Orð og tunga - 01.06.2013, Page 139

Susanne M. Arthur: Are Oranges Yellow?
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for examples). In the glossary of Þýzk lestrarbók (Steingrímur Thor-
steinsson 1886:229) the German color orange is defined as something
"sem hefir óransíu lit, eða er rauðgulur eins og óransíubörkur" [that
is the color of an orange, or red-yellow like the rind of an orange].
Here, the author makes a definite connection between rauðgulur and
the fruit and color orange.
From the mid-seventeenth century (1642) to the late twentieth
century (1992) the term brandgulur 'fire-yellow' appears. The thirteen
examples in ROH suggest that the term is closely associated with tex-
tiles - especially silk - and in the twentieth century with the color of
mushrooms and animals. Just as bleikr was used to indicate the hue
yellow, brandr 'brand/flame' - referring to fire - may have been used
to indicate the hue red.16 This supports the argument that before the
introduction of the fruit Icelandic only used compounds of red and
yellow for the color orange.
Twelve examples of gulrauður 'yellow-red' dating between 1704
and 1977 are listed in ROH. The term is used in a variety of contexts,
including the description of textiles. It does not, however, refer to gin-
ger hair for which rauðbleikr, rauðgulur, and gullrauður (see below) ap-
pear to be the only compounds used.
In the late nineteenth century, isolated examples of oransjegidur
(1877), orangegulur (1882), and óransíugulur (1891) - all meaning 'or-
ange-yellow' - appear (ROH). This coincides neatly with the nine-
teenth-century examples of orangeávöxtur 'orange-fruit/ orangeepli 'or-
ange-apple/ and óransía 'orange' noted above. Icelanders presumably
noticed the close connection between the fruit and the color, which
they may have encountered in other languages, but since no common
Icelandic term for the fruit - and therefore the color - had yet been in-
troduced into the Icelandic lexicon, a variety of terms emerged. ROH
lists one example of gidleplalitaður 'colored like a golden apple'17 from
1906 and nine examples of gullrauður 'golden-red' from between 1935
and 1977. The latter, however, may describe a 'golden/shimmering'
red color more than the actual color orange.18 The term is frequently
16 Kirsten Wolf (2010:122) gives an example from Skáldskaparmál, in which gold is
described as "fire of arm or joint or limb, since it is red." This may suggest that
both gold and fire were considered red in Old Norse-Icelandic.
17 A reference to the Latin malum aureum (ch. 2 and ch. 3).
18 As with bleikr, Kirsten Wolf (2010:123) suggests that gull may have been used to
describe the hue yellow before the introduction of gulur. This suggests that gull-
rauður, like rauðbleikr could be considered a compound of yellow and red.