87-518: Ynglingatal or Ynglinga tal ( Old Norse : 'Enumeration of the Ynglingar') is a Skaldic poem cited by Snorri Sturluson in the Ynglinga saga , the first saga of Snorri's Heimskringla . Þjóðólfr of Hvinir (Thjodolf), who was a poet for Harald Fairhair (r. 872–930), is traditionally credited with its authorship. Snorri quotes frequently from this poem and cites it as one of the sources of
174-492: A century earlier and refrained from reproducing the erroneous text. Ynglingatal also inspired Eyvindr skáldaspillir's Háleygjatal , which demonstrably was written in the late 900s. Another argument for early dating comes from the Icelandic philologist Bergsveinn Birgisson , whose doctoral thesis said Ynglingatal is not supposed to be a praising poem but an entertainment poem and a warning. He asserts this partly based on
261-727: A change known as Holtzmann's law . An epenthetic vowel became popular by 1200 in Old Danish, 1250 in Old Swedish and Old Norwegian, and 1300 in Old Icelandic. An unstressed vowel was used which varied by dialect. Old Norwegian exhibited all three: /u/ was used in West Norwegian south of Bergen , as in aftur , aftor (older aptr ); North of Bergen, /i/ appeared in aftir , after ; and East Norwegian used /a/ , after , aftær . Old Norse
348-660: A descendant of the Ynglings. The poem was written on behalf of Ragnvald the Mountain-High , a cousin of King Harald Fairhair, and its last stanza is about Ragnvald . Ynglingatal is composed in kviðuháttr (modern Norwegian kviduhått ); this genealogical verse form is also used in Son loss (Sonatorrek) in Egils saga . In this form of verse, the lines alternate between three and four syllables—the first line has three syllables,
435-417: A female raven or a male crow. All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms, and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals. The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such as lim and mund . Some words, such as hungr , have multiple genders, evidenced by their determiners being declined in different genders within
522-412: A front vowel to be split into a semivowel-vowel sequence before a back vowel in the following syllable. While West Norse only broke /e/ , East Norse also broke /i/ . The change was blocked by a /w/ , /l/ , or /ʀ/ preceding the potentially-broken vowel. Some /ja/ or /jɔ/ and /jaː/ or /jɔː/ result from breaking of /e/ and /eː/ respectively. When a noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb has
609-409: A given sentence. Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns were declined in four grammatical cases – nominative , accusative , genitive , and dative – in singular and plural numbers. Adjectives and pronouns were additionally declined in three grammatical genders. Some pronouns (first and second person) could have dual number in addition to singular and plural. The genitive
696-569: A historical source, in Sweden by the brothers Lauritz and Curt Weibull , and in Norway by Halvdan Koht and Edvard Bull . In 1908, German philologist Gustav Neckel said Ynglingatal had to be a construction from the 1100s; Norwegian historian Claus Krag also said this in his book Ynglingatal and Yngling Saga. A study of historical sources , and joins Neckel's hypothesis. Claus Krag claimed in 1990 that Ynglingatal 's origin should be dated to
783-584: A long vowel or diphthong in the accented syllable and its stem ends in a single l , n , or s , the r (or the elder r - or z -variant ʀ ) in an ending is assimilated. When the accented vowel is short, the ending is dropped. The nominative of the strong masculine declension and some i-stem feminine nouns uses one such -r (ʀ). Óðin-r ( Óðin-ʀ ) becomes Óðinn instead of * Óðinr ( * Óðinʀ ). The verb blása ('to blow'), has third person present tense blæss ('[he] blows') rather than * blæsr ( * blæsʀ ). Similarly,
870-490: A lost verse. Frey, the great fertility god in the Nordic countries , entered into a sacred wedding ( Hiero Gamos ) with Gerd, which is retold in the poem Skírnismál . The mythological purpose of the holy wedding is to bear a child who is the child of both the parents but is neither god or giant but something completely different that will be the first of a "new" species; a new royal family. With effort and tensions from this,
957-479: A ninth-century creation". Krag's late dating has been challenged. If the saga is a late work of propaganda, it should reasonably have been concluded with Norwegian king Harald Fairhair and not by his largely unknown cousin Ragnvald Heidrumhære, whose meaning seems otherwise to have been lost after 1000. There are places and names in the poem that archeology has shown to have had great importance until
