Islandic and Íslendingabók
Intermingling | Islandic | Some linguistic distance
This is natural evidence, and the organic evolution of languages explains it, Old Norse resembles the Scandinavian languages that derive from it. But is it equally close to all Scandinavian languages? The three main continental Scandinavian languages - Swedish, Norwegian and Danish - are closer to each other than they are to Icelandic. Logically, if Old Norse is very close to one of them, it cannot be as close to all the others.
Let’s observe closely. This is from the first chapter of Íslendingabók.
En þat var átta hundruð ok sjau tigum vetra eftir burð Krists, at því er ritit er í sǫgu hans.
The following is the Islandic equivalent.
En það var átta hundruð og sjötíu vetur eftir burð Krists, samkvæmt því sem ritað er í sögu hans.
The closeness is uncanny. Let us look at the Norwegian equivalent.
Og det var åtte hundre og sytti vintre etter Kristi fødsel, ifølge det som er skrevet i hans saga.
Then the Swedish one, and finally the Danish one.
Och det var åtta hundra och sjuttio vintrar efter Kristi födelse, enligt vad som står skrivet i hans saga.
Og det var otte hundrede og halvfjerds vintre efter Kristi fødsel, som det er skrevet i hans saga.
We are not very far away either, but maybe a little further.
As you can appreciate, there is a difficulty inherent in the “closeness” in question. We can spontaneously detect and gauge the proximity of languages. In the present case, to say with a simple glance of neophyte, that Old Norse is closer to Icelandic than it is to the three continental ones, without being far from the latter. If, however, we try to rationalize this impression, to explain in detail the "components" or "modalities" of this “closeness”, we may be left speechless. How close, precisely, are both languages, and close how? It takes a bit of thinking.
Galois dreams of alchemizing a precise, very mathematical notion of distance between languages. A machine which, given the universal corpora of any two languages, engineers their objective score of similarities, in all respects, according to a secret and exact formula. Until then, we happily spend our time researching among humans, intuiting and marveling at the closeness of Old Norse to his close heirs.
Precisely, the Intermingling series focuses on comparative linguistics and the science of translation. It brings the Old Norse text closer to its versions in related and less related, rather Germanic, languages.
Our dream of a distance is revealing of a number of problems in this comparison undertaking. Let's patiently consider anew our sentence from Íslendingabók.
En þat var átta hundruð ok sjau tigum vetra eftir burð Krists, at því er ritit er í sǫgu hans.
By the way, the following is an English translation:
And it was eight hundred and seventy winters after Christ's birth, according to what is written in his saga.
We are at the very beginning of the first chapter of Íslendingabók. We are learning about the temporal circumstances of Iceland's first colonization, as well as the famous and reliable sources relied on by the author, Are Torgilsson Frode. Our Norwegian translation was the following:
Og det var åtte hundre og sytti vintre etter Kristi fødsel, ifølge det som er skrevet i hans saga.
Yet, alternative propositions are very valid. For instance, this works equally well.
Og det var åtte hundre og sytti vintre etter Kristi fødsel, slik det står skrevet i hans saga.
Let’s compare.
Let's take a short detour into grammar. at is an Old Norse preposition that can mean many things. In the present case, it is followed by the dative, and is probably well translated by according to, entry C. VI. in the Cleasby & Vigfusson Dictionary. því is indeed the dative of the neutral singular demonstrative pronoun, which is declined as follows:
Nom. þat
Acc. þat
Dat. því
Gen. þess
er is the relativ pronoun that the Norwegian translates here as som. at því er is therefore literally: according to that which, corresponding well to the Norwegian ifølge det som. Thus, the first Norwegian translation of the relative proposition in Old Norse, after the comma, is virtually the word for word translation of the Old Norse.
The second renders at því er by slik det. This does not alter the meaning, but melts the according to that which into a slik det which literally rather means such as that. So, *according to that which is written in his saga becomes in the second Norwegian translation something approaching such as it stands (står) in his saga.
We can see that the first translation, ifølge det som, is obviously closer to the Old Norse than the second, slik det.
