Some Viking words in English
This page forms part of an etymology course that gives an outline of the development of English. It is written in a sequence that you may want to follow. The best place to start, if you want to follow the whole course, is Etymology course, or, if you are only interested in English, Development of English. You may also arrive at any of these articles from other links. For more information about the history of English, you should of course read a good history of the language, such as Baugh (1993), Strang (1970), or Crystal (2005)
One of the strange features of the long period of Danish rule of parts of England (and short rule of virtually all of it) is the comparatively small influence that Old Norse vocabulary had on English - until after the Vikings had lost much of their power. (For some of the linguistic changes other than vocabulary, go to Old Norse.) However, there was a steady flow of words from northern dialects (in the areas which show the greatest Danish political influence) to mainstream English. Some examples of words which tell us about the sort of life that Vikings led include:
- anger
- berserk, a word probably from Icelandic which means 'a frenzied fury' or 'fighting mad'. "Now " says OED, "usu. as adj., frenzied, furiously or madly violent; esp. in phr. to go berserk."
- Danegeld, the tax raised to pay the ransom demanded by the Vikings.
- outlaw, 'a person declared to be outside the [protection of the] law', is derived from Old Scandinavian, through Icelandic.
- slaughter (pronounced 'SLAW-ter'), both noun and verb. In ON, slaughter meant 'the killing of [farm] animals for food', or 'the start of a butcher's work'.The meaning of 'killing humans' is not recorded in OED till the fourteenth century; and the meaning of killing humans in large numbers, as in battle, does not appear till the end of that time. So much for the image of Vikings!
But the Vikings settled, mostly in the north, and led domestic lives. Their vocabulary included:
- Fell in the sense of a hillside, or rolling hilltop, is a Norse word that is only current in the north of England, and in some place-names. Moor (or muir in Scots) is an OE near-equivalent. In the south, another OE word is down, a strange name for an upland. (It is cognate with dune, usually a mound of drifted sand.)
- happy, happen and perhaps are all derived from ON 'hap', meaning 'chance. (In the case of the first of these, it is 'good chance'.)
- Although wife is OE, husband is from the Norse bóndi, a peasant; specifically. a hus bondi is a peasant with a house - and therefore marriageable. The OE terms were 'lord' (~ guardian of the loaf') and 'lady' (~ loaf-kneader).
- sister, where the ON form has survived where the OE forms swuster and swoster have not.
- sky, whose original denotation was literally 'cloud'. The OE word was heofon (= heaven), using the same link of senses as still exists in German (himmel) - a much clearer picture of what we can see above our heads.
Some doublets may be of interest. These are occasions where Modern English has words from both the western and the northern traditions of Germanic, in other words from a common ancestor which diverged. Sometimes there are two words for the same thing; sometimes the two words have come to mean different things.
| Old Norse (ON) | Old English (OE) |
|---|---|
| beck, "the ordinary name in those parts of England from Lincolnshire to Cumbria which were occupied by the Danes and Norwegians" OED | brook is OE, and another OE word, burn, the usual word in Scotland for such a stream, is now only found in England as an element in place-names like Westbourne. |
| birk, the ordinary word for this tree in older Scots. | birch |
| dyke | ditch |
| gate meaning 'street' survives in addresses in northern towns, e.g 'Whitefriargate' in Hull and 'Micklegate' in York. See also gate. | Gate meaning 'entrance', or the 'moveable barrier at an entrance' is OE. |
| garth | yard, meaning 'an enclosed patch of land', 'a garden' or 'smallholding'. |
| hale | whole |
| kirk. Though a good Scots word, kirk still survives in the north of England, mostly as an element in place-names. | church |
| skipper (captain of a ship) | ship |
| skirt | shirt |
