Old Norse for Beginners - Lesson One by Haukur orgeirsson and skar Gulaugsson 0. Miscellany 0.

1 About this course This course is designed for speakers of English. No previous knowledge of Old Norse or any other language is needed or expected. The aim of the course is to aid beginning students of Old Norse in building up sufficient basic knowledge for the student to be able to start studying on his own after the course. The method is to focus on building up a firm understanding of the grammatical basics of the language, having the student use the language as much as possible. We will try throughout the course to spice it up with background information, as most students of Old Norse have strong interest in Old Norse culture as well as language. We will also refrain from using nonsensical sentences, preferring "real" made-up sentences or simplified versions of actual texts. Lessons are organised into four chapters. The first one (0) contains information that is not really the core of the matter but can be useful and interesting to read. The next one (1) contains the new grammar for the lesson, then (2) comes the vocabulary, all of which you should memorise, and then (3) exercises to help you get a hands on feeling for the subject. In the last chapter (4) we look at real texts or sentences from the literature. Do not get discouraged if this is difficult at times, you don't have to memorise everything there, just read through it. 0.2 On learning languages in general The process of learning languages is often somewhat misperceived, especially in cultures with little tradition or need for it. Language learning is gradual, piece-by-piece, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, often rewarding, often frustrating. There is no black and white in language learning, no set stage where one "speaks the language", before which one understood and spoke nothing, after which one understands and speaks everything. It's an open-ended process, from which one can enter and exit at will, always benefitting from every minute effort. How this relates to our course, is to make you understand that you will not exit from it completely fluent in Old Norse, having "finished" that language, because there is no finish line; but neither will you have wasted your time, because time invested in language study is never "lost". You are to emerge from the course having achieved a certain point, a certain skill level, from which you can benefit, even if it cannot be considered fluency. Most importantly, the end results should be gratifying and the process fun, though unavoidably hard at times. 0.3 On learning arcane languages The study of arcane languages such as Old Norse has certain marked differences to the study of modern languages; the most important factor is, naturally, that one can never hear anybody speak the language. That can be a significant psychological obstacle in memorizing words and reading text. Coming from an experienced language learner, the problem with learning arcane languages is that one has no access to the "sound of the language", its very soul. This makes it more difficult to get a feel for its structure, to become comfortable with it, even to develop feelings for it, all factors not to be taken lightly. In studying arcane languages, one must deal with this by "reliving" and "realizing" the language, by familiarizing oneself with the culture of the language's former speakers and imagining the life behind it. One must understand that it was once the native language of a whole nation of people of all kinds, to whom it was as dear and natural as your first language is to you. Understand that those

people thought in this language, expressed their needs in it, their love, their anger and hate, their first and last words; parent to child, friend to friend, husband to wife, foe to foe, any person to any other person. It was as living once as any given language of today, complete with slang, neologisms, swearing and nonsense, just as well as the more commonly known poetry and literature. Once one genuinely and truly understands this, one has gained an important psychological advantage in the learning process of an arcane language. 0.4 Old Norse? Which Old Norse? The term Old Norse refers to the language spoken in Scandinavia and Scandinavian settlements from about 800 to about 1350. It should be obvious that it was not exactly the same language over a vast area and 550 years. It is usually split into two groups, which are then split into two dialects. West Norse Old Icelandic Old Norwegian East Norse Old Danish Old Swedish

Of all these, the dialect which preserved the most interesting literature is Old Icelandic. This course will teach Old Icelandic from the 13th century; when such works as Heimskringla and the Edda were composed. The spelling of Old Icelandic words is normalised to the accepted standard. When texts that are not from the 13th century are quoted we will still use the same spelling. The term 'Old Norse' is sometimes used to mean specifically what we here call 'West Norse' or what we here call 'Old Icelandic'. It is sometimes applied to Icelandic up to the 16th century. 0.5 English grammatical vocabulary It is quite possible to teach and learn languages without the use of grammatical terms. Indeed, a child does not learn to speak by first learning what a noun is. Yet, it is our opinion that it is practical to use grammatical vocabulary in describing the Old Norse language. This course assumes knowledge of the following words for parts of speech. Very short descriptions follow. Noun: A name of a person, place or thing (book, Paris, John). Adjective: A word that describes a noun (good, bad, ugly). Pronoun: A word used instead of a noun (he, we, which). Verb: A word that describes what someone is doing (do, kill, say). Adverb: A word that describes a verb (well, highly, badly). Conjunction: A connecting word (and, but, or). Preposition: A word placed before a noun to indicate place, direction etc. (to, from, in). As new terms are introduced make an effort at understanding them; it is essential for making sense of the text. 1. Grammar 1.1 Declension of pronouns In Norse, nouns and pronouns are declined in cases. What on earth does that mean? We will use English as a starting point to explain. Consider the English sentence: "She loves me." If you have learnt syntax you will know that the "subject" of this sentence is the pronoun "she" and the "object" is the pronoun "me". If you haven't learnt syntax I'll let you in on the trick; the subject in a sentence is the word that is doing stuff, the object is the word stuff is done to. So, in our sentence "she" is doing stuff and it's being done to "me". Simple. Now let's look at another sentence: "I love her." Okay, now "I" is doing stuff, so "I" is the subject,

and it's being done to "her" which must then be the object. Now consider; how does the English language distinguish between subject and object in a sentence? As you will see from our example there are two methods: 1. Changing the word order. You will note that the word preceding the verb is the subject whereas the word following the verb is the object. 2. Changing the form of the words. Aha! This is where things get interesting. Of course the "she" in the first sentence is the same person as the "her" in the second sentence, similarly the "I" and "me" refer to the same bloke. We say the word itself hasn't changed, only the form of it. We'll make a little table: Subject: Object: I me you you he him she her it it

You will note that sometimes the word changes completely when switching between the roles of subject and object, like "I" to "me", sometimes it changes but remains recognisably the same, like "he" to "him", and sometimes it doesn't change at all, like "you" to "you". Now we have seen that English uses different forms of pronouns to represent subject and object but those different forms are also used for other things. Let's look at the sentence "I am he." Something strange has happened; preceding the verb there is a pronoun in the subject form, well and good, but following the verb is a pronoun that is also in the subject form. The explanation lies in the verb we're using; the verb "to be" doesn't really describe "stuff being done" (as we have so eloquently put it in this passage). It's more like an equals sign: "I = he". In such cases the word following the verb is called neither object nor subject but "complement". Now that we've found a new use for our subject form we'll have to redo our table: Subject, complement: Object: I me you you he him she her it it

Now we might wonder whether there is another use for the object form as well. Indeed there is; consider the sentence "I saved it for him". Here "I" is the subject and "it" is the object, as you will have realised, but what about "him"? It's not following a verb so it can't be an object but it's still in the object form. We conclude that words following a preposition take the object form. Again we have to redo our table: Subject, complement: Object, prepositional: I me you you he him she her it it

Now that we've found more than one use for both of our forms we'll name those forms for easy reference. We'll call them nominative and accusative and we'll refer to them collectively as the cases of the pronouns. We'll call this changing of forms by the pronouns declension. Nominative case: Accusative case: I me you you he him she her it it

Remember what we stated at the beginning of this section? "In Norse, nouns and pronouns are declined in cases". Now we can state: "In English, pronouns are declined in cases". The beauty of it is that the Norse cases of nominative and accusative work exactly like the English cases we have been defining. Thus the nominative in Norse serves as subject and compliment and the accusative as object and prepositional. The Norse table corresponding to the English table above looks like this:

Nominative case: Accusative case:

ek mik

ik

hann hann

hon hana

at at

You notice a slight resemblance between the two tables. You also note that, as with English, when the pronouns go from nominative to accusative they sometimes change much (ek - mik), sometimes little (hon - hana) and sometimes not at all (hann - hann). Now you can do exercise 3.1. 1.2 Declension of nouns In the Norse language, nouns, like pronouns, are declined in cases. Again we start by discussing English. Consider the sentence "Peter calls Maggie." Here the subject is "Peter" and the object is "Maggie". Now another sentence: "Maggie calls Peter." The roles of subject and object have been switched, but how? Not by changing the forms of the words, as with the pronouns, but solely by changing the word order. In contrast, Norse solves the problem of distinguishing between subject and object with case endings and not word order. Now to the good stuff. Norse nouns are declined in cases. That is, the form of the nouns change depending on whether they play the role of nominative or accusative. The wonderful science of grammar puts nouns into different groups depending on their declension pattern. The first group we will look at is called "strong masculine"; accept those terms as arbitrary for now. The pattern of the strong masculine word is that they have the ending -r in the nominative. We'll look at some examples from our vocabulary in 2.1. Singular of the strong masculine declension: Nominative: Accusative: lfr lf baugr baug Haukr Hauk konungr konung

Note that proper names (like Haukr here) are declined in cases like any other nouns. 1.3 Article In English there are two kinds of articles; the indefinite article "a and an" and the definite article "the". The Norse language has no indefinite article, thus "draugr" by itself means "a ghost". Norse, however, does have a definite article though it doesn't work quite like the English one. Rather than being a small unchanging word preceding nouns the Norse article is a suffix depending on case, gender and number. For the masculine words we've introduced the article in both nominative singular and accusative singular is "-inn" tacked on to the words. Thus: Nominative Accusative or in so many words: lfr = an elf (nominative) lf = an elf (accusative) lfrinn = the elf (nominative) lfinn = the elf (accusative) Indefinite lfr lf Definite lfrinn lfinn

1.4 Gender of nouns We said before that the group of nouns we're looking at is called strong masculine. The "strong" classification is arbitrary but we're going to let you in on the masculine thing. Every word in Norse has an arbitrary "gender", masculine, feminine or neuter. When we refer to a word with a certain

gender we have to use the pronoun with the same gender. Thus masculine nouns take the masculine pronoun (hann=he), feminine nouns take the feminine pronoun (hon=she) and neuter nouns take the neuter pronoun (at=it). Since all the nouns used in this chapter are masculine you'll be concerned with "hann" for now. 1.5 Notes on word order Word order in English is quite rigid. For a simple sentence it's always "subject-verb-object". In Norse this is not so, the word order is quite free, mainly because the information about which word plays which role is given by grammatical endings (cases and more) whereas English relies on word order to convey this information. Remember to check the grammatical ending of Norse words to find their place in the sentence. This is not to say that there aren't certain conventions on word order in Norse. Most often there is one thing that is most natural but be prepared to meet anything. In Norse, titles usually follow the name they refer to; thus 'king lfr' is 'lfr konungr'. 2. Vocabulary 2.1. Nouns All nouns here are of the strong masculine declension. lfr baugr brandr dvergr draugr hestr haukr hjlmr konungr knfr ormr lfr Names: Haukr lfr Sigurr Tyrfingr elf ring sword dwarf ghost horse hawk helmet king knife worm, serpent wolf

2.2 Pronoun hann he, it

We gloss the word as both "he" and "it" as it can refer both to men and to things with masculine gender. Remember that all the nouns given in this lesson are of masculine gender. 2.3 Verbs The forms given here are the third person singular of the verbs. This corresponds with the English s-

form (like "sees" and "hears"). This is all you need to know for now. er heitir sr segir tekr vegr owns is (takes a complement!) is called (takes a complement!) sees says takes kills (usually in battle), slays

Sometimes the subject is dropped and the verb alone gives the meaning. Thus 'vegr' alone might mean 'he kills'. 2.4 Adverbs hr eigi ok 2.5 Conjunctions These conjunctions are used much as in English. Note that 'ok' can be either an adverb or a conjunction, depending on context. ok en and but here not also

2.6 Sample sentences The following sentences represent one approach to tackling Norse sentences. If you're comfortable with it you can employ it yourself in the exercises. Vegr orminn lfr. Subject: lfr [nominative, proper name] Object: orminn [accusative, with article] Meaning: lfr kills the serpent Baug dvergr Subject: dvergr [nominative, without article] Object: baug [accusative, without article] Meaning: A dwarf has a ring. Draugrinn sr konunginn. Subject: draugrinn [nominative, with article] Object: konunginn [accusative, with article] Meaning: The ghost sees the king. Heitir konungrinn lfr. Subject: konungrinn [nominative, with article] Complement: lfr [nominative, proper name] Meaning: The king is called lfr.

