Haukur Þorgeirsson

Publications in chronological order

Publications by subject

I can be reached at haukur.thorgeirsson@arnastofnun.is

I am a research professor at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic studies. I completed my PhD at the University of Iceland in 2013 and I been a faculty member at the Árni Magnússon Institute since 2014.

My research interests include the following.

• The chronology of Old Norse poetry: I have studied various linguistic and metrical traits of Eddic as well as late medieval rímur poetry and their value as dating criteria. The long rímur poems offer a rich tapestry of data which allows us to date them fairly closely. The Eddic poems are more difficult but it is still possible to make progress.
• The Eddic fairytales: In the 17^th century, a number of poems in fornyrðislag (the Germanic alliterative metre) were recorded from oral tradition in Iceland. These are the Eddic fairytales and they represent a direct continuation of the Eddic tradition. I have been engaged with editing and analyzing these poems.
• The Prose Edda: I am preparing a new edition of the Prose Edda for the Íslenzk fornrit series. In order to accomplish this I have been engaged in an analysis of the surviving manuscripts and their relationship.
• Authorship attribution: Advances in computer-assisted stylometry have greatly facilitated the analysis of the characteristic stylistic tendencies of each author. Despite the complexities inherent in the transmission of medieval texts, the application of these methods to them has proven fruitful and thrown new light on the old question of which surviving texts may have the same author.
• Reconstructive editing: One of the core tasks of a philologist is to analyze the manuscript tradition of a particular text. My goal as an editor is usually to get as close as possible to the text of the original author and I believe the undertaking is useful even if success can only ever be partial. For the purposes of authorship attribution it is particularly important to have a sound philological basis for the analysis.
• Historical phonology: Poetry offers a window into the historical phonology of a language and this was the subject of my PhD dissertation. The topic which I studied in the most detail is the poetic evidence for the presence of a Scandinavian-style tonality distinction in Old Icelandic.