SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Latin I nftuence on the Norwegian Language 157
is still a powerful reality for the ordinary man, even in
the de-Latinised Norway of today where the vocabulary
and syntax of this universal language have been consciously
resisted as "foreign" and "officialese".
Confronted with such a wealth of material it IS
necessary to restrict the scope of our treatment and to
concentrate chiefly on the old and medieval periods. It
is particularly the priesthood which will occupy our
attention. In reality, of course, this means the intellectual
upper class of the age, the educated men among
whom Latin was most firmly entrenched. And even here
the reader will certainly notice that the examples are to
a great extent taken from a special literary genre, namely
correspondence of the fourteenth century. This can
perhaps be defended since the epistolary literature, however
modest in nature and extent it may appear to be,
gives a good representative picture of the whole situation.
Latin influence on Norwegian gained access through
both oral and literary channels. The former, which is
of course the older, was effected through early military
and trade contacts with areas which bordered the civilised
nations in the south. The noticeable result is a large
number of loan-words of Latin origin, although most
of these have entered Norwegian indirectly via Frisian,
German or English. It is significant that many are of
commercial character, e.g. kaup, pund, oin, sekkr, skrin.
The word eyrir (from aureus) is however only found in
the Scandinavian languages. To this early period belongs
the Latin suffix -arius, Old Norse -ari, which is
found as early as c. 900 in I>orbjQm Homklofi's poem
on Harald Fairhaired in the word leikari. As we know,
this is a word-forming element which is still productive
in Norwegian.
The contact with the British Isles in the Viking period
and down to about lIOO also meant at first that the Latin
element was oral and indirect. In addition to the group
mentioned above, the loan-words we now have are to a
E