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Talk:Old Norse

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[edit] donsk tunga / Danish tongue

Alphabo changed "donsk tunga" to "Danish tongue" with the following reasoning given in the edit summary: "this is not the native name but an Icelandic translation, then why not "dansk tunge"?. "Danish tongue" is used by many historians, and is the most correct in an English article". I reverted, because alphabo was wrong, in the following ways:

  • "donsk tunga" is the native name, not an icelandic translation.
  • In this place in the infobox, it is the rule to write the name of the language in the original, not an English version. See the infobox in, e.g., the articles on German language or French language.--Barend 16:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
"donsk tunga" is NOT the native name. Dansk tunga or dansk tunga (in spelling) is equally correct - if not more. The OWN pronunciation was a minority pronunciation and no more authoritative than the OEN (or true Danish Tongue) pronunciation. The never ending attempts to get a Icelandic patent on Nordic culture is mildly speaking offensive, and a little bit racist.Dylansmrjones (talk) 05:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Quick comment (added later): This is wrong usage of the word 'racist'. In my opinion, to be racist the matter in question at least has to have something to do with race, don't you think? All the peoples that are in question here are North-germanic! How on earth can there be racism here? Nationalism maybe?--Alexlykke (talk) 00:13, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Good grief, racist? Sure, the u-mutation wasn't universal but the -e ending, suggested by the writer above, is not accurate. Anyway, if dansk tunga is attested then we can certainly add it. Haukur (talk) 08:11, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it's already there, reducing the whole complaint to non-sense. Haukur (talk) 08:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Only because it was added extremely recently. Dansk tunge would be just as inaccurate as "dǫnsk tunga" which never occurs in writing. It's a semi-IPA spelling and not a correct transliteration. And yes... the Icelandic national-extremism qualifies as "racism" in it's wide usage. "dǫnsk tunga" ought to be deleted as no such word ever existed in writing.Dylansmrjones (talk) 15:01, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
What are you talking about? Transliteration? What alphabet would you want to transliterate from? Do you object to normalized Old Norse spelling? Would you prefer dönsk tunga? Or dönsk túnga? Or what? What do you mean it never existed in writing? How has this anything to do with the International Phonetic Alphabet? How has any of it to do with "racism"? What races are involved? Haukur (talk) 21:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why is it called "Old" Norse?

Why is the language called "Old" Norse, when theres no such thing as "New" Norse, or "Modern" Norse. Why isnt the lanaguage just called "Norse". If there is a linguist who knows how this convention came into existence, please answer. Please also notify me at my Talk site. I appreciate it. :) --Haldrik 19:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

The word Norse means "Scandinavian" (or even specifically "Norwegian"). Old Norse, i.e. Old Scandinavian/Norwegian, is simply a conventional name for the Viking Age Scandinavian language.--Berig 19:51, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Im surprised by your speedy response. It seems like it should be correct to simply refer to the "Norse language", similar to the way linguists refer to the "Gothic language"?--Haldrik 21:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
It depends. In a clear Viking Age context it would work, but otherwise the Norse language would just mean the "Scandinavian language".--Berig 21:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
"Old NOrse" rather refers to the language spoken after Viking age. At least the normalized version typically corresponds to Late Old Icelandic spoken no earlier than late 13th century.
Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 (talk) 22:08, 17 February 2008 (UTC))
That's an exaggeration. Although of course language always changes, the language from about 700/800 to about 1350 exhibits only small differences, and the language of this whole period is referred to as Old Norse. --Barend (talk) 08:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
What is the basis for "old norse" at all? Protoscandinavian is the ancestor language, after that there is little reason to posit intermediate forms before the "old" languages (old danish, old swedish, old norwegian/icelandic), especially since historical sources suggest the languages to be then only recently differentiated, as per "dansk tungə". At best a division into old west scandinavian and old east scandinavian can be justified before the individual "old" languages.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I see your point, but I guess we're are partly dealing with convention here and partly with the fact that Proto-Norse underwent such drastic changes during the syncopation period that it is useful to separate between Old Norse and Proto-Norse.--Berig (talk) 22:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
The usual way to deal with vast language change across a unified period is to refer to Early and Late versions of the language, in this case Early Old Norse would be proto-norse or proto north germanic, Late Old Norse would be the form closest to the indiviualized old scandinavian languages.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, I have always thought the article on Old Norse should only cover what is called in the article "old west Norse" (old Norwegian and old Icelandic), and Old east Norse should have a separate article. Aksel Gerner is right that there is no intermediate form between protoscandinavian and old danish, old swedish, old norwegian/icelandic, but the problem is that this article tries to cover all these four "old-" languages and lump them together in one article. That is not in keeping with the convention in the Norwegian litterature at least, where Old Norse is only used for old Norwegian/Icelandic.
Proto-Norse and Old Norse obviously have to be kept separate, as they are two completely different languages.--Barend (talk) 11:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
What would you say if I wrote the following?
I have always thought the article on Old Norse should only cover what is called in the article "old east Norse", and Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian should have separate articles
In my experience Old Norse usually refers to the language of the Danish Vikings in England and the Old Norse loanwords in English and the toponyms that these Danes left. If Norwegians consider the Viking Age languages of Swedes and Danes to have been distinct from that of the Norwegians and Icelanders, and use "norrønt" only for Old Icelandic/Norwegian, it cannot be considered to be an equivalent word to "Old Norse". Moreover, the Norwegian terminology looks quite peculiar when you consider the fact that Snorri Sturluson thought he spoke and wrote in the Danish tongue.--Berig (talk) 13:46, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
If you wrote that, Berig, then I'd think I may have phrased myself badly, and suggest we should probably call the two separate articles "old east Norse" and "old west Norse" so we don't step on anyone's toes. As for the rest of what you write, I can't argue with your experience, of course, but I think it's pretty atypical - the vast majority of the text corpus of Old Norse is from Iceland and Norway (most of it from Iceland). The vast majority of the text corpus is also written after c. 1180, and at this point there was a clear and noticeable difference between east and west, which leads to large parts of the article being about these differences, which makes it somewhat messy and confusing, in my opinion. And Snorri, of course, called his language both "dansk" and "norrønt".--Barend (talk) 07:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
My point is that I do find the Norwegian definition to be a tad too Syttende Mai for my taste. There is a difference between the English term "Old Norse" and the Norwegian term "norrønt". According to the American Heritage Dictionary (third edition) Old Norse means:
1) The North Germanic languages until the middle of the 14th century.
2 a) Old Icelandic
2 b) Old Norwegian
It is apparent that AHD recognizes that there are two and even three ways of defining Old Norse, but it apparently considers Old Norse to be primarily a blanket term for Old East Norse and Old West Norse. .--Berig (talk) 07:24, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough. I stand corrected. The important point, as far as I'm concerned, is that there is an important distinction between the two. But that wasn't the original discussion here, of course. But when you talk about being too Syttende Mai, it was even worse before - until quite recently, it was common in Norway to refer to the language Snorri wrote simply as "Old Norwegian".--Barend (talk) 09:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
In my experience, Old Norse usually refers to the language of the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, the skaldic poetry, the sagas, etc., i.e. predominantly Old West Norse/Old Icelandic/Old Norwegian. I don't feel any tremendous need to split the article into two, at least not yet, but if the split were to be done, I'd say the two forks should be named Old West Norse and Old East Norse, while Old Norse should remain independent as a quasi-disambiguation page. I don't think an article called Old Norse should restrict itself to either the western or the eastern dialect. As to the OP's question why it's customarily called Old Norse when there are no languages called "Middle Norse" and "(Modern) Norse", maybe it just originated as a parallel to Old English, Old High German, etc.; the "Old" served to remind people what approximate time period was under discussion. There really isn't any good reason the language couldn't be called simply "Norse", but the fact remains it usually isn't called simply "Norse" in the scholarly literature, and it's not Wikipedia's job to change academic conventions. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 22:02, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
The term New Norse is sometimes used, usually referring to nynorsk. Haukur (talk) 23:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
That is based only upon the phonetic likenesses of the names, many probably think that norse is related to norway, not the other way around. Analogy on the lines of Dane:Danish, Swede:Swedish = Norwegian:norwegish↔Norse is also likely for some of the occurrences.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
The citation bias is not of encyclopedic interest. The speaker population was centered very far from iceland, and while people in general are more interested in poetry, heroic fiction (compare Beowulf) and stories about gods and the end of the world than in law texts like Skånske and Jyske law (from 1200-1250, usually referred to as old danish, but falling within the time period given in this article), this does not mean that the covering of the historical language should be encyclopedicly skewed in favor of what cannot be described as other than an extreme of the area of use. --AkselGerner (talk) 22:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Frankly, I don't think that a division between OWN and OEN is necessary on WP. The difference between the two dialects was small, and I would say that it was comparable to the difference between General American and Standard British English. Moreover, most of what we know about OEN is based on comparing Old Icelandic with runic inscriptions and the later versions of Danish and Swedish. In addition, the most salient difference between the two dialects, which was a monophthongization in OEN, did not appear until the 11th c.--Berig (talk) 06:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

For a recent overview on these issues I recommend the article Language by Michael Barnes in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture. A couple of money quotes: "'Common Scandinavian' is something of a misnomer, and the (largely) variation-free language of many handbooks a myth." (p. 181) "It may be time to reconsider the idea that the east-west dichotomy represents the primary dialectal split in the history of Scandinavian." (p. 186) Haukur (talk) 10:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Every person has his/her own idiolect, so it stands to reason that there were regional variations in the vast and geographically varied North Germanic area ever since Proto-Germanic times. However, what seems to be at issue here is the very definition of dialect vs. language. What could very well be considered the same modern Scandinavian language is divided into four languages in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. I would not be surprised if some people wanted to push back the Scandinavian language divisions even further back into Proto-Norse times. It's probably feasible if a difference can be discovered between a Norwegian runestone and a Swedish one. Even the minutest dialect differences can be raised to language dividing status (e.g. Majorcan vs. Catalan).--Berig (talk) 12:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
The point of a dialectal split is that it splits a language into two dialectal groups, not into two different languages. A dialectal split may result in the split of a language or it may not, the reasons for that are mainly geopolitical. Jutlandish and Falsterian are both considered to be Danish, while Skånemål is not. Ultimately the difference involved are comparable in size, I am not saying that Skånemål is also Danish, rather that Jutlandish could be split out on the same grounds, but is not because Jutland is not, say, a province of Germany, which it could have easily become had Bismarck had his way.--AkselGerner (talk) 23:03, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History?

The article mentions what became of Old Norse, but not at all where it came from. The language distribution also almost exclusively sticks to the later distribution. Shinobu (talk) 15:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, it evolved out of old Germanic dialects. It's mentioned that it was a Germanic language in the lead, and I don't think there is that more info about it, see Proto-Norse. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 01:45, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cite?

I think the section on the differences between East and West Norse should be much more heavily cited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.149.99.2 (talk • contribs) 00:41, 1 December 2007

[edit] Mergefrom Old Norse

This is not the time for national pride, all the old scandinavian languages should be handled together and in the same way. The matter is too confusing to anglophones as it is:p Under Old Norse the parts of Old Norwegian article that tries to delimit the meaning of the term can be skipped, it's misleading anyway. Also, this may give the impetus for fleshing out the coverage of the other old languages as well. If sometime in the future a sizeable amount of information has accumulated in this article it can always be split out again, hopefully alongside it's sister languages. As it is, the Old Norwegian article is shamefully short, hardly qualifying it's unique existence.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:07, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion we need more articles, not fewer articles. There's plenty to say about Old Norwegian specifically, Old Icelandic specifically etc. I even wrote a short article on Old Greenlandic. Haukur (talk) 22:20, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Why then isn't there plenty being said? As I said, the articles can be resplit when there is enough material. As it is the subject is confusing, even to some editors, like f.ex. the difference between norse and norrønt. Having all the material in one place is a good way to start. If Old Norwegian is to be kept then it has to be edited so that it is very clear that it is a daughter language of Old Norse, not as it stands, "Old norse as spoken in Norway". The Old Norwegian article shows how the writer(s) have been forced to re-state what is already stated here... there's not enough info in it for it to stand on its own. A further possibility of course would be to split out Old East Norse (in which is handled then Old Swedish and Old Danish) and Old West Norse (Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian), since both of these groupings cover developments later than Old Norse, and are in fact a dialectal split relevant to this day, unlike Old Norse.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't see anything particularly confusing with the current arrangement and in my experience Wikipedia tends to work better and grow more naturally with more articles rather than fewer articles. Haukur (talk) 22:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
The problem here is that Old Norwegian can't be described on it's own. There has to be contrasting to Old Icelandic, at the very least, as there is already. Without that the article becomes just an incomplete list of changes, many of which are not unique to Old Norwegian and does not enlighten the reader in any way. There's then going to be at least four articles with a lot of overlapping information, and no place where the needed cross-referencing is done. I would accept moving Old Norwegian to West Norse and adding Old Icelandic and the necessary background comparisons.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Haukurth. A cursory skimming of the seminary "Introduction to Old Norse" by Gordon reveals many intricacies that can be covered in an article. Vincent Valentine||talk to me! 22:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Again, by all means write that. But start it here so that the spawned articles don't end up having each a different spin. They can be cut and pasted at any time, say, when they are longer than one screenview. --AkselGerner (talk) 21:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
And BTW are you perhaps confusing old norse and old norwegian? That's exactly the problem I see with the present Old Norwegian article: It can be read as OLDNORSE=OLDNORWEGIAN which is already a painfully common misconception.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I was actually just skimming through my copy of Gordon's An Introduction to Old Norse, and there's quite a decent amount of information on differences between the dialects. I'll do my best over the course of a few days to add some information and flesh out the article(s), assuming no one has any problems with it. Vincent Valentine||talk to me! 23:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Great, sorry for doubting you, I don't have that book. BTW See my post on talk:Old_Norwegian to see the problems with describing the changes of a single dialect without the backdrop of it's source and sibling dialects. The big problem is that there is no common name (to my knowledge) for the group Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish and Old Swedish. So they can't be kept together in any single article (except for Old Norse), because there's no reasonably name for that common article. Old East and West Norse would be possible, but still the changes don't make a lot of sense without the backdrop of the other group, and there's no point in having to articles saying the same thing only from opposite perspectives.--AkselGerner (talk) 23:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I'd say "Old Norse" is the common name for the group Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 21:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but not very useful. Old Norse is most precisely used for the common tongue of the early viking age, highlighting the continuity with proto-norse/proto north-germanic. The old [danish, swedish, norwegian, icelandic] terms consequently are used for the divergence into seperate languages in the late viking age, each being the starting point for the progression through medieval (middle) [danish, swedish, norwegian, icelandic] to modern [danish, swedish, norwegian, icelandic].--AkselGerner (talk) 22:13, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a work of reference and not a work of scholarly analysis. Consequently, we name articles according to what is the most common English term/definition and what people are most likely to search for. In a work of scholarly analysis, such as a dissertation, your considerations may be more relevant depending on what is the scholar's thesis.--Berig (talk) 22:26, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I am actually talking about how the words are being used. They are being used in two completely different ways depending on the area of relevance of the text: when the cohesion of the nordic region is to be stressed then the term Old Norse is used, but when the linguistic divergence is to be stressed then the individualized forms are used. At the same time there is some kind of temporal cut-off point, for example Skånske Lov and Jyske Lov from 1202-1218 and 1241 are regarded as among the very first works written in danish (=old danish). In other words, the older runic inscriptions in younger futhark are regarded as written in so called common nordic (=Old Norse) rather than Old Danish.--AkselGerner (talk) 23:00, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I probably have made my case in the wrong way or been abrasive or something. I usually don't know myself until I see the response, I am deeply sorry for that. Here's the deal: Old Norwegian, like Old Danish, Old Swedish and Old Icelandic are terms used for the end-state of Old Norse, which is the begin-state of the language history of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Icelandic, respectively. As such they can be handled elegantly under Old Norse as well as under the specific articles about the relevant languages. In fact they should be described in relevant detail in both places (that is, they should be dealt with in Old Norse, and they should also be dealt with in history of norwegian language, history of danish language, history of swedish language and history of icelandic language. This I believe to be something we can all agree on. What follows from that is that they have been dealt with in both of the contexts that make any sense. It doesn't make sense to deal with an intermediate by itself, it's very very hard to write such an article without restating way too much of what comes before and what comes after. And like I have pointed out on talk:Old_Norwegian that article shows exactly those weaknesses, it doesn't contain almost any information that is exclusive to Old Norwegian, and the bulk of it's text is actually concerned with later developments, i.e. middle norwegian. --AkselGerner (talk) 21:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I did not read what's written before so this ma be said already but "old Norse" is not only old norwegian, it is also ols Icelandic, old Swedish, old Dannis... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.89.55.200 (talk) 08:22, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

That just goes to show that you shouldn't comment on a discussion you haven't read.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Regarding that answer: don't be impolite! Don't scare away mayhap future editors. He/she just tried to pinpoint something, it's a good thing to read the text before commenting, yes - but you could simply and shortly have repeated the conclusion from before in one sentence, starting with "as said before". Said: Rursus ☻ 08:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I thought of something that might make more people happy than the proposed merge would. Why not cut Old Norse down a bit (it's extremely long, 40kb is long in wikipedia, this is 50% more than that) by making an article "Old Norse Languages" in which Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, Old Swedish and Old Gnutish can be treated together, separate from the "common norse" but still handled together, so that the developments can be related to each other. That article should then heavily refer to the known documents of these languages, and should draw up the ways that differences and similarities line up, because they do not always follow that East Norse/West Norse split. A large amount of prose can be lifted straight from Old Norse and Old Norwegian can then be merged to the new article. This also allows for the handling of the "middle norwegian" and the other medieval norse languages because the term "Old Norse Languages" can arguably apply also to medieval forms whether they are called "Old" or "Middle" or whatever. Please let me know what you think. I personally feel that this would be a good compromise. I also think my proposed article will be a lot easier to write than the Old Norwegian article has shown itself to be (see that article's talk page for my critique) because the changes can be related to those of the other languages, everything can be put into it's true context.--AkselGerner (talk) 23:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Regarding that: it's a good idea (probably), since I wished the same before reading your proposal. I think it's the natural thing to do, but I believe the hierarchy of the splitup should be more like the one in North Germanic languages#Family tree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe the material is not yet enough in WP regarding Old Swedish compared to Old Danish, who are very nearly related dialects within the then dialect-level North-West/South-East split. It might be preferrable to start the splitup between "Old South East Norse" and "Old North West Norse" ... just a suggestion ... if the material on WP already contains enough material justifying a more detailed split, then I'm wrong. Otherwise agreed. Said: Rursus ☻ 08:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Grave accent and glottal stop

At the moment, the article states:

"Moreover, Danish lost the tonal word accent present in modern Swedish and Norwegian, replacing the grave accent with a glottal stop."

Wasn't it the acute accent that turned into a glottal stop? // Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 (talk) 21:02, 24 March 2008 (UTC))

That's not uncontroversial. There's little evidence of tonal word accent being present in Old Norse before the sound changes that made certain words homonyminous. There is no way to exclude these prosodies being parallel developments to make up for the same problem of undesired homonyms. The dialects of Danish that lack stød (translatable into "thrust") do not have tone in stead, they simply have homonymic words where otherwise stød is distinctive. Also stød is rarely a full glottal stop, and is marked in IPA not with the glottal stop marker ʔ but rather with a raised and diminished version of it.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:26, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Haukur should probably be able to confirm or reject the following: I believe that there is no evidence of distinctive tonal word accent opposition in Icelandic. I am going to reword the sentence in question because it's otherwise flawed, it refers to danish losing something that's present in present-day Norwegian and Swedish and that's not very good. I'll try to keep it NPOV and low-specific as to theories.--AkselGerner (talk) 20:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok, it's there now. Feel free to suggest changes. I checked out the research and there's some area of Denmark that has tones. There's also a lot of disagreeing theories out there so be careful with the sources. The 15th century source is by non-danish researchers regarded as merely a comment on the ugliness of danish language, but I consider that to be the result of ethnic animosity :P, clearly the description is too similar to later scientific descriptions as to be coincidental.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
There is some evidence from Icelandic for distinctive tonal accent opposition. See Stefán Karlsson (1964). "Gömul hljóðdvöl í ungum rímum", in Íslenzk tunga 5, ISSN 0459-455X That article argues for it being present in 17th century Icelandic based on evidence from poetry. Haukur (talk) 09:47, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
That's interesting. I was only able to find a theory that there were different tone patterns but non-distinctive. Unfortunately I've lost that source. Ok, in this one, on page 93-94 it is suggested that the toneless dialects in scandinavia should be assumed never to have had tone distinction, until hard evidence is produced. And on p. 94 there's a quote from Eli Fischer Jørgensen, an internationally highly renowned phonologist, saying that it is unlikely for tone and stød to have developed in the order tone from nothing and then stød from tone, because the reductions making stød distinctive in monosyllabics were in place already in the earliest jutlandish texts. So the feature would have had to have developed already by the early 1200s. Her answer to that is to propose that a dynamic tonal feature (= not tone and not stød, and not distinctive in the meaning that it lacked minimal pairs, being in place before the reductions) must be assumed to have existed already across the area that now have tones. These two standpoints do not contradict each other, the first about not assuming loss of tone in regions that now lack tone only talks about the tone opposition, so it does not go against a non-distinctive intonational feature of earlier forms: no distinction = no minimal pairs = no opposition.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Why not just blur the statement, to reflect the blurry state of research. Something like:
"Danish have a glottal stop in the place where modern Swedish and Norwegian have tonal word accent present."
Or yet more blurry:
"Danish have a glottal stop in words indicating a pattern similar to where modern Swedish and Norwegian have tonal word accent present."
Or yet more:
"Several authors [citation needed] have theorised a connection between Danish glottal stops with the modern Swedish and Norwegian tonal word accent."
Said: Rursus ☻ 08:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Old Norse

I know I am re-starting an old discussion, but I simply have to.

Strictly speaking, old norse is the term used for the language spoken in Norway and its colonies in the Viking and Medieval Ages. The contemporary languages of Denmark and Sweden are known as old Danish and old Swedish respectively. The reason why Old Norse is not called 'Old Norwegian', as it indeed often is in Norway, is because so much of the written material in said language originates from Iceland not from Norway. Therefore it is important to underline that at the time, the same language was spoken both in Norway and on Iceland. Therefore, the introduction of the article should be changed, because Old Norse was in fact NOT the language spoken in the entirety of Scandinavia, but, as aforementioned, the language of Norway and Iceland. --Alexlykke (talk) 17:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

This is really an old discussion that Norwegians bring up every once in a while since they appear to misunderstand the meaning of the English word "Old Norse". The Norwegian word Norrønt corresponds to Old West Norse in English. I really don't understand why it is so important in Norway to declare Old Norwegian to have been a language that was independent from Old Swedish and Old Danish. Moreover, it's completely a-historical since Snorri thought he wrote in Danish.--Berig (talk) 18:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Berig is wrong, Alexlykke is right. Encyclopedia Britannica defines Old Norse as the language used in Norway and Iceland, and as the parent language of modern Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic. The definition of old Norse as the language used in all of Scandinavia is a wikipedia peculiarity, and not in keeping with common English usage. As Berig says, this is brought up from time to time, and unceremoniously shot down, unfortunately. The difference between Old Norse, Old Swedish and Old Danish were small, but it is still common, in English as well as in Norwegian, to refer to them as distinct languages. Berig's sentence that "Snorri thought he wrote in Danish" is absurd. Snorri wrote in his vernacular, a language which he called, alternately, "dansk tunga" (Danish) and "norrønt mál" (Norse). He didn't "think" there was anything particularly Danish about it, but his use of that name indicates that the Nordic languages were, as they indeed still are, mutually intelligible. --Barend (talk) 11:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
You're both right. Sometimes "Old Norse" is used to refer to the language of Norway and the islands and sometimes it's used in a more general way. The Danish settlers (and raiders) of England are often referred to in English sources as speaking Old Norse. Haukur (talk) 13:19, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, and on English Wikipedia we stick to English usage. In English usage, even the Swedish Vikings in Russia spoke Old Norse.--Berig (talk) 14:14, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, I think there is more than one English usage, but this is certainly one. Haukur (talk) 14:24, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
It's the only usage I am familiar with from books like Omeljan Pritsak's The origin of Rus'. However, if it's more common to say that the Swedish Varangians spoke "Old Swedish" instead of "Old Norse", then Barend's and Alexlykke's view should prevail. Maybe they could provide me with sources to show me I am wrong.--Berig (talk) 14:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
E.V. Gordon's book focuses chiefly on Old Icelandic, but does also include Old Danish and Old Swedish, so for him the term is broader than just Old West Norse. —Angr 17:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, and judging from EB's definition (see below), AHD's definition and Merriam-Webster's definition[1], it appears that Old Norse generally includes Old East Norse in English-language scholarship. I consequently don't think there are any valid arguments for trying to restrict Old Norse to Old West Norse on WP.--Berig (talk) 18:21, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Isn't "Norse" an older term refering to "Nordic". Old Nordic, as compared to the modern nordic languages Modern South East Nordic with three armies (Swedish, Danish and Bokmål) and the three or so Modern North West Nordic languages (Icelandic, Faerian and Nynorsk). I just assumed so: Norse = Norrön/Norrøn = "from Norden" = Nordic. ??? Said: Rursus ☻ 07:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Britannica's definition

Barend wrote above:

"Encyclopedia Britannica defines Old Norse as the language used in Norway and Iceland, and as the parent language of modern Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic.The definition of old Norse as the language used in all of Scandinavia is a wikipedia peculiarity, and not in keeping with common English usage."[2]

However, when I check out Britannica, I find this:

Classical Germanic language used c. 1150–1350, the literary language of the Icelandic sagas, skaldic poetry, and Eddas. [...] The terms Old Norse and Old Icelandic are sometimes used interchangeably because Icelandic records of this period are more plentiful and of greater literary value than those in the other Scandinavian languages, but Old Norse also embraces the ancestors of modern Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Faroese.[3]

Are you using an older version of Britannica?--Berig (talk) 15:24, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

All right, I bow down to the Encyclopedia Britannica. After all, I can't tell the English how to use their own language, can I? So, then, end of discussion. BUT 'Norrønt' the norwegian translation of 'old norse' will thus always be slightly 'off', as 'norrønt' refers to norwegian, icelandic etc.
All things considered, us Norwegians had a good run, eh? See you around the next time I find something to rouse a rabble about. Heh, heh...--Alexlykke (talk) 23:24, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
See you around :).--Berig (talk) 08:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, I'm obviously using a different version of Britannica. I checked the paper version, and it was explicit in excluding Old Swedish and Old Danish from the definition. It would appear that Haukur i the one who got it right here - English usage is not consistent in this question. However, I still think that this article's insistence on describing both OEN and OWN in the same article, and in the same grammatical tables, makes the article messy.--Barend (talk) 11:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I think English usage is quite consistent since not only the scholarly works I have read, but also Britannica Online, the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster have the same definition. Britannica probably corrected/updated the information in the on-line edition. You may personally disagree with the standard definition, but in WP articles we stick to the definitions that are most common.--Berig (talk) 12:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Right, the Britannica mystery is solved. I have checked Britannica online, the actual encyclopedia, not the free summary. It contains the text I quoted earlier. So Berig's quotes are not from a new, updated version, but from an imprecise summary. My first assertion holds true, Britannica defines Old Norse as the parent language of Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese, not of Swedish and Danish.--Barend (talk) 22:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Then Britannica must contradict itself since its online summary says:
[...] Old Norse also embraces the ancestors of modern Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Faroese.[4]
It does not matter much if Britannica contradicts itself, however, since there are other reliable sources such as the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster that we can rely on to establish what is the mainstream view. Moreover, Barber's The English Language: A Historical introduction[5] and every single discussion on the English language that I have seen, such as Harper's etymology dictionary, say that English borrowed words from Old Norse, in spite of your claim that Old/runic Danish is not considered to have been part of Old Norse.--Berig (talk) 16:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't see the relevance of your last sentence. Apart from that, my point is that there is no consistent definition in the English language. Some, like the sources you listed, use your definition. Others, like Encyclopedia Britannica, which is about as mainstream as it gets, don't.--Barend (talk) 16:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
The bulk of the "Old Norse" loanwords in English were borrowed from the Danish settlers in the Danelaw, i.e. from runic/old Danish (OEN), and that was the relevance in my last sentence. Secondly, you started this discussion by claiming that it is a "wikipedia peculiarity and not in keeping with English usage" to include OEN in Old Norse[6]. Thirdly, Britannica online contradicts itself so it cannot be used to support your claim that Britannica excludes OEN from ON.--Berig (talk) 17:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Skye

Hi Folks - further to last June's discussion about Uist, a discussion has just broken out at Talk:Skye as to the Norse name of the island. The Scottish writers on the subject are a little contradictory. We have Skuy = "misty isle" (Haswell-Smith); Skuyö meaning "isle of cloud" (W.H. Murray); or maybe Ský-øy. Any directions to something definitive would be appreciated. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 20:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Haukurth for replying - its *Skýey apparently. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 07:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


aa - ab - af - ak - als - am - an - ang - ar - arc - as - ast - av - ay - az - ba - bar - bat_smg - bcl - be - be_x_old - bg - bh - bi - bm - bn - bo - bpy - br - bs - bug - bxr - ca - cbk_zam - cdo - ce - ceb - ch - cho - chr - chy - co - cr - crh - cs - csb - cu - cv - cy - da - de - diq - dsb - dv - dz - ee - el - eml - en - eo - es - et - eu - ext - fa - ff - fi - fiu_vro - fj - fo - fr - frp - fur - fy - ga - gan - gd - gl - glk - gn - got - gu - gv - ha - hak - haw - he - hi - hif - ho - hr - hsb - ht - hu - hy - hz - ia - id - ie - ig - ii - ik - ilo - io - is - it - iu - ja - jbo - jv - ka - kaa - kab - kg - ki - kj - kk - kl - km - kn - ko - kr - ks - ksh - ku - kv - kw - ky - la - lad - lb - lbe - lg - li - lij - lmo - ln - lo - lt - lv - map_bms - mdf - mg - mh - mi - mk - ml - mn - mo - mr - mt - mus - my - myv - mzn - na - nah - nap - nds - nds_nl - ne - new - ng - nl - nn - no - nov - nrm - nv - ny - oc - om - or - os - pa - pag - pam - pap - pdc - pi - pih - pl - pms - ps - pt - qu - quality - rm - rmy - rn - ro - roa_rup - roa_tara - ru - rw - sa - sah - sc - scn - sco - sd - se - sg - sh - si - simple - sk - sl - sm - sn - so - sr - srn - ss - st - stq - su - sv - sw - szl - ta - te - tet - tg - th - ti - tk - tl - tlh - tn - to - tpi - tr - ts - tt - tum - tw - ty - udm - ug - uk - ur - uz - ve - vec - vi - vls - vo - wa - war - wo - wuu - xal - xh - yi - yo - za - zea - zh - zh_classical - zh_min_nan - zh_yue - zu -