Norse Sentence Examples

About the end of the 8th century both the Shetlands and Orkneys suffered from the depredations of Norse vikings, or pirates, until Harold Haarfager annexed the islands to Norway in 875.

The name is derived from the Norse faar, a sheep (a derivation better seen in the Faroe Isles).

In IIIo, for example, he was enabled to capture Sidon by the aid of Sigurd of Norway, the Jorsalafari, who came to the Holy Land with a fleet of 55 ships, starting in 1107, and in a three years' "wandering," after the old Norse fashion, fighting the Moors in Spain, and fraternizing with the Normans in Sicily.

The island takes its name from Hjalpand, a Norse viking.

In times of scarcity the Norse peasant-farmer uses the sweetish inner bark, beaten in a mortar and ground in his primitive mill with oats or barley, to eke out a scanty supply of meal, the mixture yielding a tolerably palatable though somewhat resinous substitute for his ordinary flad-brod.

A Norse belief found in Iceland is that the fylgia, a genius in animal form, attends human beings; and these animal guardians may sometimes be seen fighting; in the same way the Siberian shamans send their animal familiars to do battle instead of deciding their quarrels in person.

Burray (677) is famous for the broch from which the island takes its name (Borgarey, Norse, "island of the broch").

Papa Stour (272), properly spelt Stoor, "the big [Norse stor] island of the priests," lies in the south-west of the great bay of St Magnus.

Uyea, "the isle," from the Old Norse oy (3), to the south of Unst, from which it is divided by the narrow sounds of Uyea and Skuda, yields a beautiful green serpentine.

The Norse language and customs survived in Foula till the end of the 18th century, and words and phrases of Norse origin still colour their speech.

George Low (1747-1795), the naturalist and historian of Orkney, who made a tour through Shetland in 1774, described a Runic monument which he saw in the churchyard of Crosskirk, in Northmavine parish (Mainland), and several fragments of Norse swords, shield bosses and brooches have been dug up from time to time.

The southern and south-western coasts have been known, as will be mentioned later, since the 10th century, when Norse settlers appeared there, and the names of many famous arctic explorers have been associated with the exploration of Greenland.

Walrus tusks and walrus hides, which in the days of the old Norse settlements were the chief articles of export, are now of little importance.

The Norse colonies had twelve churches, one monastery and one nunnery in the Osterbygd, and four churches in the Vesterbygd.

The last ship that is known to have visited the Norse colony in Greenland returned to Norway in 1410.

This seems a less feasible explanation; it is more probable that the Norse settlers intermarried with the Eskimo and were gradually absorbed.

About the end of the 15th or the beginning of the 16th century it would appear that all Norse colonization had practically disappeared.

When in 1585 John Davis visited it there was no sign of any people save the Eskimo, among whose traditions are a few directly relating to the old Norsemen, and several traces of Norse influence.'

Here you find articles in the encyclopedia on topics related to German or Norse mythology.

In the Norse version of the Carolingian epic Guillaume appears in his proper historical environment, as a chief under Charlemagne; but he plays a leading part in the Couronnement Looys, describing the formal associations of Louis the Pious in the empire at Aix (813, the year after Guillaume's death), and after the battle of Aliscans it is from the emperor Louis that he seeks reinforcements.

Iforsford thought were the remains of a Norse settlement in the 11th century, and which include a semicircular amphitheatre of six tiers or terraces which he thought was an assembly place, and a portion of a stone wall or dam.

On the Fuglenaes or Birds' Cape, which protects the harbour on the north, there stands a column with an inscription in Norse and Latin, stating that Hammerfest was one of the stations of the XII.

He was an indefatigable worker and speaker, and in order to facilitate his efforts in other countries and other literatures he learnt Arabic, Norse, Danish and Dutch.

M.H.G gagen, gugen, to sway to and fro " (gugen, gagen, the rocking of a cradle), the Swabian gigen, gagen, in the same sense, the Tirolese gaiggern, to sway, doubt, or the old Norse geiga, to go astray or crooked.

It only occurs in Old English as a word borrowed from the Norse, the proper term in Old English being "theow" (peow); the Icel.

