When did the Old Norse language originate?
Old Norse
The earliest inscriptions in Old Norse are runic, from the 8th century. Runes continued to be commonly used until the 15th century and have been recorded to be in use in some form as late as the 19th century in some parts of Sweden. With the conversion to Christianity in the 11th century came the Latin alphabet. The oldest preserved texts in Old Norse in the Latin alphabet date from the middle of the 12th century. Subsequently, Old Norse became the vehicle of a large and varied body of vernacular literature, unique in medieval Europe. Most of the surviving literature was written in Iceland. Best known are the Norse sagas, the Icelanders' sagas and the mythological literature, but there also survives a large body of religious literature, translations into Old Norse of courtly romances, classical mythology, and the Old Testament, as well as instructional material, grammatical treatises and a large body of letters and official documents.
Icelandic language
The language of the sagas is Old Icelandic, a western dialect of Old Norse. The Dano-Norwegian, then later Danish rule of Iceland from 1536 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic (in contrast to the Norwegian language), which remained in daily use among the general population. Though more archaic than the other living Germanic languages, Icelandic changed markedly in pronunciation from the 12th to the 16th century, especially in vowels (in particular, ', ', "", and "/").
Scottish island names
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300. Its influence on Scots island names is considerable due to the development of both the Earldom of Orkney and the Kingdom of the Isles which resulted in almost all of the inhabitable islands of Scotland (except those in the Firth of Forth) coming under Norse control from the 9th to 13th centuries.
Norn is an extinct North Germanic language that developed from Old Norse and was spoken in Shetland, Orkney and possibly Caithness. Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West Scandinavian group. Very little written evidence of the language has survived and as a result it is not possible to distinguish any island names that may be Norn rather than Old Norse. After the Northern Isles were pledged to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, the early Scottish Earls spoke Gaelic when the majority of their subjects spoke Norn and both of these languages were then replaced by Insular Scots.
First Grammatical Treatise
This work is one of the earliest written works in Icelandic (and in any North Germanic language). It is a linguistic work dealing with Old Norse, in the tradition of Latin and Greek grammatical treatises, generally dated to the mid-12th century. Hreinn Benediktsson was not able to narrow the time of writing more precisely than to 1125–1175.
English language in Northern England
However, Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon and Old West Norse (from which modern Norwegian is descended) have arguably had a greater impact, over a longer period, on most northern dialects than Old East Norse. While authoritative quantification is not available, some estimates have suggested as many as 7% of West Cumbrian dialect words are Norse in origin or derived from it.
Tune stone
The Tune stone is an important runestone from about 200–450 CE. It bears runes of the Elder Futhark, and the language is Proto-Norse. It was discovered in 1627 in the church yard wall of the church in Tune, Østfold, Norway. Today it is housed in the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. The Tune stone is possibly the oldest Norwegian attestation of burial rites and inheritance.
Old Norse
This is an extract from "Västgötalagen", the Westrogothic law. It is the oldest text written as a manuscript found in Sweden and from the 13th century. It is contemporaneous with most of the Icelandic literature. The text marks the beginning of Old Swedish as a distinct dialect.
Ingersoll (surname)
During the Viking Age, from the late 8th century to the mid-11th century, the Old Norse language expanded through Europe as the Vikings conquered and settled areas like Normandy (Normanni in Old Norse) and Inkersall (Ingvarsál in Old Norse).
Danish language
The Danish philologist Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen divided the history of Danish into a period from 800 AD to 1525 to be "Old Danish", which he subdivided into "Runic Danish" (800-1100), Early Middle Danish (1100–1350) and Late Middle Danish (1350–1525).
By the eighth century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse.
This language was generally called the "Danish tongue" ("Dǫnsk tunga"), or "Norse language" ("Norrœnt mál"). Norse was written in the runic alphabet, first with the elder futhark and from the 9th century with the younger futhark.
History of Norway
The Bronze Age started in 1800 BC and involved innovations such as plowing fields with ards, permanents farms with houses and yards, especially in the fertile areas around the Oslofjord, Trondheimsfjord, Mjøsa and Jæren. Some yields were so high that it allowed farmers to trade furs and skins for luxury items, especially with Jutland. About 1000 BC, speakers of Uralic languages arrived in the north and assimilated with the indigenous population, becoming the Sami people. According to Ante Aikio the formation of the Sámi language was completed in its southernmost area of usage (central Scandinavia, South Sápmi) by 500 AD.
Norse–Gaels
The Norse–Gaels originated in Viking colonies of Ireland and Scotland, the descendants of intermarriage between Norse immigrants and the Gaels. As early as the 9th century, many colonists (except the Norse who settled in Cumbria) intermarried with native Gaels and adopted the Gaelic language as well as many Gaelic customs. Many left their original worship of Norse gods and converted to Christianity, and this contributed to the Gaelicisation.
An Introduction to Old Norse
The introduction of the text traces the literary history of Old Norse and describes the literary merits, historical accuracy, and compositional style of Old Norse texts. In it, Gordon draws comparisons to other languages and texts of the Middle Ages such as the Old English epic poem "Beowulf".
Nynorsk
During the same period, Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb standardised the orthography of the Faroese language. Spoken Faroese is closely related to Landsmål and dialects in Norway proper, and Lucas Debes and Peder Hansen Resen classified the Faroese tongue as Norwegian in the late 17th century. Ultimately, however, Faroese was established as a separate language.
Norwegian literature
At least as important in the creation of a Norwegian literature was the effort to introduce a pure Norwegian language, based on the dialects spoken in the areas more isolated from capital. The genius of Ivar Aasen (1813–1898) was at the heart of this effort. Aasen, a self-taught linguistic scholar and philologist, documented a written grammar and dictionary for the spoken Norwegian folk language, which became Nynorsk (New Norwegian) – the "speech of the country" as opposed to the official language largely imported from Denmark. Nynorsk is one of the two official written norms of the Norwegian language to this day.
Old Norse
As for the Latin alphabet, there was no standardized orthography in use in the Middle Ages. A modified version of the letter wynn called vend was used briefly for the sounds , , and . Long vowels were sometimes marked with acutes, but also sometimes left unmarked or geminated. The standardized Old Norse spelling was created in the 19th century, and is for the most part phonemic. The most notable deviation is that the non-phonemic difference between the voiced and the voiceless dental fricative is marked—the oldest texts as well as runic inscriptions use "þ" exclusively. Long vowels are denoted with acutes. Most other letters are written with the same glyph as the IPA phoneme, except as shown in the table below.
