Foreign Words in Old Norse

It's well-known that Old Norse strongly influenced English; less well-known is the wealth of words it borrowed from other languages. These borrowings often give interesting glimpses into the society and interactions of the Norse.
Dr. Jackson Crawford is Instructor of Nordic Studies and Nordic Program Coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder (formerly UC Berkeley and UCLA). He is a historical linguist and an experienced teacher of Old Norse, Modern Icelandic, and Norwegian.
Logo by Elizabeth Porter (snowbringer at gmail).
FAQs: • Video
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Poetic Edda: www.amazon.com/gp/product/162...
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Saga of the Volsungs with The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok: www.amazon.com/gp/product/162...
Jackson Crawford's Patreon page: / norsebysw

[@ac5025]

"unwoke" has got to be the best phrase Ive heard in a very long time

[@michaelluscombe1907]

The Dutch for interpreter is 'tolk' - quite similar. Just looked it up, came originally from Slavic as well, and they say it's related to Latin 'loqui', as in to be loquacious. From the PIE root *Tlokw- Amazing how these patterns flow around, changing but staying the same.

[@SvAwesomeness94]

The modern Swedish word for boy (Pojke) is a Finnish borrowing too. But this word is from the early 13th century in all probability so it might not count as an Old Norse borrowing in a strict sense.

[@rudde7918]

Emil Sandqvist I thought Kille was Swedish for boy?

[@SvAwesomeness94]

It can be, and I don't think there is any clear lines between the words, but to me a Kille is an older boy. Also the word can be used to mean boyfriend, so it has that other part which implies a little older person than a boy, perhaps a young man or something of the sort.

[@andeve3]

I alway thougt pojke sounded a bit borrowed. Probably because diphtongs like ai and oi are mostly found in words borrowed into scandinavian. Exept in faroese, I guess, since they have oy.

[@rudde7918]

Andreven Yeah you guys made the diphtongs into long vowels.

[@SuperEddyn]

Many of the sagas in the poetic edda were written during the 13th century, so I definitely think it counts.

[@weepingscorpion8739]

In Faroese, at least, some of the Old Irish borrowings are still relatively common. Especially words like drunnur, grúkur, blak, korki, lámur, and most surpringly maybe, tarvur (meaning bull, this is also found in Icelandic), and then ærgi. There's also another word for mare, jalda, which is borrowed from some other non-Finnic and non-Samic Uralic language. The interesting part with this word is that it's unattested in Old Norse's daughter languages but it survives in modern English as both yaud and jade even though its meaning has shifted to mean a worn-out horse. Another possible loanword from Old English is the word for soap: sápa.

[@flynn9749]

have you done a video about elfdalian?

[@SuperEddyn]

Another word for the Sami people that was used in old Norse, though probably primarily in Sweden, was "lapper", and that word actually seems to be a loanword from the origin of the Finnish word that is lappalainen, meaning person from Lappi.

[@Siggorillo]

Your channel is an absolute treasure.

[@IntermezzoR]

The views in your videos are always stunning!

[@juliaconnell]

really interesting and informative - the history of words is fascinating - thank you ♥

[@backspin6698]

Love your videos, and the beautiful surroundings. Nice to learn about your own language.

[@OsscarBones]

This was fascinating, thank you very much!

[@arinhjorulfr]

Yes thx. It was realy interesting information you gave. Or should I say (as I understand you can read it) Tack så mycket för väldigt intressant information.

[@sunshinesilverarrow5292]

Interesting, thank you. 🌞

[@EudaemonicGirl]

I read that English cross is an Irish borrowing via the movement of Vikings from Ireland back to England. I assumed that OIrish cros than became kors in modern Swedish, but a Frisian origin is interesting too.

[@normannormiemates4844]

Does anyone have any idea what those flashes from the background are at the end?

[@anotherelvis]

It could also be fun to have a video about Norse words in Russian. Which Russian names have a Norse origin? Were the Rus people Norse or did they just have a few Norse kings.

[@sunriseoergalilee8388]

I watched a documentary that was saying that the word “vin” as in Vinland” from the Vinland sagas meant in old Norse as pastures or field, not vines as in grapevines. Does it mean both?

[@Muminalfurinn]

What would you say of the words strákur and stelpa. I once heard they were celtic.

[@miro.georgiev97]

Professor, is it snowing there?

One of my favorite rune stone names is Refr, second only to Haukr. If I had lived here 1500 years ago, I would have wanted to be named Haukr.

[@bokajtob96]

Interesting comment about the Norse not borrowing much from perceived lower status groups such as the Irish ☘️ Skål!

[@anotherelvis]

You should make a video about word viking. What did it originally mean? Is it related to the word vig (as in Norwich and Sandwich)?

[@shruggzdastr8-facedclown]

Is "túlkr" where the English verb "talk" comes from?

[@richardokeefe7410]

New Zealand English has borrowed many words from Maori. British English borrowed quite a few words from Hindi. So I might have tiffin with my whanau, and think I'm speaking English. Were Maori and Hindi equal to or higher in status than English?

[@jonko82]

Ég þarf engan túlk til þess að skilja Jackson. Ég skil ensku bara ágætlega. Orðið 'loddari' er notað í íslensku í dag en það er einnig tökuorð úr fornensku. Þetta lærði ég nýlega og þetta kom mér á óvart. (I need no interpreter in order to understand Dr. Crawford. I understand English just fine. The word 'loddari' is used in Icelandic today but it is also a borrowing from Old English. This I learned recently and this surprised me).

[@jonko82]

Loddari is somebody who uses deception or betrayal (often for his own gain); a fraud; a conman.

[@thundercliff93]

jonko82 áhugavert að orðið fíll er komið úr arabísku Er ekki viss Hvenær það orð kom inn í íslensku samt

[@jonko82]

Áhugavert, Þorsteinn. Ég prófaði að fletta upp orðinu 'fíll' á malid.is og þar kemur fram að orðið 'fíll' sé einmitt tökuorð úr arabísku en þó stendur ekkert um það hvenær það kom inn í málið (sjá neðst). Þar kemur þó fram að 'úlfaldi' sé komið af 'eléphas' úr grísk-latínu (enska: elephant). fíll: malid.is/leit/f%C3%ADll Loddari: malid.is/leit/loddari

[@theanonymousmrgrape5911]

Somebody correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t it pretty common up until the early 20th century to refer to Germans as Dutch, kind of like he was suggesting. The one relic of that I know of is the name for the language, Pennsylvania Dutch.

[@kbm2055]

I don't know when this practice stopped and Dutch became to mean exclusively someone from the Netherlands, but yes you are correct.

[@tapanilofving4741]

The Slavic words are interesting because they are almost the same used in Finnish, torg = tori, tulkr = tulkki :)

[@tapanilofving4741]

Swedish didn't exist in that time those words were borrowed.

[@holdyerblobsaloft]

Old Norse borrowings, then. There are also Proto-Norse borrowings in Finnish, eg. kuningas, ruhtinas, haukka, etc.

[@ihmejakki2731]

The finnish name for Åbo, Turku, is a direct loan from slavic torg. "Turuilla ja toreilla"

[@danielkohvakka488]

and Herra in exactly in the same form

[@tapanilofving4741]

No, not old Norse borrowings, Proto-Germanic rather, old Norse did not exist when those borrowings were taken.

[@ihmejakki2731]

Interesting, didn't know that räv was loaned from finnish repo! It isn't the animals "official" name nowadays though, which is kettu, but a more of a friendly name for the animal, little repolainen or repokettu.

[@phillipstewart295]

Thanks, I was trying to figure out what the Finnish source word was!

[@magisterwarjomaa3858]

"Kettu" is an euphemism (or kenning) for "repo/revo", based on the belief that when going fox-hunting, the usage of the animal's true name would scare it away. Kettu is related to the word "kesi" i.e. skin/pelt...which of course is the main reason foxes were hunted. This same idea is in play with e.g. "karhu" (bear). The true name is "oksi/ohto" etc., but in this case using the true name was avoided in order not to call a bear to attack you..."karhu" is related to "karhea" (coarse) and again is a reference to the quality of the animal's skin.

[@valhoundmom]

Refr comes from Finnish?

[@kondorviktor]

Re : terms as "German" "Dutch" "Deutsch": Seeems to me that as in "Dutch" that is Nederlaands in fact they have kept the word that has been replaced in English. by the "German" as originally a general, umbrella term, And that must have been somewhat like the Dutch word: "Duitz" Supposedly originally meaning "Deutsch" or "Teutonic" or even Saxonian. Actually, the settlers in the Nederlands were Saxonian indeed. Do you think you can agree?

[@vp4744]

I wonder if Old Norse had original words or borrowed ones for the equivalent of slave, slavery, and other words connected to that part of their culture.

[@jeffreyoliver4370]

That Frisian might be the source for boat isn't surprising, given that the Frisians established the first trade routes over the North Sea in the centuries prior to the expansion of the Scandinavians in the 'Viking Age.' As for the original of wine, the word and the cultural object, it's clear that it comes to northern Europe with the arrival of the Romans. The Germanic root is likely restricted to other vines, rather than wine itself. The Indo-European root is problematic, and has connections to the words for wine in Georgian and many Semitic languages, but the restricted meaning of wine certainly comes from the Near East, with the earliest forms of wine found in Georgia, and the earliest recorded words from the Fertile Crescent.

[@jeffreyoliver4370]

David Weihe Classical Latin definitely had a /w/ sound, written 'v.' This is the sound borrowed into Common Germanic for many words, not only wine/Wein but also wall/Wall from Latin 'vallum' (rampart) for example. Germanic had a /w/ throughout its daughter language, although English is the only major exemplar to maintain the sound to the present. Since it was the Romans and not the other Italic peoples who expanded into Northern Europe (although certainly other Italic peoples were in their numbers and their languages must have influenced their spoken Latin), we can ascribe these words to borrowing from Latin rather than Oscan or Faliscan, etc.

[@ratboy_]

Love how a dragon just casually appears in the clouds at 3:37 .

[@pierreabbat6157]

What about Arabic? Fíll (elephant) is from Arabic (and the word also exists in Persian, Hebrew, and other languages). What words did Gaelic borrow from Old Norse? One is fuinneog, from vindauga (English window is cognate).

[@nintendoborn]

I'd love to be in this business, but I don't what it does

[@cj719521]

Is túlkr cognate or false cognate to talk?

[@weepingscorpion8739]

False friend. Túlkr goes back to a PIE root *telkʷ-. So a Germanic cognate would have had the initial consonant þ-/th-. But to the best of my knowledge this root has no descendants in Germanic (*telkʷ- is the ancestral root to Latin loquor, however).

[@RobotProductions09]

have there been no borrowed words from outside europe?

[@thundercliff93]

RobotProductions09 yes the word for elephant fíll comes from Arabic

[@RobotProductions09]

cool! thank you! :)

[@TheMegaRin]

Herra in Finnish means sir.

[@holdyerblobsaloft]

Sir or mister. It is also used as lord, as in God, or an obsolete general term for a man of high status, not the title.

[@Luciferofom]

Kind of like Sioux vs Lakota.

[@colinp2238]

Surely signore is from a Latin source as it appears in Spanish/Italian and Portuguese in very similar forms? The French for mister Monsieur could be from the Latin magister as I am sure that the English master/mister is.

[@zacharylobel3883]

Signore is from Latin senior meaning elder. Monsieur is also from senior. It is made up of mon+sieur, sieur coming from senior and mon meaning "my".

[@colinp2238]

Thank you. Can you explain the English Master or Mister? They seem a long way from the German roots.

[@zacharylobel3883]

Master is from Old English mæġster, a borrowing from Latin magister. Mister is just an unaccented variation of master.

[@boredombuster2000]

"Seigneur" occurs in French as an honorific roughly equivalent to the English "sir". If the Old Norse "sinjór" occurs in the same way then the French derivation becomes telling. That said, I absolutely agree that "seigneur" is cognate with e.g. Spanish "señor" and the element "sieur" in "monsieur" is probably a reduced variant as well.

