SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Latin Influence on the Norwegian Language 171
the original which could not be translated easily into
Norwegian. The inflectional endings of Latin seem to
favour assonance more than Norwegian does, so the
latter compensates by using alliteration.
This applies to a much greater extent to play on words,
paronomasia or annominatio. From text-books in the
art of letter writing and thence from papal letters the
Norwegians picked up such subleties as affectumeffectu,
quittum - quietum; - "Cure tibi sit magis
hominibus prodesse quam preesse ; - "iterum et in
eternum"; - "perire potius e1igunt quam parere'",
We have a good example of how apt a pupil Bishop
Hakon was in a case where he deprives two priests of
their benefices on account of their unsavoury mode of
life in the following words: "Cum nos Haquinus ... te
domine .. Erlinge... sepe sepius monuerimus super
foearia tua, immo fornicaria, de cura et curia tua
dimittenda . . . quamvis tu, fronte effronti ac animo
infrunito, precipientis salubria monita ac precepta et
perungentis fomenta contempseris . . ." And we meet
intellectual expedients of this kind far more often than
before in the Norwegian language, particularly combined
with correctio or epanorthosis: "veniur peer sem
helldr mega heita oveniur"; - "ny tiltceke er hsellfir
ma fadceme oc udceme kalla"; - "han bseidizst orlof er
heelor ma olof kalla"; - "sakir ymisra tilfella, er hselldr
mseghi motefelli kalla".
There is an interesting example in Hakon's correspondence
of an attempt to transfer to Norwegian a word for
which in Latin a new etymological interpretation was
offered. Franz Blatt maintains that it is possibly
etymological considerations which caused the spelling
honus for onus, since one comes across the view that
many an "honour" is "onerous". This is a very plausible
conclusion and we can also see that honus and onus
are often placed together. Thus in a papal letter to the
Archbishop of Nidaros we find "pontificalis honoris et