2008/07/01 by Viola Miglio · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Basque language and culture studies #Medieval European Literature and History #Glossary #Icelandic #Pidgin #Sketch #Context (archaeology) #History #Section (typography) #Genealogy #Perspective (graphical) #Classics #Linguistics #Archaeology #Computer science #Art #Philosophy #Visual arts
paper · doi:10.3721/071010
published in Journal of the North Atlantic 1, 25-36
openalex publication_date 2008/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/19
This paper takes a fresh look at what is known about the 17th–18th century Basque-Icelandic glossaries and reassesses their historical importance from a cultural perspective. These anonymous glossaries have been published a number of times since Deen's first publication (1937) and attracted some interest in the 1980s because of the few Basque pidgin sentences included in the second glossary. I maintain that their importance goes well beyond the undoubtedly interesting pidgin section of glossary II. To prove this point, I sketch a brief history of the context in which Basques and Icelanders came together, and analyze some of the words in the glossaries to offer an explanation of some obscure terms, as well as to re-assess the origin of the informants and the circumstances that gave rise to these unique documents.