Talk:Gefion Fountain

See Scandinavian discussion on the subject-- where's that?

Would the person who noted we should look somewhere, please put a link to exactly where this discussion can be found. --SFDan 18:40, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that would be me. Link is here: http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Gefionspringvandet. Emilsj 19:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Hej Emilsj. From what I read at that discussion, and also at http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Gefion and a quick search on Google it seems there are some that say it is Mälaren[1] and others that say it is Väneren[2] (no matter what you or I think is the one that it should be). It doesn't appear to me that one answer is definitive. If that is the case and both lakes are attributed to the legend, that it would seem to me that it would be most truthful to say exactly that and to cite with footnotes who is saying what. --SFDan 21:01, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure how much of my Danish argumentation you understood, but it is true that there are different opinions regarding the translation of the original name of the lake, which was Lagen/Lägen/Lågen. If you are able to understand Swedish, you can take a look at this site, http://susning.nu/Sj%F6n_Lagen. The main argumentation of the site is that the word låg (from Lågan) means "low" in English as do the word "vän" (used in Vänern) in old Swedish. So we know that both lake names probably refer to a lake that are placed low in the terrain. Some interprets this as being the same lake; a rather weak argument in my opinion. A better argument is that Vänern's size (5,655 km^2) is much closer to the actual size of Zealand (7,031 km^2) than that of Mälaren (1,140 km^2). However, my point in the Danish talk page was that the size of the lakes doesn't matter at all. In the original legend (which is the origin of this debate, since it obviously didn't happen in reality), the comparison of the lake to the island is made by comparing the shapes of the creeks in the lake to the capes of Zealand, and in that regard Mälaren looks much more like Zealand than Vänern (see Google Earth). The original saga does not mention size in any way, which takes away the main argument on the Vänern side. In addition to this, Snorri Sturlasons writes another place in the Heimskringla that Odin travled to Lågen, settled down and acquired a big piece of land, that he called "Sigtuna", which today is the name of one of Sweden's oldest, still existing cities (over 1000 years old), which is placed at the shore of Mälaren. In my opionion, the arguments for Mälaren are quite convincing, opposed to those for Vänern that are more speculative and non-historic. I can see how one could be misled to think that it is Vänern the had been plowed up, given the obvious resemblence in size to Zealand. But I am also convinced, that this argument is the source of the "wrong" story. I have yet to see a serious history book/site the referes to Lågen/Lagen/Lägen as being todays Vänern. All the places it is being mentioned as Vänern are tourist informations and other such bureaus, who doesn't use much time on research. I think that we should keep Mälaren in the article and make a subsection about the name confusion, which has the above arguments? --Emilsj 23:40, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

In shape, Vänern has a rather close resemblance to Zealand, while Mälaren has none at all. But was this now in Snorri's time? --Klausok (talk) 12:05, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

I understand your arguements perfectly fine, and I read the Swedish site. Still, these arguments of yours-- "a rather weak argument in my opinion", " better argument is that", "doesn't matter at all", "this argument is the source of the "wrong" story", "In my opionion"-- and the one is more speculative than another-- all amount to "original" conclusions and not the reporting of facts (which are simply that there is divided expert opinion on which lake is being talked about, and attributing the expert opinion to the proper sources). I am not sure if all of this argumentation is needed in this article or in another article. If the only "expert sources" that say the lake is Vänern are "tourist informations and other such bureaus" in relationship to this fountain, then that information along with the competing "historic" expert opinion (with citations) belongs here. But if the argument is wider (and I have not looked into that), then perhaps it belongs in, for example, the Gefjun article (which surprisingly enough lacks any references to Snorri Sturluson or Heimskringla or Ynglinga saga, if these are as you say "the original legend (which is the origin of this debate)"), and then a brief summary of the situation belongs here. In any case I believe the text in this article at this moment reflects your personal conclusions and is not reporting the situation as it really is. I would like to see that situation improve, and you offer what I see as a very good start to fixing the text in your comments above. --SFDan 05:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I have now made a revision of the article, including general editing of the article with more information. I also include what I hope is a reasonably sound explanation of the various lake identifications that others can accept. --SFDan 17:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)