--- In
norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "jay_py012" <jay_py012@...> wrote:
>
> hi,
>
> i'm new around here but i'm very enthusiastic with learning old norse.
> so, can you give some tips that may help my learning? i'd apreciate
> any kind of help.
>
> thanks in advance.
Hi Jay,
The Norse Course lessons are a great place to start especially if
you're new to learning languages, and you don't need to know lots of
linguistics jargon to understand them [
http://www.hi.is/%7Ehaukurth/norse/ ]. Old Norse Online is another
course of lessons, and you can also use the grammar for reference [
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/norol-TC-X.html ]. It has
a bit more jargon, but it's quite thorough, and each chapter has a
text with a translation and detailed notes explaining the grammatical
function and meaning of each word.
You might find some other useful links in this list here [
http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/norselinks.htm ], especially the
beginners section [
http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/norselinks.htm#beg
]. It's also worth looking at the Norse Course Yahoo Group website
links page [
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norse_course/links ].
And at Kiyo's Norse links [
http://www.home.ix.netcom.com/%7Ekyamazak/index.html ].
The Viking Society is a good source of books, including "A New
Introduction to Old Norse".
http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/viking/
UK orders:
http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/viking/publications.htm
US orders:
http://asu.edu/clas/acmrs/publications/mrts/vsnr.html
An older book, E.V. Gordon: An Introduction to Old Norse, is also well
worth having [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Introduction_to_Old_Norse ], although
the grammar is quite compact and it can be a bit daunting for complete
beginners. The reading selections from this book are now online here [
http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/tmp/oi_gordon_taylor_corpus.html ], without
the notes or glossary.
There are a few old text books (19th century, early 20th) on places
like Google Books and Project Gutemberg (see those links pages), but
they tend to assume that you already know traditional grammar
terminology, such as would be used for teaching Latin in schools in
those days. But with the internet it's easy enough to look terms up,
and you can always ask questions on the Norse Course forum here.
A convenient student dictionary for Old Norse prose is A Concise
Dictionary of Old Icelandic, by Geir T. Zoëga (1910) [
http://norse.ulver.com/ondict/zoega/ ], online here and elsewhere
(although at the moment I find this the most convenient place to check
it online), which is an abridgement of An Icelandic-English
Dictionary, based on the work of Richard Cleasby, enlarged and
completed by Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1874) [
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/%7Ekurisuto/germanic/oi_cleasbyvigfusson_about.html#images%20
]. Also online and searchable is Johann Fritzner's Ordbog over Det
gamle norske Sprog (2nd. ed. 188696) [
http://www.edd.uio.no/perl/search/search.cgi?appid=86&tabid=1275 ].
This is a great place for poetry [
http://www.hi.is/~eybjorn/ugm/ ].
Best to start on the prose, but if you want a taste of what lies in
store...
And finally, here's a page that has advice about configuring your
keyboard so you can type the special Icelandic letters þ, ð, æ, ö and
the vowels with acute accents, á, é, í, ó, ú [
http://www.mentalcode.com/nl/islenska/kbd.page?return=%2Fnl%2Fislenska%2Findex.page%23kbd
]. If you ever find a page on the internet that ought to be displaying
Icelandic characters but isn't, try switching the CHARACTER ENCODING
in the VIEW MENU between Western (ISO-8859-1) and Unicode (UTF-8).
Hope you find something of use in amongst that lot. Good luck!
Lama Nom