Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1963, Page 104

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TÍMARIT ÞJÓÐRÆKNISFÉLAGS ISLENDINGA
may have been less between the
two tongues in ordinary speech.
Gunnlaugr's saga minimizes the dif-
ferences and says that the same
tongue was used in England and in
Scandinavia until the Conquest
when French was introduced and
consequently communic a t i o n be-
tween the Norse and English be-
came difficult. Howsoever that may
be, Gunnlaugr delivered a poem be-
fore Ethelred, which so pleased the
king that he gave him a rich cloak
of scarlet cloth.34
It is in the field of religion and
literature that the Anglo-Saxon in-
fluence has been greatest in Ice-
land. All scholars today are agreed
that Icelandic literature is heavily
indebted to the Anglo-Saxons. As is
well known the influence of the
Anglo-Saxon church on the intro-
duction of Christianity in Norway
was very considerable and through
Norway or directly from England
this infuence was carried to Ice-
land. We know that a kinsman of
Edward the Confessor, Rotholf, who
ended his days as abbot of Abing-
don, spent about 19 years (ca. 1030-
1049) in Iceland at Bær in Borgar-
fjord. There he conducted a school,
but it is not likely that he also
founded there a monastery as some
have conjectured.35 Rotholf is the
only English cleric in Iceland at
this time who is known to us by
name, but he must have been only
one of a large number of English-
men who came to Iceland and
taught the Icelanders the rudiments
of the alphabet and literary prac-
tices in general. The earliest Ice-
landic manuscripts are written in
a hand that is very similar to that
used in the last days of Anglo-
Saxon England.36 It has been point-
ed out that to express the sound of
ih the Icelanders borrowed the let-
ter þ from English script and called
it by its English name þorn, and
not þurs as the corresponding sym-
bol in the Norse runic alphabet was
called. Again the þ used in oldest
Icelandic manuscripts resembles a
þ used in England about 1050. Ice-
landic words having to do with
books and writing are derived from
Anglo-Saxon e.g. bókfell (vellum,
Old English bocfell), rila (fo wrile,
O.E. writan), stafrof (alphabet, O.E.
stæfræw).37
As we have seen Bede is quoted
by the earliest historians of Ice-
land. In addition, his homilies are
copied in the earliest collections of
Icelandic homilies. The Stockholm
Homily Book written about 1200
contains two homilies based on Bede
or on works attributed to Bede. The
first, which is preserved also in the
Norwegian Homily Book, written a
little later than the Stockholm one,
follows the original closely but the
second shows greater freedom.38
Numerous words of ecclesiastical
usage have passed either indirectly
through Norway or directly from
England into the ecclesiastical vo-
cabulary of Iceland.39
It is true that in the eleventh
century ties were close between the
German church and the Icelandic
church, but it seems clear that the
Anglo-Saxon influence was greater
than that of the German. Only a
few terms have passed from Ger-
many into the ecclesiastical termi-