Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Qupperneq 88
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INTRODUCTION
the comparative rarity of expression of the svarabhakti and of (vo)
((vó)) for older vá, the single ex. of a weak declined article, ‘þv villt’
attested only twice, the absence of prep. úr for ór, of suffix -indi, of
superlative -ligasti, and of (ie)/(ei> for é, and the virtual non-existence
of third person sg. endings in the first person. One or two forms might
make one think of a date some time after about 1350: relative particle
eð and the spellings ‘tveær’ and ‘optna’, but these are isolated and
weigh little against the other evidence.10
There are however other features which suggest a period closer to c.
1350 than to the opening years of the fourteenth century: frequent (aa>
spellings,11 regular (giæ) and (kiæ),12 fem. pron. ‘hvn’,13 preponder-
ance of article forms in hin(-),H increasing use of neg. prefix ú-,15 the
firm presence of the svarabhakti, even though not often expressed,16
dat. sg. hönd,'1 nom. sg. m. pronoun and adj. enginn\K and stray forms
10 Part. eð appears in a context unlike that of the earliest exx. otherwise recorded. They
are noted in Hægstad, Vestnorske maalfpre II 2 (1942), 114, 131, who cites its first use
from a 1371 transcript of a 1359 document; cf. Um ísl. orðmyndir, 48-49. The oldest
(viæ) spellings known are in a 1344 document (Stefán Karlsson, IO, nr 13 II; probably
from Þingeyjarsýsla); they are better known in sources, predominantly northem Ice-
landic, from c. 1360 onwards; see J. Oresnik, Gripla V (1982), 183-96. On optna cf.
P. Naert, Studia Islandica 15, 73-79 (but see further Stefán Karlsson, Saga-Book XXV
2 (1999), 146-47, 155); Naert’s earliest ex. of (pt) in ‘optnu’ (“með þessu minu optnu
brefi”) is from 1449 but Seip, Sprákhist., 300 cites a Norwegian ex. from 1316.
11 Noreen, § 33, Anm. 1; K&lund, Pal. Atlas (1907), v.
12 Cf. Nokkrar sögulegar athuganir, 6-11.
13 Um ísl. orðmyndir, 43.
14 Bandle, 355, with refs.
15 Bandle, 63, with refs.
16 Um ísl. orðmyndir, xxiv.
17 Bandle, 260, with refs.
18 The introduction of engin(n) nom. and occasionally acc. sg. pronoun and adj. was
obviously a dispersed process, but exx. are so few that Bandle, 373, reasonably refers
to the “bis ca. 1350 allein geltende engi”. Earliest exx. are Norwegian, in a transcript of
a 1320 document and then in originals of 1326 and 1334; Hægstad, Vestnorske maal-
fpre, II 2 (1916), 196; cf. n. pl. ‘enghen’ in a Hamar document of 1342 (Seip, Sprák-
hist., 320). The first dated Icelandic ex. of the nom. is in a document of 1363 (though
reckoned to be by a Norwegian scribe; Um ísl. orðmyndir, 50; Stefán Karlsson, IO, nr
35, Tekst, 40). Kálund refers to acc. ‘engin’ in Möðruvallabók (Laxdœla saga, 1889-91,
xi), dated 1330-70; Fritzner cites two exx. from Stjórn in AM 226 fol., c. 1360-70; and
Jón Þorkelsson in Supplement I others from Tveggja postola saga Jóns ok Jakobs