Old Norse: How Nouns Work

An introduction to the most important facts about how nouns work in Old Norse, including gender, case, and the commonest endings.
Playlist of Old Norse lessons: • Old Norse Lessons / Pr...
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. FAQs: • Video
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Poetic Edda is available now: www.amazon.com/gp/product/162... and his translation of The Saga of the Volsungs with The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok is forthcoming in September 2017: www.amazon.com/gp/product/162...
Jackson Crawford's Patreon page: / norsebysw

[@Nikanoru]

"I am a professor. I was a happy man. I became bitter."

[@Beeba10]

I noticed that too XD You okay there, professor?

[@daniellebryan3496]

Caught that as well, must say I got a little concerned lol

[@urgaalnoir5268]

But then sold his heart to the fire, so I guess things worked out fine at the end

[@iconsumedmt1350]

26:25 here's a word we're all too acquainted with

[@armokgodofblood2504]

That caught me off guard when he said that. I had to take a break to laugh.

[@countjulian]

26:25 "Here's a word that we're all too acquainted with after a few years on earth: sorrow." This and several other hints lead me to the conclusion that Dr Crawford has a very sad backstory :(

[@gweiloxiu9862]

countjulian There are a couple of things like that in this. I think a bad day or even just an existential mood can easily pop out here and there.

[@npctkindred9469]

"I was a happy man. I became bitter." I'd like to hear your backstory, Mr. Crawford. Always throwing those downers at us in every episode. I get a little laugh out of it, though.

[@varolason8263]

I'm not sure this helps much, but this is the practice we Icelanders use as kids to help us learn the correct changes. Here is/Hér er Eldr Hús Staðr about/um Eld Hús Stað from/frá Eldi Húsi Staði to/til Elds Húss Staðar plural Here are/Hér eru Eldar Hús Staðir about/um Elda Hús Staði from/frá Eldum Húsum Stöðum to/til Elda Húsa Staða

[@larsfinlay7325]

takk fyrir!

[@michaeltreneff3630]

Amazing how similar in grammar rules that Modern Icelandic still is to Old Norse. Thanks, Dr. Crawford!

[@jmclean6648]

Is it just me or is Dr. Crawfords voice particularly creamy, deep and radio smooth than normal?

[@countjulian]

You're probably just aroused, it's no different than any other video.

[@gweiloxiu9862]

Jackson John McLean "cringe"

[@jmclean6648]

hahaha so then it is just me :P

[@jmclean6648]

it was more a question about if he got a new camera or microphone. I've been watching his videos for a while now and the audio quality struck me as different (deeper) in this one than the others

[@sheilas1283]

I found that to be one of your most interesting videos. I was gripped! I do appreciate all the time and effort you put into these. This one took me back many years to Latin lessons at school!

[@Tina06019]

Professor Crawford, this is one of the most cogent explanations of gendered nouns and how to make a "good guess" of what gender a noun might be based on characteristics of the nominative (dictionary) case form of the noun that I have ever heard. I have always struggled with case endings in every language except my mother tongue - your explanation in this video is the best I have ever heard or read. It will be helpful to me in my other languages, not just in Old Norse. My "husbondi" gave me Jesse Bylock's very good "Viking Language" for Yule 2013, and now, thanks to your videos, I can get a lot more out of that book. If I may be a bit "fresh," it is not only your camera work which has improved from good to great - your knowledge of how to teach language seems to have grown to an impressive level. Thank you. You are the first content creator whom I decided to support on Patreon - your videos are so good, and I watch them so often, that it seemed almost wrong NOT to support your work. Tina G.

[@joetrueman3555]

Very interesting. Had me hooked to the very end. Thanks for taking the time to make the vid. :)

[@LukeRanieri]

Such great videos, sir! I especially appreciate your dry wit. Immensely enjoyable! Thank you for your hard work.

[@gearhead1234]

Great work, please keep going with the lessons! Very useful and interesting. Cheers!