After you finish studying the vocabulary you should take on the remaining exercises. 3. Exercises 3.1 Mark the pronouns' cases (optional) In the following bible quotes there are many pronouns. Locate them and find out what case they're in. Also note the reason they are in that case. a) I am he that liveth. b) Take now thy son whom thou lovest and offer him there for a burnt offering. c) And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her: "Come lie with me, my sister". d) Him that dieth of Baasha in the city shall the dogs eat. e) Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise. 3.2 Translate the phrases into English. a) Dvergrinn baug. b) Hjlm Haukr. c) lfrinn sr draug. d) Hann er konungrinn. e) Hann sr dverginn. 3.3 Translate the phrases into Old Norse a) The ghost kills the king. b) The elf kills a wolf. c) The king sees a hawk. d) lfr is a king. e) A king is named lfr. 3.4 Translate the text into English lfr heitir konungr. Hann brand. Heitir brandrinn Tyrfingr. lf sr lfr ok segir: "Hr er lfr!". lfr tekr brandinn ok vegr lfinn. En hr er ok ormr. lfr sr hann eigi. lf vegr ormrinn. 3.5 Translate the text into Old Norse A king is called Sigurr. He owns a sword but not a horse. lfr is also a king. He owns a horse. Sigurr kills lfr and takes the horse. 4. Looking at real texts 4.1 A few words from the Snorra-Edda En er Jrmunrekkr konungr s haukinn... Glossary: er when

saw (past tense of 'sr')

Meaning: "But when king Jrmunrekkr saw the hawk..." The subject of the sentence 'Jrmunrekkr konungr' is in the nominative case whereas the object 'haukinn' is in the accusative case. To find out just what happened when king Jrmunrekkr saw the hawk you will have to look up chapter 50 of the Skldskaparml. 4.2 Two lines from the Vlusp In Vlusp (The Prophecy of the Seeress) the seeress says: Ask veit ek standa. Heitir Yggdrasill. Glossary: askr veit ek standa ash tree I know (to) stand

There are some things you should notice here. The first word of the sentence, 'ask', is the object. You can see that because it is in the accusative form. Then comes the verb 'veit' and then the subject 'ek'. Thus the word order is 'object-verb-subject'. The second sentence has no subject. Instead of 'Hann heitir Yggdrasill.' we have only 'Heitir Yggdrasill.' It is quite normal in poetry that the subject be dropped. Meaning: "I know an ash tree to stand. It is called Yggdrasill." Lesson Two 1. Grammar 1.1 First and second person personal pronouns Now you have to learn those singular personal pronouns: Nominative Accusative 1.person ek mik 2.person ik

The corresponding English table looks like this: Nominative Accusative 1.person I me 2.person you you

The forms '' and 'ik' are the relatives of the English forms 'thou' and 'thee'. And then there are the plural pronouns, still fairly similar to English: 1.person 2.person

Nominative Accusative Nominative Accusative

vr oss 1.person we us

r yr 2.person you you

And finally a concept that doesn't exist in Modern English, dual pronouns: Nominative Accusative Nominative Accusative 1.person vit okkr 1.person we two us two 2.person it ykkr 2.person you two you two

1.2 Plural of third person pronouns We will now introduce the plural of the third person pronouns. As before we begin with English. Singular Nominative he she Accusative him her it it Plural they them they them they them

The reason for writing "they" out three times is that the plural of "he" is the same as the plural of "she" or the plural of "it", unlike Old Norse : Nominative Accusative Singular hann hon hann hana at at Plural eir r r au au

Thus, many "hons" make a "r" and many "hanns" make a "eir" (to put it in silly terms). We are still only using the masculine pronoun as all nouns we have introduced are masculine. 1.3 Plural of nouns Nouns, of course, have a plural form. The plural form declines in cases and can be with or without definitive article. We'll write up a table showing the declension of our strong masculine words. This time we will use a {stem + ending} scheme. The grammatical stem of a word is the word without grammatical ending. Without article Singular stem + r stem Plural stem + ar stem + a With article Singular stem + r + inn stem + inn Plural stem + ar + nir stem + a + na

Nom. Acc.

And then with the good old elf as the example. Without article Singular lfr lf Plural lfar lfa With article Singular lfrinn lfinn Plural lfarnir lfana

Nom. Acc.

Now you know eight different forms of each noun. This might be a bit overwhelming at first but if you immediately begin memorising the table above and work hard at the exercises it will soon be very familiar. 1.4 Some slightly irregular nouns Some words of the strong masculine declension lack the nominative singular ending 'r'. In order to make it completely clear what we mean we decline a sample word from this group. The word is 'jarl' and means 'earl'. The reason is probably that pronouncing "jarlr" would not be comfortable. Without article Singular jarl jarl Plural jarlar jarla With article Singular jarlinn jarlinn Plural jarlarnir jarlana

Nom. Acc.

The vocabulary also introduces the word 'geirr'. It is completely regular, so do not get confused by the two r's at the end. The first r is part of the stem whereas the second one is the nominative singular ending. 1.5 Mar - an irregular noun We will now introduce a masculine noun that in its declension does not follow the patterns already described. The word is 'mar' and means 'human being' or 'person'. Without article Singular mar mann Plural menn menn With article Singular marinn manninn Plural menninir mennina

Nom. Acc.

Notice how the irregularity is similar to that of the corresponding English word, 'man'. Also notice that the endings for the article are very similar to those for the regular words. This is no coincidence, in fact the article declines in the same basic way for every word of the same gender. The word 'mar' is a very useful one and will help us make more interesting sentences. 1.6 Verbal conjugation The form of a verb depends upon the subject in the sentence, so in Old Norse as it is in English. Let us give an example Infinitive: (to) be I am thou art he/she/it is we are you are they are

We will now give the corresponding Old Norse verb; like its English counterpart, it is completely irregular. Infinitive: (at) vera ek em ert vit/vr erum it/r eru

hann/hon/at er

eir/r/au eru

Remember what everything means here. The plural of 'hann' is 'eir' et cetera. Also note that the dual pronouns have the same conjugation as the plural ones. Now we will look at more regular verbs. We don't have to remember every form of every verb; for now it will be sufficient for us to remember two; the infinitive and the first person singular. The endings are tacked on in the following way. Infinitive: [form 1] ek [form 2] [form 2] + r hann/hon/at [form 2] + r vit/vr [form 1] - a + um it/r [form 1] - a + i eir/r/au [form 1]

This code may be a bit cryptic. When I say " - a + um" I mean "subtract 'a' and add 'um'". This is best illustrated with examples: vega, veg ek veg vegr hann/hon/at vegr heita, heiti ek heiti heitir hann/hon/at heitir taka, tek ek tek tekr hann/hon/at tekr segja, segi ek segi segir hann/hon/at segir kalla, kalla (to call) ek kalla kallar hann/hon/at kallar hafa, hefi (to have, wear, carry) ek hefi hefir hann/hon/at hefir vit/vr vegum it/r vegi eir/r/au vega vit/vr heitum it/r heiti eir/r/au heita vit/vr tkum (explained below) it/r taki eir/r/au taka vit/vr segjum it/r segi (explained below) eir/r/au segja vit/vr kllum it/r kalli eir/r/au kalla vit/vr hfum it/r hafi eir/r/au hafa

And now for one verb that is almost regular, but not quite: sj, s (to see) ek s sr hann/hon/at sr vit/vr sjm (not *sjum) it/r s (not *sji) eir/r/au sj

A u in a grammatical ending always changes a preceding 'a' to an ''. This is known as u-mutation and is treated in more detail later. The letters 'j' and 'i' cannot coexist; for this reason we have 'segi' and not '*segji'.

We won't use the infinitive just yet but it is still one of two forms of each verb you need to memorise. The verb '' does not follow this pattern, it is conjugated in lesson 3. The forms 'sjum' and 'sji' are correct in later Icelandic. 1.7 "Er" - an all purpose relative pronoun Relative pronouns are words like 'who, which, that'. In Norse we have one very useful word that can play the role of all those. The word is 'er' and it should not be confused with the 3rd person singular of the verb "to be". An example will be in order. The people (that) he sees are Norwegians. Menninir, er hann sr, eru Normenn. Relative pronoun can be dropped. Relative pronoun cannot be dropped.

We say that the relative pronoun represents a word from the main sentence in the case appropriate for the verb in the relative clause. Since the word 'er' is the same in all cases this is mostly a technical thing and need not be worried overly about. We will, somewhat arbitrarily, separate all relative clauses in Norse with commas. 1.8 The present tense So far we have only been discussing the present tense of verbs. The ON present tense actually corresponds to two forms in English. Vkingarnir koma. Vkingarnir koma. The vikings come. The vikings are coming.

When translating remember to use the most natural English form. 1.9 Word order While word order in Old Norse is fairly free there are usually some things that are more normal than others. The normal word order in a simple sentence is, as in English: "subject verb object". Another common word order is "verb subject object". The greatest emphasis in a sentence is usually on the first word. Thus, if we want to draw special attention to the object we can use "object verb subject". Other word-order schemes are usually reserved for elaborate poetry. Where do you put the negating word "eigi"? Those examples will illustrate the variety of normal structures. Do not be overwhelmed by this, there is little need to memorise every possible pattern, you will slowly become familiar with normal word order in reading the translation exercises. Subject-verb-object Hann sr eigi lfinn. Hann sr lfinn eigi. Verb-subject-object Sr hann lfinn eigi. Sr hann eigi lfinn. Eigi sr hann lfinn. Object-verb-subject lfinn sr hann eigi.

All the legal sentences above have one thing in common: "The verb is always the first or the second word in the sentence." This phenomenon is known as V2 and is treated in more detail later in the course. Other adverbs are usually placed in the same way. 2. Vocabulary 2.1 Nouns mar Normar person, man, human being (declension described in 1.5) Norwegian (declines like mar)

Then two words whose declension we described in 1.4. hrafn jarl raven earl

The rest of the words given are regular strong masculine. btr geirr slendingr vargr vkingr jfr boat spear Icelander wolf viking thief

And for good measure we also list the names used in the lesson. You should never forget that names behave as any other nouns. They decline according to their declension group. Eirkr Erlingr

2.2 Pronouns er that, which, who, whom

Also remember to memorise the masculine pronoun in plural. Nom. eir (they) Acc. (them)

2.3 Verbs The verbs from lesson one are reiterated here for easy reference. hafa, hefi hata, hata heita, heiti deyja, dey have, hold, wear hate be called die

ba, b koma, km mla, mli sj, s vega, veg segja, segi taka, tek sj (irregular) vera (irregular)

wait come talk see slay says take see be owns (only form of this verb yet presented)

2.4 Adverbs n ar now there

2.5 A greeting The following forms can be used as greetings. This is actually an adjective that is declining according to gender and number but we'll talk about that later. Heill! - to greet one man Heil! - to greet one woman Heilir! - to greet a group of men Heilar! - to greet a group of women Heil! - to greet a group including both sexes

2.6 Yes or no questions To change a statement into a question you use the word order Verb-subject-(object/complement) And often you add the word 'hvrt' in front. Hvrt er hann hr? Er hann hr? But it's not good fashion to answer a yes or no question with yes or no! That's almost never done in the Old Icelandic texts. Instead you just repeat the question as a statement. Question: Hvrt er hann hr? Answer: Hann er hr. Oh, alright, we can tell you the words: j nei yes no

2.7 Sample sentences Normenn hata slendinga. Subject: Normenn [nominative, plural, without article] Object: slendinga [accusative, plural, without article] Meaning: Norwegians hate Icelanders. Hatar konungrinn lfa. Subject: konungrinn [nominative, singular, with article] Object: lfa [accusative, plural, without article] Meaning: The king hates wolfs. eir eru Normenn. Subject: eir [nominative, plural] Complement: Normenn [nominative, plural, without article] Meaning: They are Norwegians. Brandrinn, er hann , heitir Tyrfingr. Subject in main sentence: brandrinn [nominative, singular, with article] Complement in main sentence Tyrfingr [nominative, singular, proper name] Subject in relative clause: hann [nominative, singular] Object in relative clause: er [accusative, singular] Meaning: The sword which he has is called Tyrfingr. Vit hfum hjlma. Subject: vit [nominative, dual] Object: hjlma [accusative, plural] Meaning: We two have (are wearing) helmets.

3. Exercises 3.1 Translate the phrases into English Sj jarlarnir konungana. lfrinn knfa. lfar heita ok vargar. Baugana sj menninir. Hrafnarnir deyja. 3.2 Translate the phrases into Old Norse The raven sees a hawk. The king hates thieves. A viking is called Erlingr. The earls are called Erlingr and Eirkr. You (pl.) are coming. 3.3 Translate the text into English Note: As our vocabulary and knowledge of grammar expands we will find better things to do with our exercises than killing lfr. Normenn hafa konung; hann heitir lfr. Mar heitir Eirkr; hann er jarl ok vkingr. lf hatar Eirkr. lfr bt. Hann heitir Ormr. N sr Eirkr btinn. Segir hann: "Hr er btrinn, er lfr ." Eirkr hatar lf en hann tekr eigi btinn, er lfr . Hann br. lfr kmr. Eirkr segir: "N deyr

, lfr konungr! Ek veg ik!" ok vegr lf. lfr segir " vegr mik! Ek dey! ! ! (exclamation of pain) 3.4 Translate the text into Old Norse A man is called Eirkr. He owns (some) helmets, (some) boats and a spear. He is a viking. He kills people and takes boats. But Eirkr is not a thief. Thieves don't kill. Now Eirkr sees lfr and the Serpent. He kills lfr and takes the Serpent. 3.5 Translate the play into English [lfr br.] lfr: Ek s mann! [mar kmr] Mar: Heill lfr konungr! Ek heiti Eirkr ok ek em slendingr. lfr: Heill Eirkr! Eirkr: Hvrt sr orminn ar, konungr? lfr: Eigi s ek orm. Eirkr: En hann er hr! [n sr lfr orminn] lfr: Ormr! Ek s orm! Ormr: lfr! Ek s lf! Eirkr: Segir ormrinn "lfr"? Ormr: Nei. Ormar mla eigi. [lfr ok Eirkr flja] 3.6 Translate the play into English [Eirkr, jfr ok vkingr, sr Orm, bt er lfr ] Eirkr: "ar er btr!" [Haukr, slendingr, mlir] Haukr: "lfr btinn." [lfr kmr] lfr: "Menn s ek!" Eirkr ok Haukr: "Vit erum hr." lfr: "Hvrt taki it btinn?" Eirkr ok Haukr: "Vit tkum hann eigi." lfr: "Ormr heitir btrinn. Ek Orm" [Eirkr ok Haukr kalla] E & H: "lfr! lfr! ar er lfr!" lfr: "lfr? Ek hata lfa!" [lfr, Normar ok jfr, kmr] lfr: "Ek s eigi lf. Hvrt er hr lfr?" lfr: "Hr em ek, lfr konungr." [Eirkr, Haukr ok lfr taka btinn ok flja] lfr: "jfar! Ek hata jfa!" E, H & : "Vr erum vkingar, vr hfum bt er heitir Ormr!" 4. Looking at real texts 4.1 Half a stanza by Snorri Sturluson

