[Sca-cooks] eths and thorns, oh my

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

>
>     It is very helpful; but Svalbarth is Old Icelandic--do the rules for
> the Anglo-Saxon characters apply across languages???

The Old Icelandic spelling would depend on which century we are talking
about here. 12th century texts would probably have Svalbarþ (I assume we are
talking about the farm Svalbarð in Northern Iceland, not the island
Svalbarði). In the 13th century, the spelling changed to Svalbarð. In the
15th century, Svalbard. In modern Icelandic, we have Svalbarð again.

The following is taken from a short history of the Icelandic alphabeth,
available at http://www.stadlar.is:

"Even if Þorn was nowhere in use except in Iceland after 1500 when the
English stopped using it, the printers of all Icelandic text had a
printing-glyph made for it. They also made a special printing-glyph for an
f, that had developed in Iceland out of insular script from England/Ireland,
the same as þ. Other glyphs for Icelandic characters originated from
main-stream Europe.

Þorn is today only used and only needed, in beginning of words or in
composites, but it was also used, inside words in the oldest manuscripts.
The examples in my table are typical for the development. The Eth replaced
þorn inside words and was then replaced with a d. The Eth was written like a
d with a stroke through it, or phrased differently: the less frequent d was
written like "an Eth without a stroke" as the Caroline d with a straight leg
was about to disappear when ð was introduced.

Þorn is the only Icelandic special character that is consistently used from
the beginning of writing in Iceland to present time. It is difficult to find
manuscripts, private letter or a book without it. I do not know of any
instances in manuscripts were it is replaced word-initially by anything else
with one exception: As an initial at the beginning of a paragraph, the
capital d with stroke or Ð was used in place of Þ in a small percent of
Norwegian and Icelandic Medieval manuscripts. I must also add that using a
different glyph word-initially and another glyph at the end of a syllable
for the same letter, is standard practice for the letter s, in the Fracture
(gothic) font. Thus Þorn and Eth might be seen as the same letter in such a
font, but this is hardly relevant as the Eth was re-introduced about the
same time that Icelanders stopped using Fracture-fonts."

Nanna