Jakob Jakobsen

“ Celtic was spoken in Orkney and Shetland in ancient times, and long after Northmen had settled there. It was gradually displaced by Norse in proportion as the number and power of the immigrating Northmen increased, and not all at once. But, while the Norn, afterwards displaced by Lowland Scottish, has left behind it many and deep traces in the present dialect of the Islands, there remain now only very slight traces of the original Celtic. ”

“ The variant forms are therefore often very different.
“The last lisp of a dying child” is the striking phrase applied by S. Bugge to those last remnants of Shetland Norn [1] . Of the worst mutilated fragments it will hardly be possible to give any translation or adequate interpretation. To explain isolated words and phrases with more or less probability is all that can be contemplated. This is particularly the case with the remnants of verse from Unstn (the sea-song) and Foula (the eagle-song) , which are only small, disjointed fragments. ”

“ The unscrupulous way in which the Islands were treated during the time that they belonged to Scotland (and after Scotland and England were united the connection of the Islands with that country was particularly close) , has kept alive in the minds of the people an ill-will towards Scotsmen and everything Scottish, an ill-will which, however, during the last fifty years has steadily decreased, and which, as a result of the closer intercourse established in the 19th century, has now almost entirely disappeared. ”

“ The Danish vocabulary in Shetlandic is, however, relatively large and of weight, and contains not a few strongly-marked old dialect words, so there certainly must be an original or, at all events, very old Danish element in Shetlandic. Some of the words may have been in use, in ancient times, both in Denmark and in southern Norway. Altogether, the occurrence of the Danish element in Shetlandic strengthens the conviction, reached on other grounds, that the central point for the emigration to Shetland is to be sought in the south-west and south of Norway. ”

“ O.N. hann, pron., he. — hain [hain] is doubtless the same word, noted down in the foll. tabu-term, belonging to fishermen’s lang.: (der ’r) a hain ahead o’ hersell [‘herself’] , there is a boat ahead of ours. “hersell” replaces “himsell”, which must be the older of these two words, as O.N. bátr, a boat, is of the masculine gender. Prop.: he (a boat) before him (another boat) . The term originates most prob. from S.Sh., where shø [‘she’] is used for “he” far more widely than in N.Sh. Cf. the use of the words hannister and hannepaa of a person or thing that one does not wish to mention by name. ”

“ Districts lying apart, as, for example, the island of Unst, esp. the north of it, and Foula, where Norn had been spoken fully as long as anywhere else, and where a Norn vocabulary peculiar to themselves had been preserved, lacked altogether, on the other hand, many words of Norn origin that were quite common elsewhere, and that sometimes were rather widely distributed, especially on Mainland. Foula is a small island with a very sparse population, only about three hundred people, and this fact weakens the power of the old to resist the new, in spite of the remote situation of the island. ”

“ Many of the Latin verbs current in English are not known, or not used by the common people, who prefer to employ everyday verbs of Northern or Anglo-Saxon origin in combination with certain prepositions or adverbs. In some cases, in which an old verb has been assimilated in form to an English or Scottish verb, the Old Northern use of the word has been preserved, differing from Mod. English or Scottish usage. ”

“ When milking the cow, some drops of milk were sprinkled on the “bosten” in the byre; likewise at a private baptism, the “bosten” was sometimes sprinkled with a few drops of the baptismal water. 2) a sea-term, tabu-name in fishermen’s language for the sinker (kappi) on the fishing hand-line or long-line. Conn. — Meaning 1 is doubtless the original one, and meaning 2 derived from the former, as a certain faith and sense of consecration were associated with the sinker, as well as with the actual “bosten”. A successful sinker was thought to bring good luck when used in fishing. ”

“ With preps. and advs.: d. at, in the phrase “he is drawin’ at de dekk”, the end of the fishing-line has chanced to stick fast to the sea-bottom (Un.) , tabu-term at sea in boat-fishing, doubtless (as the thought is often veiled or expressed approximately in such tabu-phrases) : the line is approaching the sea-bottom; O.N. draga (sk) at, to approach. — d. doon [‘down’] : a) to pull the teats of a cow repeatedly before milking; b) he is drawin’ him doon to night, the night is coming down. — d. f (r) ae [‘from’] , a) to draw up the long-line a little from the sea-bottom (Yh.) , Icel. draga frá ”

