Celtic and Norse (with Heather Newton)

Heather Newton (Harvard University) answers questions about Celtic languages, literature, and myth and folklore, and their relationships with Norse equivalents, from Patreon supporters of Jackson Crawford in this Patreon-exclusive Crowdcast conversation recorded December 4, 2021.
Jackson Crawford, Ph.D.: Sharing real expertise in Norse language and myth with people hungry to learn, free of both ivory tower elitism and the agendas of self-appointed gurus. Visit JacksonWCrawford.com (includes bio and linked list of all videos).
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[@martinharnevie]

When I stayed with a family in St Malo to learn French better, many in the family and many of my friends there were Breton speakers. I began study Breton while there, including making use of some of Roparz Hemon's Brezhoneg books. One morning I tried to speak simple Brezhoneg with some fishermen at the harbour. Nice people. They told me a story about Welsh and Cornish fishermen which they sometimes had met. They said those fishermen could not speak French, and they themselves could not speak English. But they said their Brezhoneg was sufficiently intelligible with Cymraeg & Kernowek to be able to communicate a bit when they met.

[@moggycampbell06]

I was always told that Breton was similar to Cornish. At the time I didn't even realise that there was a Cornish language! I knew some Gaelic (Irish) but that didn't help when I was in st Malo!

[@leviway8874]

As a fluent Welsh speaker, this isn't true. Welsh and Breton are not mutually intelligible. It's a very common myth that we can communicate with each other. Cornish has also not been spoken by fishermen since the 1700s, with the language likely having gone dormant by the mid 1800s. Cornish is very close to Breton but even then, they aren't fully mutually intelligible either. St Malo is an area where Breton isn't spoken natively. The few Breton speakers there are from the western part of Brittany (Breizh-izel) or 2nd language learners.

[@hunbran7939]

Yeah like levi said, Breton and Welsh aren't mutually intelligeable and Breton and Cornish aren't completely either. As a Breton speaker i couldn't understand Welsh before learning it. You might stumble on some words here and there that you can understand but really no more than that.

[@martinharnevie]

@@hunbran7939 Some of the songs we sang on Fest Noz had a verse in Breton followed by a verse in Welsh, then back to Breton and then Welsh again. Can't recall today if this was any of the Gilles Servat gatherings or any of the others. I was only 17 back then.

[@martinharnevie]

@@leviway8874 If this is correct, then the fishermen I spoke with were likely exaggerating on purpose. This was year 1976. If I recall correctly, the fishermen were mostly from the Dinard area. As regards St Malo, the family and friends I stayed with mostly had the Breton TV-channels on and were fluent. Their surnames were Breton such as Bloc'h and similar.

[@redere4777]

38:56 To add some more information, it was Alcuin of York who complained that the monks were more interested in heroic tales than the words of God. He specifically points to the legendary figure Ingeld as an example, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?".

[@mattbarclay]

Awesome interview, there's very little out there regarding Old Irish, and this was a real goldmine of information.

[@isntimportant]

The only audience disappointed by this are American LARPers who haven't done a DNA test yet. :P None of us actually living in Ireland give a toss! We're too busy finding new and exciting ways to destroy our history and people!

[@thorgeist]

I concur.

[@ulfson279]

This is beautiful, the study of history and languages between both of you is a gold mind of knowledge Thank you both for doing this interview

[@Dudelzack]

I can add to the problem of English and French speaking celticists. From the perspecitve of the german celtic studies community it seems to me most celticists from Germany have an easier time making connections to the anglophone field than to the francophone. Having also studied scandinavian studies I can say it's much easier to get professional contacts across borders in scandinavian studies than in celtic studies in general. I wasn't able to explain it before but I can see how language "snobbiness" may play into it. Which is somewhat laughable considering it's the study of "third party" languages.

[@isntimportant]

Scandinacian is now a word.

[@Dudelzack]

​@@isntimportant That's all you have to comment? That's called a typo. Fingers sometimes slip. C and v are next to each other on the keyboard. Edited.

[@therat1117]

Ugh I feel this. My greatest complaint about Celtic studies is the lack of actual Celtic people involved, and that the Anglo- and Francophone communities have not in the past fifty years done nearly as much for the field as have researchers in Russia and the former Yugoslav countries despite much greater access! The person to publish the most recent dictionary of Proto-Celtic lives in Zagreb!

[@bendthebow]

There's a fair bit of old Norse in Scottish Gaelic. In the place names too. I live in Laxdale which in Gaelic is Lacasdal. That's outside Stornoway which in Gaelic is Steornobhagh from Norse Stjornarvogur

[@ragnarragnarson1692]

Correct! I live in the Highlands and some of the Scots Gaelic accents sound almost Norwegian to my ears but it seems the further south you get it begins to sound more Irish (as intonation and flow).

[@bendthebow]

@@ragnarragnarson1692 Agreed I think that blended intonation subtly changes even within the Hebrides

[@chungus_khan]

Yeah, Scots say Halo vs the Irish that say Dia duit; sounds a bit more Germanic than Gaelic

[@benedyktjaworski9877]

1:06:40 - oh yes, Stifter is definitely great for anything either Goidelic or Continental Celtic, and in general Indo-European if it touches Celtic. And he’s active online and puts a lot of resources out there. And patiently puts up with the likes of me asking him random questions on Twitter about Irish language history. :P It’d be amazing if dr. Crawford reached out to prof. Stifter and did a video together!

[@briansebor]

That was a fantastic discussion!

[@samp9418]

Really interesting interview! You guys are great!

[@owenwilliams4759]

I'm a fluent Manx speaker!

[@TheBlimpFruit]

When did you learn?

[@owenwilliams4759]

@@TheBlimpFruit when I was a child and teenager

[@morvil73]

Thew da dhe weles obma! Kernoweger o vy!

[@adamcfpv5372]

Lots of awesome information

[@KevDaly]

Something I find interesting is the apparent awareness in the Early Medieval period of the Q/P divide between Goidelic and Brythonic, as evidenced both by the scattering of bilingual Ogham stones and by examples such as Ciarán becoming Saint Piran in Cornwall, when you might expect that Brythonic had acquired "q-tolerance" from centuries of exposure to Latin. I wonder if that points to an earlier period of a degree of mutual intelligibility when people thought of the major sound differences as "just the way people talk over there"

[@slingknees]

I think you’re a bit confused in terms of the q/p split in that exposure to Latin even could cause ‘q-tolerance’. Words from Latin with initial q- wouldn’t walk back Brythonic sound changes that had already happened. Maybe if Brythonic had not yet undergone the split, borrowed Latin terms would be subject to the q-p sound change alongside native words, but words borrowed after the change has already happened would not undergo the sound change themselves in the adaptation by Brythonic speakers. I doubt the period of Q and P being allophones was very long at all

[@therat1117]

It has nothing to do with Latin - it would be readily apparent to Old Welsh and Old Irish speakers that where Welsh has an initial 'p' in some words, the equivalent near-identical word in Irish has 'k'. Most evident are the numbers four and five, where in Old Welsh these were 'pimp' and 'petuar' but in Old Irish they were 'cóic' and 'cethair'. Saint Pádraig's name was originally written for Irish as something like 'Qatric' because 'p' had not been loaned into Old Irish as a sound yet. Piran looks like an example of this happening in reverse, which would be entirely expected.

[@KevDaly]

@@therat1117 My point was that Latin might be expected to have made Q possible for Brythonic speakers, and yet they appear to have bothered to make the substitution, which implies awareness of the correspondence.

[@therat1117]

@@KevDaly As stated, it would have been very obvious to Cymric and Goidelc speakers that their languages were related. Brythonic borrowing /kʷ/ is extraordinarily unlikely for two reasons - languages without /kʷ/ aren't going to distinguish well between /kʷ/ and /kw/, and so will just use /kw/ (like most Anglophone Latin speakers), secondly, languages almost never borrow phonemes from each other. I'll go as far as to say I've never seen a case of this provably happening, even for languages that have been highly sublimated by other language groups. However, contact with other languages can influence how sound systems change within languages, as is likely the case in Romanian and Hungarian.

[@KevDaly]

@@therat1117 Okd Irish borrowed P from Welsh and Latin. Earlier borrowings received a /kʷ/ substitution. That's why you have "corcra" and "cáisc" etc. In most Old English dialects /v/ and /z/ were allophones of /f/ and /s/ after a vowel or voiced consonant, and were not found in word-initial position (same for the voiced affricate in "bridge"). They became possible in initial position under influence form Norman French. I don't see any reason why a sustained period of widespread bilingualism such as seems likely for Roman Britain *couldn't* have had a similar effect. Not seeing it *did*, but it easily could have.

[@micheleterrill3036]

An awesome resource for Irish myth, legend and romance is by Dr. Daithi O hOgain. As well as "The Origins of the Irish" by J.P. Mallory. Another great resource is " The History of the Irish Race" by Seumas MacManus. Eddie Lenihan's KZbin video stories are wonderfully educational and entertaining.

