The Geography and Dialects of Old Saxon: River-basin communication networks and the distributional patterns of North Sea Germanic features in Old Saxon

Abstract

Historical Frisians in an archaeological light 5 Egge Knol and Nelleke IJssennagger 2. The Anglo-Frisian Question 25 John Hines 3. Frisian between the Roman and the Early Medieval Periods: Language contact, Celts and Romans 43 Peter Schrijver 4. 'All quiet on the Western Front?' The Western Netherlands and the 'North Sea Culture' in the Migration Period 53 Menno Dijkstra and Jan de Koning 5. Power and Identity in the Southern North Sea Area: The Migration and Merovingian Periods 75 Johan Nicolay 6. How 'English' is the Early Frisian Runic Corpus? The evidence of sounds and forms 93 Gaby Waxenberger 7. The Geography and Dialects of Old Saxon: River-basin communication networks and the distributional patterns of North Sea Germanic features in Old Saxon 125 Arjen Versloot and Elżbieta Adamczyk 8. Between Sievern and Gudendorf: Enclosed sites in the northwestern Elbe-Weser triangle and their significance in respect of society, communication and migration during the Roman Iron Age and Migration Period 149 Iris Aufderhaar 9. Cultural Convergence in a Maritime Context: Language and material culture as parallel phenomena in the early-medieval southern North Sea region 173 Pieterjan Deckers vi 10. The Kingdom of East Anglia, Frisia and Continental Connections, c. ad 600-900 Tim Pestell 11. A Comparison of the Injury Tariffs in the Early Kentish and the Frisian Law Codes Han Nijdam 12. Cultural Contacts between the Western Baltic, the North Sea Region and Scandinavia: Attributing runic finds to runic traditions and corpora of the Early Viking Age Christiane Zimmermann and Hauke Jöns Index vii figures Palaeography and People, Egge Knol and Nelleke IJssennagger 1.1 Palaeogeographical map of the northern Netherlands, c. 500 bc. 1.2 Palaeogeographical map of the northern Netherlands, c. ad 800. 1.3 The Frisian coastal area in the 8th century ad and the dates of conversion to Christianity. 1.4 The distribution of Frisian regions around ad 1300. 1.5 The 8th-century weapon grave of Antum. The Anglo-Frisian Question, John Hines 2.1 Rune-forms representing a, ae, o and oe in the Anglo-Saxon fuþorc. 2.2 The reverse of the Schweindorf solidus. 2.3 Copper-alloy brooches found in England and the Netherlands. 'All quiet on the Western Front', Menno Dijkstra and Jan de Koning 4.1 Palaeogeographical reconstruction of the Netherlands in the early Middle Ages. 4.2 Palaeogeographical reconstruction with the distribution of water-and place-names that derive from prehistoric or Roman times in the western Netherlands. 4.3 Handmade plain and decorated 'Anglo-Saxon' style pottery from the early-medieval cemetery of Rijnsburg-De Horn. 4.4 The cruciform brooch from Katwijk. 4.5 The perifical geographical position of the western Dutch coastal area in the Migration Period. Power and Identity in the Southern North Sea Area, Johan Nicolay 5.1 Equal-armed brooch from Dösemoor (Lkr. Stade). 5.2 Geographical distribution of 5th-century 'Saxon-style' equal-armed brooches. 5.3 Type-C bracteates from the coastal areas of the northern Netherlands and northern Germany...

Old Saxon and Middle Low German Adverbs of Degree: A Case of Diachronic Discontinuity?

“…One implication of interpreting this convergence solely based on language contact is that the system of adverbs of degree had to be quite stable between the departure of the Anglo-Saxons and the composition of the Heliand: The similarity of the system of degree adverbs in the Heliand and Genesis to the one in Old English suggests that relatively little change must have occurred during this early period (as opposed to fairly significant changes that must have occurred later). Such a state of the system, however, would be more in line with the hypothesis of early linguistic stability (Krogh 1996:403-404, Krogh 2013, Versloot & Adamczyk 2017 than with early dialect mixing (Wolff 1934:154, Stiles 1995:202, Braunmüller 2007:32, Peters 2012:447, Stiles 2013.…”

“…Additionally, there are four surviving fragments (Cathey 2002:22-24, Schmid 2006, indicating that the text was quite widespread. The most notable of these fragments is the Straubing fragment (S), which is the manuscript with the most North Sea Germanic features including ones that appear to resemble Old Frisian (Nielsen 1988, Klein 1990, Versloot & Adamczyk 2017. 1 Outside of the Heliand, a number of smaller Old Saxon fragments survive.…”

“…3 While the different manuscripts show great orthographic variation, it is unclear if these represent dialectal variation or influence from other scribal traditions: As Fulk (2018:29) states, it is impossible to establish distinct dialects for Old Saxon. Yet, a distinction between west and east has been observed for the nonliterary fragments (Versloot & Adamczyk 2017). The largest part of the Old Saxon fragments comes from the southwest, mainly Essen and Werden (Versloot & Adamczyk 2017:128).…”

The Early Jutish Bracteate Texts From Skonager And Darum

“…But the monophthongisation of * au > ō reflected in Frōilō , and Old Saxon and Old High German frōiō suggests that the name on the Darum I bracteate is written in a dialect ancestral to Old Saxon, not to Kentish. Old Saxon is usually grouped with Old English in the West Germanic dialectal grouping that Frings (1948) called Ingvaeonic and Maurer (1942) described as North Sea Germanic—attempts to distinguish Old Saxon dialectally from Ingvaeonic have generally been rejected (Krogh 1996; Versloot & Adamczyk 2017). Yet, the monophthongisation of * au > ō in Old Saxon is usually dated to the period after the Anglo‐Saxons migrated to sub‐Roman Britain and the Ingvaeonic dialect continuum began to break up.…”