Drfr handar hlekkr ar er hilmir drekkr. Mjk er brgnum bekkr blsklar ekkr. This half-stanza will not look recognisable to you, indeed it shouldn't, it is a complicated poetic passage. But we will apply the principles set forth earlier [The Norse and English tongues] to help us with individual words. Some we can guess at without thought; 'handar' looks like it's a cognate of 'hand' and 'drfr' could be a cognate of 'drive'. We are right on both accounts; 'handar' means 'of hand' but while 'drfr' is indeed related to 'drive' in this case it means 'snows'. Compare with the English word '(snow)drift'. The next word is 'hlekkr'. Doesn't look familiar. But English dropped all h's in front of consonants, maybe if we change it to 'lekkr'. Looks better but we need to do more. The cluster 'nk' was frequently assimilated to 'kk' in Old Norse, maybe we need to reverse such a change. Then we've got 'lenkr'. Of course English doesn't have r as a grammatical ending, out it goes. New result 'lenk'. Still not an English word but let's remember that vowels are more prone to change than consonants. If we change the 'e' to an 'i' then we've finally made it to 'link' which is the right word. It's a good and correct guess that 'ar' means 'there'. In this context 'ar er' means 'where'. What might 'hilmir' be? No way to figure that one out, it means 'king'. The word is related to 'hjlmr' and refers to the fact that kings tend to bear helmets. Then there's 'drekkr'. We apply the same rules as before; Norse 'kk' can be English 'nk' and English doesn't have 'r' as a grammatical ending. Then we've got 'drenk'. Maybe if we change the vowel to 'i' as before. Hocus-pocus we've got 'drink' which is correct. More specifically 'drekkr' means 'drinks'. Let's look at that first sentence in toto. "Drfr handar hlekkr ar er hilmir drekkr." The subject is 'handar hlekkr' which means 'link of the hand'. And what does _that_ mean? It is a poetic paraphrase for 'gold'. The verb is 'drfr' which means 'snows'. Then 'ar er' means 'where', 'hilmir' means 'king' and 'drekkr' means 'drinks'. "(The) link of the hand [gold] snows where (the) king drinks." This sentence is quite typical of Norse court poetry; praise of the king's generosity in florid language. Let's look at the second sentence. The word 'mjk' means 'very'. The English cognate is 'much'. You already know that 'er' can mean 'is'. Such is the case here. The word 'brgnum' doesn't have an English cognate. It means 'for men' and is a poetic word. Then there's 'bekkr'. In with the n, out with the r! We've got 'benk'. Hmm... The correct cognate is 'bench' and the meaning is the same. The word-form 'blsklar' is made out of 'bl' and 'sklar'. The first is an adjective cognate to English 'blithe'. The second is the possessive form of 'skl' which means 'bowl'. Modern Scandinavians can often be heard shouting this word. Skl! Skl! Toast! Last word: 'ekkr'. Once more we change 'kk' into 'nk' and get 'thenk'. The correct cognate is 'thank' but the word means 'comfortable' rather than 'thankful'. If we draw together the second sentence. "Mjk er brgnum bekkr blsklar ekkr." Meaning: "The bench of the blithe bowl is very comfortable for men." And who doesn't like sitting and drinking... In summary we could guess correctly at the meaning of many words: 'handar, drekkr, bl, hlekkr, bekkr' but we also had some whose cognates didn't help us much: 'drfr, ekkr'. This is quite typical. Do not rely on cognate trickery but use it, where it applies, as an aid to memory.

4.2 Two half-strophes from the Sigdrfuml

Heill Dagr! Heilir Dags synir! Heil Ntt ok nipt!" --Heilir sir! Heilar synjur! Heil sj in fjlnta fold!" Compare the greeting carefully with chapter 2.5; notice how it changes according to gender and number. "Hail, Day! Hail, Day's sons! Hail, Night and [her] sister!" "Hail, sir (gods)! Hail, synjur (goddesses)! Hail, bountiful earth!" Lesson Three 0.1 Spelling When the Latin alphabet was introduced to write Old Norse the spelling used was not very consistent and not very precise. To improve readability the spelling of the preserved manuscripts is usually "corrected" in modern editions. For example, there are few manuscripts that distinguish between short and long vowels but this distinction is, as a rule, made now when Old Icelandic texts are published. The spelling used in this course is the standardised spelling used in the "slenzk fornrit" edition of the sagas. That spelling, in turn, is based on suggestions from a 12th century treatise called The First Grammatical Treatise, because it is the first of four in its manuscript. There are two exceptions to this. What we here write as '' should be an o with a tail and what we here write as 'oe' should be an oe-ligature. This is due to letter code difficulties. 1. Grammar 1.1 Adjectives - indefinite form In Modern English an adjective, such as 'fresh' will have exactly the same form no matter what its grammatical context is. This was not so in Middle English. Let's look at a part of Chaucer's description of the Squire. Embrouded was he, as it were a meede Al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and reede. Syngynge he was, or floytynge, al e day; He was as fressh as is e mon of May. We see that two forms of the same adjective occur; ' fressh' and 'fresshe'. The first form goes with 'he' and the second with 'floures'. We could guess, correctly, that the Middle English adjective has a plural ending of 'e'. We have more examples of this above. The flowers are ' whyte' and 'reede' whereas the meadow is 'ful' of them. After this sidestep it should come as no surprise to you that in Old Norse adjectives have different

forms depending on the number and case of the noun they describe. Their form also depends on the gender of the noun and whether it is definite or indefinite (explained below). The masculine indefinite declension is exemplified here. Nom. Acc. Sg. reir reian Pl. reiir reia

The word 'reir' means 'angry'. As always you must memorise the table. We will immediately give examples of the usage. Note that the adjective can come either in front of the noun or behind it. Both types of usage are natural. Hr eru reiir menn. Hann sr reian mann. lfr er mar reir. Here are (some) angry people. He sees an angry person. Olaf is an angry person.

Note carefully, however, that ON has a separate declension for adjectives that apply to nouns with a definite article. That is called the definite declension, while the one presented here is the indefinite. Be careful thus, not to use the forms above with a definite noun, for that is (under normal circumstances) wrong. The definite declension of adjectives is not presented here yet, since it is modelled on a noun declension not yet introduced (the weak one); the indefinite forms above, however, are similar to the declensions of strong masculine nouns and various pronouns, all of which are being presented now. We will have to make do with only indefinite adjective forms for a while. 1.2 Usage - accusative with infinitive Having learnt infinitive forms of verbs and accusative forms of some nouns, we're ready for a very useful sentence construction. First, let's take a look of the English equivalent. I saw him come. He sees it fly. This construction, usually with a main verb meaning to see, watch, hear, feel, sense, etc, indicates that the subject sees/hears/senses the object performing an action, which is put into the infinitive form (without any marker). ON examples: Ek s lf konung koma. Vr sjm manninn kalla. Hann heyrir drauginn mla. I see King Olaf come. We see the man shout. He hears the ghost speak.

Modern English speakers will often say "I see it coming." instead of "come." The ON construction may be translated either way. 1.3 Usage - auxiliary verbs ON has much in common with English in its use of auxiliaries. To begin with, some examples of English auxiliary constructions with infinitive: It wants to go. He has to go. The man does see. Birds can fly.

The dogs must leave. The beast will sleep. The auxiliary verbs are the ones that conjugate, 'want', 'can', etc, always coming first in an English sentence (but not necessarily in ON). The other verbs are all in infinitive. Note how some of the infinitives are marked with 'to', but some not. This is a feature of English as well as ON. It is inherent in the auxiliaries themselves, if the following infinitive is marked or not. Among the auxiliaries above only 'want' and 'have' take a marker. ON verbs that have no infinitive marker, are easily recognized because they all belong to a special conjugation group. Below you will learn 'vilja', meaning 'want', which is one of those "special" auxiliaries. Konungrinn vill vega mennina. eir vilja taka hestinn. Ek vil mla. Eta vil ek eigi. The king wants to kill the men. They want to take the horse. I want to speak. I don't want to eat.

1.4 The masculine article It may annoy speakers of many languages that the definite article is attached to the end of words rather than being a seperate word in front. It may be some consolation that it is originally a separate word. Its declension (in the cases and gender we have learnt so far) follows: nom acc sg inn inn pl inir ina

When we tack the article on to words it sometimes appears in its full majesty: mar + inn = marinn menn + inir = menninir But if the noun ends with a vowel or 'r' the 'i' of the article is dropped: ormar + inir = ormarnir orma + ina = ormana And now a masculine noun from a declension group (the weak one) which you haven't learnt. (nom sg) (acc sg) hani + inn = haninn hana + inn = hanann

Though it is a separate word, 'inn' cannot be freely put in front of a word as an article; it always follows the noun (with some important exceptions to be learnt later). 2. Vocabulary 2.1 Nouns matr fiskr food (always in singular) fish

ostr Names: Svartr Kormkr

cheese

2.2 Pronouns There is a group of pronouns called 'indefinite' pronouns; here are two useful ones: allr margr all, whole many, multitudinous

As said above, many pronouns decline like the indefinite adjectives that have been presented. Thus, 'allr' is declined (in masculine): nom acc sg allr allan pl allir alla

Exactly like the adjectives above. But since 'allr' is available both in singular and plural, how would each translate in English? The plural form translates directly to the English cognate 'all', while the singular means 'all of', 'whole'. Examples: Allir menninir eru norskir. Hann sr allan manninn All the men are Norwegian. He sees all of the man.

'Margr' declines in the same way. Its singular form means 'one of many', while the plural means 'many'. To explain the singular, consider this example: Margr mar hest. Many a man has got a horse.

What students should perhaps realize, is that there is little difference between these so-called pronouns on the one hand, and adjectives on the other. For other adjectives can stand independently just as these pronouns can; examples: Allir eru glair. All are happy. Hrddir eru ok ragir. Scared [ones] are also cowardly. Dauir sj daua. Dead [ones] see dead [ones]. Ef blindr leiir blindan falla bir gryfju. If a blind [one] guides a blind [one], both fall into a pit. However, traditional grammar defines these so-called pronouns as such, and other adjectives as such; we will adhere to this system in our lessons, in order not to confuse students refer to other sources. Regarding word order, adjectives usually postcede personal pronouns; thus: Ek et hann allan. I eat all of it.

2.3 Adjectives danskr daur gr hrddr illr slenzkr norskr reir ragr strr svangr Danish dead good afraid evil Icelandic Norwegian angry cowardly big (note that the first r is part of the stem) hungry

2.4 Verbs Regular verbs: eta, et veia, veii flja, fl spyrja, spyr svara, svara kenna, kenni elta, elti heyra, heyri fara, fer deyja, dey eat hunt/fish flee, run away ask answer recognize, know (a person, place, or object) follow, chase hear go die

Note that ON has different words for the English concept "know"; "kenna" above indicates familiarity, while "vita", mentioned above, is the "absolute" knowing, i.e. it means awareness of a fact or event. An irregular verb - vilja: This irregular verb, meaning "want", is the second in a small group of verbs with an anomalous conjugation (the first being "vera"), but also highly useful meanings. It is a cognate of English "will", and behaves in similar ways as that English verb (e.g. in auxiliary constructions, see 1.3 above). It conjugates thus: Infinitive: (at) vilja ek vil vilt hann/hon/at vill vit/vr it/r eir/r/au viljum vili vilja

2.5 Adverbs brtt oft hv? soon often why? (word-order: hv + verb + subject)

mjk

very, very much, greatly

'Mjk', being an adverb, can also be used with verbs, in which case it means 'very much'. For example, lfr hatar mjk lfa. Olaf hates wolves very much. Another example, from a real text, Vlusp: Geyr n garmr mjk. Now [the] dog howls greatly.

2.6 Conjunctions v at er because (word-order: v at + subject + verb) when

3. Exercises 3.1 Translate the sentences into English Ragir menn sj reian lf koma. "Ek s svangan mann taka ost." "Hvrt sr slenzka menn koma?" Marinn er oft hrddr. Illir menn vilja vega ga menn. Allir vilja btinn taka v at lfr hann. slendingar eru eigi menn ragir. eir eru ok gir en eigi illir. Marinn veiir fisk ok etr hann brtt allan.

3.2 Translate the phrases into Old Norse "Do you two eat the whole cheese?" "We see hungry wolves chase the man." "The ravens want to eat all of him, for they are very hungry." King Olaf sees the thieves take the boat. "I see many thieves! I want to kill them all!" Olaf wants to kill the thieves, but they see him coming. As the thieves hear Olaf speak, they all flee. The king chases them. "Many a thief wants to take the boat."

