Gripla - 01.01.1982, Page 187

JANEZ ORESNIK
AN OLD ICELANDIC DIALECT FEATURE:
IÆ FOR Æ
This paper discusses a somewhat unusual Old Icelandic spelling, viz.
iæ, ie, etc. for ‘æ’. Example: viænn, vienn for ‘vænn’. The phenomenon
will here be referred to as iæ-spellings. It will be seen below (i) that
the iæ-spellings are basically limited to the fourteenth century docu-
ments and manuscripts connected with the north of Iceland, and to a
lesser extent with the Breiðafjörður region, and (ii) that the iæ-spellings
allow us to surmise an incipient and eventually abortive diphthongis-
ation of æ to iæ. The phenomenon is strictly Icelandic in the sense that
it is not observed in Old Norwegian documents and manuscripts.
The pertinent philological material will be discussed in section 1,
and considerations from the standpoint of historical phonology will
follow in section 2.1
1.1 proceed to the enumeration and discussion of the relevant aspects
of the Old Icelandic written material containing iæ-spellings, beginning
with the documents (section 1.1), and continuing with the located
(section 1.2) and not located (section 1.3) manuscripts. Section 1.4
contains the general conclusions of the philological part of the paper.
— My sources: Stefán Karlsson’s private collection of examples, the
files of AMKO, introductions to text editions, my own excerpts of the
manuscripts and edited texts.
1.1. There follows the treatment of the documents, in chronological
1 During the preparatory work on the present paper I had the privilege to dis-
cuss its subject matter extensively with Stefán Karlsson of the Stofnun Árna Magn-
ússonar, Reykjavík. Stefán Karlsson has offered essential advice,as well as supplied
a number of the examples that are adduced below. I hereby extend to him my
warm thanks for his kind help. My thanks are also due to Jonna Louis-Jensen and
to Olafur Halldórsson for their help, and to Margaret G. Davis for the correction
of my English. The responsibility for the contents of the paper is, however, my
own.