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#17327721132081044-474: A noun must mirror the gender of that noun , so that one says, " heill maðr! " but, " heilt barn! ". As in other languages, the grammatical gender of an impersonal noun is generally unrelated to an expected natural gender of that noun. While indeed karl , "man" is masculine, kona , "woman", is feminine, and hús , "house", is neuter, so also are hrafn and kráka , for "raven" and "crow", masculine and feminine respectively, even in reference to
1131-476: A similar development influenced by Middle Low German . Various languages unrelated to Old Norse and others not closely related have been heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman language ; to a lesser extent, Finnish and Estonian . Russian, Ukrainian , Belarusian , Lithuanian and Latvian also have a few Norse loanwords. The words Rus and Russia , according to one theory, may be named after
1218-608: A voiced velar fricative [ɣ] in all cases, and others have that realisation only in the middle of words and between vowels (with it otherwise being realised [ɡ] ). The Old East Norse /ʀ/ was an apical consonant , with its precise position unknown; it is reconstructed as a palatal sibilant . It descended from Proto-Germanic /z/ and eventually developed into /r/ , as had already occurred in Old West Norse. The consonant digraphs ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ occurred word-initially. It
1305-467: A vowel or semivowel of a different vowel backness . In the case of i-umlaut and ʀ-umlaut , this entails a fronting of back vowels, with retention of lip rounding. In the case of u-umlaut , this entails labialization of unrounded vowels. Umlaut is phonemic and in many situations grammatically significant as a side effect of losing the Proto-Germanic morphological suffixes whose vowels created
1392-431: A warrior elite can point to ancient human migrations . Sundquist posits the theory that Thjodolf from Kvine composed his works in the 900s and based them on an extant tradition. He also said Empedocles' cosmology can hardly be argued as evidence of late dating; in that case it would be influenced by Britannia or Franks . The fact Snorri has reproduced the poem suggests he would probably have known about any falsification
1479-448: A word. Strong verbs ablaut the lemma 's nucleus to derive the past forms of the verb. This parallels English conjugation, where, e.g., the nucleus of sing becomes sang in the past tense and sung in the past participle. Some verbs are derived by ablaut, as the present-in-past verbs do by consequence of being derived from the past tense forms of strong verbs. Umlaut or mutation is an assimilatory process acting on vowels preceding
1566-598: Is also quoted in Þáttr Ólafs Geirstaða Alfs . Stories that build on the poem are found in the Norwegian history, Historia Norvegiæ , which was written in Latin in the late 1100s, and in the short saga Af Upplendinga konungum (About the upplander-kings). Ynglingtal is also indirectly preserved as a list of names in Íslendingabók from the early 1100s. A few of the characters in Ynglingatal are also mentioned in
1653-453: Is an attempt at a synthesis of different oral traditions about different kings. According to Snorri, the Yngling stemmed from the gods Yngve-Frey and Odin. This kinship, a euhemerism, is not left in the poem; only Snorri's words support this. Finnur Jonsson said he thought this song originally contained several verses and started with Yngve. Religion historian Walter Baetke said Yngligatal
1740-544: Is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden . In what is present-day Denmark and Sweden, most speakers spoke Old East Norse. Though Old Gutnish is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations, it developed its own unique features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th-century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes , Norwegians , Icelanders , and Danes spoke
1827-465: Is expected to exist, such as in the male names Ragnarr , Steinarr (supposedly * Ragnarʀ , * Steinarʀ ), the result is apparently always /rː/ rather than */rʀ/ or */ʀː/ . This is observable in the Runic corpus. In Old Norse, i/j adjacent to i , e , their u-umlauts, and æ was not possible, nor u/v adjacent to u , o , their i-umlauts, and ǫ . At
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#17327721132081914-403: Is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects : Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to as Old Norse ), Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), and Old Gutnish . Old West Norse and Old East Norse formed a dialect continuum , with no clear geographical boundary between them. Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway , although Old Norwegian
