A similar issue arises in English studies. The "classical" OE language, which has most of material to read, is later West Saxon. It's a fine thing to say you want to study Northumbrian or Kentish, but you have to learn WS OE first. Everything else is a sub-specialty.
As a Swede, who perhaps theoretically should have an extra investment in the old eastern Norse of my forefathers, I am too interested in all of Norse history to focus on only what is classified as “closer to old Swedish” - I want it all and only assume that any other enthusiast, no matter their origin, thinks the same. And I feel like Jackson is delivering that through his work. That said, I did find this video, pointing out differences and markings changes, very interesting. I am extremely grateful for all the material Jackson creates and that so much is made so easily available. Huge thanks and greetings from Stockholm!
People were amazed at how much difficulty British audiences had with the first American movies with sound. The other direction was easier because Americans had experience with immigration.
Maybe, it's worth mentioning that even in Swedish dialects monophthongisation did not fully complete in a lot of Sweden and Finland (yes, Finland has it its own traditional dialects of Swedish).
Dialects of the bondska language group didn't even monophtongize them until VERY recently, like late 1800 to early 1900s and only in southern westrobothnian and even then, not without exception. as an example, in dialects where monophthongization is most present, they would still retain historical -eið as -ei like in "bräjj" for breiðr
@@clanDeCo However it is rather unknown (at least to me) exactly how much of the Northernmost dialects originates from Svea-dialects or from the older Northern-dialects in now southern and middle Norrland (depending on how the migration pattern looked like when the very north was settled with Norse speaking people). The regions such as Hälsingland, Medelpad and Ångermanland had huge influence from Norway, and especially Trönderlag, which can very clearly be seen still in the regions dialects. I am not mentioning Härjedalen nor Jämtland here as they were mostly settled from, and then governed by, Norway and have had a distinct Norwegian characteritics up until very modern times. However it is very often forgotten the impact the influence from the west have had on all of the middle north. If that is also the case with the more northern most dialects - which I guess it is due to the amount of similarites - then the preservation of the diphtong might be due to heavy west Norse influence.
@@sirseigan they derive from a northern source without a doubt, not svea. As for the diphthong i am very skeptical of any claim that says an archaism is the result of influence. The simplest answer is: the sound change didn't reach them. Why? Relative isolation either geographically, socially or otherwise. Now there are definitely instances where you could point to westerm influence on norrland dialects but the diphthong is definitely not one of them
@@clanDeCo To my mind a influence can also be to keep archaisms due to that people around you of influence still uses. So influence to me do not really mean that some things nessecerly need to be added. Perhaps to have like a common platform of similar words when interacting... As example: Two words in west Norse that is thought to have other equivalent in Sveamål is hravn and anger which is korpr and fjord or fjärd. However in the north rafna and ånger was used. In Hälsingland the word for "I" is "Je" and most, if not all, verbs is ended with -e similar to many (but not all) verbs in Norwegian. Another word is the word "sint" and "sinnig" meaning mad, cross and angry which is used in Norway and middle north Sweden but never heard further down south in Sweden. Same goes for the word "slikt" for "such". The also goes for words like "annra hanna" instead of standard Swedish "andra handen" (other hand). I trødersk they also use "annra hanna" (which the do not in Oslo dialect) but they have a slight "nj" so it becomes "hanja". The ending for singular definte forms is very often -na in both the north and in Norway. So is also the swap in word order so "barna mina" (the kids mine) instead of "mina barn" (my kids). It is also very common to shorten the singular definitive neuter ending of -et to just -e in both Norwegian and the northern dialects. The same goes for what looks like "silent Ts" compared to standatd Swedish: "vattnet" (the water) becomes "vanne" or even "vanna". It it is also common to use the word "fara" in the middle north for "travel" and in Trønders the use "fårrå", but the å sound is closer to a nasal ą then the Swedish å so it is more like fąrą which would cognate to old Norse fárá I guess. In Trøndersk the say "A æ itj" for "I am not". In many norther Swedish dialects the same sentence is "Ja ä int" but in some diealects the "int" becomes "intje". Both tj-sounds here are soft, similar to the "ch-sound" in swedish "tjärn". Compare that to Oslo dialect "jej er ikke" and standard Swedish "jag är inte". In trøndersk they put emphasis on "æ" in words that in Oslodialects uses "e", but on the other side of the mountains the emphasis is on the "ä". Compare: Oslo: rejn Tröndersk: rægn Midfle north: rägn Swedush: regn There the west norse word for barn, fjós = fé+hús, which evolved into fjøs in Norwegian and ranges from fjås to fjös all over to fäjs in the middle north dialects. Or the word for summer pasture: bua, buá, búa, boa or in definitive form boan. This is used in Norway and all over the middle north as well. And so on and so on...
I love your videos, and the generosity, passion and patience you show in sharing your vast knowledge with all of us. As a Swede living in the southern part of Bohuslän (the part of Víkin known as Elfarsýsla in Old Norse) I thoroughly enjoyed this video, especially the bits about the origin of some of the differences between Swedish and Norwegian. The Bohuslän dialects still have many elements of Norwegian, both in pronunciation and vocabulary, so the differences have always been something I've been low-key wondering about. Önskar dig en riktigt God Jul!
This was a great video as always. I do want to point out the séa vs sjá thing, as Faroese makes something interesting here. The modern form of the infinitive is síggja, which without the skerping is *sía. We do have sjá too but it's very archaic and more of a poetic term, and should honestly be *sjáa if it were a living term (like how we also have fá > fáa).
@@HeriJoensen Eg visti, at tú vart ein, og eg hevði ein varhuga av, at Tadeusz eisini var ein málnørdur. So tað verður spennandi at síggja, um nakað kemur burturúr hjá tykkum. Eg krossi so mínar fingrar. :)
Thanks for the work you do. The classes I've taken on Norse mythology and pre-Christian Scandinavia have been disappointing. Thank you for breaking everything down in your videos with so much detail.
I'm one of the nerds who finds the differences between the 2 dialects fascinating. How particular language changes such as the 11th c monophthongization spread and evolved intrigues me 😊
Thank you so much for all your extremely informative and very fascinating videos. I enjoy each and every one of them, and thank you profoundly for teaching us.
I imagine that if I found the time and patience to really learn old norse (I will definitly be buying your self studies book btw), I'd start with the more easily accessible west old norse out of sheer convenience and then nerd out into east old norse when I felt that I had enough of a grip on the language to understand the differences and nuances. Being swedish, I am naturally very interested in east old norse. I don't know what world those detractors of yours live in but I suspect it isn't a very practical world.
Dr. Crawford. I know this is off topic but I needed an expert's opinion on something that I have come across. When you were discussing Thor's association with thunder in the Edda, I wanted to look up more about Thor because I thought Marvel had to at least draw from some other source to get this grand association with thunder and lightning. I came across this old manuscript called the Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum by one Adam of Bremen, 1070. In it, he details the particular gods that were worshipped and what they were worshipped for. I quote a section from the manuscript that I found online and it reads as follows: "At this point I shall say a few words about the religious beliefs of the Swedes. That nation has a magnificent temple, which is called Upsala, located not far from the city of Sigtuna. In this temple, built entirely of gold, the people worship the statues of three gods. These images are arranged so that Thor, the most powerful, has his throne in the middle of the group of three. On either side of him sit Othin and Freyr. Their provinces are as follows: “Thor,” they say, “rules the heavens; he is the god of thunder, wind and rain, fair weather and the produce of the fields." I cannot help but wonder do you think Snorri Sturluson did not bother mentioning the associations with thunder Thor was known for around that time because of common knowledge or what?
@@kiethhammer6882 I think they mean “heavens” as in “he flies around in the sky and causes weather in it that affects the land above”, and not that he literally rules over the heavens as some kind of god king. He is basically weather incarnated in a physical or spiritual being. He IS the weather basically.
@Lukas Sprehn The direct parallels to other Indo-European mythologies is obvious. Where it gets interesting is that while Odin is mistakenly said to be the "All-Father," the role of the creator of mankind seems to fall to Heimdall. While Thor might not be King of the Gods as Zeus was, both had supremacy of the sky.
I would like to read your stories! Also, the entire time I was watching this, I was half-concerned that your things on the ground behind you would blow away in the wind!
I've noticed how vowels are pronounced in America has changed over the past 10 years or so with the younger generation. Totally changed. The a and e most notably. A like the southern i. E like the old a or southern long i. Apple is Ipple. Egg is agg. Sometimes like iegg. Also, southern children are more and more pronouncing the long i like northerners. The dialect seems to be dying out. Perhaps due to TV and movies and in part due to migration (northerners moving south). All this may be an example of how pronunciations changed centuries ago.
Great video Dr Crawford, I'd like to see what you think on the theory that English is a Scandinavian (North Germanic) Language, rather than a West Germanic language. It's a little bit different than your normal topics, but I think it could be interesting because a lot of our everyday words are Scandinavian in origin, rather than the borrowed words.
english never went through the same sound shifts and grammar changes that the scandinavian languages did. while modern english and continential scandinavia has similar grammar, it got there different ways :)
quite interesting phonological comparison. curious if there were grammatical differences as well. always wonder why these changes occur in the first place (motivated by internal and/or external factors?) gorgeous background btw. 10/10.
From these facts stated in this video; one can conclude that the Ovansiljans-målen, of which Elfdalian is a member, are West Norse! 'Ig' ('i' before a consonant) for 1st person sg, 'brune' for bridge & so forth.
I'm from the middle, kinda, (Østerdalen, Hedmark) and I really recognise a lot of what you're saying in my dialect. I'd say it's almost 50/50, maybe a little more of West. Could you explain the mixing of the two in some way? (If there is anythimg to be said about it, or any good sources from this inbetween-area)
Let us take a moment to appreciate the West Nordic features of the of the dialects of Jutland where the pronoun "I", standard Danish "jeg", is "a" or, in the more archaic periphery of Thy and Sønderjylland (North Slesvig), "æ", both without the vowel breaking that East Norse has in this word. Also, umlaut in the present of verbs is still alive and kicking in south-eastern Sønderjylland. When I ask my mother who grew up there in the 50s to translate "jeg har, jeg går, jeg står, jeg får, jeg slår, jeg kommer" (I have, I go, I stand, I get, I beat, I come), it is /æ ¹he:ə, æ ¹gæ:ə, æ ¹stæ:ə, æ ¹fæ:ə, æ ¹slæ:ə, æ ¹kømə/. This also once existed in an area north of Århus. I am generally always a little puzzled by the traditional distinction between East and West Norse because it seems extremely blurred. The oft-cited diphthongs still exist in northern Sweden, northern Swedish Finland, Swedish Estonian (though displaced and moribund) and Gotland, while Shetland Norn had monophthongs. I mentioned the "I" pronoun and the present-tense umlauts above. And the equally oft-cited loss of /m, n/ before /p, t, k/ is obviously more common in West Norse but also widespread in East Norse ("thank": "tacka, takke"; "drink": "dricka, drikke" etc.) and even more so in Jutlandic: 'itt' versus (archaic) Standard Danish "inte" ("not"); "klit" ("sand dune", also in Standard Danish) vs. East Danish "klint" ("cliff"); "bakke" ("hill", also in Standard Danish) vs. East Danish "banke" ("hill, sand bank") etc. While not much is written in Old East Norse, I can recommend the slightly younger Danish provincial law codes from the 13th century for an interesting read. They tell us a lot about the society of the past. The Law of Jutland is often cited, but the Scanian Law has more archaic language and is even written in runes. Swedish and Gutnish provincial law codes also exist from this age.
As a non-linguist, interested observer, the aspect of this whole topic that I’d love to hear discussed... How and why did these languages develop such variations in, what seems like, such a short time?
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure it primarily has to do with which outside languages the two regions primarily contacted. East Norse was further into Slavic and Baltic territory, whereas West Norse were contacting Celtic and West/Southwest European languages.
Well, as Jackson says, the differences are not particularly large. I don't think it is necessary to assume outside influence besides the normal linguistic change in a relatively large area.
@@troelspeterroland6998 I’m not, I’m saying the lack of outside influence in Iceland and the Faroes resulted in their languages changing “differently” from those on the continent. The differences between Old West and East Norse aren’t huge, but the differences between the languages that developed from them are pretty significant.
It happened due to a need for conveying new standardised state laws to population groups that didn’t speak, write or read Latin. This is why law texts like Jydske Law and Scanian Law have a Latin version and then several different regional versions in the 1200s.
As I grow up in Uppland (not far from Jarlabanke’s bro) I find it odd that you say that the East Norse texts are hard to find. Just go for a freaking walk and you pass by the original “manuscripts”! But, yes, the literary value of “I’m such an important guy that I could move the place for the ting” is limited…
He's not saying East Norse texts are hard to find, he's saying that there is barely any literature (sagas, chronicles, poetry etc) in Old East Norse. All of those are in Old West Norse. Virtually the only Old East Norse texts are runestone inscriptions. And as you say, most of those are so short and formulaic that their historical value far exceeds their literary value. The only major exceptions are the Rök stone and the Gripsholm stone, both of which feature poetry of considerable length for a runestone (the Rök stone has 760 characters, the Gripsholm stone about 110). Comparing that to the large body of Old West Norse sagas and chronicles, I think Crawford is justified to say that there is very little to read in Old East Norse.
Since your on the topic of the variations of Old Norse, maybe make a video on Greenlandic Norse? From what I understand one big difference is they turn the "Th-" sounds into "T" sounds, so "Thor" becomes "Tor." I'm fascinated by the small differences between Old Norse sub regions that I think would be really interesting if you covered
þ > t in OWN is also a feature of Faroese. Faroese loses this pretty early so already in the early 1400s you see people having difficulties writing t and þ correctly.
Finnishswedish speaking parts of Finland in ostrobothnia, we use some of the old swedish words like komber. Every word is written theway you speak it. example: Tomtin komber me paketin på julaftonin, å tå vaar ja glad. Santaclaus comes with presents on Christmas, and then i become happy. Tå ja va lill så bruk ja peed me cyklin ront husi vårt, åså bruk ja kletär i trädin å. Ibland föll ja å tå böra ja grååt. When i was little i used to bicycle around our house, and i used to climb in trees aswell. Sometimes i fell and then i started crying. Sii tidee, e nain som e ut å simar! Kanski man sko fara å ta se eit dåpp sjölv å? See there, someone is out and swimming! Mabe i should go take a dip aswell? Ska do koma naa elo? Vi vaar jo förseina om int do lagar de fäädi fåort. Are you coming or not? We are going to come late if you are not done fast. Ho tycker do ja siir ut, eja snygg? What do you think, do i look nice? Ejo nåo förfäälit dehär tå dem ska bara höjj på skattin på skattin, när ska e ta slut dehär eländi? This is terrible when they just raise the tax on the tax, when will this misery end? bridge=bråo Snåo tråo Låppo= The End 🙂
Does "Västgötalagen" count as Oldeastnorse or early medieval Swedish (if that's even a thing), if it's distinguishable, if you have heard of it. It is one of oldest lawbook in Sweden from the early 13th century. So about the same time Snorre Sturlason wrote the Poetic Edda if i'm right.
