hi I'm dr. Jackson Crawford I'm an Old
North specialist and instructor of
Nordic Studies at the University of
Colorado Boulder I'm back at the old
Crawford place in central Colorado to
remake one of my oldest and most watched
videos which concerns the pronunciation
of Old Norse during the time when the
sagas and edits were actually written as
Old Norse is usually taught today the
pronunciation that is taught is modern
Icelandic it's sometimes not even
introduced that way sometimes people
just call it Old Norse pronunciation on
the assumption that Old Norse and modern
Icelandic are the same thing but they're
not every language changes and Icelandic
is no exception even though I sign it
grammar has remained very consistent
with Old Norse the pronunciation
especially of vowels has changed quite a
bit if you're interested in modern
Icelandic pronunciation or in using that
for Old Norse of course that's your
choice in your business and I do have a
video about that that I'll link in the
upper right corner
I taught Icelandic at the University of
california-berkeley for two years so I
know both Old Norse and modernize ionic
and I'm pretty keenly attuned to the
differences as well as having a PhD in
Scandinavian languages my Master's is in
historical linguistics from the
University of Georgia and the history of
the phonology or sounds of Old Norse is
one of my special fields of study so to
begin with keep in mind that in Old
Norse the stress of every word is on the
first syllable so even if it doesn't
look like it should be it will be
emphasized on the first syllable so for
instance it's the vowel whole not vowel
whole Valkyria not Valkyria the Olten
hamer not gilt inhaler etc and this is
always on the first syllable now to
begin with the vowels
the five basic vowels of the Roman
alphabet AEIOU are pronounced more or
less as they would be in a Romance
language today ah
oh ooh so the short vowel a is basically
pronounced as in the Oh in English got
American English got the short vowel E
is basically pronounced like the E in
American English pet
the short vowel eye is basically
pronounced like the eye in English heat
and the short vowel o is pronounced like
almost like the O and wrote although
notice that in English this is a
diphthong although in some accents like
northern Wisconsin it's not where people
say like wrote and then short value is
pronounced like the double O and English
root now there are also long versions of
these vowels that are written with an
accent over the vowel in most cases in
the case of e io and you this long vowel
is the same sound but it's just held
longer so compare the bell in say a set
with the belt and said before a key the
vowel is shorter than it is before a D
and this is a general rule of English so
it can give you a sense for where the
vowel is short or where it's long so set
versus said or wrote versus road or
route versus rude or heat versus heed so
you can see how about can be longer or
shorter and Old Norse this can actually
consistently distinguish words so for
instance a word with the short e would
be ech I
a words the long e would be there we
short I would be Fisker fish long I
would be east ice short o would be storm
a storm long o would be Thor god of
thunder and storms short you would be
full or full long you would be who's
eager but beyond these five Old Norse
also uses the letter Y to represent a
vowel although it's not the same as the
vowel represented by Y when it's used as
a vowel in English the valve represented
by old Old Norse as a Y or by most
Scandinavian languages of Y is a fronted
ooh so the sound of the letter U and a
surfer dude pronunciation of dude or
- if you can think of that accent making
an O sound with your lips pursed you
that's the sound of Y so there's also
short and long varieties of that so you
have like you here which is over and
then you also have like U which is a yew
tree or the name of one of the runes
there are also vowels that are not used
in writing modern English ash is used
right the ass sound so like an had or
mad Oh Cal Dada and O with the tail is
used to write the of the rounded off
sound so if you say like ah like you're
at the dentist office but you rounded
all sort of like in northern New Jersey
pronunciation of the O and coffee
you've got the okay Dada now coming back
to the original five vowels long a
probably had this same sound but the
long version of it so long a is actually
the long version of okay Dada rather
than the long version of short a so
short a is an AA short okay Dada is a
short all-rounded ah and long a is a
long rounded aw I and many other
scholars of Old Norse believe this had
happened pretty early on because this
change is basically universal in the
Scandinavian languages the Icelandic
pronunciation this vowel is how which is
also found in some division dialects and
in Scanian whether you want to call that
Swedish or Danish is your own opinion
this is probably a later development
