Norn language

“ 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. ”

“ The transition from the old to the new, in the case of the language, seems, when one compares the oldest with the youngest generation now living, to have taken place more rapidly in Foula than anywhere else in Shetland. The last man in Unst who is said to have been able to speak Norn, Walter Sutherland from Skaw, died about 1850. In Foula, on the other hand, men who were living much later than the middle of the present (19th) century are said to have been able to speak Norn. The Norn spoken towards the middle of the century and later can hardly have been of much account. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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 people of the island are lively and intelligent. Here I collected some fragments of Norn; but the Hildina-ballad, recorded by Low in 1774, was irrevocably lost.
The present Foula-dialect is not in any special way more old-fashioned than that of the Westside, in the main; but conversation with the old people in the Islands soon convinced me that ancient modes of life and language had been maintained longer here than on Mainland, — indeed, than in all the rest of Shetland. ”

“ The introductory word “vallilu” is L.Sc. balow, hush-a-bye, in an extended form with a change of initial b to v. This must be a later addition, as the rhyme is of Norn origin, and has commenced with some Norn equivalent of balow. That Norn equivalent is probably seen in suro [soəro] , which doubtless is the same word as No. (south-west Norw.) “su-ru”, a word with which children are hushed asleep. After balow one might expect a pet name for a little child, and siggalin suggests such a word. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ The first line is corrupt Norn. The only intelligible word is gonga, to go, O.N. ganga.
C. A third Fetlar version is:
Du at rides de rød
and rins de grey,
tell tūna [tuəna] tɩvla
at nūna nɩvla
is väᶅna väƫna [= fallinn í vatnit] .
de rød, the red horse or mare. In this version the water takes the place of the fire.
Nivla as a troll-name, name of a troll-child, may, if not formed simply to rhyme with Tivla, be set alongside No. nyvel, m., a small, insignificant person (Aa.) , a good-for-nothing (R.) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ In North Yell I got very special help from J. Fraser, carpenter, who had a most intimate knowledge of the old dialects of the district. To him I am indebted for the variant of the “Conningsburgh Phrase”, mentioned in “Fragments of Norn”; and to his daughter Margaret Fraser for the riddle in Norn about the melting snowflakes. Mr. Sandison, the merchant at Cullivoe, with whom I stayed part of the time, gave me good indirect help. — I also received good assistance from Wm. Brown, bookseller, a native of Fetlar, settled in Mid-Yell. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Celtic (first Pictish, afterwards Gaelic) was certainly the language generally spoken in the interior parts of the country, but the Orkney-Norn had a strong support in the Caithness-Norn, which latter formed a kind of bulwark that checked the advance of the Celtic language towards the north, and prevented it from displacing Norn in Orkney and Shetland. Later, both Celtic and Norn, in Caithness, were displaced by Lowland Scottish. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sandness is divided, in regard to dialect, into Sandnessw. (that is, Sandness proper) and Sandnesse. (Snaraness) ; Aithsting into Aiw. (Fogrigert) and Aie., or Ai. proper (Ai., W. Burr., Clousta) . To the Westside in a wider sense, we assign also the island of Papa Stour, in the north, and Foula, far to the west, each with its own linguistic peculiarities.
In the case of the Unst dialects, a distinction is here made between areas where the lines of demarcation are very strongly marked: a) the northerly, Un., specially represented by Haroldswick, Norwick and Skaw. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The old form *ol has been dropped, as the name for the fish, *ol has been superseded by Eng. “eel”, and the other *ol has then been changed similarly to “eel”. This change must have taken place at a time when the older (Norn) form *ol, as a name for the fish, and the more recent (Eng.) form “eel”, were used simultaneously in Shetlandic.
Many Norn words in Shetland have been fully or partly translated into English (L. Scottish) , but with the special Northern (Norn) meanings preserved.
bank, sb., ledge, as e.g. peat-bank, and banks, pl., steep coast, show anglicising of O.N. “bakki”. ”

“ The form “ʌ‘lta” is reported from Un. Sometimes with prefixed h; hilta [hɩ‘lta] and ilta [ɩ‘lta, e‘lta] : Fo. — Acc. to Edm. ilta is found also in sense of anger (U.?) . — Prob. the neut. form “illt” of O.N. illr, adj., bad; evil; hostile; unkind; harmful, etc., this form in Shetl. Norn then changing to a substantive, when the adjectives had lost their inflexion of gender. For the supporting final vowel, see e.g. doma, jema, lama (= lem) , skalv2, skalve, stomna, sbs. — ilta-fu’, full of mischief, desirous to do damage or harm ”

“ In this case, there would be no verb in the sentence (Irvine inserts “return” in his translation: to earth thou returns now when dead) ; moreover, English “when” can hardly have been pronounced “ven” in Shetlandic.
Words and forms showing Danish characteristics in the formula, are: “opstaa” for “upstand or opstand”, to arise; “naar” in sense of when (conj.) , and the contracted from “laar”, let, arising from “lather, laðer” with d aspirate, a pronunciation also occurring in Mod. Danish: lar. ”

“ On the other hand, short vowel occurs in, e.g.: bani. flag = flag3, slag = slag5, slagg. tari-crook. See below, granibane.
Alternation between long and short vowel is found in, e.g.: drâg and (doon-) drag. rāb and rab = rab1. Side by side with dagəli, dagali (which have regularly short a because a, ə between g and l is a later-inserted connecting vowel) go the forms dāgali, dâ·gali̇̄·ən.
Long a is found also in some cases before “r” followed by a consonant (esp. l, m, n) , e.g.: ārm; fārlək; kwārna fārna (see Fragments of Norn, conversation) ”

“ Insertion of j.
ll (rl) commonly changes to ᶅ, nn and rn to ᶇ. Several examples of this change have been mentioned in preceding sections; see §§ 16—20, regarding vowel-changes before palatalized consonants. Softening of l, n and t, tt (d, dd) before another consonant has been exemplified in the same paragraphs. In a few cases ll, rl, nn, rn have remained unsoftened, e.g.: to ban (n) [banna] . hō·kɩl (l) ·in [hákerling] . hȯni-, həni- [horn, hyrni] , hinnispott. *mana [manna] (see Fragments of Norn, adages) , span [spann] , spann1. ”

“ Let the steel and the sword always guard her and appear to her as a protection (a shield?) , a sword.
u in “stuhl”, from O.N. stál, n., steel, denotes, in this case, a close o-sound [ô] . a in “sachel” probably expresses an e-sound, open pronunciation of English sickle, sb. “emer” is possibly Germ. immer. “snean” is sni̇̄en, cutting, from sni, vb., to chip, cut; O.N. sníða. v for w in “vird”, L.Scottish wird, word, is probably due to consciousness of the fact that initial w in Eng. corresponds to v in the old Norn. “sicer” means sicker, i.e. certain. ”

“ Since a development g > k is comparatively rare in Shetl. Norn, when initial (the change of initial k > g is more frequent) , there is certainly in Shetl. kummer a merging and mingling with the L.Scottish word, in form as well as in sense and application. Cf. golla, sb. — A loan-word from L.Sc. is kummerskols [kom··ərskɔls·, -skåls·] , sb. pl., refreshments given to visitors by a woman just risen from childbed (Un.) .
*kuna [kūna] , sb., sea-term, name in fishermen’s tabu-language at sea for woman, wife. U., Fo.? Also kuni [kūni] . A.L.: kunie. ”

“ But when Iceland was colonized at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century, chiefly from western Norway, a separate (western) Norwegian dialect gradually sprang up, at first of course only differing slightly from the mother-tongue. It was not until the introduction of Christianity (about 1000 A.D.) that the language was so far differentiated as to enable us to distinguish, in runic inscriptions and in the literature which was then arising, four different dialects, which have ever since existed as the four literary languages—Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish. ”