2001-584: Is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse. This is still a major difference between Swedish and Faroese and Icelandic today. Plurals of neuters do not have u-umlaut at all in Swedish, but in Faroese and Icelandic they do, for example the Faroese and Icelandic plurals of the word land , lond and lönd respectively, in contrast to
2088-505: Is not a genealogy, but a poem about people from different clans. Not all sources agree; in Historia Norvegiæ , About Uplanders kings and Íslendingabók , several of the kings of other names than in Ynglingatal or are said to live on or be buried elsewhere. Finnur Jonsson said the various descriptions stem from the kings mentioned in Ynglingatal ; all have different traditions handed down by word of mouth. He said Thjodolf's poem
2175-585: Is only mentioned in Snorri's preamble. In the saga he is only referred to as a friend of Harald and as the son whom Godred fostered. Snorri also quotes several other poems of Thjodolf in Harald Fairhair's saga. The historian Claus Krag proposes that the connection between Harald Fairhair and Thjodolf was constructed by Snorri, probably because Thjodolf would have been an important person in the development of scaldic art, while according to tradition, Harald
2262-506: Is possible to follow Harald Fairhair's ancestors back to Halfdan Hvitbeinn. Norwegian historians and archeologists have traditionally held the Norwegian Ynglings to be historical people. Because of problems with dating, it is problematic to work out when these people might have lived. Are Frode , in the 1100s, was probably the first person who tried to convert the dates from relative time stamps to absolute chronological dates on
2349-517: Is seen in Ynglingatal where Swedes sacrificed King Domalde after a prolonged famine. This is illustrated in Carl Larsson 's controversial monumental picture Midvinterblot , but there are no other sources supporting the sacrificing of a king. Ynglingatal consists of 27 stanzas and a litany of different kings and how they died. It starts with Fjölnir , who according to the Ynglinga saga
2436-459: Is that the nonphonemic difference between the voiced and the voiceless dental fricative is marked. The oldest texts and runic inscriptions use þ exclusively. Long vowels are denoted with acutes . Most other letters are written with the same glyph as the IPA phoneme, except as shown in the table below. Ablaut patterns are groups of vowels which are swapped, or ablauted, in the nucleus of
2523-557: Is unclear whether they were sequences of two consonants (with the first element realised as /h/ or perhaps /x/ ) or as single voiceless sonorants /l̥/ , /r̥/ and /n̥/ respectively. In Old Norwegian, Old Danish and later Old Swedish, the groups ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ were reduced to plain ⟨l⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨n⟩ , which suggests that they had most likely already been pronounced as voiceless sonorants by Old Norse times. The pronunciation of ⟨hv⟩
2610-563: Is unclear, but it may have been /xʷ/ (the Proto-Germanic pronunciation), /hʷ/ or the similar phoneme /ʍ/ . Unlike the three other digraphs, it was retained much longer in all dialects. Without ever developing into a voiceless sonorant in Icelandic, it instead underwent fortition to a plosive /kv/ , which suggests that instead of being a voiceless sonorant, it retained a stronger frication. Primary stress in Old Norse falls on
2697-458: Is usually interpreted as "descendants of Yngve", but as in modern Nordic , it can also mean "young man". In skaldic poems, the word yngling is only used in the singular; only in the sagas has it has been used in the plural Ynglings ; thus the ynglings of the poem cannot be defined as one family. The term may be a kenning, a euphemism, for the prince or king and not something connected with a particular family. Bergsveinn Birgisson says Ynglingatal
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2784-484: The Latin alphabet , there was no standardized orthography in use in the Middle Ages. A modified version of the letter wynn called vend was used briefly for the sounds /u/ , /v/ , and /w/ . Long vowels were sometimes marked with acutes but also sometimes left unmarked or geminated. The standardized Old Norse spelling was created in the 19th century and is, for the most part, phonemic. The most notable deviation
2871-587: The Old English poem Beowulf . According to Snorri, Ynglingatal was composed by the scald Þjóðólfr of Hvinir , who was from Kvinesdal in what is now Vest-Agder , Norway. In the preamble to the Heimskringla , Snorri writes that Thjodolf, in addition to composing the poem Ynglingatal , was poet at Harald Fairhair's hird (royal retinue ). Thjodolf also appears in the Saga of Harald Fairhair , in
