Altnordisches Etymologisches Worterbuch [Library Binding]

J. de Vries (Author)

Product Details

• Library Binding: 689 pages
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers; 2 Revised edition (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9004054367
• ISBN-13: 978-9004054363
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,904,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars de Vries is de Best, July 31, 2001

By 

Cinna the Poet (Zeeusche Uytkyk, Svalbard) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Altnordisches Etymologisches Worterbuch (Library Binding)

If you're at all serious about Icelandic/Old Norse, or even Germanistik in general (or even Indogermanistik), then you should by all means buy this book! A hundred bucks is steep, I know, but it's par for the course in this kind of thing, and well worth it to get de Vries.

De Vries's Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch is the standard etymol. dictionary of Old Norse and you simply can't find better. (There's one other, in English, but it runs about $400 and it's not as good.)

One nice thing about this book is that it gives a definition for each word treated, and so acts as a regular semantic dictionary as well (they're hard to find for Old Norse!). Plus, it will give cognates in Old English (and occasionally modern English) and other Germanic languages, plus Greek, Sanskrit, etc., and reflexes in modern Icelandic.

If you're interested in Old English, then get F. Holthausen's Altenglisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, 1974. ISBN: 3 533 00508 9), which is not as easy to use (because Anglo-Saxon orthography is so much more "flexible" than Norse), but is helpful and standard for that field.

P.S. If you're reading this at all, then you're a very rare breed. Kudos for going Germanistik, instead of that boring old French stuff. Good luck!