Norse Shetland and Norn: Sources and Corrections

Shetland is the Old Norse Hjaltland, and its people spoke a Norse language, Norn, into the 1700s. Lerwick is leirvík, clay bay, and Scalloway the bay of the huts. In 1468 and 1469 the King of Denmark and Norway pledged Orkney and then Shetland to Scotland for his daughter's dowry, and never redeemed them. In 1774 George Low wrote down the Lord's Prayer and a 35-verse Norn ballad on Foula. Voe, noost and haaf are Shetland words from Old Norse. This page gives the source for every slide.

Every factual claim in our carousel on Shetland, Norn and the Norse words the islands kept, and in its caption, with its source. It is the seventh in our place-name series, after the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man. Shetland's Tingwall, the plain where the Law Ting met, already appears among the relatives of Dingwall in our Scotland sources; here we go further north and deeper in. Section numbers 01 to 05 match the number at the top of each slide; 07 to 10 are the later slides' places in the carousel. Every location photograph in the carousel is real and credited below.

How we cite. For Norn we follow Michael P. Barnes, "The Study of Norn", hosted by Shetland ForWirds; Barnes wrote The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland (1998), which we did not read. The Foula texts come from George Low, A Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Schetland, written in 1774 and printed in 1879; we quote its archive.org text, with obvious OCR errors normalised. The words and names come from Jakob Jakobsen: his lectures The Dialect and Place Names of Shetland (1897), his Danish Shetlandsøernes stednavne (1901), translated by us, and his Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland (1928 to 1932). Etymologies of Scots words come from the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), each entry linked where we use it, and Old Norse forms from Cleasby and Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary (1874). For Lerwick's history we use James R. S. Clark, "A Hundred Years of Lerwick" (Scottish Society for Northern Studies, 1978). For 1469 and for Up Helly Aa we use two articles by Brian Smith, the Shetland Archivist: "550 Years Ago: how Shetland became part of Scotland" (Shetland Museum and Archives, 2022) and "The History of Up Helly Aa" on the festival's own site. We did not read the 1469 pledge charter, the 1472 act of annexation, or Jakobsen's English Place-Names of Shetland (1936).

Slide by slide

Cover. "Own a Shetland jumper? You're wearing a Norse name."

Cleasby and Vigfusson: "Hjalt-land, n., later Hetland ... in Engl. corrupted into Shetland or Zetland", with "Hjaltar, m. pl. Shetlanders". Jakobsen (1897, p. 119) speaks of "the name Shetland itself, or rather ... the original form of the name, which was Hjaltland." So anything called Shetland, a jumper, wool or a pony, carries the Norse name. The cover does not say what Hjaltland means, because nobody knows; see "What we do not claim".

Photo: Malvara, "Jarl's Squad Lerwick 2019 (01)", 29 January 2019, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped by us, with text added. It shows the Up Helly Aa Jarl Squad marching along the Esplanade in Lerwick in falling snow. The credit on the slide calls it a Victorian festival, and the caption says the same; see the section on Up Helly Aa below.

01. A capital named after mud

"Lerwick is Old Norse leirvík, 'clay bay'." Jakobsen (1897, p. 112): "Lerwick means 'clay-creek,' and has originally been applied only to the creek itself". His dictionary, under VIK: "Lerwik ... *leirvik (O.N. leir, n., clay)". In 1901 he glosses leir in Danish as ler, dynd, clay, mire. Clark: "Lerwick (ON leir-vik: mud bay)". Hence the headline's "mud".

"the town only grew there in the 1600s, around Dutch herring boats." Clark: by the late 16th century Dutchmen gathered each summer in Bressay Sound before "their law permitted herring fishing to begin", and "Booths sprang up along the shore at Lerwick". In 1625 the court in Scalloway ordered them "utterlie demolished". His verdict: "Lerwick is less than 3 1/2 centuries old, and owes its development to the Dutch rather than to the Scandinavians." The name is Norse; the town is not Viking.

"Norway has a Leirvik too." Store norske leksikon describes Leirvik as the administrative centre of Stord. Same name, not a namesake. "Scalloway, the old capital, is skálavágr, 'bay of the huts'." Jakobsen (1901): "Skallowa ... »Scalloway«: *skála-vágr", under skáli, a hut or house; Clark: "Scalloway, the ancient capital (ON skála-vágr: bay of the huts/sheds)".

Sources: Jakobsen (1897) p. 112, (1901) pp. 127 and 146, and the dictionary, under VIK; Clark (1978). Photo: David Purchase, "Lerwick Harbour", June 2016, geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added.

