Michael Ferber

While observing the Norway soccer squad surpass expectations during the World Cup, with players and supporters performing coordinated air-rowing gestures to chants of “Roo!” or “Hoo!”, reflections arose on the team’s Viking nickname and its link to rowing. Viking longboats relied on sails at sea, yet crews switched to oars upon reaching inlets or rivers. This custom may explain the origin of the name Russia. The early term Rus’ (with the apostrophe marking a Slavic modification) first denoted Norse settlements along the Volkhov River in northern Russia and appears to stem from Old Norse terms akin to roa (“row”) or rothr (“a rowing”). These words connect directly to English row and rudder and trace back to Proto-Indo-European roots, evident in Latin remus and Old Irish ramae, both signifying “oar.” In this way the Russians take their name from rowers.

Regarding Viking itself, the term entered English from Old Norse vikingr, long thought to derive from vik (“inlet, creek”), the vantage point of coastal inhabitants who encountered these seafarers. Yet an earlier Old English form wicing existed before widespread Norse contact and likely stems from wic, denoting the temporary camps Vikings established after landing. Wic encompassed any settlement, town, or farmstead and survives today in English place names such as Chiswick, Ipswich, Sandwich, Warwick, and Wickham, as well as in bailiwick. Its root traces to Latin vicus (“village”), pronounced with a w-sound, which also yields vicinity and connects further to Greek oikos (“house, household”). The Vikings’ activities thus tie their name to both inlets and encampments.

The Vikings did more than raid and depart with plunder and captives. In 865 the “Great Heathen Army” of Vikings, labeled “Danes,” landed in East Anglia and within fourteen years seized roughly half of Anglo-Saxon Britain. They established York (then Eoforwick) as their base and advanced as far south as London before their advance slowed. Conflicts with Anglo-Saxon kingdoms persisted, with territory frequently changing hands. As late as 1035 Cnut the Great ruled nearly all of England along with Denmark, Norway, and portions of Sweden. Internal strife continued in Scandinavia, and in September 1066 Harald Hardrada, after failing to secure the Danish throne, invaded England, overcame local defenders, and was later defeated and killed by a larger English force.

This event matters because the following month the English, fresh from repelling the latest Viking incursion, fell to William of Normandy at Hastings. William quickly subdued most of England, including formerly Danish regions. The Normans themselves descended from “North-men,” Norse Vikings who had settled in France generations earlier and adopted French speech while preserving a taste for conquest.

Between 865 and 1066 substantial areas of England came under the control of Old Norse speakers. Old Norse, essentially identical to Old Icelandic, belonged to the northern branch of Germanic languages and differed from the western branch that included Old English. The tongues were close enough for limited mutual understanding, allowing numerous Norse words to enter English, especially in northern regions.

Consider the sentence “They are wrong: seek them both until they die.” Every word originates from Old Norse rather than Old English, though the status of are remains debated. Such basic vocabulary, including pronouns, rarely shifts between languages, yet Norse supplied these terms. Norman French later enriched English without displacing core words to the same degree. Close linguistic proximity eased the transfer. Egg supplanted Old English aeg (once pronounced roughly like German Ei). Old Norse sveinn (“boy, servant”) replaced Old English swon or swan, becoming swain and appearing in boatswain and coxswain; over time it shifted from “servant” to “countryman” or “shepherd” and, in pastoral verse, to a lovesick rustic, as in Shakespeare’s reference to swains in Two Gentlemen of Verona. In modern Scandinavian languages Sven remains a common name, familiar in English through the reindeer in Disney’s Frozen.

Common English words inherited from the Vikings include the verbs take, get, like, call, seem, guess, want, run, cut, and hit, along with the nouns leg, birth, dream, window, fellow, score, anger, cap, and bag. Many speakers assume these belong to the original Old English stock brought from the Continent in the fifth or sixth century, yet they arrived later through Norse contact.

Words beginning with sk- often trace to Old Norse, among them skill, skin, skip, skirt, skulk, and sky. Sky originally denoted “cloud,” a sense preserved into Chaucer’s era. The noun scold, describing a person, frequently a woman, “known for using coarse or abusive language,” descends from skald (“poet” or “bard”). Nordic bards apparently composed satirical verses that targeted individuals, rendering the term less than complimentary.

One favored Norse borrowing is ugly, from Old Norse uggligr (“fearful”), itself derived from ugga (“fear”). The related verb ug entered English meaning “disgust” and persisted in northern dialects as late as 1894, as in the recorded sentence “He was ugged wi’ eatin the stuff.” Revival of the word seems worthwhile.

The discussion closes with berserk, which entered English only in 1818 through a book on Iceland. Originally a noun, it comes from Old Norse berserkr, combining ber (“bear”) and serkr (“shirt”) and referring to warriors who fought in bearskins rather than armor. According to Snorri Sturluson, devotees of Odin known as berserksgangr charged into battle without protection, stirred by war-frenzy. Odin, called Othinn in Old Norse and Woden in Old English, embodied battle ecstasy. Related terms appear across Germanic languages, including Old Icelandic othr (“mad”), German Wut (“fury”), and the Scottish sense of wood (“mad”). These fighters reportedly entered a trance-like state, charging naked or clad as bears or wolves. Similar practices may reach back to Indo-European times, as suggested by an Assyrian inscription from 1228 BCE describing Hittite warriors of comparable ferocity.

The more restrained Norwegian soccer side kept their kits on during the match, and any questionable challenge by Erling Haaland amounted to little more than a nudge. Their supporters, however, went berserk.

Readers with questions or comments may write to mferber@unh.edu.

Michael Ferber relocated to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, where he is now retired. He earned a BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and a doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and worked with the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in federal court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law alongside pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three others. He has published extensively on literature and maintains a strong interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.