[@arielconsuegra7401]

Doctor Jackson, I have been watching your videos for a long time. I find them very interesting. I got so interested to Nordic languages that I started another bachelor's, studying German and Scandinavian Languages in Milan (I am Italian). I have always thought about writing you giving you the advice to open a bit more your mouth when you speak and to SMILE (smile son, please), but I think it might have sounded a bit shallow. But now that I understand why the verb TO BE calls for a nominative case, you have opened my eyes, and I really THANK YOU publicly. I would like to keep in touch for when I write my thesis :DDD

[@Saskia01]

Thank you for all the education!

[@concernedcitizen6313]

Your channel is red with gold!

[@cannonballbob6949]

16:50 holy sh*t I did German for two years in high school, I started at German 1 and then jumped to German 4 and I just now properly realised how the dative case works when you explained it! 😂 I just didn’t get it before, but when you explained it I just understood it! And I was the best in my class at German! But I just remembered what verbs caused dative instead of seeing it the way you described it! It’s hard living with ADHD and autism 😂

[@charlesharris8805]

Awesome video. Thank you sharing your knowledge.

[@NMalteC]

Great stuff. I'm amazed at how similar Old Norse is to today's Danish!

[@ragnarblobarr9567]

Love this stuff Jackson!

[@tiberiustheweaponsmaster4621]

I almost found it strange when I found your vids due to the fact I had the same facial hair, wore a cowboy hat and also learned quite a bit about Germanic languages. Thank you for the vids as well!

[@liviq]

Interesting to see the cases of old Norse. I am a native Slovak speaker and we also have cases in the order nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, instrumental and we used to have a case called vocative. I was only taught the first 6 cases the 7th one being the same as nominative as the language developed but my parents were taught all 7. And that is only 1 generation ago

[@moetwithmedusa]

Just what I was seeking. Takk!

[@thevikingvox1277]

Very informative.

[@ThunorOdinson]

Great video as always. This far Look Old Norse doesn't seem any more heavily declined than German. I realize I very well may be wrong about this but just a first impression. Definitely some possibly inherited parallels like identical nom. & acc. forms in at least the neuter case. Every time I start dabbling in a new language I'm confirmed in my conviction that being a polyglot or at least even a bilingual is immeasurably helpful in the effort. I truly love seeing all the similarities that one notices, even if accidental, and the moments of epiphany which often follow. Once again thank you so much for this channel. Rest assured here ARE at least a few of us that DO WATCH, and every so intently. Also I'm sure we're NOT that few.

[@laughingdaffodils5450]

Thanks for the video, fascinating series. "Skaði" is not an abstract noun but a goddess." Are you certain it's not both? You're the expert but I'm very tempted to read her name as 'Damage' - cognate with "unscathed" meaning "undamaged."

[@purple_purpur7379]

I believe it is. It's related to Dutch "schade" or damage and German "Schade" or pity (and of course "scathe").

[@deiniou]

Great! My language has like... 11 cases? I think? But yeah, they work the same, I found them very useful and I was frustrated when I was little when I learned Spanish and then English, although in English there is 's, which works in a simillar way....

[@albertmerlew]

Can you do word order videos and grammar like how to use present past and future tense. Modal verbs and such?

[@sigvarivarsson1285]

Can anyone help please? I am looking at the modal auxiliary verb skulu and its use in creating the future tense but cannot figure out what case a noun would take in it. Eg. I shall defend the land. Is land accusative or dative?

[@littlemissdeel7231]

I'm currently taking norse grammar and my book is very confusing when it comes to this, others might disagree but I can say I at least get it a bit better now,,,

[@johnstilley5063]

As a hobbyist blacksmith, what do we know about blacksmithing in the pre-Christian Norse era? Or, rather, where can I learn about that?

[@Joos2000]

You should start a podcast mate.

[@Joj1n]

Hello Mr. Crawford I like to know if the building of words is similar to sanscrit. Which means the every Sybil has an own root and by that meaning: Audhumbla Au- means ... dhum- means... bla- ... If so i like to study more on that. Anyone who has any kind of information will be a great help. Cheers

[@saschaolrogge4943]

I am wondering if the word 'til' is actually related to the German word 'Ziel' which means 'Destination' or 'target'. Dr. Crawford said 'til' might have been a noun rather than a preposition in earlier forms. So it would make sense to use the Genitive with 'til'.

