Old Norse News

I came across an interesting article by John Stanley Martin in Nordic Notes, a publication of the Centre for Scandinavian Studies at Flinders University, Australia. John traces the long and distinguished history of the teaching of Old Norse/Icelandic and related subjects at the University of Melbourne (where Old Icelandic was the sixth language to be introduced to the university’s curriculum!)

Unfortunately, the article ends on a melancholy note, since the Viking Studies programme at Melbourne was shut down last year, ending more than half a century’s tradition and achievement. It’s an all-too-familiar story: despite Viking Studies apparently pressing many of the correct buttons for modern university administrators — interdisciplinarity, cross-cultural approaches, collaborative teaching and healthy and growing enrollments — internal politics and budget restrictions appear to have sealed its fate. A great shame.

It seems impossible: the fundamentals of Old Norse grammar on one sheet of A4 paper. But that’s what Alaric Hall of the University of Leeds has produced in the form of his ‘magic sheet’ of basic paradigms!¹ It’s an ideal supplement and reference aid to one of the standard grammar books, and I’m going to be using it (with Alaric’s permission) in my introductory classes this autumn.

Alaric makes this resource available freely, and he says he’d be delighted for anybody to download it, print it, and share it. He’d appreciate it if you’d drop him a line though to let him know if you choose to use it, though.

(Oh, and he apologises that he couldn’t fit the ‘middle’ verbal voice on the sheet: he might produce a second page at a later date…)

Anything that makes Old Norse grammar more user-friendly (which is where Michael Barnes’s generally excellent introduction falls down, in my opinion) is much to be welcomed. Thanks to Alaric for sharing it with us.