North Germanic languages
After the Old Norse period, the North Germanic languages developed into an East Scandinavian branch, consisting of Danish and Swedish; and, secondly, a West Scandinavian branch, consisting of Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic and, thirdly, an Old Gutnish branch. Norwegian settlers brought Old West Norse to Iceland and the Faroe Islands around 800. Of the modern Scandinavian languages, written Icelandic is closest to this ancient language. An additional language, known as Norn, developed on Orkney and Shetland after Vikings had settled there around 800, but this language became extinct around 1700.
Old Norse literature
From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Vikings and Norse settlers and their descendants colonised parts of what is now modern Scotland. Some Old Norse poetry survives relating to this period. The "Orkneyinga saga" (also called the "History of the Earls of Orkney") is a historical narrative of the history of the Orkney Islands, from their capture by the Norwegian king in the ninth century onwards until about 1200. 20th-century poet George Mackay Brown was influenced by the saga, notably for his 1973 novel "Magnus". The Icelandic "Njáls saga" includes actions taking place in Orkney and Wales. Besides these Icelandic sagas a few examples, sometimes fragmentary, of Norse poetry composed in Scotland survive. Among the runic inscriptions at Maeshowe is a text identified as irregular verse. Scandinavian cultural contacts in the Danelaw also left legacies in literature. "Höfuðlausn" or the ""Head's Ransom"" is a skaldic poem attributed to Egill Skalla-Grímsson in praise of king Eirik Bloodaxe in the Kingdom of Northumbria.
Modern Norwegian
Modern Norwegian () is the Norwegian language that emerged after the Middle Norwegian transition period (1350-1536) and Dano-Norwegian. The transition to Modern Norwegian is usually dated to 1525, or 1536, the year of the Protestant Reformation and the beginning of the kingdom of Denmark–Norway (1536-1814).
Danish language
Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Norse dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language before the influence of Danish and Norwegian Bokmål are classified as West Norse along with Faroese and Icelandic. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as "mainland Scandinavian", while Icelandic and Faroese are classified as "insular Scandinavian".
An Introduction to Old Norse
"An Introduction to Old Norse" is commonly accepted as a standard text in the English-speaking world for studying Old Norse. It includes a long introduction, a short grammar of Old Norse, a glossary, an index of names and selections from the "Poetic Edda" as well as a number of other sagas (all in Old Norse).
Norman toponymy
Old Norse settlement names began with the Norse settlement at the end of the ninth century, expanding in the tenth century with the creation of the Duchy of Normandy by Rollo in 911. Since the speakers of Old Norse were linguistically assimilated into Francophone society within a few generations, these settlement names most likely date prior to the 11th century. Most of these settlers were most likely Danish and/or Norwegian. These languages were quite similar to each other, making it difficult to distinguish the origin of the appellatives and accompanying adjective or male name.A similar use can be found in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany : Haddeby ("Hadæboth" 1285).
The names in parentheses are the earlier forms of the place-names, with the century in which they appeared.
Norwegian language
Around 800 AD, the script was simplified to the Younger Futhark, and inscriptions became more abundant. At the same time, the beginning of the Viking Age led to the spread of Old Norse to Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. Viking colonies also existed in parts of the British Isles, France (Normandy), and Kievan Rus. In all of these places except Iceland and the Faroes, Old Norse speakers went extinct or were absorbed into the local population.
Old Norse religion
Throughout its history, varying levels of trans-cultural diffusion occurred among neighbouring peoples, such as the Sami and Finns. By the twelfth century Old Norse religion had succumbed to Christianity, with elements continuing into Scandinavian folklore. A revival of interest in Old Norse religion occurred amid the romanticist movement of the nineteenth century, during which it inspired a range of artworks. It also attracted the interest of political figures, and was used by a range of right-wing and nationalist groups. Academic research into the subject began in the early nineteenth century, initially influenced by the pervasive romanticist sentiment.
Norwegian language
Like most of the languages in Europe, the Norwegian language descends from the Proto-Indo-European language spoken about 5500 years ago on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. As early Indo-Europeans spread across Europe, they became isolated and new languages evolved. In the northwest of Europe, the West Germanic languages evolved, which would eventually become English, Dutch, German, and the North Germanic languages, of which Norwegian is one.
Proto-Norse is thought to have evolved as a northern dialect of Proto-Germanic during the first centuries AD. It is the earliest stage of a characteristically North Germanic language, and the language attested in the Elder Futhark inscriptions, the oldest form of the runic alphabets. A number of inscriptions are memorials to the dead, while others are magical in content. The oldest are carved on loose objects, while later ones are chiseled in runestones. They are the oldest written record of any Germanic language.
Old Norse
The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian and the extinct Norn language of Orkney and Shetland; the descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages of Danish and Swedish. Norwegian is descended from Old West Norse, but over the centuries it has been heavily influenced by East Norse, particularly during the Denmark–Norway union.
Vikings
Common words in everyday English language, like some of the weekdays (Thursday means Thor's day), axle, crook, raft, knife, plough, leather, window, berserk, bylaw, thorp, skerry, husband, , Hell, Norman and ransack stem from the Old Norse of the Vikings and give us an opportunity to understand their interactions with the people and cultures of the British Isles. In the Northern Isles of Shetland and Orkney, Old Norse completely replaced the local languages and over time evolved into the now extinct Norn language. Some modern words and names only emerge and contribute to our understanding after a more intense research of linguistic sources from medieval or later records, such as York (Horse Bay), Swansea (Sveinn's Isle) or some of the place names in Northern France like Tocqueville (Toki's farm).
Norwegian language
By far the largest part of the modern vocabulary of Norwegian dates back to Old Norse. The largest source of loanwords is Middle Low German, which had a huge influence on Norwegian vocabulary from the late Middle Ages onwards partially even influencing grammatical structures, such as genitive constructions. Bokmål and many dialects have these loanwords, while Nynorsk is more puristic and has many of these words replaced with words that are derived from Old Norse, Nynorsk thus shares more vocabulary with Icelandic and Faroese. There are Middle Low German vocabulary in Nynorsk too, but to a lesser extent than Bokmål. At present, the main source of new loanwords is English e.g. "rapper", "e-mail", "catering", "juice", "bag" (originally a loan word to English from Old Norse).
Algiz
In Proto-Norse and Old Norse, the Germanic "*z" phoneme developed into an R sound, perhaps realized as a retroflex approximant , which is usually transcribed as "ʀ". This sound was written in the Younger Futhark using the Yr rune , the Algiz rune turned upside down, from about the 7th century. This phoneme eventually became indistinguishable from the regular "r" sound in the later stages of Old Norse, at about the 11th or 12th century.
Elfdalian
Like all other modern North Germanic languages, Elfdalian developed from Old Norse, a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age until about 1300. It developed in relative isolation since the Middle Ages and is considered to have remained closer to Old Norse than the other Dalecarlian dialects.
