Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/392

Rh are the following: b, d, and g are substituted for p, t, and k,—as in the local names Nabø (earlier Napa), Tvedæ sogn (þveita'sókn); -a in terminations passes into -e,—as høre (høyra), to hear, søghe (sǿkja), to seek; single Danish words are introduced,—as jek (ek), I, se (sjá), to see; spørge (spyrja), to ask, &c. Towards the end of the Middle Ages the Danish influence shows an immense increase, which marks the gradual decline of Norwegian literature, until at last Norwegian as literary language is completely supplanted by Danish. During the 15th century Norway has hardly any literature except charters, and as early as the end of that century by far the greatest number of these are written in almost pure Danish. In the 16th century, again, charters written in Norwegian occur only as rare exceptions, and from the Reformation onward, when the Bible and the old laws were translated into Danish, not into Norwegian, Danish was not only the undisputed literary language of Norway, but also the colloquial language of dwellers in towns and of those who had learned to read. For the rise in recent times of a new Norwegian language, employed in literature and spoken by the educated classes, see p. 373.

Dialectical differences, as above hinted, occur in great number in the Norwegian charters of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Especially marked is the difference between the language of western Norway, which, in many respects, shows a development parallel to that of Icelandic, and the language of eastern Norway, which exhibits still more striking correspondences with contemporary Old Swedish. The most remarkable characteristics of the eastern dialects of this epoch are the following:—a is changed into æ in the pronouns þænn, this, þæt, that, and the particle þær, there (the latter as early as the 13th century), and later on (in the 14th century) also in terminations after a long root syllable,—as sendæ, to send, høyræ, to hear (but gera, to do, vita, to know); ia passes (as in Old Swedish and Old Danish) into iæ,—as hiærta (Icel. hjarta), heart; y sometimes passes into iu before r, l,—as hiurder, shepherd, lykiul, key, instead of hyrðir, lykyl (older still, hirðir, lykill; see above, p. 369); final -r after a consonant often passes into -ar, sometimes only into -a,—as prestar (prestr), priest, bøkar (bøkr), books, dat. sing. brøða (brǿðr), (to a) brother; tl passes into tsl, sl,—as lisla (litla), (the) little, the name Atsle, Asle (Atle); rs gives a "thick" s-sound (written ls),—as Bærdols, genitive of the name Bergþórr; nd, ld are assimilated into nn, ll,—as bann (band), band, the local name Westfoll (Vestfold); and (as far back as the 13th century) traces occur of the vowel assimilation, "tiljævning," that is so highly characteristic of the modern Norwegian dialects,—as voko, vuku, for vaku, (Icel. vǫko, -u), accusative singular of vaka, wake, mykyll for mykill, much. On the other hand, as characteristics of the western dialects may be noted the following:—final -r after a consonant passes into -ur, -or,—as vetur (vetr), winter, rettur (réttr), right, aftor (aftr), again; sl passes into tl,—as sytlla (sýsla), charge; hv is changed into kv also in pronouns,—as kver (hverr), who, kvassu (hversu), how.

This splitting of the language into dialects seems to have continued to gain ground, probably with greater rapidity as a Norwegian literary language no longer existed. Thus it is very likely that the present dialectical division was in all essentials accomplished about the year 1600; for, judging from the first work on Norwegian dialectology, the Søndfjord (Western Norway) dialect at least possessed at that time most of its present features. A little clog-calendar of the year 1644 seems to prove the same regarding the Valders (Southern Norway) dialect. How far the Old Norwegian dialects on the Faroes, in Ireland and Scotland, on the Scottish islands, and on the Isle of Man differed from the mother-tongue it is impossible to decide, on account of the few remnants of these dialects which exist apart from local names, viz., some charters (from the beginning of the 15th century onward) from the Faroes and Orkneys, and a few runic inscriptions from the Orkneys (thirty in number) and the Isle of Man (fourteen in number). These runic inscriptions, however, on account of their imperfect orthography, throw but little light on the subject. Of the Orkney dialect we know at least that initial hl, hn, hr still preserved h in the 13th century,—that is, two hundred years longer than in Norway.