2958-667: The Rus' people , a Norse tribe, probably from present-day east-central Sweden. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi , respectively. A number of loanwords have been introduced into Irish , many associated with fishing and sailing. A similar influence is found in Scottish Gaelic , with over one hundred loanwords estimated to be in the language, many of which are related to fishing and sailing. Old Norse vowel phonemes mostly come in pairs of long and short. The standardized orthography marks
3045-470: The Viking Age , but not later, and thus should not have been stated in a more recent saga. Archeologist Dagfinn Skre is an advocate for these arguments. According to Swedish researcher Olof Sundquist , Krag bypasses clear signs of Ynglingatal on a tradition of Swedish area visible in kenning , place names and personal names. Cultural phenomena such as a king who goes to holy places and the memory of
3132-504: The Viking Age , the Christianization of Scandinavia , and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse
3219-668: The word stem , so that hyrjar would be pronounced /ˈhyr.jar/ . In compound words, secondary stress falls on the second stem (e.g. lærisveinn , /ˈlɛːɾ.iˌswɛinː/ ). Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark , runic Old Norse was originally written with the Younger Futhark , which had only 16 letters. Because of the limited number of runes, several runes were used for different sounds, and long and short vowels were not distinguished in writing. Medieval runes came into use some time later. As for
3306-507: The 1100s and that it was based on other royal lists. In a research project during the 1980s Krag's attempt to justify the doubt regarding Ynglingatal 's age began to take shape, disregarding the traditional, uncritical acceptance. Krag studied the Yngling tradition's place in folklore and the Yngling's genealogy in relation to other European royal genealogies and scholarly genealogical works in Iceland . As an argument, Krag proposed that
3393-557: The 11th century in most of Old East Norse. However, the distinction still holds in Dalecarlian dialects . The dots in the following vowel table separate the oral from nasal phonemes. Note: The open or open-mid vowels may be transcribed differently: Sometime around the 13th century, /ɔ/ (spelled ⟨ǫ⟩ ) merged with /ø/ or /o/ in most dialects except Old Danish , and Icelandic where /ɔ/ ( ǫ ) merged with /ø/ . This can be determined by their distinction within
3480-979: The 12th-century First Grammatical Treatise but not within the early 13th-century Prose Edda . The nasal vowels, also noted in the First Grammatical Treatise, are assumed to have been lost in most dialects by this time (but notably they are retained in Elfdalian and other dialects of Ovansiljan ). See Old Icelandic for the mergers of /øː/ (spelled ⟨œ⟩ ) with /ɛː/ (spelled ⟨æ⟩ ) and /ɛ/ (spelled ⟨ę⟩ ) with /e/ (spelled ⟨e⟩ ). Old Norse had three diphthong phonemes: /ɛi/ , /ɔu/ , /øy ~ ɛy/ (spelled ⟨ei⟩ , ⟨au⟩ , ⟨ey⟩ respectively). In East Norse these would monophthongize and merge with /eː/ and /øː/ , whereas in West Norse and its descendants
3567-668: The 13th century there. The age of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland is strongly contested, but Swedish settlement had spread the language into the region by the time of the Second Swedish Crusade in the 13th century at the latest. The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , and the extinct Norn language of Orkney and Shetland , although Norwegian
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3654-490: The Black was the half-brother of Olav Geirstadalv and Harald, and was thus Ragnvald's cousin, but neither Harald nor his father Halfdan are mentioned in the poem, so this is probably an attempt by Snorri and other writers to make Harald look more royal. It may have been the Icelandic poet Ari Þorgilsson who constructed the genealogy of the Ynglings and connected Harald Fairhair's seed to Ynglingatal. Snorri later developed this to
3741-572: The Faroe Islands, Faroese has also been influenced by Danish. Both Middle English (especially northern English dialects within the area of the Danelaw ) and Early Scots (including Lowland Scots ) were strongly influenced by Norse and contained many Old Norse loanwords . Consequently, Modern English (including Scottish English ), inherited a significant proportion of its vocabulary directly from Norse. The development of Norman French
3828-552: The Nordic folklore tradition, of which Yngling is a part, originated from the migration period and that people have historically not been Nordic figures. According to Lukmann, poems and legends about the Danish clans Scylding and Skilfings , which have much in common with the Ynglings, are part of a tradition from the migration period that really dealt with Huns and Heruli kings, and which has gradually evolved into legends known from
