What is the Slavic Language in the Northman? 

To be clear, Hamlet was based on the legend that The Northman is a depiction of. Shakespeare cribbed it with great flair

Your Polish pronunciation in this video was pretty damn spot on, I'm impressed!

I’m interested in the Western Slavic dialects of the Wends. Many surnames from eastern Germany are Slavic in origin and were, in time, Germanicized.

Rodzina, Rodina, Rodnina can mean "family", "tribe", "motherland", "cousin", depending on the Slavic language, the root Rod has many meanings, "where you belong", "birth", "your people", "your cousins" etc...

As Polish I can catch some words. I also know bases of russian and I know how czechian, slovakian and ukrainian sounds and to me it was no one of them but defenetly slavic. Olga's slavic sequens was very impressious to me, it sounds really ancient

HI! I'm a history student and a native speaker (Ukrainian and Russian), and I also studied and assisted in teaching Old East Slavic&Old Church Slavonic language. Thank you so much for this video, I wasn't even aware of this movie' existence, and now I'm thrilled to go and listen to the language spoken there!!! For the time period& the place given, it would make sense for the Slavic people to speak Old Novgorodian - the language which was considered a dialect of Old East Slavic, but recently has gained enough evidence and differences to be considered a separate branch out of Proto-Slavic. Gardariki land refers mainly to the lands of Duchy of Novgorod, and there in the 10th century CE Old Novgorodian would be spoken. Also, Old East Slavic would be totally fine, as it was a universal and official language for all the Kievan Rus lands, which will include Novgorod decades later, and the people of Novogorod most likely spoke both of them as bilinguals - we can see it clearly in the chronicles of the time :) Definitely West or South Slavic would be wrong - even the Old Church Slavonic, which you mentioned, at the time was used only as written language of the Church (like Latin in Western lands), and even the official documents were written on Old East Slavic (daily communication was conducted in Old Novgorodian on the contrary). From the only scene that I've found on the internet(the same attack scene as in your video) - I am a bit confused as to which language do they speak :) Something like "[n/m]edvjedje mo[l/w]it', [n/m]edvjedje von idöt" can be heard, which could be translated as "The Bears are praying??/speaking???, the bears there/outside are coming". The conjugation of the verb is a bit strange (it should be 3rd person plural with atь/jatь, utь/jutь endings, but it is the 3rd person singular), but it can probably be solved as assimilation with "lüdie" - pluralia tantum meaning "people, the crowd", the noun appearing only in the plural form but using the conjugation of the singular one. If we use this strange translation and assimilation, in Old East Slavic it would sound as "medviedie molitь/molvitь, medviedie vъnъ idetь", and in Old Novgorodian it would be "med(ь)viedie molitь/mъlъvitь" and the rest is the same, with letters ь/ъ representing Proto-Slavic short vowels "e/o" respectfully which were lost around 13-14th century. So even if we assume that the ь/ъ sounds were neglected as now they just mark hard/soft consonants in East Slavic languages, there is still an observable difference, for example in the word идеть (idetь in Old East Slavic). In the movie it's pronounced idöt, as in the modern Russian language, but the sound ö(as in bird or heard) will not appear neither in Old East Slavic nor Novgorodian until at least 12th century, and it will be the gradual change for more than a 100 years in Russian and only a tiny fraction in Ukrainian. Also the hardening of palatalised t would also occur much later in Russian - and in modern Ukrainian it will be lost at all, for example, the same with late Old Novgorodian - there it would just be "ide". Now, I by no means speak Polish, but as the people in the comments pointed out, that the first word sounds a lot like niedźwiedzie in Polish, and I assume (via dictionary only) that the second word in the sentence for to say/to speak, which is "mówić" in Polish, can also be probably connected with the scene above as in the old times it would be pronounced differently. So in the end (using this 5-second fragment only) I would say that they could've definitely used some of the OES/ON language, but the pronunciation is a bit off, and it is a bit strange to hear the Polish pronunciation (if it is one) of first two words in Gardarika lands. But to end this nerdy nightmare, I'm only gonna say that they nevertheless did a great thing as they at least speak someting slavic and of course I can be wrong as I only hear 5 words of an entire movie :) I'm gonna go watch it as it's not on the streamings yet, and then maybe then I could say something more precise and concrete on the matter - as I already wrote an analysis based on only my hearing of a tiny fragment without any written record, so it might be totally wrong, but maybe someone will find it useful or correct me :)

In this scene: 4:03, one of the guards is shouting "niedźwiedzie". Which means "bears" in Polish. It sound exactly like Polish. In different Slavic languages it would be something like "medvedi". Even in different west slavic languages. I might be wrong though. I think they mixed different Slavic languages in one. Trying as hard as I could to understand what exactly he is shouting, I think its something like "Bears (of something???) are coming". Second word sounds a little bit like "wody", which means "of water" in Polish. I dont know why would he say that. Maybe because they are vikings, so you know, sailors. It sound also little bit like "wojny" (although Im really reaching right now), which means "of war". But I might be comepletely wrong about all of this :D

According to the prominent Russian historical linguist Andrey Zaliznyak, there were two main East-Slavic vernacular dialects until 13-14 centuries: an Old East Slavic and Old Novgorod dialect. If events in the Northman take place in the Nothern Russia around Novgorod, then it could be this Old Novgorod dialect.

Just so you know, the script depicted on your thumbnail is Glagolitic, which was used mostly by South Slavs. I can't think of an example of it being used by the East Slavs, but hey it looks far more mystical for most people :D Keep up the good work and keep on covering that beautiful Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic history. Cheers

Skarsgård is turning into one of our real modern action stars, now he's just proving it.

We discussed this movie in my university lecture on medieval cultural history, thanks for bringing attention to it!

It’s admirable that they try to re-create a version of old Slavic but keep in mind this is done for dramatic delivery of a story to primarily an English speaking audience who’s going to know if a specific spoken phrase is an appropriate eastern Slavic representation of what the language would be and if the extra speaking Polish or Russian in the background if you’re an English-speaking American the primary audience

In my opinion it's a mix of modern slavic languages. I'm Polish and I speak some Ukrainian and Russian and I recognize words from all of those languages. And maybe some misspeled Polish? For example, in the clip in the fourth minute of the video, you can clearly hear the guard screams "niedźwiedzie" - "bears" in Polish.

Hello Hilbert. It looks a good film as you say and well researched, so old wargamers like me do not sit there mumbling "Ney, wrong helmet". In my day we had to watch Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis and think ourselves lucky they called it Vikings. The nearest we got to Slavonic was "Da da da, da da da, da da, da da, da da, da da, da da" in Latin script.

Wonderful video, thanks! I just saw this film today in a local cinema. I loved it. I'd be interested in watching more videos on the film, especially in relation to the rituals and religious references (and experiences).

I really enjoyed this video, never watched this movie, but I liked it and keep the good work up! As a Bulgarian, it's always nice when we get noticed, but great video nonetheless

I just enjoy how deep you are in all this stuff. When you showed a wheat field I knew you were going to speak about my lovely Ukraine :D Your slavic pronunciation is a thousand times better than a regular non slavic person could do. And it is interesting, because it looks like English is your first language and I thought our "heavy and maximum clear" letters are hard to pronounce for English dudes.

Hi Hilbert, can you talk about the clothes in The Northman? From what I've seen in museums, old "viking-era" nordic people were using a wide array of colors, especially colored thread decorating simpler garments made of cloth. Not necessarily the weird studded leather and fur of shows like "Vikings" with their overly brown, grey and black colors, though I suspect pelts were still used to some extent because of the climate.

