Modern Icelandic is closer to the speech patterns of the Middle Ages than any living European language. Thus, a knowledge of Icelandic is highly relevant to the study of English history. This volume, one of the most complete available, will be indispensable to scholars of medieval Icelandic and English culture and history.
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About the Author
Geir T. Zoega (1857-1928) was the first master in the Grammar School of Reykjavík and the author of An English-Icelandic and Icelandic-English Dictionary.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Indispensable!,
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This review is from: A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Dover Language Guides) (Paperback)
Zoëga's dictionary has been a classic in the field since it first appeared almost a century ago. Both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien knew the dictionary and had their own well-thumbed copies. Lewis mentions in his letters his great enjoyment in perusing "his Zoëga" at leisure, and Tolkien alludes to it as the "standard" in the preface to his Middle English Glossary. Also, the preeminent Old Norse scholar, William Craigie (also a mentor to Tolkien), assisted Zoëga with the manuscript and the proof-revisions. This is a terrific volume even for idle browsing -- you'll almost always discover some interesting word, compound, or cognate -- and it's absolutely indispensable to have at your side if you want to take a shot at reading the Old Norse literature in the original language. It even has a short grammatical outline at the end of the book.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential reference for students of Old Norse/Old Icelandic,
By abt1950 "abt1950" (usa) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Dover Language Guides) (Paperback)
This dictionary packs a lot of information into a relatively small space. Zoega is a condensation of the massive 1869-1874 Old Icelandic dictionary by Cleasby and Vigfusson. Since most students of Old Icelandic didn't have access to this work, for many years Zoega was pretty much the only game in town for English speakers. Now both it and Cleasby-Vigfusson are available online, but it's still nice to have a hard copy of Zoega in you hands while trying to figure out just what that weird idiomatic construction is supposed to mean. There is no formal grammar included here, but there are some vital charts at the back of the book that provide basic information about endings for nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. Zoega was originally published by Oxford University Press, and it's nice to see that Dover has decided to reprint it. Believe it or not, this dictionary is nearly one hundred years old! It's got a lot of staying power.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Needed Missing Piece,
By mick williams (Hampton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Dover Language Guides) (Paperback)
The write stuff:
Practically the only fault I can find is the lack of an English- Norse section, which would simplify things for novelists who want their Viking characters to sound authentic. Still, you can find a wealth of material in sample sentences. The more difficult of these are given English translations. Since it's a scholarly work, don't look for slang or very much colloquial speech. On the technical front: Standard format is followed, where vowel fusions, umlauts, etc. are presented at the end of their respective letter sections. Words beginning with such characters begin after the V section. Most useful is the separation of nominative from genitive forms. This makes wading through medieval readers much easier (the stated goal of the author). When you come upon an unfamiliar word--nowhere to be found in the reader's glossary--you can find it in the dictionary, whereupon you're directed to the root word for a full definition. For students: It's informative to compare modern Icelandic with Old Norse. For example, you'll find that "athugi" becomes the modern form "athygli".
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- A World of Others' Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality by Richard Bauman in Back Matter
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