Switzerland counts among the small but exciting places for the transmission of Old English, the ancestor language of present-day English which was spoken in England from about AD 500 until the Norman Conquest of England in AD 1066. Swiss libraries preserve some of the earliest Old English written sources including Old English bird names, the Old English names of the months, Anglo-Saxon runes, as well as the earliest version of Bede's Death Song. Other Old English texts found in Swiss libraries were copied in Anglo-Saxon England and only reached Switzerland later, for example, three short legal texts and a fragment of a homily by Ælfric. This book presents Old English texts surviving in Swiss libraries in their historical, cultural and linguistic contexts in ten chapters.

Autorentext

Annina Seiler is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at the English Department of the University of Zurich where she teaches and researches English historical linguistics with a focus on Old and Middle English. She is interested in historical lexicography and lexicology, the development of writing systems, questions relating to orality and literacy in the Middle Ages, as well as historical multilingualism.

Nicole Studer-Joho works as general manager and instructor of English linguistics at the English Department of the University of Zurich. Her research and teaching interests include the study of spatial variation and language change in the history of English with a special focus on Middle English.