[@donworley7448]

Celtic studies are a whole other frontier for me. Very cool to hear from a Celticist. I'd like to look more into the subject one day.

[@benedyktjaworski9877]

27:15 - Heather Newton says that lenition wouldn’t be marked for words starting in anything but s and f. That’s not entirely true, it was consistently marked for voiceless stops too, the letters ‘c, t, p’ would change to ‘ch, th, ph/f’ in Old and Middle Irish, and that’s a big clue to us today about where lenition happened in OIr. But it wasn’t marked for voiced stops /b, d, ɡ/ and /m/. This is the origin of the alternative way to mark lenition in modern Gaelic languages, using h. You can mark lenited b, p, m, d, g etc. with either ‘ḃ, ṗ, ṁ, ḋ, ġ’ or ‘bh, ph, mh, dh, gh’ in Modern Irish (though the former is rarely used today, but was common in pre-reform texts printed in Gaelic/Insular Type). Also, for ‘m’: unlenited ‘m’ was commonly written doubled (‘mm’), so if in a given context we always find single ‘m’ we can deduce it must be lenited there (though this wasn’t the case in absolute word-initial ‘m’). The same for the sonorants /l, n, r/. And as for eclipsis, it wasn’t marked for voiceless stops (so ‘c, t, p’ wouldn’t change in writing) but it was for voiced stops (‘mb, nd, ng’ were a thing already in OIr.). So it wasn’t *that* bad, for some words the mutations were consistently marked.

[@therat1117]

Honestly it makes me wonder personally if people over-assume the degree of séimhiú in Old Irish. To me it seems a lot of prescription from Middle Irish is back-substituted onto Old Irish with the logic of 'well it *should* be there' rather than directly searching for evidence that it exists. I've personally found Old Irish to be very consistent about marking mutations where they occur, but I'm no expert by any means and haven't made a thorough study. I've also found for urú that the eclipsed consonant would just be written with the sound it has - so you may find 'mran' instead of 'mbran', as in Welsh orthography for instance, so maybe that is confusing perception of how often these occur?

[@benedyktjaworski9877]

@@therat1117 It’s not just “it should be there”, we *do know it’s there*. You get spelling variation between “g, d” and “ch, th” in some contexts (where original sounds were voiced or devoiced in some contexts) which shows that in Old Irish “g” and “d” could stand for lenited fricatives /ɣ, ɣ´, ð, ð´/, eg. “prithchibes” instead of “pridchibes” in Milan glosses. Also, the voiced stops are written with the letters “p, t, c” when not standing in initial position (eg. “bec” /b´eɡ/ ‘small’). That’s because the spelling was borrowed from British Latin, and British languages had already undergone the British lenition (which turned voiceless stops into voiced ones), so eg. Latin “Patricius” was pronounced /padrigijus/, was borrowed into Old Irish as /paːdrəɡ´/ and it made sense to write it as Pátraic (with “t” and “c” standing for voiced /d, ɡ/). Thus in the middle of a word we do see lenition marked - unlenited /b, d, ɡ/ are written ⟨p, t, c⟩ and lenited are written ⟨b, d, g⟩. But this system did not allow marking of initial mutations here. That wasn’t a big problem as the mutations were (and still are) pretty predictable from context, so lack of marking wasn’t a big problem to a native speaker. I wrote a little bit more about the logic behind OIr. spelling in my guide on Celtic Languages wiki (which I cannot link directly as YT treats it as spam).

[@therat1117]

@@benedyktjaworski9877 Right, yes, there's instances that show medially in clusters there was lenition, (although pridchaid as a verb is a little grubby due to being a loanword), but I disagree that necessarily voiced stops were written as voiceless non-initially. 'bec' in particular is maddening as it is also found written 'becc' which would *strongly* suggest /bek/ rather than /beg/, and moreover, Old Irish seems perfectly fine with writing voiced stops in medial or terminal positions, so unless for some reason we are suggesting that structurally in Old Irish all non-initial unvoiced stops had disappeared (which would be silly as this is not the case in descendant languages), this is basically a back-substitution of Middle Irish conventions onto Old Irish in my opinion. To say that the Cymric languages had already undergone lenition is also incorrect for Saint Patrick's time, and it is unlikely that his name in Old Irish had any voiced consonants. The simple reason is that Old Welsh at this time had not undergone lenition in the manner described (and Pátraic is most likely taken from an Old Welsh/Old Cumbric form rather than the Latin, as its last syllable has fallen off in a characteristically Celtic manner), for example, from the Lichfield Gospels: OW Tutbulc vs. modern Tudfwlch, OW guetig vs. MW wedi, OW braut vs. MW brawd. So his name in Old Welsh was probably 'Patric', hence the Old Irish form, which is probably pronounced similarly. There's also little reason to assume British Latin followed language patterns for the lay language - unlike for Romance languages, British Latin was a foreign language to the Britons and would not have followed British language conventions. On top of this, it is likely that Old Irish and Old Welsh speakers could have recognised that their languages were similar to each other via word correspondences, so I consider it likely that Old Welsh and Old Irish orthography more or less correspond.