Thank you for the video on this topic

Banging video mate, keep it up

5:42 well, there is a little mistake. It was not created to convert bulgarians, since it was created by st. Kiril before mission to great moravia from slavic dialect near Thessaloniki and then was recognised by Rome. The Bulgarian part starts generation later, when Kiril's scholars were expelled by frankish priests and settled in bulgaria, where they created cyrilics

4:20 In East Slavic historical linguistics "pleophony" normally refers to something more specific than inserting vowels between all consonants (all varieties of Proto-Slavic display a tendency towards open syllables, but they vary greatly in how they end up achieving them). It's generally used in reference to a specific process occurring in environments where a liquid consonant (*l or *r) in syllable coda position was followed by a consonant (for example, PS *vorgŭ, which evolved into Ukrainian "voroh", Slovene "vrag" and Polish "wróg", among others). "Viter" derives from PS *větrŭ, where the liquid was followed by a vowel and a different process occurred which ended up with a vowel preceding the "r" not just in East Slavic languages, but also all the South Slavic ones (Croatian "vjetar") and some of the West Slavic ones (Slovak "vietor" vs. Czech "vítr").

knew you be all over this one great to see your doing well bud.

Loved that callback to the lindybeige video hahahah. Actually the video that got me introduced to your channel.

oh hey this is very interesting love your vids

just a interesting note: old church slavonic with hlaholica was also spread by Methodius and Konstantin to Great Moravia in today Czechia and Slovakia since year 863

One of your best presented and researched videos and excellent linguistic research, greatly enjoyed it. Just hope that I will be able to see the film as I dont get to see many. I have a great interest in the Norse anyway, greatly enjoyed visiting the longboat museum Norway.

Thank you. That's brilliant!

3:00 Actually, the slavic languages started diverging only somewhat in the late 1st millenium, probably during approx. IX century

Thank you so much, I just wish that the history teachers at school could have made history as interesting as you do.

With or without the face reveal is fine, I think seeing you speak is good for adding emphasis to a subject.

went to see this film with some friends the other day was brilliant :)

At this time southern coasts of Baltic sea were Slavic territories (Poland), they were pagans, but they were not only victims, we had our own pirates which fought with Vikings, sometimes Slavic warriors joined to Viking bands. There were some important sites like Wolin island or Rugia island - slavic strongholds against Vikings. And polish name for slavic pirates "slavic vikings" is "chąśnicy", hard to say by english speakers, this term means "people who bite". Also at this time there were strong pagan slavic tribes, living between Odra river and Łaba river - also fighting with especially Danish Vikings. And at this time Berlin was a slavic site :-)

Please Hilbert I’m begging you, make a video on Widukind and the Saxons wars. I feel as if you have information on it that’s not easily available.

Great video! Thanks for doing a video on this specific topic! Where did you get that shield to your right? It's beautiful work.

This film's accuracy wasn't just historical, but literary as well. The story structure, narrative beats, use of allegory and the supernatural were right out of the sagas. I loved every second of it.

When you mentioned viking series just fun fact: The one of the greatest Viking Canute was half Slavic by his mother

Man you should do more in front of the camera videos! :D

Its very encouraging to see small yet very emersive details like that in films. The film/movie medium shapes so much of our perception and belife today its a crime every time its missused. Personally im from Slovenia and I am very intereasted in Slavic history, especially consurning modern slovenia territory. We have a language most similar to Czech, Slovakians, Croatians and Serbians. But unlike the Croations and Serbs our language is much more influenced by german.

Regarding some of the extras' lines - The phrase in question, "to me", has really barely changed in most slavic languages. So not only is the form "ko mně" Russian, it is very likely not far from the old Ruthenian or even old Slavic. Several cognates include "ke mně" in Czech, "ku mne" in Slovak, and probably most importantly, "ku mňi" in Rusyn, the closest relative of Ukrainian and another east Slavic language. So while in Ukrainian itself it has changed (and not by that much either), it does have historical foundation and in many languages has only shifted by one or two letters. Plus, if the extras were Slavic, it was probably easier to just let them speak and focus on the main characters. We can understand each other after all, and a normal viewer wouldn't notice.

I simply would have thought that the Slavic actors were simply speaking their native languages, which is why many other speakers of those understood what they were saying, but that is just my guess And to answer your question at the end of the video, yes show your face more often. Nothing wrong with the mask avatar, you can keep that too

Eggers made the most historically accurate movie about the Viking age and also got the most historically accurate depiction of the Rus. Double win (if I'm wrong please correct me)

After that first battle scene ends, you can hear tribe leader telling guards to take the prisoners to Kiev, which was a very cool, subtle touch, especially for me as I was born there!

Wow! Your polish pronunciation is just great. Respect!

Hi, what was the Old Ænglish name for Paris or Orleans (before Normans)?? I think Al-Andalusia was named as "Heathen Spain" by 12th-13th Century Norse

I think in this cinema we hearing something like Esperanto, compilation of multiple slavic languages. Sure, some of words and sentences was reconstructed and aligned with proto-slavic. As a native ukrainian speaker (also I know polish, serbian/croatian, and a little bit bulgarian) I understand common context, I can catch a lot of words from all of these languages, same mix we have with pronunciation. But actually we have a problem with diphthongs pronouncing. Looks like producers didn't take care about it. Let's take for example such words as: ріка[rika]-river, вітер[viter]-wind. These words became in our modern languages from proto-slavic language and was not changed at all except dyphthong [yat/jať]. This dyphthong mutated into different letters and sounds in each slavic language. ukr. rika/ріка | ukr. viter/вітер pol. rzeka | pol. wiatr croat. rijeka | croat. vjetar serb. reka | serb. vetar bul. reka/река | bul. viatr/вятър But these changes happened between of 11th-14th centuries, before it sounded totally differently. But I can't provide the samples here it's too complicated, just google it)

My birth town Trebinje is in your video. Nice😊

Hi Hilbert, did you like the last kingdom? I recall you did a video ages ago on it.

Well probably most Slavic people might hear something similar to what they know now but you should consider as you mentioned that around 1000 years ago those tribes were able to easily communicate between themselves and yes they settled around the rivers and the mutual understanding is important since they knew they are from one source unlike the ones to the west that were - mute or just hard to understand as many languages use that description for name of the Germany. Also modern Slavic languages that are of 3 branches - west, east and south have till this day some degree of understanding. It is closer in the languages of one branch but also depends on the word - some words might be understandable but they seem old-fashioned meaning for example that one's grandmother in Poland could use much more words that will be understa for a Ukrainian/Russian /Belarusian speaker then for a young Pole. Languages evolve and are heavily influenced by other languages and general culture. For example I'm not saying what language they are speaking but nowadays Polish soldier is - "żołnierz" but not so long ago it would more likely be "wojak" - from wojna -war. Again 'to fight" in modern Polish would be : walczyć but also "bić się " od "bójka" and "bój " was also sinonimus with "war" . So my best guess of the scene is proto- Slavic leaning to Ukrainian (but bear in mind that modern ukrainian has been influenced both by russian and polish languages ). Because again in modern Polish you would say :" do mnie " (come to me) but in older version it would also be "ku mnie".

As a Bulgarian I can confirm its not Church Slavonic, as its based on Old Bulgarian, I can still catch some of the words and they don't sound like Church slavonic, the extras seem to speak modern Russian, but the rest is some East Slavic dialect. Really love the research they've put into this movie.

I love the Lindybeige clip, lol

This is great

Yeah, as a fellow slav I too caught few words. Most particularly, in 4:04 the guard shouts something very similar to modern czech 'medvědi', in vocative I would assume, which would mean 'bears', followed by some other words. However I am no linguist and can be very easily mistaken.

