AKull Norn 07
AKull Norn 07
Anglistisches Seminar
1. Preface ................................................................................... 4
2. History of Norn and Norn Research .................................... 4-6
3. Bad Data Problem of Norn ................................................ 6-10
4. Reconstruction Issues of Norn Phonology ...................... 10-11
5. Influence of Norn ............................................................. 12-14
6. Conclusion ...................................................................... 14-15
7. Appendix .............................................................................. 16
8. Bibliography .................................................................... 17-19
9. Antiplagiatserklärung ............................................................ 20
1. Preface
Norn, which is derived from Old Norse norrœna and means Northern
language, was first mentioned in 1485 (Barnes 1991:430). Its history
began with the first Scandinavian settlements of Vikings from West-
and Southwest Norway around 800 (Tierney 1967:74-7, 115-16).
Although this date is debatable – like everything that is said about
Norn – because the Latin Historia Norwegiæ tells us, that a person
named Rognvaldr “ [...] seized the inhabitants of Orkney [...]
” (Barnes 1998:3) in 700 which is confirmed by “Viking town
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generics” (ibid.), e.g. <-heimr> (home, dwelling) in place names of
Shetland and Orkney.
When “ [...] Shetland was removed from the earldom of Orkney [...]
” (Barnes 1991:446) in 1195 the islands built closer ties to Norway
and started trading with Hanseatic and Danish merchants – which of
course had impact on the language. Modern Orcadian and
Shetlandic speech even show nowadays traces of Dutch and Low
German (ibid. 445). During this period there were only Norse
speaking officials in Shetland (ibid. 446) which made Norn the
predominant language until the beginning of the 13th century when
“Scots gradually began to replace Norn” (ibid. 429). This language
shift started when the Scots speaking “Sinclairs succeeded to the
earldom” (ibid.) in 1379.
The actual 'death' of Norn began when Orkney and Shetland “were
pledged to King James III of Scotland as marriage dowry by King
Christian I of Denmark and Norway” (ibid.). At the time of the
reformation in Scotland in 1560 all officials and the clergy were Scots
speaking and Scandinavian law were gradually replaced by Scottish
until 1611 (ibid.). The last Scandinavian document in Orkney was
signed in 1426, the first Scottish document in 1433. The last
Scandinavian document in Shetland was written two-hundred years
later, in 1607, the first Scottish document in 1525 (ibid.).
Norn withdrew to small isolated communities of speakers on the
northern Mainland of Orkney and Shetland were the last official
reference to Norn was made in 1750 (ibid. 447) and probably the last
native speaker died on the island Unst in 1850 (Jakobsen 1928-
32:xix).
The first studies about Norn were primarily about collecting words
and explaining their etymology. Edmondston released the first
comprehensive collection with his Etymological Glossary of the
Shetland and Orkney Dialect in 1866 which was succeeded by Jakob
Jakobsen's Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in 1928. At
the same time the Orkneyman Hugh Marwick presented his
pioneering book The Orkney Norn which can be seen as the first
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linguistic acceptable work on Norn that focused on specific issues.
Nowadays there are a few notable scholars – like Michael Barnes
who managed to obtain a certain degree of publicity for his work The
Norn language of Orkney and Shetland – which is related to high
requirements a Norn scholar have to comply and the bad source data
of Norn.
For a language that was almost spoken a whole millennium and has
had a huge impact on the Orcadian and Shetlandic dialect and
culture – only 60 place-names on the isles are of Scots origin in
contrast to 600 of Scandinavian or Norn origin (Stewart 1970:318-19)
– we have to deal with “extremely bad data“ (Knooihuizen 2006:6).
Michael Barnes one of the few modern Norn scholars wrote (Barnes
1991:436):
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Norn is. Some scholars like Johnston and Jón believe that Norn is
just a “Scandinavian language opposed to Scots” (Barnes 1991:430)
were other scholars define Norn as a “mixture of Scots and
Scandinavian” (Saxby, Sandison, Graham; ibid.). Personally I think
all those scholars are right and we have to divide Norn in three
phases.
The first phase of Norn started with the Viking settlements. At this
point Norn was not a distinct form of the West-Norwegian language,
but exactly the same and only defined by the opposition to the
language of the native inhabitants.
Phase two started when the stream of immigrants from West-Norway
run dry and the settlements began to trade with Dutch, Hanseatic,
Scots and English merchants. In this period the former settlers
intermingled through intermarriage with the natives and began to
construct an own identity which was expressed through their very
own language that now began to deviate from its Scandinavian
origin.
Phase three sealed the 'death' of Norn and the beginning of the
unique Orcadian and Shetlandic dialect. Scots became more
prestigious because of certain political events (see chapter History of
Norn and Norn Research) and functioned as “[...] sole language of
public affairs [...]” (Donaldson 1958; Barnes 1991:451) and replaced
Norn gradually over decades. Decades in which Norn influenced
Scots (ibid.) – although this fact is denied by Rendboe who said that
it remained pure until its 'death' (Renboe 1984-87; Barnes
1991:432f). Flom even numbered the “[...] steadily decline ratio of
Norn to Scots” (Flom 1928-9; Barnes 1991:432 ) to 12:5 in 1850 and
1:1 in 1900 (ibid.).
