Norse Words in Scots: Sources and Corrections

Flit, to move house, is Old Norse flytja. Kirk and kist are the English words church and chest in Norse dress: Old English softened the k, Norse speakers said kirkja and kista, and Scotland and the north kept the hard k. In Scots the Norse gowk beat the English word for the cuckoo, nowt beat the English word for cattle, and Burns wrote Norse maun and big into To a Mouse. Greet is Old English, and ken is Old English with a Norse sense. This page gives the source for every slide.

Every factual claim in our carousel on Norse words in Scots and in its caption, with its source. It moves from names on the map to the words people still say: our Scotland sources traced Dingwall, Sutherland and Kirkwall, Old Norse Kirkjuvágr, church bay, whose first part is the kirkja of slide 01; our Lake District sources covered fell, beck and tarn; and our guide to the language the Vikings spoke lists the Norse words in everyday English, from they and them to window and egg. None of those words is repeated here. 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 photograph on slides 1 to 7 is real and credited below; none is generated.

How we cite. The etymologies come from the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL, Data Version 3.1), which holds two dictionaries: DOST, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, for Scots to 1700, and SND, the Scottish National Dictionary, from 1700 on. We read each entry in full and link it where we use it. For the history we follow Caroline Macafee and A. J. Aitken, "A history of Scots to 1700", in DOST vol. XII (2002), published by the DSL: the sections on origins and on vocabulary. As a cross-check we read the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, in the archive.org text of vol. I (1888), vol. IV (1901) and vol. V (1901). These are first-edition etymologies; the current OED is behind a sign-in and we did not read it. Burns we quote from the Kilmarnock edition, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786). The Mästermyr chest follows Else Roesdahl's entry "Mästermyrfundet" in Den Store Danske, translated by us; the Galloway Hoard follows Martin Goldberg, "The Galloway Hoard", in The Viking Age in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), of which we read the abstract and opening only. For Up Helly Aa we quote the festival's own history page, and label it as the festival describing itself. We did not read Arwidsson and Berg's The Mästermyr Find (1983), the Middle English Dictionary, or the National Museums Scotland pages on the hoard.

Slide by slide

Cover. "Say kirk, kist or flit? Then you still speak a bit of Old Norse."

"A bit of" is deliberate. Flit is a straight Norse loan (see 03). Kirk and kist are Norse forms of words English already had (see 01). Macafee and Aitken put the scale in one line: "The ON component is surprisingly large ... The body of loanwords from this source in StE is also very large, but less than in the dialects of the North of England or Scots. The areas of vocabulary affected are also surprisingly basic".

Photo: Vicky Brock, "Up Helly Aa", Lerwick, 25 January 2011, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added. It shows the torch procession on its way to the field where the galley is burned. Why a Shetland festival on a post about Scots words: it is the best-known Norse-styled spectacle in Scotland, and the photograph has what a cover needs, people, fire and scale. It is not evidence for anything on the slides. The festival is Victorian: its own history page dates the name and the torchlight procession to "Around 1870" and the galley to the "late 1880s", and the Guizer Jarl to 1906. The credit on the slide says "a Victorian festival". Shetland's own Norse language was Norn, a different story, told in our Shetland sources, which also show that the name Up Helly Aa is Scots, not Norse.

01. Church and chest, with a Norse k

"English softened the k in Old English cirice and cest, and got church and chest. Norse speakers kept it hard: kirkja, kista. In Scotland and the north the hard forms won." The SND entry kirk: "= Eng. church in all senses ... Gen.Sc. Also in n.Eng. dial.", from "North. form of Eng. church, cf. O.N. kirkja, O.E. cirice." DOST, kirk: "ON. kirkja ... taking the place in the north of ME. chirche". The SND entry kist: "A chest, box, trunk ... esp. a (farm-)servant's trunk. Gen.Sc., also in n.Eng. dial.", the "northern form of Eng. chest; O.N. kista, O.E. c(i)(e)st ... < Lat. cista"; DOST, kist, sets ON kista against "midl. and south. ME. chest". The first OED agrees on both: kirk is the "Northern form of CHURCH", "formerly used as far south as Norfolk", and kist is "either directly from Scandinavian, or owing its form to Norse influence".

"The twist: the Norse had borrowed kirkja from English first." DOST says Old English cirice "is itself the origin of the Scand. word", and Macafee and Aitken (origins, note 26): "ON originally borrowed it from OE, while the consonant was still /k/, prior to the OE sound-change of palatalisation". That sound-change is the softening the slide describes. The Norse were not the only help: "Flemish speakers in the early Scottish burghs would have added their weight to the restoration of non-palatalised forms of words like kirk" (vocabulary, 4.2.2.4). So the slide says "a Norse k", not that kirk is purely Norse.