3.3 Translate the texts into English Illr draugr vill vega lf konung. Hann eltir konunginn ok er hann sr hann, kallar draugrinn, "lfr, ert mar illr mjk ok ragr. Ek hata ik, v at vegr ga menn." lfr er hrddr ok flr. Svartr heitir danskr mar. Hann veiir oft fiska ok etr v at fiskar eru matr gr. Svartr ferr ok veiir marga stra fiska er hann vill eta. Er Svartr veiir fiskana, kmr mar. Er marinn sr Svart veia fiskana, segir hann, "Heill, ek heiti Kormkr." Svartr heyrir Kormk mla ok svarar, "Heill. Svartr heiti ek ok em danskr mar." Kormkr spyrr Svart, "Hvrt veiir fiska, Svartr?" "Marga

stra fiska veii ek, v at eir eru gr matr." Kormkr segir, "Ostr er ok gr matr, Svartr. Ek hefi hr ost gan. Hvrt vilt ost eta?" "- Ek vil fisk ok ost eta, v at ostr er ok gr matr. Hvrt vilt fisk eta, Kormkr?" "- Fiskr er gr," svarar Kormkr ok tekr fisk. Svartr tekr ok ost ok etr. Menninir eru mjk svangir. eir eta n alla fiskana ok allan ostinn, ok eru brtt glair menn en eigi svangir. 3.4 Translate the text into Old Norse A worm sees a wolf coming. When it sees the wolf, it says, "Sss - wolf, why do you come? I own the fish here, which you want to take." The wolf is not scared and replies, "hail worm, I'm a hungry wolf now and I want to eat fish. You have much fish (many fishes) there, which you aren't eating (don't eat)." The worm is angry and says, "I own all the fish there, wolf. Wolves who eat the fish all die (deyja allir)!" Now the wolf is scared, because an evil worm wants to kill it. "- You are an evil worm! You fish (hunt) much fish but do not eat it (them) all. We wolves are very hungry and don't have fish. We also want to eat fish, worm!" The worm sees the wolf flee. The wolf is very angry and shouts, "I hate evil worms!" But the worm does not chase the wolf, for it is happy but not angry. 4. Looking at real texts 4.1 A strophe from Vlusp In this course we use standardised Old Icelandic spelling, geared to the 13th century. In this format we would give one of the last strophes of Vlusp like this. "Sr hon upp koma ru sinni jr r gi ijagroena; falla forsar, flgr rn yfir, s er fjalli fiska veiir." This, however, is not what how the main manuscript of Vlusp, Codex Regius, reads. The same strophe is spelled in the following way in the manuscript (I change e with tail to and o with tail to ). Ser hon upp koma avro siNi iord or gi iia grna. falla forsar flygr avrn yfir sa er afialli fisca ueiir. Lots of interesting points. The manuscript doesn't distinguish between short and long vowels. It sometimes uses capitals for double consonants. It does not differentiate between i and j. It does not differentiate between u and v. It uses c for k. The grammatical ending 'u' is written 'o'. It does not split the poem into lines. It uses capitalisation and punctuation in a way different from ours. It divides words in a way different from ours. It writes '' as '', 'd' or ''. It uses 'av' for ''.

In all those respects Codex Regius is quite normal. Indeed, the standardised spelling is by no means an average of the spelling systems in the various manuscripts. Rather, it is intended to write Old Norse in a way that distinguishes its different sounds. We can now look at the same strophe respelled into modern Icelandic. "Sr hn upp koma ru sinni jr r gi ijagrna; falla fossar, flgur rn yfir, s er fjalli fiska veiir." Not many changes because the spelling of Old Icelandic and the spelling of Modern Icelandic are based on the same basic system. You should note that the ending 'r' has changed to 'ur'. We have now shown you the same strophe in three different spellings. All of them are quite plausible and many more. The morale? When you encounter a text 'in the original Old Norse' be sure to notice which spelling is used. Lesson Four 1. Grammar 1.1 Dative Case: Giving & Receiving Until now, we have been working with two opposing cases: nominative and accusative. By now you should understand clearly the concept behind them and the difference between them. Consider this English sentence, John tells a story. That's complete. It's clear to you that John is the subject and the story is the object; if it were ON, John would be in nominative form and the story would be in accusative form. John tells a story to Mary. John's still the subject, the story's still the object; but the new participant, Mary, serves an as yet unidentified role. Let's consider the following incomplete sentence, John gives the dog... As stated above, the sentence is not complete; we need to know to whom John gives the dog. So, John gives the dog to Mary. Again, Mary's a third participant in the sentence; but how does Mary relate do John and the dog? Again, before we answer that, let's consider what word order has to do with it; John gives to Mary the dog. To Mary the dog gives John. The first version is not obviously incorrect, merely unconventional; the second one is wrong, especially for our purposes, because it makes it seem like the dog is giving John away, and thereby being the subject. In any case, it is clear that Mary has a different role from the dog, and John clearly has a different role from both of them. We know that John is the subject and the dog is the object, so what does that make Mary? She's an object all right, but not in the same way as the dog. The dog's a direct object; it's being directly affected by John. Mary is an indirect object; she's merely being affected by John's actions involving the dog. The bottom line is, Mary's role is special, and it is practical to mark this role in a separate way. How

does English mark this role? Usually, in sentences like the ones above, by fixing "to" to the indirect object. Note how the "to" would stay with Mary no matter how the word order got arranged. You might have figured out by now that we're dealing with a new case. You might also have guessed that ON marks this case with special endings, not merely with words like "to" and a special word order. This case is called the dative case; the "da" part of the word is the stem of the Latin word "give", which is the logic behind the term for the primary usage of the dative case is to mark the receiver of a "gift" (note, though, that "gifts" can also be thrown, shoved, transmitted, told, etc to their receivers).

1.2 Dative Case: Forms Now that you understand the basic idea behind the dative, you require only the ON endings to start using it. First, the strong masculine noun declension: Sg Pl Nom dvergr dvergar Acc dverg dverga Dat dvergi dvergum The -i ending there is characteristic of the dative in the strong masculine; some words in this declension don't have it (i.e. they are the same in acc and dat), e.g. "matr", but you should not worry about it now. The -um in the dative plural is characteristic of all declensions; it is thus important that you learn to recognize it. Next, the pronouns: Sg Du Pl Nom ek vit vr Acc mik okkr oss Dat mr okkr oss Sg Du Pl Nom it r Acc ik ykkr yr Dat r ykkr yr he it they (masc) they (neut) nom hann at eir au acc hann at au dat hnum v eim eim You may find it disconcerting that "hnum" has an -um ending (coupled with a minor stem change), similar to the plural of nouns; that is however characteristic of masculine pronouns in general. Since the article is originally a pronoun, its masculine form also features this, see a strong masculine word declined with the article attached: Sg Pl Nom dvergrinn dvergarnir Acc dverginn dvergana Dat dverginum dvergunum The main anomaly here is the plural dative form; you might, systematically speaking, expect something like "dvergumnum". Roughly speaking, that's the original form, but a combination like "mn" in that position would very easily get simplified to a more convenient "n"; which is what happened. Finally, adjectives in masculine: Sg Pl Nom reir reiir Acc reian reia

Dat reium reium Again, same pattern as with the pronouns, since the boundary between pronouns and adjectives is often not that clear in ON. As you have seen happen with verbs, endings like -um that have an u in them, will modify any a in the immediately preceding syllable, changing it to . This is called u-umlaut, or u-mutation ("umlaut" is a German term; "um" is a preposition meaning "about/around", while "laut" means "sound" - "sound-about" if you like). Practically speaking, this means that you must take care with words containing an "a" in the root. For example, (Example noun) Sing Pl Nom mar menn Acc mann menn Dat manni mnnum (Example adjective) Sing Pl Nom glar glair Acc glaan glaa Dat glum glum (Example pronoun) Sg Pl Nom allr allir Acc allan alla Dat llum llum Note the "a > " changes where the -um ending is present (always in dative plural and In dative singular of masculine adjectives and pronouns). 1.3 Word Order: Indirect Objects The most conventional order in ON prose, is to put the indirect object *before* the direct object. Marinn gefr konunginum btinn. You should stick to this word order, though you can expect just about any word order to appear in skaldic poetry. 1.4 Verb Imperative We commonly command or suggest for people to do something: Leave, find the car and then bring it here. All the verbs there are in "imperative". English verbs do not have any separate form for the imperative. ON verbs do not have any endings for the imperative, but rather the infinitive stem is used without the -a ending. For example, Veg orminn ok tak bauginn er hann hefir. An exception is verbs that end with -a in 1st person singular present, "kalla". Those keep their a in the imperative. Kalla mik Hauk! (From the verb infinitives "vega" and "taka") As can be seen, the pronoun "" (or "it" or "r") may be inserted and usually is, especially in spoken language. It need not be repeated for the following imperative verbs, though it may be done ("...ok tak bauginn..."). To command more than one person, the "-i" ending (as in the verb active) is used: Vegi r orminn ok taki bauginn er hann hefir. The imperative is seen in some greetings: Ver () heill! be whole/healthy Veri heilir! be whole/healthy (plural) Far vel! go well (fare well)

But "negative commands" are also used, as in English Don't go! In ON, this is simply expressed by adding a negative adverb such as "eigi". Far eigi! 1.5 Pronoun trick - We Olaf slay a worm In English we can say sentences like this: Olaf and I are slaying a worm. Old Norse has an idiomatic way of expressing the same: Vit lfr vegum orm. We could also have: Vr lfr vegum orm. Meaning: Olaf, I, and some other people are slaying a worm. Some more examples: eir lfr vega orm. it lfr vegi orm. r lfr vegi orm. 2. Vocabulary 2.1 Nouns hattr grautr Names: Einarr Fjalarr (dwarf-name) Gandlfr (dwarf-name) 2.2 Adjectives glar langr gylltr 2.3 Verbs gefa, gef foera, foeri finna, finn hlja, hl 2.4 Adverbs 3. Exercises 3.1 Translate the phrases into English Svartr gefr Kormki fiska. er Kormkr glar. Menninir foera eim gan mat. "Vit foerum gum manni ost." Svartr spyrr, "Hv gefr mr eigi ost, Kormkr?" Kormkr svarar, "Ek gef r eigi ost, v at ek hefi hann eigi." hat porridge

happy, glad long golden, gilted

give bring find laugh

then

Kormkr etr allan ostinn en gefr Svarti hann eigi. Konungrinn foerir Normnnunum knfa ok geira. gefa Normenninir hnum langan bt ok gylltan baug. Marinn gefr hnum hatt gan. 3.2 Translate the phrases into Old Norse Then they give a golden ring to an evil king. The dwarves bring the king a golden ring. The king says "You are good dwarves." The king takes the ring and gives the dwarves a big cheese. The dwarves don't want any cheese, but they take it and go. "Why do I give them cheese which they don't eat?" King Olaf asks the ghost. The ghost replies "Olaf, you're a good man. But do not give cheese to dwarves." 3.3 Translate the text into English lfr gefr Svarti hatt, knf ok hest gan. Hann segir, "Far n, Svartr, ok finn bauginn er dvergarnir Fjalarr ok Gandlfr hafa." Svartr svarar, "En lfr, hv gefr mr eigi mat? Ek em svangr ok vil mat eta."lfr gefr hnum ost, graut, ok fisk ok segir, "Hr hefir mat. Far n ok finn bauginn." Svartr etr matinn er lfr gefr hnum. Hann segir, "grautrinn er gefr mr er gr, lfr. ert gr konungr." Svartr ferr n ok finnr dvergana er hafa bauginn. Hann segir, "Dvergar, gefi mr bauginn. lfr konungr vill hann." Dvergarnir svara, "Vit viljum eigi gefa lfi konungi bauginn. Hann er illr konungr." Svartr er reir ok segir, "Gefi mr bauginn ea ek veg ykkr!" Dvergarnir eru eigi hrddir. eir hlja ok Fjalarr segir, " ert ragr mar, Svartr. vegr okkr Gandlf eigi. Vit gefum ykkr lfi eigi bauginn, ok far n!" Svartr hefir eigi brand. Hann hefir knf, en knfrinn er eigi strr. Hann vegr eigi dvergana ok foerir lfi eigi bauginn. 3.4 Translate the text into Old Norse Eric, a thief, sees some men eat. They eat good porridge, many fish, and a big cheese. Eric wants the food, for he is hungry. He says "Hail, I am hungry. Will you (use "r") give some good food to a hungry man?" They reply "Take some food. We give it to you. But the elves are hungry too. Take some porridge and give it to them. Eric finds some elves. He brings hungry elves food, for he is a good man. 4. Looking at real texts 4.1 A stanza from the Hfulausn Again we practice our etymology but in a less verbose manner than before. A stanza from the Hfulausn: Beit fleinn floginn var frir loginn var lmr dreginn var lfr feginn. Stzk flk-hagi vi fjr-lagi gall -bogi at egg-togi. The main etymological lesson here is that g inside a word is gone in modern English; resulting in a change of the original vowel. floginn flown

loginn dreginn feginn lagi (dative) Other cognates: lmr stzk (middle voice) beit gall egg-

lied drawn fain lay elm (bows were made of elm) stood bit (bta = bite) yelled (Old English "geall", the 'g' is pronounced as 'y' in ME) edge (Old English "ecg" was pronounced "edge") yew-

Words without English cognates: fleinn arrow frir peace fjr life I have included most of the cognates in this translation but enclosed them in quotation marks when they didn't seem to fit the context. A flown arrow bit then peace was "lied" [broken] the elm [bow] was drawn the wolf became fain. The folk-leader stood against a "lay" [blow] to his life a yew bow "yelled" [twung] at the "tow" [pull] of edges.

