SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
great extent ecclesiastical, often words of Greek origin.
The words kristen, bishop, prost, presi, engel, are
those usually cited. But the encounter with Christianity
also laid the foundations for Latin literary influence.
Christianity drew Norway into the great European
community whose linguistic medium was Latin. The
scholars from Scandinavia who aspired, ultimately with
success, to become the representatives of this culture in
their own country had first to learn Latin. If we now
move on to the first half of the fourteenth century, we
can see from the letters written by the bishops of Bergen,
Arne, Audfinn and Hakon, that they wrote elegant Latin,
and it is said of their contemporary, Jon Halldorsson,
that he could "svo rnjukt latinu at tala sern rnodurtungu"
First among the individual fields in which Latin was
bound to make itself felt in the written language was
grammar. Professor Anne Holtsmark has pointed out
that Latin scholarship can clearly be seen in the work
of the Icelandic scholar of the twelfth century who composed
the First Grammatical Treatise, and demonstrated
that he must have been familiar with Donatus and
Priscianus. Norway produced no such work but we
know for certain that Norwegians studied Latin grammar.
The Bergen bishop, Arne Signrdsson (died 1314), left a
respectable library which included an important section
which he catalogued as Grammaticales libros. Under
this heading he mentioned in particular Donatus and
flares gramatice metricos and deriuaciones minares and
a manual of the eight partes aracionis. It is not without
reason that it is in the field of grammar that Latin
terminology is best preserved, even in our primary
schools today. We need think only of nomen, pronornen,
verbum, aduerbium, to mention just four of the eight
partes.
The gateway to the great intellectual life of the Middle
Ages stood open for the man who had learnt Latin
grammar. Here the religious literature which was