02. Pawned for a princess

"In 1468 Christian I, King of Denmark and Norway, could not pay his daughter Margaret's dowry to James III of Scotland. So he pledged Orkney, and in 1469 Shetland, until he could pay." Smith: "The process started in 1468 and 1469, when Princess Margaret of Denmark married James. Margaret's father, Christian I, couldn't afford a dowry. So he mortgaged first Orkney, and then Shetland, to his new son-in-law." In May 1469 Christian told his island subjects to obey the king of Scots and pay him their taxes every year, "until he (Christian) could afford to pay redemption money." Barnes dates it the same way: "the pledging of Orkney in 1468 and Shetland in 1469 to King James III of Scotland".

"He never did. In 1472 Scotland annexed both." Smith: "There is no evidence, and no likelihood, that Christian had any intention of redeeming the islands", and "James annexed Orkney and Shetland to his crown on 20 February 1472." The slide says pledged, not sold.

Sources: Smith (2022); Barnes. Photo: Stuart Taylor, "Scalloway Castle and the East Voe of Scalloway", August 2018, geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added. The castle is later than 1469: Clark calls it "Earl Patrick Stewart's castle, built sufficiently by 1602 to serve as a prison, and for long a symbol of Scottish exploitation".

03. "Fy vor o er i Chimeri"

Low on Foula, 1774: "The Norse Language is much worn out here, yet there are some who know a few words of it; it was the language of the last age, but will be entirely lost by the next. The Lord's Prayer in Foula Norse is as follows: Fy vor o er i Chimeri. Halaght vara nam dit. La konungdum din cumma ...". The slide gives only the first words, glossed by the English prayer. Barnes notes that these prayer texts "have a conspicuous Scots or English element".

"From a farmer, William Henry, he took down a Norn ballad of 35 verses, Hildina." Low: "I wrote it as an old man pronounced it ... This man (William Henry, a farmer in Guttorm, in Foula) has the most knowledge of any I found". Barnes: "thirty-five stanzas in all ... known in Norwegian as Hildinakvadet". "Low could not get it translated": "A literal translation of the above I could not procure". Low also warns: "I cannot answer for the orthography", so the spelling is his.

Was Norn still alive on Foula? Barnes, after Smith: "Low didn't describe a living language; he described a dead one", and Knooihuizen calls Henry "at best a very poor semi-speaker", more likely a "rememberer". So the slide does not say Foula spoke Norn.

Sources: Low (1879) pp. 105 to 114; Barnes. Photo: David Purchase, "The church on Foula", June 2016, geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added. We do not date the church.

04. The Norse words Shetland kept

"Shetland switched to Scots, not its words." Barnes: "Modern Shetland dialect is Scots. It contains a small Scandinavian element, and one that is steadily diminishing". The DSL gives each word: voe, "An inlet of the sea", from "O.N. vágr, bay, sea inlet"; noust, from "O.N. naust, a boat-shed, dock"; haaf, "The deep or open sea", from "O.N. haf, the (high) sea, ocean"; tusker, the tushkar, from "O.N. torfskeri ... a peat-spade, from torf, turf, + skera, to cut".

"Shetland was Hjaltland; even sheltie probably comes from Hjalti, 'a Shetlander'." For Hjaltland, see the cover. The DSL entry for sheltie, the Shetland pony, records "sheltie" from 1633 and "shelty horse" from 1612, "suggesting that the word is orig. an attrib. or adj. use of O.N. Hjalti, a Shetlander", and "Schalte as a nickname for a Shetlander is found in a document of 1516". Barnes says "supposedly derived". Hence "probably".

Sources: Barnes; DSL, SND entries linked above. Photo: Ronnie Robertson, "Shetland pony (2)", July 2014, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added.

05. At sea, the minister was "the upstander"

"At the deep-sea fishing, Shetland men would not say certain words." Jakobsen (1897, pp. 25 to 27): at the "haaf" or deep-sea fishing, "the minister and the church were on no account to be mentioned by their right names at sea." The church was "de benihoose": "Benihoose means prayer house", from "an old Norn word for prayer". The minister was "de upstander" "from his standing up in the pulpit during the sermon". The cat was "de foodin", which "means the light-footed animal"; "light-foot" is our shortening. "Jakobsen recorded them in the 1890s": he first came to Shetland, his dictionary says, "in the early summer of 1893"; Barnes puts the bulk of his collecting in 1893 to 1895, and the lectures are from 1897.

Why? Jakobsen thought the custom "rooted in the Pagan time", to avoid offending the sea-god; that is his theory. Thomas Irvine in 1814 recorded such words for North Yell fishermen, used "from a superstitious motive that luck attends it", and some, Barnes notes, are Scots, Dutch or Low German.

