Orð og tunga - 01.06.2016, Page 95

Orð og tunga 18 (2016), 85–101. © Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum
fræðum, Reykjavík.
_
Matteo Tarsi
On the origin of the oldest
borrowed Christian terminology in
Icelandic
1 Introduction
The Icelandic borrowed lexicon is semantically vast. Among the vari-
ous semantic fi elds in which it might be subdivided, the focus of this
article will be on the religious, i.e. Christian, sphere. Its oldest core
will be presented here: i.e. those words which are most likely to have
reached the North in the period ranging from the fi rst evangelical
missions in Scandinavia (9th c.) to the establishment of the archbish-
opric of Niðarós in 1153.
The article1 is organised as follows: in section 2, an overview of the
1 I wish to thank here those who, with their valuable suggestions and comments,
helped me when writing the present article, whose main idea actually stems from
reviewing my M.A.-thesis for publication (Tarsi 2014b). The people I wish to thank
for the above-mentioned reasons are: Jón Axel Harðarson (University of Iceland),
Marco Batt aglia (Università di Pisa) and Alessandro Parenti (Università di Trento)
for having reviewed and commented on a very early version of this article; the
editor-in-chief of the present journal, Ari Páll Kristinsson, for his patience and
brilliant suggestions; the two anonymous peer-reviewers, whose insightful com-
ments I tried to follow as well as possible. I wish also to thank Margrét Jónsdótt ir,
who during my second year at the University of Iceland, suggested to me that I
take a course in the history of the Icelandic language. Her suggestion turned out
indeed to have been one of the most inspired I have ever been given. Last but not
least, special thanks go to Charles Gitt ins (Morgunblaðið) and Ryan Eric Johnson
for having accurately corrected the fi nal draft of this article.
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