Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Síða 143

matteo tarsi
Loanwords and native words in Old and Middle
Icelandic (12th c.–1550): Doctoral defense

1. Introduction
The founding idea for my doctoral project1 came to me in 2013, while reading
Grettis saga as part of a course for the degree in Icelandic as a second language at
the University of Iceland. In the text, the words kápa and feldur appeared on the
same page, referring to the same object.2 I then started pondering whether this
phenomenon was common, and what this might imply for the prehistory of
Icelandic language purism, for the occurrence of kápa and feldur in Grettis saga
showed that loanwords and native words could be used interchangeably in a text.
The reading of Halldór Halldórsson’s 1964 article Nýgervingar í fornmáli, where
the phenomenon is mentioned, prompted me to pursue this idea further and to
write a doctoral project devoted to the analysis of the coexistence and competi-
tion of loanwords and native words in Icelandic before the advent of purism in
that language. This brought me back to Italy for a little more than a year, from
the summer of 2014 to early January 2016, where it was clear to me that such a
project could unfortunately not be carried out satisfactorily there. Those months
in Italy, during which I was part of a doctoral program in linguistics at the uni-
versities of Bergamo and Pavia, were nevertheless fruitful for me, giving me the
opportunity to do a pilot study on three literary genres and thus to begin the data
collection for the project. I am moreover thankful to have got to know people
with whom I am still collaborating at Università di Pavia, chiefly Chiara Zanchi
and her mentor Silvia Luraghi. I set sail again to Iceland in early January 2016,
determined to carry out my project and perhaps widen my interests too. In
Reykjavík, I could profit from the mentorship of Jón Axel Harðarson, but also
benefit from the materials and research environment at the Árni Magnússon
Institute, where I had my working station, first in Árnagarður and then at Lauga -
vegur 13, and was mentored by Ari Páll Kristinsson. Finally, I was a guest doc-
Íslenskt mál 43 (2021), 143–181. © 2021 Íslenska málfræðifélagið, Reykjavík.
1 The project enjoyed a two-year funding by the University of Iceland Research Fund
in the years 2018–2020.
2 Grettis saga, chapter 21 (Íslenzk fornrit VII, p. 75): “ok er minnst varði, þrífr Bjǫrn
kápu Grettis ok kastaði í híðit til bjarnarins. Ekki gátu þeir at gǫrt ok hurfu aptr, er á leið
daginn. En er Grettir bjósk heim að ganga, saknar hann feldar síns; hann gat sét, at
bjǫrninn hafði drepit undir sik kápuna.”