114. Dialects and written language in Old Nordic II: Old Danish and Old Swedish

Perridon, Harry; Bandle, Oskar

doi:10.1515/9783110197051-113

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“…Indeed, sidher itself likewise appears in Konungastyrelsen, where it can mean both "behaviour" and "moral." Returning to the point with which I concluded the survey of religious material, if Harry Perridon (2002Perridon ( , 1018 is correct that the North Germanic languages showed relatively little variation by the end of the Viking Age, and that their substantial differences arose afterwards, this implies that these senses of siðr were already present across the Germanic-speaking North by the eleventh century. Confidence in that assertion must be limited, however: the lexicons of East and West Norse are little-compared, and research so far has concentrated on phonological divergence (cf.…”

Section: Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Siðr, Religion and Morality

Taggart

2023

Gripla

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The religious semantics of Old Norse siðr have been heavily scrutinized by scholars over the last fifteen years, yet its moral dimensions have almost not been considered at all. In this, research on siðr may reflect the lack of attention paid in general to the morality of worshippers of Old Norse gods, beyond considerations of honour and masculinity. With this article, I aim to fill this gap in scholarship and to assess whether siðr’s moral semantics developed with the Christianization of the North or pre-existed it. To begin, I survey the earliest surviving instances of siðr and distinguish a range of denotations from their uses, from “religious praxis” to “individual practice” to “moral”. The last of these senses first clearly appears in Harmsól in the twelfth century, although moral dimensions do arise earlier. Despite the dearth of earlier attestation, it is proposed on the basis of those moral dimensions in earlier usage and the term’s geographical spread (as well as its etymological derivation) that siðr “moral” was popular and relevant during the Viking Age. The article concludes by briefly considering the relationship between morality and religion in the context of siðr, chiefly through the prism of legal change. Christian siðr may be inflexible already in the late Viking Age; however, siðr associated with Old Norse gods may also be less accommodating than is sometimes assumed, given how deeply embedded Old Norse religion was in the lives of its adherents and its possible legal and administrative connections. Siðr may not have meant “moral” for any Old Norse speaker in the same way as moral does for a speaker of modern English, and the evidence is too provisional to promote its use as an emic term for a Viking Age code of conduct. Nevertheless, siðr is the extant word that most captures that concept.

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Section: Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given how widespread siðr's religious semantics are, however, the suggestion has to be that they were already present across Scandinavia before differences between East and West Norse accelerated in the thirteenth century (cf. Perridon 2002Perridon , 1018.…”

Section: Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Siðr, Religion and Morality

Taggart

2023

Gripla

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“…One is the geographical distribution of the suffixed article: in spite of its low frequency in some early texts, it is attested in the 13 th century from all parts of the Scandinavian area: Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. And even earlier, in the first half of the 12 th century in Iceland (according to Perridon 2002, there is a consistent use in the First Grammatical Treatise. Moreover, although not frequent, even the very earliest texts in Sweden do contain quite a few definite articles.…”

Section: The Expansion Of the Definite Formsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammaticalization in the North: Noun phrase morphosyntax in Scandinavian vernaculars

Dahl¹

2015

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114. Dialects and written language in Old Nordic II: Old Danish and Old Swedish

Cited by 2 publications

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Siðr, Religion and Morality

Siðr, Religion and Morality

Grammaticalization in the North: Noun phrase morphosyntax in Scandinavian vernaculars

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