Njarar or Njars were an ancient

Germanic people The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and ear ...

Närke Närke () is a Provinces of Sweden, Swedish traditional province, or ''landskap'', situated in Svealand in south central Sweden. It is bordered by Västmanland to the north, Södermanland to the east, Östergötland to the southeast, Västergö ...

, Sweden, that appears in the Scandinavian version of the Lay of Weyland the smith. In the early part of the lay, King Níðuðr is introduced as a king in Sweden: Later he is specified as the lord of the Njars: The Njars probably lost their independence early to the

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

king at

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...

, and they are not mentioned by

Jordanes Jordanes (), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Goths, Gothic descent who became a historian later in life. Late in life he wrote two works, one on Roman history (''Romana ...

in his thorough listing of tribes in

Scandza Scandza was described as a "great island" by Gothic-Byzantine historian Jordanes in his work ''Getica''. The island was located in the Arctic regions of the sea that surrounded the world. The location is usually identified with Scandinavia. Jor ...

, in the sixth century. There are few mentions of the Njarar/Nerikjar in

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

sources, but for exceptions see King of Nerike.

Linguistic notes

At first glance, the name is hard to recognize, because the people of Nerike are otherwise called the ''Nerikjar'' in

sources. However, ''njar'' is a breaking of an older ''ner''. The same sound change happened with ''eka'' and ''hertõ'' which resulted in ''jag'' (I) and ''hjarta'' (heart). However, in the case of ''Njar'', the sound change never became established, and the older form ''ner'' continued to be used for the province and its population. ''Ner'' is, in its turn, an umlaut from an older ''nar'' which is cognate to English ''narrow''. The name referred to the narrow inlets that characterized the geography. The north-eastern (Kvismaren-Hjälmaren) has disappeared artificially, but the southern part of the province still has a large fjord.

Linguistic notes

See also