[@acidbracelet3697]

I really wish there were more translations of these works. Need someone to make a tv show about them so they get popular enough for that to happen

[@beepboop204]

enjoying some Wray & Nephew and Purple Punch Mints #11 while listening to this fascinating material

[@melysmelys2622]

Sioned Davies, (The Mabinogion), was Professor of Welsh at Cardiff University.

[@atlanticdragon4773]

@jackson when will you publish your transition of the prose Edda?

[@johnfenn3188]

The B2 thing for teaching is shocking. I’m a long-term learner if Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig), and learn with Ceòlas in South Uist. The teachers there are all native speakers and excellent. My Gaelic has improved immensely since I started with them. And as I am in England, all on Zoom!

[@aidanmonroe5580]

The crossover event of the century

[@rogerwitte]

Thirty or forty years ago I used to hang out with some Irish Republican friends in London and there was certainly a political identification/empathy between the modern Nationalist political and cultural activists within these language speaking groups. I don't know whether this present day cultural romanticism is helpful to the study - it may just cloud the historical study - but it does help the modern languages survive.

[@simonbannow3905]

Lovely episode, I was a bit disappointed you didn't wear your cowboy hat Jackson, considering Heather wore boss sunglasses!

[@getrealroleplaying7427]

I have a notion that Prof. Crawford is too old fashioned to wear his hat indoors

[@briantaylor9475]

I think her glasses are blue filter to protect her eyes from the potential damage from excessive computer screen time.

[@ivystuart1736]

I love how many jokes were made by mr. Crawford in this interview! He does have a less gravitas side ahaha

[@CharlesSchaum]

My professor at Rutgers, Dr. Marlene Ciklamini, also known in Old Norse circles, identified the English writer as Alcuin of York: "What does Ingeld have to do with Christ?" Alcuin took this attitude to the Carolingians, and Louis the Pious (der Fromme) initiated a purge of extant Germanic sources. Thus we get the Hildebrandslied and the Merseburger Zaubersprüche left over, but a lot is extinguished as a result of the Frankish hard line, kept alive in the Regnum Teudiscum of the Ottonians amid the crusader spirit of the time.

[@bobgiddings0]

You have given us at length many stories of the Norse gods collected by Snorri. But surely there are some alternate texts from earlier and elsewhere, at least in fragments. The skalds of Earl Hakon in Norway are said to have composed many poems about the gods. Isn't there anything left of those? If there are collections other than Snorri, even just bits and pieces, are there English translations of those? It would be interesting to compare Snorri's stories with other sources, even in fragments. Without them we are as one-eyed as Odin, minus the wisdom.

[@melissahdawn]

Regarding the cross-cultural thing is every time I search for information on Sagas I get lots of links to Irish folklore

[@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh]

23:45 as a native-like speaker of Irish, I myself have, the few times I've tried, not had any difficulty at all reading pre-reform Irish. although the reading is slower because the word-shapes are not as immediately recognizable, everything is still quite obvious from the context. although the spellings were different, they were still phonetic, and if read aloud are still pronounced the same. so I'm surprised that you think that would be a barrier. for example the writings on "dúchas.ie" are quite easily and freely readable to any Irish speaker today, even with the pre-reform spellings and handwriting.

[@FERDINANDVSLVCIVS]

I've heard a few times that the pan-Celtic conscience wasn't really a thing before Romantic nationalism. But, just out of curiosity, was Germanic identity a thing at all before the Modern Era? Were the Norse, Anglo-Saxons and southern Germans in any way aware of some connection between them?

