#but… Icelandic is all the same and Norwegian and Swedish have a whole bunch of regional stuff and oh boy idk | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vikinglanguage · 1 year

Text

This is an overhaul of an old post from 5 years ago, because I've added a bunch of stuff which unfortunately does not show up correctly anywhere but ON my blog.

Denmark, Scandinavia, and the Nordic region in Danish

Areas The Nordic countries - De nordiske lande · Norden Scandinavia - Skandinavien Kingdom of Denmark · Danish Realm - Kongeriget Danmark · Danmarks Rige The Kalmar Union · Union of Kalmaris - Kalmarunionen (1397 to 1523) Countries Denmark - Danmark Sweden - Sverige Norway - Norge Finland - Finland Greenland - Grønland · Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenlandic, lit. “Greenlanders’ land") The Faroe Islands - Færøerne · Føroyar (Faroese) Iceland - Island

Languages Danish - dansk Swedish - svensk Norwegian - norsk · nynorsk · norsk bokmål Finnish - finsk (West) Greenlandic - (vest)grønlandsk · kalaallisut Faroese - færøsk · føroyskt Icelandic - islandsk Minority languages German - tysk (spoken by the German minority in North Schleswig/South Jutland) Sámi - samisk (spoken by the Sámi people in large parts of northern Finland, Norway, and Sweden; the cultural region of Sápmi)¹ Inuktun · Polar Inuit - nordgrønlandsk · avanersuarmiutut (spoken in Northern Greenland, around Qaanaaq)² East Greenlandic - østgrønlandsk · tunumiisut (spoken in Eastern Greenland/Tunu)² Romani - romani (spoken by the Romani people) Kven - kvensk (spoken by the Kven people in northern Norway)³ Sign Language - tegnsprog⁴ National demonyms⁵ Dane - dansker Swede - svensker Norwegian - nordmand (lit. “northern man”) Finn - finne · finlænder (rare) Greenlander - grønlænder · kalaaleq Faroese · Faroe islander - færing · føroyingur Icelander - islænding German - tysker Non-national ethnicities Romani - romani Sámi - same

Specifically Danish stuff

Places in Denmark⁶ Copenhagen - København Aarhus - Aarhus · Århus (unofficial, but not incorrect spelling) Jutland - Jylland · Hovedlandet (slang) Funen - Fyn Zealand - Sjælland · Djævleøen (slang, lit. “The Devil’s Island”) Major dialects/regiolects based on location Jutland - jysk Zealand - sjællandsk Funen - fynsk Bornholm - bornholmsk All islands (including Zealand + Funen, excluding Bornholm) - ømål (lit. “island language”)

Smaller areas that used to be Denmark Schleswig-Holstein - Slesvig-Holsten⁷ Scania (Skånes län) - Skåne (around 970 to 1658) Halland (Hallands län) - Halland (around 970 to 1645, legally 1658) Blekinge (Blekinge län) - Blekinge (around 970 to 1658) The Virgin Islands of the United States - Jomfruøerne · Dansk-Vestindien (outdated) · De Vestindiske Øer (outdated) (1672 to 1917) Estonia - Estland (Hertugdømmet Estland 1206 to 1346, Øsel 1560 to 1645)⁸

Notes: 1) There are many Sámi languages and dialects, too many to list here. 2) Some argue that East and West Greenlandic are dialects of the same language and that North Greenlandic (Inuktun) is a dialect of Inuktitut. 3) Some do not recognise Kven as a separate language from Finnish. 4) Obviously, there is not 1 (one) Sign Language in the entire Nordic. There are Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic Sign (which are all related), and Swedish and Finnish Sign (which are related to each other). Danish Sign is also used in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. 5) All nationalities and ethnicities fælleskøn (utrum)/common gender (uter). 6) These are just the major parts that you probably should know 7) The whole Schleswig-Holstein area has been much disputed and is hard to date. It was definitely NOT part of Denmark 1864-1920. 8) All of Estonia was never Danish, but various parts were.