Its name, derived from the Scandinavian Thingvollr, " field or meetingplace of the thing," or local assembly, preserves the Norse origin of the town; its Gaelic designation is Inverpefferon,"the mouth of the Peffery."

The name Jotunheim (giants' home) is a modern memorial of the mountain-dwelling giants of Norse fable; the alternative name Jotun Fjelde was the first bestowed on the region, when it was explored in 1820 by the geologist Balthasar Matthias Keilhau (1797-1858).

He early made himself known as a poet, especially by glorifying the exploits of the contemporary Norse kings and earls; at the same time he was a learned lawyer, and from 1215 became the lOgsiigumaar, or president of the legislative assembly and supreme court of Iceland.

The very names of the islands indicate their nature, for the terminal a or ay is the Norse ey, meaning "island," which is scarcely disguised even in the words Pomona and Hoy.

Flotta (372), east of Hoy, was the home for a long time of the Scandinavian compiler of the Codex Flotticensis, which furnished Thorrnodr Torfaeus (1636-1719), the Icelandic antiquary, with many of the facts for his History of Norway, more particularly with reference to the Norse occupation of Orkney.

The Orkneys were the Orcades of classical writers, and the word is probably derived from the Norse Orkn, seal, and ey, island.

Norse pirates having made the islands the headquarters of their buccaneering expeditions indifferently against their own Norway and the coasts and isles of Scotland; Harold Haarfager ("Fair Hair") subdued the rovers in 875 and both the Orkneys and Shetlands to Norway.

They remained under the rule of Norse earls until 1231, when the line of the jarls became extinct.

The topography of the Orkneys is wholly Norse, and the Norse tongue, at last extinguished by the constant influx of settlers from Scotland, lingered until the end of the 18th century.

Readers of Scott's Pirate will remember the frank contempt which Magnus Troil expressed for the Scots, and his opinions probably accurately reflected the general Norse feeling on the subject.

When the islands were given as security for the princess's dowry, there seems reason to believe that it was intended to redeem the pledge, because it was then stipulated that the Norse system of government and the law of St Olaf should continue to be observed in Orkney and Shetland.

The older story, according to which Grimhild slays her husband Attila in revenge for her brothers, is preserved in the Norse tradition, though Grimhild's part is played by Gudrun, a change probably due to the fact, mentioned above, that the name Grimhild still retained in the north its sinister significance.

To these must be added a large number of Old Norse writings including the older Edda and the prose Edda (the chief authorities for Northern mythology), Islands Landnamabok and many sagas dealing with the history of families in Iceland (such as Eyrbyggia Saga) or with the lives of Norwegian and other kings, both historical and legendary (in Heimskringla, Fornmanna Sogur and Rafn's Fornaldar Sogur Norr landa).

In the centuries that followed the break-up of the Roman empire it again suffered much from barbarian attacks, and was finally devastated in 889 by bands of Norse raiders who had sailed up the Rhine.

It holds supreme control over all the foreign missions in heathen countries, and also over large and important parts of the church in Christian countries whose governments are not Catholic - including the British empire, the United States, Holland, the Norse kingdoms, Greece, and some parts of Germany and Switzerland.

The Norse king had with him seventy-one vessels, but part of them belonged to an associate, Sigwald, a chief of the Jomsburg vikings, who was an agent of his enemies, and who deserted him.

The allies allowed the bulk of the Norse ships to pass, and then stood out to attack Olaf.

He might have run past them by the use of sail and oar to escape, but with the true spirit of a Norse warrior he refused to flee, and turned to give battle with the eleven ships immediately about him.

The Norse long ships were high in the bulwark - or, as the Greeks would have said, "cataphract."

In this way the Norse ships were carried one by one, till the "Long Serpent" alone was left.

These words show the futility of ascribing to Adam's account Columbus's knowledge of lands in the West, as many overzealous advocates of the Norse discoveries have done.

To the student of the Norse sources, Adam's reference is not so important, as the internal evidence of the sagas is such as to give easy credence to them as records of exploration in regions previously unknown to civilization.

Icelandic literary history says that Ari the Learned (born in 1067) was "the first man in this land who wrote in the Norse tongue history relating to times anciei and modern."