[@therat1117]

The Norse and Saxons were aware that their languages were very similar and that they (used to) worship more or less the same gods. The 'high' Germans also recognised their languages were pretty close to the Saxons, the Frisians, and the Flemish, and that they shared some cultural similarities. But none of these considered themselves really to be the same people, although they might consider each other related cousins. Germans in the Holy Roman Empire considered Czechs to some extent to be also German, for example, because they were also a long-time important part of the Empire and had cultural similarities, even if Czechs spoke a completely strange language. 'German' as a national identity is a product of 19th century nationalism and is highly constructed considering that, for example, Standard German is a bastard amalgam of basically two or three German languages.

[@AutoReport1]

Heroes can always do things no-one else can. They become like tall tales, Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, etc. For tales about gods what was an irreverent or even blasphemous entertainment can later become canon.

[@IanMcKellar]

I'd have been interested to hear what evidence there is of influence from Norse occupation of Ireland and Scotland on Celtic languahes and culture. The Vikings were in Dublin for a couple of hundred years i think...

[@samuelterry6354]

I wish they'd touched upon the Celtic origins of Arthurian legend.

[@CardCaptorDeadpool]

I feel bad on the English, Arthurian legend is so cool but they don't seem to have much of their own mythology bar Anglo-Saxon equivalents of Norse figures. (Admittedly, I have limited knowledge on English myths outside of Arthurian stuff). Memory's fuzzy, I think Excalibur came from one of the swords demi-God heroes like Cú Chulainn used, 'Caladbolg' (ka-lad bo-lug) 'hard cleft'. But in Celtic stories the sword doesn't seem supernaturally special in the way it's meant to be in Arthurian stories, it's just a really hard to break sword lol.

[@Lochlannach661]

Are there any colleges that have courses on the Celtic Galatian language?

[@Dudelzack]

In recent years, no. Last time I was aware of a class about the Galatians anywhere in context of celtic studies and language was in the late 2000s. The language itself is preserved very fragmentarily. Must be only some place and personal names. Highest chance of finding a course would be looking for programs in indo-european studies.

[@evolagenda]

Bha mi a' gabhail ionadh cuine a gheibheadh tu dha na Gàidheil. Fèir ga thòiseachadh ach chan e ruith ach leum an còrr fhaicinn, le smior!

[@evolagenda]

@@TheKraken5360 oh Google. "I was wondering when you'd get to the Gaels. Just started it but can't wait to get stuck into the rest."

[@evolagenda]

@@jameswoodard4304 hah I'd imagine it's because the genitive of feur is feòir.

[@Wolf-yt5rz]

I wonder scholars claim mainland European Gauls and Britain Celtics share La Tène culture background, but did they really share similar language system or just living ways like Kamag Mongol and Khitans?

[@cormacdonnelly365]

Iontach ar fad, very interesting

[@jamesestrella5911]

Ach - Ak

[@elizabethford7263]

One thing I noticed is the lack of clear, definitive answers to questions. I don't know if this is indicative of the paucity of material on the subject or the lecturer's style of dialogue.

[@Dudelzack]

In the field of celtic studies indeed a lot of times our answer to many questions has to be "We don't know." due to the lack of sources. Sometimes it's also because we can answer only for a punctual, narrow window in time and space. E.g. if we know something for 5th century Wales, that's no reason to apply it to 2nd century BC Gaul.

[@jeffreyoliver4370]

I believe the lack of clear and definitive responses is a result of the format of the discussion, i e., the rambling nature of a conversation between two friends and a general lack of focus. That said, I would be very frustrated taking a course from such an instructor if this is her classroom style of presentation. Her apparent lack of ability in the languages of her area of study is troubling. There are universities that no longer require Greek and Latin for a Classics degree and this feels very like that. I wouldn't want to study with a professor who could not work in or handle their area of study's primary sources. And some of what she says here is simply inaccurate according to my understanding of what she's said, although I'm not sure quite what she means some of the time because of her vague responses.

[@jeffreyoliver4370]

Full disclosure: I gave up at the 51 minute mark. Maybe she got better

[@elizabethford7263]

@@jeffreyoliver4370 If I were a student in her class, I would hope she would be more direct and informative. I think this is the first of Jackson's friend/ scholars I've been disappointed in.

[@briantaylor9475]

Remember, when people on a an equal or near-equal level of academics and/or experience understand what is going on in the background or between the lines. Also, when you get to the level they are at you tend to be very cautious about stating absolutes or being overly definitive.

[@AutoReport1]

The church in south America still has trouble with pagan influence even in the clergy - native American and African gods and beliefs keep creeping in to local practice.

[@sagittariusA..26.670]

Cymru am byth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