ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2324 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2324 ************************************ From: "Brian M. Scott" 13 Jul 2001 Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You asked for help in constructing an Old Norse place-name beginning with . You wanted it to sound as much as possible like , and your first choice was ; if that were unsuitable, your second choice was . (Throughout this letter we'll use a slash to stand for an acute accent over the previous letter and an asterisk to stand for a small over the previous letter.) You also asked two specific questions. First, you wondered whether 'holding, as in a farm holding' was an Old Norse word, since you could find no period reference for it. Secondly, you analyzed the construction of as 'crop grown in area or product area is famous for' (in this case wine) + 'location' (in this case a holding on a larger farm) and asked whether the construction was authentic. Finally, you noted that if were not authentic, you were interested in as an alternative. The word is a compound whose literal meaning is something like '(right to the) use of a farm'. The second element, , appears (in slightly different forms) in all of the modern Scandinavian language, but it's not native to any of them. Rather, it's a borrowing from a Low German form of German 'custom, tradition, use' that first appears in Icelandic after the 16th century. [1] It might have been borrowed into Norwegian a bit earlier, but we very much doubt that it was borrowed early enough to allow the new compound to have been formed and then put to use as a place-name element in the SCA period. We found no clearcut examples of the construction 'crop grown in area or product area is famous for' + 'location', though in North America fails only in so far as it expresses a hope rather than a fact. This lack of examples may partly reflect the limitations of our sources; we would not be astonished to find an example of this type, but it does seem clear that they are rare. There are none, for instance, in a survey of about 500 viking era Scandinavian place-names in Yorkshire. [2] We did find a few place-names that refer to plants or animals characteristic of that place, but the plants and animals in question are those naturally occurring there. The Norwegian place-name , for instance, comes from Old Norse 'leek, garlic' and 'meadow' and signified 'meadow where leeks grow profusely'. Similarly, the place-name is from 'boar' and 'a clearing in a wood' and signified 'clearing frequented by boar'. [3] The alternative 'wine valley' is a better choice, since 'valley, dale' was a common Old Norse place-name element. [4, 5, 6] However, we've found 'wine' as a place-name element only in the name , presumably because the Scandinavian climate was ill-suited to viticulture. is therefore not a good re-creation of an Old Norse place-name that might have been found in Scandinavia or any of the places where there was significant Norse colonization. It is certainly possible that successful Norse colonization of North America could have given rise to a place-name , but at this point we've moved well into the realm of 'what if?'. We were able to find two ways to form a more authentic Old Norse place-name with a first syllable similar to . One uses the Old Norse word 'meadow, pasture'. This is a common element in early Norwegian names, though it's not found in Iceland or England and seems to have been obsolescent by the 10th century. [7, 8, 9] Unfortunately, it is questionable whether it was used as the first element of place-names. It was used by itself, however, in the plural form 'meadows, pastures'. [10] This name would have been pronounced \VIN-yar\. The other uses an element (sometimes or ) derived from the Old Norse verb 'to wind, to turn, to bend'. This element, which is found in the names of streams and fjords, is not directly attested but can be inferred from later forms of several Norwegian place-names. [11] Extended valleys in Norway often have names that are compounds of a river-name and <-dal> 'valley' (from Old Norse ), and in many cases the river-names are so old that they have gone out of use. [12] Thus, a hypothetical name combining the lost river-name and would be quite unexceptionable. In compounds of this type the name of the stream is put into the genitive (possessive) case. [13] Since is a feminine noun, its genitive is , and the resulting place-name is , meaning literally 'Vind's valley, valley of the Vind'. It would have been pronounced \VIN-dar-DAHLr\, where the final \r\ is not a separate syllable and is barely pronounced. Either or would be a fine choice for an authentic Old Norse place-name. Hartmann Rogge, Lindorm Eriksson, Teceangl Bach, Zenobia Naphtali, Arval Benicoeur, and Juliana de Luna also contributed to this letter. We hope that it has been of use and that you won't hesitate to write again if you have any further questions. For the Academy, Talan Gwynek 13 July 2001 ===== References and Notes [1] Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson, and William A. Craigie. An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957); s.v. . [2] Fellows Jensen, Gillian. Scandinavian Settlement Names in Yorkshire (Copenhagen: Institut for Navneforskning, 1972); pp. 14- 5, 50-2, 84-5. [3] Sandnes, J. and O. Stemshaug. Norsk Stadnamnleksikon, 4th ed. (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 1997); s.nn. , . The notation <{dh}> stands for the letter edh, which looks like a backwards <6> with a small stroke crossing the upper part. The element <-vin> has been especially subject to erosion over time; in , as in many other modern place-names originally containing <-vin>, only a trace of it survives. [4] Cleasby et al. s.v. . [5] Smith, A.H. English Place-Name Elements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956); s.v. . [6] Sandnes and Stemshaug s.n. . [7] Cleasby et al. s.v. . [8] Smith s.v. . [9] Sandnes and Stemshaug s.v. . [10] Ibid. s.n. . [11] Ibid. s.nn. , , , . Here stands for an with a slash through it, the 28th letter of the Norwegian alphabet. [12] Ibid., pp. 37-8. [13] Ibid. s.nn. , . Here <{ae}> stands for the a-e-ligature formed by squashing and together so that the right edge of the coincides with the left edge of the .