Hej everyone,

It's been a while since I've updated you over here, but here we are, looking at a Runeterran language again. It's been a while since Volibear's magnificent theme has been released (If you haven't heard it yet somehow, go check it out, it's truly great). And although they have released the English lyrics (more on that later), they have never released a Freljordian transcription, which is where I come in.

I've made a Freljordian transcription, and although it is a bit messy, it should help us figure out some more information about this language. Afterwards I'll compare the language used in Voli's theme with Orrn's song, which have some big differences between them.

Now I need to preface this with two things. Firstly, it is still my interpretation, and can thus be very wrong, but we won't know anything for sure until Riot released the Freljordian words. As for the English translation provided by Riot, it's mostly accurate, but some bits don't add up. For example, in the first line:

Teimir himler römmurThe sky rumbles deeply

We know from Ornn's song that 'sky' is 'sky' in Freljordian as well. Himler probably means 'heavens' as can be seen in Swedish himlen or Icelandic himnaríki. For this reason, I will be adjusting the English translation slightly in some place, according to what we know of Freljordian from Ornn's theme, and will change entire sentences if the syntactic structure doesn't add up. Now without further ado, here are the Freljordian lyrics and the more Freljordian-based translation than the one provided by Riot.

First Verse:

Teimir himler römmur, kendir heim.
Times and heavens rumble, knowing him.

Áskandar en helt, Valhirr.
A thunderous hero 'Valhirr'.

Æn vinde var on melter jeðir.
A wind of faded glory.

Frán kallir ásþisk, férner mér.
From ancient calls, they find me.

There are some interesting remarks to be made about the translation here. Riot's translation of the first line is "The sky rumbles deeply, knowing him". As previously mentioned, himler is probably best translated as heavens, but more interesting is the 'deeply' part. Teimir means 'Times' as in, the strands of time, which we know from Ornn's Song, and we also know that adverbs come after the verb instead of before it. Taking these arguments into consideration, the English sentence doesn't add up completely, thus my adjusted translation.

The second line is translated as 'As the thunder calls out', but again, we know that 'call' is translated as something like kallir. Moreover, helt could stem from helt in Danish and held in Dutch, which are translated as 'hero'.

The third line is translated as 'A memory of ancient and faded glory' while we know that vinde means wind, so that raises questions as well. Also, it's interesting how melter translates to 'faded', while you'd expect something like 'molten'. It's possible though, that 'molten' and 'faded' stem from the same word.

In the last line, kallir is translated as 'beckon', while it's translated as 'calling' in the main chorus, but, as I've mentioned previously, the Riot English translation isn't literal, it's more general and probably made to sound nice in English, instead of Freljordian.

Chorus:

Vorrijaard kallir, viltur vei hertås.
Vorrijaard calls, a path towards a wild heart.

Se tón hóg men króna tíl.
Seen to a height, a crown of claws.

Van Vorrijaard beoft, be sparka lón.
Of Vorrijaard request, asking to answer the plea.

Nar í sóg vír saman, vír stark.
When we join in song together, we're strong

In the first line, hertås could be dissected as hert-ås 'towards the heart,' which then ties in nicely with vei, meaning 'road' or 'path' from Ornn's Theme. The second line is probably the line I'm least sure of. Riot's translation says 'By tooth, and with claw, will return!', but I'm not sure if I agree with that when comparing it to the language used in Ornn's Theme. Thus my own translation is very much begging for a clearer translation as of now.

The third line is more straightforward, since be comes from Swedish 'to ask', beoft could then be a noun, such as 'a request' that was declined from be. The last line makes more sense when translated as 'when we join in song' instead of 'stand' since the song is meant to be sung by many. Riot's translation is "Rise now! Together we stand tall!". If vír means 'we', saman means 'together' (such as in Nordic) and nar means när 'when' as in Swedish, "When we join in song together, we're strong" feels like a more appropriate translation.

Second Verse:

Teimer jörður römmur, te veinter heim.
Time and earth rumble, awaiting him.

Oss jörnór helt, vindrings spa ínt.
Our earthly hero, weathered in iron.

Jörð konger hún erer skal dreinor,
The earth they worship, shall drink,

Regnón stremnor ræ evasist.
The rain that flows eternally.

In the second line, Riot translates oss jörnór helt as 'The wind howls', but in Ornn's song, both 'wind' and 'howl' occur, with different words (vind and hyl respectively). Jörn could be derived from júrð 'earth', instead. The wind can be seen, however, in vindrings, where it could take a meaning such as 'weathered' or 'drenched'. In the third and fourth line, Riot's translation has a very different structure, so I had to be a bit more liberal. Stremmor could come from Swedish strömma 'to flow', which ties in with the rain of regnón. As for the last two words of the verse, they could be many things, so for now I've kept it in line with the official translation.

In conclusion, when we look at Voli's theme from a Freljordian perspective with the knowledge gained from Ornn's song, we had to make some adjustments to Riot's translation. Furthermore, the sounds used aren't identical, but it could be that Ornn's is Ancient, while Voli's is sung by a speaker of Modern Freljordian.

It's still a bit messy, so please comment if you have suggestions, so that we can figure this out together. If people are interested, I'll do a more in-depth analysis of the linguistic information that we can find and apply to both songs, such as case, proposition placement and vocabulary. I wanted to create glossing for this post, such as the example beneath here, but the post was already a bit too lengthy. I'll make a post with glossing of the entire song if people are interested in it.

teim-ir     himl-er     römm-ur      kend-ir      heim
time-PL.COM heaven-PL   rumble-PRS   know-PTCP    he.DAT
'Times and heavens rumble, knowing him.'

If you wish to discuss it further, check out our subreddit r/Runeterran or join our Discord ^^

// Nanna