The German version was translated as: 'It is her obsession to scrape together thaler after thaler for her son Andreas, whom she expects to return. ChatGPT: aler på daler — literally dalers upon dalers. A daler was a historical Scandinavian silver coin (the predecessor of the Norwegian krone). Here it is an idiomatic expression meaning "money upon money," "a fortune," "heaps of money." It is not referring to geographical valleys.

Mark, you once correctly pointed out to me that Norwegian is so close to English and here is another example. Although the Norwegian 'dale' does translate to 'valley', 'daler' here in this context simply means 'dollar'. A correct translation therefore would be "It's her crazy idea, that she has to scrape together dollar upon dollar for her son Andreas, for whom she's waiting at home." Doesn't that make more sense?