Modern Icelandic Research Articles

Discourse in Old Norse Literature

Discourse in Old Norse Literature

Translation‐Induced Interrogative Relativizers and Stability in Icelandic

AbstractThroughout the history of Icelandic, invariant particles, which do not inflect for semantic or syntactic features of the antecedent, are the typical markers of relative clauses (Þráinsson 2007). Another, putatively foreign strategy—relativization with interrogative–relative pronouns—is archaic in Modern Icelandic, but is frequent between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a period featuring a high degree of literary translation from languages which themselves possessed interrogative–relativization strategies. In this paper, I examine both internal processes of grammaticalization and the effects of contact on the development of this strategy from Old‐to‐Early Modern Icelandic by comparing the translation of the morphosyntatic structures of relative clauses among the languages involved in this contact scenario: Icelandic, German, and Latin. Using the Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus (Wallenberg et al. 2011), I conduct a diachronic corpus study that quantifies the development of this relativization strategy. I argue that the proliferation of the Icelandic interrogative–relativization strategy is a contact phenomenon stimulated by pattern borrowing from (primarily) Latin, but contextualized and made possible by a state of systemic variability and instability in the relative paradigm in Early Modern Icelandic.

The Library at Bræðratunga: Manuscript Ownership and Private Library-Building in Early Modern Iceland

Library institutions did not exist in early modern Iceland, meaning that private ownership was central to the preservation of pre-modern manuscripts and literature. However, personal collections are poorly documented in comparison to the activities of manuscript collectors such as Árni Magnússon. This article examines the case study of Helga Magnúsdóttir (1623–1677) and book ownership at her home of Bræðratunga in South Iceland, concluding that Helga Magnúsdóttir engaged in library-building as a social strategy following the death of her husband, Hákon Gíslason (1614–1652). The inventory of the Bræðratunga estate from 1653 includes only four books, all printed. However, nine manuscripts are conclusively identified as having been at Bræðratunga at least briefly during the period from c. 1653 to 1677, and evidence for the presence of another five items is discussed. Examination of surviving volumes suggests that Helga’s goal was to participate in an active culture of sharing manuscript material across distances, rather than to accumulate a large stationary collection of printed books and codices for Bræðratunga. She thereby played an important but easily overlooked role in the survival of Old Norse-Icelandic literature in the early modern period. Of the manuscripts at Bræðratunga, at least two likely came from Helga’s childhood home of Munkaþverá in North Iceland, the former site of a Benedictine monastery. Her cousin Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson of Skálholt (1605–1675) also gifted books to Helga and her family, and on his death she inherited half of his collection of Icelandic books and manuscripts, making her the owner of one of the most significant collections of Icelandic manuscripts in the country. The survival of books from Helga’s library was negatively impacted by the Fire of Copenhagen in 1728, the extinction of her family line in the eighteenth century as a long-term consequence of the 1707–1709 smallpox epidemic and collector Árni Magnússon’s antagonistic relationship with two of her children’s heirs. Árni’s relationship with Oddur Sigurðsson (1681–1741), Helga’s grandson and last living descendent, did eventually improve; an appendix includes a list of manuscripts that Oddur loaned to Árni and may have come from the library at Bræðratunga.

Old Icelandic veri

Abstract In Modern Icelandic the form veri of the verb vera ‘to be’ is seen as a subjunctive expressing a wish. Treating Old Norse veri, earlier vesi, as an imperative of the third person simplifies the vera paradigm. A survey of the oldest attestations shows that veri not only fits qua form in the imperative paradigm, but also behaves like an imperative and expresses a command. The hypothesis that veri is an imperative can be extended to: Old Norse had an imperative of the 3rd person consisting of stem+i. What usually is called the use of the 3rd person subjunctive to fill in for the missing 3rd person imperative, would then be nothing else than a real imperative, which, however, in all verbs except vera coincides in form with the subjunctive. The form verir looks like a counter example to the hypothesis, but it is only found twice in poetry, never in prose, and can be explained as a common copying error. We cannot ask the native speakers of Old Norse, so the description of Old Norse veri as a subjunctive is a hypothesis as well. It is argued that seeing veri as an imperative is the more elegant solution.

