TY - BOOK
T1 - Old Gutnish in a Danish Hand
T2 - Studies in the B manuscript of Guta lag
AU - Vrieland, Seán D.
PY - 2017/12
Y1 - 2017/12
N2 - The Arnamagnæan Collection houses a single manuscript written in Old Gutnish, the medieval language of the Baltic island of Gotland. Copied by a Danish priest on the island in 1587, the manuscript AM 54 4to contains the law code Guta lag, which remained valid legislation on Gotland during the three centuries of Danish control.This dissertation is a philological and linguistic investigation of the manuscript which, due to its foreign scribe and young age, has received relatively less attention than the single extant medieval copy of Guta lag in Old Gutnish. The philological component of the study compares AM 54 4to with the remaining six manuscript witnesses of Guta lag, both in Old Gutnish and in translation. What was the scribe’s motivation behind copying the text? What can be said about the source of the text in the exemplar manuscript, a now-lost codex copied in 1470? The linguistic component approaches AM 54 4to as a locus of language contact. To what extent is it possible to trace the linguistic peculiarities of the manuscript to influence from the scribe and his native language, Danish? Which features show native Gutnish developments and which are archaic features not present in the medieval manuscript? Finally, is it possible to determine whether the scribe of the exemplar manuscript from 1470 was also a Dane?
AB - The Arnamagnæan Collection houses a single manuscript written in Old Gutnish, the medieval language of the Baltic island of Gotland. Copied by a Danish priest on the island in 1587, the manuscript AM 54 4to contains the law code Guta lag, which remained valid legislation on Gotland during the three centuries of Danish control.This dissertation is a philological and linguistic investigation of the manuscript which, due to its foreign scribe and young age, has received relatively less attention than the single extant medieval copy of Guta lag in Old Gutnish. The philological component of the study compares AM 54 4to with the remaining six manuscript witnesses of Guta lag, both in Old Gutnish and in translation. What was the scribe’s motivation behind copying the text? What can be said about the source of the text in the exemplar manuscript, a now-lost codex copied in 1470? The linguistic component approaches AM 54 4to as a locus of language contact. To what extent is it possible to trace the linguistic peculiarities of the manuscript to influence from the scribe and his native language, Danish? Which features show native Gutnish developments and which are archaic features not present in the medieval manuscript? Finally, is it possible to determine whether the scribe of the exemplar manuscript from 1470 was also a Dane?
M3 - Ph.D. thesis
BT - Old Gutnish in a Danish Hand
PB - Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet
ER -