And speaking of these arcane matters... I came across some more
details about the merging of these one-time phonemes and the various
letters and ligatures used to represent them in Cleasby / Vigfússon.

http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/png/oi_cleasbyvigfusson/b0757.png

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@...> wrote:
>
>
> Some help from Guðvarður Már Gíslason:
>
> "Ég hef nú ekki athugað þetta sérstaklega, en mig minnir að o (o+e)
> hafi ekki verið notað fyrr en á 19. öld, ætli Rask hafi ekki verið sá
> fyrsti sem vildi nota það þegar aðgreina átti fónemin æ og o í fornum
> textum. Stafurinn er svo stundum notaður í hljóðkerfisgreiningu og
> mjög algengur í útgáfum, t.d. Fornritafélagsins. ø með lengdarmerki
> (broddi) er líka mikið notaður í hljóðkerfisumfjöllun. Í íslenskum
> handritum eru ýmis tákn notuð fyrir þetta hljóð (langt ø-hljóð) en þar
> sem það rann saman við æ (langt opið e-hljóð) á 13. öld höfum við ekki
> svo miklar heimildir um það. Oft var það skrifað með ø. En Norðmenn
> notuðu hins vegar mjög líkan staf, þ.e. o án lykkjunnar að neðan, þ.e.
> o með litlum belg uppi til hægri."
>
> "I haven't looked into this particularly, but I seem to recall that
> 'oe' wasn't used before the 19th c. If I remember rightly, it was
Rask who was
> the first to use it when necessary to distinguish between the phonemes
> 'æ' and 'oe' in old texts. The letter is sometimes used thus when
> analysing the vowel system and very common in editions, e.g. those of
> the Fornritafélagið. 'ø' with an accute accent to mark length is also
> much used in discussions of the vowel system. Various symbols are
> used for this sound (long ø-sound) in Icelandic manuscrupts, but where
> it fell together with 'æ' (long open e-sound) in the 13th c., we don't
> have so many sources of evidence for that. It was often written with
> 'ø'. The Norwegians, on the other hand, used a very similar letter,
> like the oe-ligature but without the lower part of the 'e', that is to
> say: an 'o' with a little (closed) loop attached high up on the right
> hand side."
>
> (My own translation, so you can blame me for any mistakes in that!)
>