| Norn | ||||
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| Spoken in | Shetland, Orkney and Caithness | |||
| Extinct | by the 18th century (19th century at the latest); much earlier in Caithness | |||
| Language family |
Indo-European
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | nrn | |||
| Linguasphere | 52-AAA-ac | |||
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Norn is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in Shetland and Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland, and in Caithness. After the islands were pledged to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, it was gradually replaced by Scots and on the mainland by Scottish Gaelic.
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It is not known exactly when Norn became extinct. The last reports of Norn speakers are claimed to be from the 19th century, but it is more likely that the language was dying out in the late 18th century.[1] The isolated islands of Foula and Unst are variously claimed as the last refuges of the language in Shetland, where there were people "who could repeat sentences in Norn, probably passages from folk songs or poems, as late as 1893.[2] Walter Sutherland from Skaw in Unst, who died about 1850, has been cited as the last native speaker of the Norn language. However, fragments of vocabulary survived the death of the main language and remain to this day, mainly in place-names and terms referring to plants, animals, weather, mood, and fishing vocabulary.
Dialects of Norse had also been spoken on mainland Scotland—for example, in Caithness—but here they became extinct many centuries before Norn died on Orkney and Shetland. Hence, some scholars also speak about "Caithness Norn", but others avoid this. Even less is known about "Caithness Norn" than about Orkney and Shetland Norn. Almost no written Norn has survived, but what little remains includes a version of the Lord's Prayer and a ballad. Michael Barnes, professor of Scandinavian Studies at University College London, has published a study, The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland.[3]
Norn is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West Scandinavian group, separating it from the East Scandinavian group consisting of Swedish, Danish and Gutnish. While this classification is based on the differences between the North Germanic languages at the time they split, their present-day characteristics justify another classification, dividing them into an Insular Scandinavian and Mainland Scandinavian language groups, based on mutual intelligibility. Under this system, Norwegian is grouped together with the neighbouring languages Danish and Swedish, because the last millennium has seen all three undergo important changes, especially in grammar and lexis, which have set them apart from Faroese and Icelandic. Norn is generally considered to have been fairly similar to Faroese, sharing many phonological and grammatical traits with this language, and might even have been mutually intelligible with it; thus, it can be considered an Insular Scandinavian language.
Few written texts remain. It is to be distinguished from the present day 'dialect', termed by linguists Shetlandic.
The phonology of Norn can never be determined with much precision due to the lack of source material, but the general aspects can be extrapolated from the few written sources that do exist. Norn shared many traits with the dialects of south-west Norway. This includes a voicing of /p, t, k/ to [b, d, ɡ] before or between vowels and (in the Shetland dialect, but only partially in the Orkney dialect) a conversion of /θ/ and /ð/ ("thing" and "that" respectively) to [t] and [d] respectively.
The features of Norn grammar were very similar to the other Scandinavian languages. There were two numbers, three genders and four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative). The two main conjugations of verbs in present and past tense were also present and like all other North Germanic languages, it used a suffix instead of a prepositioned article to indicate definiteness as in modern Scandinavian: man(n) ("man"); mannen ("the man"). Though it is difficult to be certain of much of the aspects of Norn grammar, documents indicate that it may have featured subjectless clauses, which were common in the West Scandinavian languages.
The following are Norn and old Norse versions of the Lord's Prayer: [1]
Modern Icelandic
Modern Norwegian (bokmål)
Faroese
A Shetland "guddick" (riddle) in Norn, which Jakob Jakobsen heard told on Unst, the northernmost island in Shetland, in the 1890s. The same riddle is also known from the Faroe Islands.
Shetland Norn (Jakob Jakobsen)
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Faroese
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English translation
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Orkney (The Orkney Norn, 1926.[4])
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Icelandic
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The answer is a cow. Four teats hang, four legs walk, two horns and two ears stand skyward, two eyes show the way to the field and one tail comes shaking (dangling) behind.
Most of the use of Norn/Norse in modern day Shetland and Orkney is purely ceremonial, and mostly in Old Norse, for example the Shetland motto, which is "Með lögum skal land byggja" ("with law shall land be built") which is the same motto used by the Icelandic police force.
Another example of the use of Norse/Norn in the Northern Isles can be found in the names of ferries:
There are some private enthusiasts who are engaged in developing and disseminating a modern form called Nynorn, based upon linguistic analysis of the known records and Norse linguistics in general.[6]
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