Norn

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Norn (or Norroena or Orkney and Shetland Norn) is the name given to the Germanic language spoken in Shetland and Orkney during the Norse era down to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Norn still has a considerable influence on Shetland speech.

Contents

Classification

Dr. Jakob Jakobsen was a major recorder of the language, and a native speaker of Faroese, probably Norn's closest living relative.
Dr. Jakob Jakobsen was a major recorder of the language, and a native speaker of Faroese, probably Norn's closest living relative.

Norn was a part of the Indo-European family, to which languages as diverse as Russian, English, Hindi, Gaelic and Greek belong. It belonged to the Germanic branch, along with English, Dutch and German, more specifically, North Germanic, which makes it a relative of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. Its closest living relatives are Nynorsk Norwegian (Norway's second official language, most widely used in Western Norway [1] ), Icelandic and Faroese, of which the last two are the least changed from the old Norse. Together with Norn these three languages form the West Scandinavian sub-group of the North Germanic languages.

History

Pre-Norse background

We do not know what the earliest language spoken on Shetland was, since it has not been recorded or at least not yet deciphered. When the Norse arrived, the people in Shetland seem to have been speaking a form of Pictish, a Celtic (or possibly partly non-IE language), some of which is recorded in ogham inscriptions.

Early history

Norn was a direct descendant of the Old Norse tongue, but it is not easy to say where Norn begins and Old Norse ended. Instead, it was a case of a long transition, rather than a sharp break, like between Anglo-Saxon and English, with the Norman Conquest. Barnes, in The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland[2] , makes Norn apply to Old Norse as it is known in the Northern Islands. Norn is then possible to assign to the variety of Norse Language used on the Islands from the Norse conquest in around 800 AD to the extintion of the language a millenium later.
Because of Shetland's closeness to mainland Norway, it was probably highly influenced by the dialects in Western Norway, and to a lesser extent, the Faroes. There are many records of Shetlanders visiting mainland Norway, and vice versa, and presumably they understood one another well.

Forms of Norn were also spoken in East Caithness and the Outer Hebrides, but these died out long before the Norn of Orkney and Shetland.

Decline

Foula was probably the last place to speak Norn in Shetland. Photograph taken from Dale of Walls
Foula was probably the last place to speak Norn in Shetland. Photograph taken from Dale of Walls

Norn seems to have gone into sharp decline in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was probably partly due to an influx of Scottish landowners, and later tenant evictions. Curiously, its decline seems to have occurred round about the same period as that of Cornish. Its last strongholds seem to have been Unst and Foula.

Scots and English as Germanic languages had some words in common with Norn, and so there seems to have been something of a merger with them, which resulted in modern Shetlandic, still spoken to this day. English was used in Church, and became the language of prestige, while Orkney and Shetland Norn was increasingly associated with poverty. It declined rapidly, first in Orkney and subsequently in Shetland.

"Afterlife"

The linguistic development in Shetland may be contrasted with that in Faroes and Orkney. In Faroes the Norn-derived language survived (though modified by Danish), so that today the Faroese speak a language very similar to that brought by the Vikings. In Orkney, Norn was lost, and while some vocabulary remained in the Orkney dialect of English, that is far less than is the case in Shetland. The linguistic development in Shetland is unusual - the volume of vocabulary preserved is remarkable, and may be partly due to Shetland's relative isolation from the rest of the UK.

Jakob Jakobsen wrote:

As late as 1894, there were people in Foula who could repeat sentences in Norn, as I myself had the opportunity of hearing. The last man in Unst who is said to have been able to speak Norn, Walter Sutherland from Skaw, died about 1850. In Foula, on the other hand, men who were living very much later than the middle of the present century are said to have been able to speak Norn'

Modern use and revival?

Shetland's motto "Með lögum skal land byggja"
Shetland's motto "Með lögum skal land byggja"
Some modern use of Norn: the ferries Dagalien and Daggri meet in Yell Sound.
Some modern use of Norn: the ferries Dagalien and Daggri meet in Yell Sound.

