Need to figure out how to turn the names of your OTP into one glorious portmanteau? Gotcha covered. (And the actual linguistics stuff is really cool, too).

What is modern Icelandic? It is the official language of the Republic of Iceland, with some 315,000 native speakers. It is the tongue that is the closest to what has been called Old Norse, spoken in Scandinavia and, to some extent, in the British Isles during the early Middle Ages; from the twelfth century, it is the written language in Iceland, and it has been kept ‘pure’ on purpose: in modern Icelandic, there are none of the internationally used words of Greek or Latin extraction, such as television, telephone, satellite, etc. All new terms are coined and customized on the basis of Icelandic derivatives. Thus the language spoken and written in Iceland today is quite close to what has been called Old Norse, such as it appears in the medieval texts. The linguistic territory is Iceland, a rugged, volcanic isle between the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Sea. A huge rock in the middle of the ocean, covered with glaciers, tall mountains, wide lava-fields, long dark winters and midnight suns. Sturdy, horned sheep graze in the sparse meadows, and the small Icelandic horse runs wild across the wasted lands.  Indeed, Icelandic as it was written in the twelfth century is a gold mine for those looking for evidence in the archaeology of knowledge and of language.

Abstract: The Vikings from Scandinavia invaded the British Isles during the late eighth century. They prevailed there for the next 300 years, until the Normans arrived. Despite having been such a dominant force they left behind diminutive evidence of their reign. That was the general assumption up until the second half of the nineteenth century when philologists began investigating English. Their investigations successfully established the definite evidence of the Vikings language in English.

The Vikings spoke a language called ‘Old Norse’, which today is an extinct language. Old Norse and Old English were in many ways similar since they belonged to the same language family, Germanic. Therefore, the Old Norse constituents integrated with ease into Old English. These borrowings went undetected for centuries but remain in the language up to the present-day.

It is estimated that there are around 400 Old Norse borrowings in Standard English. These borrowings are amongst the most frequently used terms in English and denote objects and actions of the most everyday description. This thesis determines which aspects of the language were and still are influenced by Old Norse and if these borrowings are still productive in Modern English. Moreover, it examines the varied influence Old Norse had on different English dialects.