Sources: DSL, as linked; Macafee and Aitken (2002), origins note 26 and vocabulary 4.2.2.4; OED, 1st ed., vol. V, s.v. Kirk and Kist. Photo: Ruth Sharville, "Cranshaws Church of Scotland kirk, in the Scottish Borders", October 2020, geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added. It shows a country kirk with a bellcote and a round window above its kirkyard. We do not date the building.

02. A Viking kist you can still see

"Kist is Old Norse kista, a chest." See 01. "On Gotland a craftsman's oak kist, packed with about 150 woodworking and smithing tools, turned up in a bog in 1936." Roesdahl describes a "kiste med en varieret samling af værktøj", a chest with a varied collection of tools: "Det blev fundet i en mose på Gotland i 1936", it was found in a bog on Gotland in 1936, hidden or lost there "i sen vikingetid/ældre middelalder", in the late Viking Age or early Middle Ages. Her photo caption counts "ca. 150 redskaber, både tømrer- og smedeværktøj", about 150 implements, both carpenter's and smith's tools, which lay together "i en værktøjskiste af egetræ", in an oak tool chest. She calls it "Europas største samlede værktøjsfund fra perioden", Europe's largest single find of tools from the period. "Craftsman's" is our word for a man who carried both kinds of tools.

"Stockholm's history museum still files it as a verktygskista: a tool kist." The museum's own photograph is titled "Verktygskista - Historiska museet - DIG 25871", object 107095_HST, and Roesdahl places the find in the Statens historiska museum, Stockholm. Swedish verktygskista is verktyg, tool, plus kista.

Sources: Roesdahl, lex.dk, last changed 24 August 2012; the museum's file title on Commons. Photo: Jens Mohr, Swedish History Museum, "Verktygskista", via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 4.0. The museum's studio shot of the chest on white. We cut off a printed scale bar at the bottom and extended the plain white background upward to fit the slide; the chest itself is untouched. Text added.

03. You don't move house. You flit.

"Flit is Old Norse flytja, to move." DOST, flit: "[ME. flytt(e, flitt(e, ON. flytja.]" The SND entry flit: "O.N. flytja, to transport, migrate". The first OED: "a. ON. flytja", and "Now chiefly Sc. or dial." This one is Norse through and through.

"Scots and northerners flit house; farmers flit their beasts to fresh grass". SND: "Of one's household and belongings: to remove to another house. Gen.Sc. Also in n.Eng. dial.", and "Of tethered animals: to move to fresh grazing". "Burns's old farmer promises his mare, "I'll flit thy tether"." The poem is "The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare, Maggie", in the 1786 Kilmarnock edition, stanza 18: "Wi' tentie Care I'll flit thy tether, / To some hain'd rig", to a strip of land saved for grazing. SND cites the same line. "A proverb recorded by 1641: better rue sit than rue flit." SND quotes it from Henderson's Scottish Proverbs (1832), which marks it as from David Ferguson's collection of 1641. We did not read Ferguson.

Sources: DSL, as linked; OED, 1st ed., vol. IV, s.v. Flit; Burns (1786). Photo: John Smith, "Herd of cattle wading through the sea to reach island", June 2016, geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added. Cattle crossing to fresh grazing: a flit in the farm sense, and nowt (see 04). The file page does not name the place, so neither do we.

04. Where the Norse word won

"Old English had gēac for the cuckoo and nēat for cattle. In Scots the Norse words won: gowk from gaukr, nowt from naut." Macafee and Aitken: "Scandinavian word-forms have been borrowed as doublets or have even in time replaced OE ones, e.g. ... gowk n., ... nowt (= OE nēat ...), gleg". The first OED, under Gowk: "a. ON. gaukr = OE. géac", "Orig. Sc. and north. dial." The SND entry gowk: "O.N. gaukr, the cuckoo"; DOST, gowk, agrees. For nowt, cattle, SND gives "Norw., O.N. naut, cattle", and DOST, nowt, "ON. naut". Both are Norse forms of words Old English also had; the Norse form is the one Scots kept.

"A gowk is also a fool, the April gowk." SND: "Also used = April fool ... gen. in phr. an April gowk". "Sharp and quick? Gleg, from Norse gleggr." The SND entry gleg: "O.N. gleggr, clear-sighted; clever"; DOST, gleg: "ON. glegg-r clear-sighted".