If I screwed up or you have questions, feel free to shoot me a message!

#denmark #scandinavia #the nordic region #nordic countries #danish #langblr #language #dansk #danish vocabulary #original #in case you were wondering what was added #the answer is a BUNCH of minority languages #MORE notes #and numbers to the notes for your convenience

12 notes · View notes

vaguely-concerned · 2 years

Text

I just replayed jaws of hakkon again and the avvar still fucking rule honestly haha. listening to all these chantry-educated people (listen I love you all but you are being so RUDE I can't take you anywhere!!!!) lose their goddamn minds over how they treat magic while the avvar side eye them like '...okay weirdos' never fails to bring me joy.

BUT also since the avvar take a bunch of inspiration from scandinavian culture, I thought I'd put on my friendly neighbourhood norwegian hat and muse about some of them!

- most people probably know this by now, but 'storvacker' means literally 'big beautiful' with swedish spelling haha. (with kind of an implication that it's beautiful because it's big, or that the bigness is integral to the beauty? it's really quite sweet as a name)

- hakkon seems to be a riff on håkon/haakon (listen I don't have time to explain all the tedious langague history right now but let's say for short that the pronounciation is the same either way and from a norwegian pov it has a lot to do with being under danish rule for a couple of hundred years there) which is a very common name for scandinavian kings through the ages. and yes a bunch of them did love them some war so it's not a bad choice at all! the current norwegian crown prince is named haakon (and his dad is harald, which is one of the other most common name for kings. there's also a 'sverre magnus' in the family now, so between them they hit about 75% of all norwegian kings through the ages lmao)

- avvar poetry works somewhat along the lines of traditional norse poetry, being heavy on the alliteration and kennings and heiti (essentially turning perfectly normal words into metaphors and shit, calling a boat a 'wave-steed' would be an example, often to ensure the alliteration haha. one of the reasons odin has so many fucking names, you can find a way to alliterate that dude with just about anything through pseudonym.)

- more on names because it's h i l a r i o u s to me for some reason-- the fisherman dude you meet on the shore and who would otherwise be perfectly forgettable? well, his name is arvid rolfsen. having a character named 'arvid rolfsen' in a fantasy universe is like... that's just a normal man. like 'that's the name of my denist' level of just some guy. dragon age often does the fantasy name balancing by having at least either the first name or surname be kind of unusual/fantasy-ized, but those are simply two incredibly common names hahaha.

avvar names ending in '-sen' and '-dotten' is a very obvious parallel to how scandinavian surnames traditionally work (and still do in iceland), in that it's 'parent's name' + sen/son (son) or dotter/dottir (daughter). however. in changing the female ending of that to 'dotten'. some Things have happened, to my norwegian ear. namely that 'dott' (which turns into 'dotten' in the definite singular form, the dott as it were) means... hm.

1) most literally, something like a small untidy ball or clump of something, like hay, dust, wool -- my instinctive translation would be something like 'fluffball', probably.

2) a useless weakwilled hapless and naive but ultimately harmless person

3) slang term (though a mild one) for the vagina. yup it's another one of those, as if boba 'fett' didn't already fill that particular cross-language hilarity niche (though that one is a whole league more obscene and technically dialect). especially 'kuldsdotten swamp' (so something like... the cold ahem ahem swamp) conjures... Imagery.

#I brought bull with me for most of the dlc and it was like... bull's best/worst day ever #on one hand: demon crap demon crap everywhere. on the other hand: fought a huge fuck-off dragon at the end of it . life is a balance #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #jaws of hakkon

72 notes · View notes

dwollsadventures · 4 years

Photo

As requested by theLOAD, here is a family tree of all the beings included in the "Nix" family, or how a bunch of water horses, a river dragon, and a violin playing devil are all related to each other. Line-art version because I will never be satisfied with colors here.

