How Vikings Shaped the English Language
For a more indepth look at the influence of Old Norse on the English language take a look at the series: How Vikings Changed the English Language: Intro
The English language has certainly been a heavy influence on many languages around the world – including modern Norwegian. Thanks to ‘internationalisation’ from the Internet, TV and film, Norwegians frequently use words like baby, drink, cool, jeans, web and chips – to name a few.
But once upon a time it was the other way around. Many English words actually come from old Norse language – brought by Vikings to England in medieval times. Here are some words you have probably uttered without realising you are speaking Norwegian!
- Anger – from angr (“trouble, affliction”)
- Bag – from baggi. Norwegians use the word bag today but, ironically, with an English pronounciation. The word has actually been re-imported from English!
- Berserk – from berserkr (“bare shirt”). Fierce warriors who fought without armour (and ate magic mushrooms for courage).
- Crawl – from krafla (“to claw”).
- Dirt – from drit (“feces”).
- Gun – from gunn (“war, battle”)
- Hell – from Hel, the ruler of the Underworld in Norse mythology.
- Hit – from hitta (“find”). Another example of a re-imported word.
- Husband – from husbondi (“master of the house”).
- Knife – from kniv, kvifr. You may have guessed this one already. In fact, any word starting with kn- is probably from old Norse.
- Raft – from raptr (“log”). Today we use the (English) word rafting in Norway when talking about the popular sport.
- Reindeer – from hreindyri. In modern Norwegian: reinsdyr.
- Scare – from skirra (“to frighten”).
- Steak – from steik, steikja (“to cook, roast”). Curiously, the word steak house is common in Norway today.
- Town – from tun, referring to the open space between buildings.
- Ugly – from uggligr (“dreadful”).
There you have it – no need for a dictionary when travelling in Norway. All you need to do is roll your R’s and you’ll be speaking Norwegian fluently!
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Hi Moose,
Good post. When I was living in Sweden and learning some Swedish, I was also pleasantly surprised by this type of discovery. I remember one I liked was the similarity between the Swedish ‘ut gang’ (exit) and how a Geordie or Scot would say ‘going out’ in English – it sounds the same but the other way round – ‘gan ut’. Don’t know if that works in Norwegian though.
Saludos from the South of Spain.
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From Moose:
Hi Matthew
Well, ‘utgang’ works in Norwegian too – the languages are very similar and Swedish actually has more in common with modern Norwegian than Danish does – even though modern Norwegian comes from Danish.
Not sure about the origin of the word ‘going’ though…
In some Norwegian dialects (spoken in small isolated places where the dainsh influence was smaller) the verb “to go” is “å gang” (north) or “å gange” (west and interior) both of which are remnants of old norse. And “going out” would thus be “gang(e) ut”
There may very well be some kind of connection there.
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From Moose:
Thanks for the input. On the other hand, in Northern parts of Britain the word “out” is in some places pronounced “oot”, identical to Norwegian “ut”. So yes, there is certainly a connection.
LOL As an English teacher, I find this fascinating. As someone married to a person of proud Scandinavian descent, I roll my eyes at one more thing he can claim Viking superiority over! *wink*
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from L-Jay:
Yeah, I am often amazed at how close English and Norwegian are. It’s a lot easier for my to read Norwegian as it just looks like English spelt badly…lol.
Great post!
I’m fascinated with linguistics and the origins of words–especially how many words related in different languages.
We had a Danish houseguest stay with us for a week a few months ago–and it was amusing to find out how many words *sounded* like English (until we saw the spelling in Danish). I’ve found “sounded out” words in Japanese and Russian as well that were the same meaning in English as in Japanese or Russian, but if you saw the spelling in the characters of the respective languages didn’t seem to have much resemblance.
Again, this is a cool post… You can see more at my Squidoo lens on Grammar:
http://www.squidoo.com/parts_of_speech
Best regards….
Dave Gardner, aka EditorDave
Weird how “drit” means sh*t and “skitt” means dirt.
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From Moose:
It wasn’t originally like that, but yeah – it’s interesting how languages evolve.
L-Jay always jumps a bit when she hears a TV ad for detergents that remove “skitt” (pronounced sh-). To her it always sounds like they are swearing!
Mind you, those words are not swearwords in Norway; a swearword always seems to evolve from what is the taboo. In English speaking societies the main taboos are bodily functions and sexuality, so naturally this reflects in swearing. In Norway, the main taboo is religion and so Norwegian swearwords are mostly about God or the devil.
I’m from Norway, and i must say some of these words suprised me^^
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From Moose:
You are not the only one. Doing research for this article, I was expecting to find maybe a dozen or so words. In reality, you could fill a booklet!
I am Scottish but work in Norway and speak Norwegian. The number of Scottish words linked directly to Norway is basically unlimited. Here are a few, with the Scottish word being presented first followed by English and Norwegian:
Coo (cow) Ku
Hoose (house Hus
Moose (mouse) Mus
Reek (smoke) Royk
Ganzie (jersey) Genser
Doo (pigeon) Due
Taou (string) Tau
Neep (turnip) Nepe
Hame (home) Heim
Mair (more) Mer
Kittle (tickle) Kitle
Noo (now) Nu
Bick (dog) Bikje
Host (cough) Host
Quine (girl) Kvinne
Most of the above are found in the North-East of Scotland and are still used in rural areas,
Regards,
Alec Ogston
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From Moose:
Yes, there has always been a particularly strong bond between Scotland and Norway. I heard of some places in Scotland where people would tell their kids to go out and play with the words “go oot and laik” – very similar to Norwegian “gå ut og lek”.
Also, there are some unconfirmed rumors that the highlanders are remnants of the Vikings…
Thanks for your comment
Interesting post, and I also enjoyed your photos–love those reindeer.
Blessings.
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from L-Jay:
Vær så god!
Do you mind if I use some of your examples?
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from Moose:
Sure thing.
There’s lots of northern English words that are the same as Norwegian, My favorite is By-law, i.e. a town law. The variety of regional English pronunciation means that there’s loads of words already in your head ready to use. A friend from Stoke says “gehen” for “going”, almost the same as the German. Northern English has “goin’ wham” for “going home”, I think it’s really hjemme .
Nice article, useful website, mange takk
Neil
I love words! Thanks for posting this. Also I like the post by Alec; I never would have thought that Norwegian was like Scottish. Amazing.
How can these similarities be surprising, given that the Vikings raided Scotland for most of the 9th century ? I learnt that in history class when I was 11 or 12 …
Some spill of language is bound to happen in both directions, one would assume.
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from L-Jay:
You would have also learnt that the dominant population impacts on the lesser. In fact, the Jutes (from Denmark) first migrated/invaded England around 500AD after the fall of the Roman Empire and brought the first forms of English to the British Isles. Then it was the Anglo Saxons (from upper Denmark/Lower Swedish area) that invaded bringing their ‘English’. Then it was the Vikings who invaded. In fact, England was ruled by a Danish king (Gothorm) for a while and the Anglos were banished to southern England. So in actual fact, it was the people of Northern Europe, aka Nordic descendants, that created English in the first place – not the English! If English didn’t go through the great vowel shift then it would sound very much like Norwegian today.
I was studying English History and studying Norwegian. It is supposed that Norsemen influenced the grammar system of English. In addition, Old Norse (that had 3 dialects then)was not so different from English, thus English could comprehend Norsmen.
England was rules by many Danish kings.
Just came back from a cruise to the fjords today, a Fred Olsen cruise (by which I mean that 99.9% of the customers were British) and I think that the way the Northerners pronounce English is still very close to Norwegian
)
Here in Minnesota, I’m often hearing people use the word ‘talk’ for the word speak, as in: He talks three languages. I wonder if the early Swedish people who came here
started to use the english :talk for the swedish word: tala, as tala svenska?
In an earlier comment, Moose said that Swedish actually has more in common with modern Norwegian than Danish.
Well, I’m not an expert, but I think that written danish has definitely more in common with written norwegian, and swedish has fare more words that has nothing in common with norwegian.
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from L-Jay:
Real Norwegian is not a written language. You are talking about bokmål which is a written language specifically crafted from Danish (it was a revolt against the ruling Swedes among other things). Moose was talking about the spoken Norwegian language that is more similar in sound to Swedish than Danish. Bokmål was completed by scholars in the early 20th century who wanted to keep its Danish roots as they believed a language should keep its heritage. However, it is Nynorsk that is considered traditional, or country, Norwegian – Norwegians learn both bokmål and nynorsk at school but they can also write in dialect which is really true Norwegian. Norwegians can generally understand Swedes but they don’t know what the hec Danes are saying. When we get Danish workers in the Arts industry here in Norway they have to speak English because Norwegians can’t understand the Danish (especially their way of counting…lol). The other reason for the similarity between Swedish and Modern Norwegian is that Sweden ruled Norway from the 1800s to 1905. That largely influenced the Norwegian spoken language, formal language and especially the upper class.
Very interesting article! Being Greek-American I know all about contributions to the English language. I really enjoyed that husband comes from Norse-my husband (Australian) liked the translation! I believe that some days of the week are named after Norse gods correct? Namely Wednesday (from Germanic Woden or Norse Odin), Thursday (from Thor) and Friday (from Frey). Love your articles great work!
When I visited Norway in 1992, I saw a cool bumper sticker that illustrated the Bokmål/Nynorsk/Dialect situation at the time. It read:
LES BOKMÅL. SKRIV NYNORSK. SNAKK DIALEKT
(Read Bokmål, Write Nynorsk, Speak Dialect). This was in the Sognefjord area (north of Bergen) visiting a friend’s relatives in Laerdal. I love Norwegian and have learned to speak it conversationally.
Norsk er et interessant og pent språk!
You’ve also got the word “thwart”, describing the rower’s seat _across_ on a rowing boat. This comes from the Old Norse word for the same thing, “thvert”, from thverr/thverr (across). The Norwegian word is now “tofte” (which happens to sound more similar to the English word than to the Old Norse, but not exactly the same), but we still have the words tverr and tvert meaning across.
In Trondask dialekt you say “Æ” instead of “Jeg” while “Æ” is vry similar to Engish “I”
Fascinating, but nae new.
Other examples
House – Hus
Boat – Båt
Bite – Bite
Door – Dør
Home – Hjem
Spear – Spyd
Bow – Bue
Stone – Sten
Book – Bok
Needle – Nål
…and so forth and so on…
Also, there’s tuesday/tirsdag (Tir), wednesday (woden) onsdag (Odin), thursday/torsdag (Thor), friday/fredag (Frey) all of which are named after norse deities.
You guys also seem to have forgotten the Norman impact on England, and the normans were – of course – norwegians
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from L-Jay:
Even before the Normans were the Jutes – but they and Normans were not ‘vikings’.