[@eliastandel]

How do we know a word was borrowed from other germanic languages instead of being developed genetically from their common ancestor? Great video as always!

[@mytube001]

We know because of how different languages changed at different times. A sound change affecting for example a certain vowel in a certain position would be almost universal within a language, so a borrowing can be identified if it breaks that rule.

[@j3tztbassman123]

And it's still snowing in the Rockies? Off topic, maybe.

[@norsemankv6472]

Miód, is hunny in polish, and Mjöd in Swedish is mead..

[@thundercliff93]

The Icelandic word for elephant Fíll comes from Arabic also the word Skák The Icelandic word for a stone wall Múr comes from Latin Murus

[@waterdrager93]

Skák comes from Persian, meaning king.

[@oneukum]

It surprises me, given that Denmark had colonies in the Baltic, that there are no Baltic loans.

[@andeve3]

If I rememer right, the word for girl; pige/pike (in danish and norwegian respectivly) comes from old norse "píka" which in turn comes from finnish. But i dont know what finnish word it comes from.

[@rudde7918]

Andreven "Piika" in Finnish means "female servant" but that is a Swedish borrowing and not original Finnish word.

[@gunjfur8633]

It comes from the word "piika", which mostly means "servant girl" or "wench" How amusing

[@thundercliff93]

Rudde in modern Icelandic píka refers to the vagina

[@dlittlester]

So that Japanese character Pikachu means....

[@gunjfur8633]

Don Little "pika" in Finninsh means "instant" or "quick"

[@NickCybert]

I have some dead pixels on the right side of my screen, in the future could you film on the left side so that they don't get in the way?

[@SuperMrMuster]

A Finn here. I do not recognize this word "refr", that is, I do not see how it could come from Finnish. I would like to see some justification for this claim. The Finnish word for a fox is "kettu". There is however an expression that more typically occurs in fairy tales, where a fox is referred to as "kettu repolainen", meaning fox of Repola. Repola itself would mean something like "house of Repo", "land of Repo" or just generically "place of Repo". Then we finally get to Repo itself, which does not mean anything in Finnish, unless it's some obscure dialect word I'm not aware of. It could also be some old word for fox used in some older stage of the Finnish language, that's since fallen into disuse. I however, feel it must be a loan word, and I had assumed it was actually Scandinavian in origin. The closest we have as a word that sounds like refr/räven is "revä" which is an obscene word meaning vagina. I really do not think it's related to refr. It might be related to Swedish "röv", meaning arse. Others have already pointed out that in Finnish we still use the word "tori" for a market or a town square, and "tulkki" for a translator. "Tulkata" means to translate. I recall reading in a book* a mention that in Old Norse there was a seldom used word meaning war that mostly only appears in poetry. The word was something like "sóda", purportedly from the Finnish word "sota", meaning war. I would like to hear your thoughts on this, Mr. Crawford. *I thought the book was "Suomalaisen sotilaan historia" (="The History of the Finnish Soldier", I don't know that an English translation exists) or " Exploring the World The World of the Vikings " by Richard Hall, but I could not find the mention in either one. It might be I actually read this on some website, but cannot for the death of me find it now.

[@SuperMrMuster]

Very good, Erilaz, thank you for the good insight. I was not aware of this meaning of repo, though I could've suspected it. I wonder how they turned the p into an f, repo > refr. Then again, maybe it used to be *revo in some previous stage of Finnish, as "repo" conjugates to "revon" etc. Thus, "revo > refr" is already a smaller leap. I say, both interpretations exist: "repolainen" might mean "one who lives in Repola*" as well as "lesser being associated with Repo". I still maintain that "repo" itself is obscure in today's language. I've never heard it being used as such in actual speech. For example; "Pihalla meni kettu", never "pihalla meni repo". I recall reading somewhere that the true Finnish word for bear, that is phonologically correct and consistent with related languages, is "ohto". It was also said that the form "otso" is originally specific to some dialect. Sadly, I cannot produce a source for this. It is something I keep in mind, however. I suppose "reva" is the technically correct form of Standard Finnish, with "revä" being more of a dialect form. *Repola might be some hypothetical realm of fox spirits, the domain of the progenitor god of foxes, or something.

[@SuperMrMuster]

Very interesting, very enlightening. Got me thinking. Where I'm from we say "metsä > mettä" and "katsoa > kattoa". Would it not then follow, that "otso > otto"? I find it amusing that the name "Otto" might also have a domestic origin in Finland On that note, where a friend of mine is from, they say "metsä > messä" and "katsoa > kassoa". It might then follow that "otso > osso".

[@gunjfur8633]

Funny, Finnish also uses the word "herra"

[@rudde7918]

Gυnjα Fυry We loaned that from Swedish, obviously.

[@Red0100]

I checked several online Swedish dictionaries and none refers to Räv as an old borrowing from Finnish.

[@aidanwoodford3532]

What about Pennsylvania Dutch? They're German.

[@asbjrnpoulsen9205]

bátr bátur

[@faramund9865]

Am I the only one seeing a lady in robes with a rectangular object in front of her?

[@MatejRRL]

Hello (=

[@juliaconnell]

hello :)

[@MatejRRL]

Hello, Julia. (=

[@heges1606]

Hei🤗

[@flynn9749]

danes

[@haveswordwilltravel]

Túlkir sounds an awful lot like “talker”.

[@asbjrnpoulsen9205]

konfirmera ferma

[@Noetic22]

Unwoke 😂

[@asbjrnpoulsen9205]

hook in icelandic krógur faroese húkur

[@512472]

It is spelled krókur not krógur

[@hazenoki628]

Without convincing evidence, I find it hard to believe that refr would come from Finnish, specifically since there are so few loanwords in Scandinavian languages from their Finno-Ugric neighbours. The etymology I've seen the most (in Svenska Akademiens Ordbok among others) is that refr came from an Indo-European word for reddish-brown. I've seen it suggested that Finnish repo is itself an Indo-European loanword, though I still find it strange that anyone would feel the need to borrow a word for an animal that's so common where you live.

[@magisterwarjomaa3858]

What words get loaned into other languages rarely seem logical...in Finnish there are many loans from Proto-Germanic and Old East Norse, many of which are very basic vocabulary, but for some reason have replaced native terms. For example "taivas" (sky) from PGmc. *teiwaz, "tursas" (giant/monster) from *thurisaz, "hevos/hevonen" (horse) from *eihwaz, "hullu" (crazy) from *wuollo?, the root for *WoÐanaz. There are also numerous Old East Norse loans, like "miekka" (sword) from OEN mjekR, "haukka" (hawk) from haukR, "arka" (timid) from argR, "raukka" (poor/coward) from rargR...I have idly developed the theory that these words were loaned into Finnish perhaps from the areas currently known as Sweden and Gotland at a time period when the final "R" sound of these words was pronounced somewhat like they are in modern French...almost a sort of glottal stop. It would explain why the sound became a "regular" A in Finnish. Otherwise those loanwords would sound different in Finnish...for example, if both r's in argR had the same sound, the resulting loanword form in Finnish would be something like *arkara.

[@Memphiso]

I am with 'haze no ki' on this one. The English Wiktionary suggests: Swedish 'räv' > Old Norse 'refr' > Proto-Norse '*rebaz' (meaning 'brown'). SAOB claims: Swedish 'räv' > Old Swedish 'räver', coming from an adjective meaning 'red-brown'. Svensk etymologisk ordbok (by Elof Hellquist, 1922): Swedish 'räv' > Old Swedish 'ræver' and comparing it with Icelandic 'refr and Danish 'ræv', all from Proto Norse '*reva-', which is solely a North Germanic word probably meaning 'the (red)brown one'.

[@monotropauniflora4969]

The reason it is considered a borrowing is that the word refr has a very limited distribution amongst germanic languages (only north-germanic) whereas the source of the borrowing (repo in modern Finnish, *repoine in old Finnish) is found in a very large number of Uralic languages, from Finnish to Hungarian. It makes very little sense to assume that it repo would have been borrowed from proto-norse into Finnish if the word itself is also present in very distantly related languages (mari= rə̑βə̑ž, komi=ruć, hungarian=róka