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Saga-Book oj the Viking Society
Presumably the Northwest Germanic language spoken in
Scandinavia did not develop in the same way at the same time
everywhere.
In any book about Primitive Norse runic inscriptions there will
clearly be very little that is certain and therefore much room for
disagreement. I feel a different interpretation from Krause's is
to be preferred in many cases, but here I shall only mention a few
important matters about which he must, I think, be wrong.
1. The preposition after on the Tune stone can hardly develop
to mftiR (Old Ice!' eptir) at the time of i-mutation. 25 Any
unstressed [eJ (or [8J?) in this position would be regularly lost
during the syncope period and would not develop to [iJ, let alone
cause the changes [aJ >[R. 26 We are faced
with two possibilities: (I) The spelling on the Tune stone for some
reason represents [iJ by the 'e'-rune in this word (though not in
others). If we are dealing with the preposition which in later
Scandinavian appears as eptir, aftir etc., this is perhaps the only
explanation, for whether one believes that unaccented IE e
regularly developed to r in Germanic, or that this development
could be hindered by a following mid or low vowel, the
etymology suggested for Old Ice!' eptir «*opteri) indicates
an early Germanic form "'aftir(i), not after.t" (2) The spelling on
the Tune stone is consistent, and after, although doubtless
etymologically identical with *aftir(i), is at this stage a different
word, probably the one that develops to aft, "after, in memory of",
which occurs on many Viking Age inscriptions. It may be that
AfatR on the Istaby stone is a transitional form, although -R for
-r is hard to explain. In my view the second possibility is the
more likely. That is to say, on the Tune stone we already have
the distinction of early (Danish and Swedish) Viking Age
inscriptions and of scaldic verse between aft (and analogical(?)
aft, ept) , prep., and eptir, aftir, adv. 2B Whether after is a very
early example of weakening in unstressed position ([iJ > [aJ) or
whether we are dealing with two different Germanic forms,
.. Krause, 30. The form aftiR does not, as far as I know, occur before or
during the syncope period, yet here it is printed without an asterisk (ct. below).
26 Thus Krause, 30.
27 Cf. H. S. Falk and Alf Torp, Norssegisches-Danisches eiymologisches
W6rterbuch (1910-II), 181; Prokosch (1938), 234; R. C. Boer, Oergermaanscb
handboek (1924), 61. Krause himself seems to hold the view that unaccented
I >i irrespective of the following vowel, for in his Primitive Norse paradigms
he gives the 2nd pers. pI. pres. indie. ending as -if in all cases « IE '-ete, ct.
Prokosch (1938), 212, Boer (1924), 61). It is worth noting that according to
Krause's indices (1966 and 1971) no clear examples of unstressed t occur in
Norse runic inscriptions before the seventh century (Oil the Blekinge stones,
Kr. 95-8), and some might not even call these clear.
28 Cf. Jacobsen and Moltke, col. 742; Ingrid Sanness Johnsen, Stuttruner
(1968), 54·