Scandinavian Studies in Germany with a Special Focus on the Position of Old and Modern Icelandic

Scandinavian Studies today are divided into (at least) three areas, which should ideally also be represented by their own chairs at the universities, if one wants to cover the subject as broadly as possible. Likewise, the four languages, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, should be offered to a certain extent. Scandinavian Studies, however, belong to the so-called “small subjects”, and financial and personnel resources are often limited. In addition, the federal states (Bundesländer) have an influence on the equipment of the universities. The subject of Scandinavian Studies can therefore be structured very differently at the individual universities. It is largely undisputed that foreign language skills are an important factor in promoting international understanding. As well, language skills are an absolute foundation in all aspects of a philological subject. Nevertheless, language teaching at universities is generally under pressure, and questions arise about its justification. This is true for both modern and ancient languages. In our article, we mainly describe the positions of Old and modern Icelandic within Scandinavian Studies, which differ greatly. This is mainly due to traditions within Scandinavian Studies and the institutions at which they are taught. Considerations are made regarding the legitimacy of these areas and their connections with other parts of the subject.

Helium and oxygen isotopic variations in the Iceland plume source controlled by entrainment of recycled oceanic lithosphere

Icelandic basalts have low oxygen isotope (δ18O) values compared to other ocean island localities. While this observation is often ascribed to the assimilation of low-δ18O crust, a low-δ18O mantle beneath Iceland has also been suggested. To discern crustal from mantle-derived signals, high-quality in-situ and bulk crystal δ18O measurements have been obtained from olivine crystals covering 16 Ma of activity at the Iceland hotspot. The results are combined with olivine (ol) major, minor and trace element chemistry. Relationships between δ18Ool and indicators of melt evolution do not support a singular process responsible for lowering of δ18O values. However, correlations are observed between δ18Ool values and indicators of crustal processes. Such patterns are used to filter out data that are likely to reflect effects from crustal assimilation to highlight δ18Ool values indicative of source-derived variability only. Although filtered, the dataset reveals, that δ18Ool values, significantly lower than the canonical depleted upper mantle value, are derived from the Iceland mantle. Coupled δ18Ool and 3He/4Heol measurements done on olivine crystals from the same samples demonstrate that low-δ18O components (down to δ18Oolivine = 4.2‰) are a trait of the modern Iceland plume and that low-δ18O and low-3He/4He components have become more apparent in the hotspot products since 60 Ma. Olivine chemistry characteristics suggest that this low-δ18O component is best sampled in melts that reflect contributions from pyroxenitic mantle lithologies, likely related to the recycling of oceanic lithosphere within the plume. An increase in plume flux, as traced by increasing plume temperatures and plume buoyancy after 35 Ma, led to enhanced entrainment of lower mantle material carrying recycled low-δ18O oceanic lithosphere. Such material has become more apparent with time as is reflected in source-derived low-δ18O and high 3He/4He values in olivine from the modern Iceland plume. Moreover, the coincidence of the Iceland plume-head and the North Atlantic Rift at from ∼25 Ma likely assisted and further promoted enhanced plume-melting. Thus, the combination of changes in mantle upwelling and tectonic reorganisation of the North Atlantic led to the introduction of recycled oceanic lithosphere into the Iceland plume and the formation of the Iceland Plateau ∼25 Ma.

Ecological niche divergence between extant and glacial land snail populations explained

The presence of Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) biotic communities without modern counterparts is well known. It is particularly evident in central European fossil LGM land snails whose assemblages represent an odd mix of species that are currently limited to either xeric or wetland habitats. Here we document a genetically verified discovery of the modern calcareous wetland species Pupilla alpicola on Iceland, where it is limited to dry grasslands. This species also represents a common European LGM fossil, and its new records from Iceland help explain puzzling shifts of some glacial land snails of xeric grassland habitats to open wetlands today. Similarities between the climates of modern Iceland and LGM Eurasia suggest that this species did not become limited to wetlands in continental Europe until after the Late Pleistocene–Holocene climate transition. These results are a strong reminder that assumptions of ecological uniformity must be questioned and that the quality and robustness of palaeoecological reconstructions is dependent upon adequate knowledge of the full autecological range of species over time.

