Old Norwegian ( and ), also called Norwegian Norse, is an early form of the
Norwegian language that was spoken between the 11th and 14th century; it is a transitional stage between
Old West Norse and
Middle Norwegian.
Its distinction from Old West Norse is mostly a matter of convention, but it is also the period when the language begun to develop its immense diversity. Old Norwegian is typically divided into the following dialect areas:
* Western Norway:
**
Trøndelag
** Northwest Norway (
Romsdal,
Sunnmøre,
Nordfjord and the coast of
Sogn)
** Southwest Norway:
*** Outer Southwest (
Rogaland and
Hordaland)
*** Inner Southwest (
Agder, western
Telemark,
Setesdal, continental Sogn, Hordaland and Rogaland, including
Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
and the
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands ( ) (alt. the Faroes) are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and an autonomous territory of the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. Located between Iceland, Norway, and the United Kingdom, the islands have a populat ...
)
* Eastern Norway:
** Southeast Norway
** East Norway Proper
No sources appear to exist from which the dialectal variation of the rest of Norway might be discerned. There do, however, seem to be reasons to believe the region of
Oppland constituted its own dialect area, though it is unclear whether this would fall within the Western or Eastern dialect group, as well as that Greenlandic Old Norse had begun to develop its own linguistic variety.
Phonological and morphological features
One of the most important early differences between Old Norwegian and
Old Icelandic is that ''h'' in the
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
combinations ''hl-'', ''hn-'' and ''hr-'' was lost in Old Norwegian around the 11th century, while being preserved in Old Icelandic. Thus, one has e.g. Old Icelandic '
slope', '
curtsey' and ' 'ring' and Old Norwegian ','' '' and ', respectively''.''
Many Old Norwegian dialects feature a height based system of
vowel harmony: Following stressed high vowels (, , , , , ) and diphthongs (, , ), the unstressed vowels and appear as ''i'', ''u'', while they are represented as ''e'', ''o'' following long non-high vowels (, , , , ). The situation following stressed short non-high vowels (, , , , , ) is much debated and was apparently different in the individual dialects.
The
''u''-umlaut of short (written ''ǫ'' in normalized Old Norse) is not as consistently graphically distinguished from non-umlauted as in Old Icelandic, especially in writings from the Eastern dialect areas.
It is still a matter of academic debate whether this is to be interpreted phonologically as a lack of umlaut or merely as a lack of its graphical representation.
Old Norwegian had alternative dual and plural first person pronouns, ''mit,'' ''mér,'' to the Common Norse ''vit,'' ''vér.''
Old Norn
Norn is an extinct language derived from the
North Germanic language family that died out in the late 19th or early 20th century. It was primarily spoken in the
Northern Isles, or
Orkney (Orkneyjar) and
Shetland (Hjaltland), and
Caithness on the northern tip of
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
. Little remains of Norn other than a few
literary works in Orkney Norn and Shetland Norn, while Caithness Norn is expected to have died out in the 15th century, replaced by Scots.
Sources from the 17th and 18th century report that Norn, often misidentified as
Danish,
Norse or
Norwegian, was in a rapid decline, although prevailing in Shetland more than Orkney.
Walter Sutherland is generally considered the last native speaker of the language, dying in 1850, though many claims describe the language, probably in verses and songs, spoken in the islands of
Foula and
Unst as late as the 20th century.
Middle Norwegian
The
Black Death struck Norway in 1349, killing over 60% of the population.
This significantly affected the development of Norwegian down the line.
The language in Norway after 1350 up to about 1550 is generally referred to as Middle Norwegian. The language went through several changes: morphological paradigms were simplified, including the loss of
grammatical cases and the levelling of personal inflection on verbs. A
vowel reduction also took place, in some dialects, including in parts of Norway, reducing many final unstressed vowels in a word to a common "e".
The
phonemic inventory also underwent changes. The
dental fricatives represented by the letters
þ and
ð disappeared from the Norwegian language, either merging with their equivalent
stop consonants, represented by
t and
d, respectively, or being lost altogether.
See also
*
Norwegian language
*
Icelandic language
*
Faroese language
Faroese ( ; ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language spoken as a first language by about 69,000 Faroe Islanders, of whom 21,000 reside mainly in Denmark and elsewhere.
It is one of five languages descended from Old Norse#Old West ...
*
Norn language
References
External links
«Kulturformidlingen norrøne tekster og kvad»Norway.
«Medieval Nordic Text Archive»Organization working with Medieval Nordic texts.
«Dokumentasjonsprosjektet»Includes old Norse dictionary and includes Diplomatarium Norvegicum which is a collection of texts from before 1570 (originally 22 books with 19 000 documents) and Regesta Norvegica which contains letters and official documents (it's a more detailed description on "Om Regesta Norvegica") from 822 to 1390. This page is partly available in English. (not Regesta Norvegica)
Old Norwegian online dictionary
{{Authority control
Norwegian, Old
Norwegian language
Norwegian
Manuscripts in Old Norwegian
Languages attested from the 11th century