[@jellosapiens7261]

Are the paired body parts ending in -a descended from a Proto-Indo-European dual form?

[@urgaalnoir5268]

I still don't get few points like : When a nouns is f, n. Or when a nouns is dative. I hope he makes another video about it.

[@larsfinlay7325]

hey man, keep the faith. I want to write in Old Norse.

[@vittoriahawksworth8117]

Ah interesting! I went to school in Italy where I studied Latin and ancient Greek. We normally learnt the cases in the same order as apparently Iceland today i.e. nominative genitive dative accusative vocative and ablative, but now I live in England and I noticed that when they do study Latin, they do tend to learn the cases with direct cases first followed by oblique i.e. nominative accusative vocative genitive dative ablative. P.S. Yes, I am aware that there is no ablative in ancient Greek.

[@michaelmeier7224]

Nominativus, Genitivus, Dativus, Akkusativus, (Ablativus) is the standard in Germany, too, probably a general standard of Latin. Vocativus was never seen a real case on it's own by our teachers and books. Just a footnote that there is the suffix -e for male forms.

[@shruggzdastr8-facedclown]

Does the Modern English adjective "fair" (typically used as a descriptor of a woman's beauty) come from the Old Norse "fagr"?

[@12hoodiebruv]

in Italian exists an adjective "Figo/a" which means "cool"/ "beautiful" and it derives probably from (reconstructed) langobardic language "fagar" - "beautiful", it is also used as "figa" to indicate the female reproductive organ in a vulgar way.

[@kadabrium]

The -a ending of ON weak noun is not a direct continuation of the general IE feminine in a/eh2. The invisible -u that caused the umlaut in words like jörð is.

[@bigrobbyd.6805]

I was just about to ask a question about this. So, you're saying that the invisible -u was the original in the Proto-Norse or Proto-Germanic, and that the -a is strictly unique to Old Norse?

[@samuelterry6354]

Why do some languages preserve inflection better than others?

[@hansmahr8627]

There are different factors. Many languages lose their inflections because of sound changes. In Latin for example, there were a couple of sound changes that made the endings of a lot of cases identical. This leads to a collapse of the system because suddenly you don't get the necessary information from the suffixes anymore. This type of language change happens quite often because last syllables (if they're unstressed, as they are in most Indo-European languages) are vulnerable to changes. The same thing also happened in German. In Old High German, a noun like 'tag' (day), could have several different endings, depending on the case: 'taga', 'tagum', 'tago', 'tagu', etc. But in the course of the centuries, the vowels in the last syllable got weakened: all of them became 'e' (or were dropped), until finally, we arrived at the situation we have today where most nouns don't change form according to the case they're in. However, the case system itself didn't collapse like it did in Late Latin because German had developed the definite article (which was a later development in Latin/the Romance languages) which does change its form and which is used much more extensively than in English so it can function pretty well as a case marker. 'Tag' can be Nominative, Dative or Accusative in Modern German, but in most cases you will see the noun with an article and then it's 'der Tag', 'dem Tag' or 'den Tag', so you can still recognize which case it is. However, there are also other processes that can lead to the loss of cases. Right now for example, German is slowly losing the genitive case. It's still used extensively in writing, but in spoken German, it's mostly substituted by the dative. This has nothing to do with sound change, especially in masculine and neuter nouns it's actually the most distinctive case because it does change the actual noun, not just the article: 'der Mann' but 'des Mannes'. The decline of the genitive is not a new phenomenon, in fact in almost all German dialects, the genitive has been completely dead for centuries and the reason for that is that it competed with several other constructions. Instead of saying 'das Haus meines Vaters ('my father's house'), you can also use a periphrastic construction with the dative: 'das Haus von meinem Vater' ('the house of my father') and ultimately, this construction (or similar ones) became dominant in the German dialects hundreds of years ago and it remains that way in spoken Standard German. It's hard to explain what the reasons for such a change were, maybe the genitive already felt old-fashioned back then because the form of the noun was so distinctive as opposed to other cases where only the article changed. The fact that the dative-e ('dem Tage') that was still used in those times also disappeared (except for a few relics) seems to support the view that these distinctive forms were perceived as old-fashioned. Contact between different languages can also influence inflections. Some scholars for example argue that Old English lost its case system partly because of extensive contact with speakers of Old Norse. The languages were very similar, especially when you're comparing just the word roots without the inflectional endings and so speakers might have simplified a lot when they spoke to each other: by using prepositions and stricter word order instead of case endings for example. However, it's also clear that English experienced a similar sound change as German: the final vowels lost their distinctiveness and so the different case forms became too similar to each other.

[@Vank4o]

thesatanic6 Not a native German speaker, but here are my observations. Accusative and dative can get confused based on the dialect the speaker is speaking, especially in dialects from north Germany(eg Berlin) where the accusative and the dative have merged together. I think it is normal, that synonyms can have a different use and can indicate their objects in a different manner(unless the declension system is falling apart and people just can't make a distinction anymore), it could be confusing sometimes because it doesn't really have a logical explanation in the modern language, because it probably follows some logic in the language long lost in time. There is also the opposite process, there can be also an attempt at homogenisation, like adjustment of the dative accusative objects of some verbal synonyms. For instance, take the verb "to teach someone something" which can have two synonymous forms "lehren" and "beibringen" in German. "Beibringen" always takes an accusative and a dative object ("jemandem(dat.) etwas(acc.) beibringen") while "lehren" takes normally two accusative objects ("jemanden(acc.) etwas(acc.) lehren"). I guess the two accusative objects of "lehren" sound unnatural to some German speakers and they try to match them with the more distinct dative-accusative of the synonym "beibringen", so I've heard "jemandem(dat.) etwas(acc.) lehren" from native German speakers. I think as of recently this dative accusative variant has even entered the Duden(it's something like the official German dictionary) alongside with the historically correct form with the two accusatives.

[@matmachina]

the difference gender makes on the endings of adjectives and pronouns as well as the cases are just like in Russian and most Slavic languages. This makes things a lot easier for me :D

[@matmachina]

The more I learn, The more I realise how much sense it make for me to learn Old Norse or any Scandinavian language for that matter. I speak Russian, Bulgarian and German also and I see grammar rules that relate to all of these languages. Amazing

[@ludvigweimarsson7770]

It's interesting that kona means woman, and that in scania we still have the word kåne wich also means woman. And i believe that in some parts of Gotland, öra (ear) is still pronounced like eyra.

[@xenotimothea7698]

"Him gave I a lecture." could work in poetry, also because "Him gave I a lecture" reads like poetic way of saying, "I gave a lecture to him." Proper word order is less important in English than the cases and consistent word order, if you get the cases wrong then: "Him gave I a lecture," would not be understood correctly as "He gave me a lecture."

[@b43xoit]

I read "Him gave I a lecture." to mean 'I gave a lecture to him.' Case should trump word order.

[@dannicron]

Interesting how neuters ending in -a seem to be restricted to body parts. Is there any specific reason for that? I know that they stem from neuter n-stems of Proto-Germanic, which were rare in that language already. Is this some Indo-European heritage thing?

[@PRKLGaming]

It could be that they come from the Dual number. He said they were all about body parts that are doubled. Eyes would be in the dual, not plural, in Indo-European.

[@TheLestat422]

Jackson Crawford A few weeks ago I started with the first few introductions lessons (untill the one about the verb "to be") and now, after I had to take a break for personal reasons, they are gone and replaced, it's really sad and too bad. The older ones were a better format imo (shorter, more pedagogical, etc...). I'm really sad and disapointed...

