--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "peterchullo" <peterchullo@...> wrote:

>
> I started the Old Norse course about a month ago and I'm enjoying it. I'm on lesson 5. I'm wondering if anyone has also studied Old English. I read in the Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, Ch. 7 that "the language in England was the same as that spoken in Norway and Denmark" before 1066. I assume the writer means that an OE speaker could understand an ON speaker, and that he is not simply referring to Norse-speaking areas of England, but it's not clear, at least to me.

That's a good question. We can't be sure how aware of the actual linguistic situation in 1066 the author of the saga was and - as you say, it's ambiguous. But there are a number of sources that support the idea that Old English and Old Norse were, to some extent, mutually comprehensible. The anonymous 12th century author of the 1st Grammatical Treatise speaks of Icelandic and English as "one tongue", although one or both have diverged somewhat from their original form. He sees them as being essentially the same, in contrast to other languages such as Latin. Þórhallur Eyþórsson has an article here, in Icelandic, on this subject [ http://malfridur.ismennt.is/vor2002/pdf/malfridur-18-1-21-26.pdf ]. He mentions a few more examples. In the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, the Danes and the English have no problem communicating. In his Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus tells the story of an incident in 1170 in which an Englishman speaking in his own language is understood by Danish listeners. By contrast, the author of Laxdæla saga regards Irish as not automatically comprehensible to an Norse speaker, hence Molkorka's statement that she's taught Óláfr pái to speak Irish. As a demonstration, Þórhallur compares Old English and Icelandic versions of the Lord's Prayer, and translates Egill's childhood poem into Old English, with very little change (p. 25); of course, this is a very simple text. He reckons Old English and Old Norse differed to a similar degree as Modern Icelandic and Faroese do, or the mainland Scandinavian languages differ amongst themselves, or the Swiss dialects, and that speakers of Old English and Old Norse could have made themselves understood to each other, if not always instantly or effortlessly. I can imagine that comprehension might depend a good deal on familiarity, and that a little familiarity with hearing the other language would have gone a long way to recognising the regular correspondences between sounds.

Halldóra B. Björnsson's Modern Icelandic translation of Beowulf makes for an interesting comparison, not only of shared linguistic features, but also poetic devices:

http://www3.hi.is/~peturk/3T/bjolfskvida.html

Viking Age Old Norse, while not radically different to medieval (or indeed modern) Icelandic would have had a few extra clues for Old English speakers, such as nasalised vowels.

> Anyway, I'm actually more interested in Old English, but I like this course and I did not see anything similar for OE. But I noticed on Amazon.com that Old English dictionaries are cheap and plentiful, but that's not true for Old Norse. So I was thinking that if I continue to study after I complete this online Old Norse lesson, I might buy materials for OE and start over, with the idea that I will have gained a bit. Am I fooling myself? Has anyone done so and what is the transition like?

Not at all! What you've learnt of Old Norse will serve you well in learning Old English. Old English has none of the complicated reflexive suffixes that Old Norse does, and different forms of the same word aren't as well disguised by mutations as they can be in Old Norse. Grammatically the two languages are very similar, and much of the basic vocabulary is the same, taking into account the sound changes.

> Also: how necessary are personal pronouns? It seems like the verb does the job.

In Old Norse, most of the time, I'd say, not necessary to comprehension. But they do tend to be used usually, even so. The most common context where a pronoun is dropped is in the second of two conjoined clauses where they have the same subject, as in English, except that Old Norse isn't averse to a random change of tense between such clauses:

Ganga þeir síðan á skip sín ok héldu brott frá landi; sigldu þeir þá til Danmerkr.
They board their ship and () headed out from the shore; they sailed then to Denmark.

Less often, this happens when the subject of the second clause is not the same as the subject of the first:

En Álfr konungr tók at herfangi dóttur hans ok allmikit fé, ok fara nú heim við svá búit.
And King Álfr took his daughter as spoils of war, together with a great quantity of treasure, and (they) go home now with matters thus.

Síðan hirti Hrefna motrinn ok gengu þær til sætis síns.
Then Hrefna hid the headdress, and (they) went to their seats.

Rarely, a pronoun is dropped in a main clause:

Stigu síðan á skip ok sigla þegar á haf.
(They) boarded their ship and promptly sail out to sea.

On the other hand, a pronoun is sometimes used in apposition to a noun or nouns, where it wouldn't be in English. Where the subject is two people of different genders, the neuter plural pronoun is used:

Þau Herjólfr ok Þorgerðr höfðu eigi lengi ásamt verit áðr þeim varð sonar auðit.
() Herjólfr and Þorgerðr hadn't been together long before they were blessed with a son.

In archaic texts, most often verse, you'll sometimes see a first person pronoun suffixed to the verb, sometimes redundantly with a freestanding pronoun, sometimes without:

ek fjötraðr vark (=var + -(e)k)
I was fettered

In Old English, verbs aren't marked for person in the plural, so there's more room for ambiguity than Old Norse, but (as in Old Norse) even where there isn't ambiguity, pronouns tend to be used.