Scandinavian Voices are still reflected
in our language ... the lecture at the British Museum yesterday was
fascinating ... hard work too! an accompaniment to the Viking Exhibition.
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| Guests from Overseas: Nicholas Roerich (1899) |
Jayne Carroll is a professor and
specialist in Name Studies at the University of Nottingham ... so she was
highly qualified to take us, 300 members, through our paces.
Thankfully in her introduction she gave
us an example whereby an inscription around the edge of the Sundial at
Aldbrough, East Yorkshire (located in the Church) combined Old English
(Anglo-Saxon 5th C) in the description, but the names were of Old
Norse origin ...
... here we have the ‘catch-all’ label
... when the linguistic words are ‘easily’ absorbed ... so Scandinavian names
were culturally used during the English Viking period: 800 – 1050 AD approximately ...
The text on the sundial reads: “+Ulf
had this church built for his own sake and for Gunnvor’s soul” ...
... the text
used is given by Professor Ray Page (1924 – 2012), who was a prominent British
scholar of ancient Anglo-Saxon and Viking monuments ...
The description Professor Page gave ...
refers to words and phrases such as dative singular of the 3rd
person pronoun, genitive, pronominal system influenced but not superseded by
the Old Norse one ...
... at this point I mentally declared
myself beyond knowledge! Jayne also
mentioned that on reading through her notes on Sunday with her husband and
daughter, aged 7, ... her husband gave up at this point too! Her daughter was enthusiastically agreeing
... gosh to have brains that young!!
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| Manx Runestones |
Pronouns were affected by the Old Norse
language ... the “Þ”
from the runic script was absorbed into
our English language ... becoming the plural form “th” absorbed into the word ... acting like our “apostrophe S” today ...
From Old Norse we get some fundamental
building blocks of our language ... for example:
Law Old English ‘Lagu’, from Old Norse ‘Lag’
meaning something laid down or fixed, of Germanic origin
Window is of Middle English origin: from Old
Norse ‘vindauga’, from vindr ‘wind’ + auga ‘eye’ ...originally an unglazed hole
in the roof
We now have many words in our language
that have derived from Old Norse ... there were many more in Medieval times,
but they were more dialect-orientated and were over time subsumed ... but would
occur around settlement patterns one thousand years ago ...
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Karlevi Runestone - oldest record of
a stanza of skaldic verse,
on Oland Island, Sweden |
Jayne mentioned ‘lyk’ – as her Lancastrian
father-in-law uses it, meaning ‘to play’ ... in trying to check it out I came
across this website (see below) where Hazel Gardner sets out Old Lancashire Dialect Words and their
origins ... which may be of interest.
Contemporary evidence of the Viking Age
in Britain today ... appears in;
·
Skaldic
(court) verses (technically demanding)
·
Runestones
·
Runic
inscriptions ... on stones and on portable objects
·
Norse
town and village place names ...
eg Fishguard ... Scandinavian ‘gard’ is
enclosure in Welsh Celtic ...
-
‘by’ –
farmstead, homestead usually accompanied by name of owner ... eg: "Tealby"
-
Market
Rasen, Lincs – ‘rasen’ at the planks – a plank walkway or footbridge across a
dyke (ditch/wet area)
-
Withenshaw
– valley of the wood
 |
| Fishguard harbour |
·
Significant
Old Norse plays on in our language ... the following words reflect this:
-
Toft =
plot
-
Thorp =
dependent settlement
-
Tynwald =
assembly fields (Isle of Man legislature)
·
The names
of Nordic gods reflect in our language to this day ... particularly Thor ...
in various formats...
 |
The mushroomy coloured
'Daneland' is Viking territory |
A heavier footprint of Old Norse
prevails in the English language, a lesser one in the Celtic languages ... which
makes sense as the Vikings really settled a northern diagonal swathe of England
...
What is apparent ... is that we need to
research back to the original derivation of a word – in Roman, Anglo-Saxon – good examples
of these are rivers ... the River Trent is a classic:
 |
showing some of the flood levels on the
River Trent at Girton from 1795 |
In Roman times (115 – 117AD) it was
known as 'Trisantona' ...
... by 731AD it was 'Treente'
Now interestingly the Old British word ‘Trisantona’
is the word for ‘trespasser’ ... which could easily refer to the regular
flooding of the river, as we still find out in the 21st century ...
I looked up the River Trent and found
the Trent Aegir (Eagre) ... which is a tidal bore ... it is said to take its
name from the Norse god of the Ocean: Aegir.
 |
Germanic root languages
in Europe (see Wiki) |
It is alleged that King Cnut performed
his purposefully unsuccessful attempt to turn back the tide in the River Trent
... i.e. turn back the Aegir tide.
I will do another post on the
Exhibition itself ... and I have already mentioned the Vikings in various posts
... but to finish as the article in the British Museum Winter Magazine
mentions:
 |
| The four kingdoms ruled by King Cnut |
“Despite
a justified reputation for violence, the Vikings by the standards of their time
were unparalleled in Europe for the range of their cultural contacts, and these
enabled them to assimilate a wide range of external influences.
At
the same time, they left lasting reminders of their presence in the places that
they visited and settled, both in the form of objects, in language, place-names
and even DNA.
The
Viking Age may be long over, but its legacy remains strong.”
 |
Church of St Mary's at Thoresway
(a way of a Viking called Thor) |
Our cultural history reflects the many
invasions we have as an island nation absorbed ... and our ‘borrowing language’ readily reflect these
...
Today we have English as the leading
language of international discourse and the lingua
franca in many regions ... which includes that Viking influence from 1200
years ago ...
Professor Jayne Carroll recommended
these websites:
and search for Visit for Place Names ... brings up a choice ...
At the British Museum website are
various books on the Vikings, their language, the chronicles ... should you
wish to look.
Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories
