[Leica] Vikings in Yorkshire

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Knowledge of near extinct languages comes in handy sometimes. My wife, who
is Norwegian, left the Norway as a child. She spoke only Gamel Norsk (old
Norwegian). While we were sweater shopping in Bergen during a recent trip we
wandered into a small store outside of the main shopping area. The very aged
shopkeeper spoke such poor English that my wife decided to try her barely
remembered Norwegian. The old man's eyes lit up and the two of them carried
out a long and animated conversation. My wife told me later that he was
overjoyed to talk with someone who remembered the old language. All the
young folks, i.e. those under 50, spoke only Nynorsk. We got some real
bargains in sweaters too. Less than half the price of the tourist shops.

Larry Z


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Alastair,


There's an interesting story about Arthur Raistrick - probably the

world's first industrial archaeologist, and from Yorkshire. He visited

northern Norway to compare sheep farming methods with those of the

Yorkshire Dales and discovered that he was more or less able to get by

with Yorkshire dialect when talking to farmers who still spoke old

Norwegian rather than Nynorsk.


Cheers

Douglas


On 05.01.2010 09:01, afirkin at afirkin.com wrote:

doug,

wonderful stuff: I noticed that under L was:


leika


meaning "to play"


Seems appropriate ;-)



Many of the words in the Yorkshire dialect I grew up with are of Viking

(Norse) origin, e.g. laik = to play, skep = basket, ginnel = narrow

street or snicket (all of which I used as a child) as in "Is yower

Martin laikin aht - wirrof darnt ginnel un off ovver to't mill to laik

abaht in't skeps."


The enormous baskets piled up outside the textile mills were great for

playing hide and seek.


There are hundreds more here:

http://www.viking.no/e/england/e-yorkshire_norse.htm


Cheers

Douglas