Dear Listmembers,
Right now I cannot remember the original subject header,
but I believe someone asked for examples of foreign words
that were taken up into Old Norse. (an example was "fill" m.
= elephant < arabic fil.)
Yesterday I found some further examples of foreign words in
Old Norse. Quite often the words would follow the various
innovations that were imported from other lands, and this
would happen both in the case of things, as well as in the
case of new ideas. Below is a list of church-related words
that were originally Greek or Latin words:
páfi, byskupr, prestr, kapalínn, djákn, klerkr, kanóki or
kannúkr, munkr, nunna, postoli, propheti; kirkja, mysteri
or mustari; messa, offra; kristinn; engill, djofull etc..
To these also belongs skrín (Lat. scrinium). It is not
always possible to determine what route the words have taken,
but most of them must have come with English missionaries.
A word that bears a clear mark of having come by way of
England is klaustr (AS clauster, MLG kloster, from Lat.
claustrum, enclosure; Dan. Sw. and Neo Norse kloster
from Low German). Síra m. is a titel for churchmen
(from Latin senior), and must be from Old English; the
word was not used in Old German. Skrift in the meaning
confession, penance, clearly corresponds to Anglo Saxon
scrift m., punishment, fine; ganga til skriptar = AS gán
tó scrift. Through Low German came the holiday name páskar
(MLG pasche, OLG paschen, originally Hebrew). Similarly
it must have been with klukka or klokka, and klukkari
(MLG klocke, klockener; from Med.Lat. clo(c)ca). The
learned word bréf, from Latin breve (scriptum) also came
via Low German.
Quite new words of Anglo Saxon origin were, for example,
húsl, the eucharist sacrament, originally a sacrifice, sál,
soul (AS sáwol), bletsa, to bless.
In addition to these, they translated many words almost
letter by letter from other languages to Norse ("tranlation
borrowings"). Thus, from Anglo Saxon, for example, bókstafr
(AS bócstæf), guðspjall or guðspell, gospel (AS godspell),
helgi þórsdagr, hvítsunnadagr (AS hálge þunresdæg, hwíta
sunnandæg), lærisveinn, disciple of Christ (AS leorningcniht),
þyrnihjalmr, the crown of thorns (AS þyrnene helm), helviti
(AS hellewíte) etc. Rephrasings of the same kind are ór þvisa
ljósi, í ljós annat - from this life, to the life on the
other side - after AS af ðissum léohte, in óðer léoht.
Finally old Scandinavian words could receive either a
totally new meaning or a new meaning in addition to the
old meaning ("interpretatory loans"). The word jól received
a new meaning. It was originally used for the pagan Midwinter
celebration (Jan. 12), but was transferred to the Christian
celebration of the nativity. A new meaning in addition to
the old meaning was taken up by, for example, tíðir (OLG),
which was now also used for the hours of prayer services
in the churches, Latin horae canonicae. In both these
examples our forefathers followed Anglo Saxon, that had
the corresponding words géol (ge(o)hhol), tide. Special
new meanings were moreover given to other, quite ordinary
words such as trú, bróðir (now also Christian Faith, Cloister-
brother).
Sometimes they also used words that already existed in
Norse for more independent translation or the creation of
new words. Thus they used the beautiful words skírn for
baptism, skíra for to baptize, groeðari for saviour. Anglo
Saxon has the verb fulwian for to baptize, and German has
the word that corresponds to Neo Norse døypa; for "saviour"
AS has hælend, OLG héliand. Other examples of such more
independent churchly wordmaking are varðhaldsengill, andskoti,
satan, originally adversary, spámaðr, prophet, leiðretting,
conversion.
We do find some churchly loan words in runic inscriptions
from the 11th and 12th centuries. The majority of churchly
langauage borrowings must have come into the language
before 1200, but we do not know the Norse church language
really well before ca. 1200 A.D., through the important
religious texts that have been saved from those times,
especially from the Homilies.