Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2004, Page 59

Norn
57
The four Orkney diplomas have also been published by Marwick
(1929:218-24). English translations of the Shetland diplomas will be
found in Ballantyne and Smith (1994:38-9, 1999:1-3, 5-6, 16-17,
29-30, 54—5). The text of the 1431 Kaldbak document together with a
reconstruction in normalised Old Norse is also found in Ballantyne
and Smith (1999:14-16). Further Scandinavian diplomas from
Shetland have been mooted, but none can be shown for certain to have
been written there (cf. Bames 1998:12).
Divergent views have been expressed on the linguistic significance
of the Scandinavian-language documents ífom Orkney and Shetland.
Marwick (1929:xxi) reports his “complete failure to find any ...
‘Orkneyisms’” in the four Orcadian examples, while Indrebo
(1951:281) considered that “fornbrevi frá Hjaltland og Orknoyane
syner at mange av dei viktugaste serdragi i málet pá oyane ovra seg alt
i millomnorsk tid” (‘the diplomas ífom Shetland and Orkney indicate
that many of the most important characteristics of the language of the
islands appeared as early as the Middle-Norwegian period’). My own
examinations of the fifteen diplomas have revealed only a few spo-
radic features that might distinguish them from similar contemporary
writings in Norway. A major problem is of course to know what one is
looking for. We can compare with later records of spoken Nom, but
these are few and brief and most of the really striking features they
exhibit are absent from the medieval documents. What we chiefly find
is the occasional unexpected spelling which may have a phonological
basis. Some examples are given in (5):
(5)a. <landbular> for landbólar ‘tenants’ and <brut> for brot ‘trans-
gressions’, showing <u> for expected /o(:)/ as in the scaldic verse
b. <ustan> for austan ‘ffom the east’ and <sode> for sauöi
‘sheep’, showing apparent monophthongisation of /au/ (cf.
Hægstad 1900:43-5, Jakobsen 1928-32:1)
c. <son> for som ‘who’ and <skyldem> for skyldin ‘debt, rent’,
indicating confusion of <m> and <n> in final position (cf.
Hægstad 1900:65)