gladgutt/sandboy

While translating a while back, I encountered the word “gladgutt.” “glad” means “happy” and “gutt” means “boy,” so I figured I had a pretty good sense for what this word meant until I looked it up in Kunnskapsforlaget’s Norsk-Engelsk Stor Ordbok the other day and found:

gladgutt noun Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, sandboy
• han er en skikkelig gladgutt he’s as happy/jolly as a sandboy

Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky made perfect sense to me, but I was stumped by “sandboy.” What the heck’s a sandboy? So, I looked “sandboy” up in the OED and found “sand-boy: 1. a boy who hawks sand for sale. In proverbial phr. as happy (or jolly, etc.) as a sandboy.”

And even now, having researched it, I’m still a little confused as to whether these boys are drunk and/or homeless. This is just not in my active or passive vocabulary. And I would argue that there are literally millions of native English speakers who probably have no idea what a sandboy is, thus making this a bad translation. Or maybe it’s a good translation, but just British English? In which case Kunnskapsforlaget should mark it as such.