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The rune stone U 751, undoubtedly carved by Balli, was erected by three men for their father. The name of the second commemorator is labus. No interpretation has been suggested, reading the name as it is written. This article discusses three possible interpretations, the first two (*Lambhauss and *Lambhǫss) would not be consistent with the writing habits of Balli. The third alternative, Lambhūss (cf. Old Icelandic lambhús ‘byre; sheep shed’), fits runologically and is onomastically also possible.

On the interpretation of the name aurir on the runestone U 492 at Örby

The inscription on the Örby runestone (U 492) is unproblematic in its reading and basic contents: x asbion + auk + kisl + aurir + auk + auþbiorn + litu rita + stin aftR+ biorn + foþur sin +. Āsbiǫrn ok Gīsl, aurir ok Auðbiǫrn lētu rētta stæin æftiʀ Biǫrn, faður sinn. ‘Āsbiǫrn and Gīsl, aurir and Auðbiǫrn had the stone erected in memory of Biǫrn, their father’. Clearly, several people were involved in the raising of the stone in memory of their father, the only question is whether we are dealing with three, or four commemorators. Elias Wessén asks whether aurir is name of an individual, or the byname borne by Gīsl. The lack of a conjunctive ok ‘and’ could be seen to favour the latter, but asyndetic construction without ok between position two and three is known from at least one other inscription with four names. Also, the separation symbol in the sequence kisl + aurir speaks against the presence of a byname. Instead the author tentatively proposes that aurir denotes the third sibling, a sister bearing the name Aurīr, a reduced form of Auðfrīðr, just as U 876 kunrir is best interpreted as a contracted form of Gunnfrīðr.

This Festschrift is dedicated to Veturliði G. Óskarsson, Uppsala professor of Scandinavian Languages with a focus on Icelandic, on his sixty-fifth birthday, 25 March, 2023. Eleven colleagues based in three different Nordic countries have written contributions in Icelandic, Swedish, English, and Norwegian, touching on different aspects of Veturliði’s research interests: Lexicology and etymology: Katrín Axelsdóttir (University of Iceland), Enn um ald(u)rnara (Ald(u)rnari once again); Margrét Jónsdóttir (University of Iceland, emerita), Orðið féskylft (About the word féskylft ‘insolvent’); Matteo Tarsi (Uppsala University), Naming the elements in the Nordic languages (Swedish, Danish, Icelandic) until 1945; Morphology: Þorsteinn G.Indriðason (University of Bergen), Hvorfor er suffikset -legur såpass produktivt i islandsk? En historisk utgreiing (Why is the derivational suffix -legur so productive in Icelandic? A diachronic study); Nordic Philology: Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir (University of Iceland), Guðrúnarbrögð hin nýju (A new lay of Guðrún); Heimir Pálsson (Uppsala University, emeritus), Forn nöfn — fornöfn (Old names — pronomina); Henrik Williams (Uppsala University), Vart tog Röskva vägen? (What became of Röskva?); Lasse Mårtensson (Uppsala University), Dvergatal i Uppsala-Eddan (The catalogue of dwarves in the Uppsala Edda); and Michael Schulte (University of Agder), Between the pagan past and the Christian future; Sociolinguistics: Ari Páll Kristinsson (The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies), Bonds and Boundaries and Helga Hilmisdóttir (The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies), Språkkontakt och pragmatik: En empirisk undersökning av pragmatiska lån i isländska tonårspojkars samtal (Language contact and pragmatics: An empirical study of pragmaticloans in the speech of Icelandic teenagers).