Bæði margspǫk ok óljúgfróð
Grammar by sagas | Íslendingabók | Adjectives, prepositions, possession
Þuríðr var bæði margspǫk ok óljúgfróð, Thurid was both very wise and truthful. We shall continue our grammatical reading of chapter I of Íslendingabók. The author traces his illustrious lineage. As we noted earlier, the passage highlighted here is a long incise explaining according to the reckoning and count (at ætlun ok tǫlu þeira Teits) from whom these historical data on the settlement of Icelande comes.
Ísland byggðist fyrst ór Nórvegi á dǫgum Haralds ins hárfagra, Hálfdanarsonar ins svarta, í þann tíð, at ætlun ok tǫlu þeira Teits, fóstra míns, þess manns, er ek kunna spakastan, sonar Ísleifs byskups, ok Þorkels, fǫðurbróður míns, Gellissonar, er langt munði fram, ok Þuríðar Snorradóttur goða, er bæði var margspǫk ok óljúgfróð, er Ívarr Ragnarssonr loðbrókar lét drepa Eadmund inn helga Englakonung. En þat var átta hundruð ok sjau tigum vetra eftir burð Krists, at því er ritit er í sǫgu hans.
We shall focus on this very piece of Old Norse, which although brief, is very rich in grammar. We will make three main observations, thereby highlighting three different notions.
At
As we said earlier, at is the preposition which in this context means according to. But at can mean many things! Let's look closely at the entry at in the Cleasby & Vigfusson Old Norse to English dictionary. This long entry distinguishes between the cases, precisely, the grammatical cases required by the preposition, depending on use, context and meaning. Old Norse prepositions therefore call for a particular grammatical case, and sometimes several, as with at, depending on the context.
The Germanist will already be familiar with prepositions with a particular rection. Let's look at some German.
Die Feuerwehrleute gehen durch die Rauchsäule. (Firefighters make their way through the smoky dome.)
Sie kämpfen gegen das Feuer. (They're fighting the fire.)
Ein Hund läuft um die Ecke. (A dog comes around the corner.)
Durch, gegen, um always call for the accusative, and the noun phrase that follows is here correctly declined in the accusative : die Rauchsäule, das Feuer, die Ecke.
Er kommt aus dem Laden, in dem er seit mehreren Stunden eingekauft hat. (He comes out of the store where he had been shopping for several hours.)
Aus and seit both always require the dative, which the nominal groups dem Laden and mehreren Stunden bear.
Finally, two-way prepositions.
Vor dem Haus hatten sie die Geweihe eines großen Hirsches aufgehängt. (In front of the house, they had hung the antlers of a large deer.)
Die Maus rennt vor die Tür. (The mouse runs in front of the door.)
The same German preposition vor sometimes calls for the accusative, sometimes for the dative. In general, displacement demands the accusative, while the static state demands the dativ. The mouse runs, while the antlers hang.
This locative function of the dative runs through Germanic languages, and language historians date it back to Proto-Germanic. Proto-Germanic, it is hypothesized, will have completely integrated the locative case that existed in Proto-Indo-European with the dative. (Majer, 2014, p.46) A riveting chapter, and we shall soon be exploring the progression of the case system from Proto-Indo-European through Proto-Germanic to Old Norse.
Let's return to our dictionary entry. We learn that Old Norse at is followed sometimes by the accusative, sometimes by the dativ. The dative case is by far the most frequent, and Haugen (Haugen, 2015, p.140) summarizes its use as “an expression of time or place, where presence can be understood as the result of movement” (“uttrykk for tid eller stad, der nærværet kan forståast som resultat av rørsle”), which indicates a certain subset of the static state, the one arrived at after movement; interestingly, for the preposition at, the dictionary details two uses of the dative to express place, one without and the other with movement. Without movement, the preposition will be denoting presence at, near, by, at the side of, in, upon as in at ǫldri (at a banquet), at áti (at dinner), at samfǫrum ok samvistum (at public meetings/gatherings), at dómi (in court/at a legal assembly).