Proto-Germanic language
Phonemic nasal vowels definitely occurred in Proto-Norse and Old Norse. They were preserved in Old Icelandic down to at least 1125, the earliest possible time for the creation of the "First Grammatical Treatise", which documents nasal vowels. The PG nasal vowels from "-nh-" sequences were preserved in Old Icelandic as shown by examples given in the "First Grammatical Treatise". For example:
The phonemicity is evident from minimal pairs like "ǿ̇ra" "younger" vs. "ǿra" "vex" < "*wor-", cognate with English "weary". The inherited Proto-Germanic nasal vowels were joined in Old Norse by nasal vowels from other sources, e.g. loss of "*n" before "s". Modern Elfdalian still includes nasal vowels that directly derive from Old Norse, e.g. "gą̊s" "goose" < Old Norse "gás" (presumably nasalized, although not so written); cf. German "Gans", showing the original consonant.
Scanian dialect
Swedish and Danish are considered to have been the same dialect, Old East Norse, up until the 12th century. However, some scholars speculate that there might have been certain dialect differences within the Nordic language area as early as the Proto-Nordic period. The term Swedish is not mentioned specifically in any source until the first half of the 14th century, and no standard spoken language had developed in either Sweden or Denmark before 1500, although some scholars argue that there may have been tendencies towards a more formal "courteous" language among the aristocracy.
Old Norse
An epenthetic vowel became popular by 1200 in Old Danish, 1250 in Old Swedish and Norwegian, and 1300 in Old Icelandic. An unstressed vowel was used which varied by dialect. Old Norwegian exhibited all three: /u/ was used in West Norwegian south of Bergen, as in "aftur", "aftor" (older "aptr"); North of Bergen, /i/ appeared in "aftir", "after"; and East Norwegian used /a/, "after", "aftær".
Early Swedish literature
As Swedish evolved from Old Norse in the 13th century, the Swedish literature began to take form as an independent body of literature. The earliest form of an independent Swedish language is called Old Swedish, and it was used in the years 1225 to 1526. The period was initiated by the first provincial laws. In them, the runic Futhark was almost totally replaced by the Latin alphabet. The provincial laws are believed to have had a solid centuries-old foundation that was kept alive by oral tradition until they were written down. Compared to the Christianity-influenced Swedish literature during the ensuing centuries, the provincial laws are described as having a touch of the ancient folkhistory; of tradition and age.
Old Norse religion
Andrén described Old Norse religion as a "cultural patchwork" which emerged under a wide range of influences, both from earlier Scandinavian religions and elements introduced from elsewhere. It may have had links to Nordic Bronze Age: while the putatively solar-oriented belief system of Bronze Age Scandinavia is believed to have died out around 500 BCE, a number of Bronze Age motifs—such as the wheel cross—reappear in later Iron Age contexts. It is often regarded as having developed from earlier religious belief systems found among the Germanic Iron Age peoples. The Germanic languages likely emerged in the first millennium BCE in present-day northern Germany or Denmark, after which they spread; several of the deities in Old Norse religion have parallels among other Germanic societies. The Scandinavian Iron Age began around 500 to 400 BCE.
History of Icelandic
The history of the Icelandic language began in the 9th century when the settlement of Iceland, mostly by Norwegians, brought a dialect of Old Norse to the island.
Språkåret 2013
Språkåret (The Language Year) in Norway was arranged with government support in 2013. That year was 200 years after Ivar Aasen was born. It was 100 years after Det Norske Teatret (The Norwegian Theatre) opened. Ivar Aasen's life work was the development of Nynorsk (New Norse), a language with grammar and vocabulary based upon the way ordinary Norwegians, primarily rural, spoke. After a few hundred years under Danish rule, many in the cities as well as everyone educated in Denmark, spoke and wrote Danish and Danish was taught in schools. Det Norske Teatret is a theatre in Oslo that primarily produces plays in Nynorsk.
Old Norse
Old Norse was a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements from about the 9th to the 13th century.
Old Norse
Due to Gotland's early isolation from the mainland, many features of Old Norse did not spread from or to the island, and Old Gutnish developed as an entirely separate branch from Old East and West Norse. For example, the diphthong "ai" in "aigu", "þair" and "waita" was not retroactively umlauted to "ei" as in e.g. Old Icelandic "eigu", "þeir" and "veita". Gutnish also shows dropping of /w/ in initial /wɾ/, which it shares with the Old West Norse dialects (except Old East Norwegian), but which is otherwise abnormal. Breaking was also particularly active in Old Gutnish, leading to e.g. "biera", unlike mainland "bera".
Northern Isles
The Norn language formerly spoken in the islands, a descendant of the Old Norse of the Vikings, became extinct in the 18th or 19th century. The local dialects of the Scots language, collectively known as Insular Scots, are highly distinctive and retain strong Norn influences.
Norwegian language
Meanwhile, a nationalistic movement strove for the development of a new written Norwegian. Ivar Aasen, a botanist and self-taught linguist, began his work to create a new Norwegian language at the age of 22. He traveled around the country collecting words and examples of grammar from the dialects and comparing the dialects among the different regions. He examined the development of Icelandic, which had largely escaped the influences under which Norwegian had come. He called his work, which was published in several books from 1848 to 1873, Landsmål, meaning "national language". The name "Landsmål" is sometimes interpreted as "rural language" or "country language", but this was clearly not Aasen's intended meaning.
Nynorsk
Both written languages are in reality fusions between the Norwegian and Danish languages as they were spoken and written around 1850, with Nynorsk closer to Norwegian and Bokmål closer to Danish. The official standard of Nynorsk has been significantly altered during the process to create the common language form Samnorsk. A minor purist fraction of the Nynorsk population has stayed firm with the historical Aasen norm where these alterations of Nynorsk were rejected, which is known as Høgnorsk (, analogous to High German). Ivar Aasen-sambandet is an umbrella organization of associations and individuals promoting the use of Høgnorsk, whereas Noregs Mållag and Norsk Målungdom advocate the use of Nynorsk in general.
Faroese language
Around 900, the language spoken in the Faroes was Old Norse, which Norse settlers had brought with them during the time of the settlement of Faroe Islands () that began in 825. However, many of the settlers were not from Scandinavia, but descendants of Norse settlers in the Irish Sea region. In addition, women from Norse Ireland, Orkney, or Shetland often married native Scandinavian men before settling in the Faroe Islands and Iceland. As a result, the Irish language has had some influence on both Faroese and Icelandic. There is some debatable evidence of Irish language place names in the Faroes: for example, the names of Mykines, Stóra Dímun, Lítla Dímun and Argir have been hypothesized to contain Celtic roots. Other examples of early-introduced words of Celtic origin are: / (buttermilk), cf. Middle Irish ; (tail-piece of an animal), cf. Middle Irish ; (head, headhair), cf. Middle Irish ; (hand, paw), cf. Middle Irish ; (bull), cf. Middle Irish ; and (pasture in the outfield), cf. Middle Irish .
