Despite the fact that each of the West Norse lands 'christianized'
by Áleifr Tryggvasunr (Óláfr Tryggvason) was an independent entity
in political terms, they shared a common church. Norvegr, Ísland,
Færeyjar, Orkneyjar, Suðreyjar, Hjaltland, and Groenland all shared
close ties of familial and cultural kinship. Furthermore, they spoke
the same language. From the dawn of church-rule in Norway, the kings
and aristocracy committed vast resources to the development of the
church at home and abroad. Zealous converts sent everything from
teachers of Christianity to the wood the churches were built from to
their counterparts in the treeless island-nations. Members of the
aristocracies of each of these nations sent their sons into schools
abroad to become priests or other Christian officials. In true and
time-honoured Catholic tradition, priests and other ordained members
of the clergy were freely exchanged between these lands. A Faroese
priest could end up in Norway, a Norwegian one in Iceland, and an
Icelandic one in the Orkneys. Although almost all of the documents
used by the church to teach during this early period are believed to
have been lost, two books of homilies have survived - one in Iceland
and the other in Norway. They form part of what must once have been
a vast literature of this type. In addition to a book of homilies,
every church must have had other related literature in store. Latin
Bibles (Vulgate) and loose translations such as that found in the
Old Icelandic 'Stjórn'-manuscript come to mind. The landscapes of
these little nations were once riddled with monestaries and schools
as well - one hesitates to imagine how much of their production has
been lost forever. As several of the sermons in the two books of
homilies which have survived are the same (based on originals which
are now lost), we can learn a lot about how similar the language was
throughout the West Norse area during the first centuries of church-
rule - aside from very minor differences such as vowel-harmony and
the loss or retention of initial 'h' and 'v before r' in respective
dialects, the language is everywhere the same. The spelling of both
books of homilies is erratic and each manuscript showns clear signs
of having been copied from older originals by later copyists whose
own tongue showed certain minor difference from the originals, such
as 'var' (was) for 'vas' and 'sonr' (son) for 'sunr'. Much can be
learned from the various ways in which the same words are spelled in
both of these manuscripts. Because the these books are perhaps the
oldest surviving manuscripts written in West Norse, they have a lot
to say not only about how the Christians of the early 11th century
actually spoke, but also about what the language must have looked
like around the time of the 'conversion'. Although we know from West
Norse runic inscriptions (circa 900-1030) that the actual language
of West Norse Heathens differed in some ways from that of the books
of homilies, these differences were far from substantial. When taken
together, boiled down to a common essence, and compared with runic
inscriptions, these books throw a powerful searchlight on the speech
of the last West Norse speakers to have escaped forced conversion to
a foreign faith from the Middle East. It is important to emphasize
this point when reading or anaylizing the language of these books,
as they were clearly written by individuals with a profound bias in
favour of Judaic mythology and religion at the expense of the native
Indo-European variety, whose practioners are outright comdemned to
eternal damnation in certain of these homilies. Whatever the biases
of these individuals may have been, they clearly spoke a language
which should be of interest to students of Old Norse. In view this
fact, I have taken it upon myself to post some material from these
books of homilies to Norse Course for educational and linguistic
purposes only, accompanied by my own translation and standardization
of the texts into a more standardized Old Norse from about the time
of the scholar Snorri Sturluson. In addition, I will make an attempt
to provide an English translation. I will freely admit that I find
the contents of these books offensive and outrageous. However, it is
not my place to assess the value of what these books had to say. My
own interest is purely linguistic. As for those others of you who
may take issue with the contents of these books, my advice would be
to waste no time taking issue them or making assertions to the con-
trary useless you plan to do so in Norse. It is my hope that these
texts will be educational. I will begin with parallel versions of a
homily which occurs in both books. It will be in the original manu-
script spelling accompanied by a standardization and a translation.

Regards,
Konrad.