But the dativ is also required by the at locatif without movement, which can then translate
towards, against, as in sendimaðrinn sneri hjǫltum sverðsins at konungi (the messenger turned the sword's hilt toward the king);
denoting proximity, close up to as in Gunnarr kom þangat at þeim ǫrunum (Gunnar reached them there with his arrows);
denoting a motion along, into, upon as in at ísi (on the ice) or máttu menn ganga bar yfir at skipum einum (men could walk there across by ships alone);
hereafter somehow metaphorically, denoting an engagement as, the dictionary tells us, in ríða at hrossum, at sauðum (to go looking after/checking on horses, sheep) or
denoting hostility as in renna at, hlaupa at (to run towards, to leap at) or
denoting around, of clothing or the like as in vefja mǫtri at hǫfði sér (to wrap a snood around one's head)
In all cases, we sense a prevalent nuance of proximity, be it heading towards or being near.
The temporal use in dativ is rather close to the English one. Moment when something happens, point in time, sometimes more precisely, point of beginning as in at vetri (at the beginning of the winter, on the day when winter sets in).
Finally, at in dativ accompanies a number of metaphorical uses, in particular, denoting the source of a thing when learning something as in Ari nam ok marga fræði at Þuríði (Ari learned also much knowledge from Thurid) or denoting conformity - and this is the usage case in our original text - as in at ráði allra vitrustu manna (according to the counsel of all the wisest men).
The accusative usage is much less frequent, so it seems, rather for poetic and literary purposes, or in conjunction with other prepositions.
In short, Old Norse prepositions call for a specific grammatical case. Some are two-way, and may call for multiple grammatical cases, depending on meaning and usage. Let's look anew at our saga excerpt.
at ætlun ok tǫlu
ætlun and tǫlu are two feminine substantives in the dative singular, whose nominative is ætlun (reckoning, estimation) and tala (count, number) respectively.
according to the reckoning and count
margspǫk ok óljúgfróð
Let's now turn our attention to the adjectives (very) wise and truthful.
Þuríðar Snorradóttur goða, er bæði var margspǫk ok óljúgfróð
Both describe Thurid, Snorri the Goði's daughter. er is the relative pronoun expanding on Þuríðar and bæði is determiner in singular neutral, meaning both, here used adverbially. Thurid, who is both margspǫk and óljúgfróð.
Let's take a closer look at our two adjectives. The former is formed from marg and spǫk, where the former serves emphases, a bit like many- or super-. We will therefore focus on the declension of spǫk. The prefix ó- in óljúgfróður is privative while ljúgfróður means untruthful, inacurrate and the double negation gives truthful or truthfully knowledgeable. Agreed in gender and number with what or whom they refer to, Thurid, spǫk and óljúgfróð are in the feminine singular. Their form is then enough to determine that both are in the nominative, and follow the strong declension: spǫk and fróð appear nowhere else in the feminine singular declension table.
This is also indeed the case, and the declension pattern required by their function. Both are predicative adjectives, that is, adjectives appearing after a copula, here the verb to be in the preterite tense, var, and qualify the subject, functionally the relative pronoun er, which stands for Thurid. And the predicative adjective in Old Norse is, precisely, in the nominative strong declension.
For there is a weak and a strong declension of the adjective. Let's look at the weak declension of the feminine singular of spakr,
N. spaka
A. spǫku
D. spǫku
G. spǫku
and now the strong one
N. spǫk
A. spaka
D. spakri
G. spakrar
What to notice? The three oblique (i.e., non-nominative) cases of weak declension are identical. So it's the context, the number and person of verbs, the number, person, case, strong or weak pattern of substantives that helps resolve the case in situation.
All adjectives can be declined almost like spakr. Almost, because several phonetic rules apply quite regularly to certain cases, so that it is customary (Haugen) to distinguish two or three declension patterns: spakr, the most common, gamall, for adjectives ending in -al/-il/-ul or -ig/-ug and heiðinn. Of course, we shall return in detail to these important phonetic rules and to the complete adjective declension tables.
For now, let's remember that the predicative adjective follows the strong declension, that the adjective agrees in gender, number and person with the noun to which it refers, and that, so, there are two declensions of the adjective, weak and strong.