Although Norn is effectively a dead language, there are now attempts to revive it on cyberspace as Nynorn (New-Norn), and it still has one or two uses in Shetland today. The ferries, Dagalien & Daggri have Norn names, meaning "dawn" and "dusk" respectively.[3] Shetland council also uses the motto, Með lögum skal land byggja ("with law shall (we) build (the) land")

Periodically, there are suggestions of a Norn revival [4] , but none of these have come to much. It should be noted however, that there are several fairly successfully revived languages in much the same position, such as Cornish and Manx. Other languages such as Frisian, Channel Island French and Hawaiian have also been brought back from the brink.

Sources

There are three or four main sources for Norn in Shetland

  • Place names and personal names, many of which are still in some use, e.g. Rasmie for Erasmus, Papa Stour (Papey Stora) and Muckle Roe (Mikla Raudey), which are modifications, or modern developments one might say, of Norn names. Jakob Jakobsen studied Shetland place names thoroughly. The overwhelming majority of place-names are Norn derived.
  • Oral fragments recorded just as the language was facing extinction. Some of these were still in use after its official death, and some phrases may have survived into the 20th century.
  • Written fragments e.g. the ballad, Hildinakvadet (or Hildina Ballad) recorded on Foula 1774, and the Lord's Prayer plus a few short verses and fragments.
  • Shetlandic, which retains many Norn words, feature and pronounciation in it. Even today, names of birds, flowers and other common nouns used in Shetland dialect often have a Norn root.

Comparison with closely related languages also helps us reconstruct what it was like.

As recently as 2006 the Foula Community website posted a fragment of Norn not previously recorded. It is within the bounds of possibility that even today somewhere on Shetland someone remembers a child's rhyme or a grandparents' phrase which is a snippet of this largely lost language.

It should be noted that Norn has been recorded in two main orthographies: an anglicised one, which records it in English phonetics, and a Norse one, which is probably more faithful, and resembles the neighbouring languages of Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian, as well as its old Norse roots. Hildinakvadet was originally transcribed in English phonetics; unfortunately this can hide the roots of certain words.

Studies

Norn is to be distinguished from the present day Shetland 'dialect' of Scottish English, termed by linguists Modern Shetlandic Scots. The Faroese philologist Jakob Jakobsen discovered that much of Norn vocabulary was retained in Shetland and used alongside Scots and English. He was assisted in his efforts by Shetland native Haldane Burgess.

Michael Barnes, emeritus professor of Scandinavian Studies at University College London, has published a history, The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland, in which he sets out a clear account of Norn in Orkney and Shetland and disposes of some myths about it.

The Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer fragment is important, but even it displays some English influence, e.g. the use of "forgive" and "but" for Norn cognates:

Fy vor or er i Chimeri.
Halaght vara nam dit.
La Konungdum din cumma.
La vill din vera guerde
i vrildin sindaeri chimeri.
Gav vus dagh u dagloght brau.
Forgive sindorwara
sin vi forgiva gem ao sinda gainst wus.
Lia wus ikè o vera tempa,
but delivra wus fro adlu idlu.
For do i ir Kongungdum, u puri, u glori, Amen

Further reading

  • Jakobsen, Jakob An etymological dictionary of the Norn language in Shetland London, 1928-1932; reprinted Lerwick: The Shetland Folk Society, 1985

External links

References

  1. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk
    The prevailing regions for Nynorsk are the western counties of Rogaland, Hordaland, Sogn og Fjordane and Møre og Romsdal, in addition to the western/northern parts of Oppland, Buskerud, Telemark, Aust- and Vest-Agder, where an estimated 50% of the population writes Nynorsk. The usage in the rest of Norway, including the major cities and urban areas in the above stated areas, is scarce.
  2. ↑ The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland
  3. ↑ http://www.shetland.gov.uk/ferries/fleet/newyellsound.asp#Dagalien
  4. ↑ http://www.shetlink.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2316

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