Here is the problem with our distance we seek to illustrate here. Translation is not an exact science. For the same Old Norse sentence, we can produce one Norwegian translation that corresponds word for word, and another a little further away. Distance is not a function of the language pair alone, but fluctuates with translation. It can be objected that these variations are minor, and do not alter the conclusion immediately intuited, that Old Norse is much closer to Icelandic than to the other three. The fact remains, however, that the possibility of an exact calculation of a closeness is very much challenged by this wide variability in translation. Our case here is simple: translation, in general, is interpretation, and creation. The interplay is therefore important.
Another obvious challenge in defining a distance is the variability of the languages themselves. Great authors can be said to have a language of their own. As we shall see in our Norse chronicles series, linguistic tendencies, the style of the writers is a crucial clue when attempting to trace the authorship of the sagas. Of course, the official language tends to freeze written usage, but even so, it can still fluctuate to some extent geographically or sociologically. A slang or dialect word is woven into the essay. And of course, language evolves over time. The reference dictionary sells a new edition every Christmas. Languages let themselves be anglicized or overall influenced, they sharpen, they broaden, they jargonize, and so on. Some languages are evolving rapidly (globalization), while others seem to be freezing millennia-old characteristics (insularity).
Icelandic, then, is one of those languages that preserves, as if in ice, the remnants of old Norse.
A modern Icelandic reader can very well understand our Old Norse sentence:
En þat var átta hundruð ok sjau tigum vetra eftir burð Krists, at því er ritit er í sǫgu hans.
when the following is our Islandic equivalent:
En það var átta hundruð og sjötíu vetur eftir burð Krists, samkvæmt því sem ritað er í sögu hans.
Let's focus on the first proposition.
En þat var átta hundruð ok sjau tigum vetra eftir burð Krists
En það var átta hundruð og sjötíu vetur eftir burð Krists
The syntax ( the structure of the sentence) is rigorously identical, as is the word order, every Old Norse word finding an Icelandic equivalent whose similarity is sometimes complete. A minor exception is the number sjau tigum in two words (seventy) which becomes sjötíu in Icelandic. eftir burð Krists remains perfectly unchanged. Interestingly, this points to a very analogous declension paradigm. Krists in burð Krists is indeed the genitive of Old Norse Kristr, and of Icelandic Kristur.
Kristr presents the -r mark of the nominative of certain masculine substantives. The interspersed u in Kristur most likely appeared by epenthesis, a phological process present in a large number of languages across multiple language families, in particular the Germanic languages, and which calls for some clarification.
Generally speaking, epenthesis is the exact opposite of elision, a word perhaps better adopted by everyday language. Elision removes a sound, epenthesis adds one, vowel or consonant, either spoken or written.
In Old Norse (and Old Icelandic), the final -r was probably syllabic in certain circumstances, for example when it followed a single consonant (Þráinsson, 2017). What is a syllabic consonant? Typically, syllables require a vowel as their nucleus. However, certain consonants can take on vowel-like qualities and serve as the syllabic core. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, this is a overstroke (or understroke) diacritic - a small dot or line above (below) the sound in question. This concerns for instance m, n and l in some pronounciation of some English words such as
little in its UK [ˈlɪtʰɫ̩] or US [ˈlɪɾɫ̩] or [ˈɫɪɾɫ̩] pronounciation
prism [ˈpʰɹ̠̊ɪzm̩]
listen [ˈlɪs.n̩]
In short, we can assume that the suffix -r marking the Old Norse nominative Kristr was such a vocalic consonant, a consonant that is a syllable of its own. This is also the case with the substantive dalr (valley) or the adjective latr (lazy), generally, according to certain rules, notably when this final -r follows a simple consonant. (Þráinsson, 2017)
Since Modern Icelandic does not allow syllabic consonants, a /u/ - the slashes denote the sound - was inserted between the /r/ and the preceding consonant. Here is our epenthesis, which has a systematic allure in the evolution from Old to Modern Icelandic
dalr → dalur
latr → latur
Kristr → Kristur
