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ORDBOG OVER DET NORRONE PROSASPROG // A DICTIONARY OF OLD NORSE PROSE. Volume I. Edited by Helle Degnbol, Bent Chr. Jacobsen, Eva Rode, Christopher Sanders, Porbjorg Helgadottir. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnaean Commission, 1995. Pp. 453 (906 columns). Dkr. 250.
Annual bulletins from the Arnamagnaean Institute in Copenhagen have through many years kept the academic community around the world posted on the progress of the Ordbog over det morrone prosasprog / / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose and at last the first volume of the ONP is available for our inspection. Volume one has entries in 906 columns, two per page, from a, a to bamlaor. It is appropriate to compare this with what has hitherto served as the first reference for much scholarly work: Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson's An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874) in its second edition as supplemented by William A. Craigie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957) . In its version from 1957, henceforth referred to as C-V, the corresponding entries from a, a to balsam (there is no entry for bamladr) occupy pages 1 to 1o, that is, about 6 percent of its 833 pages. Given that the OIP is of about the same format as regards page and type size and that its entries are more thorough in every respect (see below) and include more examples in context, we can imagine that the complete set of volumes may contain well in excess of zo,ooo columns. An analogy that leaps to the mind of this reviewer is the distinction between early and later word processing programs. This analogy holds notjust in the size of the respective earlier and later versions but also in their complexity. The now early Craigie redaction of C-V can be used with a basic knowledge of Old Norse and is self-contained. The next-generation ONPrequires further apparatus in the form of Registre//Indices (a volume of sigla issued in 1989) and the spiral-bound ONP r: Nogle // Kev, to which we first direct our attention.
As supplementary manuals are to word processing programs, the Nogle // Key is an indispensable adjunct to the dictionay'. Indeed, the Nogle // Key is in a way the program itself, as the dictionary is rendered much less useful, perhaps even puzzling, unless one...