The Gersum Project: the Scandinavian Influence on English Vocabulary
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic
Abstract
In the early Middle Ages, Scandinavian influence on British life, language and culture was profound. Long before the rise of 'Nordic noir' and Danish haute cuisine, the Vikings had a major and lasting impact, and their legacy still resonates strongly in modern constructions of British identity and heritage. Scandinavian settlement began in earnest in the late ninth century, especially in the North and East of England, and probably its most significant, and certainly its most enduring and pervasive effect, was on the English language.
A large number of important English words have been ascribed an Old Norse (ON) origin, including such basic items as sky, egg, law, leg, call, take, window, knife, die and skin, and even the pronouns they, their and them. These are cultural artefacts which link us directly to the Vikings, and which all English speakers still use on a daily basis; and there are hundreds of other similar borrowings in standard and regional English usage, especially Northern dialects. The nature and contexts of the contact between speakers of Old English and ON in Viking-Age England have been the subject of important research in the last few decades. But there has still been surprisingly little intensive work on the borrowed vocabulary itself, and there is a huge amount about the early histories of these words yet to be discovered. Even identifying which English words really were borrowed from or influenced by ON is a very complex business. And we still know relatively little about how and by whom these words were used in the first few centuries after their adoption into English, especially in the crucial Middle English (ME) period, whose most important texts - particularly those composed in areas heavily settled by ON speakers - have never seen sustained exploration from this perspective. The main aim of the Gersum project (named after the ME word gersum, borrowed from ON gersemi 'treasure') is to remedy this deficiency. Its research will result in a detailed catalogue of up to 1600 words for which an origin in ON has been suggested in a corpus of major, late ME alliterative poems from the North of England - a catalogue which will include words as diverse and intriguing as hernez 'brains', muged 'drizzled', stange 'pole' and wothe 'danger'. The catalogue will be presented as a publically accessible online database, fully searchable by the meanings, distributions (regional and chronological), etymologies and other aspects of the words it contains, and linked to electronic texts of the poems chosen. These will include renowned works of literature like 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', 'Pearl', and the 'Alliterative Morte Arthure'; the project will greatly enhance knowledge and appreciation of their vocabularies, and how the originally ON element contributes to their style and meaning. In short, this will be the fullest survey ever undertaken of words derived from ON in ME, and a lasting platform for all future research into this major area of English language history.
Above and beyond this survey and its related research questions, the project will actively coordinate interest in the fascinating subject of the ON linguistic heritage in English, and communicate it to various beneficiaries. Public engagement will include talks to local groups of people who speak the modern versions of the dialects of the project's texts, exploring and celebrating the local language of the North of England and its role in some of the great literary monuments of the Middle Ages. The project's website will act as a general resource for all those interested in the subject, introducing key issues and contexts to both specialist and non-specialist users. Through an accompanying conference and book, Gersum will also create a cross-disciplinary conversation between the linguistic analysis of the Viking legacy and other aspects of the scholarly study of Anglo-Scandinavian cultural interaction in a way never before achieved.
A large number of important English words have been ascribed an Old Norse (ON) origin, including such basic items as sky, egg, law, leg, call, take, window, knife, die and skin, and even the pronouns they, their and them. These are cultural artefacts which link us directly to the Vikings, and which all English speakers still use on a daily basis; and there are hundreds of other similar borrowings in standard and regional English usage, especially Northern dialects. The nature and contexts of the contact between speakers of Old English and ON in Viking-Age England have been the subject of important research in the last few decades. But there has still been surprisingly little intensive work on the borrowed vocabulary itself, and there is a huge amount about the early histories of these words yet to be discovered. Even identifying which English words really were borrowed from or influenced by ON is a very complex business. And we still know relatively little about how and by whom these words were used in the first few centuries after their adoption into English, especially in the crucial Middle English (ME) period, whose most important texts - particularly those composed in areas heavily settled by ON speakers - have never seen sustained exploration from this perspective. The main aim of the Gersum project (named after the ME word gersum, borrowed from ON gersemi 'treasure') is to remedy this deficiency. Its research will result in a detailed catalogue of up to 1600 words for which an origin in ON has been suggested in a corpus of major, late ME alliterative poems from the North of England - a catalogue which will include words as diverse and intriguing as hernez 'brains', muged 'drizzled', stange 'pole' and wothe 'danger'. The catalogue will be presented as a publically accessible online database, fully searchable by the meanings, distributions (regional and chronological), etymologies and other aspects of the words it contains, and linked to electronic texts of the poems chosen. These will include renowned works of literature like 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', 'Pearl', and the 'Alliterative Morte Arthure'; the project will greatly enhance knowledge and appreciation of their vocabularies, and how the originally ON element contributes to their style and meaning. In short, this will be the fullest survey ever undertaken of words derived from ON in ME, and a lasting platform for all future research into this major area of English language history.
