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Viking Club
The Viking Club was a club for philologists and historians specializing in Germanic and Scandinavian studies. It was founded by E.V. Gordon and J. R. R. Tolkien when the two were professors at Leeds University in the 1920s. At meetings of the club students and faculty would gather to read Old Icelandic sagas and drink together in an informal setting. Members of the club also invented original songs and poems in Old English, Gothic, Old Norse and other extinct Germanic languages. A collection of these works was privately published as ''Songs for the Philologists'', of which most of the printed editions were destroyed in a fire. Only a very few copies are believed to have survived. Following Gordon's departure, the student magazine ''The Gryphon'' remarked that 'old students will note with pleasure that Dr. A. H. Smith is now President of the Viking Club’, indicating that the student society that Tolkien and Gordon had established had in some sense survived Gordon’s departure an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Club (organization)
A club is an association of people united by a common interest or goal. A service club, for example, exists for voluntary or charitable activities. There are clubs devoted to hobbies and sports, social activities clubs, political and religious clubs, and so forth. History Historically, clubs occurred in all ancient states of which exists detailed knowledge. Once people started living together in larger groups, there was need for people with a common interest to be able to associate despite having no ties of kinship. Organizations of the sort have existed for many years, as evidenced by Ancient Greek clubs and associations (''collegia'') in Ancient Rome. Origins of the word and concept It is uncertain whether the use of the word "club" originated in its meaning of a knot of people, or from the fact that the members "clubbed" together to pay the expenses of their gatherings. The oldest English clubs were merely informal periodic gatherings of friends for the purpose of dining ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their Viking expansion, overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age, the Christianization of Scandinavia and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 7th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid-to-late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects: Old West Norse, ''Old West Norse'' or ''Old West Nordic'' (often referred to as ''Old Norse''), Old East Norse, ''Old East Norse'' or ''Old East Nordic'', and ''Ol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Norse Literature
Old Norse literature refers to the vernacular literature of the Scandinavian peoples up to c. 1350. It chiefly consists of Icelandic writings. In Britain From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Vikings and Norse settlers and their descendants colonised parts of what is now modern Scotland. Some Old Norse poetry survives relating to this period. The '' Orkneyinga saga'' (also called the ''History of the Earls of Orkney'') is a historical narrative of the history of the Orkney Islands, from their capture by the Norwegian king in the ninth century onwards until about 1200. 20th-century poet George Mackay Brown was influenced by the saga, notably for his 1973 novel ''Magnus''. The Icelandic ''Njáls saga'' includes actions taking place in Orkney and Wales. Besides these Icelandic sagas a few examples, sometimes fragmentary, of Norse poetry composed in Scotland survive. Among the runic inscriptions at Maeshowe is a text identified as irregular verse. Scandinavian cultural contacts in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic Studies
Germanic philology is the philological study of the Germanic languages, particularly from a comparative or historical perspective. The beginnings of research into the Germanic languages began in the 16th century, with the discovery of literary texts in the earlier phases of the languages. Early modern publications dealing with Old Norse culture appeared in the 16th century, e.g. ''Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus'' (Olaus Magnus, 1555) and the first edition of the 13th century ''Gesta Danorum'' (Saxo Grammaticus), in 1514. In 1603, Melchior Goldast made the first edition of Middle High German poetry, Tyrol and Winsbeck, including a commentary which focused on linguistic problems and set the tone for the approach to such works in the subsequent centuries. He later gave similar attention to the Old High German Benedictine Rule. In England, Cotton's studies of the manuscripts in his collection marks the beginnings of work on Old English language. The pace of publication increas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inklings
The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy. The best-known, apart from Tolkien and Lewis, were Charles Williams, and (although a Londoner) Owen Barfield. Members The more regular members of the Inklings, many of them academics at the University, included: * Owen Barfield * Jack A. W. Bennett * Lord David Cecil * Nevill Coghill * Hugo Dyson * Adam Fox * Robert Havard * C. S. Lewis * Warren Lewis (C. S. Lewis's elder brother) * J. R. R. Tolkien * Christopher Tolkien (J. R. R. Tolkien's son) * Charles Williams More infrequent visitors included: * James Dundas-Grant * Colin Hardie * Gervase Mathew * R. B. McCallum * Courtenay Edward Stevens * John Wain * Charles Leslie Wrenn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alaric Hall
Alaric Hall (born 1979) is a British philologist who is an associate professor of English and director of the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds. He has, since 2009, been the editor of the academic journal '' Leeds Studies in English'' and its successor ''Leeds Medieval Studies''. Biography Hall received his B.A. in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic from the University of Cambridge, his M.Phil. in Medieval Studies from the University of Glasgow, and his Ph.D. in English from the University of Glasgow. His Ph.D. thesis was on elves in Anglo-Saxon England. He has subsequently become an associate professor of English and director of the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds. Hall researches and teaches the languages, cultures and history of Northwest Europe in the Middle Ages. He has written and edited several works on these subjects. Hall is also an authority on Icelandic language and literature. His 2007 book ''Elves in Anglo-Saxon England ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Hugh Smith
Albert Hugh Smith OBE (24 February 1903 – 11 May 1967) was a scholar of Old English and Scandinavian languages and played a major part in the study and publication of English place-names. Hugh Smith was the son of Albert John Smith, a butler, and Anne Smith of Sowerby, West Yorkshire. He was educated at Rishworth School, West Yorkshire, and, after a time working as a railway booking clerk, he went to Leeds University where he was awarded 1st Class BA in English in 1924 and a PhD in 1926. His PhD thesis was on the place-names of the North Riding and the study of place-names remained of continuing interest to him, resulting in several publications. He was Vaughan Fellow at Leeds University from 1924 to 1926, and was then lecturer in English at Saltley College, Birmingham from 1926 to 1928. In 1928 he went to Sweden and was English lecturer at Uppsala University, returning to England in 1930 to University College London (UCL) as a lecturer and reader. In 1932, he became presi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Songs For The Philologists
''Songs for the Philologists'' is a collection of poems by E. V. Gordon and J. R. R. Tolkien as well as traditional songs. It is the rarest and most difficult to find Tolkien-related book. Originally a collection of typescripts compiled by Gordon in 1921–1926 for the students of the University of Leeds, it was given by A. H. Smith of University College London, a former student at Leeds, to a group of students to be printed privately in 1935 or 1936, and printed in 1936 with the ''impressum'' "Printed by G. Tillotson, A. H. Smith, B. Pattison and other members of the English Department, University College, London." Since Smith had not asked permission of either Gordon or Tolkien, the printed booklets were not distributed. Most copies were destroyed in a fire, and only a few, perhaps around 14, survived. The book is accordingly "extremely rare", according to the University of Leeds, which has a copy. Tolkien's songs Of the 30 songs in the collection, 13 were contributed by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic Languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German language, German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch language, Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of Standard language, unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gothic Language
Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the ''Codex Argenteus'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, and French. As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philologists
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics. Classical philology studies classical languages. Classical philology principally originated from the Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BC, continued by Greeks and Romans throughout the Roman/Byzantine Empire. It was eventually resumed by European scholars of the Renaissance, where it was soon joined by philologies of other European ( Germanic, Celtic), Eu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anglo-Saxon Language
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman (a relative of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