North Germanic languages
Sweden left the Kalmar Union in 1523 due to conflicts with Denmark, leaving two Scandinavian units: The union of Denmark–Norway (ruled from Copenhagen, Denmark) and Sweden (including present-day Finland). The two countries took different sides during several wars until 1814, when the Denmark-Norway unit was disestablished, and made different international contacts. This led to different borrowings from foreign languages (Sweden had a francophone period), for example the Old Swedish word "vindöga" ‘window’ was replaced by "fönster" (from Middle Low German), whereas native "vindue" was kept in Danish. Norwegians, who spoke (and still speak) the Norwegian dialects derived from Old Norse, would say "vindauga" or similar. The written language of Denmark-Norway however, was based on the dialect of Copenhagen and thus had "vindue". On the other hand, the word "begynde" ‘begin’ (now written "begynne" in Norwegian Bokmål) was borrowed into Danish and Norwegian, whereas native "börja" was kept in Swedish. Even though standard Swedish and Danish were moving apart, the dialects were not influenced that much. Thus Norwegian and Swedish remained similar in pronunciation, and words like "børja" were able to survive in some of the Norwegian dialects whereas "vindöga" survived in some of the Swedish dialects. Nynorsk incorporates much of these words, like "byrja" (cf. Swedish "börja", Danish "begynde"), "veke" (cf. Sw "vecka", Dan "uge") and "vatn" (Sw "vatten", Dan "vand") whereas Bokmål has retained the Danish forms ("begynne", "uke", "vann"). As a result, Nynorsk does not conform the above model, since it shares a lot of features with Swedish. According to the Norwegian linguist Arne Torp, the Nynorsk project (which had as a goal to re-establish a written Norwegian language) would have been much harder to carry out if Norway had been in a union with Sweden instead of with Denmark, simply because the differences would have been smaller.
Norwegian language conflict
By the mid-19th century, two Norwegian linguistic pioneers had started the work that would influence the linguistic situation to this day. Ivar Aasen, autodidact, polyglot, and the founder of modern Norwegian linguistics, studied first the dialects of Sunnmøre, his home district, and then the structure of Norwegian dialects in general. He was one of the first to describe the evolution from Old Norse to Modern Norwegian. From this he moved to advocate and design a distinctly Norwegian written language he termed "Landsmål", "language of the country". His work was based on two important principles, in morphology he chose forms which he regarded as common denominators from which contemporary varieties could be inferred, in lexicography he applied puristic principles and excluded words of Danish or Middle Low German descent when at least some dialects had preserved synonyms inherited from Old Norse. In 1885, Landsmål was adopted as an official written language alongside the Norwegian version of Danish.
Old Norse
Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, and Gaelic (Scottish and/or Irish). Although Swedish, Danish and the Norwegian languages have diverged the most, they still retain mutual intelligibility. Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, particularly if speaking slowly. The languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders. This could be because these languages have been mutually affected by each other, as well as having a similar development influenced by Middle Low German.
Old Norse
Various other languages, which are not closely related, have been heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman language. Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Latvian and Estonian also have a number of Norse loanwords; the words "Rus" and "Russia", according to one theory, may be named after the Rus' people, a Norse tribe; "see Rus (name)", probably from present-day east-central Sweden. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are "Ruotsi" and "Rootsi", respectively.
Jakten på Odin
Heyerdahl's intention was to prove the veracity of the account of Snorri Sturluson in the Ynglinga saga, written in the 13th century, about the origin of the Norse royal dynasties, and the pre-Christian Norse gods. Snorri provides a euhemeristic account, in which he describes the Norse god Odin and some other Norse gods, the Æsir, as having been real people who emigrated from the area around the river Don to Scandinavia at the time of the Roman expansion into their old homeland. In Scandinavia, Snorri writes, they so impressed the native population that they started worshipping them as gods.
Russenorsk
The earliest recorded instance of Russenorsk was in 1785. It is one of the most studied northern pidgins; many linguists, for example, Olaf Broch, studied it. Unlike equatorial pidgins, it was formed from only two languages: Norwegian and Russian. Furthermore, these languages are not from the same branch of Indo-European languages. Also unlike equatorial pidgins, Russenorsk was formed from one social class.
Norwegian language conflict
In the early 1840s, the young linguist Ivar Aasen traveled rural areas collecting examples of the words and grammar used there. He assembled a Norwegian language based on dialects little affected by Danish and published his first grammar and dictionary of the Norwegian people's language ("Folkespråk"), in 1848 and 1850 respectively. Both he and other authors wrote texts in their own dialects from around this time and in the decades following.
History of Swedish
In the 9th century, Old Norse began to diverge into Old West Norse (Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Sweden and Denmark). In the 12th century, the dialects of Denmark and Sweden began to diverge, becoming Old Danish and Old Swedish in the 13th century. All were heavily influenced by Middle Low German during the medieval period. Though stages of language development are never as sharply delimited as implied here, and should not be taken too literally, the system of subdivisions used in this article is the most commonly used by Swedish linguists and is used for the sake of practicality.
Swedish language
In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects: "Old West Norse" (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) and "Old East Norse" (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called "Runic Swedish", while the dialects of Denmark are referred to as "Runic Danish". The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes, such as the rune for the vowel "u", which was also used for the vowels "o", "ø" and "y", and the rune for "i", also used for "e".
List of English words of Old Norse origin
To be distinguished from loanwords which date back to the Old English period are modern Old Norse loans originating in the context of Old Norse philology, such as "kenning" (1871), and loans from modern Icelandic (such as "geyser", 1781).
Yet another (rare) class are loans from Old Norse into Old French, which via Anglo-Norman were then indirectly loaned into Middle English; an example is "flâneur", via French from the Old Norse verb "flana" "to wander aimlessly"."You"-thou
"your"-thy
Old Norse orthography
An understanding of the writing system of Old Norse is crucial for fully understanding the Old Norse language. Studies of remaining rune stones from the Viking Age reveal many nuances about the spoken language, such as the constant use of alliteration. A comparison of various whetstones from this time period with the works of Snorri Sturluson reveal that alliteration was common in many Old Norse writings, and were not only present in skaldic works. This would then suggest that the Vikings closely tied their language to their auditory sense, which in turn would have helped with the continual transfer of their cultural memory, which was also closely tied to their language.
