Annotation This handbook is conceived as a comprehensive history of the North Germanic languages from the oldest times up to the present day. Whereas most of the traditional presentations of Nordic language history are confined to individual languages and often concentrate on purely linguistic data, the present work covers the history of all Nordic languages in its totality, embedded in a broad culture-historical context. The Nordic languages are described both individually and in their mutual dependence as well as in relation to the neighboring non-Nordic languages. The handbook is not tied to a particular methodology, but keeps in principle to a pronounced methodological pluralism, encompassing all aspects of actual methodology. Moreover it combines diachronic with synchronic-systematic aspects, longitudinal sections with cross-sections (periods such as Old Norse, transition from Old Norse to Early Modern Nordic, Early Modern Nordic 1550-1800 and so on). The description of Nordic language history is built upon a comprehensive collection of linguistic data; it consists of more than 200 articles, written by a multitude of authors from Scandinavian and German and English speaking countries. The organization of the handbook combines a central part on the detailed chronological developments and some chapters of a more general character: chapters on theory and methodology in the beginning, and on overlapping spatio-temporal topics in the end.

James Macpherson's famous hoax, publishing his own poems as the writings of the ancient Scots bard Ossian in the 1760s, remains fascinating to scholars as the most successful literary fraud in history. This study presents the fullest investigation of his deception to date, by looking at the controversy from the point of view of Samuel Johnson. Johnson's dispute with Macpherson was an argument with wide implications not only for literature, but for the emerging national identities of the British nations during the Celtic revival. Thomas M. Curley offers a wealth of genuinely new information, detailing as never before Johnson's involvement in the Ossian controversy, his insistence on truth-telling, and his interaction with others in the debate. The appendix reproduces a rare pamphlet against Ossian written with the assistance of Johnson himself. This book will be an important addition to knowledge about both the Ossian controversy and Samuel Johnson.

This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Hugh Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the "ancient constitution" of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian and ancient poetry; and the sartorial myth of tartan and the kilt, invented--ironically, by Englishmen--in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualization and domestication of Scotland's myths as local color diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy. This compelling manuscript was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 and is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity, and wit, and containing defiant and challenging opinions, it will absorb and provoke Scottish readers while intriguing many others. "I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it."-Hugh Trevor-Roper