Hiring a philology consultant is something every historical movie should do, even for more recent periods. People from 100, 200, 500 years ago did not speak like we do, even if it was a language still used today such as English. Hell, even going back 50 years will have its effects on vocabulary. How people speak is a reflection of how they think.

I wish there would be a show or movie strictly about the Vikings and Rus. From the research I've done, there is so much to tell and so much history. Plenty of drama with religion as well. My family is Scandinavian, Scottish, Irish, and Russian. Been doing a lot of research and there is so much potential.

As a student of Russian i found this video to be fascinating and informative!

We always enjoy seeing Hunkbert regardless.

Approximately, the 10th century is the period when different Slavic languages started to appear from the old Slavic. Still, between certain contemporary Slavic languages there is considerable level of intelligibility.

Can't wait to see this movie

This movie was so crazy good. I was speachless.

You said that the Proto-Slavic period lasted up to 500 BC. I remember somewhere that it lasted rather until 500 AD. Did the Slavic languages really started to divide a thousand years earlier?

Isn’t Proto-Slavic more recent? Like 500ad?

Interesting video

We have a six main dialects in Poland about 45 local dialects and live in the same woodland more than thousand year very interesting;-)

In that settlement attack scene we can hear word "Niedźwiedzie" which stands for "bears" in Polish (as in plural form of a name for an animal 'bear') I wonder if that's something to do with the likely name for the Norse invaders, maybe that is how they have refered to the Vikings given how many of them might have had the name "Björn/Bjørn" that I believe means 'bear' in Scandinavian tongues.

As a Ukrainian, I can imagine phrases like "сіверський вітер" to be spoken in modern Ukrainian, though it is rather old-fashioned; and I am pretty sure you cannot say something like that in Russian. In Ukraine, we have a historical region north of Kyiv named "Сіверщина," which means "Northern lands," and the river where we fight Russians now is "Сіверський Донець" ("Northern little Don"). Moreover, such phonology can mirror the south-western dialectical variations of the Ruthenian language, for in the northern dialects they use the sound "е" (Ukrainian "є") instead of "і". However, I cannot be sure about the timing, for the use of "е" may be due to the late influence of the Old Church Slavonic on the Russian language. The Old Church Slavonic is a late liturgical language that was substantially different from the vernacular language of Eastern Slavs (thus in Ukraine, we sometimes refer to it as "Old Bulgarian"). The modern Russian language was largely influenced in lexical and phonological terms by this liturgical language, while Ukrainian is based on vernacular language. It can explain why the reconstruction they use in the film resembles Ukrainian much more than Russian.

Regarding your question at 8:05 I most of the time solely listen to your videos so I don't care to much, but I gotta say you are handsome :)

I saw the movie this morning, and it's funny, because some quotes in viking or slavic language are, sometimes said by the french voice actor him/herself who had to learn how to speak in ancient language, sometimes they just kept the original version. So, depending of the scene, the characters has two different voices. ^^

Old Church Slavonic is 9th century Bulgarian. Slavic languages were still mutually-intelligible, so it could spread as the literary language and language of the Church in quite a few Slavic states.

I'm Swedish and my gf is Polish

Well Hilbert, so now it's time for you to watch Vinland Saga :D

"Veter" is not an example of East Slavic pleophony. The word is fully sounded in most West and South languages too. Standard Polish "wiatr" is a recent leveling to dependent cases ("wiatru", "wiatrem"). Similar leveling happened in Czech, but that's it - "viator" in Slovak, "wiater" in PL Podhale dialect that continues into Slovak. Fun leveling fact: some Polish speakers will level "sweter" to "swetr" (sweater, from EN).

As far as I heard "Olga" is not an original/ old slavic name. Instead it is derived from "Helga" as the scandinavians founded the kievan rus and spread from the "rus-ification" of these lands onwards. If this is true, isn't it strange, that a character defined as slavic is called by that name?

