Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: When did the Old Norse language originate?
The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century.[2]
During the Viking Age, the Norse likely regarded themselves as a more or less unified entity through their shared Germanic language, Old Norse. The scholar of Scandinavian studies Thomas A. DuBois said Old Norse religion and other pre-Christian belief systems in Northern Europe must be viewed as "not as isolated, mutually exclusive language-bound entities, but as broad concepts shared across cultural and linguistic lines, conditioned by similar ecological factors and protracted economic and cultural ties". During this period, the Norse interacted closely with other ethno-cultural and linguistic groups, such as the Sámi, Balto-Finns, Anglo-Saxons, Greenlandic Inuit, and various speakers of Celtic and Slavic languages. Economic, marital, and religious exchange occurred between the Norse and many of these other groups. Enslaved individuals from the British Isles were common throughout the Nordic world during the Viking Age. Different elements of Old Norse religion had different origins and histories; some aspects may derive from deep into prehistory, others only emerging following the encounter with Christianity.
The orthography of the Old Norse language was diverse, being written in both Runic and Latin alphabets, with many spelling conventions, variant letterforms, and unique letters and signs. In modern times, scholars established a standardized spelling for the language. When Old Norse names are used in texts in other languages, modifications to this spelling are often made. In particular, the names of Old Norse mythological figures often have several different spellings.
The original Icelandic manuscripts which are the main source of our knowledge of Norse mythology did not employ a unified system of spelling. During the Viking Age, many dialects of Old Norse were spoken. While they appear to have been mutually intelligible, the slight variances resulted in various spelling. Thus the same name might be spelled several different ways even in the original manuscripts. Letters unique to the language existed, such as a modified version of the letter Wynn called Vend that was used briefly for the sounds , , and . In particular, the length of vowels was only sporadically marked in many manuscripts and various umlauted vowels were often not distinguished from others. Another complication is that several shortcut forms for common words, syllables, and grammatical endings developed. One example is the use of the rune named ' (man) for the word '. Another is the use of a special glyph for the various r-endings so common in Old Norse. These scribal abbreviations are categorized as follows:These abbreviation conventions and a majority of the signs are inherited from the Latin language itself, and were common to the Latin alphabet in other languages. However, other signs or conventions are specifically Norse, such as the " zig-zag.
In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse. This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted the appearance of two similar dialects, "Old West Norse" (Norway and Iceland) and "Old East Norse" (Denmark and Sweden).
Thurston () is an English-language surname. The name has several origins. In some cases it can have originated from the Old Norse personal name "Þórsteinn". This name is derived from the Old Norse elements "Þórr" ("Thor", the Scandinavian thunder god) and "steinn" ("stone", "rock"). In other cases the name can have originated from the name of Thurston, located in Suffolk, England. This place name is derived from the Old Norse personal name "Þóri" and the Old English element "tūn" ("enclosure", "settlement").
Most of the innovations that appeared in Old Norse spread evenly through the Old Norse area. As a result, the dialects were very similar and considered to be the same language, a language that they sometimes called the Danish tongue (Dǫnsk tunga), sometimes Norse language (Norrœnt mál), as evidenced in the following two quotes from Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson:
Words like "bull" and "Thursday" are more difficult when it comes to their origins. "Bull" may be from either Old English "bula" or Old Norse "buli", while "Thursday" may be a borrowing, or it could simply be from the Old English "Þunresdæg", which could have been influenced by the Old Norse cognate. The word "are" is from Old English "earun"/"aron", which stems back to Proto-Germanic as well as the Old Norse cognates.
The inherited form of alliterative verse was modified somewhat in Old Norse poetry. In Old Norse, as a result of phonetic changes from the original common Germanic language, many unstressed syllables were lost. This lent Old Norse verse a characteristic terseness; the lifts tended to be crowded together at the expense of the weak syllables. In some lines, the weak syllables have been entirely suppressed. From the "Hávamál":
The various names of the Old Norse verse forms are given in the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson. The "Háttatal", or "list of verse forms", contains the names and characteristics of each of the fixed forms of Norse poetry.