Above and beyond this survey and its related research questions, the project will actively coordinate interest in the fascinating subject of the ON linguistic heritage in English, and communicate it to various beneficiaries. Public engagement will include talks to local groups of people who speak the modern versions of the dialects of the project's texts, exploring and celebrating the local language of the North of England and its role in some of the great literary monuments of the Middle Ages. The project's website will act as a general resource for all those interested in the subject, introducing key issues and contexts to both specialist and non-specialist users. Through an accompanying conference and book, Gersum will also create a cross-disciplinary conversation between the linguistic analysis of the Viking legacy and other aspects of the scholarly study of Anglo-Scandinavian cultural interaction in a way never before achieved.
Planned Impact
The Gersum project will be the fullest survey ever undertaken of the Viking heritage in the English language - a major and iconic subject for all those interested in the history of English, its dialects and its medieval literature. The non- and extra-academic beneficiaries of the project are therefore many, but fall principally into two groups: (1) professional lexicographers (and the non-specialist users of their dictionaries); (2) members of the public interested in their cultural, linguistic and literary heritage.
(1) The findings of Gersum will shed new light on the history of hundreds of English words, and will therefore be of direct relevance to those engaged in commercial English lexicographical projects; it will be of special benefit to historical dictionaries with an etymological component, pre-eminently the Oxford English Dictionary. Through these dictionaries, our research will also have an impact on anyone using them, including students/teachers and those with an amateur interest in language history (hence overlapping with group (2)).
(2) The idea of 'the Vikings' and their legacy is a very potent one in the public consciousness, and something that resonates strongly in modern constructions of British identity, esp. in the North of England. It has considerable impact for the heritage and tourism industries and in the media, not least for its relevance to debates about multiculturalism and diversity in present-day Britain and Europe. Amongst the most visible recent manifestations are the British Museum's 2014 Vikings: Life and Legend exhibition, and Neil Oliver's 2012 BBC2 TV series Vikings (NB the segment of the programme in which the PI discusses ON linguistic influence on English was used to publicize the series on the BBC History website; see http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/0/19520636). The specifically linguistic aspect of this heritage also taps into a considerable popular interest in the history of words (notice e.g. the BBC TV series Balderdash and Piffle, 2006-7). The other key focus of Gersum, Middle English alliterative poetry, also has a very wide appeal. 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' is in particular enduringly popular with the general reader. The profile of this poetry has been raised most recently by poet Simon Armitage's translations of 'Sir Gawain' (Faber, 2007) and the 'Alliterative Morte Arthure' ('The Death of King Arthur'; Faber, 2012), both Gersum texts.
By engaging with these topics, Gersum will therefore appeal to a very wide range of potential beneficiaries, who are described in more detail under Pathways to Impact. Our focus in developing impact strategies will be on two broad (and overlapping) themes which we think will be of special interest and cultural benefit: (a) The significance of the Scandinavian element in the evolution of the English language, inc. some of the most basic words we still use every day. This is a way of promoting understanding of the Viking legacy in particular, and more generally of emphasizing the relevance of the medieval period to the multicultural heritage of Britain. (b) Exploring and celebrating the local language of the North of England, and its role in the great literary monuments of the Middle Ages. We believe that introducing speakers in locales associated with our texts (esp. Cheshire and Yorkshire) to the medieval versions of their own dialects, and to the use of this local language in the internationally important cultural heritage of these poems, can bestow very significant social benefits. In the English regions, too many people still grow up with pejorative attitudes towards their local dialects as marginalized, degenerate versions of 'proper English', esp. when it comes to dialect vocabulary (still rarely heard in the national media); knowing something of the historical depth of these features, and moreover the artistic and intellectual richness of the literature in which they survive, can be enormously validating and socially empowering.
(1) The findings of Gersum will shed new light on the history of hundreds of English words, and will therefore be of direct relevance to those engaged in commercial English lexicographical projects; it will be of special benefit to historical dictionaries with an etymological component, pre-eminently the Oxford English Dictionary. Through these dictionaries, our research will also have an impact on anyone using them, including students/teachers and those with an amateur interest in language history (hence overlapping with group (2)).
