Hi, I´m the Rocky Mountains’ Dr. Jackson Crawford.
I’m an Old Norse specialist teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder, previously at UC Berkeley and UCLA.
I’m often asked about conversational Old Norse.
People often want to talk in Old Norse either because
they're doing some kind of reenactment,
or because of possibly religious reasons,
or just for fun and games.
It’s a little bit difficult, though, to kind of come up with
appropriate equivalents to the sort of just random
daily things that we say to each other today,
since the written sources that we have in Old Norse
are always of a somewhat formal nature.
The sagas include a lot of dialogue,
but it’s really very casual. It’s usually people talking
about a case they’re bringing to the Althing,
or something like that.
And then in the stories about the gods,
in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda,
they’re rarely just talking about the weather,
although there is some back-and-forth
that approaches conversationality.
So today, the language that is closest in structure
and vocabulary to Old Norse is Icelandic, and so you
can also kind of calque off of Icelandic,
and kind of just take the Old Norse equivalents, but
keep in mind that Icelandic today is a modern language
with modern expression, modern things to talk about;
it’s had a thousand years to develop since the
Viking Age; it’s not going to be exactly the same,
and especially the pronunciation of vowels has changed
quite a bit since the Viking Age.
But I’ll give a shot to giving you some of the
major conversational phrases I’m asked for,
partly calquing off of Icelandic, and partly taking
material from the sagas and Eddas
where it seems appropriate.
So one of the big ones is of course just
'How are you doing?'
Now in the poem Vǫluspá in the Poetic Edda, in which
the vǫlva, or seeress, is talking about Ragnarok,
she at one point asks:
“Hvat’s með ásum?”; “Hvat’s með alfum?”
'What’s with the gods?'; 'What’s with the elves?',
and this seems to be a question about how they’re
doing, so perhaps that could be used in Old Norse:
“Hvat’s með þer?”,
“Hvat’s með þer?": 'How are you?/What’s with you?'
Now, you might respond to that by saying
“Þat es gott”: 'It’s good', or “Þat es illt”: 'It’s bad',
or simply “gott”, “illt”; 'good', 'bad'.
It seems like a plausible scenario to me.
In modern Icelandic, 'How are you?' is usually expressed
as “Hvað segirðu?”, “Hvað segirðu?”
which is 'What do you say?'. In Old Norse that would be
“Hvat segirðu?”, “Hvat segirðu?”, and in that case
you usually answer like ‘I say good’ or ‘I say all good’: Ég-
in modern Icelandic, “Ég segi allt gott”; in Old Norse
it would be “Ek segi allt gott”.
A simple ‘hello’ in modern Icelandic is often
“sæll” to one single man, “sæl” to a woman.
Equivalent forms in Old Norse would be “sæl” to a man,
“sæl” to a woman, with just one ‘L’, so probably the 'L' is
held a little bit less.
To multiple men you would say “sælir”;
that’s masculine plural, to multiple women, “sælar”;
that’s feminine plural, and to a mixed group of
men and women, women’s “sæl”,
because Old Norse uses the neuter for mixed groups of
masculine and feminine.
'Thank you' is easy enough; that’s “Þǫkk”.
That’s also the name that Loki takes when he’s disguised
as a giant woman who won’t weep for Baldr
in the story of Baldr’s death: "Þǫkk".
There’s no real ‘You’re welcome’ equivalent in any
Scandinavian language, but there’s kind of a pre-
‘you’re welcome’ when you’re presenting something to
someone where you say ‘Do so well’:
in modern Icelandic, “Gerðu svo vel”, or “Gjörðu svo vel”.
In Old Norse, you could say “Gerðu svá vel,”
or “Gjǫrðu svá vel”.
A simple farewell is in fact extremely similar to English:
“Far vel”. It is literally a wish that someone fare- go well.
Asking where someone is from: “Hvaðan,”
that means, ‘Where from?’
"Hvaðan ert þú?": ‘Where are you from?’;
"Hvaðan ert þú."
You could respond, “Ek em frá...”
and then from whatever place you’re from,
if the place you’re from has an Old Norse name
or has a modern Icelandic name that you can calque,
you need to make sure that you’re using the dative.
So for example, “Ek em frá Íslandi,”
"Íslandi" is the dative of "Ísland"; the dative is required
because of that preposition, "frá".
‘I am’ is “Ek em,” as you might have noticed;
‘you are’ is “Þú ert,” so if you know some adjectives
you can also use various adjectives to make-
to fill in sentences there. ‘I am happy,’ ‘I am sad,’
‘I am angry,’ whatever. I’m gonna put some of those on
the screen with their masculine and feminine forms.
Well for now, I hope this has been somewhat
oddly entertaining at least, and I hope that if you enjoy
these videos made in beautiful places that you’ll
consider donating to my Patreon.
Patreon has become a wonderful community for me:
great people, great questions, and great input, and
it really helps my life, and it helps in making
these videos available; helps me making the time to
make them. I hope you’ll also consider checking out my
translations of the Norse myths and sagas.
And for now, from beautiful Colorado,
I’m gonna wish you--
all the best.