SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
the general reader, but whether there are general readers with
sufficient interest in the development of the English and
Scandinavian languages, and to a lesser extent Gaelic, to read and
digest such a book is open to question. Let us hope there are, for
the author has provided a detailed and generally accurate account
from which those with little knowledge of the subject can learn
a great deal. For the specialist there is nothing new, although it
is useful to have so much diverse material collected in one volume.
The section on the Orkney and Shetland Nom, with its particularly
lavish exemplification, is most noteworthy in this respect.
An irritating feature is the lack of proper references. A reader
whose appetite is whetted by the opening stanza of Hildinakvadet
will search in vain for some indication of where he can find the
rest. The bibliography is a poor thing which must reflect Mr
Geipel's expectations of his readership rather than his own
learning. In a list of eleven books and articles about individual
Scandinavian languages we find a specialised study such as
Kenneth Chapman's Norwegian-Icelandic Linguistic Relationships
side by side with Lundeby and Torvik's school-book Sprdket vdrt
gjennom tidene, while Seip's Norsk sprdkhistorie is excluded. For
Faroese we have Lockwood's text-book A n Introduction to Modern
Faroese (though excellent in itself, hardly of immediate relevance
to The Viking Legacy) and J6n Helgason's article "Fsereiske
studier" in M aal og minne (1924), while Marius Heegstad's
historical studies in Vestnorske maalfere and Otmar Werner's
excellent bibliographical work 'Die Erforschung der faringischen
Sprache' in Orbis (1964) are omitted. Swedish is represented by
Wessen's Svensk sprdkhistoria (1945, presumably not a reference
to the complete work which is 1941-56), although Costa Bergman's
Kortfattad svensk sprdkhistoria would be a better companion to
Sprdket vdrt gjennom tidene and Vemund Skard's Norsk
sprdkhistorie. Scandinavian dialectology includes Sigurd
Kolsrud's Nynorsken i sine mdlfere, but omits such basic and
comprehensive works as Hans Ross's Norske bygdemaal and
Hallfrid Christiansen's Norske dialekter I-III. It is not clear
whether "WADSTEIN, E. Norden och kontinenten i gammal tid,
Uppsala, 1944" is a reference to Fritz Askeberg's book of that title
and year of publication or to Wadstein's Norden och
Viisteuropa i gammal tid (1925). The Viking Society and the
Viking Congress have only the word 'Viking' in common, as those
who try to follow up another reference, "THORSON, P. 'The
Third Nom Dialect .. .', in Saga Book. . 1954" will discover.
There are mistakes elsewhere in the book, too. Let the following
serve as an example (p. 25): "The Scandinavians also seem to have
shared with English-speakers a certain bewilderment concerning