Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalism. His influential textbook Language, published in 1933, presented a comprehensive description of American structural linguistics. He made significant contributions to Indo-European historical linguistics, the description of Austronesian languages, and description of languages of the Algonquian family.
Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age, the Christianization of Scandinavia, and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries.
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, was the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland.
A skald, or skáld, is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry. Skaldic poems were traditionally composed to honor kings, but were sometimes ex tempore. They include both extended works and single verses (lausavísur). They are characteristically more ornate in form and diction than eddic poems, employing many kennings, which require some knowledge of Norse mythology, and heiti, which are formal nouns used in place of more prosaic synonyms. Dróttkvætt metre is a type of skaldic verse form that most often use internal rhyme and alliteration.
A riddle is a statement, question, or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer.
A Latin Dictionary is a popular English-language lexicographical work of the Latin language, published by Harper and Brothers of New York in 1879 and printed simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Oxford University Press.
Eric Valentine Gordon was a Canadian philologist, known as an editor of medieval Germanic texts and a teacher of medieval Germanic languages at the University of Leeds and the University of Manchester.
Nora Kershaw Chadwick CBE FSA FBA was an English philologist who specialized in Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Old Norse studies.
Edgar Howard Sturtevant was an American linguist.
Eiríkr or Eiríkur Magnússon was an Icelandic scholar at the University of Cambridge, who taught Old Norse to William Morris, translated numerous Icelandic sagas into English in collaboration with him, and played an important role in the movement to study the history and literature of the Norsemen in Victorian England.
Raymond Ian Page was a British historian of Anglo-Saxon England and the Viking Age. As a renowned runologist, he specialised in the study of Anglo-Saxon runes.
The "Battle of Brunanburh" is an Old English poem. It is preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a historical record of events in Anglo-Saxon England which was kept from the late ninth to the mid-twelfth century. The poem records the Battle of Brunanburh, a battle fought in 937 between an English army and a combined army of Scots, Vikings, and Britons. The battle resulted in an English victory, celebrated by the poem in style and language like that of traditional Old English battle poetry. The poem is notable because of those traditional elements and has been praised for its authentic tone, but it is also remarkable for its fiercely nationalistic tone, which documents the development of a unified England ruled by the House of Wessex.
Lee Milton Hollander was an American philologist who specialized in Old Norse studies. Hollander was for many years head of the Department of Germanic Languages at the University of Texas at Austin. He is best known for his research on Old Norse literature.
Stefán Einarsson was an Icelandic linguist and literary historian, who was a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the United States.
Guðni Jónsson was an Icelandic professor of history and editor of Old Norse texts.
Caroline Agnes Brady was an American philologist who specialised in Old English and Old Norse works. Her works included the 1943 book The Legends of Ermanaric, based on her doctoral dissertation, and three influential papers on the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. She taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard University, among other places.
Constance Bartlett Hieatt was an American scholar with a broad interest in medieval languages and literatures, including Old Norse literature, Anglo-Saxon prosody and literature, and Middle English language, literature, and culture. She was an editor and translator of Karlamagnús saga, of Beowulf, and a scholar of Geoffrey Chaucer. She was particularly known as one of the world's foremost experts in English medieval cooking and cookbooks, and authored and co-authored a number of important books considered essential publications in the field.
Grace Mayer Frank was an American medievalist and lecturer. Frank, along with her spouse, the classicist Tenney Frank, was primarily associated with Bryn Mawr College, first as a graduate student, and later as a Lecturer and Associate Professor of Romance Philosophy and Old French. Beginning in 1919, Frank lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where she would reside for the majority of her life, serving also as a Visiting Professor of Romance Philology at Johns Hopkins University in that city.
Carol Braun Pasternack was a professor of medieval English literature and language at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) from 1988 to 2013. She chaired the Medieval Studies department, and was also Dean of Summer Sessions at UCSB in 2011–2013.
Sandra Ballif Straubhaar is a Germanic studies scholar known for her work on women's poetry in Old Norse, and for her contributions to scholarship on J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, in particular his use of Scandinavian medieval literature and lore.
