The theme of this celebratory collection is the interaction between the familiar and the foreign. This theme is also central to one of the most widely studied poems in an Old Germanic language, the Hildebrandslied. Here, the elderly warrior Hildebrand, the Germanic archetype of a mercenary exile, faces his own son Hadubrand in single combat.¹ The tragedy of the Hildebrandslied revolves around the fact that Hildebrand has become so estranged from his son that he is now viewed as a foreign member of the opposing army. While the son thus does not recognize the father, the latter becomes painfully aware that he is facing a most familiar foe: the child he left behind thirty years ago. Hildebrand’s attempts to make himself known fail and father and son fight to the death (cf. Classen 1995). The poem breaks off before the outcome of the fight is revealed, but later Germanic versions of the legend suggest that the old man came out victorious.²

Like its contents, the transmission and the language of the Hildebrandslied have connections to this collection’s theme. To begin with, the Hildebrandslied appears foreign in the context of its own manuscript, Kassel, Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. fol. 54, where it was added on the first and last folio sides in the early ninth century. Since this manuscript mainly contains theological texts in Latin, such as the Liber Sapientiae, Ecclesiasticus and fragmentary sermons and prayers, the non-religious Hildebrandslied seems out of place here. The poem was added by two scribes who worked in the monastery of Fulda, founded by the Bavarian monk Sturm, a disciple of the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface. The scribes probably made use of an earlier manuscript, written in a dialect and script that was unfamiliar to them, which resulted in a number of scribal errors. It has been hypothesized that the Hildebrandslied originated as a seventh-century Langobardic oral lay, while the language of its extant version shows a mixture of both Old High German and Old Saxon linguistic elements.³ As such, the poem’s history, in as far as it can be established from its surviving manuscript version, demonstrates the importance of the interaction between various cultures, individuals and languages for understanding the cultural heritage of the Middle Ages.

In a sense, the study of the contents, transmission and language of the Hildebrandslied represents the full breadth of Old Germanic studies in all its philological complexity. In interpreting this text we are struggling with various cultural influences, an obscure textual prehistory and multiple linguistic layers. These issues are central to many medieval texts, whether they were written in Old English, Old Norse, Old High German or Middle Dutch. Fortunately, this complexity has not deterred anyone from looking for answers and revisiting the many problems that remain. Over the last thirty years, the Vereniging voor Oudgermanisten has played a pivotal role in supporting this field of inquiry in the Low Countries; this collection celebrates the ‘sixty summers and winters’ that its members spent in the ‘foreign country’ of the past as well as their efforts to familiarize us with the language, literature and culture of the speakers of Old Germanic languages.

With a broad theme like ‘familiar and foreign’, it comes as no surprise that the contributions to this collection show a great variety in subject and methodology. As such, the articles are representative of the broad scope of Old Germanic studies, ranging from philology to historical linguistics, through to history, text editions and manuscript studies, and spanning the geographical area from Iceland to the Mediterranean. The topics covered include cultural contact, literary representations of the ‘Other’, loan words, contact-induced sound changes, distinctive linguonyms and obscure riddles. Each in their own way, these contributions are a testimony to the potential of Old Germanic studies, especially when pursued from the angle of the encounter between the familiar and the foreign.