Icelandic vocabulary
Iceland was first settled in the 9th century by Norwegians who took captive Irish slaves. At this time, the same language was spoken in both Iceland and Norway. Vocabulary was largely Norse, and significant changes did not start to occur until the 13th and 14th centuries. Around this time, Norwegian declension and inflection became considerably simplified, whereas Icelandic’s did not. This difference can be seen today by comparing the two modern languages.
Old Norse
From the late 13th century, Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian started to diverge more. After c. 1350, the Black Death and following social upheavals seem to have accelerated language changes in Norway. From the late 14th century, the language used in Norway is generally referred to as Middle Norwegian.
Languages of Scotland
Norn is an extinct North Germanic, West Scandinavian, language that was spoken on Shetland and Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland, and in Caithness. Norn evolved from the Old Norse that was widely spoken in the Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland and the west coast of the mainland during the Viking occupation from the 8th to the 13th centuries. After the Northern Isles were ceded to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, its use was discouraged by the Scottish government and the Church of Scotland (the national church), and it was gradually replaced by Lowland Scots over time. Norn persisted well into the 19th century, as the Faroese linguist Jakob Jakobsen wrote:
History of Icelandic
Most of the original settlers of Iceland came from Western Norway, bringing with them the western dialect of Old Norse. Due to its geographic isolation and consequent lack of influence from other stratum languages, the development of the language was entirely independent. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the language that was brought to Iceland was completely homogeneous; even though most of the settlers were from western Norway, there were a number from other parts of the country and also from other Scandinavian countries. Therefore the language that grew up in Iceland was influenced by all of the Norwegian dialects of the time. The close intermingling of the people of the island, especially at the "Alþingi" (the general meeting that took place at the beginning of each summer at "Þingvellir") contributed to even out the differences between the various dialects: traits common to all dialects were reinforced, while the most marked differences gradually disappeared. Although it is not known exactly how the language developed, modern Icelandic has evolved less than other Scandinavian languages. The unique development of Icelandic, which eventually resulted in its complete separation from Norwegian and the other Scandinavian languages, began with the "landnám" or first settlement. Icelandic has lost all trace of the tonal nature of early Scandinavian languages, traces of which are noticeable in modern Norwegian and especially Swedish. Research has been carried out to identify certain traits of the language, for example the so-called "preaspiration", but the results were inconclusive. Icelandic shares such characteristics with two other languages: Faroese and the Swedish spoken in Finland.
Old Norse
Among these, Icelandic and the closely related Faroese have changed the least from Old Norse in the last thousand years, although with Danish rule of the Faroe Islands, Faroese has also been influenced by Danish. Old Norse also had an influence on English dialects and Lowland Scots, which contain many Old Norse loanwords. It also influenced the development of the Norman language, and through it and to a smaller extent, that of modern French.
Norwegian language
Norwegian () is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is the official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties, and some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era.
Proto-Germanic language
The earliest available coherent texts (conveying complete sentences, including verbs) in Proto-Norse begin in c. 400 in runic inscriptions (such as the Tune Runestone). The delineation of Late Common Germanic from Proto-Norse at about that time is largely a matter of convention. Early West Germanic text is available from the 5th century, beginning with the Frankish Bergakker inscription.
Proto-Germanic language
The Proto-Germanic language developed in southern Scandinavia (Denmark, south Sweden and southern Norway), the "Urheimat" (original home) of the Germanic tribes. It is possible that Indo-European speakers first arrived in southern Scandinavia with the Corded Ware culture in the mid-3rd millennium BC, developing into the Nordic Bronze Age cultures by the early 2nd millennium BC. Proto-Germanic developed out of pre-Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe. According to the Germanic substrate hypothesis, it may be influenced by non-Indo-European cultures, such as the Funnelbeaker culture, but the sound change in the Germanic languages known as Grimm's law points to a non-substratic development away from other branches of Indo-European. Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after 500 BC, and Proto-Norse from the 2nd century AD and later is still quite close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic, but other common innovations separating Germanic from Proto-Indo-European suggest a common history of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers throughout the Nordic Bronze Age.
Toponymy of England
Old Norse, a North Germanic language from which both Danish and Norwegian are derived, was spoken (with dialects) by the Viking settlers who occupied many places in the north of the British Isles during the Viking era. In general, Danes settled in eastern England, whilst the Norwegians settled around the islands and coasts of Scotland, Ireland and western England. Although the language of the two groups were essentially similar, there is bias amongst the elements found in placenames. For instance "-by" and "torp" are much more common in placenames of Denmark whilst "toft/taft" and "bister/ster/bost" are more common in names of Norway; all these elements essentially mean 'settlement/dwelling'.
History of Norway
Norway's coastline rose from glaciation with the end of the last glacial period about 12,000 B.C. The first immigration took place during this period as the Norwegian coast offered good conditions for sealing, fishing, and hunting. They were nomadic and by 9300 B.C they were at Magerøya. Increased ice receding from 8000 B.C. caused settlement along the entire coastline. The Stone Age consisted of the Komsa culture in Troms and Finnmark and the Fosna culture further south. The Nøstvet culture took over from the Fosna culture ca. 7000 BC, which adapted to a warmer climate which gave increased forestation and new mammals for hunting. The oldest human skeleton ever discovered in Norway was found in shallow water off Sogne in 1994 and has been carbon dated to 6,600 BC. Ca. 4000 BC people in the north started using slate tools, earthenware, skis, sleds and large skin boats.
The first farming and thus the start of the Neolithic period, began ca. 4000 BC around the Oslofjord, with the technology coming from southern Scandinavia. The break-through occurred between 2900 and 2500 BC, when oats, barley, pigs, cattle, sheep and goats became common and spread as far north as Alta. This period also saw the arrival of the Corded Ware culture, who brought new weapons, tools and an Indo-European dialect, from which the Norwegian language developed.
Old Norse
All the while, the changes resulting in breaking (for example "hiarta" from *"hertō") were more influential in the East probably once again due to generalizations within the inflectional system. This difference was one of the greatest reasons behind the dialectalization that took place in the 9th and 10th centuries, shaping an Old West Norse dialect in Norway and the Atlantic settlements and an Old East Norse dialect in Denmark and Sweden.
