NORSE LANGUAGE. The Old Norwegian language (till the Reformation) was not, like the modern language, confined to Norway and the Faroe islands, but was for some time spoken in parts of Ireland and the north of Scotland, the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, Shetland and Orkney (where it continued to the end of the 18th century), and also in certain parts of western Sweden.
The runic inscriptions in Old Norse are few in number (about 15o) and of trifling philological importance, since they belong almost wholly to the period between 1050 and 135o, and are con sequently not much earlier than the earliest literature. The whole literature preserved is written in the Latin alphabet. The earliest manuscripts are not much later than the oldest Old Icelandic ones and are of the greatest interest. The masses of charters which occur throughout the whole middle age of Norway from the beginning of the 13th century give information, especially of dialect.
In Old Norwegian the most primitive forms occur in old poems from times as remote as the days of porbiorn Hornklofi (end of the 9th century). The language at this epoch differed very little from other Scandinavian dialects. From the 13th century, Nor wegian, owing to geographical and political circumstances, is con siderably influenced by the eastern Scandinavian languages. The tendency in Norwegian to reduce the use of the so-called u-Umlaut has already appeared. There appears another kind of vowel assimilation, almost unknown to Icelandic, the vowel in termina tions being in some degree influenced by the vowel of the preceding syllable. Thus, for instance, we find in some manuscripts that the vowels e, o, 0, and long a, ce, are followed in terminations by e, o; u, y and short a, e, on the other hand, by i, u—as in bOner, prayers, konor, women ; but ti5ir, times, tungur, tongues. The
same fact occurs in certain Old Swedish manuscripts. When Nor way had been united later with Sweden under one crown (1319) we meet pure Suecisms in the Norwegian literary language. In addition to this, the 14th century exhibits several differences from the old language : rl, rn are sometimes assimilated into ll, nn—as kall (elder karl), man, konn (korn), corn, prestanner (prestarnir), the priests; i passes into y before r, /—as hyr6ir (hirffir), shep herd, lykyl (lykill), key; final -r after a consonant is changed into -ar, -er, -ir, -or, -ur or cer, sometimes only -a, -e, ce—as Hester (hestr), horse, bOker (bOkr), books, the names Polleifoer (por leifr), Gublxifme (GuMeifr). About the beginning of the 15th cen tury initial kv occurs for old hv (not, however, in pronouns, which take kv only in western Norway), as the local name Quiteseie (hvitr, white). During the 15th century, Norway being united with Denmark, and at intervals also with Sweden, a great many Danisms and a few Suecisms are imported into the language. Towards the end of the middle ages the Danish influence shows an immense increase, until at last Norwegian as a literary language is supplanted by Danish. Many Norse dialects developed in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. The language of western Norway resembles Icelandic, and the language of eastern Norway is still nearer to contemporary Old Swedish. The present dialectical division was in all essentials accomplished about the year 1600.