Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.2003, Page 356
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Middelnedertyske låneord
New loanwords in the Late Middle Ages have, without doubt, often
been brought into Icelandic through Norwegian law reforms, charters,
and suchlike. These are discussed separately in Section 2.1.4. Section
2.2 deals with the first notarius publicus in Iceland, Jon Egilsson, and
documents written by him. Jon Egilsson was presumably a Norwegian
and he was active as a scribe for two Icelandic bishops in the period
1418-1440. His letters contain many MLG words, not a few of which do
not appear again in other Icelandic texts until the middle of the fifteenth
century or later. Special account must therefore be taken of letters written
by Jon Egilsson if one wishes to obtain a correct view of loanwords in
Icelandic charters and other official documents of the fifteenth century.
In Chapter 3 there is a discussion of the cultural situation in the period
in question, particularly the contact that Iceland had with the outside
world. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were a time of great his-
torical change. Foreign influence increased and the country gradually
came under Danish rule. Until the late fourteenth century the strengest
foreign influence on Iceland had come via contact with Norway, but in
the fifteenth century Danish influence grew while Norwegian influence
decreased. On the other hånd, the considerable contact with English
fishermen in the first half of the century, and later with Germans in the
second half, does not seem to have had any influence worth mentioning
on the language.
Chapter 4 deals especially with theories and terminology regarding
loanwords and foreign influence on the lexicon. Different types of for-
eign influence are discussed, mainly direct lexical borrowing, loan
meaning, and loan translation. Criteria for distinguishing between do-
mestic words and loanwords are discussed, as well as criteria for dating
loanwords.
In Chapter 5 there is a discussion of the words in the present study.
Section 5.1 accounts for the number and frequency of the words. About
75% of them appear only 1-5 times in the text corpus. As already men-
tioned, the number of word stems is c. 310, of which 55-60% are repre-
sented by a single lexical item. Around 68% (c. 210) of the stems are of
MLG origin proper, while about 32% (c. 100) are themselves loans in
MLG, usually from Latin.
Section 5.1.1 provides a more thorough treatment of words that most-
ly belong to, or for the first time appear in, inventories (5.1.1.1) and
statutes of bishops and archbishops (5.1.1.2). An excursus (5.1.1.3) pro-