Sources: Jakobsen (1897) pp. 23 to 27; Jakobsen, dictionary, Introduction p. xxi; Barnes. Photo: Andy Waddington, "Fishing boats, Hay's Dock", June 2018, geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added. Hay's Dock is the Shetland Museum's harbour in Lerwick; we do not identify the boats.

07. Which Norse word do you use without knowing it? Comment below

"Know a Shetland word we got wrong? Send the source and we'll pin the correction." Jakobsen's dictionary is the place to start. The caption's "In his Norn dictionary, published from 1928, Jakob Jakobsen listed more than ten thousand words of Norn origin" rests on the dictionary itself (1928 to 1932): "Of the words of Norn origin, more than ten thousand in number, that I succeeded in collecting in Shetland, not more than half can be said to be in general use at the present time." Barnes counts "some 10,000 entries", and adds that some of the etymologies have been questioned since, so check a word in the DSL too.

Photo: Phillip Capper, "Fishing boat arriving in Lerwick, Shetlands, 1965", a scanned slide, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added.

08. The Norse named people too

Bynames were conferred rather than claimed, as the sources present them, though some men took on a name and some bynames were inherited. Even a whole people could get one: the Norse called the islanders Hjaltar, and the nickname Schalte for a Shetlander turns up in a document of 1516. Our free Viking name generator draws on given names and bynames attested in medieval sources.

09. Norse words, on steel

The Scar boat burial on Sanday, Orkney. The Orkney Museum, which holds the finds, calls it "a pagan Norse boat burial" with "a man, a woman and a child": "Beside the man was an iron sword, a quiver containing eight arrows, a bone comb and a set of 22 gaming pieces." The grave is "dated to between 875 AD and 950 AD." Our knife is not a copy of the Scar sword.

GLADR OK REIFR is from Hávamál, stanza 15: glaðr ok reifr skyli gumna hverr, unz sinn bíðr bana, glad and cheerful should every man be, until he meets his death. It is the poem's glaðr ok reifr in capitals, with D for ð; the translation is ours. "On our seax we laser-engrave GLADR OK REIFR": the blade on the slide is our 12-inch forge-finished seax-style knife, 1075 high-carbon steel, dark from the forge along the spine and polished to the edge, on a rosewood handle with plain metal fittings. Any blade in our personalized Viking blades collection can carry these words or any you choose, laser-engraved to order, letter for letter, exactly as you approve it.

10. Silver by the bay

The Skaill hoard. James Graham-Campbell, "Two Viking-age silver brooch fragments believed to be from the 1858 Skaill (Orkney) hoard" (Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 114, 1984): the hoard was "deposited c 950 near the shore of the Bay of Skaill" and found "in March 1858", near a rabbit hole. Joseph Anderson, "Notes on the ornamentation of the silver brooches found at Skaill" (PSAS 15, 1880 to 1881): "nine large penannular brooches, fourteen twisted neck rings and arm rings, twenty-three solid armlets ... eleven ingots and bars of silver"; its latest coin was "struck at Bagdad in 945 A.D." Hence "Around AD 950 someone buried Viking silver neck rings, arm rings and brooches by the Bay of Skaill in Orkney."

The ring is our wolf sterling silver ring, with a Norse animal wrapped round the band: 925 sterling silver, made to order in your size. It is not a copy of anything in the Skaill hoard.

Caption

"Norn itself comes from norrœnn, 'Norse'." Barnes: Norn "derives from the Old Norse adjective norrœnn 'Norwegian' 'Norse'". "The islands spoke a Norse language, Norn, into the 1700s." Barnes: "By the year 1000, if not before, their type of speech had become the sole medium of communication in the islands", and it "remained the dominant tongue until it began to be challenged by Scots in the late Middle Ages." Thomas Irvine, writing from his grandfather's memory, says that "about the year 1720" Norn was still spoken "exclusively by a great number of the natives" in the North Isles. Scholars disagree on the end: Knooihuizen has most Shetlanders abandoning Norn "shortly after 1700 at the latest", and Barnes concludes that "by 1800 at the latest the language had ceased to be spoken". Hence the caption's "Scholars disagree on when it died; most say Shetland had switched to Scots by the 1700s." A few, Rendboe and Wiggen, think it lasted into the 1800s.

"In 1774 George Low toured Foula." Barnes calls Low "the Scottish minister and naturalist"; he was ordained minister of Birsay and Harray in Orkney on 14 December 1774, after the tour (introduction to Low, 1879). The Hildina plot is Low's own summary: the Earl of Orkney carries off the King of Norway's daughter; the courtier Hiluge kills him, "cut off his head and threw it at his lady"; forced to marry Hiluge, Hildina "infuses a drug which soon throws the company into a dead sleep, and after ordering her father to be removed, set the house on fire."

