Medieval Word Geography

A draft version of a paper in Vísindavefur til heiðurs Þorsteini Vilhjálmssyni prófessors í vísindasögu við H.Í., eds. Orri Vésteinsson, Einar G. Guðmundsson, Eyja Margrét Brynjarsdóttir, Gunnar Karlsson & Sverrir Jakobsson (Reykjavík 2010), 231-38.

The cartographer Konrad Miller reconstructed what a physical map of Orosius' textual geography in his "History contra paganos" would look like.  This scan of his reconstruction is in the public domain, and is sufficiently large [read: enormous file] to read all of his annotations. 

Do keep in mind two things:  there is no visual depiction of Orosius' geography to my knowledge which survived the middle ages.  This mostly useful for reference only.  Secondly,  this is a map of the Latin version only.  The OE and Arabic translations of Orosius have their own idiosyncrasies.

Medieval Interventions publishes innovative studies on medieval culture broadly conceived. By «innovative», we envisage works espousing, for example, new research protocols especially those involving digitized resources, revisionist approaches to codicology and paleography, reflections on medieval ideologies, fresh pedagogical practices, digital humanities, advances in gender studies, as well as fresh thinking on animal, environmental, geospatial, and nature studies. In short, the series will seek to set rather than follow agendas in the study of medieval culture. Since medieval intellectual and artistic practices were naturally interdisciplinary, the series welcomes studies from across the humanities and social sciences. Recognizing also the vigor that marks the field worldwide, the series endeavors to publish work in translation from non-Anglophone medievalists.

Medieval writers who 'translated' Latin texts into Germanic vernaculars not only transmitted their originals, but, driven by individualistic impulses and cultural conventions, also transformed them. This process of domesticating texts was fundamentally creative and might more accurately be described as 'reconstruction'. The essays in Germanic Texts and Latin Models: Medieval Reconstructions explore the ways in which Latin texts and traditions were reconstructed in Old English, Old Icelandic and Old High German and cover a range of genres: legal texts, genealogies, histories, and poetry. They examine how medieval Germanic authors negotiated the need to transmit their models while at the same time fulfilling their own political, artistic and didactic objectives in the creation of vernacular texts. These new studies demonstrate the variety of ways in which medieval Germanic texts were indebted to their Latin exemplars, while reflecting their new culturally specific circumstances in the complex nexus of Latin learning and Germanic lore.

Une quarantaine d'années après la conquête de Jérusalem par ‘Umar et une quinzaine d'années avant la construction du Dôme du Rocher par ‛Abd al-Malik, Arculfe, évêque des Gaules, fit un pèlerinage en Terre Sainte.  Il relata ses aventures à Adomnán, abbé d'Iona, qui écrivit par la suite un tract, De locis sanctis, où il cite abondamment Arculfe comme expert des lieux saints.  Le but d'Adomnán était de mieux connaître la topographie des lieux saints pour pouvoir mieux comprendre les sacra pagina.  Ce même motif poussa Bède le Vénérable, quelques décennies plus tard, à écrire son propre De locis sanctis, dans lequel il incorpore les informations d'Adomnán avec celles d'autres auteurs.
Ces deux textes De locis sanctis sont intéressants à plusieurs titres.  D'abord, ils conservent les impressions d'un chrétien occidental (et sans doute, jusqu'à un certain point, les impressions de ses interlocuteurs chrétiens orientaux) présent au Proche Orient à un moment clef de son histoire, peu après la conquête arabe, moment pour lequel les sources nous font cruellement défaut.  Si la description des lieux saints reste le but principal d'Arculfe, quelques passages ouvrent des perspectives intéressantes sur les interactions entre juifs, chrétiens et musulmans de Jérusalem lors du califat de Mu‘âwiya (661-680).  Deuxièmement, dans ces textes sont imbriqués plusieurs niveaux de "passages".  D'abord le déplacement d'un homme, Arculfe, qui fait le pèlerinage en Terre Sainte, séjourne neuf mois à Jérusalem, parle avec les habitants, surtout chrétiens;  puis (deuxième niveau) l'entretien entre Arculfe et Adomnán;  ensuite (troisième niveau), la composition par Adomnán de son texte et enfin (quatrième niveau), la réécriture de ce texte par Bède.  A chacun de ces niveaux, il y a un filtrage des informations et des témoignages pour les rendre aptes à être compris dans un système de pensée précis.  Au bout de cette chaîne de "passages", nous notons par exemple que le calife Mu‘âwiya s'est transformé en le bon roi chrétien Mavias, protecteur des chrétiens hiérosolymites face à leurs rivaux juifs.