The Ancient Language used by the elves in the "Inheritance Cycle" is partly based on Old Norse. The word "brisingr" is an ancient Old Norse word meaning "fire", which Paolini found while reading through a dictionary of word origins. Paolini said he "loved it so much, he decided to base the rest of [the Ancient Language] on Old Norse. To find more words, I went online and dug up dictionaries and guides to the language. I invented more words based on what I learned and then formed a system of grammar and a pronunciation guide to fit my world. Developing this has probably been the most difficult part of writing the books." The languages used by the dwarves and Urgals in the book were created from scratch by Paolini.
In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects: "Old West Norse" (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) and "Old East Norse" (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called "Runic Swedish", while the dialects of Denmark are referred to as "Runic Danish". The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes, such as the rune for the vowel "u", which was also used for the vowels "o", "ø" and "y", and the rune for "i", also used for "e".
Wulfstan was a native speaker of Old English. He was also a competent Latinist. As York was at the centre of a region of England that had for some time been colonised by people of Scandinavian descent, it is possible that Wulfstan was familiar with, or perhaps even bilingual in, Old Norse. He may have helped incorporate Scandinavian vocabulary into Old English. Dorothy Whitelock remarks that "the influence of his sojourns in the north is seen in his terminology. While in general he writes a variety of late West Saxon literary language, he uses in some texts words of Scandinavian origin, especially in speaking of the various social classes." In some cases, Wulfstan is the only one known to have used a word in Old English, and in some cases such words are of Scandinavian origin. Some words of his that have been recognised as particularly Scandinavian are
"þræl" "slave, servant" (cf. Old Norse "þræll"; cp. Old English "þeowa"),
"bonda" "husband, householder" (cf. Old Norse "bondi"; cp. Old English "ceorl"),
"eorl" "nobleman of high rank, (Danish) jarl" (cf. Old Norse "jarl"; cp. Old English "ealdorman"),
"fysan" "to make someone ready, to put someone to flight" (cf. Old Norse "fysa"),
"genydmaga" "close kinsfolk" (cf. Old Norse "nauðleyti"), and
"laga" "law" (cf. Old Norse "lag"; cp. Old English "æw")
The Scandinavians, or Norsemen, spoke dialects of a North Germanic language known as Old Norse. The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians thus spoke related languages from different branches (West and North) of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammatical systems were more divergent. Probably significant numbers of Norse speakers settled in the Danelaw during the period of Scandinavian control. Many place-names in those areas are of Scandinavian provenance (those ending in "-by", for example); it is believed that the settlers often established new communities in places that had not previously been developed by the Anglo-Saxons. The extensive contact between Old English and Old Norse speakers, including the possibility of intermarriage that resulted from the acceptance of Christianity by the Danes in 878, undoubtedly influenced the varieties of those languages spoken in the areas of contact. Some scholars even believe that Old English and Old Norse underwent a kind of fusion and that the resulting English language might be described as a mixed language or creole. During the rule of Cnut and other Danish kings in the first half of the 11th century, a kind of diglossia may have come about, with the West Saxon literary language existing alongside the Norse-influenced Midland dialect of English, which could have served as a koine or spoken lingua franca. When Danish rule ended, and particularly after the Norman Conquest, the status of the minority Norse language presumably declined relative to that of English, and its remaining speakers assimilated to English in a process involving language shift and language death. The widespread bilingualism that must have existed during the process possibly contributed to the rate of borrowings from Norse into English.
Tolkien took the name "Durin", like most of the dwarf names in his works, from Norse mythology. This he later explained by the translation fiction: since Tolkien's invented language of Westron was translated with English, the language of Dale, used by Dwarves for their "outer" names, was translated with Old Norse. One way the Old Norse term "durinn" can be translated is "sleepy", which aptly features in the legends of the origins and ultimate fate of Durin the Deathless.
Old West Norse and Old Gutnish did not take part in the monophthongization which changed æi (ei) into ē, øy (ey) and au into ø̄, nor did certain peripheral dialects of Swedish, as seen in modern Ostrobothnian dialects.[34] Another difference was that Old West Norse lost certain combinations of consonants. The combinations -mp-, -nt-, and -nk- were assimilated into -pp-, -tt- and -kk- in Old West Norse, but this phenomenon was limited in Old East Norse.
