I’ve asked this a few times over the years and never gotten a satisfactory answer; here’s hoping the collective brainpower here has crossed over the critical line and can now decipher my mystery.
My mother was North Dakota Norwegian, of the first family generation born here, around 1925. Her parents were Norwegian and Danish, and of course the community included some blockhead Swedes as well.
From this background, she (and my grandmother) had an expostulation that indicated tremendous irritation - for example, if one of us dropped a milk carton and made a huge mess. It was a stronger companion to the usual “uff da” and “fish da.”
As closely as I can remember it, the phrase was “Doo von hicken von varda veet.”
Anyone with a good grasp of colloquial Scandinavian care to take a swing at a translation?
I can’t make sense of it either, but I’ve thought something was gibberish before and been proven wrong by the people on the Norway-list genealogical mailing list. You might have better luck there:
I know. I’m not sure my mother even quite knew what it meant. Since this is the fourth or fifth time I’ve asked over the years, even trying to speak it in person to Norwegiphones, without success… I guess it just remains family gibberish.
Can you make a sound clip of it? Maybe that would be easier.
FWIW, here’s a little wild speculation on what the individual words might mean
Doo von hicken von varda veet
Doo = du (you)
Hicken = ikke (not)
varda = verdt å (worth to) or hver dag (every day) or verden (the world)
veet = vite (to know)
The ‘von’ I’m even more lost on. Could be ‘faen’ (lit: devil) or ‘fant’/‘fann’ (found, find) or ‘vann’ (water) or vant/vann (won). Since there’s two of them they might be different words.