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BOOK REVIEWS
EARLY ENGLISH AND NORSE STUDIES. Presented to Hl1GH SMITH
in honour of his sixtieth birthday. Edited by ARTHVR BROWN
and PETER FOOTE. Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1963. 225 pp.
The Quain Professor of English at University College London
is honoured by the publication of a volume of nineteen essays by
writers drawn from learned institutions of Britain, Scandinavia
and America. They cover some of the many subjects on which
this distinguished scholar has written. Appropriately enough in
a Festschrift for a leading member of the Viking Society, seven
of the items are concerned with Northern Research.
P. G. Foote has contributed an extended lexicographical note,
listing thirty-three examples of the use of the rare Old Icelandic
word auarceai, all from texts of clerical provenance. He identifies
the first element, not with the noun auor 'wealth', but with the
common prefix aua- 'easy' The word thus means 'easy proposal,
easy action', and thence develops to 'easy circumstances' and so
to 'wealth'. Professor Kr. Hald examines the evidence given by
Danish place-names for the cult of Odin. He notes five possible
examples (some of which require some special pleading) of the
god's name combined with vi 'sanctuary', four combined with
hilla, an element of uncertain meaning, and one instance of sal
'building connected with the cult of the god'. There is, moreover,
the district name Othcensheret (Onsjo, Skane): There are few
comparable examples of other gods' names used as place-name
elements in Denmark, and Hald concludes that "a single god,
Odin, played a completely dominant role in the public cult"
Professor S. B. F. Jansson reports the discovery of a new runestone,
an eleventh-century example re-used as a foundation stone
of the tower of Tornevalla church, Ostcrgotland. The beginning
of the inscription is lost, but what remains is of interest. The
stone commemorates one DrcengH, a name otherwise unknown in
Swedish runic texts, and was erected by the dead man's guildbrothers.
It thus compares with the Bjalbo and Sigtuna stones,
providing evidence of another early guild (presumably of
merchants) in Sweden. Professor Chr. Matras discusses four
place-name types rare in Norway but found in the Faroes, Orkney
and Shetland, and occasionally elsewhere in the western world.
Professor Sahlgren explains the town-name Eslov (Skane) as
*Asislev 'ridge-dweller's inheritance'. the ridge being either
Soderasen, or the smaller ridge on which the town itself stands.