Old Gutnish was a stage in the development of the

North Germanic language The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also ...

Gutnish, spoken on the Baltic island of

Gotland Gotland (; ; ''Gutland'' in Gutnish), also historically spelled Gottland or Gothland (), is Sweden's largest island. It is also a Provinces of Sweden, province/Counties of Sweden, county (Swedish län), Municipalities of Sweden, municipality, a ...

and

Fårö Fårö () or in Gutnish is a Baltic Sea island just north of the island of Gotland, itself off mainland Sweden's southeastern coast. It is the second-largest island in the county and it is a popular summer resort. It has its own language, Fårö ...

. The extant body of Old Gutnish is small, and

Gutalagen Gutalagen (or Guta lag; "The law of the Gotlanders") is the earliest preserved law book for Gotland. The laws were likely first written down around 1220 CE but there is evidence for the laws being older than this, with some aspects likely being ...

and the Guta saga constitute its majority.

Distribution

Old Gutnish was spoken on

and

, which lies to its north, during the

Viking Age The Viking Age (about ) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their ...

and

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

Linguistics and relation to other languages

Old Gutnish is ancestral to Modern Gutnish. The root ''Gut'' is identical to ''Goth'', and it is often remarked that the language has similarities with the

Gothic language Gothic is an extinct language, extinct East Germanic languages, East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the ''Codex Argenteus'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only Ea ...

. These similarities have led scholars such as Elias Wessén and Dietrich Hofmann to suggest that it is most closely related to Gothic. The best known example of such a similarity is that Gothic and Gutnish called both adult and young sheep . The Old Norse diphthong ''au'' (e.g. "eye") remained in Old Gutnish and Old West Norse, while in Old East Norse – except for peripheral dialects – it evolved into the monophthong ''ǿ'', i.e., a long version of ''ø''. Likewise the diphthong ''ai'' in ("bone") remained in Old Gutnish while in Old West Norse it became ''ei'' as in and in Old East Norse it became ''é'' (). Whereas Old West Norse had the ''ey'' diphthong and Old East Norse evolved the monophthong ''ǿ'' Old Gutnish had ''oy''.

Extant texts

The body of Old Gutnish is smaller than that of the other attested Old Norse dialects. It includes runic inscriptions on Gotland such as G181 and G 207. Old Gutnish

runic calendar A Runic calendar (also Rune staff or Runic almanac) is a perpetual calendar, variants of which were used in Northern Europe until the 19th century. A typical runic calendar consisted of several horizontal lines of symbols, one above the ...

s have also been collected, including one dating to 1328 and one dating to 1578 which is now lost but is partly preserved in '' Analecta Gothlandensia Walliniana'', compiled in the 1740s. The majority of Old Gutnish text is in the manuscript Holm B 64, which includes both

and Gutasagan, and AM 54, from the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection which contains a version of Gutalagen with substantially more Danish linguistic influence.

Language sample

Text from Gutasaga: Normalised orthography: Translation to Icelandic: Translation to English:

References

Bibliography

Primary

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Secondary

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Nationalencyklopedin (; "The National Encyclopedia" in English), abbreviated NE, is a comprehensive contemporary Swedish-language encyclopedia with several hundred thousand articles. It is available both online and via a printed version. History The project was ...

{{Germanic languages Gutnish

Old Gutnish Old Gutnish was a stage in the development of the North Germanic language Gutnish, spoken on the Baltic Sea, Baltic island of Gotland and Fårö. The extant body of Old Gutnish is small, and Gutalagen and the Guta saga constitute its majority. ...

Gotland