In the popular game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, guards are known to say “I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee”, which has sadly spawned a terribly annoying internet meme. I recently came across a comment on a website claimed that “Arrow to the knee” was slang for getting married, a quick Google search has found lots of sites saying it’s true, lots saying it’s false, and none bothering to site any sources. So was/is “Arrow to the knee” Nordic slang?
Never heard it or anything like it.
In the sense it’s used in Skyrim its a spoof of the American classic “I played sportsball in college, could have gone pro, but then I injured my knee/elbow/shoulder”. It could of course by pure coincidence be a slang term in different languages, but I can’t recall hearing anything even remotely similar in my 39 years as a Norwegian.
Twenty years in Sweden, ten years in Denmark. Never heard it, in either language.
Well then, once again YouTube comments have lied to me. Thanks for the info.
No! It can’t be true!
(Now THERE’S meta for you…)
I concur that I’ve never heard it. I will add, however, that I googled the phrase in Swedish. Most of the hits were clear references to Skyrim, or at least postdated the game, with one exception, that being part of a poem on some guy’s poetry blog (in 2008). There was no indication that it had anything to do with marriage, but it wasn’t exactly a poem with any clear meaning. More interesting is a comment from an individual from northern-ish Sweden, who claims it’s current slang there. So it could conceivably be very local slang.
There are a lot people in Scandinavia who get to fight dragons, while their cousins get guard duty.
Could be, but I’m not so sure, because out of many Swedes he seems to be the only one who knows of it. I just found a Reddit post (Because everyone knows Reddit is more reliable than YouTube) with some more people refuting the claim, some native speakers and an “Old Norse Professor”, who either got a degree in history or is old and Norse.
Well, that narrows it down a little bit - but not a lot.
See, “northern-ish Sweden” still covers a whole lotta territory, relatively speaking - it’s like half of Scandinavia, more or less.
I guess it’s not entirely impossible that the expression exists in some windswept five-house hamlet somewhere far up north beyond the wall, as it were - up in Pajala or Tårnedalen or something - but I doubt it.
Here, by the way, is a seven-page thread about the expression, on a Swedish-language forum, where no one even mentions the possibility that it might be Swedish in origin. (Everybody’s either “Skyrim” or “maybe an old American expression, cowboys vs. Indians or some shit.”)