[@jonko82]

Thanks Dr. Crawford! Takk, Jackson! Old Norse seems pretty easy to learn if you already speak Modern Icelandic. O-Caudata is written 'Ö' but otherwise all the cases are the same. At 26:40 when the 'U' converts the 'A' into 'Hook-O' ( or 'Ö' in Modern Icelandic) you call that phenomenon U-umlaut. What about a word like 'Köttur' (English: Cat)? Nominative: Köttur Accusative: Kött Genitive: Kattar Dative: Ketti In the genitive, the vowel in the stem turns into an 'a' where the grammar ending is 'ar', and in the dative it turns into an 'e' where the grammar ending is 'i'. Are these phenomenons then maybe called A-umlaut and I-umlaut, respectively? I'm just curious because these linguistic terms are not familiar to me.

[@RKMDJrYoshinori]

In theory, in the genitive the word is returning to the "original state" (the root was "katt-" long time ago, but then the -u in nominative and accusative changed the "a" in the root to "ǫ", in this case the accusative -u was lost as the language evolved, but the influence it had in the root was kept. The genitive doesn't have -u in the suffix, so the root keeps its "a") and in the dative, it's I-umlaut as you said, the front vowel "i" made the back vowel "a" come to the front as "e". But what makes me curious is the nominative form köttur, cause in old norse the nominative didn't have the -u, it was added in icelandic orthography later, so it would be kattr, not kǫttr, is this U-umlaut in nominative an exclusive icelandic thing or it was really kǫttr in old norse?

[@jonko82]

Of course! That makes perfect sense, thank you!

[@jonko82]

And regarding your question at the end: It seems that the word was kǫttr, at least according to this source: www.vikingsofbjornstad.com/Old_Norse_Dictionary_E2N.shtm So why the 'a' turned into O-caudata is a bit of a mystery, it seems.

[@ethanfields1444]

Fóru til eldsins líta likamann brennandi I had to look á lot up and I still know I probably didn't used the present participle right 😅 "they traveled to the fire to watch the body while it was burning" Likami is just like lic and 𐌻𐌴𐌹𐌺 lita probably is not the right word but I kinda like the repetition

[@michaelmeier7224]

Wow, all the lesson about getting what cases are. In the beginning i did not get that, since for a german-speaker it is all-day. Seems to be very hard stuff for english people. But why so complicated? In Germany one teaches the kids that it is so simple: by what word can you ask here? Who? Whose? To whom? Whom? These question pronouns even exist in English. Can't they help learners too?

[@kaskoll7536]

In German we write it in this order: nominative genetive dative akkusative

[@appelsin2821]

That’s a bizarre order. I’m used to seeing nominative accusative dative genetive

[@Ascarion47]

If you have learned German, these cases will be very, very familiar. Quite interesting that Old Norse used the same declinations that modern German still does.

[@michaelmeier7224]

Still does? they are rapidly dieing. The genitive is the first one, hardly known to anybody anmore. The dativ will follow and some generations on, german will be as simple as english today.

[@iconsumedmt1350]

Not at all. Genitive is a core part of English. I'm sure you know how nouns take the suffix -'s when they possess something. That's genitive. The only difference between that and Old Norse is that there's no apostrophe and the possessive noun comes after the thing being possessed

[@MysteriousAsteria]

​@@iconsumedmt1350 but that's in English and we talk about German. As a native German speaker I do notice the lack of genitive cases in most people's everyday speech. I think the younger generations exclusively prefer the dative, so instead of "Hannas Haus" (Hanna's house) they will say "das Haus von Hanna" or even "Der Hanna ihr Haus". The latter sounds really strange, but it's common in some dialects. The genitive is still required in writing, but that may eventually change. I do however not think that the dative will be gone too, since you can't really show possession with the other cases that easily in German and not every language will simplify as much as English did.

[@egraber10]

I don't know if you answer questions here, but while watching this I had one: could the structure of a sentence demand a noun to be in more than one case? Namely, how would you write something like "he gave me HIS talk"?

[@samuelhedengynna5181]

Sure, just use the correct case form for each occasion of the word. "The Lord wants you to take care of the lord's manor." The first "lord" would be nominative and the second genitive. The case form only applies to that particular instance of the word and potential modifiers to it, like adjectives and articles.

[@egraber10]

@@samuelhedengynna5181 thanks for the reply! That makes sense, but I do still have a question. In the example sentence I gave, it seems to me that "talk" would be both genitive and accusative. Do you know how I would express that?

