Hi Haukur,
Thank you for your comments!
The modern Norwegian word is "dagsreise".
Thus: 1 dagsreise, 2 dagsreiser, 3 dagsreiser, etc.
Your version would be
1 dags reise, 2 dagers reise, 3 dagers reise, etc..
But to my ear, it is "dagsreise" that sounds most natural.
Note that I speak only from the point of view of modern
Norwegian. The hypothesis underlying my analysis was that
this was someone from the 19th century with a Scandinavian
background, who wrote the Kensington text.
There is something that I wrote yesterday that needs reconsidering,
and it concerns the word "reise" (Swedish resa, resor).
I found in Falk's etymological dictionary, that the word "reise"
is already documented in late Old Norse. I would assume that he
by that means the 14th century.
Upon reconsidering, this makes sense, since the first Hanseatic
League goes back to documents dated around 1100 from London,
England. In Scandinavia the Hansa was already important
during the 13th century, and is supposed to have reached
its maximum influence around 1300. In particular, the city of
Visby on Gotland (important island in the Baltic), was an
important center for the German Hansa.
Could it be, then, that the "8 Goths" referred to upon the
Kensington Stone were Gotlandic insulars? Perhaps they were
Hansa tradesmen, who were looking into the possibilities
of expanding their markets out west, towards Iceland, Greenland,
Vinland???
Perhaps you also learned about the Hansa league in your
school days in Reykjavik? Do you recall when they are
supposed to have arrived in Iceland for the first time?
Also thanks to Sjuler for correcting my (poor) Swedish.
Actually I could have done better, since I wrote "ved"
in one place, and "vid" in another. Had I given it some more time,
I should have written "vid" in both places.
Another point of interest: This morning I discovered a book
that is written in 15th century Swedish. Unbelievable perhaps,
but true: Right now I have the book right under my nose!
Since I have noted on previous occasions that listmembers
expressed their interest in samples of various medieval
Scandinavioan texts, I will be only too happy to type up
a sample for the list -- which I will do in a post following
this one.
--- In
norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Haukur Thorgeirsson
<haukurth@...> wrote:
> Hinn 16. desember 2003 lét xigung@... þetta frá sér fara:
> > Hi Haukur,
> > Yes, that was a weak point, that I didn't document what
> > I meant by plurals. Here is the text again (for reference):
> > 1 > Front: 8 goter ok 22 norrmen pa opdagelsefard fra winland
> > 2 > of west wi hade lager wed 2 skjar en dags rise norr fra
> > 3 > dena sten wi war ok fiske en dagh aptir wi kom hem fan 10
> > 4 > man rode af blod og ded AVM fraelse af ille
> > 5 > Side: har 10 mans we hawet at se aptir wore skip 14 dagh
> > 6 > rise fram dena oh ahr 1362
>
>
> > Look at line 4.
> > He correctly writes "rode", where the -e ending
> > is the correct modern Norwegian adjective ending,
> > that is congruent to the plural "10 man".
> > BUT, in conformity with rodE, he should also
> > have written dodE. Because in the sentence
> > the 10 men are qualified by both of these adjectives:
> > The ten men are red as well as dead. Hence correct
> > modern Scandinavian would be:
> > Vi fant 10 mann rødE og dødE.
> >
> > Instead of the form dødE, he does however
> > relapse into the English-sounding form DED. (=dead)
>
> Of course, you were talking about the verbs.
> Somehow my mind was fixed on the nouns, sorry.
>
> In any case your analysis of this sentence appears correct.
> The absence of the adjective ending on the second word is puzzling.
>
>
> > Another detail, that I regard as an error, is found in
> > line 5-6: vore skip 14 dagh rise fram dena
> > Here correct modern Scandinavian would have been
> > "våre skip 14 dagsreiser fra denne"
> > So "rese" ought to have been "reser/resor" with an -er
> > or -or ending, because "our ships 14 day-journeys from here"
> > calls for a plural of "journey".
>
> Perhaps. Then again what I read out of it would come out in Icelandic
> as "14 daga reisu" and it is the 'dagh' that needs a genitive plural
ending.
>
> Thus: "a journey OF 14 days".
>
>
> > P.S. I was looking for an example of "day's journeys" from
> > the sagas, but this is all I came up with for the time being:
>
> Dagleiðir?
Yes, I too found indications of such a word yesterday, though
I couldn't it in Heggstad. But that must have been because
I was looking under "dagsleiðir", and the correct form is
"dagleiðir", as you write it.
Another ON word of the same type is "dagganga" (f.) which is
supposed to be the distance a man walks in a day.
(I include comments in paranthesis for the other readers:
ON ganga= to walk).
Kveðja
Xigung
P.S. The Linux keyboard is wonderful for writing
Icelandic characters! It's never been so easy.