Gunnel Melchers, known by various field studies, listed the three
main problems of “identifying the Scandinavian component in
Shetland dialect” (Melchers 1991:462).
The first problem which we have to consider, is that we do not have a
“linguistic acceptable account of the Shetland dialect” (ibid.). This
applies to George Low's recorded data which I will review in more
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detail in the phonology section of this paper. All material which we
can use for research was not recorded by native speakers, but was
handed down orally for generations.
Secondly and additional to the first problem, we cannot identify “[...]
English loan or independent innovation[s]” (ibid.) because we actually
do not know what to search for and the “absence [of specific features
of Norn] might be revealing as their presence” (Barnes 1998:11).
The third and last problem applies to the important data of Jakob
Jakobsen which did not differentiate between “high versus low
language contact” (Melchers 1991:462), i.e. whether a “[...] exotic
small group of speakers influenced others” (ibid.) or the feature can
be seen as representative for the language and a larger community
of speakers.
The most problematic issue of Norn research is to analyse the
Scandinavian material and how Norn deviates from it. This is
particular a problem because we do not know how Norn deviates
from Old Norse and whether the deviations are just idiolectic
expressions or derived from dialects spoken by a minority.
Michael Barnes divided the source material in groups (Barnes
1998:10):
1. runic inscriptions
2. documents written in the roman alphabet
3. continuous pieces of spoken Norn recorded before the
language died
4. words and forms preserved in scaldic verse
5. place names
6. fragments of spoken Norn that might be expected to
yield information about the language in function
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language in this period was not distinguishable “from contemporary
Norwegian” (ibid.) and therefore “only proofs the West-Scandinavian
character of Norn” (ibid.).
The disappointing situation of bad data continues when we are trying
to find features of Norn in documents written in the roman alphabet.
All scribes of documents related to Orkney and Shetland were either
from Norway or Denmark or they learnt their craft there, since the
first school opened in Shetland around 1611 (ibid. 11). According to
Marwick it is “[...] a complete failure to find any 'Orkneyisms' [in those
documents]” (Marwick 1929:xxi).
All recordings of spoken Norn suffer the same problem – the
dichotomy of written and spoken language. For instance the two
Lord's Prayer in alleged Orkney Norn (see appendix 1; recorded by
Wallace 1700:68-9) and Shetland Norn (see appendix 2; recorded by
Low 1774:105) as well as some scaldic verses and phrases. We all
know that especially biblical texts and lyrics were not composed in
everyday speech, but in a formal, elaborated, archaic style and
therefore are not legitimate for drawing conclusions. Another
problem is that we neither possess information of their sources nor
age nor the way of transmission and how much were lost or modified
due to orally transmission – hence the scientific usability is almost nil.
The so called Shetland Diploma of 1355 (reprinted in Low 1774) and
the place names of Orkney and Shetland are a rich source of Norn
lexemes. Words like <yealtaland> for Shetland (Sibbald 1845:11, 68)
or <iarlin> for earl puzzle Norn researchers because of their missing
progressive i-mutation which indicates that Norn was not affected by
this Germanic sound change that started between 450-500 AD and
affected all Germanic languages except Gothic. There is no
explanation for this unique curiosity yet, but we can state two more
obvious possibilities additional to the possibility above.
The first would be that Viking settlers arrived before the sound
change took place, before 450 AD - this would be terrific and has to
be proved by archeology yet. The second possible explanation, that
sounds even more unbelievable, is that a Non-Germanic language
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influenced Norn. We know that a Non-Germanic language existed
before the Vikings arrived and the evidence (Historia Norwegiæ)
makes it clear that the native language was Pictish, although it is a
common belief that the “Pre-Viking inhabitants were assimilated,
exterminated or driven out and their language withered away”
(Barnes 1998:2) without even leaving slightest traces in the new
language.
1 Please note that some phones and diacritics do not meet the IPA standards of
2007, but were often exclusively created and used by the authors of the studies.
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was repopulated from other parts of Scotland (Edmondston 1809:85;
Baldwin 1984:55) makes Low's collected data too critical to be
considered – I think, but it is one of the few source materials which
we have at all.
Jakobsen, so to say the founder of modern Norn study, identified in
his doctoral thesis: [å], [o], [ɔ], [ɔ.], [ȯ], [u], [ø], ([ö]) (Jakobsen 1897)
and thirty-one years later in his Etymological Dictionary: [å], [o], [ɔ],
[ɔ.], [ȯ], [u], [ø], [ö], [aö]2 for Old Norse /o/ (Jakobsen 1928-32).