Reception of Old Norse Mythology in Modern Icelandic Poetry: the Case of “Blóðhófnir” by Gerður Kristný Guðjónsdóttir

Reception of Old Norse Mythology in Modern Icelandic Poetry: the Case of “Blóðhófnir” by Gerður Kristný Guðjónsdóttir

Magic, Margrétar Saga and Icelandic Manuscript Culture.

Using the evidence of AM 428 a 12mo, this paper argues that ownership of Margrétar saga in early modern Iceland was not closely associated with witchcraft, as has been previously argued. Margrétar saga in AM 428 a 12mo dates from the fourteenth century but was rebound in 1689–1690 for an Icelandic woman named Helga Sigurðardóttir (d. before 11 June 1691), the wife of the landowner Jón Þórðarson of Bakki in Melasveit (1648–1719). A century earlier, it had belonged to the matriarch Helga Aradóttir (c. 1538–1614), and before Helga it had been owned by Jón Arason (1484–1550), the last Catholic bishop of Hólar. Although Margrétar saga continued to be associated with women and childbirth after the Reformation, its traditional use as a birthing aid did not lead to systematic suppression of its circulation in manuscript form. The transition from vellum to less durable paper is the most likely reason for the poor survival of early modern copies of the saga. AM 428 a 12mo is unusual in that Jón Þórðarson added new vellum leaves to the manuscript for Helga Sigurðardóttir, including two elaborate title-pages decorated with red and gold, and it is suggested that the volume was Jón’s bridal gift to Helga. Jón’s use of vellum was a deliberate aesthetic choice that served to protect the older fourteenth-century leaves until the volume came into the collection of Árni Magnússon.

Prepositional phrases and case in North American (heritage) Icelandic

AbstractThe paper investigates the use of PPs, specifically prepositions and the case marking on their DP arguments, in moribund North American (heritage) Icelandic (NAmIce), using data from a map task experiment. Since prepositional phrases combine semantic properties with morpho-syntactic properties, PPs allow us to investigate the relative vulnerability of both domains at once. Our results show that while the prepositional inventory of NAmIce is not reduced as compared to Modern Icelandic, the choice of prepositions is subject to crosslinguistic influence from the dominant language English. For case, we find an increase in the use of nominative and accusative case at the expense of the dative; prepositions may take over case functions too. Our results are in line with previous research on case in heritage languages as well as studies on language change, while partially contradicting the assumption that loss is reversely related to acquisition.

The terrain of thingworlds: Central objects and asymmetry in material culture systems

Material culture forms a relational system of distributed reality – a thingworld. But how do we get beyond simply saying that all material culture is meaningful and entangled to understanding the internal structure of such systems? Is it a flat terrain among co-equal things? Or are some objects more important than others, as we might intuitively suppose? And if so, why? This article presents an initial discussion of the problem. Using vignettes from two thingworlds – one from early modern Iceland, one from Neolithic Europe– the authors discuss what were the central material things in each, and for what reasons. This suggests that objects may be systemically central in different ways, for instance things which connect and mediate relationships of different kinds, things which are non-substitutable, and things which span multiple roles and contexts.

Сага за исландския език

This paper seeks to answer the question whether the great wealth of Icelandic literature in the sagas and the Eddas of the 12th – 13th c. is accessible to modern Icelanders without special linguistic training and hence whether it is possible for a language to remain almost intact and impervious to changes for more than 7 centuries. The paper provides an ad hoc contrastive analysis of the main nominal and verbal grammatical categories in Modern Icelandic and Old Icelandic, while focusing on their morphological properties, and describes and discusses the similarities and differences ensuing from the analysis.

Frá skiptisögn til ósamhverfrar aukafallssagnar: Um 'líka' í fornu máli

In Modern Icelandic the verb líka ‘like’ occurs with a subject in the dative case and an object in the nominative case. It has been argued that this was also the case in Old Icelandic. In this paper we argue that in contrast to Modern Icelandic, the nominative argument of líka could also constitute the subject during the Old Icelandic period and the dative argument the object. More specifically, we maintain that the verb líka was an alternating (or symmetric) verb where the nominative and the dative argument could raise to the subject position, whereas in Modern Icelandic only the dative is able to raise to the subject position. In other words, we argue that a change in the argument structure of the verb has taken place such that líka has changed from being an alternating (symmetric) verb to an asymmetric oblique subject verb. The main argument that is used to substantiate this claim comes from control infinitives in Old Icelandic, taking on the form in (i): (i) girntiz meirr at líka einum guði en mönnum desired.mid more to PRO.nom like.inf alone.dat god.dat than men.dat ‘(He) desired more to please God alone than men.’ (Æv 150.15) Based on a generative analysis of syntactic structure, we present evidence that reveals that the dative argument functions syntactically as the object, in addition to discussing other potential evidence based on word order. When the nominative argument is the subject, the meaning of 'líka' is sometimes closer to that of English 'please' than 'like'. We also discuss how this might be accounted for.

Kirsten Wolf and Natalie M. Van Deusen, The Saints in Old Norse and Early Modern Icelandic Poetry. (Toronto Old Norse-Icelandic Series.) Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2017. Pp. xi, 363. $95. ISBN: 978-1-4875-0074-0.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsKirsten Wolf and Natalie M. Van Deusen, The Saints in Old Norse and Early Modern Icelandic Poetry. (Toronto Old Norse-Icelandic Series.) Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2017. Pp. xi, 363. $95. ISBN: 978-1-4875-0074-0.Ásdís EgilsdóttirÁsdís EgilsdóttirUniversity of Iceland Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 95, Number 2April 2020 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/708039 Views: 42Total views on this site Copyright 2020 by the Medieval Academy of America. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Reunited after 1000 years. The development of definite articles in Icelandic

AbstractThis article traces the diachronic development from the Proto Norse demonstrative hinn via the Old Icelandic definite article(s) to the Modern Icelandic article system. This demonstrative gave rise to two distinct article elements during the Viking period that are well-attested from Old Icelandic onwards, a freestanding and a suffixed article.Based on evidence from Old Icelandic, I argue for a categorial distinction between an adjectival and a nominal article, which does not entirely coincide with a mere morpho-phonological distinction. The former, which mostly occurs as a freestanding element, is a genuine component of AP, not an immediate constituent of the nominal extended projection. The latter, which only occurs in suffixal form, heads a low projection in the extended nominal projection and has scope only over the noun. For Modern Icelandic, on the other hand, I will adopt the idea that free and suffixed articles are two surface manifestations of the same element.The diachronic perspective is complemented by an examination of the development of seven adjectivally modified definite noun phrase patterns. This empirical survey reveals several surprising facts: The standard pattern of modification in Modern Icelandic was virtually non-existent prior to the 17th century, and double definiteness persisted until the early 20th century. Likewise, certain modificational patterns otherwise found in Mainland Scandinavian were dominant between the 16th and 19th century. This latter observation points to a competition between two adjectival articles hinn vs. sá similar to the one that had taken place earlier in Mainland Scandinavian. In Icelandic, however, sá did not replace hinn, and, in the long run, a pattern not comprising an adjectival article became the dominant one.

An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog: Icelandic setja upp við dogg, Engl. to lie doggo, Engl. dog, and Engl. it’s raining cats and dogs

There is a rare slangy British English phrase to lie doggo “to lie hid”. The earliest known example is dated in the OED to 1882. Doggo looks like dog + o (with -o, as in weirdo, typo, and so forth), but a formation consisting of an animal name followed by the suffix -o would have no analogs. Some light on the origin of lie doggo may fall from the Modern Icelandic idiom sitja upp við dogg ‘to sit or half-lie, supporting oneself with elbows’. Doggur, known from texts since the eighteenth century, occurs with several other verbs. Also, sitja eins og doggur ‘sit motionless, look distraught’ and vera eins og doggur ‘to be motionless’ exist. Doggur has nothing to do with dogs, because the Scandinavian word for “dog” is hund-. The origin of the English noun dog is obscure, but, contrary to the almost universal opinion, the word is not totally isolated. In some German dialects, the diminutive forms dodel, döggel, and the similar-sounding tiggel ~ teckel occur. Perhaps dog and its continental look-alikes were originally baby words. The same sound complexes as above sometimes mean ‘a cylindrical object’ (such are Icelandic doggur and Middle High German tocke). Two of the basic meanings of those words were probably ‘round stick; doll’. Although the evidence is late, we can risk suggesting that lie doggo also contains the name of some device that was current not too long ago in the European itinerant handymen’s lingua franca. The overall image looks nearly the same as in the phrase dead as a doornail. In English, folk etymology connected doggo with the animal name and misled even professional lexicographers and etymologists. Finally, of some relevance is the English idiom it rains cats and dogs, whose forgotten earliest form was it rains cats and dogs and pitchforks with their points downwards. Apparently, the original idea was that a downpour of sharp objects fell to the ground.

Perception of the Sagas Of Icelanders in Modern Icelandic Crime Novels

Perception of the Sagas Of Icelanders in Modern Icelandic Crime Novels

The Valhalla saga by Snorri Kristjánsson: perception of the Old Norse culture in modern Iceland prose in English

The paper deals with The Valhalla saga (2013–2015), the novel trilogy by Snorri Kristjansson, the Icelander who writes in English and is familiar both with the Icelandic and the Anglo-American traditions of reception of the Old Norse. The question is how these two ways of reception interact in the trilogy. In modern Icelandic literature, the way of reception depends on the genre of the works referred to: if the modern work is based on sagas, its starting point is the text of a particular saga, but if it is based on mythology, the main focus is on the plot of the myths, without regard to particular texts. Besides, the Anglo-American (as well as the continental European) tradition of reception deals with some general “Viking” universum, with original persons and plots that are not related to particular ancient texts. The universum can be heroized or romanticized. The Valhalla saga begins as a historical novel and gradually develops into a mythological novel, as the plot of Ragnarok becomes the main subject matter. Still, while the mythological element in the novels increases, the historical one also becomes stronger, and the battle of the gods and the forces of chaos is attributed to the exact date in the history of the North. The Valhalla Saga is a complicated synthesis of the Icelandic and the Anglo-American ways of reception of the Old Norse universum, but the inertia of the both literary traditions is overcome in the trilogy.

Being European

During the campaign for Iceland’s independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, theatre was considered an important site for the representation of the nation. Emphasis was placed on producing and staging local plays dealing with the nation’s folklore, myths and history, thereby strengthening a sense of the roots of national identity. The article examines the longing for a representation of the nation in late nineteenth-century theatre as well as the attempts of the Reykjavik Theatre Company to stage the nation during theso-called ‘Icelandic Period’ (1907-20), before analyzing the distinctive changes in the company’s repertoire following the decision of the Icelandic parliament to build a national theatre in 1923. The staging of the nation, which had been dominated by nineteenth-century cultural nationalism, took a turn in the late 1920s towards representing the nation as a member of European metropolitan culture through an increased focus on international contemporary drama, bourgeois bedroom farce and classical drama. The image of the modern Icelanders, as represented on the stage in the 1920s, was that of the middle-class bourgeoisie.

Men in Black: Performing masculinity in 17th- and 18th-century Iceland

Studies in masculinity have lagged behind in the field of gender studies though recent scholarship is making up for this disparity. In this paper, we tackle the question of masculinity and modernity in early modern Iceland through an analysis of archaeological material relating to dress from the site of an Icelandic bishopric and school, Skálholt, during the late 17th and 18th centuries. We explore both the symbolic and performative dimensions of dress in relation to masculinity as it is traversed by other facets of identity including status, nationalism, and calling. An important focus of our study is to unravel the subtle negotiations that are evident in dress and linked to the performative construction of different and sometimes competing masculinities. Tensions between Lutheran ideals, nationalistic pride in homespun and elite status, and more generally between clerical and nonclerical masculinities can all be seen in the way dress and dress accessories are made to work.