About

Word Hoard Press is the only literary publisher dedicated towards publishing poetry written in Old English and other extinct Germanic languages by modern writers.

Our main focus is on Eala, our online journal for poetry and short stories. We are also interested in print copies of future work.

Richard Littauer

Richard Littauer, Founding Editor, Editor-in-Chief
@RichLitt
burntfen.com

Richard writes often, and has some creative work published in Code Poems, among other places. He studied Old English at the University of Edinburgh, eventually graduating with an MA (Hons) in Linguistics. He studied for an MSc in Computational Linguistics at Saarland University and the University of Malta. He runs this project and many others.

Patrick Snyder

T. Patrick Snyder, Old English Editor
@ealdenglisc

Patrick has a BA in Linguistics from Temple University, and is a former archaeologist in the US. He runs the the EaldEnglisc pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

How will you know if the submissions are good?

Long hours with a dictionary and grammars. Hopefully, some other experts in Old Germanic languages will be keen to help out, and we will do our best to seek out trained language consultants. This is, ultimately, for love of the craft.

Why ‘Eala’? Why ‘Word Hoard’?

Eala is the Old English word for ‘Hello.’ Its most famous usage was in the poem Cynewulf, mostly because of JRR Tolkien’s mention of it in his letters.

Eala Earendel engla beorhtast
Ofer middangeard monnum sended

Hail Earendel brightest of angels
Over middle-earth sent unto men

Word-hoard is from the Old English kenning for lexicon, wordhord. Beowulf’s first words in the epic poem are prefaced wordhord onléac, ‘he unlocked his word hoard’.

I am a native Icelandic or Norse speaker. Can I submit some poems I wrote?

We’d prefer if you submitted only texts which are written in languages that don’t exist at the moment, or in the least that you do not know from birth. If you’re writing in Old Norse or Old Icelandic (not that they are that different!), feel free to submit those.

Will you send me a printed copy?

If we get enough submissions, this is my ultimate goal, yes.

Can we have a word list at the end of each submission?

I hope to do this too.

Do you have any resources I could use to help me write?

I don’t, but there are a host of other blogs online that may help. Unfortunately, most of them are old, from various institutions, and not updated. They’re not much better than going back to the original texts and learning there. Good luck.

So… you’re not interested in my rhyming couplets?

Correct. There’s no real outlet for verse in the Germanic alliterative tradition that I could find, so that’s what this is for. Your end-of-line rhymes and iambic pentameter are welcome elsewhere, I am sure.

If you would like to be a reader or a language consultant for Word Hoard Press, please send an email to Richard. We are always looking for more readers, and especially consultants for obscure, extinct languages. Get in touch!

Word Hoard Press is a volunteer project. If you would like to support Word Hoard Press, please get in touch.

We’re very excited to read your work. If you’ve got any questions, give us a shout via email or on Twitter at @WordHoardPress.

This website is hosted by GitHub. The website theme is centrarium, by bencentra. Any similarity in the name to WordPress.org are completely unintended. The longboat logo is by Ryan Beck from The Noun Project, and the background image of a misty forest is by Jeremy Hiebert on Flickr.