Horsford, in a number of monographs (unfortunately of no historical or scientific value), fixed upon the vicinity of Boston, where now stand a Leif Ericsson statue and Horsford's Norumbega Tower as testimonials to the Norse explorers.

Hrothgar and Halga correspond to Saxo's Hroar and Helgi, while Hrothwulf is the famous Rolvo or Hrolfr Kraki of Danish and Norse saga.

At Lafayette he introduced the first carefully scientific study of English in any American college, and in 1870 published A Comparative Grammar of the AngloSaxon Language, in which its Forms are Illustrated by Those of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old Saxon, Old Friesic, Old Norse and Old High German, and An Anglo-Saxon Reader; he was editor of the "Douglass Series of Christian Greek and Latin Classics," to which he contributed Latin Hymns (1874); he was chairman of the Commission of the State of Pennsylvania on Amended Orthography; and was consulting editor of the Standard Dictionary, and in 1879-1882 was director of the American readers for the Philological Society's (New Oxford) Dictionary.

The word " Viking," in the sense in which it is used to-day, is derived from the Icelandic (Old Norse) Vikingr (m.), signifying simply a sea-rover or pirate.

During the Saga Age (900-1050), in the beginning of Norse literature, vikingr is not as a rule used to designate any class of men.

The reason for using " viking " in a more generic sense than is warranted by the actual employment of the word in Old Norse literature rests on the fact that we have no other word by which to designate the early Scandinavian pirates of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century.

In Ireland, besides the important and successful Turgesius, we read of a Saxulf who early met his death, as well as of Ivar (Ingvar), famous also in England and called the son of Ragnar Lodbrog, and of Oisla, Ivar's comrade; finally (the vikings in Ireland being mostly of Norse descent) of the wellknown Olaf the White, who became king of all the Scandinavian settlements in Ireland.

For Bjarmaland, though it gained a local habitation, is also in Norse tradition a wholly mythical and mythological place, more or less identical with the underworld (Niflhel, mist-hell).

An immense joy in battle breathes through the earliest Norse literature, which has scarce its like in any other literature; and we know that the language recognized a peculiar battle fury, a veritable madness by which certain were seized and which went by the name of " berserk's way " (berserksgangr).2 The courage of the vikings was proof against anything, even as a rule against superstitious terrors.

Whatever these dialects be called, the Kabyle, the Shilha, the Zenati, the Tuareg or Tamashek, the Berber language is still essentially one, and the similarity between the forms current in Morocco, Algeria, the Sahara and the far-distant oasis of Siwa is much more marked than between the Norse and English in the sub-Aryan Teutonic group. The Berbers have, moreover, a writing of their own, peculiar and little used or known, the antiquity of which is proved by monuments and inscriptions ranging over the whole of North Africa.

A nearer parallel to Greek colonization may be found in Iceland, whither the adherents of the old Norse polity fled from the usurpation of Harold Haarfager; and the early history of the English pale in Ireland shows, though not in orderliness and prosperity, several points of resemblance to the Roman colonial system.

In these slips we have the origin of the Norse kefli, the Scots kaivel, which were and are still used as lots.

The forms of the Danish king's name given by the Frankish historians are corruptions of the name of which the primitive Germanic form was Hugilaikaz, and which by regular phonetic change became in Old English Hygelac, and in Old Norse Hugleikr.

The Swedish princes Eadgils, son of Ohthere, and Onela, who are mentioned in Beowulf, are in the Icelandic Heimskringla called Adils son of Ottarr, and Ali; the correspondence of the names, according to the phonetic laws of Old English and Old Norse, being strictly normal.

The conjecture that most naturally presents itself to those who have made no special study of the question, is that an English epic treating of the deeds of a Scandinavian hero on Scandinavian ground must have been composed in the days of Norse or Danish dominion in England.

The history of Roman Catholicism in the New World begins with the Norse discoveries of Greenland and Vinland the Good.

Hybrid place-names are occasionally to be met with in the colonized portions of Wales, as in Gelliswick (a combination of the Celtic gelli, a hazel grove, and the Norse wick, a haven), and in Fletherhill, where the English suffix hill is practically a translation of the Celtic prefix.