Really enjoyed this video, though I have a slightly unrelated question: I think the corpus of Proto-Norse is so meagre that you can't really determine how divergent different dialects would be. Depending on the model of the cause of language change, you may even argue that the local innovations of Proto-Norse would be more heterogenous than Old-Norse. A good example of this is the many words for 'Horse, whether it is Stentoften *Hangistumz, where you may expect *hahistumz or Möjbrostenen *haha. Generally interpretations of these words are contested, but may show a more evolved divergent dialect cluster. Depending on the language shift model from Proto-Norse to Old-Norse (From Eggjasteinen and onward -600), if it was due to migration and calamity population decimation - You would actually expect Old Norse to be more homogeneous across the board. Several perpetrators have otherwise been proposed, such as central germanic people taking refugee from huns in scandinavia, a cold period during 450-550, plague and so on. What do you think about the cause for the rapid change from Proto-Norse to Old-Norse?
Wasn’t the Norwegian King Harald Fairhair from Vikin? Would he have spoken a dialect of Old East Norse rather than one of the Old West Norse dialects spoken by rest of his countrymen?
I'm curious why some English (West Germanic) phonemes didn't "break" whereas they did in North Germanic languages, making some modern English words more similar to older Germanic forms. I read an article one time theorizing that English could be categorized as a crypto-Scandinavian language, but I'm not sure how much validity there is in that claim. I do notice though that in many American dialects there are phonemes in use that sound very much like some of what I hear in Dr. Crawford's reconstructed Norse pronunciations. Weird, or no?
The phonemes and the pronunciation rules and the spelling etc were always changed / decided by the dude that modified / created the new version of the language, then they were taught to ppl at school - languages don’t change on their own, they are changed by a dude (usually a linguist) that decides to create a new version, by modifying existing terms as well as creating new terms based on the same new spelling / grammar rules etc that hè decided, which is how each language was created, except for Proto European, which is the first proper language that a dude created from scratch a long time ago, that came with the first proper writing system, which inspired all other languages, either directly or indirectly, and most European languages directly come from Proto European!
Well my heritage is Orcadian and Icelandic (but mainly Orcadian where they lived until three generations ago) so I guess I'm old West Norse. Although my ancestors are Orcadian, my DNA shows that I have a small amount of Native American too. Which means I am living proof that the Vikings went back and forth along the route Norway-Orkney-Iceland-Greenland. I find that very satisfying.
Not necessarily. Just because you have DNA from two widely separated geographic areas does mean interbreeding was going on between those people groups. DNA is a funny thing.
Unrelated question, but I've noticed you pronounce the "f" in certain names as we would in English instead of as a "v", such as in Verdfolnir or Svadilfari. Why is this?
It's even weirder that people would get bent out of shape about east vs west Old Norse than about dialects of modern languages, which have modern identity politics baggage. Maybe being forced to learn British English instead of American English feels Eurocentric or something, but who in 2022 has strong feelings about medieval Scandinavian regional politics?
Fairly certain most of the people who watch you are linguists or people who study linguistics but doesn’t necessarily have the knowledge from a university education but sought it out on their own, though.
I don't know if comments are a good way to contact you But what happened with Continental Norse verb conjugations? It wasn't lost, like in English, it wasn't (largely) retained, like, say, in German or Icelandic, but they have 3rd p.s. form spread to every other person. How does that happen? Especially considering how distinct they were, so confusion is not a good culprit. Saying something like "I eats" makes no sense outside very narrow contexts. And considering how specific and uncommon this usage is it is just odd to see such a unique development. On the contrary, if this isn't that uncommon or odd, why didn't the same thing happen to, say, English or even, say, Spanish?
Jackson Crawford says Old East Norse is the ugly part of the country! What more proof do you need that he's a traitor? Fy, for fanden! ;-) Speaking of the ugly part of the country, I don't expect to see a video location looking north from Casper, Wyoming, in February (or anytime). All the best to (Doctor) Mr. Crawford, and keep it up!