International English
The English language evolved in England, from a set of West Germanic dialects spoken by the Angles and Saxons, who arrived from continental Europe in the 5th century. Those dialects came to be known as "Englisc" (literally "Anglish"), the language today referred to as Anglo-Saxon or Old English (the language of the poem "Beowulf"). However, less than a quarter of the vocabulary of Modern English is derived from the shared ancestry with other West Germanic languages because of extensive borrowings from Norse, Norman, Latin, and other languages. It was during the Viking invasions of the Anglo-Saxon period that Old English was influenced by contact with Norse, a group of North Germanic dialects spoken by the Vikings, who came to control a large region in the North of England known as the Danelaw. Vocabulary items entering English from Norse (including the pronouns "they", and "them") are thus attributable to the on-again-off-again Viking occupation of Northern England during the centuries prior to the Norman Conquest (see, e.g., Canute the Great). Soon after the Norman Conquest of 1066, the "Englisc" language ceased being a literary language (see, e.g., Ormulum) and was replaced by Anglo-Norman as the written language of England. During the Norman Period, English absorbed a significant component of French vocabulary (approximately one-third of the vocabulary of Modern English). With this new vocabulary, additional vocabulary borrowed from Latin (with Greek, another approximately one-third of Modern English vocabulary, though some borrowings from Latin and Greek date from later periods), a simplified grammar, and use of the orthographic conventions of French instead of Old English orthography, the language became Middle English (the language of Chaucer). The "difficulty" of English as a written language thus began in the High Middle Ages, when French orthographic conventions were used to spell a language whose original, more suitable orthography had been forgotten after centuries of nonuse. During the late medieval period, King Henry V of England (lived 1387–1422) ordered the use of the English of his day in proceedings before him and before the government bureaucracies. That led to the development of Chancery English, a standardised form used in the government bureaucracy. (The use of so-called Law French in English courts continued through the Renaissance, however.)
Norse cosmology
Concepts of time and space play a major role in the Old Norse corpus's presentation of Norse cosmology. While events in Norse mythology describe a somewhat linear progression, various scholars in ancient Germanic studies note that Old Norse texts may imply or directly describe a fundamental belief in cyclic time. According to scholar John Lindow, "the cosmos might be formed and reformed on multiple occasions by the rising sea."
Drawing in part from various eddic poems, the "Gylfaginning" section of the "Prose Edda" contains an account of the development and creation of the cosmos: Long before the earth came to be, there existed the bright and flaming place called Muspell—a location so hot that foreigners may not enter it—and the foggy land of Niflheim. In Niflheim was a spring, Hvergelmir, and from it flows numerous rivers. Together these rivers, known as Élivágar, came to flow further and further from their source. Eventually the poisonous substance within the flow came to harden and turn to ice. When the flow came became entirely solid, the poisonous vapor that rose from the ice solidified into rime atop the solid river. These thick ice layers grew, in time spreading across the void of Ginnungagap.
Old Norse
Old West Norse underwent a lengthening of initial vowels at some point, especially in Norwegian, so that OWN "eta" became "éta," ONW "akr" > "ákr", OIC "ek" > "ék".
English language
First, the waves of Norse colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with Old Norse, a North Germanic language. Norse influence was strongest in the Northeastern varieties of Old English spoken in the Danelaw area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and Northern English. However the centre of norsified English seems to have been in the Midlands around Lindsey, and after 920 CE when Lindsey was reincorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, Norse features spread from there into English varieties that had not been in intense contact with Norse speakers. Some elements of Norse influence that persist in all English varieties today are the pronouns beginning with "th-" ("they, them, their") which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with ().
Greenlandic Norse
Greenlandic Norse is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in the Norse settlements of Greenland until their demise in the late 15th century. The language is attested through some 80 runic inscriptions, many of which are difficult to date and not all of which were necessarily carved by people born in Greenland.
Old Norse
Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark, runic Old Norse was originally written with the Younger Futhark, which only had 16 letters. Because of the limited number of runes, several runes were used for different sounds, and the distinction between long and short vowels wasn't retained in writing. Medieval runes came into use some time later.
Faroese language
Old Faroese ("miðaldarføroyskt", ca. mid-14th to mid-16th centuries) is a form of Old Norse spoken in medieval times in the Faroe Islands. The language shares many features with both Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian; Old Norwegian appears closer to Old Faroese, whereas Old Icelandic remained rather archaic compared to other medieval varieties of Old West Norse. The most crucial aspects of the development of Faroese are diphthongisation and palatalisation.
Swedish language
Old Swedish (Swedish: "fornsvenska") is the term used for the medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that "Västgötalagen" ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in Latin script and the oldest Swedish law codes. Old Swedish is divided into "äldre fornsvenska" (1225–1375) and "yngre fornsvenska" (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with the firm establishment of the Christian church and various monastic orders, introducing many Greek and Latin loanwords. With the rise of Hanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century, Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number of Low German-speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into the vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time much more similar than today's language).
Old English
Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic (also known as North Sea Germanic) dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England. This included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, except in the areas of Scandinavian settlements where Old Norse was spoken. Celtic speech also remained established in certain parts of England: Medieval Cornish was spoken all over Cornwall and in adjacent parts of Devon, while Cumbric survived perhaps to the 12th century in parts of Cumbria, and Welsh may have been spoken on the English side of the Anglo-Welsh border. Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law.
Proto-Norse language
The differences between attested Proto-Norse and unattested Proto-Germanic are rather small. Separating Proto-Norse from Northwest Germanic can be said to be a matter of convention, as sufficient evidence from the remaining parts of the Germanic-speaking area (Northern Germany and the Netherlands) is lacking in a degree to provide sufficient comparison. Inscriptions found in Scandinavia are considered to be in Proto-Norse. Several scholars argue about this subject matter. Wolfgang von Krause sees the language of the runic inscriptions of the Proto-Norse period as an immediate precursor to Old Norse, but Elmer Antonsen views them as Northwest Germanic, but his views on Runic Script and related subjects might be considered extreme.
Pennines
In Norse times, Viking settlers brought their languages of Old Norse, Old Danish (mainly in the Yorkshire Dales and parts of the Peak District) and Old Norwegian (mainly in the western Pennines). With the eventual consolidation of England by the Saxon kingdom of Wessex, the pure Norse speech died out in England, though it survived in the Pennines longer than in most areas. However, the fusion of Norse and Old English was important in the formation of Middle English and hence Modern English, and many individual words of Norse descent remain in use in local dialects, such as that of Yorkshire, and in local place names.
Fixed stars
The attempts to explain the universe stem from observations of the objects found in the sky. Different cultures historically have various stories to provide an answer to the questions of what they are seeing. Norse Mythology originates from northern Europe, around the geographical location of modern-day region of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The Norse mythology consists of tales and myths derived from Old Norse, which was a Northern German language from the Middle Ages. There is a series of manuscript texts written in Old Norse which contain a collection of [35] poems written from oral tradition. Among historians there seems to be speculation of the specific dates of the poems written, however, the estimated record of the texts is around the beginning of the thirteenth century. Although the oral tradition of passing down tales existed long before the advent of text manuscripts and print versions.
