Novgorod in the early Middle-Ages - language and society

Who, what, where and when

Guest lecture by Professor Jens Nørgård-Sørensen, University of Copenhagen.

Professor Jens Nørgård-Sørensen's lecture will take place on 4 March 2010 at 14:15 at the University of Copenhagen in Amager (KUA) in room 22.5.04 and will be given in Danish. It is organized by Roots of Europe.

Everybody is welcome.

Short description of the topic

The lecture will begin with a short introduction to the Novgorod area, its peoples and language at the beginning of historical time and then it will focus on its unique historical source: the birch bark letters, which thanks to particular soil conditions have been well preserved since the beginning of the 11th century.

The letters have provided us with new and important knowledge on past social relations, including writing abilities and a reviewed understanding of the old Russian language history. Since the letters are written in a language that presumably closely resembles the spoken language of the time, a variety of dialectal traits can be seen.

We shall look at the most important of these dialectal traits in relation to general Russian and Slavic language history.