Old Norse, also referred to asOld Nordic[1] orOld Scandinavian, was a stage of development ofNorth Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ofScandinavia and theiroverseas settlements and chronologically coincides with theViking Age, theChristianization of Scandinavia, and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries.[2]
TheProto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modernNorth Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not precise, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century.[3][better source needed]
Old Norse was divided into threedialects:Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to asOld Norse),[4]Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), andOld Gutnish. Old West Norse and Old East Norse formed adialect continuum, with no clear geographical boundary between them. Old East Norse traits were found in easternNorway, althoughOld Norwegian is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in westernSweden. In what is present-dayDenmark and Sweden, most speakers spoke Old East Norse. ThoughOld Gutnish is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations, it developed its own unique features and shared in changes to both other branches.[5]
The 12th-centuryIcelandicGray Goose Laws state thatSwedes,Norwegians,Icelanders, andDanes spoke the same language,dǫnsk tunga ('Danish tongue'; speakers of Old East Norse would have saiddansk tunga). Another term wasnorrœnt mál'northern speech'. Today Old Norse has developed into the modernNorth Germanic languages:Icelandic,Faroese,Norwegian,Danish,Swedish, and other North Germanic varieties with which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retainconsiderable mutual intelligibility. Icelandic is one of the most conservative descendants of Old Norse, such that in present-day Iceland, schoolchildren are able to read the 12th-century Icelandic sagas in the original language (in editions with standardised spelling).[6]
The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages ofIcelandic,Faroese,Norwegian, and the extinctNorn language ofOrkney andShetland, although Norwegian was heavily influenced by the East dialect, and is today more similar to East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) than to Icelandic and Faroese. The descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages ofDanish,Swedish andÖvdalian, although Övdalian was heavily influenced by the West Dialect, and is sometimes considered to form its own group.
Among these, the grammar of Icelandic, Faroese and Övdalian have changed the least from Old Norse in the last thousand years, though the pronunciations of Icelandic and Faroese both have changed considerably from Old Norse. With Danish rule of the Faroe Islands, Faroese has also been influenced by Danish.
The development ofNorman French was also influenced by Norse. Through Norman, to a smaller extent, so was modern French.
Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norsephonemic writing system. Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the vowel phonemes, has changed at least as much in Icelandic as in the other North Germanic languages.
Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, andGaelic (Scottish and/orIrish).[9] Although Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have diverged the most, they still retainconsiderable mutual intelligibility.[10] Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, particularly if speaking slowly. The languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders. This could be because these languages have been mutually affected by each other, as well as having a similar development influenced byMiddle Low German.[11]
Various languages unrelated to Old Norse and others not closely related have been heavily influenced by Norse, particularly theNorman language; to a lesser extent,Finnish andEstonian. Russian,Ukrainian,Belarusian,Lithuanian andLatvian also have a few Norse loanwords. The wordsRus andRussia, according to one theory, may be named after theRus' people, a Norse tribe, probably from present-day east-central Sweden. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden areRuotsi andRootsi, respectively.
A number of loanwords have been introduced intoIrish, many associated with fishing and sailing.[12][13][14][15] A similar influence is found inScottish Gaelic, with over one hundred loanwords estimated to be in the language, many of which are related to fishing and sailing.[16][17][18]
Old Norse vowel phonemes mostly come in pairs of long and short. Thestandardized orthography marks the long vowels with an acute accent. In medieval manuscripts, it is often unmarked but sometimes marked with an accent or throughgemination.
A person speaking Old Norse
Old Norse had nasalized versions of all ten vowel places.[cv 1][obsolete source] These occurred as allophones of the vowels before nasal consonants and in places where a nasal had followed it in an older form of the word, before it was absorbed into a neighboring sound. If the nasal was absorbed by a stressed vowel, it would also lengthen the vowel. This nasalization also occurred in the other Germanic languages, but were not retained long. They were noted in theFirst Grammatical Treatise, and otherwise might have remained unknown. The First Grammarian marked these with a dot above the letter.[cv 1] This notation did not catch on, and would soon be obsolete. Nasal and oral vowels probably merged around the 11th century in most of Old East Norse.[19] However, the distinction still holds inDalecarlian dialects.[20] The dots in the following vowel table separate the oral fromnasal phonemes.
Note: The open or open-mid vowels may be transcribed differently:
/æ/ =/ɛ/
/ɒ/ =/ɔ/
/ɑ/ =/a/
Sometime around the 13th century,/ɔ/ (spelled⟨ǫ⟩) merged with/ø/ or/o/ in most dialects exceptOld Danish, and Icelandic where/ɔ/ (ǫ) merged with/ø/. This can be determined by their distinction within the 12th-centuryFirst Grammatical Treatise but not within the early 13th-centuryProse Edda. The nasal vowels, also noted in the First Grammatical Treatise, are assumed to have been lost in most dialects by this time (but notably they are retained inElfdalian and other dialects ofOvansiljan). SeeOld Icelandic for the mergers of/øː/ (spelled⟨œ⟩) with/ɛː/ (spelled⟨æ⟩) and/ɛ/ (spelled⟨ę⟩) with/e/ (spelled⟨e⟩).
Old Norse had threediphthong phonemes:/ɛi/,/ɔu/,/øy~ɛy/ (spelled⟨ei⟩,⟨au⟩,⟨ey⟩ respectively). In East Norse these wouldmonophthongize and merge with/eː/ and/øː/, whereas in West Norse and its descendants the diphthongs remained.
Old Norse has six plosive phonemes,/p/ being rare word-initially and/d/ and/b/ pronounced as voiced fricativeallophones between vowels except in compound words (e.g.veðrabati), already in theProto-Germanic language (e.g.*b *[β] >[v] between vowels). The/ɡ/ phoneme was pronounced as[ɡ] after an/n/ or another/ɡ/ and as[k] before/s/ and/t/. Some accounts have it a voiced velar fricative[ɣ] in all cases, and others have that realisation only in the middle of words and between vowels (with it otherwise being realised[ɡ]).[23][24][clarification needed] The Old East Norse /ʀ/ was anapical consonant, with its precise position unknown; it is reconstructed as a palatalsibilant.[25][26] It descended from Proto-Germanic *z and eventually developed into/r/, as had already occurred in Old West Norse.
^Reconstructed as[ɹ̝] when part of the stem of a word with a voiceless allophone[ɹ̝̊] word-finally when not part of the stem.[citation needed]
The consonant digraphs⟨hl⟩,⟨hr⟩, and⟨hn⟩ occurred word-initially. It is unclear whether they were sequences of two consonants (with the first element realised as/h/ or perhaps/x/) or as single voiceless sonorants/l̥/,/r̥/ and/n̥/ respectively. In Old Norwegian, Old Danish and later Old Swedish, the groups⟨hl⟩,⟨hr⟩, and⟨hn⟩ were reduced to plain⟨l⟩,⟨r⟩,⟨n⟩, which suggests that they had most likely already been pronounced as voiceless sonorants by Old Norse times.
The pronunciation of⟨hv⟩ is unclear, but it may have been/xʷ/ (the Proto-Germanic pronunciation),/hʷ/ or the similar phoneme/ʍ/. Unlike the three other digraphs, it was retained much longer in all dialects. Without ever developing into a voiceless sonorant in Icelandic, it instead underwentfortition to a plosive/kv/, which suggests that instead of being a voiceless sonorant, it retained a stronger frication. In some Icelandic dialects it is still preserved as/xʷ/ or/xv/.[27]
This sectionneeds expansion with: Dating, etc.. You can help byadding to it.(April 2010)
Primarystress in Old Norse falls on theword stem, so thathyrjar would be pronounced/ˈhyrjar/. In compound words, secondary stress falls on the second stem (e.g.lærisveinn,/ˈlɛːɾiˌswɛinː/).[28]
Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with theElder Futhark,runic Old Norse was originally written with theYounger Futhark, which had only 16 letters. Because of the limited number of runes, several runes were used for different sounds, and long and short vowels were not distinguished in writing.Medieval runes came into use some time later.
As for theLatin alphabet, there was no standardized orthography in use in the Middle Ages. A modified version of the letterwynn calledvend was used briefly for the sounds/u/,/v/, and/w/. Long vowels were sometimes marked with acutes but also sometimes left unmarked or geminated. Thestandardized Old Norse spelling was created in the 19th century and is, for the most part, phonemic. The most notable deviation is that the nonphonemic difference between thevoiced and thevoiceless dental fricative is marked. The oldest texts andrunic inscriptions useþ exclusively. Long vowels are denoted withacutes. Most other letters are written with the same glyph as theIPA phoneme's grapheme, except as shown in the above tables.
Ablaut patterns are groups of vowels which are swapped, orablauted, in thenucleus of a word.Strong verbs ablaut thelemma's nucleus to derive the past forms of the verb. This parallels English conjugation, where, e.g., the nucleus ofsing becomessang in the past tense andsung in the past participle. Some verbs are derived by ablaut, as thepresent-in-past verbs do by consequence of being derived from the past tense forms of strong verbs.
Umlaut or mutation is anassimilatory process acting on vowels preceding a vowel or semivowel of a differentvowel backness. In the case ofi-umlaut andʀ-umlaut, this entails a fronting of back vowels, with retention of lip rounding. In the case ofu-umlaut, this entailslabialization of unrounded vowels. Umlaut is phonemic and in many situations grammatically significant as a side effect of losing theProto-Germanic morphological suffixes whose vowels created the umlautallophones.
Some/y/,/yː/,/ø/,/øː/,/ɛ/,/ɛː/,/øy/,[21] and all/ɛi/ were obtained byi-umlaut from/u/,/uː/,/o/,/oː/,/a/,/aː/,/au/, and/ai/ respectively. Others were formed viaʀ-umlaut from/u/,/uː/,/a/,/aː/, and/au/.[7]
Some/y/,/yː/,/ø/,/øː/, and all/ɔ/,/ɔː/ were obtained byu-umlaut from/i/,/iː/,/e/,/eː/, and/a/,/aː/ respectively. SeeOld Icelandic for information on/ɔː/.
/œ/ was obtained through a simultaneousu- andi-umlaut of/a/. It appears in words likegera (gøra,gjǫra,geyra), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną, and commonly in verbs with a velar consonant before the suffix likesøkkva < *sankwijaną.[cv 2]
OEN often preserves the original value of the vowel directly preceding runic (ᛉ,ʀ) while OWN receivesʀ-umlaut. Compare runic OENglaʀ, haʀi, hrauʀ with OWNgler, heri (laterhéri),hrøyrr/hreyrr'glass','hare','pile of rocks'.
U-umlaut is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse.
Comparison demonstratingU-Umlaut in Swedish[29][30]
^Old Swedish orthography uses⟨þ⟩ to represent both/ð/ and/θ/. The change from Norse⟨ð⟩ to Old Swedish⟨þ⟩ represents only a change in orthography rather than a change in sound. Similarly⟨i⟩ is used in place of⟨j⟩. And thus changes from Norse⟨j⟩ to Old Swedish⟨i⟩ to Swedish⟨j⟩ should be viewed as a change in orthography.
This is still a major difference between Swedish and Faroese and Icelandic today. Plurals of neuters do not haveu-umlaut at all in Swedish, but in Faroese and Icelandic they do, for example the Faroese and Icelandic plurals of the wordland,lond andlönd respectively, in contrast to the Swedish pluralland and numerous other examples. That also applies to almost all feminine nouns, for example the largest feminine noun group, theo-stem nouns (except the Swedish nounjord mentioned above), and eveni-stem nouns androot nouns, such as Old West Norsemǫrk (mörk in Icelandic) in comparison with Modern and Old Swedishmark.[30]
Vowel breaking, or fracture, caused a front vowel to be split into a semivowel-vowel sequence before a back vowel in the following syllable.[7] While West Norse only broke/e/, East Norse also broke/i/. The change was blocked by a/w/,/l/, or /ʀ/ preceding the potentially-broken vowel.[7][31]
Some/ja/ or/jɔ/ and/jaː/ or/jɔː/ result from breaking of/e/ and/eː/ respectively.[cv 3]
When a noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb has a long vowel or diphthong in the accented syllable and its stem ends in a singlel,n, ors, ther (or the elderr- orz-variantʀ) in an ending is assimilated.[cv 4] When the accented vowel is short, the ending is dropped.
The nominative of the strong masculine declension and somei-stem feminine nouns uses one such -r (ʀ).Óðin-r (Óðin-ʀ) becomesÓðinn instead of*Óðinr (*Óðinʀ).
The verbblása'to blow', has third person present tenseblæss'[he] blows' rather than*blæsr (*blæsʀ).[32] Similarly, the verbskína'to shine' had present tense third personskínn (rather than*skínr,*skínʀ) ; whilekala'to cool down' had present tense third personkell (rather than*kelr,*kelʀ).
The rule is not absolute, with certain counter-examples such asvinr'friend', which has the synonymvin, yet retains the unabsorbed version, andjǫtunn'giant', where assimilation takes place even though the root vowel,ǫ, is short.
Furthermore, wherever the cluster */rʀ/ is expected to exist, such as in the male namesRagnarr,Steinarr (supposedly*Ragnarʀ,*Steinarʀ), the result is apparently always/rː/ rather than */rʀ/ or */ʀː/. This is observable in the Runic corpus.
In Old Norse,i/j adjacent toi,e, theiru-umlauts, andæ was not possible, noru/v adjacent tou,o, theiri-umlauts, andǫ.[7] At the beginning of words, this manifested as a dropping of the initial/j/ (which was general, independent of the following vowel) or/v/. Compare ONorð,úlfr,ár with Englishword, wolf, year. In inflections, this manifested as the dropping of the inflectional vowels. Thus,klæði +dat-i remainsklæði, andsjáum in Icelandic progressed tosjǫ́um >sjǫ́m >sjám.[34] The*jj and*ww of Proto-Germanic becameggj andggv respectively in Old Norse, a change known asHoltzmann's law.[7]
Anepenthetic vowel became popular by 1200 in Old Danish, 1250 in Old Swedish and Old Norwegian, and 1300 in Old Icelandic.[35] An unstressed vowel was used which varied by dialect. Old Norwegian exhibited all three:/u/ was used in West Norwegian south ofBergen, as inaftur,aftor (olderaptr); North of Bergen,/i/ appeared inaftir,after; and East Norwegian used/a/,after,aftær.[21]
Old Norse was a moderatelyinflected language with high levels of nominal and verbal inflection. Most of the fusedmorphemes are retained in modern Icelandic, especially in regard to noun case declensions, whereas modern Norwegian in comparison has moved towards more analytical word structures.
Old Norse had threegrammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives or pronouns referring to a noun mustmirror the gender of that noun, so that one says, "heill maðr!" but, "heilt barn!". As in other languages, the grammatical gender of an impersonal noun is generally unrelated to an expected natural gender of that noun. While indeedkarl,'man' is masculine,kona,'woman', is feminine, andhús,'house', is neuter, so also arehrafn andkráka, for'raven' and'crow', masculine and feminine respectively, even in reference to a female raven or a male crow.
All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms,[36] and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals.[37]
The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such aslim andmund.[cv 5] Some words, such ashungr, have multiple genders, evidenced by theirdeterminers being declined in different genders within a given sentence.[38][39]
Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns weredeclined in four grammatical cases –nominative,accusative,genitive, anddative – in singular and plural numbers. Adjectives and pronouns were additionally declined in three grammatical genders. Some pronouns (first and second person) could havedual number in addition to singular and plural. The genitive was usedpartitively and in compounds andkennings (e.g.,Urðarbrunnr,'the well of Urðr' ;Lokasenna,'thegibing of Loki').
There were several classes of nouns within each gender. The following is an example of the "strong"inflectional paradigms:
The numerous "weak" noun paradigms had a much higher degree of syncretism between the different cases : i.e. they had fewer forms than the "strong" nouns.
A definite article was appended as a suffix that retained an independent declension : e.g.,troll'a troll' –trollit'the troll',hǫll'a hall' –hǫllin'the hall',armr'an arm' –armrinn'the arm'. This definite article, however, was a separate word and did not become attached to the noun before later stages of the Old Norse period.
The earliest inscriptions in Old Norse arerunic, from the 8th century. Runes continued to be commonly used until the 15th century and have been recorded to be in use in some form as late as the 19th century in some parts of Sweden. With theconversion to Christianity in the 11th century came theLatin alphabet. The oldest preserved texts in Old Norse in the Latin alphabet date from the middle of the 12th century. Subsequently, Old Norse became the vehicle of a large and varied body of vernacular literature. Most of the surviving literature was written in Iceland. Best known are theNorse sagas, theIcelanders' sagas and the mythological literature, but there also survives a large body of religious literature, translations into Old Norse ofcourtly romances, classical mythology, and the Old Testament, as well as instructional material,grammatical treatises and a large body of letters and official documents.[40]
Most of the innovations that appeared in Old Norse spread evenly through the Old Norse area. As a result, the dialects were similar and considered to be the same language, a language that they sometimes called the Danish tongue (Dǫnsk tunga), sometimes Norse language (Norrœnt mál), as evidenced in the following two quotes fromHeimskringla bySnorri Sturluson:
Móðir Dyggva var Drótt, dóttir Danps konungs, sonar Rígs er fyrstr var konungr kallaðr á danska tungu.
Dyggvi's mother was Drott, the daughter of king Danp, Ríg's son, who was the first to be called king in the Danish tongue.
...stirt var honum norrœnt mál, ok kylfdi mᴊǫk til orðanna, ok hǫfðu margir menn þat mᴊǫk at spotti.
...the Norse language was hard for him, and he often fumbled for words, which amused people greatly.
—Heimskringla, Saga Sigurðar Jórsalafara, Eysteins ok Ólafs § 35(34).Frá veðjan Haralds ok Magnús
However, some changes were geographically limited and so created a dialectal difference between Old West Norse and Old East Norse.
As Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse, in the 8th century, the effects of theumlauts seem to have been very much the same over the whole Old Norse area. But in later dialects of the language a split occurred mainly between west and east as the use of umlauts began to vary. The typical umlauts (for examplefylla <*fullijan) were better preserved in the West due to later generalizations in the east where many instances of umlaut were removed (many archaic Eastern texts as well as eastern runic inscriptions however portray the same extent of umlauts as in later Western Old Norse).
All the while, the changes resulting inbreaking (for examplehiarta <*hertō) were more influential in the East probably once again due to generalizations within the inflectional system. This difference was one of the greatest reasons behind the dialectalization that took place in the 9th and 10th centuries, shaping an Old West Norse dialect in Norway and the Atlantic settlements and an Old East Norse dialect in Denmark and Sweden.
Old West Norse and Old Gutnish did not take part in the monophthongization which changedæi (ei) intoē,øy (ey) andau intoø̄, nor did certain peripheral dialects of Swedish, as seen in modernOstrobothnian dialects.[41] Another difference was that Old West Norse lost certain combinations of consonants. The combinations-mp-,-nt-, and-nk- were assimilated into-pp-,-tt- and-kk- in Old West Norse, but this phenomenon was limited in Old East Norse.
Here is a comparison between the two dialects as well as Old Gutnish. It is a transcription from one of theFunbo Runestones in Sweden (U 990) from the eleventh century:
Veðr
Weðr
Weðr
ok
ok
ok
Þegn
Þegn
Þegn
ok
ok
ok
Gunnarr
Gunnarr
Gunnarr
reistu
ræistu
raistu
stein
stæin
stain
þenna
þenna
þenna
at
at
at
Haursa,
Haursa,
Haursa,
fǫður
faður
faður
sinn.
sinn.
sinn.
Guð
Guð
Guð
hjalpi
hialpi
hialpi
ǫnd
and
and
hans.
hans
hans
(Old West Norse)
(Old East Norse)
(Old Gutnish)
Veðr ok Þegn ok Gunnarr reistu stein þenna at Haursa, fǫður sinn. Guð hjalpi ǫnd hans.
Weðr ok Þegn ok Gunnarr ræistu stæin þenna at Haursa, faður sinn. Guð hialpi and hans
Weðr ok Þegn ok Gunnarr raistu stain þenna at Haursa, faður sinn. Guð hialpi and hans
translation: 'Veðr and Thegn and Gunnar raised this stone after Haursi, their father. God help his spirit'
The OEN original text above is transliterated according to traditional scholarly methods, whereinu-umlaut is not regarded in runic Old East Norse. Modern studies[citation needed] have shown that the positions where it applies are the same as for runic Old West Norse. An alternative and probably more accurate transliteration would therefore render the text in OEN as such:
Weðr ok Þegn ok Gunnarr ræistu stæin þenna at Haursa, fǫður sinn. Guð hialpi ǫnd hans (OEN)
Somepast participles and other words underwenti-umlaut in Old West Norse but not in Old East Norse dialects. Examples of that are Icelandicslegið/sleginn andtekið/tekinn, which in Swedish areslagit/slagen andtagit/tagen. This can also be seen in the Icelandic and Norwegian wordssterkur andsterk ("strong"), which in Swedish isstark as in Old Swedish.[42] These differences can also be seen in comparison between Norwegian and Swedish.
Old West Norse is by far the best attested variety of Old Norse.[43] The termOld Norse is often used to refer to Old West Norse specifically, in which case the broader subject receives another name, such asOld Scandinavian.[4] Another designation isOld West Nordic.
The combinations-mp-,-nt-, and-nk- mostly merged to-pp-,-tt- and-kk- in Old West Norse around the 7th century, marking the first distinction between the Eastern and Western dialects.[44] The following table illustrates this:
The earliest body of text appears inrunic inscriptions and in poems composedc. 900 byÞjóðólfr of Hvinir (although the poems are not preserved in contemporary sources, but only in much later manuscripts). The earliest manuscripts are from the period 1150–1200 and concern legal, religious and historical matters. During the 12th and 13th centuries,Trøndelag andWestern Norway were the most important areas of the Norwegian kingdom and they shaped Old West Norse as an archaic language with a rich set of declensions. In the body of text that has survived into the modern day from untilc. 1300, Old West Norse had little dialect variation, andOld Icelandic does not diverge much more than theOld Norwegian dialects do from each other.[citation needed]
Old Norwegian differentiated early from Old Icelandic by the loss of the consonanth in initial position beforel,n andr; thus whereas Old Icelandic manuscripts might use the formhnefi'fist', Old Norwegian manuscripts might usenefi.
From the late 13th century, Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian started to diverge more. Afterc. 1350, theBlack Death and following social upheavals seem to have accelerated language changes in Norway. From the late 14th century, the language used in Norway is generally referred to asMiddle Norwegian.[citation needed]
Old West Norse underwent a lengthening of initial vowels at some point, especially in Norwegian, so that OWNeta becameéta, ONWakr >ákr, OICek >ék.[45]
In Iceland, initial/w/ before/ɾ/ was lost:[cv 6] compare Icelandicrangur with Danishvrang, OENwrangʀ. The change is shared with Old Gutnish.[35]
A specifically Icelandic sound, the long,u-umlauted A, spelled⟨Ǫ́⟩ and pronounced/ɔː/, developed around the early 11th century.[cv 1] It was short-lived, being marked in theGrammatical Treatises and remaining until the end of the 12th century.[cv 1] It then merged back into/aː/ ; as a result, long A is not affected byu-umlaut in Modern Icelandic.
/w/ merged with/v/ during the 12th century,[7] which caused/v/ to become an independent phoneme from/f/ and the written distinction of ⟨v⟩ for/v/ from medial and final ⟨f⟩ to become merely etymological.
Around the 13th century,Œ/Ǿ (/øː/, which had probably already lowered to/œː/) merged toÆ (/ɛː/).[cv 7] Thus, pre-13th-centurygrœnn (with⟨œ⟩) 'green' became spelled as in modern Icelandicgrænn (with⟨æ⟩). The 12th-centuryGray Goose Laws manuscripts distinguish the vowels, and so does theCodex Regius copy.[cv 7] However, the 13th-century Codex Regius copy of thePoetic Edda probably relied on newer or poorer quality sources, or both. Demonstrating either difficulty with or total lack of natural distinction, the manuscripts show separation of the two phonemes in some places, but they frequently confuse the letters chosen to distinguish them in others.[cv 7][46]
Towards the end of the 13th century,Ę (/ɛ/) merged toE (/e/).[cv 8]
Around the 11th century, Old Norwegian ⟨hl⟩, ⟨hn⟩, and ⟨hr⟩ became ⟨l⟩, ⟨n⟩ and ⟨r⟩.[47][failed verification][48][49] It is debatable whether the ⟨hC⟩ sequences represented a consonant cluster (/hC/) or devoicing (/C̥/).
Orthographic evidence suggests that in a confined dialect of Old Norwegian,/ɔ/ may have been unrounded before/u/ and thatu-umlaut was reversed unless theu had been eliminated:ǫll,ǫllum >ǫll,allum.[50]
This dialect of Old West Norse was spoken by Icelandic colonies in Greenland. When the colonies died out around the 15th century, the dialect went with it. The phoneme/θ/ and some instances of/ð/ merged to/t/ and so Old IcelandicÞórðr becameTortr.
The following text is fromAlexanders saga, anAlexander romance. The manuscript,AM 519 a 4to, is datedc. 1280. The facsimile demonstrates thesigla used by scribes to write Old Norse. Many of them were borrowed from Latin. Without familiarity with these abbreviations, the facsimile will be unreadable to many. In addition, reading the manuscript itself requires familiarity with the letterforms of the native script. The abbreviations are expanded in a version with normalized spelling like that of thestandard normalization system. Compared to the spelling of the same text in Modern Icelandic, pronunciation has changed greatly, but spelling has changed little sinceIcelandic orthography was intentionally modelled after Old Norse in the 19th century.
[...] sem óvinir hans brigzluðu honum eftir því, sem síðarr man sagt verða. þessi sveinn Alexander var í skóla settr, sem siðvenja er til ríkra manna útanlands at láta gera við bǫrn sín. meistari var honum fenginn sá, er Aristoteles hét. hann var harðla góðr klerkr ok inn mesti spekingr at viti. ok er hann var tólv vetra gamall at aldri, náliga alroskinn at viti, en stórhugaðr umfram alla sína jafnaldra, [...]
[...] sem óvinir hans brigsluðu honum eftir því, sem síðar mun sagt verða. Þessi sveinn Alexander var í skóla settur, sem siðvenja er til ríkra manna utanlands að láta gera við börn sín. Meistari var honum fenginn sá, er Aristóteles hét. Hann var harla góður klerkur og hinn mesti spekingur að viti og er hann var tólf vetra gamall að aldri, nálega alroskinn að viti, en stórhugaður umfram alla sína jafnaldra, [...]
*a printed inuncial. Uncials not encoded separately in Unicode as of this section's writing.
TheRök runestone inÖstergötland, Sweden, is the longest surviving source of early Old East Norse. It is inscribed on both sides.
Old East Norse orOld East Nordic between 800 and 1100 is calledRunic Swedish in Sweden andRunic Danish in Denmark, but for geographical rather than linguistic reasons. Any differences between the two were minute at best during the more ancient stages of this dialect group. Changes had a tendency to occur earlier in the Danish region. Even today many Old Danish changes have still not taken place in modern Swedish. Swedish is therefore the moreconservative of the two in both the ancient and the modern languages, sometimes by a profound margin. The language is called "runic" because the body of text appears inrunes.
Runic Old East Norse is characteristically conservative in form, especially Swedish (which is still true for modern Swedish compared to Danish). In essence it matches or surpasses the conservatism of post-runic Old West Norse, which in turn is generally more conservative than post-runic Old East Norse. While typically "Eastern" in structure, many later post-runic changes and trademarks of OEN had yet to happen.
The phonemeʀ, which evolved during the Proto-Norse period fromz, was still clearly separated fromr in most positions, even when being geminated, while in OWN it had already merged withr.
TheProto-Germanic phoneme /w/ was preserved in initial sounds in Old East Norse (w-), unlike in West Norse where it developed into/v/. It survived in ruralSwedish dialects in the provinces of Westro- and North Bothnia,Skåne,Blekinge,Småland,Halland,Västergötland and south ofBohuslän into the 18th, 19th and 20th century. It is still preserved in theDalecarlian dialects in the province ofDalarna, Sweden, and inJutlandic dialects in Denmark. The/w/-phoneme did also occur after consonants (kw-, tw-, sw- etc.) in Old East Norse and did so into modern times in said Swedish dialects and in a number of others. Generally, the initial w-sound developed into[v] in dialects earlier than after consonants where it survived much longer.
In summation, the/w/-sound survived in the East Nordic tongues almost a millennium longer than in the West Norse counterparts, and does still subsist at the present.
Monophthongization ofæi >ē andøy, au >ø̄ started in mid-10th-century Denmark.[21] Compare runic OEN:fæigʀ,gæiʀʀ,haugʀ,møydōmʀ,diūʀ ; with Post-runic OEN:fēgher,gēr,hø̄gher,mø̄dōmber,diūr ; OWN:feigr,geirr,haugr,meydómr,dýr ; from PN*faigijaz,*gaizaz,*haugaz,*mawi +-dōmaz'maidendom/ virginity',*diuza.
Feminineo-stems often preserve the plural ending-aʀ, while in OWN they more often merge with the femininei-stems: (runic OEN)*sōlaʀ,*hafnaʀ,*hamnaʀ,*wāgaʀ versus OWNsólir,hafnir andvágir (Danish has mainly lost the distinction between the two stems, with both endings now being rendered as-er or-e alternatively for theo-stems ; modern Swedishsolar,hamnar,vågar).
Vice versa, masculinei-stems with the root ending in eitherg ork tended to shift the plural ending to that of theja-stems while OEN kept the original:drængiaʀ,*ælgiaʀ and*bænkiaʀ versus OWNdrengir,elgir andbekkir (modern Danishdrenge,elge,bænke ; modern Swedishdrängar,älgar,bänkar).
The plural ending ofja-stems were mostly preserved while those of OWN often acquired that of thei-stems:*bæðiaʀ,*bækkiaʀ,*wæfiaʀ versus OWNbeðir,bekkir,vefir (modern Swedishbäddar,bäckar,vävar).
Until the early 12th century, Old East Norse was very much a uniform dialect. It was in Denmark that the first innovations appeared that would differentiate Old Danish from Old Swedish (Bandle 2005,Old East Nordic, pp. 1856, 1859) as these innovations spread north unevenly (unlike the earlier changes that spread more evenly over the East Norse area), creating a series ofisoglosses going fromZealand toSvealand.
In Old Danish,/hɾ/ merged with/ɾ/ during the 9th century.[52] From the 11th to 14th centuries, the unstressed vowels -a, -o and -e (standard normalization -a, -u and -i) started to merge into -ə, represented with the letter⟨e⟩. This vowel came to beepenthetic, particularly before-ʀ endings.[35] At the same time, the voicelessstop consonantsp,t andk became voiced plosives and evenfricative consonants. Resulting from these innovations, Danish haskage (cake),tunger (tongues) andgæster (guests) whereas (Standard) Swedish has retained older forms,kaka,tungor andgäster (OENkaka,tungur,gæstir).
At the end of the 10th and early 11th century initialh- beforel,n andr was still preserved in the middle and northern parts of Sweden, and is sporadically still preserved in some northern dialects asg-, e.g.gly (lukewarm), fromhlýʀ. TheDalecarlian dialects developed independently from Old Swedish[53] and as such can be considered separate languages from Swedish.
This is an extract fromVästgötalagen, the Westrogothic law. It is the oldest text written as a manuscript found in Sweden and from the 13th century. It is contemporaneous with most of the Icelandic literature. The text marks the beginning ofOld Swedish as a distinct dialect.
Dræpær maþar svænskan man eller smalenskæn, innan konongsrikis man, eigh væstgøskan, bøte firi atta ørtogher ok þrettan markær ok ænga ætar bot. [...] Dræpar maþær danskan man allæ noræn man, bøte niv markum. Dræpær maþær vtlænskan man, eigh ma frid flyia or landi sinu oc j æth hans. Dræpær maþær vtlænskæn prest, bøte sva mykit firi sum hærlænskan man. Præstær skal i bondalaghum væræ. Varþær suþærman dræpin ællær ænskær maþær, ta skal bøta firi marchum fiurum þem sakinæ søkir, ok tvar marchar konongi.
If someone slays a Swede or a Smålander, a man from the kingdom, but not a West Geat, he will pay eight örtugar and thirteen marks, but no weregild. [...] If someone slays a Dane or a Norwegian, he will pay nine marks. If someone slays a foreigner, he shall not be banished and have to flee to his clan. If someone slays a foreign priest, he will pay as much as for a fellow countryman. A priest counts as a freeman. If a Southerner is slain or an Englishman, he shall pay four marks to the plaintiff and two marks to the king.
Due toGotland's early isolation from the mainland, many features of Old Norse did not spread from or to the island, and Old Gutnish developed as an entirely separate branch from Old East and West Norse. For example, the diphthongai inaigu,þair andwaita was not subject toanticipatory assimilation toei as in e.g. Old Icelandiceigu,þeir andveita. Gutnish also shows dropping of/w/ in initial/wɾ/, which it shares with the Old West Norse dialects (except Old East Norwegian[54]), but which is otherwise abnormal. Breaking was also particularly active in Old Gutnish, leading to e.g.biera versus mainlandbera.[35]
TheGuta lag'law of the Gutes' is the longest text surviving fromOld Gutnish. Appended to it is a short texting dealing with the history of the Gotlanders. This part relates to the agreement that the Gotlanders had with the Swedish king sometime before the 9th century:
So gingu gutar sielfs wiliandi vndir suia kunung þy at þair mattin frir Oc frelsir sykia suiariki j huerium staþ. vtan tull oc allar utgiftir. So aigu oc suiar sykia gutland firir vtan cornband ellar annur forbuþ. hegnan oc hielp sculdi kunungur gutum at waita. En þair wiþr þorftin. oc kallaþin. sendimen al oc kunungr oc ierl samulaiþ a gutnal þing senda. Oc latta þar taka scatt sinn. þair sendibuþar aighu friþ lysa gutum alla steþi til sykia yfir haf sum upsala kunungi til hoyrir. Oc so þair sum þan wegin aigu hinget sykia.
So, by their own will, the Gotlanders became the subjects of the Swedish king, so that they could travel freely and without risk to any location in the Swedish kingdom without toll and other fees. Likewise, the Swedes had the right to go to Gotland without corn restrictions or other prohibitions. The king was to provide protection and help, when they needed it and asked for it. The king and the jarl shall in return send emissaries to the GutnishAll-thing to receive the taxes. These emissaries shall declare free passage for the Gotlanders to all ports across the sea which belong to the king at Uppsala and likewise for everyone who want to travel to Gotland.
Old English and Old Norse were related languages. It is therefore not surprising that many words in Old Norse look familiar to English speakers : e.g.,armr'arm',fótr'foot',land'land',fullr'full',hanga'to hang',standa'to stand'. This is because bothEnglish and Old Norse stem from aProto-Germanic mother language. In addition, numerous common, everyday Old Norse words were adopted into the Old English language during theViking Age. A few examples of Old Norseloanwords in modern English are (English/Viking Age Old East Norse), in some cases even displacing their Old English cognates:[citation needed]
Nouns –anger (angr),bag (baggi),bait (bæit,bæita,bæiti),band (band),bark (bǫrkʀ, stembark-),birth (byrðr),dirt (drit),dregs (dræggiaʀ),egg (ægg, related toOE. cognateæg which becameMiddle English:eye/eai),fellow (félagi),gap (gap),husband (húsbóndi),cake (kaka),keel (kiǫlʀ, stem alsokial-,kil-),kid (kið),knife (knífʀ),law (lǫg, stemlag-),leg (læggʀ),link (hlænkʀ),loan (lán, related to OE. cognatelæn, cf. lend),race (rǫs, stemrás-),root (rót, related to OE. cognatewyrt, cf.wort),sale (sala),scrap (skrap),seat (sæti),sister (systir, related to OE. cognatesweostor),skill (skial/skil),skin (skinn),skirt (skyrta vs. the native Englishshirt of the same root),sky (ský),slaughter (slátr),snare (snara),steak (stæik),thrift (þrift),tidings (tíðindi),trust (traust),window (vindauga),wing (væ(i)ngʀ)
Verbs –are (er, displacing OEsind),blend (blanda),call (kalla),cast (kasta),clip (klippa),crawl (krafla),cut (possibly from ONkuta),die (døyia),gasp (gæispa),get (geta),give (gifa/gefa, related to OE. cognategiefan),glitter (glitra),hit (hitta),lift (lyfta),raise (ræisa),ransack (rannsaka),rid (ryðia),run (rinna, stemrinn-/rann-/runn-, related to OE. cognaterinnan),scare (skirra),scrape (skrapa),seem (søma),sprint (sprinta),take (taka),thrive (þrífa(s)),thrust (þrysta),want (vanta)
Personal pronoun –they (þæiʀ),their (þæiʀa),them (þæim) (for which the Anglo-Saxons saidhíe,[55][56]hiera,him)
Prenominal adjectives –same (sam)
In a simple sentence like 'They are both weak', the extent of the Old Norse loanwords becomes quite clear; compare Old East Norse with archaic pronunciation:"Þæiʀ eʀu báðiʀ wæikiʀ" withOld English:"híe syndon bégen (þá) wáce". The words "they" and "weak" are both borrowed from Old Norse, and the word "both" might also be a borrowing, though this is disputed (cf. Germanbeide).[who?] While the number of loanwords adopted from the Norse was not as numerous as that ofNorman French orLatin, their depth and everyday nature make them a substantial and very important part of everyday English speech as they are part of the very core of the modern English vocabulary.[citation needed]
Tracing the origins of words like "bull" and "Thursday" is more difficult.[citation needed] "Bull" may derive from eitherOld English:bula orOld Norse:buli,[citation needed] while "Thursday" may be a borrowing or simply derive from theOld English:Þunresdæg, which could have been influenced by the Old Norse cognate.[citation needed] The word "are" is fromOld English:earun/aron, which stems back to Proto-Germanic as well as the Old Norse cognates.[citation needed]
^Bokmål Norwegian – Norwegianization of written Danish ;Nynorsk Norwegian – Standardised written Norwegian based on Norwegian dialects; No = same in both forms of Norwegian.
^abcVowel length in the modern Scandinavian languages does not stem from Old Norse vowel length. In all of the modern languages, Old Norse vowel length was lost, and vowel length became allophonically determined by syllable structure, with long vowels occurring when followed by zero or one consonants (and some clusters, e.g. in Icelandic, most clusters of obstruent toobstruent +[r],[j] or[v], such as[pr],[tj],[kv] etc.) ; short vowels occurred when followed by most consonant clusters, includingdouble consonants. Often, pairs of short and long vowels became differentiated in quality before the loss of vowel length and thus did not end up merging; e.g. Old Norse/aaːiiː/ became Icelandic/aauɪi/, all of which can occur allophonically short or long. In the mainland Scandinavian languages, double consonants were reduced to single consonants, making the new vowel length phonemic.
^Greene, D. (1973),Almqvist, Bo; Greene, David (eds.), "The influence of Scandinavian on Irish",Proceedings of the Seventh Viking Congress, Dundalgan Press, Dundalk, pp. 75–82
^Stewart, Thomas W. (Jr.) (2004), "Lexical imposition: Old Norse vocabulary in Scottish Gaelic",Diachronica,21 (2):393–420,doi:10.1075/dia.21.2.06ste
^Bandle 2005, Ch. XVII §202 "The typological development of the Nordic languages I: Phonology" (H. Sandøy) :Old East Nordic, pp. 1856, 1859.
^Bandle 2005, Ch. XVII §202 "The typological development of the Nordic languages I: Phonology" (H. Sandøy) :Old West Nordic, p. 1859.
^abcdefBandle 2005, Ch.XIII §122 "Phonological developments from Old Nordic to Early Modern Nordic I: West Scandinavian." (M. Schulte). pp. 1081–1096; Monophthongization: p.1082;/øy/: p. 1082; Reduced vowels: p. 1085
^Hellquist, Elof, ed. (1922),"stark",Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary] (in Swedish), p. 862,archived from the original on 8 March 2012, retrieved1 March 2012
^König, Ekkehard; van der Auwera, Johan, eds. (2002).The Germanic Languages. Routledge. p. 38.ISBN978-0415280792. "Old Norse is by far the best attested variety of Old Scandinavian."
^Bandle 2005, Ch. XVII §202 "The typological development of the Nordic languages I: Phonology" (H. Sandøy) :Old East Nordic, pp. 1856, 1859.
^Sturtevant, Albert Morey (1953), "Further Old Norse Secondary Formations",Language,29 (4):457–462,doi:10.2307/409955,JSTOR409955
^Hagland, Jan Ragnar (2002). "Dialects and written language in Old Nordic I: Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic".The Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages. Vol. 1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 1015–1017.ISBN3-11-014876-5.
^Faarlund, Jan Terje (1995). "Old and Middle Scandinavian". In Konig, Ekkehard; Auwera, Johan van der (eds.).The Germanic Languages (1st ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 38–71.doi:10.4324/9781315812786.ISBN978-1-315-81278-6.
^abvan Weenen, Andrea de Leeuw (ed.),"(Manuscript AM 519 a 4to) "Alexanders saga"",Medieval Nordic Text Archive www.menota.org, fol. 1v, lines 10–14,archived from the original on 5 September 2018, retrieved4 September 2018
^abHelfenstein, James (1870).A Comparative Grammar of the Teutonic Languages: Being at the Same Time a Historical Grammar of the English Language. London: MacMillan and Co.
Lass, Roger (1993),Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press{{citation}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
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Bandle, Oskar; Braunmüller, Kurt; Jahr, Ernst Hakon; Karker, Allan; Naumann, Hans-Peter; Teleman, Ulf; Elmevik, Lennart; Widmark, Gun, eds. (2002),The Nordic Languages, An International Handbook on the History of the North Germanic Languages, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin
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e-textArchived 17 April 2023 at theWayback Machine adapted from the Germanic Lexicon Project version to work better with mobile devices and with an improved search (old-norse.net)
Faarlund, Jan Terje (2004),The Syntax of Old Norse, New York: Oxford University Press{{citation}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) (Old Norse in the narrow sense, i.e.Old West Norse)
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