It was during these disastrous Mercian wars that there first appeared on the Welsh coasts the Norse and Danish pirates, who harried and burnt the small towns and flourishing monasteries on the shores of Cardigan Bay and the Bristol Channel.

A similar idea also occurs in legends of world-wide currency, the best known of these being the Greek, and the medieval Norse, Celtic and Arab legends which describe an earthly Paradise in the Western or Atlantic Ocean (see Atlantis).

Ongentheow appears to have been entirely forgotten in Norse tradition and his place is taken by a certain Egill.

At this meeting Bjorn, supported by the earl, asked for peace, and Olaf was compelled by the pressure of the lawman Thorgny to agree to this and also to promise his daughter Ingeger6 in marriage to the Norse king.

During his reign grants of land in Vermland made by the king to the Norse earl Haakon Ivarsson led to a successful invasion of Gotaland by Harold Hardrada of Norway.

Gudmund Goran Adlerbeth (1751-1818) made translations from the classics and from the Norse, and was the author of a successful tragic opera, Cora och Alonzo (1782).

The word is an adaptation of the Low German or Norse pund, pound.

In Old Norse the term berserker thus became synonymous with reckless courage, and was later applied to the bodyguards of several of the Scandinavian heroes.

His name is formed from a root div, meaning " bright," which appears in other Aryan languages as a formative part of divine names, such as the Sanskrit Dydus, " sky "; Latin Diovis, Jovis, Diespiter, divus; Old English Tiw; Norse Tyr.

When we turn to the social divisions we find in Domesday and other documents classes of society in these districts bearing purely Norse names, dreng, karl, karlman, bonde, thrall, lysing, hold; in the system of taxation we have an assessment by carucates and not by hides and virgates, and the duodecimal rather than the decimal system of reckoning.

After much discussion, for both the Scottish nobles and the Norse king were somewhat suspicious, Edward had succeeded in obtaining from them a promise that the young queen should marry his heir, Edward of Carnarvon.

That it began at a very early period to enrich itself with Scandinavian words is shown by the use it still makes of forms belonging to a linguistic stage older even than that of Icelandic. Daben has subjected the vocabulary to a very interesting analysis for the purpose of discovering what stage of culture the people had reached before their contact with the Norse.

For the civil wars broke down the great houses who had monopolized the chieftaincies; and after violent struggles (in which the Sturlungs of the first generation perished at Orlygstad, 1238, and Reykiaholt, 1241, while of the second generation Thord Kakali was called away by the king in 1250, and Thorgils Skardi slain in 1258) the submission of the island to Norway quarter after quarter took place in 1262-1264, under Gizur's auspices, and the old Common Law was replaced by the New Norse Code " Ironside " in 1271.

During the heathen days many great chiefs passed part of their lives in Norway at the king's court, but after the establishment of Christianity in Iceland they kept more at home, visiting the continent, however, for purposes of state, suits with clergy, &c. Trade was from the first almost entirely in foreign (Norse) hands.

The power of the crown was increased by the confiscation of the great Sturlung estates, which were underleased to farmers, while the early falling off of the Norse trade threatened to deprive the island of the means of existence; for the great epidemics and eruptions of the 1.4th century had gravely attacked its pastoral wealth and ruined much of its pasture and fishery.

Noregs Konunga-tal, now called Fagrskinna, is a Norse compendium of the Kings' Lives from Halfdan the Black to Sverri's accession, probably written for King Haakon, to whom it was read on his death-bed.

The complex work now known as Orkneyinga is made up of the Earls' Saga, lives of the first great earls, Turf-Einar, Thorfinn, &c.; the Life of St Magnus, founded partly on Abbot Robert's Latin life of him (c. 1150) an Orkney work, partly on Norse or Icelandic biographies; a Mirade-book of the same saint; the Lives of Earl Rognwald and Sveyn, the last of the vikings, and a few episodes such as the Burning of Bishop Adam.

After his first stay in Norway he came back in 1271, with the new Norse law-book, and served a second time as lawman.

Norse versions of Mary of Brittany's Lays, the stories of Brutus and of Troy, and part of the Pharsalia translated are also found.

The Speculum Regale, with its interesting geographical and social information, is also Norse, written c. 1240, by a Halogalander.