3915-509: The Norse period. Krag says this also fits with the Ynglings and he argues for many similarities in names, people and events. Old Norse Old Norse , also referred to as Old Nordic , or Old Scandinavian , was a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with
4002-638: The Olav Tryggvasson saga. Beyond this there are no more references to Thjodolf in the sagas in Heimskringla . Snorri wrote the preamble and the saga in the 1220s, over 300 years after Thjodolf should have lived, so any information about him is uncertain. According to the Ynglinga saga , Fjolne, the first king described in Ynglingatal , was the son of the god Frey and a giantess named Gerd. The actual poem mentions nothing about this, but since it only survives in citation it may have been mentioned in
4089-473: The Swedish plural land and numerous other examples. That also applies to almost all feminine nouns, for example the largest feminine noun group, the o-stem nouns (except the Swedish noun jord mentioned above), and even i-stem nouns and root nouns , such as Old West Norse mǫrk ( mörk in Icelandic) in comparison with Modern and Old Swedish mark . Vowel breaking, or fracture, caused
4176-453: The Wise was killed by a slave with a pitchfork when he was out to avenge the death of a sparrow. Dag's son Agne was hung by his wife Skjålv , and Agne's sons Alaric and Eric killed each other with a bridle when they were out riding. Their sons Yngve and Alf killed each other after being incited by Alf's wife Bera. The poem continues with varying degrees of mythical ways to die. Eventually
4263-475: The Yngling kings walked through the woods from the Svea kingdom to Norway. Here there is a clear break in the series and it is possible Thjodolf is linked here to the Norwegian seed in the Swedish genealogies to provide the Norwegian kings with a divine origin and thus greater legitimacy. The first breeding of the kings of Norway was supposed to have been Halfdan Hvitbeinn , who died in his bed at Toten . According to
4350-561: The Ynglinga Saga. The content of Ynglingatal has been interpreted and discussed, mostly during the National Romantic period of the 1800s. Norwegian historians Rudolf Keyser and Peter Andreas Munch held the traditional dating to the late 800s. The same applies to the historian Gustav Storm and the Icelandic philologist Finnur Jonsson. Around the time of World War I , saga literature was subjected to much criticism as
4437-429: The basis of Jesus' birth; the reckoning began to be used during the Middle Ages and is still in use. Are dated Harald Fairhair's birth to 848, and until the 1920s historians used Are's reckoning to calculate the composition time stamp for different people and events. In 1921 historian Halvdan Koht introduced generation counting and his method became the dominant one. In 1964, Icelandic historian Ólafía Einarsdóttir found
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#17327721132084524-541: The beginning of words, this manifested as a dropping of the initial /j/ (which was general, independent of the following vowel) or /v/ . Compare ON orð , úlfr , ár with English word, wolf, year . In inflections, this manifested as the dropping of the inflectional vowels. Thus, klæði + dat -i remains klæði , and sjáum in Icelandic progressed to sjǫ́um > sjǫ́m > sjám . The * jj and * ww of Proto-Germanic became ggj and ggv respectively in Old Norse,
4611-411: The cluster */Crʀ/ cannot be realized as /Crː/ , nor as */Crʀ/ , nor as */Cʀː/ . The same shortening as in vetr also occurs in lax = laks ('salmon') (as opposed to * lakss , * laksʀ ), botn ('bottom') (as opposed to * botnn , * botnʀ ), and jarl (as opposed to * jarll , * jarlʀ ). Furthermore, wherever the cluster */rʀ/
4698-449: The diphthongs remained. Old Norse has six plosive phonemes, /p/ being rare word-initially and /d/ and /b/ pronounced as voiced fricative allophones between vowels except in compound words (e.g. veðrabati ), already in the Proto-Germanic language (e.g. * b *[β] > [v] between vowels). The /ɡ/ phoneme was pronounced as [ɡ] after an /n/ or another /ɡ/ and as [k] before /s/ and /t/ . Some accounts have it
4785-498: The example above—defines the poem's structure. Akerlund has also said the bard Thjodolf learned the verse-form kviðuháttr by studying the Rök runestone in present-day Sweden, which dates from around the year 800. Ynglingatal is preserved in its entirety in Snorri's Ynglinga saga , which Snorri wrote based on the poem. In the saga, Snorri expanded his text by quoting from the poem in addition to his own text. A stanza from Ynglingatal
