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Since the Middle Ages are an enormous catch-all of a thousand years or so, I don't feel too badly admitting I know absolutely nothing about Old Norse, a language that many of my medievalist colleagues have and are studying. Since many of you are handy, and surely I'm not the only one who doesn't know these things, I have some questions for you about the language.
When and where was it used?
Linguistically, what came before and after it? Is there a "Norse" to contrast with "Old Norse"? How does it relate to Germanic?
What are your favorite works written in the language?
Anything else I should know about the language offhand?
The depths of my ignorance on this subject occurred to me yesterday after encountering this sentence, written about the Pilgrimage of Charlemagne, a wacky Anglo-Norman poem which flirts with the chanson de geste genre, but really isn't in all sorts of ways: "The poem cannot have been written later than the translation into Old Norse, unaninmously dated in the thirteenth century, which derives from something very close to, if not identical with, the extant Pèlerinage."
This Old Norse translation isn't mentioned anywhere else in the materials I have handy. Are any of you familiar with it?
When and where was it used?
Linguistically, what came before and after it? Is there a "Norse" to contrast with "Old Norse"? How does it relate to Germanic?
What are your favorite works written in the language?
Anything else I should know about the language offhand?
The depths of my ignorance on this subject occurred to me yesterday after encountering this sentence, written about the Pilgrimage of Charlemagne, a wacky Anglo-Norman poem which flirts with the chanson de geste genre, but really isn't in all sorts of ways: "The poem cannot have been written later than the translation into Old Norse, unaninmously dated in the thirteenth century, which derives from something very close to, if not identical with, the extant Pèlerinage."
This Old Norse translation isn't mentioned anywhere else in the materials I have handy. Are any of you familiar with it?
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Some people use it for the language of Scandinavia and Scandinavian colonies like Iceland until 1350 or so (though maybe 1550 in Iceland), while others say specifically Norway and Iceland, and then only to 1350. Much of what survives (mostly in Icelandic manuscripts) would by some be described as Old West Norse.
Linguistically, what came before and after it?
After it, modern Norwegian and modern Icelandic.
Is there a "Norse" to contrast with "Old Norse"? How does it relate to Germanic?
"Norse" is "Norwegian". It belongs to the Nordic group of Germanic languages.
What are your favorite works written in the language?
Njal's Saga? Laxdaela Saga?
Anything else I should know about the language offhand?
The best guide to it is Michael Barnes, A New Introduction to Old Norse, published by the Viking Society for Northern Research at University College London.
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A linguistics professor of mine down at UF used to say that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
There are many wacky things about the Pilgrimage of Charlemagne, not least of which is the fact that it seems to parody a genre that it predates (the chansons de geste). There are other examples of this phenomena in the Middle Ages, and I mean to write a book about it, or at least a long-form article some day.
Some words on the modern Scandinavian languages by someone who is not expert in any of them
Bokmål: Swedish spoken to a tune that you can't quite put your finger on
Nynorsk: Swedish, but not (for the previously mentioned by someone else political reasons)
Icelandic: the Swedish of the late first millenium AD, largely unaltered except for the difference in written letters.. When you read runestone inscriptions in any of the Scandinavian countries it reads much like modern Icelandic, and is easier to understand than say, the originals of written works in England of the same age
The Scandinavian languages are all more similar when written than spoken. A bit like Italian and Spanish - very easy to get most of it but a couple of words are totally different and likely to throw you without a dictionary.
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Either way, what would the audience have made of it?
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The introduction says that there is widespread disagreement over just when it was written, with arguments being made from the late 11th century to the late 13th. The authors suspect late 12th. Part of the problem is that the text is only known from one manuscript, which went missing in 1879. I'm surprised that the Old Norse version is only mentioned once in this introduction, if that makes the ON version the second-oldest version of the text, albeit in translation. I really don't see anything obviously about the ON version in the bibliography however. A bit more footwork would be required to track it down. Intriguing, though!
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OK -- I realize that's nearly as tortured, but I'm running on little sleep and less caffeine.