Old Norse for Beginners - Lesson Five by Haukur orgeirsson and skar Gulaugsson Grammar Prepositions and Case Usage Dative Case: Command Accusative Case: Qualifying Assimilative Verb Conjugation Vocabulary Nouns Conjunctions Adjectives Verbs Adverbs Prepositions Pronouns Phrases Exercises Translate the phrases into English Translate the phrases into Old Norse Translate the text into English Translate the text into Old Norse 1. Grammar

1.1 Prepositions So far we have been managing entirely without prepositions. But prepositions are an important part of ON as well as English, and not using them calls for much unnecessary circumlocution and paraphrasing. ON prepositions, however, largely involve use of the dative case, which is why we have not started using them until now. Why would prepositions involve the dative case? Our first acquaintance with this case introduced it as a case for "giving & receiving". But the dative case has many different functions in ON. The reason is that ON's dative case was (and is, in Icelandic and Faroese) the final result of a fusion of many different cases. In the farthest "known" (projected by comparative linguistics) ancestral language of both ON and English, "Indo-European" (so called because it is the ancestor of most European languages and Persian and North-Indian languages as well), all those different cases served one specific purpose only. Four Indo- European cases served as the basis for the ON dative: Locative: The case for marking places or objects where the subject of the sentence is positioned; associated with prepositions meaning 'in', 'on', 'at', etc. Ablative: Marks places or objects whence the subject comes; associated with prepositions meaning 'from', 'out of', etc. Instrumental: Marks objects that are being used in the verb action; e.g. a sentence meaning 'he weighed the book with a scale', would mark the word 'scale' with the instrumental; English primarily marks the instrumental with the preposition 'with', but sometimes with 'by', e.g. 'he came by ship'. Dative: Marks the indirect object, usually the receiver of a gift of some kind (whether negative or positive); English usually marks this with 'to', e.g. "he gave it to him" or simply by word order, e.g. "he gave the man a chance", where "the man" would be in dative. In Indo-European, those cases (supposedly) had separate forms, i.e. separate endings, for each of them. But ON had united all those cases into one form, while retaining all of those different uses for that single case. It may be evident by now why the dative case is so strongly affiliated with prepositions in ON. Most prepositions have meanings that would be associated with the locative and ablative cases mentioned above. You might wonder what case category prepositions like 'into' and 'onto' fit. While locative answers 'where?', and ablative answers 'whence?/where from?', the 'into' case would answer 'whither?/'where to?'. This case is called "allative" by grammarians, and is the opposite of the 'ablative'. Even IndoEuropean did not have a separate form for this case; instead, it was assigned to the accusative case. This is significant, because some ON cases involve accusative, and they are all essentially allative in meaning. From now on, prepositions are introduced in the Vocabulary section in the following format: me + dat with, by, using Or that is, the prepositions are shown with a "+ [case]" following it. It is very important to note the case that a preposition takes, especially because a few ON prepositions may take either accusative or dative, with different meanings according to which case follows. These are cases of prepositions with either locative or allative meanings; compare English "in", locative, which would take dative in ON, to "into", allative, which would take accusative. Both are represented by the ON preposition "", but the meaning differs according to the case that follows. 1.2 Dative Case: Command Now that you have learnt how to mark the dative case in all words we have yet introduced, it is time to learn more useful ways of using it. One useful construction involves verbs meaning "tell" or "command". Consider this English sentence, I told him to stop. As opposed to,

I gave him a watch. And then consider I told it to him. I gave it to him. The sentences both exhibit the same pattern, at close inspection. We already understand that the second sentence, involving giving, has an indirect object, and therefore a dative case. By rearranging the sentence, the abstract "to" preposition pops up, which is a sure sign of the dative in English. "He" is the indirect object, the receiver of the "gift", and is marked with the dative. What we are interested in now, however, is that the first sentence, not obviously involving any "giving", merely "telling", behaves in the same way. "He" is also an indirect object, and is marked with dative. What does he receive? "To stop". Hardly a noun, but verb infinitives are tricky in that they often behave as nouns. Without dwelling on that, we have at least found that this is a significant "new" way of using the dative, although it is in principle the same as the "giving" usage we already know. Common English verbs that can function in this way are "tell", "command", "order", and others of similar meanings. The good news is that ON does the exact same thing. In ON, we know the verb "segja"; it means "say", but it also means "tell", since ON does not distinguish between those two meanings. Let's make ON constructions analogous to the ones above: Ek gef hnum mat. Is already familiar. Using the command-type construction, Ek segi hnum at eta. However, in examining 13th century Icelandic texts, it seems to us that such constructions with "segja" were not altogether usual, though not wrong. The idiomatic usage of the text writers was to use the verb "bja, b" = 'offer'. Thus, they'd rather say: Ek b hnum at eta. But Nordic men of authority often made "offers" that couldn't be refused; 'bja' sometimes means simply 'order'/'command'. Evidently, verb infinitives can function like nouns in other dative contexts than commanding, both in English and ON. English says, I give him to eat. (usually elaborated to, say, "I give him something to eat") ON would say, Ek gef hnum at eta. 1.3 Accusative Case: Qualifying There still remain some useful ways of employing accusative in ON. One common construction is what we off-hand dub "qualifying". Again, being closely related to ON, English has an analogous construction: I call him cowardly. In ON, both "him" and "cowardly" come in accusative: Ek kalla hann ragan. ON often uses the verb "segja" in this way: Ek segi hann ragan. Another use is with the verb "vilja", as English uses "want": Ek vil hann dauan. I want him dead. 1.4 Assimilative Verb Conjugation Verbs that do not conjugate with a vowel ending, and whose stems have a long vowel (acutes, diphthongs, ae and oe) and end in 's' or 'n' never have an -r ending; instead, the -r assimilates to the 's' or 'n' and becomes an -s/-n ending: blsa, blaes to blow ek bls

 blss hann blss skna, skn to shine ek skn sknn hann sknn But verbs that end in vowels are of course not affected: reisa, reisi to construct, to raise something/someone (to vertical position) ek reisi reisir hann reisir 2. Vocabulary 2.1 Nouns skgr vgr hlmr forest small bay, cove isle, small island palisade/stone wall, city, city-state, garr garden, yard haugr mound, dung, pile, grave (see below) eldr fire vindr wind field (not farming), meadow, clear patch vangr of ground brunnr well heimr home, homeland, world oddr point, spike fors waterfall sandr sand Norse people made great piles over the graves of important men. Ragnarr Hjlmarr Oddr lfarr Noregr Norway Geirshlmr "Geir's Isle" Geirshaugr "Geir's Grave" Heivangr "Clear Field" Skgarfors "Forest's Falls" lfarsheimr "lfar's Home" "Island City", a Nordic (Swedish) colony Hlmgarr in Russia, now called Novgorod ("gorod" = "garr") Austrvegr "Eastway" (Russia) 2.2 Conjunctions ef ar er 2.3 Adjectives djpr if where (relative)

deep

ungr rkr heir bjartr sterkr vr breir feigr spakr 2.4 Verbs sigla, sigli ganga, geng bja, b sna, sni ba, b brenna, brennr blsa, bls falla, fell skna, skn standa, stend lifa, lifi 2.5 Adverbs mean sv heim vel sem 2.6 Prepositions + acc + dat + acc + dat r + dat me + dat 2.7 Pronouns fir sumir bir hvat? 2.8 Phrases "gefa gri"

young rich clear bright, fair (of light complexion and/or blonde hair) strong wide, extensive broad doomed to die, "dead already", fey wise

sail walk offer (sometimes 'command', see 1.2) show live in, inhabit be burning blow fall shine stand live

while so, such, then (immediately following) homewards well as, like

into in(side) onto on (top of) out of with, by, using; with, accompanying

(pl) few (note: "fm" in pl dat, not "fum") (pl) some (pl) both what?

grant/give mercy, spare, pardon (from death) Example: "illr mar gefr mr eigi gri." (an evil man gives me no mercy) Dictionaries will reveal that "gri" is a plural neuter, but do not let that disconcert you. It will not

need to be declined to any form not known to you. Just use the phrase. 3. Exercises 3.1 Translate the phrases into English lfrinn gengr skginn. lfrinn gengr skginum. Eldr mjk bjartr brennr garinum. Ragnarr ferr me vkingum vginn. ar vegr hann lfana me geirinum. Ragnarr kmr Eirksheim me btinum. Me hnum eru fir menn. "Hv eru sumir eigi glair?" spyrr Oddr. "Fm mnnum, er mik feigan vilja, gef ek gri," segir lfarr jarl. 3.2 Translate the phrases into Old Norse A young man sails in the cove. He walks out of the boat and into the isle. The vikings wait with the earl in a big forest, in the isle. The man finds the vikings and the earl in the forest. The earl says: "Some men want me dead. Do you want so?" "That I do (so I want), earl. Here I stand and fall." "Few men do I spare. If you do not leave (go), I kill you." The vikings say: "Go home, or be doomed." 3.3 Translate the text into English Oddr ok Ragnarr heita menn. Oddr er mar ungr ok bjartr, ok sterkr mjk. Ragnarr er mar mjk rkr. Ragnarr bt gan ok langan mjk. eir eru bir Normenn ok ba Noregi. Ragnarr br Oddi ok mrgum vkingum at fara btinn. eir fara n allir ok sigla. eir sigla strum vgi. r btinum sj eir hlm. ar er sandr ok skgr. "Hlmrinn heitir Geirshlmr," segir Ragnarr Oddi. " skginum ar er ok Geirshaugr, en ar br Geirr, illr draugr." eir sj ok vang mjk van ok heian. Oddr spyrr, "Hvat heitir vangrinn, sv heir?" "Hann heitir Heivangr. ar blsa vindar sterkir," svarar Ragnarr hnum. "ar ek marga hesta, ok eta eir vel vanginum. Heivangi er ok brunnr mjk djpr," segir hann. Oddr sr fors breian ok spyrr, "Hvat heitir forsinn, er ar fellr?" Ragnarr svarar hnum, "Forsinn heitir Skgarfors, ok er breir mjk." Ragnarr snir Oddi vga, hlma, skga, sanda, forsa, ok vanga, mean eir sigla. Oddr segir, " ert mar mjk spakr ok mlir vel, Ragnarr, ok kenni ek n marga vga ok vanga hr Noregi." Brtt koma eir lfarsheim, ar er lfarr jarl br. lfar hatar mjk Ragnarr ok vill hann feigan. Er eir ganga r btinum ok sandinn, segir hann, "Hr lfarsheimi br lfarr, jarl illr ok rkr. Hann gefr eigi gum mnnum gri." eir ganga n lfarsheim ok sj stran gar. Ragnar maelir, "Garrinn er mjk strr. Hann er sv strr sem Hlmgarr." svarar Oddr, "Eigi kenni ek Hlmgar." Ragnarr segir hnum, " ert ungr mar, Oddr, ok eigi spakr. Hlmgarr er strr garr Austrvegi. ar eru margir vargar vum skgum." 3.4 Translate the text into Old Norse When lfar sees Ragnar coming with a young man and many vikings, he says, "Many fires burn in me, while Ragnar lives. I grant him no mercy if he does not leave (go) [out of] lfarsheim soon." The men are afraid, who are with him, as they hear him speak so. lfar takes a sword and a horse, and leaves. As they walk, Oddr asks Ragnar much (= many questions, use "mjk"). But Ragnar does not answer

him. He says: "lfar comes soon. Do not speak, he wants all of us ("oss alla") dead." But Oddr and the vikings do not speak. They stand and are afraid. Now Ragnar also sees what they see. He sees lfar on a horse. The wind blows as he speaks: "You are all dead ("feigir") men. I don't spare men like you." As he is coming, they see the fire [that is] burning in him. Oddr and the vikings flee. They do not want to die in lfarsheim. Ragnar sees them flee and shouts: "You are all cowardly! But now I flee too, for lfar grants no mercy." Then he flees with the men. lfar does not pursue them. He says: "Some men I do grant mercy - cowardly men." 4. Looking at real texts 4.1 A few words from the Heimskringla var lfr konungr reir mjk ok mlti brliga: "Hv mun ek vilja eiga ik hundheina?" var became brliga angrily mun will (conjugated in lesson 8) eiga own, marry hund-heina dog-heathen, heathen like a dog Then king Olaf became very angry and spoke angrily: "Why will I want to marry you {when you are} heathen like a dog?" 4.2 A question and an answer from Brennu-Njls saga Hann spyrr hvat eim vri ar gefit. "Ostr," segja r. vri gefit = was given He asks what was given there to them. "Cheese," they say. 4.3 Half a strophe from Helgakvia Hundingsbana: Hvrt eru at svik ein er ek sj ykkjumk? Ea Ragnark? Ra menn dauir! svik (plural noun) = betrayal, illusion ein = one, only ykkjumk = seem to ra = ride Ragnark = "the fate of the gods", the end of the world Are that only illusions which I seem to see? Or the end of the world? There are dead men riding! Old Norse for Beginners - Lesson Seven by skar Gulaugsson and Haukur orgeirsson Supplement Alternative forms Grammar Genitive Case: Possession Genitive Case: Forms Article Usage with the Genitive Reflexive Pronouns

