Orð og tunga - 01.06.2011, Page 131

Jón Axel Harðarson: Um orðið járn í fornnorrænu
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cluster rn or the rhyming is 'imperfect' in the sense that the vowel length is not the
same in both of the rhyming syllables (or, more accurately stems). In this connection
it should be taken into account that very few words could form a 'perfect' rhyme with
iárn, due to the rarity of the sound sequence árn. It has been maintained that the East
Nordic languages demand the Old Norse form iarn, but that is a misunderstanding.
In the First Grammatical Treatise the form iárn was written <eám>. The author
discusses this writing but has difficulties supporting it with arguments. He refers
to poetry where, according to his statement, the disyllabic form was pronounced
with an initial e and not i. This pronunciation is not original. The Nordic people who
borrowed the Old Irish word iarn perceived its articulation as [ijam]. Since the word
early suffered contraction in normal speech, in the 12th century it was no longer
known how the disyllabic form had previously been pronounced.
The reason why the author preferred to write words like iárn and iór with e rather
than with i, i.e. eárn, eór, is graphemic. In the first half of the 12th century forms like
féar, séa, séom and tréom were contracted to fiár, siá, sióm and trióm. The author knew
many examples of both uncontracted and contracted forms and was well aware that
iá and ió often came from éa and éo, resp. Graphic conservatism caused many to write
the contracted forms as if they were uncontracted. And since the semivowel [j] of
rising diphthongs like iá and ió was often written e, this manner of spelling could
become generalized so that all rising diphthongs beginning with [j], regardless of
their origin, were affected by it. In the First Grammatical Treatise this seems to be
the case.
The Germanic and Celtic words for 'iron' are most probably connected with Skr.
isirá- 'strong, powerful, quick, fast' and Gk íepcx; / íapó; / tpó; 'vigorous, strong, holy'
and denoted 'the strong (metal)', i.e. the hard metal in comparison with other metal
types (esp. bronze). The morphological relationship of these words is as follows: IE
*hjish2-ró- 'strong, powerful, quick, etc.' (Skr. isirá-, Gk tpcx;) —>■ *hfsh2-eró- 'id.' (Gk
iapó;, which later changed into íepó;, the Celtic river name Isará, the Ogam Ir. man's
name IARI (Gen.), Olr. íaru 'weasel, squirrel' < *isarön-) —> *h2ish2-er-nó- 'id.' (Proto-
Celt. *isarno-) —> *h2éish2-er-no- (Proto-Germ. *eisarna- > *isarna-). The difference
between the stem forms in Celtic and Germanic is to be explained by recognizing
that Proto-Celt. *isarno- originally was an adjective meaning 'powerful, strong',
whereas Proto-Germ. *eisarna- was a substantive derived from the same adjective by
means of accent shift and vrddhi. In fact, it is uncertain how old this derivation is, and
therefore it would be more cautious to describe it as follows: adj. *(hfis(h2)arnó—>
subst. *(hféis(h2)arno-.
The Old Irish word, which the Nordic people borrowed, developed from Proto-
Celtic in the following way: *isarnon > Prim. Ir. *iharnan > *eharnan > *earna > Olr.
iarn.
It is uncertain whether ON ísarn is a Germanic inheritance or a borrowing from
West Germanic.
Jón Axel Harðarson
Hugvísindasvið Háskóla íslands
IS-101 Reykjavík, ÍSLAND
jonaxelh@hi.is