Hi Victor,

Another possibility for warrior: 'hermaðr'. 'Rekkr', listed in this
dictionary, is one of many poetic words for warrior. 'Drengr' is
used in the sagas with strong positive connotations of bravery and
gallantry, and also appears on Viking Age runestones.

band of men, small detachment:-- sveit (also means a district)
crew:-- skipverjar, skipsögn
army, host, a force:-- herr, lið, herlið, fólk
host, regiment, battle array:-- fylking
royal bodyguard, king´s men:-- drótt, hirð

These are the forms of the words as written in the usual modern
standardised version of 13th century spelling. I think they
wouldn't have been too different in the Viking Age but I don't know
enough yet about the timing of developments to confidently backdate
them to a particular time. 'Fólk' would have had a short
vowel: 'folk'? The final consonant in 'herr', 'hermaðr' (=her +
mann + r), 'rekkr', 'drengr' and 'skipverjar' would be the letter
written <R> in transcriptions of runic inscriptions (herR (?),
etc.), perhaps pronounced somewhere between [r] and [z]. Or a
palatalised [r] as in Czech (the one spelt with a hook over the top;
it appears in the composer's name Dvorák). The nearest sound in
English is probably the <s> in 'pleasure'. Of course, no one knows
exactly...

'Drótt' was once *droht-, but I'm not sure when the /h/ was lost and
the /t/ doubled. Gordon's "Introduction to Old Norse" just
says "before the literary period"--so earlier than the 11th century.

The <v> in all these words would have been pronounced [w].

I wonder when the assimilation of 'mannR' > 'maðr' took place. I
imagine runic spelling conventions make it difficult to date the
change [Nk] > [kk] in words like 'rekkr' (the n-rune tended not to
be written before other consonants). Before this change the vowel
would have been /i/, cf. OE 'rinc'. At some point afterwards /i/

> /e/. After the assimilation, the vowel was still nasalised

(Gordon para. 49)--but would this be gone by the 11th c.? The First
Grammatical Treatise (Fyrsta Málfroeðiritgerðin), if I remember
rightly, only makes a distinction in spelling between long nasal and
long oral vowels, which might imply that short nasal vowels were
always predictable by the presence of a surviving /n/ or /m/.

Llama Nom