Orð og tunga - 01.06.2016, Qupperneq 102

92 Orð og tunga
The correct etymology is then the following: Icel. abbadís – OIc.
abbadissa < MLG. abbadisse < Vulg.Lat. abbadissa < Lat. abbatissa, where
the Latin noun is a derivative of abbās ‘abbot’ < AGr. ἀββᾶς < Aram.
‘abbā ‘father’ (cf. also ábóti).
altari: The oldest occurrence of this word (E. ‘altar’) is to be found
in Glælognskviða, a skaldic poem from the 11th century by Þórarinn
loft unga, preserved in the Óláfs saga helga and Snorri Sturluson’s hom-
onymous saga in Heimskringla (LP, Skjald, A–I:324–325)8. Given its
early occurrence, there are two most probable languages from which
Icelandic might have borrowed the word, namely Old English (altar)
and Old Saxon (altāri). According to Halldór Halldórsson (1969b:112),
Latin is to be excluded as a source of direct loan because, he argues,
there must have been litt le direct infl uence from Latin in the period
immediately before and aft er conversion.
Following Halldór Halldórsson’s (1969b:112–114) argument, OSax.
altāri appears to be the most likely source for OIc. altari for three main
reasons, both from a linguistic and historical perspective:
1) Lat. altāre has been borrowed in Old English as altar. However,
two native coinages, namely wīgbed and wēofod, seem to be used con-
siderably more frequently than the Latin loanword (1969b:114, ASD).
Moreover, there are no native coinages for this word in Old Icelan-
dic, neither with a structure resembling the Old English ones such
as **vígbeðr, **vígbjóðr or **vébjóðr, nor with a diff erent one. In other
words: Old Icelandic does not have a native word to label Lat. altāre,
which – I posit – would have been the most probable outcome of Old
English infl uence.
2) A variant of OIc. altari is att ested, namely altári9, which is phone-
mically most similar to its Old Saxon and Old Frisian (altáre) counter-
parts, i.e. with /ā/ in the unstressed syllable. The /ā/ in OIc. altári later
underwent shortening causing a merge of the two variants (see also
Raschellà 1988:93 for a diff erent explanation).
3) As has been shown above, this word occurs very early in Old
Icelandic and was most probably introduced as early as the fi rst evan-
gelical mission (cf. footnote 2), if not earlier via Norway. In both cases
it is natural to think more of an infl uence from the archbishopric of
Hamburg-Bremen, i.e. an Old Saxon infl uence.
8 For a complete list of the mss. in which the poem is preserved see SkP I, 1:872.
9 For instance in the Icelandic Homily Book (ms. Holm perg 15 4to), f. 96r and 97r (cf.
de Leeuw van Weenen (ed.) 1993 and ONP).
tunga_18.indb 92 11.3.2016 14:41:15