Resources
Below are some essential resources for the study of Old Norse. A group-specific file repository is here.
Course aids
Please excuse any errors or shortcomings in these documents, which were put together during the 2011 course and have not had the benefit of extensive proofreading. Contact Paul if you have any questions or recommendations.
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Handouts and slides
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Occasional handouts and html slides used in class (level two).
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What is case?
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A beginner's introduction.
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Pronouns
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Side-by-side paradigms of Old English, Old Norse, and Modern English pronouns.
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Nouns
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Charts and paradigms like those found in textbooks, but now accompanied by user-friendly yet detailed explanations.
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Weak verbs
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An explanation of the weak verb classes.
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Strong verbs
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An index of patterns in strong conjugation and full paradigms for all seven classes.
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Strong verb paradigms
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A web interface for Sean Crist's 198 strong verb paradigms, greatly improved but still containing some errors.
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Functions of the cases
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A sketch of the various uses of the oblique cases, with examples.
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Learning by formula: saga introductions
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Brief reading extracts to help students understand commonly-used constructions.
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Flashcards
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Rollover flashcards for numerous paradigms and the vocabulary for Valfells and Cathey.
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Grammars and textbooks
On the merits of the various works as textbooks, see the discussion accompanying this blog post.
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Barnes–Faulkes
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The most recent authoritative method, very user-friendly. All three volumes (grammar, reader, and glossary) are freely downloadable from the publisher's website.
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pdf: grammar, reader, glossary
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Gordon
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The classical primer and reader. The grammar section is more of a reference work than a textbook by today's standards.
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paperback
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Krause–Slocum
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A detailed online grammar and reader, with an extensive sentence-by-sentence glossary.
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html
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Noreen
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A detailed historical grammar of Old Norse, for those left with questions about sound-laws and stem origins. In German.
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pdf
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Guðlaugsson–Þorgeirsson
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An online course.
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html
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Sweet–Hall
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A venerable old textbook, recently updated by Alaric Hall.
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pdf
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Valfells and Cathey
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A textbook teaching Old Norse as though it were a living language, with vocabulary and exercises.
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out of print
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Wills
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A concise and accessible current digital textbook.
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pdf
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Dictionaries
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Cleasby–Vígfússon
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The largest Norse–English dictionary
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html/png
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Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, A–Em
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The most recent dictionary, as yet incomplete, into Danish and English.
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html, hardback
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Fritzner
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The best dictionary of Old Norse, but it translates into Bokmål and dates from the blackletter era!
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html, pdf1
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Heggstad
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The second-best dictionary of Old Norse, in a current revision, but it translates into Nynorsk.
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hardback
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Lexicon poeticum
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A Norse–Danish poetic dictionary. Its first edition is Norse–Neolatin.
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png, pdf
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| Zoëga
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A shorter Norse–English dictionary, based on Cleasby–Vígfússon. Available in affordable paperback.
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html, paperback
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Texts
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Heimskringla
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Family sagas, legendary sagas, both Eddas, Heimskringla, and various poetry, mostly with Old Norse spelling.
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html
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Netútgáfan
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Family sagas, legendary sagas, short stories (þættir), Heimskringla, Jómsvíkinga saga, Landnámabók, and Gylfaginning, all with Modern Icelandic spelling.
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html
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Septentrionalia
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A wide variety of early scholarly editions.
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pdf
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Viking Society publications
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Various scholarly editions, some published as recently as 2004, available free of charge at the publisher's website.
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pdf
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External aids
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Old Icelandic morphological analysis
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A parser of inflected forms by Francis Tyers, using Sean Crist's form-lists, which are impressive yet contain many an error. Works for common verbs and nouns as well as a few adjectives. You'll have to ignore the html tags output by the parser. A version of Crist's data is also available as a single plaintext file here. If that comes out garbled, you'll have to set your browser or editor's text-encoding settings to UTF-8.
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Old Norse Word Study Tool
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Hosted by Perseus, this parser is not without errors. To get full paradigms, try this buggy interface.
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Verbix Old Norse verb paradigms
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A paradigm service for a limited set of Old Norse verbs. Not without errors.
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Modern Icelandic inflection tool
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The Beygingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls gives you the full Modern Icelandic paradigm of pretty much any current word. If you check the box, you can also search for inflected forms. Remember that Old Norse inflection, though very similar, will differ somewhat. See also Alaric's guide to this Icelandic-only tool.
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Alaric Hall's Norse resources
| Magic Sheet of Old Norse paradigms; core vocabulary; video lectures.
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| Icelandic Online
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Did you know that Icelandic has changed very little since the Middle Ages? Learn Modern Icelandic and you'll be able to read the sagas quite easily! This online multimedia course is a superb way of learning the language at your own pace, and free of charge.
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Alaric Hall's Beginner's mp3 course in modern Icelandic
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Eight hours of audio learning, freely available in mp3 format.
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