At 11:26:37 AM on Monday, April 13, 2009, llama_nom wrote:

[...]

> Stefán Karlsson wrote: "Some of the earliest scribes used
> 'u' and 'v' in more or less the same way as Modern
> Icelandic, which prescribes the use of 'u' and a vowel,
> 'v' as a consonant. Others followed the modern rule only
> when thee sounds occurred initially. Most scribes used the
> two characters indescriminately, whether vocalic or
> semivocalic, but some adopted one or the other throughout
> their writing. Where 'f' was most commonly written in
> medial and inetrvocalic positions (as in Modern
> Icelandic), this too may be represented in some early
> scripts by 'u' or 'v', e.g. 'haua', 'hava' for usual
> 'hafa' "to have". Many 14th century scribes adopted the
> practice of writing 'v' (sometimes 'w') at the beginning
> of a word and 'u' in the body or at the end of a word,
> whether the sound denoted was 'u', 'ú' or 'v'" (The
> Icelandic Language 2004, p. 42).

That last convention was in fact common throughout western
Europe.

Brian