Old Norse

Old Norse was a North Germanic language spoken in Scandinavia and in Norse settlements during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages, roughly from the 8th to the 14th centuries. It is the name we use for the old West and East Scandinavian dialects that came from Proto-Norse and later changed into the modern North Germanic languages, such as Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.

We know about Old Norse from runic inscriptions written in the Younger Futhark and from many medieval books written with the Latin alphabet. Its writings include the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, the Icelandic sagas, skaldic verse, laws, and religious texts. Old Norse speakers met and mixed with speakers of other languages, especially Old English and the Celtic languages. This mixing left many words and place names that we still use today in English, such as egg, knife, sky, and window.

Scholars usually talk about Old Norse when they study texts from the 11th to the 14th centuries, although exactly when this period starts and ends can differ depending on the subject and tradition they follow.

Geographical distribution

Old Icelandic was very similar to Old Norwegian, and together they made up Old West Norse. People spoke this language in places where Norse people settled, like Greenland, the Faroes, Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, parts of northwest England (especially Cumbria), and Normandy. Old East Norse was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, Kievan Rus', eastern England, and in Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was used in Gotland and in some settlements to the east.

By the 11th century, Old Norse was one of the most common European languages, spoken from Vinland in the west all the way to the Volga River in the east. In Kievan Rus', the language stayed in use the longest in Veliky Novgorod, possibly until the 13th century. There is some debate about when Swedish speakers first arrived in Finland, but they had definitely settled there by the 13th century during the Second Swedish Crusade.

Modern descendants

Main article: North Germanic languages

Old Norse evolved into several modern languages. Icelandic, Faroese, and Norwegian come from Old West Norse. Danish, Swedish, and Övdalian come from Old East Norse. Icelandic and Faroese have kept much of their old grammar, though their pronunciation has changed. Norwegian, influenced by the East dialect, now sounds more like Danish and Swedish.

Many words in English, especially in northern areas and Scottish dialects, came from Old Norse. Norman French, and through it, modern French, were also influenced by Norse. Icelandic speakers can still read Old Norse texts, though pronunciation has changed. Faroese has been affected by Danish, Norwegian, and Gaelic. Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian speakers can usually understand each other, even without study, because their languages remain quite similar.

Various other languages, like Finnish, Estonian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic, have also borrowed words from Norse, often related to fishing and sailing.

Phonology

Old Norse had vowel sounds that came in long and short pairs. Long vowels were marked with an accent in writing. There were also special nasal sounds for all ten vowels, which happened before nasal consonants or where a nasal sound had been in older forms of words.

Old Norse included three special sound combinations called diphthongs: /ɛi/, /ɔu/, and /øy ~ ɛy/. In East Norse, these changed and merged with other sounds, but in West Norse they stayed the same.

The language had six stop consonant sounds. The sounds /d/ and /b/ were often soft and fricative between vowels. The /ɡ/ sound was hard after /n/ or another /ɡ/, and soft before /s/ and /t/.

Old Norse used stress mainly on the first syllable of a word. This pattern continued in modern Icelandic and Faroese. Some scholars think there may have also been a pitch or tone difference in words, which later influenced Swedish and Norwegian tones. However, this is still debated among experts. Primary stress was always on the word stem, with secondary stress in compound words on the second stem.

The open or open-mid vowels can be written in different ways:

• /æ/ = /ɛ/
• /ɒ/ = /ɔ/
• /ɑ/ = /a/

Around the 13th century, /ɔ/ (written as ⟨ǫ⟩) merged with /ø/ or /o/ in most dialects except Old Danish and Icelandic, where it merged with /ø/. Nasal vowels were noted in old writings but likely disappeared in most dialects by this time, though they remain in Elfdalian and other Ovansiljan dialects.

Old Norse had three diphthong sounds: /ɛi/, /ɔu/, and /øy ~ ɛy/, written as ⟨ei⟩, ⟨au⟩, and ⟨ey⟩. In East Norse, these changed into single vowel sounds, but in West Norse they stayed as diphthongs.

Old Norse had six plosive sounds. The /p/ sound was rare at the start of words. The /d/ and /b/ sounds were often soft between vowels. The /ɡ/ sound was hard after /n/ or another /ɡ/, and soft before /s/ and /t/. The Old East Norse /ʀ/ sound was a special tongue-tip consonant, possibly a palatal sibilant, and eventually changed into /r/, as in Old West Norse.

The sound of ⟨hv⟩ is not fully known, but it may have been like [xʷ], [hʷ], or [ʍ]. It stayed longer than other similar sounds in all dialects. In Icelandic, it changed into a strong plosive [kv], suggesting it kept a stronger frication. In some Icelandic dialects, it remains as [xʷ] or [xv].

Orthography

Old Norse was written in two ways. First, it used the Younger Futhark, a set of only 16 letters called runes. Because there were so few runes, one rune often stood for several different sounds, and it did not show the difference between long and short vowel sounds. Later, Medieval runes were also used.

Second, Old Norse was written with the Latin alphabet. Back then, there was no one correct way to spell words. A special letter called vend, based on the letter wynn, was sometimes used for certain sounds. Long vowel sounds were sometimes marked with marks above the letters but were also sometimes left unmarked. Today, scholars use a special spelling system created in the 1800s to write Old Norse words correctly.

Phonological processes

Ablaut

Ablaut patterns are groups of vowels that switch places in the middle of a word. Strong verbs change the middle vowel to show past tense, similar to how English verbs like "sing" become "sang" in the past. Some verbs are made this way from strong verbs.

Umlaut

Umlaut is a change in a vowel because of a vowel or special sound that comes after it. This change can be important for showing grammar rules. It can turn some vowels into others, like turning "a" into "ö" in certain words.

Breaking

Vowel breaking splits a front vowel into two sounds before a back vowel in the next part of the word. West Norse only changed the vowel "e", while East Norse also changed "i". Certain letters like "w", "l", or "r" can stop this change.

Assimilation or elision of inflectional ʀ

When a word ends in certain letters and has a long vowel, a special ending sound can change or disappear. For example, the verb "to blow" becomes "blæss" instead of a longer form. Some words keep their special endings even when rules say they should change.

Phonotactics

Blocking of ii, uu

In Old Norse, certain sounds could not appear next to each other. For example, the sound i could not come right after i, e, or some related sounds. This meant that at the start of words, some sounds were dropped. For instance, the word for "wolf" in Old Norse was úlfr, which looks similar to the English word "wolf".

Epenthesis

Over time, people in different parts of Scandinavia started adding extra, unstressed vowels to words to make them easier to say. By around the year 1200, this change began in Denmark, and by the year 1300, it had spread to Iceland. Different areas used different vowels. For example, in parts of Norway south of Bergen, people might say aftur, while in other areas, they said aftir or after.

Grammar

Old Norse was a language that changed words in many ways to show their meaning. It kept many of these changes in modern Icelandic, especially for nouns. Modern Norwegian, however, uses simpler word structures.

Old Norse had three types of grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Words that described nouns had to match the noun's gender. For example, one would say, "heill maðr!" but, "heilt barn!".

Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns changed form based on their role in a sentence. They had four cases – nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative – and could be singular or plural. Adjectives and pronouns also changed based on gender. Some pronouns could show pairs with a special form called dual number.

There were different groups of nouns, each with its own pattern of changes. Some nouns followed "strong" patterns, while others followed "weak" patterns with fewer forms. A definite article was added to nouns as a suffix later in the Old Norse period.

Texts

The earliest writings in Old Norse are called runes, dating back to the 8th century. People kept using runes until the 15th century, and some places in Sweden still used them as late as the 19th century. When people in these lands started following Christianity in the 11th century, they began using the Latin alphabet. The oldest books written in Old Norse with this alphabet are from the middle of the 12th century.

After that, Old Norse was used to write many different kinds of stories and books. Most of these books were written in Iceland. The most famous are the Norse sagas and stories about Icelanders, along with myths. There were also many religious books, stories from other cultures, and the Old Testament. Other writings included instructions, grammar books, and letters and official papers.

Main article:
conversion to Christianity
Norse sagas
Icelanders' sagas
courtly romances
grammatical treatises

Dialects

Old Norse had many similar features across its dialects, which is why people thought of it as one language. Sometimes they called it the "Danish tongue" or the "Norse language." However, there were some differences between the western and eastern parts of the language.

As Old Norse developed from an earlier language, changes happened across the whole area at first. Later, differences grew between the west and east, especially in how some sounds changed. For example, some words changed in Old West Norse but not in Old East Norse. This can be seen in words like "strong" and "sword," which look different in Swedish compared to Icelandic and Norwegian.

Old West Norse

Old West Norse is the best-known version of Old Norse. Often, when people talk about Old Norse, they mean Old West Norse. This version of the language changed in some ways around the 7th century, like how certain sound combinations merged.

Old West Norse kept some sounds that Old East Norse lost. For example, words like "tooth" and "goose" looked different in the two dialects. The earliest texts in Old West Norse come from around the year 900 and include poems and legal documents. During the 12th and 13th centuries, areas like Trøndelag and Western Norway helped shape this version of the language.

Old Icelandic

In Iceland, some sounds changed in unique ways. For example, the sound "w" before certain letters disappeared. Icelandic also developed a special long sound for the letter "a" around the 11th century, but this later merged back into a regular long "a."

Old Norwegian

In Norway, some sounds like "hl," "hn," and "hr" simplified into "l," "n," and "r" around the 11th century. There were also some changes in how vowels sounded and were spelled.

Greenlandic Norse

This was a version of Old West Norse spoken in Greenland by Icelandic settlers. It disappeared around the 15th century when the settlements ended.

Old East Norse

Old East Norse, also called Old East Nordic, was spoken in Sweden and Denmark between 800 and 1100. It was often written in runes and was very similar in its early stages. Over time, changes happened more in Denmark than in Sweden, making the languages start to differ.

Swedish kept more of the older sounds compared to Danish. For example, the sound "w" lasted much longer in Swedish than in Danish. Some vowels also changed differently in Danish compared to Swedish.

Old Danish

In Denmark, some sounds changed earlier than in Sweden. For example, certain consonant sounds became voiced, and some vowels merged into a single sound. This led to differences like Danish having "kage" (cake) while Swedish kept "kaka."

Old Swedish

In Sweden, some sounds like "h" before "l," "n," and "r" were still present in the early days but later disappeared in most places, though they remain in some northern dialects.

Old Gutnish

Old Gutnish was spoken on the island of Gotland. Because of its isolation, it developed differently from both Old West and Old East Norse. For example, some sounds changed in ways that were unique to Gutnish, like how the sound "ai" stayed instead of changing to "ei."

Relationship to other languages

Relationship to English

See also: History of English § Scandinavian influence, and List of English words of Old Norse origin

Old English and Old Norse were related languages. Because of this, many Old Norse words sound familiar to English speakers today. Words like armr meaning 'arm' and fótr meaning 'foot' come from a shared Proto-Germanic language that both English and Old Norse came from.

During the Viking Age, many everyday Old Norse words entered the Old English language. For example, words like "egg," "law," "leg," "sky," and "window" all came from Old Norse. These words became a big part of everyday English and are still used today.

In a sentence like "They are both weak," we can see Old Norse words clearly. The words "they" and "weak" both came from Old Norse. Even the word "both" might also have come from Old Norse, though this is not completely certain. While not as many words came from Old Norse as from Norman French or Latin, these words are very important because they are part of the core of modern English vocabulary.

Relationship to modern Scandinavian languages