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Saga-Book of the Viking Society
Germanic era as being around the time of the birth of Christ, we
have some five hundred years for the development of [z] to palatal
R and something less than four hundred for the change [i] >[e]
(the Opedal stone is dated to the beginning of the fifth century by
which time the change must have been well established). It
seems reasonable to suppose that [i] >[e] before the pronunciation
of z became at all palatal, that is, assuming a steady progression
from [z] to palatal R - and we have no reason to assume anything
else - very soon after the end of the common Germanic era. It is
thus not surprising to find men on the Opedal stone, but this form
provides no guide to the pronunciation of R at that time.
3. On p. 135 we are told that it is impossible to be sure whether
the first a of the form hahai on the Mojbro stone, which is
interpreted as the dat. sing. of a masc. *hiihaR «*hanhaz),
"horse", had the pronunciation [an], [a:J or [a:]. While a might
perhaps stand for [an] as well as [a:] (although one would think
that only after a change [an] >[a:] would such spellings as hahai
occur), it cannot represent [a:]. Nasality, particularly in a, is a
feature which can be followed down to the time of the First
Grammarian. He could still distinguish between heir, "hair"
(non-nasal, < *hiira) and hiir, "shark" (nasal, < *hanhaR),31 and
there is no reason to believe that if hahai is indeed the dat. sing.
of *hiihaR and the word had existed in twelfth-century Icel., it
would have had a pronunciation in any way different from hdr,
"shark" In Swedish it is only in the middle of the eleventh
century that the old *ansuR-rune begins to appear in non-nasal
contexts and clearly represents [o:J, [0] rather than [a:], [a].
4. On p. 135 we are also told that it is impossible to say at
what period the spirants [13], [6] and [y] developed to stops in
initial position and immediately after nasals: all we can see for
sure is the result of these developments in the consonant system of
"Klass-Altnordischen" It is, however, possible to be a little
more specific. The Eggjum stone, which Krause dates to A.D. 700,
has the form lat. This can only represent a pronunciation [land]
since although the 't] or [6].
Assuming that what is true of the dental consonants also holds
good for the labials and velars, and there seems no reason to
suppose there was a chronological difference between the orders
in the question of the development from spirant to stop, we can
say that nasal-l-spirant > nasal-l-stop before A.D. 700. The
same doubtless applies to the change from spirant to stop in initial
31 Cf. Hreinn Benediktsson (1972), 132.