Hillbert face reveal

I'm in love with film..i want to know more about this

I haven't seen this masterpiece yet but, it looks like an hitorically correct adaptation of Conana the Barbarian.

I wouldn't say "most accurate". Here's some: Viking ships (Drakkars) in rivers. Scientific director of the project "Underwater heritage of Russia", oceanologist, candidate of technical sciences A.V. Lukoshkov proved that the version of Russian domination waterways Scandinavian ships are not confirmed by anything; Moreover, due to their design features, Viking ships could not sail along the northern rivers and the former Volga, and ships from the turn of the 16th - 17th centuries are relatively well preserved in our conditions. At the same time, the main part of the medieval ships discovered in the north of Russia resembles the ships of the Western Slavs who lived in the north of modern Germany (similar to the East Slavic river boats?). To this problem we must add the silting of the old fairways of the Volga and its tributaries, as well as the high financial cost of underwater searches. It turns out that it is hardly possible to find the remains of even small merchant ships. Therefore, most likely in the near future the presence of a medieval pier will remain an assumption. Slavic slaves. The filmmakers should have been aware of the Slavic settlements in southern Jutland and Iceland (near Lake Myvatn) and sources saying they lived peacefully there. The witch. The dress of a Slavic witch is very similar to the modern Ukrainian, WEDDING wreath (modern interpretation of ears), specific necklace. Hairstyle. Captain's combination of a mustache without a beard and a long lock of hair on a shaved head (the so-called oseledets or chub) were typical for the Zaporozhian Cossacks (first mentions of that haircut go back to Sviatoslav I). The Scandinavians never used such a hairstyle. Halfshaven haircut has nothing in common. Etc.

Actually they speak pure late medieval (15-16 c.) Russian language. Very close to modern normal Russian but with archaic sounding. "Ko mne" (come to me) - identicaly to medieval/modern Russian. "Mjedvjede von idjot" (look, bear is coming/look, bear is walking) - just like modern Russian but with archaic "e" sound on the end of Mjedvjede (bear) word. "Mjedvjede molvit" (bear is speaking) - same, but with archaic "molvit" (used nowadays in Russia only in poetry and pseudo-"medieval style" speaking) instead of modern word "govorit" The lack of hissing sounds is distancing it from Polish and Czech languages. And "too russian" lexis distancing it from Ukranian ("Ko mne" = "do mene" in Ukranian, "Mjedved" = "Vedmjed" in Ukranian, "idjot" = "ide", etc)

What styles of music and musical instruments did the Vikings play and sing to during the Viking Age? Are there recordings of those tracks? Also, did their conversion to the Christian faith correlate with the end of the Viking Age?

In fact, as a Serb, I can understand what the Slavs are saying in the film. Good video.

Hi from Kyiv🇺🇦 called as Konugard (city of King) by Varangians - ancient capital of Gardariki (Ruś or Ruth), also known as Danparstadir (city on the Dnieper) among Goths...I was yesterday near Askoldova mohyla (Askold's grave) - ancient place in Kyiv on the hill above the Dnieper where Askold and Dir (first Varangian rulers who were brutally killed by Helg (Oleg) according to Ukrainian legends and folk tales) were buried in 9th century...Magical place...A lot of Dirhams of 9th century were found here. BTW under the hill there is also one famous place - Uhorśke uročíšče (Hungarian tract) where Hungarians stoped in 9th cenrury on their way to modern Hungary according to Nestor's Chronicle...I was born in Chernigiv🇺🇦 - second most ancient and powerful city of former Gardariki. In the village of Shestovytsa (Шестовиця) in 10 km to the west from Chernigiv a large Varangian settlement and bural place was found (swords, helms, axes and even ship with nobel Varangian buried with treasuries and slaves)... Shestovytsa near Chernigiv in Ukraine and Gnezdovo near Smolensk are the largest Varangian settlements in Central and Eastern Europe ever found...BTW Shestovytsa was destroyed by Russian invaders with bombs and missiles in March 2022 (liberated by Ukrainian forces in April 2022), so it is unknown what is with bural places...In any way a lot of archaeological items from Shestovytsa I saw in Chernigiv historical museum, especially the imptessive collection of Varangian swords). But Chernigiv also was destroyed a lot by Russian shells and airbombs so I hope the museum is alive after those Russian barbarian attacks...One more interesting fact is that one of buried Varangian from Shestovytsa was DNA tested and had I2-Y3120 haplogroup, which is rare among modern Scandinavians (but almost 20% of Ukrainian men have Y3120). I2 was always considered as Balkanic haplogroup (60% among Bosnians) but Ukrainian Y3120 subclades of I2 are almost absent on the Balkans. Balkan Slavs have PH908 subclade of I2 (interesting fact is that most ancient maternal subclades of PH908 are also found in modern western Ukraine, that means that I2 appeared on the Balkans with Slavic migration to the Balkans in 6th century AD). Haplogroup I1 (typical for northmen, 40% in Sweden) is only 5% among men in Ukraine, but almost all of them have I1a3 subclaster (typical for states where Goths inhabited, but not for Varangians)...

The word Russia comes from "those who row", likely the Vikings rowing and towing their boats all the way from Scandinavia to Miklagård (old viking name for Constantinople). Odd enough, the Vikings seem to have named this region, as depicted in the movie.

Hi, Hilbert. I've just watched your video about the slavic language in "the Norse Man". I like this video a lot. You speculate that the Slavic language could be an East Slavic variety based on the phrase "north wind". However, I don't understand why the word "wind" shows pleophony here. In West Slavic languages, this word shows no correspondent consonant cluster. Furthermore, it seems to be an indoeuropean cognate of "wind" / "ventus", where there are no consonant clusters that you'd expect. (I study Literary Sciences and am a speaker of two Slavic Languages as well as German). I am sorry that my comment comes across as nitpicking.

Do the Orkney aspects of The Northman have any basis in historical fact?

I did not think that good movies were still allowed to be made till I saw The Northmen

Most likely they're speaking one of the dialects of the language considered old east Slavic, as this story takes place during the viking of the Kievan Rus. Old East Slavic was the typical language of the area, and was even spoken by the ruling Norse. It is also entirely possible that in different scenes, different people are speaking different languages. The Kievan Rus as a whole contained many ethnic groups, such as Finns, Balts, Slavs, etc.

When Amleth swam toward the boat then crawled onto and into the boat the blonde girl Olga of the Birch Forest was speaking to what seemed a sick girl. I thought she was speaking at first then I realized she was praying to the girl. Olga used a word I recognized my grandmother used when I was a little boy - Bože, slovak for God. Then I went back 5 minutes before this scene and turned on the subtitles. The language Olga spoke was identified as Old Slovak but it didn't translate her words into subtitles. I listened intently as I replayed that scene and I heard Olga say, Bože. That word hasn't reached my ears since my grandmother passed away January 1992.

What’s Amleth repeating at the very end before his final fight with his uncle? Anyone know?