3rd Person Possessives Vocabulary Nouns Pronouns Adjectives Verbs Adverbs Prepositions Conjunctions Phrases Exercises Translate the phrases into English Translate the phrases into Old Norse Translate the text into English Translate the text into Old Norse 0. Supplement 0.1 Alternative forms We have stated that the language taught in this course is "standardised" 13th century Icelandic. People using other material to supplement this course (or using this course to supplement other material) often find that their books do not always use the same spelling or form of every word. It is perhaps high time that some of those variants be discussed. To begin with it is difficult to "pin down" a language as it was at any particular time and location. We say that we're teaching the Icelandic language 13th century but even that is not all too precise Icelandic underwent many changes in the 13th century. Some of our forms may reflect early 13th century language while others mirror that of the late part of the century. Perfect consistency is very hard to achieve (and is certainly not in evidence in any manuscript - even the same scribe would often spell the same word in more than one way) but we prefer to have some kind of standard. Thus our choices are arbitrary here and there and may not exactly reflect that of any other study material. Don't panic. That said the interested student may find a discussion of variant forms to be of some value. The variations can be grouped into two categories. 1. Variations in space We have already mentioned that the West Norse language forms are different from those of East Norse. But how different are they? This question is best answered by providing examples. One of the better known East Norse texts is "The Legendary History of Gutland". It starts with those words: Gutland hitti fyrsti mar an sum ieluar hit. a war gutland so eluist at et daghum sanc Oc natum war uppj. En ann mar quam fyrsti eldi a land Oc sian sanc et aldri. Translated word for word into English this produces: "Gutland found first {a man} that who Thieluar {was called}. Then was Gautland so bewitched that it {during days} sank and {during nights} was up. But that man put first fire on [the] land and since sank it never." Note that the spelling is that of the original manuscript. No normalisation has been undertaken. This is in line with the usual trend that Old Icelandic texts are normalised but other Old Norse texts are not - or to a lesser extent. This makes comparison with our "standardised" language more difficult but we will attempt it nevertheless. So here we provide those lines as they would look in our Norse Course spelling: Gautland hitti fyrst mar s sem jalarr ht. var Gautland sv *elvst at at dgum skk ok nttum var uppi. En s mar kvm fyrst eldi land ok san skk at aldri. Most of the differences are insignificant differences between manuscript spelling and normalised

spelling - but some of them are quite interesting. Let's take a better look at those: Old Gutnish Old Icelandic an s daghum dgum sanc skk The word "ann" is actually not as far from "s" as it might seem. The declension paradigm of "s" is like this: nom s acc ann dat eim gen ess In essence, what has happened in Old Gutnish is that the accusative form has been generalised to include the nominative. As a side note it might be mentioned that the exact same thing happened in English. This pronoun is the origin of the English definite article, 'the'. The Old English paradigm was like this: nom se acc one dat m gen s The "irregular" s-form was thrown out in favor of the -forms to (eventually) yield "the". The next word on our list is "daghum", as opposed to "dgum". First we note that the 'gh' is a common East Norse way of spelling the "soft" g (see pronunciation guide). It also sometimes occurs in Icelandic manuscripts. In any case the difference between 'gh' and 'g' is merely one of spelling. The other difference is much more interesting. Instead of the umlauted -vowel the Gutnish text has the un-umlauted 'a'. This reflects a general tendency. The u-umlaut effect, while remaining in full force in Icelandic up to the present day, was much less prevalent in other Old Norse dialects - and it is completely lacking from the dialect of Guta saga. The third difference is no less interesting. Instead of the Old Icelandic "skk" we have the much more English form "sanc". Again we have not an exception but a general tendency. The assimilation of 'nk' to 'kk' happened to a lesser extent in East Norse than in West Norse. In this case English and Old Gutnish maintain the more archaic forms. Again the u-umlaut has not taken place in the East Norse form. There are many small, differences between East Norse and West Norse. One that might interest the English reader is that West Norse dropped the 'v' in 'vr' clusters early on but East Norse has preserved it to the present day. Where West Norse has "reir" East Norse had "vrr" and Modern Danish has "vred". English has preserved this consonant in its spelling but dropped it in the pronunciation. The English cognate is "wrath". Now let's turn our attention to Old Norwegian. We already know that Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic are collectively known as West Norse. We might wonder what the key differences between the two dialects are. For the student of Old Norse the most visible difference is that Old Norwegian texts are usually published in their manuscript spelling - unlike Old Icelandic texts which are usually normalised. For the linguist the difference is mainly that Old Icelandic is in some instances slightly more conservative than Old Norwegian. One example where Old Icelandic is more conservative is in keeping the 'h' in the consonant clusters 'hr' and 'hl'. Those were dropped in Old Norwegian before the writing age. One stanza from the Norwegian Rune Poem illustrates this. Rei kvea rossum vesta, Reginn sl sverit besta. (A wagon is said to be worst for horses, Reginn forged the best sword.) You notice the alliterative triad rei-rossum-Reginn. This would be destroyed in "translating" into Icelandic since rossum would become hrossum.

2. Variations in time No living language is static and Old Icelandic underwent many changes from 1200 to 1400. Major changes include the merging of the phonemes and and and oe respectively. Both happened in the 13th century. + -> + oe -> Other noteworthy changes include the "softening" of final 't' and 'k' in several common words. Thus: ok -> og ek -> eg ik -> ig at -> a hvat -> hva vit -> vi -it -> -i (neuter article) The absence of and oe and the "soft" consonants in the common words are two features that can easily be used to differentiate between Old Icelandic and Modern Icelandic spelling at a glance The forms of many individual words changed with time according to arbitrary rules; we have had to decide in each case which form to use as our standard one. Our choices are not entirely consistant. In cases where this course gives another form than other grammar references you can rest reasonably assured that both forms are correct - though one may be older than the other. A few common variants are listed below. it - it r - r hon - hn - hn hnum - honum ek hef - ek hefi 1. Grammar 1.1 Genitive Case: Possession The fourth and last remaining case in Old Norse declension is called 'genitive'. English has the following relations: John owns an expensive computer. John's computer is expensive. Bill steals John's expensive computer. The orthographic -'s ending here is one part of the English genitive. It is the characteristic role of the genitive to mark the owner of a following item. Words marked with the -'s genitive stand in the same position as normal adjectives, as can be seen above. In ON, the strong masculine nouns we have encountered so far are also marked with -s in the genitive singular; thus, the full singular declension of a word like 'hestr' is: nom hestr acc hest dat hesti gen hests In the plural, the ending is -a for all masculine nouns, and most other nouns as well: nom hestar acc hesta dat hestum gen hesta Again, the article must be declined with the noun. Now that we have all the cases, let's see the full

masculine declension of the suffixed article: sg pl nom inn inir acc inn ina dat inum inum gen ins anna And combined with a noun: sg pl nom hestrinn hestarnir acc hestinn hestana dat hestinum hestunum gen hestsins hestanna There! Now you have the full declension of the normal strong masculine noun. We'll look at the full declension of our only irregular noun to date as well. sg pl nom mar menn acc mann menn dat manni mnnum gen manns manna 1.2 Genitive Case: Forms Section 1.1 already has the forms of most strong masculine nouns. Here is the full declension of most of the personal pronouns encountered so far: 'we 'you 'I' 'you' 'he' 'it' 'we' 'you' two' two' nom ek hann at vit vr it r acc mik ik hann at okkr oss ykkr yr dat mr r hnum v okkr oss ykkr yr gen mn n hans ess okkar vr ykkar yvar 'they' (masc) 'they' (neut) 'they' (fem) nom eir au r acc au r dat eim eim eim gen eira eira eira The personal pronouns all have a special form for the genitive, often a very distinctive one, so extra attention must be paid here. Note that the 3rd person plural pronouns all have the same dative and genitive forms. The only pronoun not presented in this table is 'hon' (she), since we won't be using it just yet. The full declension of adjectives in masculine form: sg pl nom reir reiir acc reian reia dat reium reium gen reis reira Note especially the plural genitive ending: -ra. To students' relief, the plural dative and genitive forms are the same for all genders, so make sure you learn them well. 1.3 Article Usage with the Genitive In English "titles", such as: The king of Norway. The lord of men. The sound of battle. The keel of the ship.

There, the titled entity always has an article attached to it. However, if we change the titles to a different type of genitive, the -s marked one, the article disappears: Norway's king. Men's lord. Battle's sound. The ship's keel. But with titles, it is more customary to use the prepositional genitive (with "of" and article). In Old Norse however, the genitive is only marked with an inflection, where the same rule applies; i.e. no article should be attached to the "titled entity": Konungr Noregs. Drottinn mannanna. But if this were to be paraphrased into a title with a preposition, we would have an article just as in English: Konungrinn Noregi. It is merely that such usage is not the norm in ON, unlike in English. 1.4 Reflexive Pronouns When the object of a sentence is the same as its subject the reflexive pronouns come into play. In English it works like this: I see myself. You see yourself. He sees himself. We see ourselves. You see yourselves. They see themselves. Old Norse, however, is content with letting its first and second person personal pronouns perform this duty. Ek s mik. sr ik. Vit sjm okkr. it s ykkr. Vr sjm oss. r s yr. But when it comes to the third person it has a special pronoun. Hann sr sik. Hon sr sik. eir sj sik. r sj sik. This 'third person reflexive pronoun' has the following declension: 'himself/herself/itself/themselves' acc sik dat sr gen sn It observably declines just as 'ek' and '' do. This pronoun has exact equivalents in many other Indo-European languages that you may be familiar with. German has "sich". French, Spanish and Latin have "se". Let's have more examples of usage: Hann kallar sik konung. He calls himself a king. eir gefa sr gan mat. They give themselves [some] good food. And other reflexive usage: Ek kalla mik Eirk. I call myself Eric. Vit teljum okkr Normenn. We consider ourselves Norwegians.

Ek foeri mik brott. Hv foerir ik til mn? ('til' + gen = [over] to) 2. Vocabulary

I move myself away. ('foera' = bring, move) Why do you move yourself over to me?

This lesson is light on vocabulary and exercises - for historical reasons relating to the composition of the course. 2.1 Nouns egn sporr 2.2 Pronouns sik 2.3 Adjectives sar / saddr vndr fastr 3. Exercises 3.1 Translate the phrases into English Hvrt etr ormrinn sjlfan sik? Menn konungs eru egnar hans. Eigi er sporr fisks matr gr. Ragnarr vill vega orm; hann hefir geirinn me sr. Ragnar vegr orminn en oddr geirs hans stendr fastr honum. 3.2 Translate the phrases into Old Norse The helm of the dwarf is gilded. The earl's hawk sees itself. People do not eat the tail of the serpent. Ragnarr's spear is broad. The point of Ragnarr's spear is big. Sentences like the last one with "nested" genitives are actually not idiomatic in Old Norse. thane, freeman, subject of a king, "citizen" tail of a fish or serpent

himself, herself, itself

sated, having had one's full evil, wicked fast, firm, stuck

Old Norse for Beginners - Lesson Eight by skar Gulaugsson and Haukur orgeirsson Grammar Present-Preterite Verbs Assimilative Nouns and Adjectives Bisyllabic Stems Vocabulary Nouns Pronouns Adjectives

Verbs Adverbs Prepositions Conjunctions Phrases Exercises Translate the phrases into English Translate the phrases into Old Norse Translate the text into English Translate the text into Old Norse 1. Grammar 1.1 Present-Preterite Verbs ON has a small group of verbs that conjugate in a special way. English has the same phenomenon, but less noticeable. The verbs are called "present-preterite", because their conjugation for the present is imitative of the preterite (= past) conjugation. This has to do with a development or shift that is believed to have happened early on in the ancestral Proto-Germanic language. To put this all into context we will state that the Germanic languages have three kinds of verbs. They are all still represented in English. Strong verbs Preterite formed with ablaut (certain type of vowel change) Certain endings in the present (in English an 's' in third person) Weak verbs Preterite formed with a dental suffix (in English 'd' or 't') Certain endings in the present (in English an 's' in third person) Present-preterite verbs Preterite formed like the preterite of a weak verb Present formed like the preterite of a strong verb We'll demonstrate by comparing a present-preterite verb ('can') with your garden-variety strong ('come') and weak ('love') verbs. I come came you come came he comes came I love loved you love loved he loves loved I can could you can could he can could Comparing the actual conjucations with the blurbs above we see that 'can' does not add an 's' in the third person of its singular present tense; just like the other verbs don't have an 's' in their preterite. We also see that it forms its preterite with a 'd'; just like the weak verb. The Old Norse cognate of 'can', 'kunna', is also present-preterite. While the English difference in conjugation is minor, ON present-preterites are more divergent. We have learnt two irregular verbs whose conjugation is somewhat similar to this class of verbs, 'vera' and 'vilja'; they are not historically present-preterites but it may be practical to speak of them in the same context:

vera 1p 2p 3p vilja Sg. em ert er Pl. erum eru eru

Sg. Pl. 1p vil viljum 2p vilt vili 3p vill vilja The present-preterite verbs are some of the most useful and common in the language so you should be careful to learn their conjugation by heart. The first verb we'll look at is the auxiliary 'skulu' which is the cognate of English 'shall' and similar in meaning. skulu Sg. Pl. 1p skal skulum 2p skalt skulu 3p skal skulu The change of vowels from 'u' to 'a' is not our everyday umlaut but something even more arcane called 'ablaut'. We'll look at that again later. Our next auxiliary verb does not have an English cognate but it is most similar in meaning to English 'will'. One of its primary uses is to indicate the future. munu Sg. Pl. 1p mun munum 2p munt munu 3p mun munu Note the anomalous infinitives, with ending -u instead of -a. The verbs 'skulu' and 'munu' are the only verbs in the language with this infinitive ending. In the Vlusp we have a lot of 'munu' where the seeress is speaking of the future. One example is "Baldr mun koma" which is easily translated as "Baldr will come". By now you may have noticed something characteristic about present-preterites; in the singular, the only endings are -t in the 2nd person. In the plural, they have -u and -u in the 2nd and 3rd persons. Our next verb has the same ablaut as 'skulu' but now our normal infinitive is back. kunna Sg. Pl. 1p kann kunnum 2p kannt kunnu 3p kann kunnu The meaning of 'kunna' is related to that of its cognate 'can' but there are some differences. While English 'can' means to be able to do something either through ability or circumstances, ON describes only ability. Also, English 'can' is always an auxiliary, while 'kunna' can be a main verb with a simple direct object: Ek kann at. I know [how to do] it, I can do it One more verb for now, 'eiga' (own): eiga Sg. Pl. 1p eigum 2p tt eigu 3p eigu You should already be familiar with its 3p sg form, '', which has been used already. The vowel