4872-404: The first four kings' deaths represent the cosmology of Greek philosopher Empedocles , with the four classical elements Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, and thus that a euhemeristic vision influenced the description of the first few generations. Krag's hypothesis has received serious criticism on several points, and so far "a convincing case has not been made against the authenticity of the poem as
4959-476: The grotesque and often ridiculous ways the kings in the poem die—they often appear to be dishonorable, which is clearly in breach of customs of the praising poem. Bergsveinn says the poem is old but the meaning of the praising poem is constructed by Snorri and other scholars of the Middle Ages . He also says Ynglingatal was not originally a genealogy, but is about different families . According to Bergsveinn,
5046-613: The king, who has high status, is valued above all other people. The author of the myth gives the king a special destiny as the main symbol within the ruling ideology in the Norse-thought universe. Both major ruling families in Norway, the Ynglings and Earls of Lade , legitimized their statuses by using a wedding myth. Just as Yngling had their legitimacy reinterpreted in Ynglingatal , the Ladejarlsætt got its equivalent in
5133-399: The long vowels with an acute accent. In medieval manuscripts, it is often unmarked but sometimes marked with an accent or through gemination . Old Norse had nasalized versions of all ten vowel places. These occurred as allophones of the vowels before nasal consonants and in places where a nasal had followed it in an older form of the word, before it was absorbed into a neighboring sound. If
5220-730: The most conservative language, such that in present-day Iceland, schoolchildren are able to read the 12th-century Icelandic sagas in the original language (in editions with normalised spelling). Old Icelandic was very close to Old Norwegian , and together they formed Old West Norse , which was also spoken in Norse settlements in Greenland , the Faroes , Ireland , Scotland , the Isle of Man , northwest England, and in Normandy . Old East Norse
5307-422: The myth also has an erotic element and is thus a fertility myth that tells of the relationship between the ruler and his "territory"; the scalds describe the land as a sexual, longing giantess who rested in the earl's arms. The prince guarantees growth and prosperity in their territory. There may have been a special connection between the king and the fertility goddess in times of crisis he was sacrificed to her. This
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#17327721132085394-566: The mythical story of Harald and the Sami girl Snæfrithr Svásadottir , who cursed Harald to marry her. According to the saga, Harald and Snøfrid had four sons but Harald sent them away when he woke up from the curse. Thjodolf raised one of these sons, Gudrod Ljome. When Thjodolf learned Harald had disowned his sons, he sided with the boys and said to Harald, "They probably would have liked better ancestry, if you had given them that". The saga contains no information about Thjodolf being Harald's scald; that
5481-514: The nasal was absorbed by a stressed vowel, it would also lengthen the vowel. This nasalization also occurred in the other Germanic languages, but were not retained long. They were noted in the First Grammatical Treatise , and otherwise might have remained unknown. The First Grammarian marked these with a dot above the letter. This notation did not catch on, and would soon be obsolete. Nasal and oral vowels probably merged around
5568-413: The next has four, the next three, and so on. For example: Ynglingatal has also makes extensive use of acquaintance , such as rewriting and metaphors that give life to the poem, which otherwise contains much litany . The Icelandic philologist Finnur Jónsson believed the eight-line stanza defines Ynglingatal' s structure, while Walter Akerlund believed the four-line helming—the half-stanza as in
5655-410: The old Icelandic reckoning more accurate; with adjustments this has since been the most commonly used approach. Traditionally, historians have attributed great source value to scaldic poems because of the tight form that made them easier to remember than narratives. If Ynglingatal is really from the late 800s, recent events would be relatively close in time to the scald, and there is a high likelihood
5742-641: The other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, and Gaelic ( Scottish and/or Irish ). Although Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have diverged the most, they still retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, particularly if speaking slowly. The languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders. This could be because these languages have been mutually affected by each other, as well as having