“ The word may stand for *golder, *gølder, by metathesis of l, and, in that case, is the same word as No. gyldra, f., a) a watercourse in a narrow cleft (Aa.) ; b) a very narrow cleft (R.) . The definition indicates the form with “ø” to be the more probable, gloder b, as the name of a river, might poss. be the same as the Norwegian river-name “Glitra” (O. Rygh, No. Elvn.) . For the vowel-change cf. the preceding word.
gloderet [glȯd··ərət·] and gloderi [glȯd··əri·] , adj., 1) of a cloud: bright, whitish, through which the sun shines; esp. in the pl.: g. cloods [‘clouds’] . ”

“ Nowadays eder most often means a kind of mythical fish, feared by fishermen, as it is said to be able to perforate their boats when at sea (thus e.g. in the N.I.) . The phrase “to fly like a (n) eder”, to make rapid headway, is used in several places, e.g. on Wests. and in the N.I. From Esh., Nmw., “de eder” is reported as a name for the sea-serpent, and in Un. eder is occas. ”

“ Where Shetlandic words have meanings that are partly Northern, partly English-Scottish, all the meanings are usually given except those that have come in, or must be considered to have come in, very recently from standard English. On the other hand, a form such as “goul, gowl”, vb., to cry, howl, has not been entered, although it corresponds rather to O.N. gaula (goula) and No. gaula (goula) . In Lowland Scottish the word has the same form as in more recent Shetl., in Jam.: goul, gowl. But in Shetl. Norn “au, ou” regularly change to o (commonly with prefixed j: jo) , occasionally to u or ø. ”

“ As the i-mutation is so old and so usual a phenomenon in Norse as well as in German, it is almost as a matter of course that it appears in Shetland Norn. There is, however, the peculiarity that the i-mutation is wanting in a great many words in Shetland Norn, in words too, where no closely related words with an original vowel are to be found that could have a smoothing effect and abolish the mutation. ”

“ The Celtic settlement lies so very far back in time, and the Norse settlement, before King Harald’s day, took place so gradually and quietly and was so little marked by striking events, that the great, strong tide of emigrants, setting westward from Norway in King Harald Fairhair’s time, swept out of mind all previous emigrations, and absorbed the entire attention of the Saga-writers. ”

“ The old Norse speech of Shetland shows in its vocabulary a close connection with the mother-tongue, Norwegian, a closer connection than that shown by Icelandic and partly by Færoese with the same language, the common mother-tongue of them all. This circumstance has a natural explanation in the fact that Shetland was situated so much nearer to Norway. Certainly the political connection between the Islands and Norway was severed by the mortgaging of the Islands to Scotland in the 15th century ”

“ Old people who had good knowledge of the matters I wished to investigate, were often difficult to question, for, as a rule, they did not and could not have that comprehension of my undertaking which the younger people had, or quickly acquired. ”

“ Shetlandic handed down from Norn (with the exception of the irrelevant sense here: forward in the boat) .
The verb vog, properly to be awake, be watchful, means in Mod. Shetl. (U.) to remain at rest, or remain lying at the same fishing-ground. Both these words give countenance to the idea that the third line refers to deep-sea fishing: seeking out the fishing-ground at the haaf by day, and remaining there at rest by night. It was formerly the custom among Shetland fishermen, going out to the haaf-fishing, to take cooking utensils with them and stay away for several days and nights. ”

“ The word is used as a pet name or jokingly; formerly used by Foula fishermen as a tabu-name at sea. The ending -en in hjosen is poss. the old def. art.; note the use of the word in def. form without prefixed “de [‘the’] ” in the expr.: Are ye [‘have you’] gi’en hjosen ony met? have you given the pig any food? — The word is poss. to be classed with hjos, vb., to devour, and might, in that case, denote the greedy one; cf. harki (herki) , sb., with a similar root-meaning as a tabu-name for swine. ”

“ While the Gaelic words and names in Shetland may date partly from ancient times, and partly from later periods with Lowland Scottish (which contains a large Gaelic element) as an intermediate link, the Pictish element in Shetland is very ancient, and is pre-Northern.
Gradually, as the Scots from Ireland, in the course of centuries of conflict, got the upper hand of the Picts in Scotland, the earlier Pictland, the Picts were forced back, and undoubtedly some of them from the North of Scotland emigrated to Orkney and Shetland. ”

