Heill Llama!

> > Often, 'ef' is lacking: 'vegr madr mann....,
> > tha....', but besides the likes of *ef madr vegr mann...'.

> Likewise in Gutalagh. I guess the formal context - the opening words

of a law - must have cut down on at least some of the potential
confusion, but still it is curious.

Indeed.

> > I am fascinated by the way in which ON legal language often

emphatically ignores norms for speech clarity (if there was such a
thing), and then in a context where clarity of meaning is of the
utmost importance.

> Do you think some of the ambiguities of ON legal language might come

from their use of arcaic formulas and phrasing?

Yes, and these came from a different time and context, where they
were clear and unarachaic.

> We've seen evidence in Njáls saga (most famously) that the laws, at

that time, might have a reputation for being complicated enough to
have exploitable loopholes. And then there's the bit in Víga-Glúms
saga where he makes use of arcaic negative suffixes and suffixed
pronouns to swear a deliberately ambiguous oath:

> ek varkat þar ok vákat þar ok rauðkat þar odd ok egg er Þorvaldr

krókr fekk bana "I wasn't there and I didn't strike there and I
didn't redden (make red) there point and blade where Þorvaldr krókr
was killed"

> But later, they realise that the words he used were ambiguous, and

that he could equally well have meant:

> ek vark at þar ok vák at þar ok rauðk at þar odd ok egg er Þorvaldr

krókr fekk bana "I was present there and I did strike there and I
reddened there point and edge where Þorvaldr krókr was killed"

> Maybe the story, whenever it was invented, was inspired by confusing

language in the lawcodes, or at least language that sounded odd and
distinctly unlike that used in everyday speech.

Indeed. Language changes. 11th century sources, like Homiliubok and
Ari Frodi, still show suffixed pronouns and negatives, and emphatic
pronominal usage, in a way that suggests daily speech (en ek, heitik
Ari, and many other examples). If folk in the time of the author of
Viga-Glums Saga really could replicate older stages of the language
correctly, we might expect to see things like *ek uaskat thar..., and
so forth. I've spent a great deal of time isolating the forms and
phonology of Ari's dialect, which is something he had from his own
childhood in the middle of the 11th century. He is thought to have
been about (and then very roughly) 70 years old when he first wrote
Islendingabok in its earliest redaction, roughly 1120-1123. From his
own words we can conclude that he learned his history from men that
were much older, often born before the conversion. The copies of
Ari's work that survive show that younger copiests automatically
inserted younger forms from daily speech, a pattern we see down to
modern times in copying of older manuscripts. Still, it seems that
folk's respect for the words of the old sage forced a compromise,
where enough of Ari's own speech survives that we can reconstruct
something like an original document, at least insofar as the tung
itself goes, essentially the same as the first grammarian. About
legal usage, I suspect that the laws of the Icelandic free-state, as
represented by the surviving Gragas, had grown increasingly complex.
I suspect, but can not show, that this had some connection to the
lack of law-enforcement (the police, for example, or a king sitting
safely in power and not at war with any opposition, etc., or perhaps
in theory, a kind of objective nefnd of objective citizens that could
be counted on to enforce a verdict, what we might call a jury chosen
at random, but necessarily unrelated to the prinicpals in any case,
and with unopposed force of arms behind it). We see a similar, but
different, situation in Norway, where lawlessness likewise abounds,
and king after king ends up trying to revise the law, and make frith
in the land, after spending years fighting opponents and trying to
legitimize his power. Also, I suspect that respect fot the law was
much lower then than in earlier heathen times, when laws and things
were local, and where folk were more closely related and could be
counted on to enforce verdicts, especially as a given man would have
a long and established character-history locally. Sort of like, 'yes,
but chapter 45, section 9b, subscript 3c can be interpreted as..',
and then the axe. In fact, I doubt that there was much of a tradition
for arguing then like we see in Njala. Much simpler, likely. We
should also bare in mind the some of the complexities in Icelandic
law might relate to men's history from a host of local things where
laws may not have been exactly the same, or things done differently.

> > 'haelar horfa i tastad, en tær i haelstad, haka medal herda,

hnakki a briosti framan, kalfar a beinum frammi, augu aftan i hnakka,
hefir sels hreifa, eda hunds hofud...'.

> I wonder how often this law was put into practic ;-) Hmm, come to

think of it, if *everything* was back to front - wouldn't that just be
a normal person facing the other way?

Right, indeed :-) This really has to be verbiage from older, heathen
law. Ari also states 'en of barna utburd skyldu standa in fornu log'
or something like that (not verbatim, just memory) talking about the
conversion. I have been able to reconstruct a reading (note a
reading, not the reading at any place in time or location) of the
heathen substance from the many west-norse kristinrettr, or balkr,
sections of old law codes, which I think accurately reflects what
stood in pre-christian relgious-law sections, veskop or veskapabalkr,
and I was very surprised by some, though not all, of my results.
About barna utburdr, it was the father's choice if the child was in
any way less than normal, and he lacked the money to raise it. In
this case it was important that no food was eaten by the newborn, no
water had been sprinkled on it by him, and that it had no name. One
of the things that surprises me the most is the dietary-laws about
meat, which are highly alliterative and show anj ancient tradition
similar to, but not the same as, what we see in Judaism or Islam. I
really had no idea that heathens would have had such laws until the
evidence came out of the blue heaven and hit me in the face, forcing
me to the board for agreement. -K