5829-529: The perception or construction of the poem as genealogy originates from the High Middle Ages . Swedish archeologist Svante Norr argues for an intermediate position for dating Ynglingatal . He said it is neither an authentic poem of the Viking Age nor a text from the Middle Ages. Norr accepts the traditional dating of poems origin , but says the poem was sung for the more than 300 years until it
5916-417: The poem Háleygjatal , which was written by the Norwegian poet Eyvindr skáldaspillir at the end of the 900s. In Háleygjatal it is Odin and the giantess Skade were of mythological origin, and their son Sæming is the ancestor of Hákon jarl. Both poems were thus used as genealogies and served as mythological propaganda, poetry, and grounds for alliances. According to religious historian Gro Steinsland ,
6003-430: The poem renders information about real people and events. Nevertheless, there is a distance of 500 years from Halfdan Hvitbeinn to Snorri, and 250 years from the poem's composition to the time Snorri wrote it down. Whether the original poem is preserved is uncertain. If Ynglingatal is younger, perhaps dating from the end of the 1100s as Krag says, its value as a source of real events shrinks further. According to Fidjestøl,
6090-662: The poem, his son Eystein was killed on a ship; he was beaten by the boat's vessel and fell into the sea. Eystein's son Halfdan died in his bed in Borre , where he was buried. Halfdan's son Gudrød was killed by the servant of his wife Åsa . The poem ends with Halfdan's son Olaf Geirstad-Alf and grandson Ragnvald Heidumhære . Tjodolv dedicated Ynglingatal to Ragnvald. The last stanza reads: Þat veitk bazt und blôum himni kenninafn, svát konungr eigi, es Rǫgnvaldr, reiðar stjóri, heiðumhôr of heitinn es. According to Snorri's Ynglinga Saga , Harald Fairhair's father Halfdan
6177-637: The remains of Eystein Halfdansson, Halfdan the Mild, Gudrød the Hunter, and Halfdan the Black are located at Borrehaugene outside Horten . When the issue of Ynglingatal ' s value as a source and recent archeological methods including C14 dating and dendrochronology are taken into account, finding out who was buried in the various barrows on the basis of information in this poem is at best educated guessing. In 1943, Danish historian Niels Lukmann said
6264-536: The root vowel, ǫ , is short. The clusters */Clʀ, Csʀ, Cnʀ, Crʀ/ cannot yield */Clː, Csː, Cnː, Crː/ respectively, instead /Cl, Cs, Cn, Cr/ . The effect of this shortening can result in the lack of distinction between some forms of the noun. In the case of vetr ('winter'), the nominative and accusative singular and plural forms are identical. The nominative singular and nominative and accusative plural would otherwise have been OWN * vetrr , OEN * wintrʀ . These forms are impossible because
6351-535: The saga. The composition of the poem is dated to the 9th century. The poem lists the partly mythical and partly historical ancient Swedish kings; twenty-seven of whom are mentioned in the poem, along with details about their deaths and burial places. The title Ynglingatal alludes to Yngling , who had the name Yngve-Frey—another name for Frey , the god who was worshipped in Sweden . Yngling allegedly descended from Frey's son Fjölnir . Snorri portrayed Harald Fairhair as
6438-441: The same language, dǫnsk tunga ("Danish tongue"; speakers of Old East Norse would have said dansk tunga ). Another term was norrœnt mál ("northern speech"). Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , Danish , Swedish , and other North Germanic varieties of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Icelandic remains
6525-747: The scald's main task was to express the Kingdom's official ideology, not necessarily render the facts. Archeologists, particularly Anton Wilhelm Brøgger in the early 1900s, have made many attempts to "place" the various youth kings and their wives in barrows in Vestfold . The most famous examples are the Queen Åsa in Oseberghaugen outside Tønsberg and Olaf Geirstad-Alf in Gokstadhaugen outside Sandefjord . In addition, archeologists have said
6612-497: The umlaut allophones . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , /ɛ/ , /ɛː/ , /øy/ , and all /ɛi/ were obtained by i-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /o/ , /oː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , /au/ , and /ai/ respectively. Others were formed via ʀ-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , and /au/ . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , and all /ɔ/ , /ɔː/ were obtained by u-umlaut from /i/ , /iː/ , /e/ , /eː/ , and /a/ , /aː/ respectively. See Old Icelandic for information on /ɔː/ . /œ/
6699-482: The verb skína ('to shine') had present tense third person skínn (rather than * skínr , * skínʀ ); while kala ('to cool down') had present tense third person kell (rather than * kelr , * kelʀ ). The rule is not absolute, with certain counter-examples such as vinr ('friend'), which has the synonym vin , yet retains the unabsorbed version, and jǫtunn (' giant '), where assimilation takes place even though