Thidrek's Saga, a late version of the VOlsung story, is of Norse composition (c. 1230), from North German sources.

The Norse version of the famous Barlaam and Josaphat, made for Prince Haakon (c. 1240), must not be forgotten.

He is made to replace Odoacer as the enemy of Dietrich of Bern, his nephew, and his history is related in the Norse Vilkina or Thidrekssagd, which chiefly embodies German tradition.

If evidence were needed it is only necessary to point to the names of three of the Irish provinces, Ulster, Leinster, Munster, which are formed from the native names (Ulaid, Laigin, Muma-n) with the addition of Norse staor; and the very name by which the island is now generally known is Scandinavian in form (Ira-land, the land of the Irish).

Hence the occurrence of such essentially Irish names as Konall, Kjaran, Njall, Kormakr, Brigit, Kalin, &c., among Icelanders and Norwegians cannot be a matter for surprise; nor that a number of Norse words were introduced into Irish, notably terms connected with trade and the sea.

During this period Ireland enjoyed comparative rest notwithstanding the intertribal feuds in which the Norse settlers shared, including the campaigns of Cormac, son of Cuilennan, the scholarly king-bishop of Cashel.

In 956 Congalach, the high-king, was defeated and slain by the Norse of Dublin.

After a stout and protracted resistance the Norse forces were routed.

The Norse rulers were bound to come under the influence of Christianity at an early date.

For some of his exploits Dasent's Tales from the Norse (2nd ed., Appendix) may be consulted.

Charles The Norse pirates who had troubled Charlemagne (843-877).

Norse pirates appeared on the coast in the 9th century, but made no permanent settlements.

The Norse sound written 4 is of the same nature.

The Little Norse Prince is an old film - a very early one from the master animator - and is not his best.

His name is very widely diffused among the Norse people.

This advocacy of Christianity is all the more amusing from someone who writes in the name of a Norse god.

Some of the isolated burials, finds and Norse funerary sculpture may even suggest occasional intermarriage and individual Viking settlement.

In Norse legend the chariot of the goddess Freya was pulled by black cats.

The Norse first settled in the fertile lowlands, where a few burial mounds remain.

There are a fair number of things from Norse mythology he could do.

In the evening we went to a Viking village and sat around a fire listening to a Norse saga.

One of the Sigurd crosses belong to the school of Gaut, the first known Norse sculptor on the island.

Greenland got its name from the verdant pastures that attracted the Norse settlers under Eric the Red in 986.

In the 9th century, the Scots were supplanted by Norse settlers.

According to Norse mythology, Valhalla was a palace roofed with shields, wherein lived the bravest of the slain Norse warriors.

Lastly, and perhaps most of all, there is the old Norman bloodfeud with Constantinople, as old as the old Norse seeking for Micklegarth, and keen and deadly ever since the Norman conquest of the Greek themes in South Italy (1041 onwards).

The word Shetland is supposed to be simply a modernized rendering of the Old Norse Hjaltland, of which the meaning is variously given as "high land," "Hjalti's land" - after Hjalti, a man whose name occurs in ancient Norse literature, but of whom little else is known - and "hilt land," in allusion to an imagined, though not too obvious, resemblance in the configuration of the archipelago to the hilt of a sword.

The derivation of the word has been obscured by a connexion in sense with the verb "cow," to instil fear into, which is derived from old Norse kuga, a word of similar meaning, and with the verb "cower," to crouch, which is also Scandinavian in origin.'

The Domesday survey of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Norfolk, &c., shows remarkable deviations in local organization and justice (lagmen, sokes), and great peculiarities as to status (socmen, freemen), while from laws and a few charters we can perceive some influence on criminal law (nidingsvaerk), special usages as to fines (lahslit), the keeping of peace, attestation and sureties of acts (faestermen), &c. But, on the whole, the introduction of Danish and Norse elements,apart from local cases, was more important owing to the conflicts and compromises it called forth and its social results, than on account of any distinct trail of Scandinavian views in English law.

Vigfusson and York Powell (Corpus Poeticum Boreale, Oxford, 1883) see in Yggdrasil not a primitive Norse idea, but one due to early contact with Christianity, and a fanciful adaptation of the cross.

