What is it about?
This research challenges the long-standing assumption that Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic can be treated as a single unit in syntactic analyses. Through a detailed annotation of one Old Norwegian text – Konungs skuggsjá (The King’s Mirror) in the 13th-century manuscript AM 243bα fol. – the study investigates word order variation in Old Norwegian and its interaction with information status (given versus new information) and prosodic weight (“heaviness” of elements). By analyzing Old Norwegian separately and comparing it to Old Icelandic, the findings reveal significant syntactic differences and divergent developments at an earlier stage in the history of these languages than previously assumed. Whereas Old Icelandic retains a strong dependence on information-structural constraints, Norwegian began to exhibit a gradual weakening of these influences, showing tendencies toward fixed word order relatively early. Across four studies, the research combines linguistic and manuscript analysis, exploring VO/OV variation, the placement of modifiers within noun phrases, and visual strategies such as punctuation as markers of topic and focus. Incorporating visual cues from the manuscript alongside linguistic signals helps compensate, at least in part, for the lack of intonation in the written medium by analyzing other strategies available to medieval scribes. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Old Norwegian syntax, demonstrating how linguistic and visual structuring interact and marking the starting point for distinct syntactic developments within the West Norse languages.
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Why is it important?
Providing analyses based on annotated corpus material for a less-studied language like Old Norwegian is a significant contribution to both international linguistics and the specialized study of Old Norse. By examining Old Norwegian separately and in contrast to Old Icelandic, this research deepens our understanding of Norwegian’s early development toward fixed word order and underscores the value of comparative studies – even among closely related languages. The study also offers new insights into how principles of information structure are reflected visually on manuscript pages. Visual cues such as punctuation worked alongside linguistic strategies to organize text and emphasize key elements. This highlights the benefits of examining the strategies available to medieval scribes together with linguistic variation when studying discourse structuring in historical texts.
Perspectives
As a linguist and scholar of Old Norse, taking a critical perspective on the long-standing and unchallenged assumption of syntactic unity between Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic was an exciting direction for my research. Questioning this tradition opened the door to compare these closely related languages, deepening our understanding of how Norwegian began to diverge syntactically at an early stage, and demonstrating the value of challenging long-held assumptions in the field. Working on this project was both challenging and rewarding. As I decided to combine linguistic analysis with manuscript studies, the analysis became more complex, requiring attention to both structural patterns and the visual strategies used by medieval scribes. For me, the most fascinating aspect was showing how syntactic shifts in Old Norwegian emerge through patterns of word order, their frequency, and the mechanisms behind variation – marking the beginning of a distinct path toward modern Norwegian.
Senior academic librarian Juliane Tiemann
University of Bergen
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This page is a summary of: Main Findings, December 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004748927_006.
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