“ Whether any u-mutation appears in the Shetlandic word cannot be proved by the vowel-sound.
The u-mutation can be exactly proved in *gøda [gøda, ꬶøda] , sb., way, path, as ø here can only be developed from ǫ in “gǫtu”, nom.: gata. Besides *gøda, the form *goda [gȯda, ꬶȯda] , and (rarely) *gota [ꬶȯta] , is found, and prob. on account of the [ȯ] -sound, must be accepted as a mutated form. “goda, gøda”, now only a place-name, is remembered as a common noun, esp. in Fe. gødins [gødɩns] , in “de Midgødins” (Y.) , is def. pl. form: O.N. gǫturnar, with a later added Eng. pl. s. ”

“ In view of the fact that the Old Norse element surviving in the Shetland dialect is so rich and varied, it cannot surprise one to find, mingled with the Norn or Old Norwegian element which is the kernel of the language, a large number of words that are only known as Færoese, Icelandic, Danish or Swedish. ”

“ The king of Norway sent his chamberlain across to Shetland to collect the “skat” (tax) due to the Crown. The chamberlain came to Fetlar, where the skat was collected at Urie (“Øri”) . To Urie the udallers came with the “teinds” or tithes they had to pay. They brought with them the “bismers”: ancient wooden steelyards. The chamberlain of course had his own bismer, which was considered standard weight, and on which he tested the udallers’ bismers. A udaller by the name of Jan Tait, while paying his butter tithe, was accused by the chamberlain of having a false bismer. ”

“ The Shetland Isles became a province of Norway in King Harald Fairhair’s time, and belonged to that country till 1469, when King Christian I of Denmark and Norway (which countries had shortly before been united) pledged the Isles, together with the Orkney Islands, to Scotland as security for the dowry he had undertaken to provide on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Margaret to King James III of Scotland. ”

“ Most of the versions have ala as the last word in the line, but one version (also from Fetlar, acc. to J. Irvine) has jala. If we take this version as the basis for the last line, there is a clear connection with the preceding three lines. rude can then be accepted as rowed, past tense of *ru, vb., to row (a boat) , O.N. róa; kringe (de) as: “í kring um”, about, around; and the last word then becomes the old name for the isle of Yell, viz.: Jala, which lies to the west and south-west of Unst and Fetlar respectively. ”

“ Northern English, from which Lowland Scottish has evolved, is saturated with a Northern, especially Danish, linguistic element, that goes back to the Viking age.
I have, in such doubtful cases, elected to include the material concerned. Where it was a question of words that were common in O.N., and that had followed the usual (Shetlandic) phonetic rules for Shetland Norn, there was indeed no reason for omitting them. ”

“ My next visit, after another short stay in Lerwick, was to Northmavine, the most northerly and the largest parish on Mainland, and the district which, after the North Isles, gave me the richest result. Among those who assisted me with information, I will mention, in connection with North Roe, the most northerly part of the parish, the Jamieson family at Brebister, as well as the young intelligent James Inkster, of Huland. Mr. Jamieson was of Unst descent. To his three daughters I am specially indebted for a large vocabulary of words belonging to North Roe. ”

“ But the coast regions of Scotland, lying right opposite to the Hebrides, had already a greatly preponderant Celtic-speaking population, and there was thus no bulwark that could defend the Norn of the Hebrides against the steadily continued pressure of the Celtic of West Scotland, which at last overwhelmed it.
The Hebrides, also, lay much farther away from Norway than Orkney and Shetland, and were separated from Norway at an earlier date than these latter Island-groups, that is, immediately after King Håkon Håkonsson’s ill-starred expedition to the West of Scotland. ”

“ Jakob Jakobsen that his Etymologisk Ordbog over det Norrøne Sprog på Shetland should appear in an English edition, but he knew that his wish would never be fulfilled by himself, all his time being devoted to further original research; a considerable collection of Orkney Norn required to be worked out, and he was also occupied with a Færoese dictionary which he had commenced. Death unfortunately intervened, and what he left undone no one else could adequately do. ”

“ As the Færoese and Icelandic cow-rhymes, corresponding to the Shetlandic verse, end in the words: all the cows are counted (Icel.: “þá eru taldar kýr kalls allar”. Fær.: “komnar” or “taldar eru kýr okkrar allar”) , it is reasonable to assume that the Shetlandic verse has ended similarly, and that “fallalderalde kjøra” is a corruption of an original “taldar eru allar kýrnar”, all the cows are counted. ”

