A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic

Originally published in 1910 by Clarendon Press, Oxford, this dictionary was created by Zoëga (1857-1928) to assist scholars of medieval prose writings in Old Icelandic. He included words that scholars might encounter and not recognize from any knowledge they might have of modern Icelandic, and left out the purely poetic vocabulary—excepting the Edda poems, of course—and a number of compounds occurring only in legal, theological, or technical works. Such borders blur however, he admits, and has included rather than excluded the questionable when possible. More often than not, he quotes a passage showing the usage. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR