Morphology is the study of words.  How words are structured, patterned and evolve tell us a lot about who influenced what language.  In How Vikings Changed the English Language: Spelling we discussed how words were spelt in Old English and Norse – phonetically.  However, as English went through the Great Vowel Shift English spelling was [...]

The origin of Modern Norwegian is fairly straight forward.  One language evolved into another and so forth without too much complication (compared to English).  As mentioned in How Vikings Changed the English Language: First Contact, one of the ways that scholars announce that a language existed is by written evidence.  A lot of the earlier [...]

I always hear, from Norwegians, Brazilians, Chinese – everyone – that English is very hard to learn.  They say it is because English is notorious for breaking all the rules.  For example: why does ‘heard’ and ‘beard’ have different vowel sounds when they have the same ending ‘-eard’?  Same with ‘great’, ‘treat’ and ‘threat’?  There [...]

Language progressively changes over time.  In theorising how a language changes, scholars look at two things – internal and external change.  Internal change relates to grammar – word patterns (morphology), sound patterns (phonetics) and meaning patterns (semantics) etc.  External change relates to influences from innovations (such as the printing press), politics and social identity (such [...]

The Nid river flows through the heart of Trondheim.  It bends round the famous Nidaros Cathedral and forms a natural moat around the city.  The river has kept its name since the Viking Age and is mentioned in prominant sagas such as Snorre Sturlason’s Heimskringla or The Lives of the Norse Kings where St Olav built [...]

During excavation work on the site of the new public library in Trondheim, archaeologists found the ruins of what is thought to be Olavskirken (Olav’s Church), a church dating back to the mid-12th century.  Olav was a Viking who went to England and was converted to Christianity.  He returned to Norway to convert the heathen, [...]

In Norway, there are still Lefse recipes around from the 1630s! This is supposedly the traditional and original Hardanger recipe used:

Runes were the written language of the Vikings.

The flags of Norway developed from the age of the Vikings.  A raven banner was flown by many Viking chieftains from the ninth century and was often used as ‘weather-vanes’ (a kind-of weather compass to show the direction of the wind) on Viking Longships.
In Old Norse the raven was a popular symbol and represented the [...]

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!