Although Jèrriais is occasionally misleadingly described as a mixture of Norse and French, it would be more linguistically accurate to state that when the Norse-speaking Normans (lit. "North-man") conquered the territory that is now called Normandy they started speaking the langue d'oïl of their new subjects. The Norman language is therefore basically a Romance language with a certain amount of vocabulary of Norse origin, plus later loanwords from other languages.
Norse origins can be seen in Jèrriais words such as these:
This is a list of English language words borrowed from the Swedish language. Some may be from other Scandinavian languages such as Danish or Norwegian, or may come from Old Norse when it was a single language.
From the seventh century, the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, resulting in the appearance of two dialect areas, Old West Norse (Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). Most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway. A change that separated Old East Norse (Runic Swedish/Danish) from Old West Norse was the change of the diphthong "æi" (Old West Norse "ei") to the monophthong "e", as in "stæin" to "sten". This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read "stain" and the later "stin". Also, a change of "au" as in "dauðr" into "ø" as in "døðr" occurred. This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from "tauþr" into "tuþr". Moreover, the "øy" (Old West Norse "ey") diphthong changed into "ø", as well, as in the Old Norse word for "island". This monophthongization started in Jutland and spread eastward, having spread throughout Denmark and most of Sweden by 1100.
An understanding of the writing system of Old Norse is crucial for fully understanding the Old Norse language. Studies of remaining rune stones from the Viking Age reveal many nuances about the spoken language, such as the constant use of alliteration. A comparison of various whetstones from this time period with the works of Snorri Sturluson reveal that alliteration was common in many Old Norse writings, and were not only present in skaldic works. This would then suggest that the Vikings closely tied their language to their auditory sense, which in turn would have helped with the continual transfer of their cultural memory, which was also closely tied to their language.
In Scandinavian folklore, a diverse array of human-like supernatural beings are attested which might be thought of as elves and which might partly originate in medieval Scandinavian beliefs. However, the characteristics and names of these beings have varied widely across time and space, and they cannot be neatly categorised. These beings are sometimes known by words descended directly from Old Norse "álfr". However, in the modern languages, traditional terms related to "álfr" have tended to be replaced with other terms. Things are further complicated by the fact that when referring to the elves of Old Norse mythology, scholars have adopted new forms based directly on the Old Norse word "álfr". The following table summarises the situation in the main modern standard languages of Scandinavia.
The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian and the extinct Norn language of Orkney and Shetland; the descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages of Danish and Swedish. Norwegian is descended from Old West Norse, but over the centuries it has been heavily influenced by East Norse, particularly during the Denmark–Norway union.
The letter (i.e. continuant of Old Norse ) is usually silent between vowels or when following a vowel before a pause (e.g. 'day' , cf. Old Norse ; 'I' , cf. Old Norse ). Use of the silent letter in Faroese is the same as for the letter "edd" - it is written for historical reasons as Faroese orthography was based on normalised spelling of Old Norse and Icelandic language.
In the context of the Northern Isles it should be borne in mind that Old Norse is a dead language and that as a result names of Old Norse origin exist only as loan words in the Scots language. Nonetheless if we distinguish between names of obviously Norse origin and those with a significant Scots element the great majority are in the former camp. "Muckle", meaning large or big, is one of few Scots words in the island names of the "Nordreyar" and appears in Muckle Roe and Muckle Flugga in Shetland and Muckle Green Holm and Muckle Skerry in Orkney.
Words of Old Norse origin have entered the English language, primarily from the contact between Old Norse and Old English during colonisation of eastern and northern England between the mid 9th to the 11th centuries (see also Danelaw). 
Many of these words are part of English core vocabulary, such as "egg" or "knife". 
There are hundreds of such words, and the list below does not aim at completeness.
Germanic a-mutation An Introduction to Old Norse—A common textbook on the language List of English words of Old Norse origin Old Norse morphology—The grammar of the language. Old Norse orthography—The spelling of the language Old Norse poetry Proto-Norse language—The Scandinavian dialect of Proto-Germanic that developed into Old Norse