Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Qupperneq 93

In this poem, Austrfararvísur from around 1019, we find an example of
án governing the dative, which might support the idea that the dative was
the primary prepositional case of án in Old Icelandic.6
According to IED, the dative appears especially in translated and
ecclesiastical texts; indeed, the dative frequently occurs in Holm. perg. 15
4to and AM 677 4to. However, as the examples show, it is the accusative
that tends to appear in these types of texts. The accusative occurs fre-
quently in homilies/didactic texts (AM 619 4to, Holm. perg. 15 4to, AM
243 b α fol.) and translated texts (AM 677 4to).7 IED claims that án with
the dative might derive from Latin, which might explain the high fre-
quency of the dative in Old Norwegian AM 619 4to. Also, it claims that
the dative was frequent in the expression án e-s ráði ‘without oneʼs will’.
However, ráð is also found in the accusative (án ráð lögráðanda ‘without
the consent of legal administrator’ in GKS 1157 fol.), and the high fre-
quency of án e-s ráði might be parallel to the high frequency of án with
the dative in Old Icelandic manuscripts.

4.2 The Preposition án with the genitive: an instance of a Norwegianism?
In the second half of the 13th and throughout the 14th century, Iceland
had a close relationship with Norway (witness the term Norska öldin ‘the
Norwegian Age’, see Björn Þorsteinsson and Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir
1989:59–258, among others), and the Norwegian influence extended to
Case government of the Icelandic preposition án 93
6 In skaldic poetry, there are also examples of án with the accusative, as in Leiðarvísan
from the 12th century.
(i) Án megu engir dýnu / otrs, þeirs skírn hafa hlotna,
without may no feather-bed of-the-ottar who baptism have received
– gótts meiðum þrif þýðask – / þat – kaup hafa skatnar.
good men well-being win-over that bargain have chieftains
‘No chieftains of the feather-bed of the ottar, who have received baptism, may have
that without a bargain; it is good for men to acquire well-being.’  (Attwood 2007:151)
In this poem, án assigns the accusative to kaup ‘bargain’, although the object kaup is quite
distant from the preposition.
7 A reviewer kindly asks how the preposition án behaves in the texts in Stjórn. ONP
has four examples, one from AM 228 fol. and the others from AM 226 fol. Of these exam-
ples, two are unclear (án guds leyfi ‘without leave of God’ (AM 226 fol.:328) and an enda
‘without end’ (AM 226 fol.:349)) and one is N.G. (bętra at hafa enn an at vera ‘better to
have than to be without’ (AM 228 fol.:596)). However, AM 226 fol. contains one
accusative example, aan alla dvỏl ‘without all delay’ (AM 226 fol.:531), which does not con-
flict with the claim that the accusative tends to occur in translated and ecclesiastical texts.