Gripla - 20.12.2004, Qupperneq 222

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SUMMARY
The symbol ‘¬’ was used to denote kk in a number of Icelandic manuscripts from the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is rarely seen in manuscripts after 1300 and
disappears altogether in the course of the fourteenth century. Its use for kk is unique to
Icelandic manuscripts.
As discussed in §2, the author of the First Grammatical Treatise proposes that
geminate consonants be denoted with capital letters (or small capitals). For kk he
introduces a separate symbol, namely ‘¬’, which has its own shape and is therefore
easily distinguishable from ‘c’, the preferred symbol for non-geminate k. The practice
of denoting kk with ‘¬’, even if seen in a number of Icelandic manuscripts, never be-
came general, as discussed in §3, and already by the end of the twelfth century there
are signs that this practice was unfamiliar to at least some scribes. This is suggested by
sporadic instances of ‘kc’ or ‘k’ for kk, as well as the use of ‘¬’ to denote lk. Instances
of this kind can be interpreted as indirect evidence for the use of ‘¬’ in the exemplars,
as well as evidence for the scribes’ unfamiliarity with the use of ‘¬’. It is important to
note that these are occasional deviations from the normal orthography.
Interestingly, two manuscripts from the first half of the thirteenth century can be
identified where the representation of kk by a single ‘k’ is not an exception, but rather
a rule: (i) in AM 645 A 4to, containing the Miracles of St. fiorlákr and the lives of the
apostles, kk is denoted 178 times by ‘k’ and 32 times by ‘c’ against a single instance
with ‘cc’; (ii) in AM 677 B 4to, containing the Homilies and Dialogues of Gregory the
Great, there are close to one hundred instances of ‘k’ and 25 of ‘c’ for kk, along with
seven of ‘cc’ and three of ‘ck’. The question immediately arises, whether this should