neonsuntan replied to your post:
“How far should we go to preserve old Norse Orthography? Most…”
Should we use ö, o, or ǫ for the first vowel in Voluspa? Also many of the original texts used an “av” ligature that simply isn’t supported in many fonts. (It’s Latin extended-d A739).
Concerning ‘ǫ’ and ‘ö’:
The ‘ǫ’ spelling is what the word would have likely sounded like from before the thirteenth century, because it was during that time in which the letters ‘ǫ’ and ‘ø’ merged to form ‘ö’.(1.) Although the poem itself is usually dated to the tenth century,(2.) I believe the earliest manuscript rendition (that we still have) is in GKS 2365 4to (Konungsbók, or Codex Regius), which is believe to date back to sometime between 1260 and 1280. Since this manuscript dates to the thirteenth century, it is likely that the word would have, in this material context, been more similar to ‘Völuspá’, rather than as ‘Vǫluspá’ (even if it appeared to have an ‘ǫ’).
It may be best if we work this out, though, to demonstrate how we would go about determining the spelling. Unfortunately, it seems that the ‘title’ is quite faded, and so I cannot actually make it out very well on the actually manuscript leaf. Still, I believe it is here (marked by the slight bit of red on 1r). Perhaps not, though:
In manuscripts, red ink tends to fade more easily than black ink, at least from my observations. Titles and other important words were most often written in red ink. You can see the same problem occurring on 3r, though, with the next poem’s title (Hávamál):
Anyway, I have gotten a bit off track. The First Grammatical Treatise, written in the twelfth century, states that ‘ǫ’ formed from the combination of ‘a’ and ‘o’, this a sort of ligature in itself, but noted by this text as a distinct vowel.(3.) The letter ‘ö’ was not used until sometime during the thirteenth century, which is when ‘ǫ’ and ‘ø’ merged. Yet, on 2v an ‘ö’ can be seen in the word ‘kjömr’ (written here as ‘kǫ̅ꝛ’):
Yet, if ‘kjömr’ is written with an ‘ǫ’, why, then, would we write ‘ö’?
Scribes were not consistent, even within their own works. It is this lack of consistency that is a key point to bring up. To attempt an answer for our question regarding why ‘ǫ’ would be used to denote the letter ‘ö’, I believe that the main reason for this is transition, which would complicate inconsistencies as new trends slowly formed from them. The thirteenth century was the time in which ‘ǫ’ and ‘ø’ began to merge, and that is not a process that occurs at a moment’s notice. Nay, it takes time to develop. Here is a helpful quote:
“In the oldest manuscripts, the sound ‘ǫ’ is represented by ‘ꜵ’, ‘ǫ’, or ‘o’; but later other symbols were adopted for ‘ö’, the sound produced by the merger of ‘ø’ and ‘ǫ’; the most common were ‘au’, ‘ꜹ’, and ‘ø’.” (4.)
The key phrase here is also “later other symbols were adopted for ‘ö’”, implying that even the symbols previously used only for ‘ǫ’ were now likely being used for ‘ö’ as well.
To complicate things further, here is a case in this very poem, on 2v, in which ‘ǫ’ is being used for ‘æ’ instead (see the word ‘dæma’, which is written here as ‘ꝺǫ̅a’):
More interesting, perhaps, is that this word, ‘dæma’, morphologically comes from this form as well: ‘dǿma’.(5.) Thus we begin to notice the growing connection with ‘ǫ’ and ‘ø’, perhaps. This also occurs earlier, on 2r, with the word ‘fæddi’ (written here as ‘ꝼǫꝺꝺi’):
Again, this word also comes from another form: ‘fǿða’.(6.)
