When you’re snubbed or ignored, you might feel cursed. The sleuth is always on the trail for clues. If you are skilled, you might earn distinction. Gang members never say, “You come near me, I’m gonna scathe you.” Only the opposite word, unscathed, is common. A poet might write about his heart being riven in two. An English dairy farmer may say he needs to muck out, or clean, his barn. Litmus – from the Old Norse words litr (dye) and mosi (moss), used as a chemical test for acidity and alkalinity. A famous Danish toy manufacturer is called Lego. Lake – to play, which is what many people do at a lake. Apparently the Vikings didn’t believe that “happiness is a choice.” It amuses me to imagine how this word came to mean vigorous bargaining. Gawk – to heed, as in paying too much attention Gang – any group of men, as in modern Danish, not necessarily dangerous Crawling up a steep slope may require clawing. Now means food used to catch fish, wild animals, and susceptible people.īask – similar to the Old Norse word meaning “to bathe”īerserk – either from bear-shirt (frenzied warriors wearing a bearskin shirt) or bare-shirt (frenzied warriors wearing no shirt)īlunder – to shut one’s eyes to stumble about blindlyīulk – partition cargo, as in the nautical term bulkheadĬrawl – to claw. Old Norse words that meant something slightly differentĮnglish word, with original Old Norse meaningĪnger – trouble, affliction, which can make a person angryīait – snack, food eaten at work. Old Norse words that feature two-letter blends and a high consonant-to-vowel ratio just sound Viking to me, especially if you pronounce both letters as the Vikings originally did: knife, snare, snub, wrong, bread, dwell, bask, dream, steak, stammer, and especially thwart. Many English words that begin with sk or sc came from Old Norse, such as skin, sky, score, scant, scrub, scathe, and skill. Today we use a longer and less ambiguously-spelled Old Norse word: law. And sale, cake, egg, husband, fellow, sister, root, rag, loose, raise, rugged, odd, plough, freckle, call, flat, hale, ugly, and lake.Īnother Old English word that was quickly replaced was the very short word æ, which meant law. In fact, English received many really, really common words from Old Norse, such as give, take, get, and both. Or maybe not – when him and them mean the same thing in a language, you know it’s time for a change. If it weren’t for the Vikings, we might still be using the Old English words hîe, heora and him instead. When it comes to English words for which we are indebted to Old Norse, let’s start with they, their and them. Today Old Norse words are most common in the Yorkshire dialect, but the Danelaw included the East Midlands, York, Essex, Cambridge, Suffolk, Norfolk, Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford, Hertford, Middlesex and Buckingham. What did William the Conquerer have to do with the Vikings? Because Normandy means “land of the north men,” colonized by people such as William’s ancestor Rollo, whose real name was Hrólfr. When he did, more Norse words entered English. Danish kings ruled England almost until William the Conquerer sailed from Normandy, France and became the first Norman king of England in 1066.
In 1016, King Canute the Great became ruler of all England, even before he became king of his native Denmark. The 14 shires dominated by Danish law in northern and eastern England were called the Danelaw. The Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders, and Danes all spoke Old Norse in those days, usually called the “Danish tongue.” In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language, ranging west with Leif Erickson’s colony of Vinland in modern-day Canada, east with the Viking settlers on the Volga River in modern-day Russia, and south with warriors battling in modern-day Spain, Italy and North Africa.įour centuries after the Anglo-Saxons began emigrating from northern Europe, Danish Vikings began raiding Britain and had begun settling down by the year 876, plowing the land. But the language of the Vikings, Old Norse, has influenced the development of English more than any other language besides French and Latin. Probably you’ve never studied Conversational Viking, let alone claimed to speak it.
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