change between '' and 'ei' is actually neither ablaut nor umlaut but don't worry about it (it has to do with a phenomenon called Verner's law). The verbs 'skulu', 'munu', and 'kunna' from above are some of the most common auxiliaries in the language, just as they are in English (substitute English 'will' for 'munu'). Just as in English, no infinitive marker is used with them when they are used as auxiliaries: You will go. but not **You will to go munt koma. but not ** munt at koma 1.2 Assimilative Nouns and Adjectives It often happens in languages that a consonant assimilates to a neighbouring consonant. We have already seen some examples of this in the etymological ponderings: *benkr -> bekkr (bench) (the 'n' has been assimilated to the 'k') *hta -> tta (eight) (the 'h' has been assimilated to the 't') One type of assimilation is important in declensions; their nominative -r has been assimilated by the final consonant of the stem. This happens with three consonants, 's', 'l' and 'n', and only when the vowel of the stem is long. Let's look at some examples: *sr -> ss (ice) *hlr -> hll (hill) *steinr -> steinn (stone) The complete declension of those nouns is as follows: Singular nom ss hll steinn acc s hl stein dat si hli steini gen ss hls steins Plural nom sar hlar steinar acc sa hla steina dat sum hlum steinum gen sa hla steina Quite simply, the nominative -r is replaced by one of the other consonants. Nothing else happens. Then there are adjectives with the same feature, declining thus in masculine indefinite: hss hoarse hll slippery groenn green Sg. nom hss hll groenn acc hsan hlan groenan dat hsum hlum groenum gen hss hls groens Pl. nom hsir hlir groenir acc hsa hla groena dat hsum hlum groenum gen hssa hlla groenna Take special notice of the genitive plural, where the assimilation occurs. Remember that the assimilation only occurs in words with long-vowel stems, but not stems of short vowels: gulr yellow vanr accustomed Sg. nom gulr vanr

acc dat gen Pl. nom acc dat gen 1.5 Bisyllabic Stems

gulan gulum guls gulir gula gulum gulsa

vanan vnum vans vanir vana vnum vanla

Some strong masculine nouns have a bisyllabic stem; observe their pattern of conjugation: hamarr hammer (stem: hamar) himinn sky (stem: himin) sg pl nom ham-ar-r ham-r-ar acc ham-ar ham-r-a dat ham-r-i hm-r-um gen ham-ar-s ham-r-a sg pl nom him-in-n him-n-ar acc him-in him-n-a dat him-n-i him-n-um gen him-in-s him-n-um First off, 'himinn' is assimilative. What is happening in these nouns is that whenever there is an ending with a vowel in it, the vowel of the second stem syllable is deleted: (sg dat) hamar + i > *hamari > hamri Note that bisyllabic names, such as Ragnarr or Einarr, completely ignore this rule and decline normally. Some adjectives are bisyllabic; they commonly have assimilation: gamall old (stem: gamal) sg pl nom gam-al-l gam-l-ir acc gam-l-an gam-l-a dat gm-l-um gm-l-um gen gam-al-s gam-al-la 2. Vocabulary 2.1 Nouns ss ss rll vagn hamarr himinn jtunn drottinn hringr hundr ningr vir ace, god, one of the sir ice slave wagon, chariot hammer sky ettin, giant (mythological) lord (or usually, "the Lord") ring, circle dog villain, oppressor wood

rr rshamarr sgarr Migarr Migarsormr Jtunheimr Vestrvegr 2.2 Pronouns

Thor, the thundergod Thor's hammer Asgard, the world of gods (sir) Midgard, the world of men Midgard's Serpent (the serpent that encircles Midgard) Gianthome (the mythological home of the giants) "Westway" (west across the North Sea; the British Isles)

annarr other, another hverr? who, what (masc)? hverr each hinn the other 'Annarr' is a bisyllabic pronoun, with an irregular declension: sg pl nom ann-ar-r a-r-ir acc ann-an a-r-a dat -r-um -r-um gen ann-ar-s ann-ar-ra As happens in 'mar', the sequence 'nnr' becomes 'r'. The main irregularity in the word is its sg acc form, 'annan', where we'd expect '*aran'. 'Hverr' declines like an adjective with j-insertion: sg pl nom hverr hverir acc hvern hverja dat hverjum hverjum gen hvers hverra An alternative (old) form of sg. acc. is the more regular 'hverjan'. 'Hverr' is the interrogative that refers to masculine nouns or persons. It can also mean 'each': "Hverr eira segir rum..." Each of them then says to another... sg pl nom hinn hinir acc hinn hina dat hinum hinum gen hins hinna Declines just like the article ending; in fact, it is just a modification of the pronoun from which the article is derived. 2.3 Adjectives sjlfr rskr slkr groenn hll heill vss gamall gulr vanr (him)self Irish such green slippery whole, healthy, "hail" (greeting) wise old yellow accustomed

2.4 Verbs gjra, gjri aka, ek + dat hringa, hringa hjlpa, help ra, roe leia, leii vernda, vernda do drive wind around (as serpents do) help row (a boat) lead protect drive out, drive sth forward from behind reka, rek (such as cattle) vera, verr + nom become 'vera' is followed by a compliment, i.e. a noun in nominative. The object of 'aka' is in dative rather than accusative. 2.5 Adverbs aftr saman bi v nst n 2.6 Prepositions vi + acc um + acc af + dat yfir + dat gegn + dat hj + dat til + gen 2.7 Conjunctions at sv at "sv at" is sometimes contracted to "svt" 2.8 Phrases again together both then, thereafter, subsequently nor

by, next to about, around, through off over against, in front of by, with, in the company of to

that so [that]

[It seems to me that some modern phrases have crept into skar's text; I'll check on this later. Haukur] standa saman stick together, stand united standa me + dat stick with someone, help someone gefa sik give in, surrender 3. Exercises 3.1 Translate the phrases into English eir ganga saman um van vang. eir sj menn standa vi forsinn. Annarr spyrr, "Hverir standa ar, vi forsinn?" svarar hinn, "eir kalla sik Eirk ok Hauk, ok eru norskir." "Hvat gjra slkir menn hr?", spyrr annarr hinn.

Jarlar Noregs eigu marga hunda ok rla rska. Noregi er oft ss vgum, sv at vsir menn sigla ar eigi. Hann gengr til groenna skga, ar er lfarnir ba. eir ganga saman hlum si, en falla eigi. "Hr er hll ss. Ek vil eigi ganga hr um." 3.2 Translate the phrases into Old Norse "Lord, protect us," an Irish man says. "I am lord here, and protect you," says the earl. "[The] Lord in Heaven ("Drottinn himni") will not help." "[The] Lord himself is with us," another Irish man says. "But is he not in Heaven? (" himni?")", the earl asks. [The] Lord in Heaven protects the men while they sail. The earl calls (says) himself the lord of the slaves. Icelandic men protect themselves ("vernda sik sjlfa") against Norwegian kings. They take (go with) an old man to the boat. 3.3 Translate the texts into English rr heitir ss, ok er sterkr mjk ok oft reir. Hann hamar gan. rr ferr oft til Jtunheima ok vegr ar marga jtna me hamrinum. rr ok vagn er flgr. Hann ekr vagninum um himininn. ar er rr ekr, er stormr. rr kennir orm, er menn kalla Migarsorm. Ormrinn er langr ok hringar sik allan um heim manna, Migar. rr vill veia orminn ok vega hann, v at hann er illr. rr kennir ok jtun er bt. rr tekr vagninn ok ekr. Hann ekr vagninum r sgari ok um himininn. Hann ferr til jtunsins. Er hann finnr jtuninn kallar hann til hans, "Jtunn, skalt taka btinn er tt ok hjlpa mr. Vit munum fara ok veia sjlfan Migarsorm." Jtunninn er mjk hrddr, ok svarar, "Ek skal gjra sem br, rr, v at ef ek gjri eigi sv, vegr mik. En ormrinn mun eta okkr ba, v at hann er strr ok illr." En rr er ss bi djarfr ok reir ok vill fara gegn Migarsormi. v nst ra eir saman bti jtunsins. kmr slkr stormr, at jtunninn verr hrddr mjk. Er rr sr hann sv hrddan, mlir hann, "Sj, jtunn, hr er hamarrinn er vegr ik ef roer eigi," ok snir hnum reir hamarinn. lfr kallar sik konung alls Noregs. Jarlar Noregs skulu ok kalla hann konung. Ef jarl gjrir eigi sv, ferr lfr konungr gegn hnum ok rekr hann r Noregi. En margir jarlar vilja eigi kalla lf konung, sv at eir standa saman gegn hnum. Jarl heitir Ragnarr, er kallar lf eigi konung. lfr konungr foerir marga menn gegn hnum ok segir: "Heill, Ragnarr jarl. Kalla mik Drottin, ea ek mun reka ik r Noregi." Sv br konungr jarli (translate: "the earl"). Ragnarr svarar, "Heill, lfr. Vit skulum eigi leia sv marga menn hverja gegn rum. Ek skal n fara ok leia alla er standa me mr. Vr skulum sigla brott btunum ok vr skulum eigi koma aftr til Noregs, mean lifir. En ek mun eigi kalla ik konung, lfr, v at ert eigi gr mar ok munt eigi gr konungr vera." Hinir jarlarnir standa eigi me Ragnari gegn lfi. Konungrinn hefir sv marga menn, at Ragnarr gefr sik hnum ok ferr. Hann segir mnnunum er eru me hnum: "Vr skulum n fara, v at ningrinn lfr leiir marga menn gegn oss, ok hinir jarlarnir standa eigi me oss. lfr gefr oss gri, sv at vr skulum sigla brott ok finna oss njan heim." Margir menn fara me hnum btana, en sumir gjra eigi sv. eir fara til lfs konungs, v at eir eru norskir menn ok vilja ba Noregi. Kormkr heitir rll ok Svartr annarr. Kormkr er rskr mar. Svartr er danskr, ok ungr mjk ok sterkr. Kormkr er gamall mar ok spakr.

Jarl br n bi Kormki ok Svarti at fara skginn ok finna vi. Viinn skal brenna hj jarli. eir fara n bir skginn. Vi skginn er strr hll, ok hll ss vangi. Svartr segir vi Kormk ("to Cormack"), "Vit skulum ganga yfir sinn." Kormkr mlir Svarti, "Eigi skal at sv, v at yfir s sv hlan, sem sr ar, skal eigi ganga. ar falla menn sinn, ok deyja. Kom me mr, ok gngum vr n hlinn." Ganga eir sv hlinn ok af hnum skginn. Kormkr mlir, " skgum eru oft illir vargar. En ver eigi hrddr, v at Drottinn himna verndar okkr." Svartr segir , "himna-drottin kenni ek, er hefir hamar gan ok flgr vagni um himininn. Sj, Kormkr, hr hefi ek rshamar, en mean ek hefi hann mun rr vernda okkr ba." Kormkr segir, "Eigi verndar okkr rr n hamarrinn; Drottinn himni er me okkr, ok mun vernda okkr gegn illum vrgum." Finna eir n viinn ok foera hann jarli. 3.4 Translate the text into Old Norse Ragnar now leads many vikings into the boats and sails away. "We have no slaves, for Olaf the Oppressor takes them all. We shall go and find Irish slaves, in Westway. Then we shall find another homeland and live there." The vikings say "You shall lead us, Earl Ragnar, to Westway (" Vestrveg"), and we will do as ("sv er") you bid." As they sail away, out of the cove, they see many green meadows, broad cascades, and forests wide. Ragnar speaks, "Evil is the oppressor Olaf, to ("at") drive us out of Norway, with such green meadows and forests. We will not find such cascades in another home." 4. Looking at real texts 4.1 Half a strophe from rymskvia Loki suggests the following to rr: Mun ek ok me r ambtt vera. Vit skulum aka tvau Jtunheima. Notice the plural of 'Jtunheimr'. ambtt female slave tvau two Notice the difference between 'munu' and 'skulu'. The first is a statement of fact (as far as a statement about the future can be) while the second is more like a suggestion. But in reality the verbs could be interchanged here with no real change in meaning. Thorpe, for example, translates both with 'will': I will with thee as a servant go: we two will drive to Jtunheim. 4.2 An answer from Gylfaginning Hr segir: "at eru tveir lfar, ok heitir s er eftir henni ferr Skoll. Hann hrisk hon ok hann mun taka hana. En s heitir Hati Hrvitnisson er fyrir henni hleypr ok vill hann taka tunglit, ok sv mun vera." Remember the feminine pronoun, 'she': nom. hon acc. hana dat. henni gen. hennar tveir two eftir + dat behind, after

fyrir + dat hrisk tunglit s ferr

in front of fears the moon the one goes, fares

Old Norse for Beginners - Lesson Nine by skar Gulaugsson and Haukur orgeirsson Grammar Genitive Case: Partition Dative Case: Instrumental Verbs with Dative and Genitive Strong Masculine Declensions Infinitive Clauses Clauses of Purpose, Sequences Vocabulary Nouns Pronouns Adjectives Verbs Adverbs Prepositions Conjunctions Phrases Exercises Translate the phrases into English Translate the phrases into Old Norse Translate the text into English Translate the text into Old Norse 1. Grammar 1.1 Genitive Case: Partition There are some more uses to the genitive case than possession, presented last lesson. This can be seen through observation of the English genitive; in English, this case is marked by 's, for possession exclusively, but more commonly by the preposition 'of'. Examples: 'Norway's king is called Olaf.''The King of Norway is called Olaf.' 'Peter's car is blue.''The car of Peter is blue.' Using the 's is normal for possession, except in the case of titles, like 'The King of Norway.' But there are other types of genitive, or at least other cases where the 'of' preposition is used abstractively: 'Three of us came over.' 'He saw all of them.' This is called 'partitive genitive'. There we're using the genitive to mark the whole whence an amount derives; 'hundreds of men.' - from an undefined mass called 'men', 'hundreds' are selected. The genitive would seem logical, as the extracted amount belongs to the original whole. Luckily, Old Norse uses the genitive in the exact same way. Except, of course, its genitive is marked exclusively through inflection and not by the help of prepositions. So, first an example of the possessive usage we already know: Btr lfs er langr. Then, an example of the partitive genitive:

Sumir vr vilja eigi vera lfarsheimi. 'Some of us don't want to be in lfarsheimr.' Note, by the way, that the verb conjugates in the third person in this example. Though it may seem to be a semantic first person, the verb refers to 'sumir', which is a third group. Remember that verbs always agree to the subject in the sentence, and the subject is always in nominative (like 'sumir', but unlike 'vr'). 1.2 Dative Case: Instrumental As detailed in lesson 5, section 1.1, the dative case in ON originates from a fusion of many different case forms. But the various functions of those originally different cases still remain in the dative case. One of those functions is called "instrumental", and marks the object with which the verb is executed. Examples: "He slays the dragon with the mighty sword." "He comes to England by ship." "It's a Trial by Fire." In those sentences, "sword", "ship" and "fire" serve instrumental functions, and are marked in English by the instrumental case prepositions "with" and "by". In ON, we have until now relied on the preposition "me" + dat, which marks instruments, among other things. But ON can also omit any preposition, relying on the naked dative form to identify the instrumental function. Example: "rr vegr jtuninn hamri." Thor slays the giant with a hammer. This function of the dative is not very common, especially not in prose. 1.3 Verbs with Dative and Genitive So far, we have used only verbs followed by a direct object marked with accusative. However, to complicate matters, the 'patients' of many ON verbs are not marked with accusative, but rather with dative or even genitive (rare), as illogical as it may seem: "Ek kasta steini." 'I throw a stone.' (dative) "eir moeta hnum." 'They meet him.' (dative) "Hon saknar hans." 'She misses him.' (genitive) The explanation to this phenomenon probably lies in the etymology of the individual verbs; a verb's original meaning may have logically called for such case marking, but then changed meaning while retaining the case use. The compulsory dative marking would in a great many cases stem from instrumental dative usage (see 1.2 above) which has "frozen" (become mandatory). At the same time, other verbs of similar meaning may then have changed to model themselves to the anomalous verb, so that all verbs of a similar "theme" meaning will govern the same case; e.g. all verbs that describe "projectile" meanings (like "kasta" above) tend to govern dative. In any case, by the time of Old Norse it is no longer practical to consider such (perhaps obscure) historical details; it is most practical to say that the grammatic case governed by an ON verb is one of its inherent variables, to be learnt as soon as one learns the verb itself. Thus, from now on, verbs will be specifically identified with the case they govern: vega, veg + acc slay kasta, kasta + dat throw sakna, sakna + gen miss, feel the loss of Most verbs learnt so far govern accusative; the only exception is: sigla, sigli + dat sail It may be of help to some students, however, to try to assign some minimal logic to some of the abnormal case use, perhaps especially with verbs that govern the genitive case. For example, with the example above of the verb 'sakna', one may assume something like this as an explanation: "Hon saknar hans." "She misses his [presence]." But this is only recommended as a mnemonic, for those whom it helps. 1.4 Strong Masculine Declensions The strong masculine is certainly the most varied declension. Some strong masculines end in -ir in the nominative. They decline quite easily: hilmir 'king'

sg pl nom hilmir hilmar acc hilmi hilma dat hilmi hilmum gen hilmis hilma The dative cannot be 'hilmii', as 'ii' is not possible in ON. A very large group of nouns within the declension are declined like this: star 'place' sg pl nom star stair acc sta stai dat sta stum gen staar staa Strong masculines of this type are called 'i-stems'; the ones we know so far are called 'a-stems'. To summarize, i-stem declension is different in the following ways: a) gen sg -ar, not -s b) nom pl -ir, not -ar c) acc pl -i, not -a d) dat sg -, not -i ('' is commonly used to symbolize "no ending") A few strong masculines' declension is a mix between i-stem and a-stem declension: sg pl nom skgr skgar acc skg skga dat skgi skgum gen skgar skga That is, i-stem gen sg -ar, but otherwise just like other a-stems. The only such words we have encountered so far are 'skgr' and 'matr'. Some i-stem nouns have -s in the sg gen. So, as you'll be thinking by now, how do we keep track of all this? We intend to do so by using a new way to introduce future vocabulary from the strong masculine declension: hestr, hests, hestar horse vinr, vinar, vinir friend skgr, skgar, skgar forest hilmir, hilmis, hilmar king ss, ss, sir god These three case forms are what characterize and identify the different declensions, nom sg (as before), gen sg, and nom pl. From now on, make sure you learn to which declension each strong masculine noun belongs, before you continue. Names will also be presented this way, though not with the plural form, e.g.: Njll, Njls Haraldr, Haralds orvarr, orvarar 1.5 Infinitive Clauses With verbs like 'claim' or 'believe', English can have full clauses following with all its main verbs in infinitive. In those clauses, the infinitive is always marked with 'to': I believe him to be passed away. I claim her to be may legal heir. I believe it to have happened already. In ON, such infinitive clauses are even more prolific. The difference to English is that the infinitive marker (at) is never used, and the verb infinitive tends to be idiomatically placed last in the sentence. As in the English example sentences above, the subject of the infinitive clause is not in

nominative, but rather in accusative: "Ek tel hann gan mann vera." I believe him to be a good man. "Ek segi ik illan konung vera." I claim you to be an evil king. In lesson 3, section 1.2, infinitive clauses with sense words like 'see' and 'hear' were taught. They are analogous to the clauses presented above: "Vr sjm ganga um skginn." We see them walking around the forest. "eir heyra konunginn mla." They hear the king speak. And as mentioned there, clauses with the word 'vita' (to know): "Ask veit ek standa." An ash I know standing. 1.6 Clauses of Purpose, Sequences Some subordinate clauses express purpose: "They go to find the wood." ("they go - [in order] to find the wood") In ON, such clauses are connected to the main clause by "til at": "eir fara til at finna viinn." Alternatively, one might say: "eir fara at finna viinn." This merely indicates a sequence of events, though purpose is strongly suggested. This omission of "til" is quite common. 2. Vocabulary 2.1 Nouns vinr, vinar, vinir ss, ss, sir askr, asks, askar sveinn, sveins, sveinar peningr, penings, peningar mttr, mttar, mttir kaupmar, -manns, -menn dmr, dms, dmar rldmr, -dms, -dmar Kristr, Krists Mjlnir, Mjlnis Askr Yggdrasils tgarr Surtr Mspellsheimr sa-r 2.2 Pronouns Demonstrative pronoun, masculine: s that, the one that sg pl nom s eir acc ann dat eim eim gen ess eira Example of the demonstrative "that" function: "Hvat heitir s mar, er stendr hj jarli?" "What is that man called, who stands by the friend ace, god, one of the sir ash tree; small wooden pot young man money power merchant judgement, -hood ("state of being" suffix) slavery Christ Mjolner, Thor's hammer The Ash of Yggdrasil, the World Tree Outgard, alternate name for Gianthome Surt, the Fire Giant Muspellsheim, the World of Fire Giants "Thor of [the] sir", alternate name for Thor

earl?" This also serves as a relative pronoun, "the one that"; for example "S er fiska veiir..." The one who catches fish... Note how the plural simply uses the masc 3p pl personal pronoun. 2.3 Adjectives heitr norroenn vitr alvitr frjls sjkr blindr 2.4 Verbs hot Nordic wise omniscient, all-knowing free sick blind

sma, sm craft, make tra, tri + dat believe; believe in, have faith in leita, leita + gen search; search for kaupa, kaupi buy halda, held + dat hold, keep velja, vel choose gjalda, geld + dat pay sigla, sigli + dat sail rsa, rs rise lkna, lkna heal And one present-preterite verb: vita know (a fact) sg pl 1p veit vitum 2p veizt vitu 3p veit vitu It should be mentioned now that the character 'z' represents a combination of 't','d' or '' + 's', just as 'x' is a combination of 'k' and 's'. This makes the form 'veizt' more understandable, as it essentially the stem 'veit' + the ending '-st'; 'veitst' > 'veizt'. The 'z' was originally pronounced 'ts', but tended to simplify to 's' in later ON and its descendant languages. 2.5 Adverbs aldregi hvar hvaan aan han heldr enn til 2.6 Prepositions undir + dat meal + gen fr + dat 2.7 Conjunctions never where whence/where from thence/there from hence/here from but rather still more, yet more

under among(st) from

sv sem 3. Exercises 3.1 Translate the phrases into English

such as

"Sumir yvar fara aldregi heim til Noregs." "Veizt eigi, hvrt menninir skulu sigla brott?" "Eigi veit ek, hverir mannanna skulu sigla." "Kristr heitir drottinn s, er verndar oss." "Ek veit annan, er verndar oss hamri gegn illum jtnum." "Hvrt mun s rr heita, ok hamarrinn Mjlnir?" "Eigi hefir s Kristr slkan hamar er Mjlnir er." "Kristr hefir eigi hamra ea branda, v at hann er gr ok vegr eigi menn n jtna." 3.2 Translate the phrases into Old Norse There are many villains among Olaf's friends. "That viking is such a villain, that he never spares good men." "Thor's might is in the hammer." "Do you know, slave, whence they come, who they are, and what they call themselves?" "They come from Westway, and are Irish men. They call themselves free." "No good men come from there. Take the sword and bring them to me." "Some of you are thieves, who take horses. Who are they?" "Those who know, shall bring me the thieves." "The thieves must give in. If they do not do so, I will kill you all." 3.3 Translate the text into English Oddr segir vi Ragnar jarl, "Seg mr, jarl, af heiminum, af jtnum ok sum." Ragnarr svarar, "at skal ek, Oddr." " heimi stendr askr strr er vr kllum Ask Yggdrasils. Vi askinn eru heimar eir er heita Migarr, ar er vr bm; tgarr, ar er jtnar ba, en hann heitir ok Jtunheimr; ok sgarr, ar er sir ba. Undir askinum ba dvergar, er sma bauga ok branda." "Drottin sa kllum vr in, ok er hann ss mjk spakr. Hann hefir hrafna, er heita Huginn ok Muninn, ok fljga eir hrafnar um heimana. at, er hrafnarnir sj, sr ok inn. v er inn ss alvitr. sgari br ok ss s er rr heitir. rr hefir hamarinn Mjlni ok flgr hann oft til Jtunheims ok vegr me hnum jtna. Margir sir ba sgari, ok vernda eir allir mennina ok heiminn, gegn illum jtnum." "Surt veit ek ba Mspellsheimi. S er strr ok illr jtunn elds. heimi eim brenna heitir eldar ok mun Surtr leia aan jtna gegn sum. Hann mun vega si eldi ok brandi eim, er hann hefir. Illr er mjk jtunn s." " Migari bm vr menninir. Um Migar allan veit ek orm hringa sik, er vr kllum Migarsorm. Ormr s er illr. sa-r vill veia ann orm ok vega hann hamrinum." Oddr mlir n, "Kenni ek n marga si. En sumir segja mr af rum, er eir nefna Krist. Hvrt er s meal sa?" Ragnarr svarar, "S er eigi ss, heldr mar. Menn segja hann lkna sjka ok blinda, rsa aftr daur, ok koma af himnum. Margir norroenna manna tra n hnum, en sjlfr veit ek eigi mtt Krists." Fara n Ragnarr ok vkingarnir at leita sr rla meal rskra manna. eir kaupa ar Vestrvegi marga unga sveina af norroenum kaupmnnum, er halda sveinunum rldmi. Kaupmar segir, "Sveinarnir eru sterkir mjk, ok s kaupir vel er velr. Tak , jarl, sveina er ar standa, gef ek r annan til." Ragnarr telr kaupmanninn bja sr vel, ok geldr hnum peningum. Br hann sv rlunum at

ganga btana, ok siglir brott. Er Svartr ok Kormkr foera viinn heim til jarls, spyrr Svartr Kormk, "Hvrt eru allir rskir menn rlar, sem ert, Kormkr?" Kormkr svarar, "Eigi erum vr allir rlar en mrgum vr halda norroenir menn rldmi." 3.4 Translate the text into Old Norse Many (of) Nordic men believe in (the) sir, but not all of them. Some believe in Christ, Lord of Heaven. Irish men do not believe in the sir, but rather in Lord Christ. The King of Norway commands all Norwegian men to call himself King. He also commands them not to have faith in the sir, but rather in Christ. Others, such as (the) earls of Norway, say that Thor will slay Christ himself ("segja r munu vega sjlfan Krist..."), with his hammer, Mjolner. Many of (the) Norwegians believe the earls.