Norse culture

The Norsemen (or Norse people) were a North Germanic ethnolinguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they spoke the Old Norse language. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages and is the predecessor of the modern Germanic languages of Scandinavia. During the late eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a large-scale expansion in all directions, giving rise to the Viking Age. In English-language scholarship since the 19th century, Norse seafaring traders, settlers and warriors have commonly been referred to as Vikings. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England distinguish between Norse Vikings (Norsemen) from Norway who mainly invaded and occupied the islands north and north-west of Britain, Ireland and western Britain, and Danish Vikings, who principally invaded and occupied eastern Britain.

Modern descendants of Norsemen are the Danes, Icelanders, Faroe Islanders, Norwegians, and Swedes, who are now generally referred to as "Scandinavians" rather than Norsemen.

History of the terms ''Norseman'' and ''Northman''

The word ''Norseman'' first appears in English during the early 19th century: the earliest attestation given in the third edition of the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is from Walter Scott's 1817 ''Harold the Dauntless''. The word was coined using the adjective ''norse'', which was borrowed into English from Dutch during the 16th century with the sense 'Norwegian', and which by Scott's time had acquired the sense "of or relating to Scandinavia or its language, esp ciallyin ancient or medieval times". As with modern use of the word ''viking'', therefore, the word ''norseman'' has no particular basis in medieval usage.

The term ''Norseman'' does echo terms meaning 'Northman', applied to Norse-speakers by the peoples they encountered during the Middle Ages. The Old Frankish word ("Northman") was Latinised as and was widely used in Latin texts. The Latin word then entered Old French as . From this word came the name of the Normans and of Normandy, which was settled by Norsemen in the tenth century.

The same word entered Hispanic languages and local varieties of Latin with forms beginning not only in ''n-'', but in ''l-'', such as (apparently reflecting nasal dissimilation in local Romance languages). This form may in turn have been borrowed into Arabic: the prominent early Arabic source al-Mas‘ūdī identified the 844 raiders on Seville not only as '' Rūs'' but also .

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in Old English, distinguishes between the pagan Norwegian Norsemen (''Norðmenn'') of Dublin and the Christian Danes (''Dene'') of the Danelaw. In 942, it records the victory of King Edmund I over the Norse kings of York: "The Danes were previously subjected by force under the Norsemen, for a long time in bonds of captivity to the heathens".

Other names

In modern scholarship, ''Vikings'' is a common term for attacking Norsemen, especially in connection with raids and monastic plundering by Norsemen in the British Isles, but it was not used in this sense at the time. In Old Norse and Old English, the word simply meant 'pirate'.

The Norse were also known as , ''ashmen'', by the Germans, (Norse) by the Gaels and (Danes) by the Anglo-Saxons.

The Gaelic terms (Norwegian Viking or Norwegian), (Danish Viking or Danish) and (foreign Gaelic) were used for the people of Norse descent in Ireland and Scotland, who assimilated into the Gaelic culture. Dubliners called them Ostmen, or East-people, and the name Oxmanstown (an area in central Dublin; the name is still current) comes from one of their settlements; they were also known as , or Lake-people.

The Slavs, the Arabs and the Byzantines knew them as the '' Rus''' or (), probably derived from various uses of , i.e. "related to rowing", or from the area of Roslagen in east-central Sweden, where most of the Northmen who visited the Eastern Slavic lands originated.

Archaeologists and historians of today believe that these Scandinavian settlements in the East Slavic lands formed the names of the countries of Russia and Belarus.

The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them ''Varangians'' ( non, Væringjar, meaning "sworn men"), and the Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard.

Modern Scandinavian usage

Modern Scandinavian languages have a common word for Norsemen: the word ( sv, nordborna, da, nordboerne, no, nordboerne, or in the definite plural) is used for both ancient and modern people living in the Nordic countries and speaking one of the North Germanic languages.

Geography

The British conception of the Vikings' origins was inaccurate. Those who plundered Britain lived in what is today Denmark, Scania, the western coast of Sweden and Norway (up to almost the 70th parallel) and along the Swedish Baltic coast up to around the 60th latitude and Lake Mälaren. They also came from the island of Gotland, Sweden. The border between the Norsemen and more southerly Germanic tribes, the Danevirke, today is located about south of the Danish–German border. The southernmost living Vikings lived no further north than Newcastle upon Tyne, and travelled to Britain more from the east than from the north.

The Norse Scandinavians established polities and settlements in what are now Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales), Ireland, Iceland, Russia, Belarus, France, Sicily, Belgium, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Greenland, Canada, and the Faroe Islands.

Notable Norse people

* Aud the Deep-Minded ( CE), ship captain and early settler of Iceland
* Harald Bluetooth (died CE), king of Denmark and Norway, namesake of the Bluetooth wireless technology
* Bolli Bollason (born CE), prominent Icelandic warrior and member of the Varangian Guard
* Freydís Eiríksdóttir (born CE), explorer and early colonist of Vinland
* Erik the Red ( CE), Norwegian explorer and founder of the first settlement in Greenland
* Leif Erikson ( CE), Icelandic explorer thought to have been the first European to have set foot on continental North America
* Estrid ( CE), powerful Swedish magnate and matriarch
* Harald Fairhair ( CE), the first King of Norway
* Gunnborga ( CE), Swedish runemaster responsible for the Hälsingland Rune Inscription 21
* Hildr Hrólfsdóttir ( CE), Norwegian skald known for her poetry concerning the banishment of her father Rolv Nevia, the Viking jarl of Trondheim
* Olaf the White ( CE), Viking sea-king, King of Dublin, and husband of Aud the Deep-Minded
* Ragnar Lodbrok ( CE), legendary Viking hero and king
* Þorbjörg Lítilvölva ( CE), renowned seeress of Norse colonial Greenland
* Gunnlaugr ormstunga ( CE), Icelandic skald who widely served in Iceland, Norway, Ireland, Orkney, and Sweden
* Raud the Strong ( CE), Norwegian blót priest and seafaring warrior
* Steinunn Refsdóttir ( CE), Icelandic skald known for her verses taunting the Christian missionary Þangbrandr
* Rusla ( CE), a.k.a. the "Red Woman", legendary Norwegian pirate fleet leader
* Steinvör Sighvatsdóttir (−1271 CE), influential Icelandic matriarch and skald
* Egill Skallagrímsson (), Icelandic war poet, sorcerer, berserker, farmer, and anti-hero of ''Egil's Saga''
* Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241), Icelandic historian, poet, politician, and lawspeaker of the Althing whose work comprises a major source of Norse mythology
* Thorkell the Tall ( CE), semi-legendary Scanian lord and Jomsviking
* Veborg (died CE), legendary shield-maiden known for her role in the Battle of Bråvalla

See also

* Danes (Germanic tribe)
* Geats
* Goths
* Gotlander
* Haplogroup I-M253
* Norse-Gaels
* Swedes (Germanic tribe)

Notes

References

{{Viking

North Germanic peoples
Norsemen