Starting Your Norse Studies (with Book Recs) 

I also have a separate video with book recommendations about runes: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6k7a4wHmSXI.html

Dr. Crawford: "I'm going to tell you how you can study Old Norse without having to pay a penny to academia." Angry Academic Wind: "No."

I never thought I would sit on a rainy (London UK) Christmas Day with my 14 year old grandson and listen to him talk me through old Norse grammar and hear him talk about the difference between ON and Latin! After a few days he has a grasp of the basics. Thank you Jackson. We love you. I am not a linguist.

This makes me really grateful to be a native German speaker. Can't imagine how much harder it must be to try and learn Old Norse when all you know is modern English. Hell, grammar-wise German probably even gives you an advantage over continental Scandinavians.

By the way (as my assistant Stella points out), if you're looking to buy any of the books I recommend, December is a great time to do it because many presses have sales. Hackett (who publishes my books) is having a sale right now through January 8th; 25% off all *regular* books (not the signed boxed set) with code YE2022. The University of Pennsylvania press, which publishes Mitchell's "Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages" and several other good titles in this field (www.pennpress.org/search-result/?keyword=norse) is having a sale through December 31st; 40% off all books and free US shipping with code HOLIDAY22-FM.

Professor I have been learning Old Norse when I saw your previous video where you talked about which books to buy if we wanted to learn Old Norse. I bought "A New Introduction to Old Norse", that are 3 books, and I can say that now I am translating texts without any difficulties. I really bless the first day when I saw your videos

That career advice is sad but true. I did a master's degree in medieval studies and I was lucky enough to land a job in a historical institute almost immediately, but it was just an endless series of short term contracts and paid little more than working retail. Once I ran out of contracts I started watching job listings and if I was lucky there might be a relevant listing every other month or so, usually temporary. If it was one of those rare permanent positions you could be sure there would be hundreds of applicants with many heavy hitters with years of experience applying, in other words a relative newcomer might as well not apply. At this point I was nearing 30 and still hadn't had a job contract longer than 6 months, and still depended on my family for support. Obviously this arrangement couldn't last and I ended up taking an internship at a completely unrelated government department where I finally got a permanent position and significantly higher pay. Not least this enabled me to get an apartment and start travelling to those places I'd been reading about but never could afford to visit. I've still kept a strong interest in history as a hobby, but if there's one thing I'm going to regret is that I was never able to get proper employment in what I'm most qualified to do. I'd highly recommend people keep their interest in this type of field as a hobby unless they're 100% convinced they're willing to sacrifice everything else to work in it. I know people 40+ who're still going from contract to contract, never knowing if they'll have an income a few months from now.

I was on a PhD track in Scandinavian history at UW Wisconsin after having taken grad course at Stockholms Universitet. This was in 1989. At the time, other PhD students had been there for > 15 years still working as adjuncts on a semester to semester contract basis. They scared me away from continuing beyond my Master degree. It's one of my biggest regrets in life because I really loved the topic of Swedish history. LIttle did I know that Scandinavian history and language would become "cool" again 30 years later...

Amazing video recommendation! Thank you and much appreciated!

Your point about knowing the basics off cold is really important, and has been a considerable aid to me in my studies of Old English.

as of now I am trying to learn Orkney Norn which is a dialect of Old Norse yes I could learn Old Norse... I might but as of now Orkney Norn is very interesting!

On the note of Viking history resources, I found Kenneth Harl’s “Great Courses” course to be very well done.

I think you have great advice re:career stuff. I'm keeping language/history stuff as purely a hobby until my kids are older and maybe I can go back to school for it.

E. V. Gordon’s book was a great resource for me. I did study Ancient Greek for years before I took up Old Norse, and after studying modern Swedish for some years, so Old Norse wasn’t a big jump. Gordon gives a good overview of the grammar and great texts with notes. I can back learning Swedish, too.

Thank you for the helpful tips. You have already done so much to help me learn Old Norse. I eagerly await the publication of your textbook 🌷

You asked why someone would look into this, for me personally? The same reason why I looked into Old English / Anglo-Saxon. My mother was a couple years shy of her dissertation in this latter topic. Hilariously, I asked her the same question you just answered about old norse, if I should study it on my own or if I should go to university She only pause for about 2 seconds before answering, do it on your own LOL

Thanks for your continued interest & dedication to this.

Perfect video thank you sir! I've always delved into this subject but never had a good idea of where to truly start.

Thank you. Incredibly helpful as always!!! (If you are new to this language, this being 'Old Norse' START HERE)

That was extremely well done and very coherent, thank you very much for making this video!

I always come for the folklore and mythology, and love learning about the language as well. Before this video, I had all three of the Icelandic sagas you mentioned (exact translations too; what are the odds?). I also have the Penguin's Sagas of Warrior-Poets and Grettir the Strong. Are those translations good as well? Thanks for all you do!

wow, i was searching around where and how i could learn old norse on the internet just a couple days ago, and now i stumbled across this video. thanks for the awesome content doc!

I have a beautiful book by Oxford, "The Syntax of Old Norse". Interesting om the grammar of old norse!

Thank you for this, Dr. Crawford! Very helpful.

Oh an introduction video, that's awesome, thank you

hyped for the new old norse text you're working on! love watching your videos on the grammar, and would be really nice to have it codified in text form

Always looking for good recommendations. Have a few already and had a few more on wishlist but added others after watching this. Thank you for all the info you share on here.

Hands down already the most comprehensive approach, makes books list complete for the coming season and for years to come. So so so many good titles and links, thanks

Just started my steps

Love that you din edit the vid, duder. Keeps it real 🖖

It’s really cool you made this. Commenting to up it in the algorithms.

Thanks for all the good work that you do Is it possible to make a list about resources available that are not in English? A Scandinavian language or German, perhaps?

……and I was * literally * just looking for this information.

I wish there was a book that taught Old Norse the way my German book from high school did 😂

Thank you this was very informative

Thank you for the recommandations Doc, helps a ton

I still watch your channel and learned a lot ❤️❤️ thank you so much

The wond is so harsh cause DocCraw got the gods excited.

Making an in depth and helpful video about where to start when learning old Norse :D Wind: *n o*

Thanks, I'm in the room of the laziest bunch to be found looking for the lowest hanging fruit to pick. What to pick is about what will work and why. Should someone ask, "How long did it take you to do that? The answer often is about two hours with ten years of looking at it in between the minutes.

I have a BA in History from IU Bloomington. I took a course in Viking/Norse culture from a Professor Blaisdell in the 1980s. He was kind of an old man at that time. I was wondering if you had heard of him.

If you need a book idea to write, I would love to see a comparison book for modern scandavian languages (at least between norweign, Swedish, Danish and modern Icelandic) with a dash of old norse for references. There's one for romance languages by mikhail petrunin that I thought was fun to read and compare to as a long term Spanish learner. Norweign is one of my baby languages I'm learning so I might be biased/greedy here, but I think you would be a great author for such a project 😊

@3:11 what?! .. what?! Immediately pauses video to switch on computer to download a free copy of a new introduction to old norse

Ah this shall be an excellent resource.

This was really helpful. Thanks.

Thank you so much for this video. I was considering writing to you somehow to ask how and where to start with the study of Old Norse, especially since it is almost an impossible hope for me to learn from you directly in-person.

Got some Mullein in the back ground

My studies are rather superficial and are for character development for Ren Faires and Festivals. I like the whole fantasy stigma, to a point, but it would be nice to get a basic knowledge of a conversational dialect in old Norse to impress and confuse folks at the festivals,LOL. I just finished a book by Neil Price titled “ The Children of Ash and Elm”. Im fairly good at parroting the language, but would like to dive a little deeper.

So, I’m a nutshell, just learn every Germanic language and then you’re good. 😂

Recommendations for Old English?

Thx friend!

I am interested because I want to go into archeology. I have both introduction to old Norse plus their mp3s in introduction to reading and how to pronounce. Plus three linguists books.

It's getting down right windy lately here in Colorado innit?

Thank you for all your work as always, your videos were a great start for me! And am about one year into self learning, currently I am able to read prose at a low level. I recently bought "The syntax of old norse" I feel it's useful for wrapping your head around phrasing. Similar to the short passages in "A new into. to ON" Do any discord servers exist which are meant for learning?

Regarding old east Norse vs old west Norse it sounds like a take on high German vs low German. I'm told low German is lower class.

If there are any, what are the best translators/dictionaries for norse whether they be a website or book?

Does anyone have a link for the 3 books set mentioned at the beginning of the video?

Do you guys know if there is any answer key to "graded readings and exercises in old icelandic"?

Guy, I'm gonna be honest, you're the only person I've heard even acknowledge the distinction between Old East Norse and Old West Norse. Did someone corner you in a coffeeshop about this or something?

Craig Van Every

the spanish/catalan comparison for old west/east norse seems like a poor one--the more apt comparison would probably be catalan vs occitan

🙂🙂

Sssssssick ring

can i get a list on the recommends, i kinda just put this on without thinking

Is Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman a good source?

Hey dude, you still have a responsibility. Someone teaching you to drive a car should at the very minimum point out that driving a car into someone will cause them harm.

I agree with skipping the runes because there is almost nothing to read. Unless you happen to be Swedish, which I am. Then there is a good chance you will learn runes first. The reason for that is of course rune stones and we had some lessons in school as kids, I mean, it does make sense if you think about it? It's easy because rune stones basically all say the same thing. 16 runes but FRKISTBL - ᚠᚱᚴᛁᛋᛏᛒᛚ looks almost the same as the normal alphabet meaning there are only eight runes to learn. Trick is to connect them to sounds not letters because that's how they were written. Most texts are simple and close enough to modern Swedish that many stones can be read and understood by anyone. Almost all rune stones are post Viking age and often clearly christian. Modern Swedish will say "His father", older, dialectal and poetic Swedish would be "Father his" and that is what rune stones say. To further remove all mystery the majority just say this and this raised the stone after his father or built a bridge. Quite often followed by something like may god save his soul. The interesting thing is their names. The tradition seems to have been that you were given a temporary name as a child because it's hard to know who you are going to become as an adult. Then you earned your name one way or the other. Which means there are some interesting and entertaining names carved on rune stones but that is more culture than langauge.