from or compare some southern American
English dialects where all has become
pal like where people say dog all right
there's also Oh / this is a pal kind of
like an Arnold Schwarzenegger
pronunciation of bid this is the same as
the German bow represented by PO with
two dots above it often called umlaut
there is also a long version of this
letter so you this is sometimes written
as Oh / with an accent above it but it's
also sometimes written as oh and E
together
I prefer Oh / with an accent above it
because there's less room for confusion
with ash there are also three
diphthongs and Old Norse that is
combinations of two vowels that make up
one syllable these are a plus u equals I
and II plus y au is pronounced L
something like in English house he is
pronounced a something like getting a
terrain and E Y we pronounced as a
combination of the o slash plus y so
this comes out as b3 this is a sound
that's present in a region and spelled
Oh / y there in Old Norse text from
Norway it's also spelled that way
probably the closest you can get in
English is to do that sort of surfer
dude pronunciation again but say gue gue
this isn't very exact some people also
say you can try saying boy but with your
lips purse in the front Bowie Bowie they
may get you a little bit closer examples
of words that they sound include house
house which is skull stain stain which
is stone and simply gooey very witches
island then with the consonants the
consonants are largely similar to
English so if I don't mention a casa
it's probably Kraus basically like you'd
expect from English F is interesting
because F by default represents actually
a V sound and Old Norse
it only represents F if it's doubled or
if it's at the beginning of a word so
weird like from frou-frou there you have
the F actually acting as an F but in the
word like over easier easier there are
the FX like a V so sometimes it'll be
both of the different sounds in one word
like the name falls near the name of the
dragon slain by the hero cigarette
G is never adjust sound like an English
Jim or Jim this is almost always more
like the English heart sound and go it's
only ever really technically the sound
at the beginning of a word or when it's
doubled so in the word like Ganga to
walk or eager the Tara fire one of the
names of codon otherwise it's
technically actually forced to be
refrigerated so something like the CH in
German Bach but pronounced with your
vocal cords of vibrating so
this is sort of similar to the way some
Spanish speakers will pronounce the
region of Idaho Idaho that G sound H can
be pronounced in combination with many
other letters so you have for instance
HJ which is like the English age in
Houston or sue H page with a J following
or Y in English writing is also HV which
was probably pronounced as HW in Old
Norse so this would be like what not too
different from older American English
what it's also HL so in a place name
like sin dolly ki doli R and H are so
finger finger or ring J is pronounced as
I mentioned before like the Y in English
with yeah so yo yo is yes then there is
the our our was probably a tap like in
Scottish or a trill like in Spanish
other it is possible that a single R
would be pronounced as the short tap
just for when his name is in the
accusative case but a double r we
pronounced I live a longer trill so for
when his name is in the nominative or
subject case s is always in s it's never
a Z so East not ease God and then there
is the letter V which is probably for
the most part pronounced like an English
V although it might have still been a
bilabial fricative like Spanish V so the
but that's difficult to say for certain
Z is used represent TS sort of like in
German and then you have the two unique
letters thorn and F which were used in
Old English as well for presenting the
th sounds thorn which looks like a P
represents the th sound and breath worth
or thin is which looks like a curly
medieval B with the slash through it
represents the th sound and three worthy
or then I hope this has done a
reasonable job of going over the basics
of Old Norse pronunciation for you let
me conclude by doing some sort of
practice words I'll take some of the
names from Norse myth
so let's look at the father of the gods
oh then or then or his son the god of
thunder Thor Thor
what about Odin son older Balder note
that our can be its own syllable sort of
like an English water where you're not
actually saying about before they are
you saying what or this is how most
American English speakers say but of
course it's the trilled or cats are not
the American English are in Old Norse
then there is Boulder's one eye brother
older who accidentally kills him
their goddesses like froa froa and freak
freak as well as gabion gabion then
there are places in the mists like need
got other need got her walls got other
horse Carter yotan Hamer yotan Hamer and
hell hell I hope this has been somewhat
useful again
and from the wilderness of the American
West I'm wishing you all the best