Sources: Macafee and Aitken (2002), vocabulary 4.2.2.3; DSL, as linked; OED, 1st ed., vol. IV, s.v. Gowk. Photo: Luiz Lapa, "Common Cuckoo, male", March 2023, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added. A male common cuckoo on a lichened stump, photographed at Setúbal in Portugal, not in Scotland.

05. Two Norse words in To a Mouse

"Burns tells the mouse "thou maun live", left with "naething, now, to big a new ane"." The Kilmarnock edition, p. 139: "What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!" and "An' naething, now, to big a new ane, / O' foggage green!" The poem's title adds "On turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November, 1785", hence the 1785 on the slide; the book appeared in 1786.

"Maun is Norse munu, must." The SND entry maun: "O.Sc. man, must, 1375, Mid.Eng. mun, O.N. munu". "Big is Norse byggja, to build: standard English dropped it after the 1400s. Scots kept building with it." The SND entry big(g): "from O.N. byggja, to inhabit, dwell in, build ... Big is obs. in Mod.Eng. (no quot. in N.E.D. after 15th cent.)". DOST, big: "ON. byggja, to inhabit, dwell in, build." The first OED: "Obs. exc. north. dial. ... a. ON. byggja". Only the verb is Norse. Big meaning large is "Origin obscure" in the SND entry big adj., and the first OED calls its derivation "entirely unknown".

Sources: Burns (1786), p. 139; DSL, as linked; OED, 1st ed., vol. I, s.v. Big, bigg v. and Big a. Photo: John Ferguson, "Burns Cottage Alloway", March 2013, geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped by us, with text added. The thatched cottage at Alloway where Burns was born. The poem is not set there.

07. Kirk, kist, flit, gowk, ken: which do you still say? Comment below

Ken is on the list because it is a word people still say, not because it is Norse; see the caption section below. "Know a Scots or northern word we missed? Send the dictionary entry and we'll pin it." Corrections are listed below.

Photo: Roy Mullay, "Lerwick Up Helly Aa 2019 Galley Burning", 29 January 2019, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 4.0. Cropped by us, with text added. The galley burning in Lerwick, seen from King Harald Street, with the crowd in silhouette. Like the cover, it shows a Victorian festival; the galley dates from the late 1880s.

08. The Norse named people too

"Bynames were conferred rather than claimed, and the sagas are full of them." That is how the sources present them, though not a rule without exceptions: some men took on a name, and some bynames were inherited. One example with its source is in our Isle of Man sources: the Chronicle of Man names its royal founder Godred called Crovan, son of Harald the Black, two bynames in one line. Our free Viking name generator draws on given names and bynames attested in medieval sources.

09. An axe for your own kist

"The Mästermyr kist held a Viking craftsman's woodworking and smithing tools, about 150 in all." See 02; among them Roesdahl lists "øksehoveder", axe heads, and "en saks og tænger", shears and tongs. Ours is the Fenrir bearded axe: a bearded carbon steel head engraved with a wolf's head for Fenrir, on a hardwood haft wrapped in leather, with a leather sheath. It can be personalised with engraving to order; see our personalized Viking blades. It is a modern axe and copies no tool from the Mästermyr chest.

10. Arm-rings from Galloway

"Viking-age silver arm-rings, buried around 900, turned up in 2014, the Galloway Hoard, on Church of Scotland land at Balmaghie in Galloway." Goldberg: the hoard was "Buried around the end of the 9th century" and "discovered by a metal-detectorist in 2014 on what is now Church of Scotland land at Balmaghie in Kirkcudbrightshire", part of Galloway, the region that gives the hoard its name. Among its silver are "three intact Hiberno-Scandinavian broad-band arm-rings".

"Ours is twisted steel with two wolf heads, worn on the arm the way Norse silver was." It is our stainless steel Fenrir wolf arm ring: a twisted bangle of 316L steel with two facing wolf-head ends, adjustable from 18 to 26 cm, so it sits on the wrist or higher on the arm. It is a modern piece. The Galloway rings are broad bands of silver; ours copies nothing in the hoard. More in our Viking bracelets and arm bands.

Caption. The k, the flit and the false friends

"Much of this Norse came north through the Anglo-Danish English of the early Scottish burghs, not only from Viking settlers." Macafee and Aitken (origins, quoting Aitken): "Scandinavianized Northern English, or Anglo-Danish, was certainly the principal, though probably not the only, language of the early Scottish burghs".