6786-420: Was Norway's first national king. To create a connection between them would thus enhance both their reputations. According to Finnur Jonsson , Thjodolf was Harald's scald without dwelling much on the subject. Finnur said Thjodolf was not a hird scald, but a scald who mostly stayed home on the farm, where in another saga we meet Thjodolf's grandson. Snorri mentions a man named Torgrim from Kvine, "son" to Thjodolf in
6873-404: Was a moderately inflected language with high levels of nominal and verbal inflection. Most of the fused morphemes are retained in modern Icelandic, especially in regard to noun case declensions, whereas modern Norwegian in comparison has moved towards more analytical word structures. Old Norse had three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives or pronouns referring to
6960-400: Was also influenced by Norse. Through Norman, to a smaller extent, so was modern French. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system. Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the vowel phonemes, has changed at least as much in Icelandic as in
7047-761: Was free of euhemerism—the notion of lineage of gods was added in the Christian era. Claus Krag said the first kings of the poem are historicized gods, and that the hypothesis of lost stanzas may be rejected. Opinions differ on whether breedings were historical figures. If all the kings in this poem really existed, the first of them must have lived in the Migration Period . It is usually only the "Norwegian" part of Ynglings—from Halfdan Hvitbeinn—that scientists have tried to prove or disprove were real, historical persons. They partly reasoned that people in Norse times kept track of their genus for six generations, thus it
7134-583: Was heavily influenced by the East dialect, and is today more similar to East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) than to Icelandic and Faroese. The descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages of Danish and Swedish . Among these, the grammar of Icelandic and Faroese have changed the least from Old Norse in the last thousand years, though their pronunciations both have changed considerably from Old Norse. With Danish rule of
7221-535: Was obtained through a simultaneous u- and i-umlaut of /a/ . It appears in words like gøra ( gjǫra , geyra ), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną , and commonly in verbs with a velar consonant before the suffix like søkkva < *sankwijaną . OEN often preserves the original value of the vowel directly preceding runic ʀ while OWN receives ʀ-umlaut. Compare runic OEN glaʀ, haʀi, hrauʀ with OWN gler, heri (later héri ), hrøyrr/hreyrr ("glass", "hare", "pile of rocks"). U-umlaut
7308-766: Was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, Kievan Rus' , eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in various settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language , ranging from Vinland in the West to the Volga River in the East. In Kievan Rus' , it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod , probably lasting into
7395-583: Was the son of Frey. This relationship is not mentioned in the actual poem. Fjolne drowned in a mead tub. The poem continues with his son Sveigðir , who followed a dwarf into a rock and never came out again. Then comes Sveigde's son Vanlande , who was strangled by a mare . Vanlande's son Visbur was burned alive and his son Domalde was sacrificed by the Swedish chiefs to get a good year's harvest. Domalde had his son Domar , who died of illness in Uppsala . Domar's son Dyggve also died of illness, and his son Dag
7482-561: Was used partitively and in compounds and kennings (e.g., Urðarbrunnr , the well of Urðr; Lokasenna , the gibing of Loki). There were several classes of nouns within each gender. The following is an example of the "strong" inflectional paradigms : Claus Krag Claus Krag (born April 21, 1943) is a Norwegian educator , historian , and writer. He is a noted specialist in Old Norse philology and medieval Norwegian history. Krag earned his Cand.philol. in 1969. He
7569-467: Was written down gradually, and must have undergone major changes to fit it into contemporaneous social conditions. According to Norr, genealogical poems cannot be used as historical sources because they depend on extant ideological, political and social conditions. He says the poem must be viewed as a development and a result of a long process of change. The Norwegian archaeologist Bjørn Myhre joins largely to Norr's standpoint. The meaning of term "yngling"
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