In the 10th and 11th centuries Norse sea-rovers, starting from Iceland, had made small settlements in Greenland and had pushed as far as the coast of New England (or possibly Nova Scotia) in transient visits (see Vinland and Leif Ericsson).

Become a leader of a Norse, Greek or Egyptian civilization.

Named after the mythical Norse god of warriors and deity among all athletes, the TYR (pronounced "tire") brand truly embodies the competitive spirit of sports, and stands as a symbol of courage and victory for athletes the world over.

Pronounced "tier," TYR is named for the Norse god of warriors and the deity among athletes.

A second states that he came upon people who tied a child to a fir tree and wanted to sacrifice him to the Norse god, Thor.

Early Germanic people honored Hertha, the Norse goddess of the home, by baking yeast cakes filled with gifts to distribute among the household.

Historians are able to trace the superstition surrounding this date all the way back to a Norse myth where twelve gods have a dinner party in their heaven.

Was this an isolated myth told only within Norse culture?

Pre-Christian pagan cultures held a belief in a female deity, drawn from Norse culture, that represented fertility and marriage.

This superstition deemed fact for many people has its roots in cultures stemming from Viking and Norse mythology through the view of modern Christianity.

The earliest known origin of Friday the 13th as unlucky is attributed to Norse mythology.

In many of the old Germanic languages, the word for man sounds very similar, for instance, Gothic wair, Old Norse verr and High German wer.

The similarity between Celtic and Norse art is believed to be one of the fruits of these exchanges.

The constellations themselves are filled with wonderfully colorful myths and legends as the Romans, Druids, American Indians and the Norse (among other cultures) all have stories and beliefs that include the stars.

Other sources are Norse, English, French, Teutonic, aboriginal, German, Irish, Celtic/Gaelic and more.

Elves, dwarves and many other magical creatures appear throughout Norse mythology and legend, and today's fictional female wood elves are creatures born of that past.

While elves are considered creatures of folklore and myth today by most cultures, the Norse, and later Germanic cultures, believed that these creatures were more than just imagination.

Tolkien used many of the original Norse and Germanic legends and incorporated them into his fiction.

However, the concept of small, mythical creatures called "elves" originated from Norse and Germanic mythology and legend.

While texts of Norse and Germanic texts mention them briefly, fictional stories elaborate a great deal more to the point where few people know where the myth ends and the fiction begins.

In Norse mythology, these wood elves lived in the forest with a king.

Of course the famous elves, which many believe originated from the same class of creature, descend from Norse folklore.

Tolkien wrote that Middle Earth was set in Earth's fictional past and that the word descends from Midgard, the Norse name for the human realm.

Tolkien is credited with knowledge and fluency in Latin, French, German, Welsh, Finnish and Old Norse.

The cities, exposed to pillage by Huns in the north and Saracens in the south, and ravaged on the coast by Norse pirates, asserted their right to enclose themselves with walls, and taught their burghers the use of arms. Within the circuit of their ramparts, the bishops already began to exercise authority in rivalry with the counts, to whom, since the days of Theodoric, had been entrusted the government of the Italian burghs.

His son Murkertagh, who gained a great victory over the Norse in 926, is celebrated for his triumphant march round Ireland, the Moirthimchell Eiream, in which, starting from Portglenone on the Bann, he completed a circuit of the island at the head of his armed clan, returning with many captive kings and chieftains.

Corresponding to Proserpine as goddess of the dead is the old Norse goddess Hel (Gothic Halja), whom Saxo Grammaticus calls Proserpine.

Trondra (151), "Trond's island," Trond being an old Norse personal name, in the mouth of Scalloway Bay.

Foula, pronounced Foola (Norse, fugl-oy, " bird island") (230), lies 27 m.

The communication between the Norse settlements in Greenland and the motherland Norway was broken off at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century, and the Norsemen's knowledge about their distant colony was gradually more or less forgotten.

He had a special fondness for records of human devotion and self-sacrifice, whether they were monkish legends, Indian tales, Norse drcipas or bits of American history.

The name Visby is derived from the old Norse y e (sanctuary) and by (town).