"Farm-servants once flitted on Flit Friday, after the Martinmas term". SND, under flit: "Flit Friday, the next Friday to the term-day at Whitsunday or esp. Martinmas, on which farm-servants changed their employment". The kist of 01 was the farm-servant's trunk. The 1641 proverb is in 03.

"On 1 April you send the April gowk "anither mile"." SND, under gowk, from Henderson (1832): "The first day of April, send the gowk anither mile". The first OED has the same fool's errand: "To hunt the gowk".

"Nowt meaning nothing is plain English nought." SND keeps two words apart: nowt, cattle (see 04), and nowt n.2, "Variant forms of Eng. nought, nothing".

"Ken is Old English, though its sense "know" probably came from Norse." The first OED: "OE. cennan ... The form is properly causative 'to cause to know' ... In Eng. this may have been taken from Norse, in which both senses were in early use". Macafee and Aitken: "Ken takes its branch II sense from ON". The SND entry ken gives "O.E. cęnnan, to make known" beside "O.N. kenna, to know"; see also DOST, ken.

"Greet, to cry, is Old English." DOST, grete: "[ME. (chiefly northern) grete, OE. (Anglian) grétan.]" The SND entry greet: "North. Mid.Eng. grete(n), O.E. grētan". The first OED lists Norse gráta only as a relative.

The Up Helly Aa line is under the cover. The rest of the caption repeats 01 to 05. The photo line credits Vicky Brock, Ruth Sharville, John Smith, John Ferguson, Jens Mohr of the Swedish History Museum, Roy Mullay and Luiz Lapa; each file is linked above, with its licence.

What we do not claim

• That kirk and kist are purely Norse words. They are church and chest in a Norse form, and the Norse took kirkja from English in the first place.
• That the Vikings brought kirk to Lowland Scotland as settlers. Much of the Norse in Scots came through Anglo-Danish English and the early burghs, and Flemish speakers helped keep the k.
• That Scots comes from Old Norse. Scots descends from Old English, with a large Norse layer.
• That ken or bairn is a Norse loan. Ken is Old English with a Norse sense; for bairn the SND gives "O.E. bearn; O.N. barn", and the first OED thinks the northern form "as much of ON. as of OE. origin".
• That greet is Norse. It is Old English.
• That big, meaning large, is Norse. Its origin is unknown; only big, to build, is Norse.
• That nowt, nothing, is Norse. Only nowt, cattle, is.
• That dreich is Norse. The SND entry dreich derives it from Old English; DOST points to Scandinavian. The two dictionaries disagree.
• That lug, ear, is Old Norse. No Old Norse word is attested, and Macafee and Aitken report that lug, nieve and muck "may really be native words". The same goes for brig and rig, which the dictionaries hedge.
• Any count of Norse words in Scots. We read none.
• That the Mästermyr chest was found when a plough caught it, that it held over 200 tools, or any exact date for it. Roesdahl says about 150 tools, late Viking Age or early Middle Ages.
• That the Galloway Hoard was one Viking's personal treasure, or any reading of the runes on its arm-rings. We did not read the full chapter.
• That Up Helly Aa is an ancient Viking festival. It dates from about 1870.
• That Burns ploughed up a mouse in November 1785. That is the poem's title, not a biography.
• That our axe or our arm ring copies anything from Mästermyr or Galloway.

Corrections

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

Frequently asked questions

Is kirk a Viking word?

Partly. Kirk is the English word church in a Norse form. Old English cirice softened its k sounds and became church; Norse speakers said kirkja with a hard k, and Scotland and the north of England kept that form. The twist is that the Norse had borrowed kirkja from English before the softening happened.

What does flit mean in Scots?

To flit is to move house, from Old Norse flytja, to move. Farmers also flit tethered beasts to fresh grazing, and farm-servants once flitted on Flit Friday after the Martinmas term. Burns uses it in 1786: "I'll flit thy tether".

Is ken a Norse word?

Not quite. Ken comes from Old English cennan, to make known. Its everyday Scots sense, to know, probably came from Old Norse kenna, so it is an English word with a Norse meaning rather than a Norse loan.

Is greet, to cry, from Old Norse?

No. Both Scots dictionaries derive greet from Old English (Anglian) grētan. It looks Norse because it survived in Scotland and the north, but Norse gráta is only a relative.

Which Scots words come from Old Norse?

Flit, to move, gleg, sharp-eyed, maun, must, and big, to build, are Norse. Gowk, cuckoo or fool, and nowt, cattle, are Norse forms that replaced the Old English words, and kirk and kist are church and chest with a Norse hard k.