Profanity - To Cuss or Not

To Swear or Not to Swear...

In the Hel series, profanity is sprinkled throughout the novels. But why? How does this help drive the story forward?

I spent the first 20 years of my adult life in the military. As a result of maturing in such a rugged environment, profanity has become a part of my daily vocabulary, especially in stressful situations, so I passed that on to the spicy warriors of Helsgaard Keep. A person living in harsh conditions where their life is on the line will be more prone to profanity than the typical college professor. It adds credibility to the character.

Turns out, the people of Norway today, speak with profanity as it is just another word... or so I've read :)

Borrowing directly from Joss Whedon's Firefly TV series, where he replaced swear words with their Chinese (Mandarin) counterparts, I did the same. When a character wants to swear, I translate it the best I can, but somewhere along the line, "Stred!" just doesn't have the same impact as the guttural "Fuck!" Understanding the verb "fuck" is derived from the German verb "fokken," I thought about trying some imaginative permutation of fokken, but that was an artistic license I wasn't initially willing to take, but confusion amongst my beta readers showed I needed to modernize the profanity a bit. The guttural impact carries more weight than the sibilant sounds.

In the end, the swear words all sound rather English, which is no surprise as Danish contributed heavily to the English language as we know it today.

Blog image courtesy Thyra Dane: https://thyradaneauthor.com/2019/09/28/curse-like-a-viking/