"Its costumes are Norse-styled, but the festival is Victorian: the name, from about 1870, is Scots for the end of Yule, and the longship arrived in the late 1880s." See the next section. The photo credits match the files linked above, and the rest of the caption, including the 1468 and 1469 pledges, repeats the cover and 01 to 05.

Two stories we left off the slides

Walter Sutherland, "the last speaker of Norn". The story comes from one sentence in Jakobsen's dictionary: "The last man in Unst who is said to have been able to speak Norn, Walter Sutherland from Skaw, died about 1850." "Is said" is hearsay, and Jakobsen goes straight on: "The Norn spoken towards the middle of the century and later can hardly have been of much account." Barnes shows that the nineteenth-century Norn speakers "owe their existence chiefly to certain remarks by Jakobsen", and that "Jakobsen himself casts serious doubt on the validity of these statements". So we do not print a last speaker or a date of death for the language.

"Up Helly Aa is a Viking festival." It is Lerwick's fire festival, and the cover photo shows it, but Smith is plain: "Up Helly Aa is a relatively modern festival." "Around 1870" young men in the town improvised the name and a torchlight procession; "it was not until the late 1880s that a Viking longship, the 'galley', appeared, and as late as 1906 that 'Guizer Jarl', the chief guizer, arrived on the scene." A squad of Vikings marched every year only "after the First World War". The name is Scots, not Norse: the DSL entry Uphalie derives it from older Scots uphalyday, 1478, "from up, over, finished, + Halie, Haliday", the end of the Yule holidays, and Low in 1774 recorded "Uphaliday (the last day of Yule)". The same DSL entry quotes the myth itself, a 1948 Daily Mail call to revive Lerwick's "1,000-year-old Norse ceremony". "Norse-styled" means just that: we make no claim that the Jarl Squad's dress is authentic Viking clothing.

What we do not claim

• That Hjaltland means hilt land. Jakobsen: "No sure explanation has as yet been offered"; "the name might contain the word hjalt".
• That Shetland was sold to Scotland. It was pledged, then annexed in 1472.
• That Christian I meant to redeem it, or that Norway or Denmark can still buy it back.
• Any florin sum for the pledge. The only source we read that gives one, a Viking Ship Museum article, could not be checked against the charter.
• That Foula still spoke Norn in 1774, or that William Henry was the last speaker.
• That the Hildina ballad is a Viking-Age poem. It was written down in 1774; when it was composed is unknown. Nor do we translate it.
• That Shetland dialect is Norn. Barnes: it is Scots, with a Norse layer.
• That the fishermen's sea words hid them from the sea-god. That is Jakobsen's theory.
• That peerie, small, is a Norn word. The DSL: "Orig. somewhat doubtful".
• That sheltie is certainly Norse, or anything about the name of the Shetland sheepdog. We did not check the dog.
• That our knife copies the Scar sword, or that our ring copies the Skaill silver.

Corrections

None yet. If you find an error, tell us, with a citation.

Frequently asked questions

What does Lerwick mean?

Lerwick is Old Norse leirvík, clay bay or mud bay. Jakob Jakobsen wrote that the name first applied only to the creek itself. The town is much younger than the name: it grew in the 1600s around Dutch herring fishing in Bressay Sound.

What was Norn, and when did it die out in Shetland?

Norn was the Norse language of Shetland and Orkney; the word comes from Old Norse norrœnn, Norse. It was the islands' only language by about 1000. Most scholars, including Michael Barnes, think Shetlanders had switched to Scots in the 1700s and that Norn was gone by 1800 at the latest. A few think scraps lasted into the 1800s.

Why is Shetland part of Scotland?

In 1468 Christian I, King of Denmark and Norway, could not pay the dowry of his daughter Margaret, who married James III of Scotland. He pledged Orkney, and in 1469 Shetland, until he could pay. He never redeemed them, and James annexed both to the Scottish crown on 20 February 1472.

Is Up Helly Aa a Viking festival?

No. The Shetland Archivist Brian Smith calls it a relatively modern festival: the name dates from around 1870, the Viking longship from the late 1880s and the Guizer Jarl from 1906. The name is Scots, from uphalyday, the last day of the Yule holidays. Only the costumes are Norse-styled.

Which Shetland words come from Old Norse?

Voe, a sea inlet, is from vágr; noost, a boat shelter, from naust; haaf, the open sea, from haf; and tushkar, a peat-spade, from torfskeri. Sheltie probably comes from Hjalti, a Shetlander. In his Norn dictionary, published from 1928, Jakob Jakobsen listed more than ten thousand words of Norn origin.