Hail Hawk !

Just a few questions in response to your interesting article:

>"Gautland hitti fyrst maðr sá sem Þjalarr hét. Þá var
>Gautland svá
>elvíst at þat dögum sökk ok náttum var uppi. En sá
>maðr kvám fyrst
>eldi á land ok síðan sökk þat aldri."

This word elvíss I find difficult.
Perhaps "elusive" is another possible translation ?
(Gotland was there, and yet it wasn't)
(or maybe "elvish"? ;)
(Þjalar's torch chased away the enchantment)

>nom. sá
>acc. þann
>dat. þeim
>gen. þess

I find it is strange that the nominative form differs so much from
from the others. But this is very important to note when you read
texts, and your background is modern Scandinavian or English or
German.

>The third difference is no less interesting. Instead of the Old
>Icelandic "sökk" we have the much more English form "sanc". Again
>we

>"þurkuþr raisti stain þena iftiR inkialt bruþur sin"
>
>(This stone has the "serial number" Öl 29, meaning that it is the
>29th catalogued inscription from East-Gotland.)
>
>The translation into Old Icelandic is very straightforward:
>
>"Þorkuðr reisti stein þenna eptir Ingjald bróður sinn.

This inscription happens to be quite similar to modern Norwegian
and Dansh/Swedish as well:

Torgud reiste denne stein efter Ingiald broder sin.

But I suppose that for other, more difficult runic texts, you
need to compare with Old Norse. It is only this particular text
that happens to be quite close to modern Scandinavian.

>No living language is static and Old Icelandic underwent many changes
>from 1200 to 1400. The most major changes are the melting together of
>ö and ø and of æ and oe. Both changes happened in the 13th
>century.
>
>ö + ø -> ö
>æ + oe -> æ

I have read somewhere that the "o-with-two-dots-over-it" (=ö or o-umlaut),
was borrowed into Icelandic in the 16th century.
Thus, strictly speaking, it cannot have occurred in the 13th century
that ø -> ö. What you mean is probably the hooked-o. But that ø is
absent from moderen Icelandic is also something I suppose is so when
I hear it, although it is not at all self-evident. The ø is such a
characteristic feature of the scandinavian languages, that it is very
difficult to imagine its complete absence. Even foreigners make fun
of the Scandinavians by inserting "smøleblø" (to them it sounds like
that) between every second word, in order to make what they say "sound"
Scandinavian. But of late I have noted that many older books simply
write "au". (e.g. saugur)

>The absence of ø and oe and the "soft" consonants in the common
>words
>are the two features that can most easily be used to recognise Old
>Icelandic from Modern Icelandic

Here you state it very clearly :
"ø is absent from modern Icelandic".
It sounds so simple when you state it like that. Thanks !
But for someone with a cursory knowledge it is difficult to be 100% sure.
It has something to do with the maxim that "absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence".

All in all, I'd say it is VERY easy to mix up all these variant
language forms. I therefore think it is very nice that you take
up the subject. Although it isn't much of a problem when I just
read texts, it is occasionally necessary that I normalize a given
text, or that I translate from ON to modern Icelandic or vice versa.
(for example when a given phrase is only found in a modern Icelandic
dictionary)

What I have noticed of late is that when I try to *hear* the words
and sentences, as if someone spoke them to me, then Old Norse becomes
much easier to understand. That is because I then manage to *free*
myself from the often arbitrary and contingent spellings that are
used, and thus to *reduce* the message to *sound*, which I think is
a more basic level of comprehension for the human mind. Writing
is always a little bit "weird"; although we usually do not think of it
as such. We are so busy with a thousand things, that we rarely
pause to consider.

Best regards
Keth