Before I get into that, however, I should say that this shouldn't be taken as absolute fact. Firstly, it's absolutely incomplete. There are many, many, many different water horses in Western Europe. I kind of just lumped three of them together in the bottom left corner. One could argue that the Welsh Ceffyl Dŵr should be on here, as well as the Belgian Kludde or the Breton Mourioche. There's a whole lot of them. Secondly, it isn't as cut and dry as the tree makes it seem. The knucker didn't spontaneously turn into a dragon, it was probably influenced by dragon folklore in the area before the name stuck. Outside influence is all over the place. Were water horses in Britain derived from English and Saxon sources or did the occupying Norse bring them? It's unclear. As well, there's probably a lot of internal influencing going on. It's hard to tell when exactly nixies came about. Were they influenced at all by the Scandinavian nøkk? When? Making family trees larger than this is hard. It would be all tangled up. For now though, let's look at the creatures that are on there right now.

The oldest of the bunch are the Old English nicor and Old Norse nykr. I couldn't find much about the nykr specifically, but the Icelandic and Faroese nykur was probably the best bet for what the Norse believed about it. The two share an old, old name, and based on the common characteristics it was probably similar to these two. Both the nicor and nykur are water monsters. That's basically it. Outside of Beowulf, the nicor is mentioned rarely if at all. There it's no different from any mundane water creature, and the word could also be used to refer to hippos as well. It's an ambiguous water monster. If specific characteristics existed, they probably haven't survived to the modern era. Judging the nykr by its Icelandic equivalent the nykur, it was primarily a water horse. A creature which mimics a regular horse standing by a river, beckoning weary travelers and children at play to ride it. Then the riders find themselves stuck as the horse leaps into the water, drowning and devouring the unfortunate soul. The nykur is a shapeshifter, rarely known to take human shape as well. It can be discovered by looking at its hooves, which are backwards.

From there, we split the two into Britain and Continental Europe. Britain has the most regional variants of water horses. They are very much similar to the nykur of before, with some local flair or quirks. The mischievous nuggle of the Shetland Isles has a wheel-shaped tail, while the spiteful, kidnapping tangie can equally appear as an old man covered in seaweed. In Scotland kelpies, the each-uisge, and the Manx glashtyn are all quite similar, being equally water horses while also taking the form of men. Strangely, one branch of the tree led to the knucker, a Sussex water dragon. While certainly different from its cousins, it does bear a resemblance to the ambiguous nicor of yesteryear. Knuckers are slippery fiends with monstrous appetites. The most famous one was killed by feeding it a poisoned meat pie. Knuckers live in knuckerholes, round kettle-like bodies of water that stretch deep into the ground.

Then, continental Europe. Here the water horse still lives, but was overshadowed by its more humanoid forms. Brook horses are found across Scandinavia and mostly act the same as their counterparts in Britain. A regional trait is that some (I believe Danish or Swedish) can extend their bodies if a large group of victims want to ride it. Pretty nightmarish. This horse just extends and then jumps in the water and kills you. The other form is the nøkk* (Norwegian/Danish), neck (Swedish), nakki (Finnish), or fossegrim/strömkarl. This is a man-shaped being that sits in rivers and waterfalls, usually playing a violin. The music lures people into the water, where he then drowns them. Fossegrim is also an accomplished shapeshifter. His usual form is that of a naked young man, but he can also become a brook horse at will, or simply melt into the water. Regardless, there's usually one part of him that signals his true nature (horse hooves, an inhumanly crooked nose, a third eye, hairy legs). While usually malevolent, killing or kidnapping people, some have been able to coax music lessons out of him. He could also act as an omen for drownings. In Germany, the nix or nixie is similar in that they will sometimes use their enchanting voice to lure people to their deaths, usually in rivers and lakes, even the Rhine itself. Nixies can also be pretty chill though. They can equally be male or female and even take human form. The one give away is their sopping wet clothes. And no I did not unintentionally lift the design from the skin deep comic I swear please don't send me to jail.

*(also, language lesson! sometimes you'll see it written as nøkken in english. this isn't a variant of the name, but "nøkk" in its definite form, basically meaning "the nøkk")

24 notes · View notes