þeira
Finally, let's analyze this þeira which is somewhat resisting us.
at ætlun ok tǫlu þeira Teits, fóstra míns, þess manns, er ek kunna spakastan, sonar Ísleifs byskups, ok Þorkels, fǫðurbróður míns, Gellissonar, er langt munði fram, ok Þuríðar Snorradóttur goða, er bæði var margspǫk ok óljúgfróð
With a little experience, you can suspect without difficulty a plural genitive. The -ra/-na/-a endings are quite indicative of a plural genitive, notably in the strong declension of the adjective, and the strong and weak declensions of the noun.
at ætlun ok tǫlu, that is, according to the reckoning and count likes to call a genitive case: according to the reckoning and count of whom, a genitive construction. Let's examine our short text more closely. We start by elaguering relative clauses, which don't interest us here: this is easy, they start with the relative pronoun, er. We also eliminate þess manns, in apposition to the preceding substantive, and which the relative clause that follows completes.
at ætlun ok tǫlu þeira Teits, fóstra míns, þess manns, er ek kunna spakastan, sonar Ísleifs byskups, ok Þorkels, fǫðurbróður míns, Gellissonar, er langt munði fram, ok Þuríðar Snorradóttur goða, er bæði var margspǫk ok óljúgfróð
We now look for evidence of the genitive. Here again, a little habit informs us: -s and -ar are two recurrent genitive marks in the strong declension of the substantive. Where the neuter always takes -s, and the feminine -ar (sometimes -r plus vowel variation), the masculine takes -s or -ar on a case-by-case basis. The text is strewn with such marks, the genitives are everywhere.
at ætlun ok tǫlu þeira Teits, fóstra míns, […] sonar Ísleifs byskups, ok Þorkels, fǫðurbróður míns, Gellissonar, […] ok Þuríðar Snorradóttur goða […]
míns the pronoun possessive is also, of course, in the genitive. Then the substantive fóstra follows the weak feminine declension, with the singular genitive suffix -a. Snorradóttur and fǫðurbróður are the genitive of somewhat special nouns, belonging to a small group of kinship terms. Their three oblique singular cases make -ur. This group includes faðir (father), móðir (mother), bróðir (brother), systir (sister), dóttir (daughter). goða is the adjective in the genitive, weak masculine declension. So there you have it at last, the cartography of the genitives.
at ætlun ok tǫlu þeira Teits, fóstra míns, […] sonar Ísleifs byskups, ok Þorkels, fǫðurbróður míns, Gellissonar, […] ok Þuríðar Snorradóttur goða […]
We distinguish three noun phrases, coordinated twice by ok (and):
Teits, fóstra míns, […] sonar Ísleifs byskups where fóstra míns (my foster-father) is a first apposition to noun Teits, sonar Ísleifs byskups (son of the bishop Ísleif) a second. In Old Norse, appositive elements agree in case with the noun they characterize or further identify. The appositional noun phrase - fóstra míns or sonar - is in genitive case because it is in apposition to something - Teits - that is in genitive case. Then, Ísleifs byskups is a further genitive construction, completing sonar.
Þorkels, fǫðurbróður míns, Gellissonar (my uncle Thorkel, son of Gelli) is again a noun proper to the genitive, and its two appositions (Thorkel is first my uncle, second, Gellisson, that is, the son of Gelli)
Þuríðar Snorradóttur goða (Thurid daughter of Snorri the Chieftain) where Snorradóttur goða is in apposition to and characterises Thurid
Three genitive groups, which tell us whose reckoning and count it is. What does this þeira add, then, in the genitive plural? And first of all, what is its nature?
þeir(r)a is the genitive plural of the demonstrative pronoun in all genders, meaning thereby of them/their. For the record, Middle English borrowed it from Old Norse, and it derived into English their. So, litteraly, according to the reckoning and count of them, (namely) Teits, […] and Thorkel, […] and Thurid. The technical notion is that of partitive genitive or partitive apposition. This of them introduces and announces a future collection, in this case of the three proper nouns in genitive. This construction is a stylistic feature of Old Norse prose, where the demonstrative pronoun þeira precedes a collection of elements - proper nouns or something else - to create some kind of referential effect in the narrative.
We talked briefly about prepositions and their particular rection, with or without movement; the genitive case and a particular construct, the partitive apposition; and the strong and weak declension of the adjective.
In the near future, we shall be looking more closely at the intriguing ǫ (o with ogonek or caudata) for instance in sǫgu and fǫðurbróður and the related phonetic phenomenon.
Sources
Majer, M. (2014). How many grammatical cases were there in Proto-Germanic? Interpreting the Old English evidence. In E. Willim (Ed.), Young linguists in dialogue (pp. 43-50). Cambridge University Press.
Haugen, O. E. (2015). Norrøn grammatikk i hovuddrag. Novus.