v1.0
Published 01/10/24

Previous Work

The following briefly summarises previous work on Old Norse loan-words, in particular in Scottish Gaelic.

Towards the end of the 19th century, scholars such as William Craigie (1894), Alexander MacBain (1896), Kuno Meyer (1890 to 1913) and Whitley Stokes (1892) begin, largely incidentally, to make advances in the phonological study of Old Norse loan-words, mainly in Old and Early Gaelic, although MacBain’s Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language deals specifically with Scottish Gaelic.

Magne Oftedal (1962, 120) notes that ‘MacBain was a skilful lexicographer and etymologist for his time, but his knowledge of Norse was limited and he made a number of errors in his Norse etymologies.’

The detail in the work of these scholars varies, but they provide a footing for the discipline. Any value in the contributions of Alexander Cameron, Ada Goodrich-Freer and Neil Mackay, however, is sometimes outweighed by miscontruction of the linguistic forms and/or phonological processes involved.

At the turn of the 20th century, this scholarly tradition continues with Alexander Bugge’s work (e.g. 1912), with slightly more Scottish Gaelic references. George Henderson’s Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland (1910), however, focuses solely on Scottish Gaelic and includes discussion of both Old Norse loan-words and borrowed place-names. This tandem approach to loans creates a greater impression of Norse influence but fails to distinguish between the sociolinguistic significance of loan-words on the one hand and that of borrowed place-names on the other. Malcolm MacLennan’s Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language (1925) notes the Old Norse etymons of some Scottish Gaelic words.

Studies of Scottish Gaelic place-names, e.g. by Willam J. Watson (1904), H. Cameron Gillies (1906), Kenneth Mackenzie (1910), William C. MacKenzie (1931), Donald Macaulay (1972), Iain Fraser (1978, 1979), Richard Coates (1988, 1990) and Iain Mac an Tàilleir (2011), note examples of Norse loan-words more or less incidentally and usually with little phonological detail. In contrast, significant phonological detail is provided in Alf Sommerfelt’s (1949, 1952, 1962) work on place-names, W. B. Lockwood’s (1963, 1966, 1976) discussion of the etymologies of Scottish Gaelic bird names, and the dialectal studies of Carl Borgstrøm (1940, 1941) and Magne Oftedal (1956). Indeed, Oftedal makes a major contribution to the understanding of the phonological development of Old Norse to Gaelic over several articles (1954 to 1983). The focus on historical phonology is maintained in much of the present author Richard Cox’s work (1989 to 2022).

Thomas Stewart’s survey (2004) of Old Norse loan-words in Scottish Gaelic argues that ‘an unusual sound pattern found among the words transferred from Old Norse into Scottish Gaelic suggests that an unexpectedly large number of words beginning with /s/+[stop] clusters were transferred under Norse-speaker agency (via imposition) rather than under Gaelic-speaker agency (via borrowing)’, but the conclusion seems unfounded. Roderick McDonald’s extensive survey (2009) ‘examines the use of Old Norse loanwords in the Celtic languages of Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man as a source of evidence for the activities of people for whom such loanwords were in currency’ and aims ‘to derive from this evidence an enhanced understanding of the social conditions that gave rise to these loanwords’. Finally, Diarmaid Ó Muirithe’s Dictionary of Scandinavian Words in the Languages of Britain and Ireland (2010) and Supplement (2013) includes Old Norse loan-words in Scottish Gaelic. None of these provide much phonological detail.

Excluding the work of linguists such as Sommerfelt, Borgstrøm, Oftedal and Cox, the above scholars sometimes cite Icelandic rather than Old Norse forms as etymons of Old Norse loan-words in Scottish Gaelic. Indeed, they sometimes misconstrue the sound systems of Old Norse and/or Scottish Gaelic. From a phonological perspective, then, previous commentary on Old Norse loan-words in Scottish Gaelic needs to be treated with circumspection.

The most systematic analysis of the phonological development of Old Norse to Early (Old and Middle) Gaelic is provided by Carl Marstrander (1915a) – whose work was later used as the basis for a comparison of Old Norse and Old and Middle Gaelic phonemic systems by Britta Schulze-Thulin (1996) – and of Old Norse to Scottish Gaelic by Cox (2022).