[ANSTHRLD] The Virtues of Geirr Bassi, Pronunciation of Gunnvor
Christie Ward
val_org at hotmail.com
Wed Oct 19 09:42:19 PDT 2005
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::
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