Norse Language: Where Did it Originate?

The Norse language heavily influenced English through vicious warfare, barter and everyday communication. The language derived from several languages that include Swedish, Norwegian, Iceland, and Faroese. A mass amount of languages have interacted with English through a daily exchange of words. It is hard to depict how, when, where and who was responsible for the grammatical changes in the vocabulary. According to some scholars the language that influenced the English language the most was Norse. The Vikings voyages gathered, collected and shared words with the regions that they conquered. During the voyages, the Norsemen were able to collect, exchange, and share words. The words that Norsemen embedded into their daily vocabulary were words that had the most influence on their daily tasks. The Vikings are known for their many raids. Most of the assimilated words they used were exchanged from conquests, warfare and seafaring.

The people of Scandinavia have been speaking Old Norse as early as 1,000 AD, and it was easy to bring into their native languages because of the similarities in grammar and vocabulary (Kroch, Taylor, Ringe). The collective languages made up Norse. The individual languages assimilated in order to conduct everyday business (Kroch, Taylor, Ringe). Soon enough the tribes became bilingual, mixing their native language with languages from the other tribes. Semantic change comes into play with the cultural interaction between the vocabularies and varied cultures start to blend. The period of attack is commonly defined as the "Viking Age of Invasion." The Germanic tribes heavily migrated during ninth and tenth centuries. The two civilization that conquered the most were the Danish and Norwegians (descendants of the Viking origin). The Vikings are negatively described because of the treachery, havoc, misconduct, robbery, and killings that they brought upon the civilizations they conquered (Maier). They also harassed the British Isles from the ninth until the tenth century. They were vicious, accused of taking British possessions during their small-scale invasions up and down the coast of England (Maier). The Danish and Norwegians were in charge of most of the land, and soon they started to settle in part of England after their loss to the British in 1066.

The Vikings expanded (The Viking Age of Invasion) by taking over all of the provinces of Britain, Ireland, West Francia, Ilberia, Byzantine Empire, Russia, Ukraine, North America, and Greenland. "The Vikings Age of Invasion" defines the time period in which the Vikings sailed the seas causing torment and hostility to the towns they conquered (Kroch, Taylor, Ringe). The Danes and Norwegians were the two tribes that first came into contact with England. The Norwegians lost their final battle to the English in 1066, ending the Vikings Age of Invasion(Arthur). The small invasions ended with the Norwegians and Danes moving to the Northern and Eastern most parts of Britain (Kroch, Taylor, Ringe).

The Danish and Norwegian soldiers were the first settlers that were a part of raiding army to settle down. The positives that came from the small-scale raids were assimilated words, intermarriage, and an array of mixed words. The Vikings picked up words from each of the regions they raided, and all of the languages were put together to form Norse. The languages that were considered important were picked up, and placed into their everyday language (Carey).

It is well known that many originally Norse vocabulary items were borrowed into northern English; for example, Norse 'egg' for Old English (and general West Germanic) 'ey', Norse 'sister' for Old English 'swuster', and so forth. More significantly for our purposes, however, a number of the borrowings from Norse were of closed-class items which functioned mainly as morphsyntatic signals of grammatical relations (Kroch, Taylor, Ringe).

Norse took a lot of its grammar and vocabulary and placed it into the English Vocabulary. The languages that are in Norse were taken from the cultures that were conquered and formed a language with no specific choice of vocabulary. A good example of this is the word 'they,' it was taken from Norse and it is one of the most used vocabulary words used in the English language. Another word that is commonly used in the English language is, "same" originated from the Norse language. It originally looked like "ey." As the words assimilated within cultures you can easily tell which cultures were close, and which ones were not too fond of one another. The most exchange was done with the cultures that had the most communication with one another (Burgess).

Words show their importance with their appearance in the English language. The earlier the word emerged into the English language the more relevance it had with the culture and the more essential it was to the The words that are considerably substantial to the culture determine what kind of culture was being formed due to importance and how much the culture fines the word necessary through semantic change (Arthur).

Languages are divided into sub-categories, and English is part of the Indo-European language family. The Vikings were known for conquest, war and the seas. A few words that they probably had a large influence on would have to be words used during war and other words that were used every day during war and conquests over the seas (Carey).

During 1016 - 1150 a lot of words that dealt with barter and exchange. For instance, the word 'vanta' was introduced to the English language from 1016- 1150 and later transformed into 'want." The word 'skil' was introduced at the same time as the word want, and it changed to 'skill' which didn't change much from its Old Norse origin. Another word that is really important for exchange and sales would be days of the week which was introduced during this time period as well (Burgess).

A few other words like 'agnr' in Old Norse meant "grief," which is quite similar to the word 'anger,' which is commonly used today. In Old Norse the word 'Slater' relates to butchers and their meats, it meant slaughter. The word 'slaughter' has been put into negative context, and can be used to describe other things besides the way a butcher cuts his meat. Another word that appeared to be important is the word 'taka.' 'Taka' appeared in English as early as 1016 - 1150. The earlier a word appeared in the English, the more important it was to the people during that time period.

If a word like 'Slater' appeared for the first time in the 1300s it did not have too much influence or importance to the culture because people would weave out the words that were not needed as much, and kept the words that were needed. Other words were also introduced later on in English and are just as important now. For example: deyja, gervit, hitta, draga, and lypta turn into the words slater, die, gear, drag, lift, and slaughter. These words were introduced in the early thirteen hundreds until the middle fourteen hundreds. The time period that they were introduced show how much the word was needed for communication, in contrast to the words that were introduced in 1066(Arthur).

The English language has come a long way if you were to compare it to "stick people (hieroglyphics)" as a source of communication to everyday vocabulary being used for communication. It is evident that the interplay between cultures played a large role in the derivation, structure, composition and pattern in the changing words in order to fit their personal needs. There have been many languages that have been introduced to the English, that it is hardest language to learn because of the different languages that have been placed into its vocabulary during its development.

Works cited

Mythologies of the Ancient World.Kramer, Samuel Noah.
Toronto. Anchor, 1960.