Engin miskunn (No Mercy) - transcript/translation

The opening number of Neyslutrans, this song is about doomsday, because as we all know this is a cheerful and happy band full of color and sprightly energy.

If you’d like to see other Hatari material transcribed/translated, feel free to drop an ask in my askbox!
Icelandic transcript

MATTHÍAS:

Síðasti loftsteinninn

verður bani þinn

Síðbúin iðrunin

breytir engu

breytir engu

 

Síðasti loftsteinninn

verður bani þinn

Síðbúin iðrunin

breytir engu

breytir engu

 

Eldur mun gleypa

veröldu þína

Haldreipi áttu

engu að fagna

 

Enga miskunn!

Enga miskunn!

Enga miskunn!

 

Blindandi steypistu

öskrar í fallinu

hlýtur í pyttinum

enga miskunn

enga miskunn

 

Eldur mun gleypa

veröldu þína

Haldreipi áttu

engu að fagna

 

Enga miskunn!

Enga miskunn!

Enga miskunn!

 

KLEMENS:

Dýrðin mun ríða

yfir jörðina

Jarðneskra er barna

dómsdagur í nánd

Dómsdagur í nánd

 

MATTHÍAS:

Enga miskunn

 

KLEMENS (MATTHÍAS):

Dómsdagur í nánd (Enga miskunn)

Dómsdagur í nánd (Enga miskunn)

(Enga miskunn)

Dómsdagur í nánd (Enga miskunn)

(Enga miskunn)


Transcription notes

Before Neyslutrans, this song was played at concerts at least starting in May 2019; however, the song was quite different back then, with the backing track marked by uncomfortable, high-pitched screeching distortions, and although the lyrics were pretty much the same, the repetitions and verses were arranged quite differently - Klemens sang his entire verse twice, for instance, and the final lines were a repeat of “Síðbúin iðrunin breytir engu”. The song was revamped into its current form at some point in the summer of 2019.


English translation

MATTHÍAS:

The final meteor

will be your end

The belated repentance

changes nothing

changes nothing

 

The final meteor

will be your end

The belated repentance

changes nothing

changes nothing

 

Fire will consume

your entire world

No lifeline

to hold on to

 

No mercy!

No mercy!

No mercy!

 

Blinded, you plummet

screaming as you fall

In the pit you receive

no mercy

no mercy

 

Fire will consume

your entire world

No lifeline

to hold on to

 

No mercy!

No mercy!

No mercy!

 

KLEMENS:

Glory will descend

upon the Earth

All the Earth’s children’s

doomsday drawing near

Doomsday drawing near

 

MATTHÍAS:

No mercy!

 

KLEMENS (MATTHÍAS):

Doomsday drawing near (No mercy)

Doomsday drawing near (No mercy)

(No mercy)

Doomsday drawing near (No mercy)

(No mercy)

 
Translation notes

In the old, unreleased version of the song, some of Matthías’s “Enga miskunn” lines said “Engin miskunn” instead. The difference between “Engin miskunn” and “Enga miskunn” is that the former is in the nominative case and the latter is in the accusative - you’d say “Engin miskunn” if you’re just talking about the concept of no mercy, stating that there is none (as in the title), whereas you might use “Enga miskunn” when putting it into a sentence: for instance, in “[Þú] hlýtur í pyttinum enga miskunn”, it’s the object of the verb “hlýtur”, and the object of that verb is always in the accusative case. (That one was “enga miskunn” even in the old version.)

However, just stating something in the accusative on its own denotes a blunt request for that thing, potentially an order. So when Matthías shouts “Enga miskunn!” by itself, he is calling for no mercy. This makes the song a bit more threatening and aggressive.

“Haldreipi áttu engu að fagna”, which I’ve translated “No lifeline to hold on to”, was an interesting one. Haldreipi, literally “holding-rope”, is a term referring to something that helps and supports you through something; meanwhile, “að eiga engu ___ að fagna” is a phrase that literally means “having no ___ to celebrate”, but idiomatically just means that you don’t have it at all. The word lifeline was a pretty good equivalent to “haldreipi” that kind of keeps the rope image, but because Hatari are using this whole phrase just to describe not having one, this lyric is two lines. Adding “to hold on to” brought back the “holding” concept, and made the rope metaphor more explicit, but mostly I did it so the translation would also sensibly be two lines.

“ríða yfir jörðina” literally means “ride over the earth” but idiomatically it means to sort of consume or overwhelm in the sense of a natural disaster - you might say it of an earthquake, for instance. “Descend upon” seemed a decent compromise.

“Jarðneskra er barna / dómsdagur í nánd” was a line that took me a long, long time to actually figure out how to parse. It’s using highly unusual poetic word order: in normal speech, this sentence would be written “Dómsdagur jarðneskra barna er í nánd”, which means “The doomsday of earthly children is near”. The word order of the line is equivalent to “Earthly is children’s doomsday near”. In Icelandic, thanks to the highly inflected nature of the language, this order does actually make sense and can be parsed correctly, though it might take you a moment and it’s not how anyone would actually say it outside of poetry! Matthías does not fuck around in writing his lyrics.

The word “miskunn” (mercy) is one of a few feminine words (einkunn, miskunn, vorkunn, and forkunn) in Icelandic that end in two n’s, rather than one. One of the most common spelling mistakes in Icelandic is confusing whether to use one or two n’s near the end of various words, and these words in particular are an exception to the general rule that feminine words ending in -un only have one n. I’m sure many Icelanders have long forgotten learning this list of exceptions in school, but it’s all I can think about when I see any of these words.