Old Norwegian grammar has hitherto always been taken up in connexion with Old Icelandic, and confined to notes and appendices inserted in works on Icelandic grammar. A systematic treatise on Old Norwegian grammar is still wanting, with the exception of a short work by the Danish scholar N. M. Petersen (†1862), which, although brief and decidedly antiquated, deserves all praise. A most valuable collection of materials exists, however, in the Norwegian charters, carefully and accurately edited by the Norwegian scholars Chr. Lange (†1861) and C. R. Unger, and in a few texts edited with diplomatic accuracy.

III. —The Pre-Reformation language is called Old Swedish.

1. Old Swedish.—The territory of the Old Swedish comprehended—(1) Sweden, except the most northerly part, where Lappish (and Finnish?) was spoken, the most southerly (Skåne, Halland, and Blekinge—see below, p. 373), and certain parts of western Sweden (see above, p. 369); (2) extensive maritime tracts of Finland, Esthonia, and Livonia, with their surrounding islands; and (3) certain places in Russia, where Swedish was spoken for a short time. The oldest but also the most meagre sources of our knowledge of Old Swedish are those words, almost exclusively personal names (nearly one hundred), which were introduced into the Russian language at the foundation of the Russian realm by Swedes (in 862), and which are for the most part somewhat influenced by Russian phonetic laws, preserved in two Russian documents of the years 912 and 945, —as Igor (O. Sw. Ingvar), Rurik (Hrørikr), Oleg (Hialge, secondary form of Helge), Olga (Hialga, Helga). Of about the same date, but of an infinitely greater variety, are the runic inscriptions, amounting in number to about two thousand, which have been found cut on stones (rarely wood, metal, or other materials) almost all over Sweden, though they occur most frequently (about half of the total number) in the province of Uppland, next to which come Södermanland, Östergötland, and Gotland, with about two hundred each. For the most part they are tombstones or monuments in memory of deceased relatives, rarely public notices. Their form is often metrical, in part at least. Most of them are anonymous, in so far that we do not know the name of the engraver, though, as a rule, the name of the man who ordered them is recorded. Of the engravers named, about seventy in number, the three most productive are Ubir, Bali, and Asmundr Karasun, all three principally working in Upland; the first-mentioned name is signed on about forty, the others on nearly twenty stones each. These inscriptions vary very much in age, belonging to all centuries of Old Swedish, but by far the greatest number of them date from the 11th and 12th centuries. From heathen times—as well as from the last two centuries of the Middle Ages—we have comparatively few. The oldest are probably the Ingelstad inscription in Östergötland, and the Gursten one found in the north of Småland. The rune stone from Rök in Östergötland probably dates from the first half of the 10th century. Its inscription surpasses all the others both in length (more than one hundred and fifty words) and in the importance of its contents, which are equally interesting as regards philology and the history of culture; it is a fragment (partly in metrical form) of an Old Swedish heroic tale. From about the year 1000 we possess the inscriptions of Asmundr Karasun, and from about 1050 the so-called Ingvar monuments (about twenty in number), erected most of them in Södermanland, in honour of the men who fell in a great war in eastern Europe under the command of a certain Ingvar; the stones cut by Bali belong to the same period. Somewhat later are the inscriptions cut by Ubir, and about contemporary with them, viz., from the beginning of the 12th century, is the remarkable inscription on the door-ring of the church of Forsa in Helsingland, containing the oldest Scandinavian statute now preserved, as well as other inscriptions from the same province, written in a particular variety of the common runic alphabet, the so-called "staflösa" (staffless, without the perpendicular staff) runes, as the long genealogical inscription on the Malstad-stone. The inscriptions of the following centuries are of far less philological interest, because after the 13th century there exists another and more fruitful source for Old Swedish, viz., a literature in the proper sense of the word, which was only in a limited degree written in runes. Of the runic literature hardly anything has been preserved to our days, while the literature in the Latin letters is both in quality and extent incomparably inferior to Old Icelandic, though it, at least in quantity, considerably surpasses Old Norwegian. In age, however, it is inferior to both of them, beginning only in the 13th century. The oldest of the extant manuscripts is a codex of the Older Vestgötalaw (Cod. Holm. B 59), written about the year 1290, and philologically of the greatest import Not much later is a codex of the Uplandslaw (Cod. Ups. 12) of the year 1300. Of other works of value from a philological point of view we only mention a codex of the Södermannalaw (Cod. Holm. B 53) of about 1330, the two manuscripts containing a