What is "my mother told me" really about ?

In Vikings and other media (Valhalla Calling / Assassin's Creed), a certain song has been widely featured.

When you go to the normal English translation, a certain line of old Norse

mær skulði kaupa

is translated

I should buy

But in actual old norse, mær is the dative, so it really means

they should buy me

This is not just a linguistic mix-up. It completely changes the situation. The song in Vikings would normally imply sth like a mother raising each of the warriors with this exact ambition : buying a ship and good oars, getting an axe, hewing foes ...

The real situation in the Old Norse poem is explained in this video by Jackson Crawford:

That Viking "Sea Shanty" (in Old Norse)
Jackson Crawford, 30 June 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwUkiIDv7Is

Skipping some detail, the seven year old boy Egill Skallagrímsson is beaten in wrestling, kills an older boy with a weapon, and his behaviour is being discussed. The poem as such is what Egill composes on hearing his mother's view on it, which was "look, you are / he is, already a good Viking" ...

When she says they should buy Egill a ship, she's just expanding on that.

I think that says quite a lot of the Viking view on life, but before the poem is taken as very exemplar, how about noting that it was actually composed by a seven year old boy who had just committed his first murder, it was not his nec plus ultra in skaldic poetry. It's like taking Mozart's first minuet and pushing that as the nec plus ultra of Viennese classicism. Mozart's first minuet was, by the way, composed at a comparable, even slightly younger age, I think I recall he was just five. He was homeschooled by a musician father, and early on raised for that business. A somewhat more agreeable one than the Viking lifestyle./HGL

PS - parlant de Vikings et leur mauvais mœurs, je viens d'entendre une moitié de conversation en suédois, un proche vient de perdre un porte-monnaie, et quand je lui propose de venir vers mon ordinateur, le vieux connard refuse, il est tellement occupé, mais s'occuper de sauver la situation de son proche plutôt que de lui faire des reproches pour avoir lâché le porte-monnaie, ça ne lui vient pas en esprit. Quand il se prend le temps de quitter l'ordi, il m'assure, assez contrairement à ce qu'il avait dit à son proche, que ce serait presque certainement un pick-pocket qui avait volé .... il aurait dû au moins demander à sa sœur d'essayer ... non, non, non ... espérons qu'il change d'avis, que j'ai plus qu'une fois crié "rue des Morillons" et qu'ensuite il demande à qqn d'autre ... mais il est d'abord hypercritique de sa sœur et ensuite hyperpessimiste pour ce qui se passe et encore dédaigneux quand j'essaie de l'aider .../HGL