A sharp mind will note that in Kristr, this -r follows a group of two consonants, -st. The rule, we learn from Þráinsson (2017), admits a few exceptions: the epenthesis is not realized when the stem ends in a high vowel followed by /l,n/ or in /r, s/ or in certain clusters of consonants such as /ss, gl, gn/. Well, we still don't know much more about the Kristr case. This u-epenthesis began at the end of the thirteenth century. We can imagine a very similar, somewhat generalized phenomenon occurring at some point. Not as generalized as in Farroese, however, who also realized this u-epenthesis in the three cases of exception just mentioned. We can illustrate the discrepancy, from Old Icelandic to Modern Icelandic and Modern Faroese respectively, still with Þráinsson (2017), when the stem is ending in a high vowel followed by /l,n/
stóll (Old Icelandic) → stóll (Modern Icelandic)
stóll → stólur (Modern Faroese)
fínn → fínn (Modern Icelandic)
fínn → fínur (Modern Faroese)
or when the stem is ending with /r, s/
íss → ís (Modern Icelandic)
íss → ísur (Modern Faroese)
stórr → stór (Modern Icelandic)
stórr → stórur (Modern Faroese)
But what happened to our -r mark of Old Norse nominative singular stóll, íss, fínn? Simply, some kind of progressive assimilation - the preceding vowel “contaminates” the following vowel. Note that the same assimilation occurs in Icelandic in the case “stem is ending in a high vowel followed by /l,n/” making
*stól-r → stóll
*fín-r → fínn
In the cases “stem is ending with /r, s/” or “stem certain clusters of consonants such as /ss, gl, gn/” another process occurs: the -r - or its assimilation into the preceding consonant - is simply deleted.
*ís-r → ís
*stór-r → stór
We shall come back to assimilations in Old Norse at length, especially in our Old Norse Grammar series.
Let's look anew at our very close sentences, in Old Norse and Icelandic.
En þat var átta hundruð ok sjau tigum vetra eftir burð Krists, at því er ritit er í sǫgu hans.
En það var átta hundruð og sjötíu vetur eftir burð Krists, samkvæmt því sem ritað er í sögu hans.
þat notably becomes það, the symptom of a more general shift in from Old to Modern Icelandic, where a voiceless dental stop - /t/ in þat - weakens to the voiced dental fricative in unstressed positions - /ð/ in það. It occurs as part of a larger pattern where “the voiceless stops are drawn toward spirantization”, especially in final word position, which are more vulnerable to weakening. Spirantization, which an example will clarify sufficiently for now, generally takes place in two stages, with stops first undergoing affrication, such as [t] → [ts], before affricates become pure fricatives, [ts] → [s]. (Goblirsch, 2001)
This phenomenon explains a great many things. While English water maintains the proto-germanic /t/, the latter spirantalizes into /s/ in German, making Wasser. The process is only halfway through in German Zunge where the inital /ts/ affricate (written Z in German) stems from the voiceless dental /t/ in English tongue. This High German consonant shift only affected the southern parts of the West German dialect continuum, around the 6th-7th centuries CE, leaving English unaffected and still bearing the marks of the distant past. The trend seeks to materialize across the entire Germanic spectrum, Goblirsch teaches us. The shift observed in Icelandic stems from an identical progression, developed independently, at around the same time, in the North Germanic branch. Which leaves plenty of work for the near future: spirantisations, consonant shifts, and the general phonology of Old and Modern Icelandic. We also leave to the trial of your patience the much awaited comparison of Old Norse and Old Icelandic.
The Old Norse relative pronoun er became the Icelandic sem, which this time resembles the Norwegian som. í sögu hans remains very close to the original í sǫgu hans.
Finally, if we compare our Old Norse sentence
En þat var átta hundruð ok sjau tigum vetra eftir burð Krists, at því er ritit er í sǫgu hans.
with the Norwegian equivalent,
Og det var åtte hundre og sytti vintre etter Kristi fødsel, ifølge det som er skrevet i hans saga.
we notice a preservation of structure and form that is nonetheless far-reaching.
With this we shall, in closing, emphasize the obvious benefits of mastering Norwegian, or a closely related modern language, for a well-mastered exegesis of Old Norse.
Sources
Þráinsson, H. (2017). U-umlaut in Icelandic and Faroese: Survival and death. In C. Bowern, L. Horn, & R. Zanuttini (Eds.), On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, relations, analyses (pp. 99-112). Language Science Press.
Goblirsch, K. G. (2001). The Icelandic consonant shift in its Germanic context. Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 116, 117-133.