[ANSTHRLD] The Virtues of Geirr Bassi, Pronunciation of Gunnvor

[Christie Ward]

Daniel said:
>While lacking dates is a problem for most books, at least we know that
>Geirr Bassi's names are all period, so it's still usable as SCA
>documentation.  Maybe not Old Norse, from what you write, and if
>you're looking for Old Norse in particular that's annoying.

Geirr Bassi isn't a *bad* source at all.  It's good for names from ca. the 
9th to the 14th century.  All the names are "Old Norse", meaning that 
they're a normalized form of Old Icelandic as typically found in 13th 
century Icelandic manuscripts. The reason it's somewhat inadequate is purely 
custonmer service related and not RfS-related, and I'll explain more why 
that is so.

What was actually being *spoken* in Scandinavia at any given time/location 
depends on exactly when and where you're talking about.  I've got a timeline 
graphic at 
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/test/graphics/pagecontent/ONTimeline.gif 
that shows this...

By the start of the Viking Age (ca. 800) there were already two distinct 
dialects, Old West Norse (used in Norway and the Norse colonies in the 
Atlantic such as Iceland, the Danelaw, the Hebridies, Orkneys, etc.) and Old 
East Norse (Sweden and Denmark and points east).  By 1200 (just past the end 
of the Viking Age) you don't have Old West Norse anymore - the linguistic 
differences add up and by that point we can talk about Old Icelandic and Old 
Norwegian.  By 1250, there are distinct forms we call Old Swedish and Old 
Danish.  By the start of the 16th century we get the modern forms of the 
languages.  The east vs. west differences affect a good many names - some 
are identical everywhere in Scandinavia, but some have differing forms east 
vs west, and some only appear in east or only in west and not vice versa.

So, if you have a client who wants to be "A VIKING" then you only want names 
from ca. 800-1100, and those are more challenging to winkle out.  Even just 
relying on the ones that are marked in Geirr Bassi as coming from 
Landnámabók won't do it, because that source has genealogies from the 
settlement ca. 850s all the way through the time of the author in the late 
13th century.

And I frequently hear from people for whom it is very important that they be 
"A SWEDISH VIKING" or "A NORWEGIAN VIKING" etc... that location/nationality 
is often *VERY* important to them.  And nothing in Geirr Bassi is 
particularly helpful for names from Sweden or Denmark at all - it's good for 
Old West Scandinavian names from Iceland and Norway.

What is tres cool is that there are free, easily-accessible online sources 
that will allow someone to get name info, *with* the dates and location 
info, and you *can* get a specifically Viking Age name, or a specifically 
Swedish Viking name, etc.  The only problem with these online sources is 
that they need some explanation on how to use the source.

If folks are interested, I can post my whole list of useful online Norse 
name sources with notes and examples on how to use them.  It's not hard, but 
you do have to know how to extract the data you want from some of them.

Clare asked:
>Out of curiosity and I was going to ask you at the Fall Arts Symposium but
>how do you pronounce your name?  I also call you Gunnora but then I
>wondered if the spelling below is actually pronounced differently.

The Old Norse form of my name is <Gunnvôr>, where the <ô> represents the 
o-ogonek that is used to stand for a variety of scribal symbols that 
represent the sound of <o> in English "corn".  The name is pronounced 
roughly /GOON-wor/, where \OO\ is as in "moon" and once again the <o> is the 
same as in "corn".  Try saying "Gunnora" like the Muppet's Swedish Chef and 
you're very close.

Since Old Norse is inflected, depending on which part is speech the name is 
being used it, it would be:

<Gunnvôr>   \GOON-wor\   (nominative, used as the subject)
<Gunnvarar> \GOON-warar\ (genitive, showing possession)
<Gunnvara>  \GOON-wara\  (accusative, used as direct object)
<Gunnvari>   \GUNN-waree\ (dative, indirect object)

In the Danelaw, we get <Gunnora>, <Gunnware>, <Gunnor> etc.  In Normandy, 
the Duchess and wife of Richard I was recorded in various Latin documents as 
<Gonnor>, <Gunnor>, <Gunwera>, etc.

So overall, "Gunnora" is really very close to the pronunciation of <Gunnvôr> 
in speech, anyway.  If you can get a little "w" sound into the midst of the 
name, it's good, but as you can see from later forms of the same name and 
the inflected Old Norse forms, it looks like people tended to slur the "w" 
into the end of the name anyway.

I generally will answer to anything close.  The exception, or course, being 
if you pronounce it \GAHN-nohr-ree-ah\, in which case I WILL hunt you down 
and attempt to break one bone per syllable, with bonus breakage if you said 
the name pronounced this way more than once. (And no, I'm not joking about 
the bone-breaking.  Ask anyone who's been around a bit.)

::GUNNVOR::