Hei Terje,
Strange that you should ask this question, since it's
been on my mind too for the last week or so !

The Danes say "han er hjemme" (he is at home)
The Norwegians say "han er heime" but also "heima".
According to Ivar Aasen this is an adverbial form.
[=hjemme, i hjemmet, paa sin plads]
Aasen points out that several forms occur:
heime, heme, hime, hima, heima.
He says that "heime" is the most common form in Norway,
but that it is the form HEIMA that corresponds to
the original Old Norse form. (also Swedish: hemma)

To get further, I look it up in Zoëga
(http://www.midhnottsol.org/zoega/h191.html), where
HEIMA is indeed listed as an adverb with the meaning
"at home". (sitja heima = å sitte hjemme)

Note that Zoëga also list "heima" as a neuter noun
meaning "home", nicely corresponding to Danish "et hjem".
But Old Norse also has "heimr" as a masculine noun,
and it is the latter masculine noun that can mean "world"
(as in Heimskringla=the World Disk) in Old Norse.
This meaning is still used in Norwegian ('til heimsens ende' =
over hele verden, or 'bokheim'= literatur).

BTW Modern Icelandic has HEIMUR masc. = 'world'
and HEIMILI neutr. = 'home'. (according to Geir T. Zoëga)

Well, I certainly learned something I didn't know there,
that there is both a masculine and a neuter word for "home"
and they have different meanings.

Best regard
Xigung



--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Terje Ellefsen"
<radiorabia@...> wrote:

> Heilir!
>
> I've got a question about an expression in Norwegian:
> "Hjemme"/"Heime"
>
> "Home" is Hjem/Heim. However, we can say "Jeg har den hjemme"/"Eg

har han

> heime", meaning "I've got it at home."
> Is this (the ending /-e/)a remnant of the old dative case?
>
>
> Terje