Hello, I just wanted to point out a small inaccuracy about Old Church Slavonic and the Cyrillic alphabet in this otherwise great video. While online in general consensus and in most Western circles it is agreed that the Cyrillic alphabet was created by the saints Kril/Cyrill and Methodius, who were half greek byzantine missionaries, that isn't actually true. While these saints did create an alphabet, it wasn't actually Cyrillic, instead they created the Glagolitic script. This script was created for the purpose of converting the lands of Great Moravia and was mostly used there and is still in use in places like Croatia. The Cyrillic alphabet was created after the First Bulgarian Empire had already converted to Christianity but wanted to make an alphabet that would still be separate from the greek one but similar enough so that the existing priesthood which mostly spoke greek could understand it (this was also to counter byzantine influence in the church), so the current (unrecognized as one but still) tsar Boris I invited the now exiled saints to work for him, and when the Glagolitic script proved incompatible, he tasked their students to make a new alphabet, out of whom the most notable and the one that is credited with creating the alphabet being saint Kliment of Ohrid, who named the new script in honour of his teacher. This is also why letters like ѯ, ѳ, ҁ, ѡ and ꙁ were present in Cyrillic until the reforms of Peter I and even later in places like Bulgaria and Serbia. As for the name of the language that was spoken by the South Slavs during the setting of the show, while calling it Old Church Slavonic is a correct term in English and is indeed very close to the truth, I do wanna point out the difference between the modern understating of Old Church Slavonic and (as it is called in here rather incorrectly due to it being used by virtually all South Slavs) Old Bulgarian, as Old Church Slavonic didn't really emerge as a language until the 14th century, when after Bulgaria was completely conquered by the Ottoman empire, much of the bulgarian priesthood moved to the lands of the Kyivan Rus, where the language mixed with the local East Slavic dialects and writing, creating a separate church language (fun fact, the Metropolitan of Kyiv, Gregory II, was actually a bulgarian and it was his creation of a union between Catholics and the Orthodox church, similar to the one that existed in Bulgaria in the 12th and 13th century that we owe the existence of the Metropolitan and later Patriarch of Moscow, due to him essentially usurping the title from the last Metropolitan who lived in Moscow). This difference can mainly be seen by the different pronunciation of the letters ѫ, ѭ, ѩ, ѧ, and the dropping of ѱ, ѵ, and ꙉ. Other than these small technicalities though, as a speaker of Old Bulgarian I can say this was a great video and you really did your research and presentation well on the subject. Keep up the good work!

What do you think about Vinland Saga (manga) from historic perspective?

Maybe I am just bad at perception, but as someone from Bulgaria and who also has a decent amount of knowledge how other Slavic languages sound, I understood absolutely nothing of what Olga spoke in the movie. To me, her accent sounded Nordic when she was speaking that "Proto-slavic" language and made me think if she was speaking some sort of mix of the two back when I watched it. I also didn't catch anything familiar from the villagers in the fight scene earlier either.

It's a master piece indeed.

You know, I am from Transcarpathia, which is the region in the west of Ukraine. And I have to say, that the language Olha was speaking was litteraly western Ukrainian dialect. I was watching it in the original and the moment I heard Ukrainian I was absolutely shocked. I understood everything she was saying and the best thing was to see people in vyshyvanka's)))

Havent seen the movie yet. That "siversky viter" sounds like some sort of a mixture in terms of modern languages. In Russian "north" is "sever", "severny" means "northern". In Ukranian its "pivnich", in Belarusian its "povnoch". "Viter" indeed sounds as Ukranian word, rather than Russian or Belorusian. In Russian its "veter", in Belarusian its "vetser". Ukranian unlike Russian and Belarusian has "i" (pronounced like in English word "big") instead of "o" and "e", mostly in the closed syllables. In Ukranian its "dim" (house), in Russian and Belarussian its "dom", in Ukranian its "snig" (snow), in Russian and Belarusian its "sneg" etc.

What is the map of the europe in the early of the video?

4:04 - What the guy shouts in this scene sounds a bit like a word "bears" in Polish.

Its like mix of Ukreynian, ruSSias, and Belarus languages. But i dont hear old slavic axent

Very nice choice of map at 00:49. (sarcasm) There were no russians at 814 AD.

4:05 "aah! bears of war! bears of war!" is what I hear

Slavic languages didn't split before 500 AD, or great migration period. That is 1000 years mistake. Even after that, for a few hundred years Slavic people could understand each other. First written language, Church Slavonic, is South Slavic dialect of slavic language written around 860 AD and in that time was understandable in all slavic lands. You can not even say that languages split in one date, it was few hundred years long process during which existed different dialects or recensions of slavic language. Even today, Church Slavonic is in liturgical usage.