354
355
verbs has changed, becoming more regular but also somewhat flexible, quite possibly for reasons of poesy. (The most common pre-plague conjugation has been almost totally abandoned, perhaps also for reasons of poesy.) And in writing, the usual 29th century spellings are more closely phonetic. Here again, poesy seems to have been a factor, as most post-plague Scandinavian writing has been the recording of oral poetry.
Many words have changed, but most such changes are not great. Existing parchments show that the major vocabulary changes took place during the first two post-plague centuries. Many changes amounted simply to the ropping of sounds which already tended to be elided in the pre-plague languages. (Of course, almost the total pre-plague technical and commercial vocabularies were lost, but they were no longer relevant.)
Several cultural factors seem to account for this remarkable linguistic conservatism. The first two seem to be responsible for the modesty of changes over the first two post-plague centuries. (1) The Scandinavians in general retained a knowledge of writing and reading, even if they didn’t do much of it, and tended to follow old spellings. (2) The old spellings tended to follow standard pronunciations, which in turn tended, somewhat, to stabilize pronunciations and usages.
After the first two centuries, another factor came to play the major role. As fighting and heroes became increasingly prominent culturally, poetry became much used to celebrate champions and events, and poets became the models and arbiters of language. There is clear evidence that the changes in the conjugation of verbs grew out of poets modifying words to make them more graceful and more amenable to popular meters. The same is true of words which have lost syllables. It has even been suggested that the neuter gender was dropped because neuter grammatical endings sounded less pleasing. Further, many words have more than one form, providing poets with choices to fit whatever meter they may have selected.
356
Every clan in every generation has its principal skald, who not only composes but teaches poems, and who knows the works of poets outside the clan. Besides these clan skalds, every village has its principal reciter of poetry, often a man or woman with a debilitating physical handicap. These village skalds may or may not compose poetry of their own, though usually they do. They function not only to entertain but to learn as many poems as possible. Commonly they are provided with partial or complete subsistence for their efforts.
Beyond these are wandering skalds who travel not only from village to village, but from clan to clan, and tribe to tribe. These wanderers, almost invariably treated with respect, recite publicly, and also teach the local skalds favorite poems from other clans and tribes. Thus, in their old homeland, a poem composed by a skald of the Ice-Bear Clan of the Norskar, far up the Norwegian coast— a poem celebrating a famous polar bear hunt—could be heard and learned verbatim by skalds of the Eel Clan of the Jötar, at the southern tip of Sweden, and the Reindeer Clan of the Svear, near the head of the Gulf of Bothnia.
During the long winter nights, many persons other than skalds learn to recite their favorite poems, or at least their favorite cantos, verbatim. And while they tend to favor tales of their own heroes, more than a few of those tales are from far away.
I said verbatim. That is very important. Those who recite verbatim, copy not only the words but the pronunciations of the composer, as far as they’re aware of it.
The principal skalds usually own and pass down to their successors, written copies of numerous poems, especially the more popular. And additional copies may be made by persons who can afford the parchment and ink. (The ink has to retain its visibility well, of course, and ink-making is an art among the Scandinavians.)
Spellings, like pronunciations, in general tend to follow those of the skalds, and through poetry, those of different tribes and clans influence each other. Poets among the
357
Svear and Totar in particular spell very much alike, and their considerable written volume has influenced considerably the orthography of Norse poets as well. (Yet there is flexibility in spelling. A poet may spell a word differently in the same poem, to accommodate cadence.)