Forthcoming:
This paper is a study a number of historical English cognates of German Österreich ‘Austria’, beginning in Old English and continuing into the Early Modern English of the mid-sixteenth century.  Although these words have received little scholarly attention to date, upon further examination they have proven to be of considerable relevance to such disciplines as Etymology, Toponymy, Anglo-Saxon Studies, Medieval Geography, as well as the History of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire. I begin with a discussion of Old High German ōstarrīchi the earliest attested form of Modern High German Österreich and the semantic development of this word. I then explore the occurrences in Old English literature of the word ēastrīce to which it is clearly akin, and identify the semantic value of the word in each instance, determining that one of these examples has some overlap with two of the definitions of its Old Norse cognate Austrríki. Therefore the possibility of a loan-translation from Old Norse cannot be discounted. Yet there is no direct evidence for this. Only one of the instances of OE ēastrīce bears a meaning which allows for the possibility of a loan-translation from ōstarrīchi prior to written attestation.
    I then identify a number of Middle English cognates of OHG ōstarrīchi and OE ēastrīce. The oldest one of these, estriche ‘the East’, is plainly a direct continuation of ēastrīce, in both phonology and semantics. A later Middle English example in the identical form Estriche has taken on the meaning of its Middle High German cognate ōsterrīche/œ̄sterrīche, referring to the medieval Duchy of Austria. A yet later variant with the same meaning appears to be a descendant of ēastrīce although containing a velar reflex of OE –rīce in the form Estrik. The remaining ME cognates likewise all refer to the Duchy of Austria, but are borrowings from Middle High German, in some cases via Old or Middle French.
    Furthermore I bring to light two cognates of Österreich in Early Modern English: Eastenrich(e) and Eastenricke (both ‘the Duchy of Austria’) which due to the relative obscurity of the texts in which they are found seem to have evaded the detection of etymologists and lexicographers. I investigate the possibility on the one hand of a native origin for these words, finding that although they are not direct reflexes of their recorded cognates in Old or Middle English, the possibility cannot be rejected that they derive from unrecorded ME variants, and owing to their shared morphology a hypothetical unrecorded OE etymon may be posited in the form *ēastanrīce/*ēastenrīce.
    On the other hand I explore the possibility of loan-translation or borrowing from a Late Middle to Early Modern stage of one of the continental Germanic languages. I show the possibility of a borrowing from Late Middle to Early Modern Frisian to be untenable on phonological grounds, while a loan-translation is at least possible, and would have the advantage of explaining the usage of the obsolescent –en suffix on Easten- in both EME variants, as an imitation of their Frisian counterpart. A borrowing from Early Modern High German, Low German, or Dutch must be rejected on phonological grounds while I cannot entirely dismiss the possibility of a loan-translation from these sources (especially from Dutch and Dutch Low Saxon cognates which like their West Frisian equivalent also share the –en suffix). While the context of the document in which Eastenrich(e) appears shows no circumstantial links to a Frisian source, and therefore Eastenrich(e) is just as likely to be of native origin, I conclude however that a loan-translation from a late Middle to early Modern Frisian source is the likeliest origin for Eastenricke considering the context of the document containing this word (George Nedham’s A Letter to Earls of East Friesland). Although a native origin still remains a possibility.

Much has been written about ancient world empires, but fewer have examined the connections between politics and geography, especially cartography. In this paper we examine how Roman imperial politics influenced geographical knowledge in the first and second centuries of the Common Era, and, conversely, how ever increasing knowledge about the oecumene had an impact on politics. We are especially interested in the representations of the oecumene made by Agrippa, Pomponius Mela, and Ptolemy.

Í þessari doktorsritgerð Sverris Jakobssonar er fjallað um heimsmynd í samhengi við íslenskt samfélag á tilteknum tíma, frá því að ritmenning breiðist út á Íslandi um 1100 og fram til 1400 þegar hún hefur tekið á sig allskýra drætti. Með heimsmynd er átt við kerfi til að lýsa heiminum, nánar tiltekið hinum sýnilega heimi og þeim sem hann byggja. Heimsmyndin ljær fyrirbærum í umhverfinu merkingu, setur þau í samhengi við eitthvað þekkt og áþreifanlegt. Um leið útilokar hún og skapar þagnir um það sem ekki fellur að henni og er því ekki skiljanlegt. Í íslenskum miðaldaritum birtist heimsmynd þess útvalins hóps sem var ekki séríslensk, heldur átti samkenni með heimsmynd klerka og menntamanna annars staðar í hinum kristna heimi. Það sem snýr að íslensku umhverfi er varla á skjön við ríkjandi heimsmynd í öðrum bændasamfélögum. Heimsmynd Íslendinga átti sér sérkenni en þau felast ekki síst í dugnaði Íslendinga við að tileinka sér kaþólska heimsmynd.