Letter Order The proper Old Norse letter order is not followed in this
dictionary. Instead, to
make finding words easier for English-speaking researchers, letters
modified by diacritical marks are sorted together, ignoring the mark
that would normally define the letter separately in Old Norse.
Or, to state it another way, for sequencing purposes, if it
looks more or less like an “O”, the dictionary treats it as an “O”. As examples,
these Old Norse words can be found - in this sequence - within the “O”
section of the dictionary: ,
ofríki,
øfrīkt,
ofrlið and
ofrǫlvi.
This is in recognition of both (1) English readers’
unfamiliarity with the Old Norse letter sequence, as well as (2)
inconsistencies from the various sources used for the dictionary.
As an example of the latter situation, E.V. Gordon renders
the Old Norse word for “son” as
“mǫgr”.
Jesse L. Byock provides “mögr”
for same word. Other sources may, because of font
limitations, eliminate the diacritical markings for the letters
altogether.
Despite the foregoing, the following order is observed when appropriate, both for
the initial letter of Old Norse words and within the words
themselves:
a á ä æ b c d ð e é f g h i í j k l m n o ó ø ö ǫ œ p q r s t u ü ú v y ý
þ. Beyond this, the
ligatures “æ”
and “œ” are sequenced as if
they were the separate letter combinations “ae”
and “oe” respectively.
The "thorn" letter “þ” is reserved for the end of the listings.
Inevitably, there will be instances found in the dictionary where
the sequence hasn't been brought in line with this guideline.
It’s a tough one to get right - consistently…
Navigation & Searching
No Search or Find facility is provided for the dictionary, but the
standard key combinations "ctl-f" or "alt-e, f"
work pretty well.
Link bars are positioned before each
letter to enable jumping directly to the letter clicked on. To
make it easier to jump back and forth between the two versions
of the dictionary, you may click on the letter links for either
language. For example, if you are in the English to Old Norse
Dictionary and you click on the Old Norse 'þ'
character in a Link Bar, you will be taken to that letter in the
Old Norse to English Dictionary.
In addition, if the
section for a particular letter is extensive, additional
"midpoint" Link Bars are positioned for selected letter
combinations to reduce the amount of scrolling necessary to find
the entry you are looking for. Note that the letter "s" bar shown below for the English to Old Norse
version of the dictionary provides links to "sh", "sk", "st" and
"su". On the other hand, the Link Bar for the letter "z", for example, would not show midpoint links for any letter.
The Old Norse to English version of the dictionary
provides a similar set of Link Bars, listing links for the Old Norse
letters. As an example, the "f" bar shown displays a midpoint link for "fœ".
Infinitive Verbs
The Old Norse verb róa
means “to row”. Within
this dictionary, the English definition eliminates the "to", showing
only the word “row”.
All infinitive verbs receive the same treatment.
The simple explanation for this is that it makes sorting the
English to Old Norse dictionary easier.
It does make the translation somewhat more obscure, but this
was a considered tradeoff.
Other (hopefully minor) tweaks to the English definitions
serve the same purpose.
Hyphenated Old Norse Words
The entry for the Old Norse word “val-tafn”
(meaning “slain as prey”) includes a hyphen.
Many other entries similarly include a hyphen.
This is just an indication of syllable separation, and is inconsistently followed among the
sources for this dictionary.
The hyphen would not have occurred in actual usage.
Dictionary Entry Duplication
Frequently, Old Norse words have multiple meanings in English.
In this dictionary, each of those multiple meanings may have one or more
phrases translated from Old Norse to English. The
dictionary
repeats all of those examples for each of those multiple meanings,
even if they don’t apply to the narrow meaning of the current entry
displayed, just to make it easier to find - and understand - useful
Old Norse words and phrases.
As an example, “gøra
sik djarfan - display boldness” is repeated for the English words
“offer”, “give”; “make”, “build”; “write”, “compose” and
others because the Old Norse verb “gøra” can be
translations for all of them.
Old Norse Word Modifications
Some Old Norse words listed in the dictionary are followed by a symbol or a sequence of letters in
parentheses. As an example, the entry for the English
word “sew”
is translated to the Old Norse entry “sauma (að)”.
These additions represent modifications to those words that
would result when they were used in context.
The entries are primarily from E.V.
Gordon's An Introduction to Old Norse. Here's the
paragraph from his book that explains the additions:
The following
indications of inflexion are given in the glossary itself: (rs) or (rar) placed
after a noun, or (ran) after an adjective, means that the
final -r of the nominative is kept in inflexion.
Similarly (van) placed after an adjective means it is
declined like hár or gløggr, § 100. The
conjugation of weak verbs of classes 1 and 2 is indicated by placing
in brackets after each of the form of the dental suffix of the past
tense gøra (ð) of the first weak conjugation, § 136, or kalla
(að), of the second conjugation, § 141. When a verb of the
first weak conjugation has a root-syllable ending in a dental
consonant, the form of the whole dental group in the past tense is
given, as leiða (dd), indicating the past 3 sg. leiddi.
In verbs of the first weak conjugation which have short stems the
vowel of the first weak conjugation which have short stems the vowel
of the root-syllable is not mutated in the past tense, which is
given in full, as flytja (flutti)
Since my background is in Information Systems and I'm only slightly capable
of multi-lingualism, I'll leave it to the reader to gain whatever meaning
you can from that explanation. I understand enough of it to know
better than to attempt to explain the rest. The sections
Gordon refers to above, e.g., § 136, are sections in the book
explaining aspects of the language in more detail. It's no third grade primer, but I don't know
of a more thorough source on the language. A book less focused
on translating the Norse sagas, and more on teaching you Old
Norse, is Viking Language 1, by Jesse L. Byock. Details on both are
noted below. If you
are at all interested in Old Norse (and you obviously are), I
recommend both books highly.
Sources- A.
Richard Diebold Center for Indo-European Language and Culture, Linguistics
Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Old Norse Online Base Form
Dictionary, Jonathan Slocum and Todd B. Krause,
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/norol-BF.html
- E.V. Gordon, An Introduction to Old Norse, Oxford University Press; 2 edition (July 23, 1981), ISBN9780198111849
- Jesse L. Byock, Viking Language 1, Jules William Press, © 2013, ISBN 9781480216440
- Ross G. Arthur, English-Old Norse Dictionary, www.yorku.ca/inpar/language/English-Old_Norse.pdf
- Jackson Crawford, YouTube Old Norse lecture series, Instructor of Nordic Studies and Nordic Program Coordinator, University of Colorado, Boulder
- Regia Anglorum: Mik Lawson: miklawson@yahoo.co.uk, http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/8/sayers.html
- The Society for Creative Anachronism:
http://www.housebarra.com/EP/ep04/12norsecurse.html
The Vikings of Bjornstad
©
For information contact Jack Garrett at
info@vikingsofbjornstad.com