[@samuelhedengynna5181]

@@egraber10 Oh sorry, I misunderstood. I'm honestly not sure, but my guess would be that "his" would be in genitive but "talk" would be in accusative. And that whatever adjectives or articles that are tied to "his" or another word in the same roll/place would be genitive, while adjectives or articles tied to "talk" would be in accusative. That's how it is in modern German, which has the same case system.

[@MidniteJd]

You make me regret drinking my way through high school!

[@kiara-kh7nh]

Outside of language and culture, how much do you know about ancient Norse peoples? Like, architecture, geography, flora and fauna, stuff like that?

[@rogerrodgers6550]

Not gormless! Outstanding work

[@LordFrito]

Man am I glad I took German in highschool

[@user-yr1gm8to3r]

you should grow your kids in old norse so you would have grown the first fluent generation in old norse in the modern world

[@txviking]

I'm amused by your emphasis on the genitive case following "til" because this remains in modern Norwegian. Nobody calls it a genitive anymore, and it's slowly dying out, but in daily speech you will still hear this especially with generic destinations: til fjells, til sjøs, til gards, or even in abstract uses: tilfreds, til overs. Some fossilized examples remain of the other cases as well (.e.g "av gårde",) but the genitive is by far the most common.

[@Ice_Karma]

Regarding grammatical gender: it really would be better if they were just "category 1", "2", "3", etc. Amusingly I once had the naïve hope tha tlanguages with grammatical gender _got_ that it was arbitrary... and then I learned about modern gender-neutral language in, say, French, or German... and despaired.

[@snaebra]

Great video. I found it funny that it bothered me to see the nom, acc, gen and dat in that order. Disturbed my world view

[@josoece3483]

nom,gen, dat, acc?

[@snaebra]

@@josoece3483 nominative, accusative, genitive and dative

[@josoece3483]

@@snaebra Oh no lol. I asked is that the correct order nominative, genitive etc :)) cause we learn it like that in Serbian

[@snaebra]

​ @Jo So Ece In Iceland it is always nominative - accusative - dative - genitive. To know the forms, we always use "Here is fire, About fire, From fire, To fire." Hér er eldur, Um eld, Frá eldi, Til elds.

[@josoece3483]

@@snaebra oh you only have 4 amateurs :)) Ours are in this order, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental and locative (dative and locative are same in 99% of the words tho) Vocative is when you are addresing someone (Kristo in your case) and instrumental is with fire, or by fire, and locative is location obviously.

[@user-vy3rc4yn1c]

Today I I told my sister this Sister: what do you want Me:want some information Sister:be fast Me: you know Loki from Norse mythology Sister: yeah I hate him Me: he is both genders Sister:wth Than I read her lokasenna Sister:😨how do you like this crap She slammed the door in my face

[@peturkristinsson9463]

I think at 5:19 you spelled kirkja with a y kirkja with a y means to choke but kirkja with an i means church

[@OBIDU13]

As he states, he doesn't use the conventional modern Icelandic spelling of Old Norse in his demonstration. Maybe the ufsilon has switched to a i later.

[@ghoulofmetal]

Please dont say Genitive is that simple in Old Norse? How did we manage to make it such a nightmare in Faorese.

[@kallht2079]

Andras Petersen Really? How is it different in Faroese?

[@AndersKingBee]

Does genitive exist at all in Faroese? I’m quite sure I read somewhere that genitive has been replaced by dative. I may be wrong though. Do you have an example of a noun (masculine) declined in all cases (nominative, accusative, etc)?

[@greggiggle]

Cool hhhhhhhhhWhip

[@Ice_Karma]

"The Queen of England's palace" puts paid to the notion that 's in English is a genitive -- it's a survival of "the man his house" (and "the woman her house" and "the cat its house" but those fell in with the masculine) rather than a proper _genitive_.

[@ericdpeerik3928]

You know what else sounds weird to a native speaker? Whhhhhy 😂

[@chujsmukoj]

28:48 for educational purposes, you should’ve read these sk like sh 💀