On Ligatures:
On the topic of your ‘ꜹ’ ligature concern (which can represent ‘av’, but more frequently ‘au’), I have actually noticed something rather interesting about that, which relates to out discussion about ‘ǫ’. This ligature was often used for ‘ö’, as noted above, which can be seen in the words ‘lög lögðu’ (written here as ‘lꜹg lꜹgðo’) on 1v:
In fact, that ligature is used far more frequently than ‘ǫ’ throughout the poem, and most often standing in for the letter ‘ö’. Yet, on the next leaf (2r), the same ligature (ꜹ) is used to represent the diphthong ‘au’ instead. For example, take a look at ‘austan’ (written here as ‘ꜹſtan’):
On that note, you may not have to worry about transcribing ligatures as much as it may seem, since they often represent two independent sounds, each retaining their independent values.(7.) The only trouble seems to be in determining what certain ligatures actually represent. For ‘ꜹ’, is it an‘ö’ or the diphthong ‘au’? Here are some other examples of the various ligatures:(8.)
Ligatures with Letters that Retain Independent Values:
- ſ + t
- c + t
- þ + ſ
- h + ſ
- k + ſ
- a + r
- a + N
- a + u (ꜹ) often as the diphthong ‘au’.
Special Sounds that Developed from Ligatures:
- ę (from a + e)
- ǫ (from a + o)
- o᷎ (from o + e)
- ø (from e + o)
- ö (from ø + ǫ)
So, in terms of most ligatures, they tend to represent other sounds rather than unique sounds. Certain ligatures are special cases, such as for how ‘ö’ was frequently written in Völuspá with the ligature for ‘au’. Figuring out how these are being used can become a sort of puzzle, but knowing the time period of a manuscript, and the linguistic patterns from the time period or script, can really help.
Concluding Remarks:
When we look at these manuscripts, we have to somehow determine what the text is actually saying. Transcribing these manuscripts becomes quite the puzzle, especially to our modern, disconnected eyes. Sometimes deciding between an ‘ǫ’ or an ‘ö’ can be rather difficult, and such a process definitely comes with the probability of making incorrect assumptions (which perhaps even I am guilty of such in my deductions above, but as you can see, that is exactly the problem in many cases).
In the end, the true decisions come from deciphering the individual manuscript in question, or, in the case of certain words, the period in which the word first shows up, or even in the way that such a word was most frequently written in a given time period. In constructing a standard form of writing Old Norse, we will inevitably overlook various intricacies that existed, especially since were are compounding a hundred years worth of a language that was constantly changing (at the very least in terms of its written form). Yet, this isn’t always a major concern for most people. Still, the forms that I have used in this post are based off a version that normalizes the text based on the period from which the manuscript, GKS 2365 4to, has been dated to, which at least enriches our discussion of how far normalization should go.
I may or may not have done a suitable job in explaining this, but I do hope that I managed to handle this subject well. Again, I am fairly new to this aspect of both Old Norse and paleography, so I there definitely is a possibly that I have overlooked something, or that there is something I am not yet aware of.
Anyway, I hope that answers your additional concerns, at least.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson, “Manuscripts and Paleography,” in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, edited by Rory McTurk, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007), 258. This source does not mention the date as being the thirteenth century, but it does briefly discuss the merging of these letters into ‘ö’.
2. Carolyne Larrington trans., The Poetic Edda. (repr., 1996. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3.
3. Einar Haugen, “ First Grammatical Treatise. The Earliest Germanic Phonology,” Language, Vol. 26, No. 4, Language Monograph No. 25: First Grammatical Treatise.The Earliest Germanic Phonology (Oct. – Dec., 1950): 13-4.
“‘Ǫ’ gets its loop from ‘a’ and its circle from ‘o’, since it is a blending of their two sounds, spoken with the mouth far less open than ‘a’, but more than for ‘o’.”
4. Gunnlaugsson, 258.
5. http://clarino.uib.no/menota/document-element?session-id=242215836510911&cpos=1272988.
6. http://clarino.uib.no/menota/document-element.
7. Gunnlaugsson, 258.
8. Ibid.
* Manuscript images from handrit.is.
** Also, special appreciation goes out to @thorraborinn, because this reply was much easier to answer being able to refer to Medieval Nordic Text Achieve, which I had not known about until reading his contribution to the post that this reply refers to.
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