“ The dance is described by Low in his “Tour thro’ Orkney and Shetland”, written in 1774 (first published in Kirkwall in 1879 by Joseph Anderson) : ...“There is one species of dance, which seems peculiar to themselves [i.e. the Shetlanders] , in which they do not proceed from one end of the floor to the other in a figure, nor is it after the manner of a Scottish reel; but a dozen or so form themselves into a circle, and taking each other by the hand, perform a sort of circular dance, one of the party all the while singing a Norn visick. ”

“ It is Lowland Scottish in form; but as I have not found the word either in Scottish or in English dialects, applied in the same sense as in Shetl., I therefore have recorded it in the Dictionary, as I consider it to be an older *løsin (cf. *los and løs, adj., loose) , which has been modified according to Lowland Scottish; similarly with “louse”, vb. and “louse”, adj.
nout, cattle, was remembered by old people in Unst in the close of the 19th century, as having been introduced from Scotland. ”

“ The now unintelligible Jala could have become ala by association of the sound with the familiar word ali in “ali-lamb”. Accordingly the line might be translated thus: they rowed round (the north point of) Yell. The Unst fishermen, especially those from Westing, and some also from Fetlar, have, like the Yell inhabitants, carried on haaf-fishing to the north and west of Yell, and on these expeditions the high Valafjel on Unst was a particularly prominent landmark to be taken in finding the fishing-grounds. ”

“ It is not only in a merely statistical sense, that is, by reckoning the number of the words, that Shetland Norn shows a closer connection with the language of the south-west of Norway or of the south of Norway than with the other Norwegian dialect-groups. ”

“ Yell is in reality more isolated than Unst, and this large island, with its still very rich Norn vocabulary, will certainly be the part of Shetland where the old dialect with its intermixture of Norn will maintain itself longest. ”

“ In the 17th century the perversion of the Norn had begun; but it was not till about 1700 that it made much progress.
It may perhaps be of interest to see what older writers on Shetland have to say about the language of the Islands.
Brand in his “Description of Orkney, Zetland, etc.” (1701) says that “English is the Common Language among them [sc. the people of Shetland] yet many of the People speak Norse or corrupt Danish, especially such as live in the more Northern Isles, yea so ordinary it is in some places, that it is the first Language their Children speak” (ed. 1703, p. 69) . ”

“ And, even in cases where the words did not follow the phonetic rules of Shetland Norn, but were Lowland Scottish in form, doubt might exist, as Norn has been exposed, during so many centuries, to a strong influence from Lowland Scottish, on account of which approximations to the latter speech have occurred, both in the meanings and in the forms of the words.
Several Shetlandic words, although they are English (L.Sc.) in form, must be regarded as of Norse origin on account of their diffusion in Northern languages, especially in Norwegian, Færoese and Icelandic ”

“ The inhabitants of Conningsburgh are intelligent and lively and generally differ somewhat in appearance from most of the people of Shetland; they are rather shorter in stature and more squarely built as well as of a darker complexion, at least in the case of the older generation. This circumstance may be due to an ancient mingling of an original Celtic element with the Norse immigrants. The people of Conningsburgh have held firmly to old customs, and in no parish of Mainland has Norn persisted longer than in Conningsburgh ”

“ Orcadian, latinized Celtic adopted by the Northmen, O.N. Orkneyjar; and, in the second place, Pictland was the natural name for Scotland before the Scots became masters of the country; and, later, for those parts of Scotland, where the bulk of the Pictish inhabitants had taken up their abode, particularly the north-east. In the third place, a name ending in “-land” appears less appropriate to the Orkney Isles, whose chief island, Mainland, is not so large and prominent in relation to the other islands as the Shetland Mainland in relation to the other Shetland Islands. ”

“ It was from the younger generation that I collected by far the greater part of the Shetland Norn vocabulary presented in this dictionary. The younger people were thoroughly interested in my work, had a certain understanding of its scope, and they formed a needed link between me and the older people. The younger people did not, of course, themselves possess such a fund of Norn vocabulary as the older generation ”

“ The words embodied in the Dictionary can, with single exceptions, be traced back to Old Norse, in some instances to Primitive Norse, partly by direct comparison with the vocabulary presented in Old Norse, partly by comparison with parallel words in later Northern languages, especially Norwegian.
In regard to a small portion of the Shetlandic vocabulary here embodied, it cannot be definitely determined whether the words spring from O.N., or are loan-words from English, particularly Northern English, and Scottish (Lowland Scottish) dialects. ”