> Thanks for the detailed response, Llama Nom. I had thought the
word
"einman" meant "alone", at least in Modern Icelandic, but maybe
that
is indeed the only word for such in Old Norse - or maybe they
had
another concept for that phenomenon back then. Well, just
curious.
There's an indeclinable adjective 'einmana' "lonely, alone"
which
existed in the medieval language and is still used.
Old
Icelandic/Norse dictionaries also have an adjective 'einmani' with
the
same meaning. Actually, on further investigation, it looks as if
this
noun 'einman' may have been restricted to the phrase 'í
einmani'
"alone" ('búa í einmani' "live in solitude"). The quotes in
the
Cleasby/Vigfú sson dictionary are from Norwegian law codes, so it's
not
clear whether the word was also used in Iceland.
Two other
possibilities that have been suggested to me: 'einsemd' and
'einvera'.
These are both used nowadays; I'm not sure when the
earliest evidence for
them dates from. They're not in
Cleasby/Vigfú sson, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that they weren't
used in early times. Another possibility
I thought of is 'einseta',
but this is especially associated with solitide
as a religious
discipline: a hermit's way of life, or the place where it is
lived
(a
hermitage).