Language, literature and art

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES

IN THE VIKING AGE

Michael P. Barnes

GERMANIC AND SCANDINAVIAN

T

he Scandinavian languages belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European
language family. They are closely related to Dutch, Frisian, German, English and
the extinct Gothic, and more distantly to most other European and some Asian tongues
(for details, see Nielsen 1989 ). Precisely when Indo-European speech first arrived in
what now constitutes Denmark, Norway, Sweden and north-west Germany is unclear,
but recent estimates suggest a time around, or a little earlier, than 2000 bc. Germanic is
thought to have begun evolving as a separate language branch soon after this, in part
because of the gradual attenuation of contacts with speakers of other forms of Indo-
European, but also due to influence from neighbouring tongues. A gradual expansion,
dated by many between 1000 and 500 bc, saw the frontiers of Germanic pushed as far
south as the present-day Netherlands and central Germany and as far east as the Wisła
(Vistula). It is reckoned that at this period all Germanic speakers shared a common
language, though probably with some dialectal differentiation. However, further
migrations around the beginning of the Christian era led to a split into an East and
North-West branch of Germanic. The latter, probably from the start a dialect con-
tinuum, was itself by the sixth century splitting into two recognisably different
branches, North and West Germanic. It is from North Germanic that the Scandinavian
languages are descended.
Language branches are classified on the basis of shared features. All forms of Ger-
manic, for example, have a two-tense verb system, distinguishing present and past (there is
no future, perfect or other tense form, as in many European tongues). In addition,
Germanic languages form the past tense in two different ways, either by vowel change
(English sing–sang, ‘strong’ inflexion) or by the addition of a dental suffix (English
walk–walked, ‘weak’ inflexion). North Germanic or Scandinavian languages are also
recognisable from the features they share, such as the suffixed definite article (ON hestr
‘horse’, hestrinn ‘the horse’; Sw häst, hästen), or the -s(k)/-st form of the verb (ON gerask
‘happen’, from gera ‘do’; Norw gjøres ‘be done’ from gjøre ‘do’).