Unrelated to the topic of this video, I find the similarity between the words 'Viken' and 'viking' highly suggestive. It may be a coincidence, as the etymology of 'viking' is controversial. But in German at least the word 'Wikinger' is what we call Vikings and what we would call residents of a town or region named something like Viken (noting that the phoneme represented in English by a V is represented in German by a W). That could also just be a coincidence, but I suspect it isn't.
Just a hypothesis, it is political, Sweden is the largest Scandinavian country and perhaps the one that have the least knowledge of it’s history. It dies seem weird to some here that we were not the most politicly strong (danmark) and that we are perhaps, the least… lets say civilised folk, becouse that might be how most folk interpret that. So some veiw it as a slight against uor history, ofcorse stemming from the fact that we mostly learn about the time of the vikings rather then about their language, and if we do it is just about the runes, not the edda
East Norse had less umlaut, but much more vowel harmony (that later disappeared). The reasons for learning Old East Norse before Old East Norse are ... none. You read most rune stones in Old East Norse, but they are written in 16-staved futhark, where most of the phonology is "rationalized away" anyways.
A couple of other key differences between East and West worth mentioning: West has the nasal-stop assimilation (e.g. Norwegian "bratt", "sopp", Swedish "brant", "svamp"). And West retained the diphthongs (except Gutnish, if regarded as East Norse and not a separate branch).
That is "a truth with modification"! You can (or rather should) not talk about "Swedish" in a historical sense by looking at the modern standardised Swedish as it is a artificially created language done by combining two very specific dialects of the two biggest dialect groups. It is a very narrow base and do not reflect the spoken language of the whole country at the time (or before). A better way to look at it is by the dialectal groups, aka "Mål", that much better reflects how the language has evolved and how it is still spoken. For example there is still plenty of diphtongs in the dialects. Westerbottnian for example still uses the "ei" in "stein" as did the Estonian Swedish before WW2 (just as the Guts still do as well), Scanians (or south-Swedish kn general) is known for their diphtobgs and triphtongs. Diphtongs are also part of Finland-Swedish. So no you can not make that generalisation, you has to be more specific to get it right. Also; In several areas i Sweden the word "sopp" is still used instead of "svamp" and that word is still part of many mushroom names regardless of the area.
@@sirseigan The Scanian diphthongs are secondary (i.e. younger) though, and not from Old Norse. But I agree with the east-west divide being somewhat unconvincing, or to quote myself from above: "Let us take a moment to appreciate the West Nordic features of the of the dialects of Jutland where the pronoun "I", standard Danish "jeg", is "a" or [...] "æ", both without the vowel breaking that East Norse has in this word. Also, umlaut in the present of verbs is still alive and kicking in south-eastern Sønderjylland. [...] "jeg har, jeg går, jeg står, jeg får, jeg slår, jeg kommer" (I have, I go, I stand, I get, I beat, I come), [...] is /æ ¹he:ə, æ ¹gæ:ə, æ ¹stæ:ə, æ ¹fæ:ə, æ ¹slæ:ə, æ ¹kømə/. This also once existed in an area north of Århus. [...] The oft-cited diphthongs still exist in northern Sweden, northern Swedish Finland, Swedish Estonian (though displaced and moribund) and Gotland, while Shetland Norn had monophthongs. [...] And the equally oft-cited loss of /m, n/ before /p, t, k/ is obviously more common in West Norse but also widespread in East Norse ("thank": "tacka, takke"; "drink": "dricka, drikke" etc.) and even more so in Jutlandic: 'itt' versus (archaic) Standard Danish "inte" ("not"); "klit" ("sand dune", also in Standard Danish) vs. East Danish "klint" ("cliff") etc.".
Internationally 'o' is not pronounced like a Swedish o, so in an international linguistic sense, Swedish bro is not pronounced with an [o] sound. Just like the 'i' in English bridge is not pronounced with an [i] sound.
