Old Gutnish in a Danish Hand: On the language of AM 54 4to
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Lecture and oral contribution
Sean Douglas Vrieland - Lecturer
Old Gutnish, the Old Nordic language spoken on the island of Gotland, is best known from two manuscripts containing the medieval law code Gut lag. The younger of the two, AM 54 4to, is characterized by a late, corrupted version of the language copied by a Danish scribe, earning the second-rate nickname ‘Codex B’.
Yet underneath the layers of scribal error and influence from the mother tongue, this sixteenth-century paper manuscript preserves layers of linguistic history from the Baltic island. The present paper attempts to uncover these layers by addressing the following questions regarding the manuscript AM 54 4to:
Which features are from the scribe, a Danish priest educated in Germany?
Which features were already found in his exemplar manuscript, a now-lost codex copied in 1470?
Did a Dane also copy the exemplar manuscript?
And finally, which features present actual linguistic changes on the island?
Yet underneath the layers of scribal error and influence from the mother tongue, this sixteenth-century paper manuscript preserves layers of linguistic history from the Baltic island. The present paper attempts to uncover these layers by addressing the following questions regarding the manuscript AM 54 4to:
Which features are from the scribe, a Danish priest educated in Germany?
Which features were already found in his exemplar manuscript, a now-lost codex copied in 1470?
Did a Dane also copy the exemplar manuscript?
And finally, which features present actual linguistic changes on the island?
15 Dec 2016
Event (Conference)
| Title | AMS Forskermøde |
|---|---|
| Date | 15/12/2016 → 15/12/2016 |
| Website | |
| Location | Institute of Nordic Research |
| City | Copenhagen |
| Country/Territory | Denmark |
| Degree of recognition | Local event |
- Old Gutnish, Manuscript Studies, Danish, Guta Lag
Research areas
ID: 171523613