From: Jens Persson
Message: 2804
Date: 2003-03-17
> Here is what Gordon says about Old Norwegian:more
>
> "Icelandic and Norwegian remained very similar until the 13th
> century, when important differences began to appear. There were
> dialects within Norwegian itself, which may be divided into two
> groups, East and West Norwegian. The dialectical boundary was
> roughly a line drawn from Grenland to Raumsdal. East Norwegian
> differed from Icelandic more than West Norwegian, agreeing with Old
> Swedish in most of the additional differences."
>
> I fully agree with Gordon on this. Having recently examined some of
> the surviving early manuscripts in Old Norwegian of the western
> variety, I have come to the rather old conclusion that Norway is
> linguistically speaking two separate countries. One can understand
> why speakers of surviving West Norse dialects in Norway have had to
> fight an unending battle for recognition against the richer and
> numerous Danish-speakers in the south. Had it been up to linguistsfact,
> to decide where the boundary lines were drawn, they would likely
> have followed Gordon and partitioned Norway into two countries. I
> can testify from my own personal reading that the languages of the
> Faroe Islands, Iceland and Northern and Western Norway were for all
> practical purposes the same language into the 13th century. In
> the diffences were so few that one could almost get away with usinglanguage,
> the phrase 'exactly the same'. Old West Norse is a unique
> even within Scandinavia. It differs at times rather widely from thein
> Eastern Scandinavian languages in various ways, including the way
> which it re-analyzed the Proto-Norse vowel-system. It even differsoff
> at times in the gender and declension of nouns, the conjugation of
> verbs, and other obvious features. Before the Black Death killed
> more than half the population of Norway and what remained fellunder
> Danish administration, the seat of Norwegian power was in thenorth.
> It is strange for those of us living today to imagine a Norwaywhere
> West Norse was not only spoken over a rather wide area, but waseven
> the administrative language of the land. Most of the surviving manu-say
> scripts in Old Norwegian are in West Norse and are believed to have
> been written in some of the numerous monastaries which once existed
> throughout Norway before the Black Death and the Reformation. To
> that the loss of Norway was a major tragedy for the West Norseworld
> would be an understatement. It was a near death-blow. The changesit
> that began in Norway with the Black Death effectively wiped out the
> majority of West Norse speakers and most of the language itself in
> less than 100 years. When the seat of national power moved to Oslo
> in the south, the process was complete - West Norse had effectively
> become extinct. During the many centuries to come, the emerging
> merchant class centered in the south would determine the future of
> the country. Unfourtunately for West Norse speakers, this merchant
> class consisted mostly of 3 non-West Norse speaking groups: 1) the
> descendants of East Norse speaking natives from before the Black
> Death 2) the Danish East Norse speaking immigrants who came to fill
> in the buisness and administrative void 3)Germans and others from
> the mainland of continental Europe, including many Scots and Dutch.
>
> When Snorri uses the phrase 'dönsk tunga' to describe his language,
> he is merely applying a formal title to the speech of Scandinavia
> during the centuries leading up to his time. 'Dönsk Tunga' makes a
> fine proper title for the common language of Gothic Scandinavia -
> has a formal ring to it (at least to West Norse ears). However,from
> a strictly linguistic point of view, it is rather obvious why Westcorrectly 'Norð-
> Norse was and is properly called 'Norroena' (or more
> roena') - no serious linguist would take issue with this. There are
> simply too many differences between the East and the West, both in
> Norway itself as in all of Scandinavia.
>
> Regards,
> Konrad.