Norn language
Norse settlement in the islands probably began in the early 9th century. These settlers are believed to have arrived in very substantial numbers and like those who migrated to Iceland and the Faroe Islands it is probable that most came from the west coast of Norway. Shetland toponymy bears some resemblance to that of northwest Norway, while Norn vocabulary implies links with more southerly Norwegian regions.
Younger Futhark
The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries.
The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse.
Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs that were written the same.
Old Norse
The following text is from "Alexanders saga", an Alexander romance. The manuscript, AM 519 a 4to, is dated c. 1280. The facsimile demonstrates the sigla used by scribes to write Old Norse. Many of these were borrowed from Latin. Without familiarity with these abbreviations, the facsimile will be unreadable to many. In addition, reading the manuscript itself requires familiarity with the letterforms of the native script. The abbreviations are expanded in a version with normalized spelling like the standard normalization system's. Comparing this to the spelling of the same text in Modern Icelandic shows that, while pronunciation has changed greatly, spelling has changed little.
Nynorsk
In 1749, Erik Pontoppidan released a comprehensive dictionary of Norwegian words that were incomprehensible to Danish people, "Glossarium Norvagicum Eller Forsøg paa en Samling Af saadanne rare Norske Ord Som gemeenlig ikke forstaaes af Danske Folk, Tilligemed en Fortegnelse paa Norske Mænds og Qvinders Navne". Nevertheless, it is generally acknowledged that the first systematic study of the Norwegian language was made by Ivar Aasen in the mid 19th century. After the dissolution of Denmark–Norway and the establishment of the union between Sweden and Norway in 1814, Norwegians considered that neither Danish, by now a foreign language, nor by any means Swedish, were suitable written norms for Norwegian affairs. The linguist Knud Knudsen proposed a gradual Norwegianisation of Danish. Ivar Aasen, however, favoured a more radical approach, based on the principle that the spoken language of people living in the Norwegian countryside, who made up the vast majority of the population, should be regarded as more Norwegian than that of upper-middle class city-dwellers, who for centuries had been substantially influenced by the Danish language and culture. This idea was not unique to Aasen, and can be seen in the wider context of Norwegian romantic nationalism. In the 1840s Aasen traveled across rural Norway and studied its dialects. In 1848 and 1850 he published the first Norwegian grammar and dictionary, respectively, which described a standard that Aasen called Landsmål. New versions detailing the written standard were published in 1864 and 1873, and in the 20th century by Olav Beito in 1970.
Cumbrian dialect
A far stronger influence on the modern dialect was Old Norse, spoken by Norwegian settlers who probably arrived in Cumbria in the 10th century via Ireland and the Isle of Man. The majority of Cumbrian place names are of Norse origin, including "Ulverston" from "Ulfrs tun" ('Ulfr's farmstead'), "Kendal" from "Kent dalr" ('valley of the River Kent') and "Elterwater" from "eltr vatn" ('swan lake'). Many of the traditional dialect words are also remnants of Norse settlement, including "beck" ("bekkr", 'stream'), "laik" ("leik", 'to play'), "lowp" ("hlaupa", 'to jump') and "glisky" ("gliskr", 'shimmering').
Old Norse
A specifically Icelandic sound, the long, u-umlauted A, spelled Ǫ́ and pronounced , developed circa the early 11th century. It was short-lived, being marked in the Grammatical Treatises and remaining until the end of the 12th century.
History of Icelandic
The period from 1050 to 1350 is known as "Old Scandinavian", "Old Nordic" or "Norse". There are numerous manuscripts and documents dating from this period, which allows researchers to characterize Icelandic from this period accurately.
Bergensk
Proto-Germanic, the common ancestor of all Germanic languages, in the 1st millennium BC evolved into Proto-Norse and later Old Norse. This subsequently developed into Western Norse and finally Old Norwegian about 1300. From 1350 to 1525, Norwegian went through a Middle Norwegian transition toward Modern Norwegian, partly fuelled by the devastating effect the Black Death had on Norway.
Old Norse religion
Additional sources remain by non-Scandinavians writing in languages other than Old Norse. The earliest of these, Tacitus' "Germania", dates to around 100 CE and describes religious practices of several Germanic peoples, but has little coverage of Scandinavia. In the Middle Ages, several Christian commentators also wrote about Scandinavian paganism, mostly from a hostile perspective. The best known of these are Adam of Bremen's "Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum" (History of the Bishops of Hamburg), written between 1066 and 1072, which includes an account of the temple at Uppsala, and Saxo Grammaticus' 12th-century "Gesta Danorum" (History of the Danes), which includes versions of Norse myths and some material on pagan religious practices. In addition, Muslim Arabs wrote accounts of Norse people they encountered, the best known of which is Ibn Fadlan's 10th-century "Risala", an account of Volga Viking traders that includes a detailed description of a ship burial.
North Germanic peoples
North Germanic peoples, sometimes called Scandinavians, Nordic peoples and in a medieval context Norsemen, are a Germanic ethnolinguistic group of the Nordic countries. They are identified by their cultural similarities, common ancestry and common use of the Proto-Norse language from around 200 AD, a language that around 800 AD became the Old Norse language, which in turn later became the North Germanic languages of today.
Norwegian literature
In pagan times the runic alphabet was the only one used in Norway. The preserved inscriptions from that time are mostly short memorial dedications or magical formulas. One of the longest inscriptions is that on the 8th century Eggjum stone, containing cryptic religious or magical allusions. Around the years 1000 to 1030, Christianity became established in Norway, bringing with it the Latin alphabet. The oldest preserved Norwegian prose works are from the mid-12th century, the earliest are Latin hagiographical and historical texts such as "Passio Olavi", "Acta sanctorum in Selio", "Historia Norwegie" and "Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium". At the end of the 12th century, historical writing expanded to the vernacular with "Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum" followed by the "Legendary Saga of St. Olaf" and "Fagrskinna".
Nynorsk
The idea that the study should end up in a new written language marked his work from the beginning. A fundamental idea for Aasen was that the fundamental dialect should be Modern Norwegian, not Old Norwegian or Old Norse. Therefore, he did not include grammatical categories which were extinct in all dialects. At the same time, the categories that were inherited from the old language and were still present in some dialects should be represented in the written standard. Haugen has used the word "reconstruction" rather than "construction" about this work.
