Early vs Late Old Norse

[Otto Kretschmer]

How does Early Old Norse ca 800-900 AD differ from later versions ca 1200 which is usually taught?

[Znex]

You might be interested in these threads on the CBB sister site:
Early old norse
Phonological history of Swedish

[Moose-tache]

I've heard that the copula is quite different from early to late ON. Early on s-endings, like English "is" obtained. By the classic high medieval ON these had changed by anaology to the r-endings of today.

[vegfarandi]

Icelandic retained -s in the copula well into the second millennium: ek em, þú est, hann/hún/þat es… The Sagas were mostly written in the 1300s and some of them have these forms vs. the -r forms.

[Ephraim]

Icelandic retained -s in the copula well into the second millennium: ek em, þú est, hann/hún/þat es… The Sagas were mostly written in the 1300s and some of them have these forms vs. the -r forms.

At least according to Jackson Crawford, the 2sg form *est is actually not attested in Old Icelandic manuscripts (or maybe just attested once), although it is sporadically attested in Norwegian manuscripts. The 3sg form es is well attested in Icelandic manuscripts, though, as are the past indicative forms vas and vast and the infinitive vesa.
https://journals.lub.lu.se/anf/article/ ... 762/17010/
(I’m not fully convinced by his arguments about the etymology of ert, which derives the form from another root, but his notes about the difference in distribution between the different forms are still interesting).

In Old Swedish manuscripts, on the other hand, I think only 2sg äst and 3sg är are attested (with spelling variation), not *ärt or *äs. Also, from what I understand, only r-forms are attested for the infinitive (vara or vära) and the 1sg and 3sg past indicative (var) but for the 2sg, both are attested (vast and värt, not sure about ?vart).

Swedish 3sg äst was eventually replaced by the same form as the 3sg, är (never by *ärt), but äst is, at least sporadically, still used in writing well into the 18th century. The 1sg äm was replaced by är at an earlier time.

[Otto Kretschmer]

nice to know folks know about Jackson Crawford