[Wikipedia-l] Old norse

Tue Jan 4 15:53:43 UTC 2005

Vegard Aukrust wrote:

> I will use the modified latin alphabeth. Old norse is not so
> different from modern icelandic and often mistaken as that, but I
> want to use the same language the one you find in Norwegian texts
> from the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. I don't find it more strange
> than latin, anglo-saxon or a lot of other old langiages. The letters
> which are not used in modern English are as follows: æ, o, ð and
> þ (but not ä, ö, ø or å as in modern scandinavian).

As far as I know, Swedish linguists divide the development of the 
Swedish language roughly into:

     --1225  Old Norse (fornnordiska), a pan-Scandinavian language
 1225--1526  Old Swedish (fornsvenska), starting to differ from Danish
 1526--      Modern Swedish (nysvenska), beginning with the New Testament

I guess the same goes for Danish and Norwegian? I have no idea of how
useful a Wikipedia in Old Norse will be, how you will find a norm for
correct spelling, how you will invent words for new innovations, or if
you will draw a line at 1225.  In Sweden, very few written documents
in Old Norse are available.  Much that was written when Christianity
was new here, was written in Latin, while Old Norse was mostly spoken.  
There are far more written documents in Old Swedish, including
diaries, chronicles, poetry, contracts, laws and partial translations
of the Bible.  If you think you can write an encyclopedia in Old
Norse, I think you should go ahead.  Perhaps expanding the current
article on the [[en:Old Norse language]] could be a good start?

If it is of any help, I have digitized the first 10 years (1883-1894)  
of "Arkiv for nordisk filologi" at http://runeberg.org/anf/

-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/