Jakobsen's assumptions are based on his own collected data, which
involves the problem that he did not define regional areas for his
source. Therefore several regional and very small dialects, and
probably even idiolects, have the same linguistic status in his
dictionary as varieties spoken by a larger community of people. Later
scholars such as Barnes proofed that Jakobsen's 10000 collected
items contained words of no Scandinavian or Norn influence at all,
but were influenced by Scots pronunciation (Barnes 1991: 435).
Rendboe, another well-known researcher, identified the allophones
[ɔ], [ȧ], [o], [u], [y], [ø] which he assumed to reflex the Old Norse
phoneme /o/ (Rendboe 1987).
Rendboe's inventory, which also uses George Low's data as source
material, can be used to illustrate the problem of conclusions that are
based on bad data. When we compare it to Hægstad's, who also
analysed short rounded vowels based on Low's data almost a
century before, we immediately recognise the difference – although
they used the same source material. Where Hægstad has 7
allophones (two of unclear status) Rendboe has only 6 and [y] totally
exclusive and not found by another researcher.
The phonology is considered the most productive and safest field of
research of Norn which demonstrates how frustrating the others must
be. This fact broaches a new problem: how do you measure the
influence of something you do not know?
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5. Influence of Norn
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(SQS). According to the SVLR a general shortening of long vowels in
certain environments occurs - the SQS, in contrast to the SVLR, is an
“uniformisation [sic] of syllabic quantity” (ibid. 465f). This is very
confusing in certain contexts and not easily to identify, because the
SVLR and SQS are often differently regionally realised and can even
variate in the spelling of the same person (ibid.). Melchers pointed
out that the contrast is only clearly visible in a few monosyllabic
words with “fully long vowels before /d/ as in <meed> (landmark used
by fishermen)“ (ibid. 467f).
A smaller and rather specific case of the phonetic influence of Norn is
the example of Auslautverhärtung, like in Neuhochdeutsch, but only
in cases where a word ends in <d> as in <cloud> (ibid. 468f). We
also have the “final consonant lengthened” (ibid.) in a handful of
cases as in <löf> (palm) (ibid.) and in this particular example we also
have a second Norn leftover – remains of Old Norse /ø/. Another
assured and, through various field studies, proved feature of the
modern Orcadian and Shetlandic dialect, is that “disyllabic words
tend to have long vowels followed by relatively short consonants“
(ibid.) for example in <later> instead of <letter>. In large parts of
Scotland we have the initial [hw] or [kw] sound which does not exist
in Shetland at all and did not exist in Orkney until the 18th century.
(Barnes 1998:20).
Besides the influence of Norn phonology, we have numerous words
of Norse or Norn origin especially in semantic fields concerning
weather, fishing, hunting, plants, agriculture, colours, movement,
seasons, animals and ludicrous behaviour (Nässėn 1989; Melchers
1981:260b). Of course those words have undergone semantic
changes such as narrowing or broadening.
The verb <blinks> in the sentence <shö blinks> uttered by fishermen
now means “that a fish shows itself” (Melchers 1991:470). The noun
<drums> for 'gloomy, peevish mood or person' was converted to the
verb <to drum> which has the meaning of 'to sulk' (ibid.). In Foula
and Papa Stour farmers are <sproning da seed> which is derived
from Old Norse sproena for 'to squirt, spit out' (Fenton 1978). The
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Norwegian verb 'hent' is nowadays exclusively used in Shetland for
“ [...] collecting wool [or] digging up potatoes” (Melchers 1991:472).
6. Conclusion
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analysis remains to be done” (Melchers 1991:469).
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7. Appendix
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8. Bibliography
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Rendboe, Laurits 1987. Det gamle shetlandske sprog. Odense:
Odense Universitetsforlag.
Sandison, William (ed.) 1953. Shetland Verse: Remnants of Norn.
Shrewsbury: Privately published.
Sibbald, Sir Robert 1845. Descriptions of the Islands of Okrney and
Zetland. Edinburgh: Thomas Stevenson.
Tierney, J. J. 1967. Dicuili liber de mensura orbis terrae. Dublin:
Institute for Advanced Studies.
Wallace, Rev. James 1700. An Account of the Islands of Orkney.
London: Jacob Tonson.
Articles:
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Graham, John J. 1983. “Social changes during the quinquennium”.
In: Withrington, Donald J. (ed.) Shetland and the Outside World
1469-1969. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 216-33.
Jakobsen, Jakob 1911. “Nordisk minder, is ær sproglige, på
Orknøerne”. Maal og minne: 318-47.
Melchers, Gunnel 1981. “The Norn element in Sheltand dialect today
– a case of 'never accepted' language death”. In: Ejerhed, Eva
and Inger Henrysson (eds.) Tvåspåkighet. Umeå, 254-61.
Rendboe, Laurits 1984. “How 'worn out' or 'corrupted' was Shetland
Norn in its final stage?”. Nowele 3: 53-88.
Saxby, Jessi M. E. 1907-08. “Notes on Shetland dialect”. Saga-Book
5: 65-9.
Stewart, John 1970. “Place names of Fula”. Fróðskaparrit 18: 307-
19.
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9. Antiplagiatserklärung
Andreas Kull
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