SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

160 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
The same was true in legal works or in literature influenced
by legal phraseology. Latin had a tendency to
increase the respect for the written word, to give it a
certain aura of solemnity.
Thus we are confronted by Latin as a kind of learned
or academic convention. Of far greater importance,
however, was the fact that we, in Norway, for a long
time lacked adequate Norwegian terms for the new
ideas - a fact which similarly explains the massive
inundation of English words in Norwegian today. It
is the international professional terminology of the
manuals of letter-writing we meet when Bishop Hakon
Erlingsson writes: "sendom ver yor eftir ydru bode
patentes literas nostras tenorem literarum vestrarum
continentes", or "so at ver sendim po til ydar procuratores
ikki at sijdir plenum et speciale mandatum habentes
ex parte nostra".
The Latin form was particularly necessary in a number
of legal terms which had come in from Latin and for
which no suitable Norwegian word had yet been found.
We can mention such technical expressions found in the
documents as concilium prouincialc, prorogacio concilii,
subsidium pape, subvencio pallii, or executor testaments,
expressions which still flourish in modern legal works.
We have a good example of the way in which Norwegian
can, so to speak, stand powerless in the face of the foreign
invader when it is stated in Bishop Arne's Christian Law
that "Skipan sv sem menn gera a siporstum daughum
heitir testamentum".
When it comes to individual Latin words and inflections
there are so many both in religious and in other kinds
of literature that we can take our pick. In religious
writings we can find proper nouns such as Maria, Helena,
Petrus, Paulus, or appellatives such as judaicus, biblia,
pater, sacramentum, sanctus. An example of a word
of commercial character is petea ("piece"), and names
for various wares are used, such as vinum, sometimes