Talk:Laxdœla saga

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I believe that this article might have the wrong name. In Nordisk familjebok the saga is called Laxdœlasagan, with œ and not æ. It would be "correct" to replace æ (ä in modern swedish) with ae, but not œ (ö in modern swedish) to ae. The "correct" (or better) way to do that would be to replace it with oe. I don't know whether it has got it's own english name, but this is according to the article in Nordisk familjebok. You can reach me here on the swedish Wikipedia, if you need.

You're right, this is originally 'œ' - but in the late Middle Ages in Iceland œ and æ merged, hence you'll see more than one spelling. Haukur 20:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me rather odd that the original character is œ. The normal way to spell it in Icelandic nowadays would be Laxdæla, the dæla part coming from the word dalur (valley) and a being, I would think, more related to æ than to œ. Was the word dalur originally dolur or something like that? I'm not doubting that you're right, at least I haven't looked into it myself to any extent, but I just find it very strange to believe. Could you either explain it, or tell me where you have this information from? --Sterio 16:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm actually not sure how the etymology works but you can confirm the form with dictionaries, here's one: [1] Haukur 16:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

And here's another one, which makes some attempt to explain the sound change: [2] Haukur 16:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)