ABSTRACT

This long article, ‘Oldengelsk og Oldnorsk’ appeared in Antikvarisk Tidsskrift (1852-4), 81-143. No volume number is indicated. The volume for 1852-4 is divided into three parts, with Gísli’s article in part 1, for the year 1852 but published in 1853. For the overall relevance of this paper (and the long excerpt it contains from George Stephens’s article) see Introduction, pp. 46-7. Gísli’s main point is that Old English (he and Stephens firmly reject the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’) is part of a ‘South Scandinavian’ group of languages, rather than the ‘West Germanic’ group in which it is commonly placed. One piece of evidence, Gísli argues, is that Beowulf belongs to the Scandinavian legendary cycle rather than the German, a view he supports by comparison with the Icelandic fornaldarsögur. There may appear to be little evidence for this, he argues: pp. 126-35.