Anglo-Saxons
Near the end of the Old English period the English language underwent a third foreign influence, namely the Scandinavian influence of Old Norse. In addition to a great many place names, these consist mainly of items of basic vocabulary, and words concerned with particular administrative aspects of the Danelaw (that is, the area of land under Viking control, which included extensive holdings all along the eastern coast of England and Scotland). The Scandinavians spoke Old Norse, a language related to Old English in that both derived from the same ancestral Proto-Germanic language. It is very common for the intermixing of speakers of different dialects, such as those that occur during times of political unrest, to result in a mixed language, and one theory holds that exactly such a mixture of Old Norse and Old English is thought to have accelerated the decline of case endings in Old English. The influence of Old Norse on the lexicon of the English language has been profound: responsible for such basic vocabulary items as "sky", "leg", the pronoun "they" and hundreds of other words.
Literature in the other languages of Britain
From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Vikings and Norse settlers and their descendents colonised parts of what is now modern Scotland. Some Old Norse poetry survives relating to this period, including the "Orkneyinga saga" an historical narrative of the history of the Orkney Islands, from their capture by the Norwegian king in the ninth century onwards until about 1200.
Danish language
Through Danish conquest, Old East Norse was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England. Many words derived from Norse, such as "gate" () for street, still survive in Yorkshire, the East Midlands and East Anglia, and parts of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings. The city of York was once the Viking settlement of Jorvik. Several other English words derive from Old East Norse, for example "are" (), "knife" (), "husband" (), and "egg" (). The suffix "-by" for 'town' is common in place names in Yorkshire and the east Midlands, for example Selby, Whitby, Derby, and Grimsby. The word "dale" meaning valley is common in Yorkshire and Derbyshire placenames.
Languages of Norway
Nynorsk was developed by the linguist Ivar Aasen in the 1850s, based on rural, spoken Norwegian, rather than the cultured, Danish-influenced Norwegian spoken in cities. Its first official codification was in 1901, was given the name Nynorsk in 1929, and has been used officially (alongside Bokmål) since 1938. Its usage, however has declined: in 1944 it was used by 34.1% (highest recorded number), in 1971 by 17.5% of the population, today, some 15% of schoolchildren are taught Nynorsk as their written language, and Nynorsk is reportedly used as main form of Norwegian by around 7.4% of the total population, whereas an additional 5% switch between Bokmål and Nynorsk.
Old Norse
This dialect of Old West Norse was spoken by Icelandic colonies in Greenland. When the colonies died out around the 15th century, the dialect went with it. The phoneme , and some merged to , so that Old Icelandic Þórðr becomes Tortr.
Norwegian literature
The earliest preserved examples of Old Norse literature are the Eddic poems, the oldest of which may have been composed in early 9th century Norway drawing on the common Germanic tradition of alliterative verse. In the 9th century the first instances of skaldic poetry also appear with the skalds Bragi Boddason, Þjóðólfr of Hvinir and the court poets of Harald Fairhair. This tradition continued through the 10th century with the major Norwegian poet being Eyvindr skáldaspillir. By the late 10th century the tradition of skaldic verse had increasingly moved to Iceland and Norwegian rulers such as Eiríkr Hákonarson and St. Olaf employed mostly Icelandic poets.
Germanic languages
The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the 4th-century Gothic translation of the New Testament by Ulfilas. Early testimonies of West Germanic are in Old Frankish/Old Dutch (the 5th-century Bergakker inscription), Old High German (scattered words and sentences 6th century and coherent texts 9th century), and Old English (oldest texts 650, coherent texts 10th century). North Germanic is only attested in scattered runic inscriptions, as Proto-Norse, until it evolves into Old Norse by about 800.
Old Norse religion
Old Norse religion is the most common name for a branch of Germanic religion which developed during the Proto-Norse period, when the North Germanic peoples separated into a distinct branch of the Germanic peoples. It was displaced by Christianity during the Christianization of Scandinavia. Scholars reconstruct aspects of North Germanic religion by historical linguistics, archaeology, toponymy, and records left by North Germanic peoples, such as runic inscriptions in the Younger Futhark, a distinctly North Germanic extension of the runic alphabet. Numerous Old Norse works dated to the 13th century record Norse mythology, a component of North Germanic religion.
Old Norse
Sometime around the 13th century, (spelled ǫ) merged with or in all dialects except Old Danish. In Icelandic, all (ǫ) merged with . This can be determined by their distinction within the 12th-century First Grammatical Treatise but not within the early 13th-century Prose Edda. The nasal vowels, also noted in the First Grammatical Treatise, are assumed to have been lost in most dialects by this time (but notably they are retained in Elfdalian). See Old Icelandic for the mergers of (spelled œ) with (spelled æ) and (spelled ę) with (e).
Normans
The descendants of Rollo's Vikings and their Frankish wives would replace the Norse religion and Old Norse language with Roman Catholicism (Christianity) and the Gallo-Romance language of the local people, descending from the Latin of the Romans, blending their maternal Frankish heritage with Old Norse traditions and customs to synthesize a unique "Norman" culture in the north of France. The Norman language was forged by the adoption of the indigenous "langue d'oïl" branch of Romance by a Norse-speaking ruling class, and it developed into the French regional languages that survives today.
Old Norse orthography
The appearance of Old Norse in a written runic form first dates back to approximately 200–300 A.D. While there are remains of Viking runestones from the Viking Age today they are rare, and vary in use of orthography depending on when they were created. Rune stones created near the end of the Viking Age tend to have a greater influence from Old English runes.
Old Norse orthography
The original Icelandic manuscripts which are the main source of our knowledge of Norse mythology did not employ a unified system of spelling. During the Viking Age, many dialects of Old Norse were spoken. While they appear to have been mutually intelligible, the slight variances resulted in various spelling. Thus the same name might be spelled several different ways even in the original manuscripts. Letters unique to the language existed, such as a modified version of the letter Wynn called Vend that was used briefly for the sounds , , and . In particular, the length of vowels was only sporadically marked in many manuscripts and various umlauted vowels were often not distinguished from others. Another complication is that several shortcut forms for common words, syllables, and grammatical endings developed. One example is the use of the rune named ' (man) for the word '. Another is the use of a special glyph for the various r-endings so common in Old Norse. These scribal abbreviations are categorized as follows:These abbreviation conventions and a majority of the signs are inherited from the Latin language itself, and were common to the Latin alphabet in other languages. However, other signs or conventions are specifically Norse, such as the " zig-zag.
Old Norse
The 12th-century Icelandic "Gray Goose Laws" state that Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders, and Danes spoke the same language, "dǫnsk tunga" ("Danish tongue"; speakers of Old East Norse would have said "dansk tunga"). Another term, used especially commonly with reference to West Norse, was "norrœnt mál" or "norrǿnt mál" ("Nordic/Northern speech"). Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish, of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility.