“Solveig Thorkildsen and Ingeborg Hornkjøl of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) found the objects—a bone featuring a Norse inscription and a rune stick with both Latin and Norse text—during ongoing excavations at the site. According to a statement, the rune bone is the first of its kind found in Norway’s capital in more than 30 years.”
Smithsonian Magazine describes their excitement over the discovery and preliminary translations of the runes. The stick may have a prayer written on it.
Jackson Crawford and Simon Roper tackle this question and talk for an hour about languages at a far deeper level than I can follow. Believing our readers will take interest in this, I share it in ignorance.
For some of our readers, this will be the book you’ve been waiting for.
Ian Stuart Sharpe has produced an eccentric but highly amusing little book for the Viking fancier. Old Norse for Modern Times is not a language course or a dictionary, but a fun collection of modern phrases rendered into the language of the Vikings. The utility of this book will probably be limited, but it is a lot of fun, especially for reenactors, saga nerds, and Viking buffs.
Ever want to say, “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” in Old Norse?
“Gøra mun ed hom boð slike, es hann getr eigi hafnat.”
Since Hamlet was in fact an old Viking (or pre-Viking) himself, he might actually have said, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark:
“Eigi mun alt dælt I Danmǫrku.”
There’s also useful stuff for the contemporary berserker: “If I die in battle today, please delete my browser history.”
“Ef ek skylda falla i þessi orrustu, fyrirkom þú þá vefsǫgu minni.”
I must admit to some surprise in reading this book, in spite of all the knowledge I like to pretend I have. It generally takes more words to say stuff in Old Norse than in English – as a writer composing Viking dialogue, I’ve always thought of the Vikings as terse in speech. That’s probably just a function of English saga translations, it would appear.
A lot of us have pondered learning Old Norse at one time or another (I know I have, but I have trouble keeping track of just two languages). If you’re one of those people, Old Norse for Modern Times may serve as a good introduction.
Or you may want to read it just because it’s funny.
Today I am distracted, or at least I’m pretending to be. Did two high-stress things — saw the dentist to repair the wisdom tooth I broke on Sunday evening (popcorn, if you must know), and then I paid my Minnesota sales tax online.
That, I figure, ought to give me an excuse to be lazy. (In fact, both worked out better than I feared.) Back when I was a school kid, there were days when the teacher would roll a projector into the room and show us some educational film, usually a generation old. Innocent that I was, I figured this was part of some highly strategized educational plan. Nowadays, I’m given to understand that it often meant the teacher wasn’t feeling up to it, and just needed to coast.
In the same way, when I post a YouTube video, it’s not unlikely that I’m loafing.
Last night, in my book review, I referred to Old Norse (Viking) words that have made their way into English. I thought there must be a video or two on that subject.
The selections weren’t as good as I hoped. There were a few, but they were either very short, or hosted by annoying young hipsters whom I hated on sight (or both). Jackson Crawford, who can usually be counted on for interesting stuff on Old Norse, had nothing.
But there is this, posted above. The Lord’s Prayer in Modern English, Old English, Old Norse, and modern Icelandic.
I haven’t yet posted any links to Prof. Jackson Crawford’s videos. I have not viewed as much of his stuff as I probably should have, but what I’ve seen impresses me very much. In this short one he tells us how the Vikings pronounced a number of names of gods and mythological characters. If you’re wondering whether I pronounce them that way, no, I confess I don’t. But it’s good to learn.
