Íslendingabók (1)
Grammar by sagas | Íslendingabók
We'll start with a short passage from Íslendingabók, meant to be written originally by Ari Þorgilsson (1067/1068 - 1148), who is considered Iceland's most prominent medieval chronicler ; Ari Þorgilsson “the Wise”, in Norwegian, Are Torgilsson Frode ; Guðni Jónsson (1901-1974) is the Icelandic scholar back the publication of Íslendingabók among many old Icelandic texts. Each text is an opportunity to practice grammar,and mastery of grammar is extremely important for acquiring celerity and ease of translation and comprehension.
1. Frá Íslands byggð.
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. […]
Let's focus on the very beginning.
Ísland byggðist fyrst ór Nórvegi á dǫgum Haralds ins hárfagra, Hálfdanarsonar ins svarta, í þann tíð, […]
The finite Old Norse sentence contains a verb in either present or preterite tense. Old Norse allowed considerable variation in word order because its rich inflectional system marked the grammatical function of words through case endings already. Rigidly assigning a place in the sentence to each function was then redundant with the form, and the language admits a certain flexibility.
Old English had a similar inflectional system, but as English lost its inflections during the Middle English period, and word order gained in importance, to show grammatical function. English had to develop a more rigid word order pattern to maintain clear meaning.
However, this flexibility of Old Norse is not infinite. There are two opposing views in the controversy over the configurational or non-configurational nature of Old Norse. The traditional Norwegian view considers it non-configurational with Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) as the most frequent surface order. Let's clear up the jargon. Non-configurational implies a free word order, where constituents, that is words or phrases that belong together syntactically, are (potentially) discontinuous, that is, separated by other elements in the sentence. An example in English: Switch the light on, where the verbal form switch on is spread around the object the light. A non-configurational language relies therefore on primarily on its case system to mark the function, and make sense. In short, the Norwegian view sees Old Norse as having a free word order with nevertheless a typical SVO pattern.
The traditional Islandic view considers Old Nores configurational: there's an underlying basic word order (SVO), and if there are variations, they follow specific syntactic rules: well-determined movement operations explain the apparent freedom.
Back to our Íslendingabók.
Once we're a little more experienced, we'll be able to spot the finite verb in an instant, i.e. the verb conjugated in the present or preterite (past) tense.
Ísland byggðist fyrst ór Nórvegi á dǫgum Haralds ins hárfagra, Hálfdanarsonar ins svarta, í þann tíð, […]
byggðist has a rather special -st form. -ð- is very indicative of a preterite form, as dental suffix is part of the Germanic innovation for forming past tenses. Weak verbs in Old Norse (there are weak and strong verbs in Old Norse) form their preterite with such a dental suffix, which realizes as -ð-, -t- or -d- selon les cas.
-st ending marks the mediopassive voice, which developed from a fusion with the reflexive pronoun accusative, sik. As the name suggests, mediopassiv has something to do with passiv. It can actually express reflexive actions ("I dressed myself"), reciprocal actions ("We hugged each other"), passive meaning ("It has been done") or impersonal actions (“It is raining”). Here, byggðist means "was settled" or "became settled", with clear passive meaning. Our verb breaks down into
bygg- (stem)
-ð- (dental suffix, weak verb preterite marker)
-st (mediopassive ending)
So that's the grammatical analysis from the very beginning.
Ísland byggðist fyrst ór Norvegi
Iceland was (first) settled from Norway
Ísland: subst. nom.
byggðist: vb. pret. 3. sg. mediop.
fyrst: adv.
ór: prep.
Norvegi: subst. dat.
The nominative (nom.) is the case of the subject, while the dative (dat.) of Norvegi is governed by the preceding preposition.
We've learned a lot of new things and will be back at it soon.