(2) The idea of 'the Vikings' and their legacy is a very potent one in the public consciousness, and something that resonates strongly in modern constructions of British identity, esp. in the North of England. It has considerable impact for the heritage and tourism industries and in the media, not least for its relevance to debates about multiculturalism and diversity in present-day Britain and Europe. Amongst the most visible recent manifestations are the British Museum's 2014 Vikings: Life and Legend exhibition, and Neil Oliver's 2012 BBC2 TV series Vikings (NB the segment of the programme in which the PI discusses ON linguistic influence on English was used to publicize the series on the BBC History website; see http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/0/19520636). The specifically linguistic aspect of this heritage also taps into a considerable popular interest in the history of words (notice e.g. the BBC TV series Balderdash and Piffle, 2006-7). The other key focus of Gersum, Middle English alliterative poetry, also has a very wide appeal. 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' is in particular enduringly popular with the general reader. The profile of this poetry has been raised most recently by poet Simon Armitage's translations of 'Sir Gawain' (Faber, 2007) and the 'Alliterative Morte Arthure' ('The Death of King Arthur'; Faber, 2012), both Gersum texts.
By engaging with these topics, Gersum will therefore appeal to a very wide range of potential beneficiaries, who are described in more detail under Pathways to Impact. Our focus in developing impact strategies will be on two broad (and overlapping) themes which we think will be of special interest and cultural benefit: (a) The significance of the Scandinavian element in the evolution of the English language, inc. some of the most basic words we still use every day. This is a way of promoting understanding of the Viking legacy in particular, and more generally of emphasizing the relevance of the medieval period to the multicultural heritage of Britain. (b) Exploring and celebrating the local language of the North of England, and its role in the great literary monuments of the Middle Ages. We believe that introducing speakers in locales associated with our texts (esp. Cheshire and Yorkshire) to the medieval versions of their own dialects, and to the use of this local language in the internationally important cultural heritage of these poems, can bestow very significant social benefits. In the English regions, too many people still grow up with pejorative attitudes towards their local dialects as marginalized, degenerate versions of 'proper English', esp. when it comes to dialect vocabulary (still rarely heard in the national media); knowing something of the historical depth of these features, and moreover the artistic and intellectual richness of the literature in which they survive, can be enormously validating and socially empowering.
Organisations
Publications
Dance R. W.
(2018)
Tykes and Vikings: Looking for the Old Norse Influence on Northern English Vocabulary
in Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society
Pons-Sanz S
(2019)
Speech Representation as a Narrative Technique in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
in The Review of English Studies
Pons-Sanz S
(2020)
Fights and Games: Terms for Speech in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology
Pons-Sanz S
(2021)
Norse-derived vocabulary in La estorie del evangelie
in Folia Linguistica
PONS-SANZ S
(2022)
Medieval multilingualism and the expression of emotion : fear in the Gawain -poet's texts
in English Language and Linguistics
Description | In the early Middle Ages, the Vikings had a major and lasting impact on European life, language and culture, and their legacy still resonates strongly in modern constructions of British identity and heritage. Scandinavian settlement began in earnest in the late ninth century, especially in the North and East of England, and probably its most significant, and certainly its most enduring and pervasive effect, was on the English language. A large number of important English words have been ascribe |
Exploitation Route | By its nature, Gersum has drawn on a wide range of linguistic, literary and editorial scholarship, and it will be of direct relevance to academic beneficiaries in all these areas. Its online database is a powerful tool for English etymologists, collecting and analysing the etymologies of hundreds of Middle English words according to a newly developed methodology. A key beneficiary of this etymological research is the Oxford English Dictionary, which has had direct access to Gersum findings sin |
Sectors | Education Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
URL | https://www.gersum.org |
Description | The non- and extra-academic beneficiaries of the Gersum project are potentially very various, but have fallen principally into two groups: (1) professional lexicographers (and the non-specialist users of their dictionaries); (2) members of the public interested in their cultural, linguistic and literary heritage. We continued to monitor our impact and to identify potential further beneficiaries and engagement strategies throughout the lifetime of the project (impact was a standing agenda item at meetings of the project team and advisory board), and indeed beyond (we have continued to receive requests for engagement talks deriving from our work for the main project, and there will be at least two further talks during the next census period). (1) The detailed findings of Gersum are of direct relevance to those engaged in commercial English lexicographical projects. The most significant of these is the Oxford English Dictionary, arguably the most important historical dictionary project in the world, with which Gersum has collaborated closely via Dr Philip Durkin (Deputy Chief Editor, and a member of our advisory board) and his colleagues. Our relationship with OED has proven to be mutually beneficial: Gersum was able to draw on the ongoing lexicological research of OED, and in turn the Dictionary's editorial team were given immediate access to our project's findings (via access to our working database), which they are taking into account when drafting entries for its ongoing third edition. This new, online edition is available to a huge readership through institutional subscriptions (in the university sector and among public and commercial organizations), through public libraries, and through individual subscriptions (see http://www.oed.com). OED has a very wide user base, including sections devised to appeal to students and teachers (https://www.oed.com/information/using-the-oed/learning-and-teaching-resources/), and its findings often reach an even wider audience through interviews and features in broadcast, print, and online media. (2) There is a variety of aspects of Gersum which we believe are of interest and social benefit to members of the general public, revolving around and tapping into the popular cultural profile (whether nationally or locally) of the Vikings and their legacy, the history of words and medieval English poetry. More specifically, this (very diverse) group of beneficiaries includes (i) those with a relatively casual interest in various aspects of the history of languages, literature and culture in Britain, who occasionally attend exhibitions and events and read popular books/websites; (ii) those with a more developed, amateur interest who regularly attend public lectures or short courses and/or who are members of local history associations or dialect societies; (iii) school-level students and teachers exploring topics relevant to their courses (e.g. the regional and historical aspects of English Language A-levels, such as AQA module 3.A 'Language variation and change', OCR module 02.C 'Dimensions of linguistic variation: Language change'). We have engaged with these beneficiaries via a series of talks aimed at general audiences and in a permanent web presence. Our engagement consisted of two broad (and overlapping) strategies: (a) introducing the significance of the Scandinavian element in the English language and its importance to Britain's multicultural heritage, focusing on nationally important events and effects; (b) exploring and celebrating the local language of the North of England, and its role in some of the great literary monuments of the Middle Ages. Over the lifetime of the project we have run a series of public events, including: a talk by the PI and CI at the Jorvik Viking Festival in York (February 2016), preceded by an interview on BBC Radio York; a day devoted to Anglo-Scandinavian England at the London Anglo-Saxon Symposium (March 2016); a lecture at the British Library by the PI and CI (November 2016); talks by both the PI and RA at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas (November 2016) and a talk by the PI at the Museum of Cambridge History Festival (February 2017), both preceded by interviews on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire; a day's talks by the PI to an audience at Sutton Hoo (one of the Wuffings Education study days; April 2017); a talk by the PI and RA to the Yorkshire Dialect Society and Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society (October 2017, followed by two publications in the Yorkshire Dialect Society's Transactions journal); a talk by the PI in Nottingham as part of the 'Bringing Vikings Back to the East Midlands' AHRC-funded outreach events (January 2018), and a talk by the RA at the Viking Society's annual Student Conference (Nottingham, February 2018), both accompanied by a specially designed poster exhibition; a talk by the CI (the annual Helen Thirza Addyman lecture) at York (February 2018); a talk by the PI at a well-attended evening event at the British Library (November 2018); talks by the PI to local history and adult education groups at a number of venues in Cambridgeshire/Hertfordshire, including at Royston Town Hall (2018) and the Letchworth Settlement (2019). These events have between them attracted audiences in the hundreds (with an online podcast which has reached thousands of viewers in the case of the Nottingham 'Bringing Vikings Back to the East Midlands' talk), and we have collected feedback from participants signalling changes in attitudes and perceptions, as well as receiving requests for us to arrange further talks and events. The project has its own website (www.gersum.org), which includes an introduction to the subject of Old Norse loans for the general reader, and a lively presence on social media (including a Twitter following of more than 1280). We have also collaborated with Answer (formerly Pearson) Publishing (Cambridge) to record Old English and Old Norse for apps aimed at the teaching of school courses about the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, including a blog on this subject by the CI. The public engagement aspect of Gersum has since continued to further beneficiaries. The project team were awarded AHRC Follow-on Funding (ref. AH/T005076/1) in order to develop (in 2019-20) resources and activities which meet the multifaceted needs of primary and secondary school teachers and pupils at thousands of schools across the country regarding the cultural context of Anglo-Scandinavian England, and the linguistic outcomes of the interactions between speakers of Old English and Old Norse; and we have also collaborated closely with York Archaeological Trust's high-profile JORVIK Viking Centre (the only museum in the UK devoted specifically to the Scandinavian presence in Britain and Ireland, which welcomes many thousands of visitors every year). |
First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
Sector | Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
Impact Types | Cultural Economic |
Description | The Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP) |
Amount | £2,258 (GBP) |
Organisation | Cardiff University |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2019 |
End | 09/2019 |
Description | The Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP) |
Amount | £2,100 (GBP) |
Organisation | Cardiff University |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2017 |
End | 09/2017 |
Description | The Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP) |
Amount | £2,600 (GBP) |
Organisation | Cardiff University |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2018 |
End | 09/2018 |
Description | The Gersum Project: Follow-On Funding |
Amount | £80,176 (GBP) |
Funding ID | AH/T005076/1 |
Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 11/2019 |
End | 10/2020 |
Description | The Impact of Multilingualism on the Vocabulary and Stylistics of Medieval English (UK-Switzerland Partnering Awards) |
Amount | £25,192 (GBP) |
Funding ID | BB/X005070/1 |
Organisation | United Kingdom Research and Innovation |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 07/2022 |
End | 12/2023 |
Title | The Gersum Project: Database |
Description | The electronic database (catalogue) hosted on the Gersum website is one of the project's major outputs. It was created by Brittany Schorn, Research Associate on the Gersum Project, drawing on research by Richard Dance (PI), in collaboration with Richard Dance and Sara Pons-Sanz (CoI), with programming by the Digital Humanities Institute, Sheffield, which hosts the site. The database contains entries for more than 900 words derived from Old Norse in a set of major late Middle English poems, including the works of the 'Gawain'-poet and 'The Wars of Alexander', whose vocabularies are famously rich and diverse. The online database is freely accessible and fully searchable, and linked to electronic texts of the poems surveyed. Each entry in the database is annotated with information about the form and meaning of the word (including, for example, spelling variants, morphology, Modern English equivalents and senses), its regional and historical distribution, and its etymology (including where possible the Proto-Germanic ancestor, Old English cognate, possible Scandinavian source forms and modern reflexes, and any phonological or morphological markers of loan). These fields create a flexible mechanism for presenting and manipulating this large body of data, and thus more powerful ways of analysing, modelling and visualizing the material. The database also introduces a new field to facilitate the study of all words of a particular etymological type alongside one another. Each entry is classified according to a system of unprecedented consistency devised by Richard Dance to indicate the nature and strength of the evidence for input from Old Norse, allowing the user to compare it immediately with the same evidence for every other word. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | By its nature, the research presented in the Gersum database draws on a wide range of linguistic, literary and editorial scholarship, and it will be of direct relevance to academic beneficiaries in all these areas. The database is a powerful tool for English etymologists, collecting and analysing the etymologies of hundreds of Middle English words according to a newly developed methodology. A key beneficiary of this etymological research is the Oxford English Dictionary, which has had direct access to Gersum findings since the beginning of the project. Gersum's findings are also of significance to other major projects involving word origins, e.g. the ongoing Survey of English Place-Names, and to all users of these and other lexicographical resources such as the Corpus of Narrative Etymologies, the Toronto Dictionary of Old English and the Middle English Dictionary. The database also includes detailed information about its words' meanings and distribution, and is therefore of huge interest to scholars and students of both historical semantics and dialect geography. As regards semantics and lexicology, Gersum builds on the recent advances in the field made by the Historical Thesaurus of the OED; ongoing interest in this area is shown by associated projects including the AHRC-funded Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus (Glasgow). Users of the Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English (and its AHRC-funded Early Middle English counterpart), and the From Inglis to Scots project (Edinburgh), will be especially interested in Gersum's dialect geographical findings. The Gersum database contains direct web links to the OED, HTOED, DOE and MED, and to the digitized version of Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (Innsbruck). There has been considerable recent interest in the subject of language contact in general and the influence of Old Norse on English in particular, and Gersum will make a major impact in this area. Specifically, it enables researchers to interrogate a database of many hundreds of purported Old Norse loans with a new level of precision, comparing them with their supposed etyma and tracing collectively the processes of their adoption in English; and, more generally, its methodology is transferable to the study of lexical borrowing between any closely related languages (such as between medieval Dutch and English, as exemplified in the work of Prof. Ad Putter, University of Bristol). The project's findings will also appeal directly to those interested in the language of the poems of the Alliterative Revival, including from a literary critical point of view. It will benefit all interpreters of the famously rich and difficult vocabulary of these texts, and future editors of them, including as regards the roles of style and metre in promoting word choice. |
URL | https://www.gersum.org/database |
Description | Addyman lecture |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 14 February 2018, Dr Sara Pons-Sanz (CI, the Gersum Project) gave the annual Helen Tirza Addyman Lecture for the Yorkshire Archaeological Trust, at DIG (York), called 'Tracing and Classifying Norse Influence on English'. The talk provided an overview of the significance of Norse-derived terms in English in general, and specific dialects from the areas that would have been part of the Danelaw in particular. After referring to previous etymological work and the difficulty in (and significance of) distinguishing between loans and cognates, the discussion focused on the etymological principles championed by the Gersum project, as well as its broader aims and outputs. There were many interested questions from members of the audience (approx. 40), which indicated that the talk had provoked in them new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | Advisory meetings and interview for Vikings documentary |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | In February and March 2023, Prof. Richard Dance, Dr Sara Pons-Sanz and Dr Brittany Schorn (the Gersum Project) held several online meetings with Charley Leach (researcher) and other production staff of documentary television company Darlow Smithson Productions to advise them about content for a new three-part documentary series about the Vikings (fronted by Dr Xand van Tulleken). This led to an on-camera interview with Dr Sara Pons-Sanz, which was recorded in Warwick on 15 March 2023, to be broadcast later in 2023. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Apps from Pearson Publishing |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Schools |
Results and Impact | In 2016 and 2017, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) and Brittany Schorn (RA) contributed ideas, information and audio readings to the 'Anglo-Saxons' and 'Vikings' apps, produced in 2017 by Pearson Publishing (Cambridge). These contributions involved texts in Old English and Old Norse and related historical and cultural matters, including introductory information about language contact and borrowing. The Pearson Apps are sold as part of the 'My Library' resources, aimed at U.K. schools at Key Stages 2 and 3. The total number of users of these apps, as of December 2017, is 2232 (1802 students and 430 teachers). This collaboration included a blog on the subject of the Old Norse influence on the English language by Sara Pons Sanz (CI) (http://www.pearson.co.uk/blog/viking-language) |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017 |
URL | https://www.pearson.co.uk/mylibrary.html |
Description | BBC Georgey Tonight interview |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On the evening of 10 January 2018, Brittany Schorn (Research Associate, Gersum Project) was interviewed on the BBC Radio 'Georgey Tonight' programme about the influence of the Vikings on the English language. This was in conjunction with Dr Dance's talk in Nottingham earlier that day. 'Georgey Tonight' is a national BBC radio programme syndicated on BBC local radio stations. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | BBC Radio Cambridgeshire interview |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 4 October 2016, Brittany Schorn (Research Associate, Gersum Project) was interviewed on the BBC Radio Cambridgeshire Breakfast Show about the influence of the Vikings on the English language. This was publicity for Dr Schorn's Festival of Ideas talk on 29 October, and for Dr Dance's talk in the same series on 26 October. The radio publicity played a role in generating interest in these talks, both of which attracted very large audiences (about 100 each). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | http://www.bbc.co.uk/radiocambridgeshire |
Description | BBC Radio Cambridgeshire interview 2 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 15 February 2017, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) was interviewed on the BBC Radio Cambridgeshire Lunchtime Show about the influence of the Vikings on the English language. This was publicity for Dr Dance's Museum of Cambridge History Festival talk on 18 February. The radio publicity played a role in generating interest in this talk, which attracted an audience of about 60. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04qlrh5 |
Description | BBC Radio York interview |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | A short radio interview of Richard Dance on BBC Radio York on 3 February 2016, as part of the publicity for the talk at the Jorvik Viking Festival given by Richard Dance and Sara Pons-Sanz on 16 February. It isn't possible to say whether the interview had direct impact, but the subsequent talk was sold out. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | British Library evening event |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 30 November 2018, Dr Richard Dance (Principal Investigator) took part in a joint evening event with Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough (University of Durham). The event included a talk by Dr Barraclough ('From Raiders to Rulers: The Vikings in Anglo-Saxon England'), in which she Dr Dance provided readings of early English texts, and a talk by Dr Dance ('Linguistic Legacy; or, Vikings in Your Vocabulary') which introduced the audience to the Old Norse borrowings in English (including medieval literature and modern dialects). We spoke to a full house of the British Library's 'Knowledge Centre' lecture theatre (250 people). There were many questions from members of the audience, who demonstrated a keen interest in the Viking legacy in the English language, and several said that it had changed their views of this element in their linguistic heritage. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | British Library talk |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 7 November 2016, Richard Dance (PI) and Sara Pons-Sanz (CI) gave an hour-long talk ('Viking Treasure in the English Language') introducing to a general audience the Old Norse influence on the English language (medieval and modern, including regional dialects). The event was sold out, with 75 attendees (free entry) in the British Library's conference centre. The talk stimulated many interested questions from the audience, and respondents to the feedback questionnaire indicated that it had changed their thinking about the history of English vocabulary. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | https://www.bl.uk/events/viking-treasure-in-the-english-language |
Description | Castellón lecture |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
Results and Impact | On 18 September 2017, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum project) gave an hour's lecture (the 'opening lecture' of the academic year in the English department) to students of English literature at the Universidad Jaume I (Castellón de la Plana, Spain), at the invitation of Dr María José Esteve Ramos. The lecture (entitled 'Sir Gawain and the Vikings: Adventures in the Glossary') described the research of the Gersum project, and used a number of examples from 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' to introduce the problems with the interpretation and etymological identification of Middle English words. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Dance lecture to Thoroton Society |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 9 March 2024, Richard Dance (PI, The Gersum Project) gave an hour's lecture ('Vikings in Your Vocabulary') to introduce the general public to the subject of the Old Norse influence on English vocabulary, both medieval and modern, including the regional dialects of the East Midlands. This was an event (the 2024 Norah Witham Lecture) in a series organized by the Thoroton Society of Nottingham (a popular local history and archaeological society). The lecture took place in the Nottingham Mechanics Institute, and attracted an audience of about 60 people. (The lecture had originally been scheduled for March 2020, but was postponed owing to COVID.) There were many interested questions from members of the audience, indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
URL | http://www.thorotonsociety.org.uk/events.htm |
Description | Dance talk at Cambridge History Festival |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 18 February 2017, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) gave an hour-long morning lecture ('Vikings in Your Vocabulary: How Old Norse Words Moved In') to introduce the general public to the subject of the Old Norse influence on English vocabulary (both medieval and modern, including regional dialects). This was an event in the annual 'History Festival' organised by the Museum of Cambridge and held in the Castle Street Methodist Church (tickets cost £8 full, £6 concessions). There were many interested questions from members of the audience (total of about 60), and feedback questionnaires were collected indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. Dr Dance has agreed to give a further talk (at a meeting of the Royston local history group, February 2018) as a result of this one. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | http://www.museumofcambridge.org.uk |
Description | Dance talk at Festival of Ideas 2016 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 26 October 2016, Richard Dance gave an hour-long evening lecture ('Vikings in Your Vocabulary: How Old Norse Words Moved In') to introduce the general public to the subject of the Old Norse influence on English vocabulary (both medieval and modern, including regional dialects). This was an event in the University of Cambridge's annual 'Festival of Ideas'. There were many interested questions from members of the audience (total of about 100), and feedback questionnaires were collected indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/vikings-your-vocabulary-how-old-norse-words-moved |
Description | Dance talk at Royston Local History Society |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 1 February 2018, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) gave an hour-long lecture ('Vikings in Your Vocabulary: How Old Norse Words Moved In') to introduce the general public to the subject of the Old Norse influence on English vocabulary (both medieval and modern, including regional dialects). This was an event in the regular series of evening talks organised by the Royston and District Local History Society and held in Royston Town Hall (tickets cost £2 each). There were many interested questions from members of the audience (total of about 60), and feedback questionnaires were collected indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. Publicity for the talk included a quarter-page notice in the Listings magazine for the local area in February. Dr Dance has agreed to give a further public talk on this subject (at the Letchworth Settlement) as a result of this one. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | http://www.roystonlocalhistory.org.uk/Programme%20Pages/programme.html |
Description | Edinburgh ICEHL |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Dr Sara Pons-Sanz delivered a paper at the 20th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, held in Edinburgh from 27-31 August 2018. Her paper, entitled 'Games and Tricks: Speech in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', focused on words for games and related concepts in 'Sir Gawain', drawing on the database of Old Norse-derived words produced by the Gersum project. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | Faculty of English Medieval Graduate Seminar |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | On 9 November 2016, Richard Dance (PI) and Brittany Schorn (Research Associate) gave a 20-minute talk introducing the Gersum Project to postgraduate students in the Faculty of English, Cambridge. This led to a lively discussion, and students and colleagues in English expressed renewed interest in this research area and a desire for future collaboration. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Festival of Ideas talk 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 25 October 2017, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) and Brittany Schorn (RA) took part in an interactive talk to the general public as part of the University of Cambridge's annual 'Festival of Ideas' event. The event (entitled 'True Relatives and False Friends: Understanding Old Words and their Meanings') was a joint event co-organized with the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish language (represented by Prof. Máire Ní Mhaonaigh), and - via talks and an interactive quiz - introduced the audience to the variety of languages spoken in early medieval Britain and Ireland, and the ways in which their interaction contributed to the history of English, including a section on the influence of Old Norse on English. There was very enthusiastic participation and discussion, and feedback forms were collected indicating that attendees had learned new things about the languages involved. One attendee (Jenny Knight) indicated that she would be using ideas from the talk for her course with U3AC on the history of the English language (Language Labyrinth). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | https://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk |
Description | Gersum conference |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | The Gersum Project's own conference ('Gersum: the Scandinavian Legacy in Medieval Britain') took place in St Catharine's College, Cambridge, from 5-7 September 2018. The fourteen papers by invited experts represented a range of historical and cultural contexts for Anglo-Scandinavian encounters in the Viking Age and the evidence for them, such as archaeology, art history and inscriptions; language contact in the North Sea and Irish Sea worlds more widely; the Norse influence in the onomastic record, including minor names; and several different takes on the Norse impact on the English language itself, including studies of particular semantic fields, specific texts and their contexts, bringing in different theoretical and methodological points of view (including lexicography and dialectology). The conference will lead to an edited proceedings volume. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | https://www.dhi.ac.uk/blogs/gersum/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/07/Gersum_provisional_programme_... |
Description | Gersum website, Twitter, Facebook |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The initial launch of the Gersum project website includes a section aimed at the general public which introduces the Scandinavian influence on English vocabulary ('Norse terms in English: a (basic!) introduction'), project news, etc. The website content was written by Sara Pons-Sanz and Brittany Schorn, and the site is hosted by HRI Digital at the University of Sheffield. Updates (including the 'word of the week') are posted regularly on Twitter and Facebook. The Twitter feed has a following of more than 1000 at the time of writing. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017 |
URL | https://www.gersum.org |
Description | ICEHL Essen |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | In August 2016, Richard Dance (PI) and Brittany Schorn (RA, Gersum project) gave a paper introducing the project and its research at the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (as part of the 'Diachronic approaches to the typology of language contact' workshop) in Essen, Germany. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | https://www.uni-due.de/anglistik/icehl19/ |
Description | ICEHL Essen 2 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | In August 2016, Sara Pons-Sanz (CI, Gersum project) gave a paper (about the etymology of PDE 'bread') at the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics in Essen, Germany. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | https://www.uni-due.de/anglistik/icehl19/ |
Description | ISHLL conference Indiana |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | In July 2016, Sara Pons-Sanz (CI, Gersum Project) gave a paper about the project at the conference of the International Society for Historical Lexicography and Lexicology in Bloomington, Indiana. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Jorvik Viking Festival 2016 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | A talk by Richard Dance and Sara Pons-Sanz called 'Vikings in your Vocabulary', held at the York Guild Hall on 16 February 2016 as part of the 2016 Jorvik Viking Festival. It was attended by a paying audience of 100 plus festival volunteers. The talk lasted about an hour, and was followed by lively and interesting questions and discussion afterwards. Attendees filled in a questionnaire: many reported that the talk had increased their awareness of (and their pride in) the Scandinavian origins of their own dialect vocabulary, and shared examples with us of words that they themselves used. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Jorvik companion guide |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | In April 2017, the Jorvik Viking Centre published its new 'Companion Guide' booklet (York Archaeological Trust, 2017). The booklet includes (p. 43) a paragraph by Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) on the subject of the Norse influence on English vocabulary. The booklet was launched in conjunction with the reopening of the Jorvik Viking Centre (Coppergate, York) at its VIP Preview on 7 April 2017, at which Richard Dance was a guest. The Jorvik Viking Centre is a major tourist attraction, which welcomes many thousands of visitors per year; and the booklet is on sale in the Centre's shop. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Kalamazoo 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | At the 52nd Kalamazoo International Congress on Medieval Studies (11-14 May 2017), Dr Brittany Schorn (RA, Gersum Project) gave a twenty-minute paper entitled 'Gersum: Old Norse Influence on Middle English Lexis' (part of session 387, 'In a Word, Philology: Etymology, Lexicography, Semantics and More in Germanic', on 13 May). This paper, attended by about 30 people, outlined the Gersum Project's approach to accessing the case for Old Norse loanwords in Middle English, focusing on a few case studies from Pearl. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2017/medieval-congress-program-2017-for-web.p... |
Description | LASS 2016 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 12 March 2016, Sara Pons-Sanz gave a talk about the Old Norse influence on English to a meeting of the 'London Anglo-Saxon Symposium' (LASS), which she also organised. 62 people attended (there was a charge for registration). The paper was well received, with participants commenting in feedback questionnaires that the event had expanded their appreciation of the Scandinavian impact on English language and culture. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Leeds IMC 2017 panel 1 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On Thursday 6 July 2017, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) gave a twenty-minute paper at the Leeds International Medieval Congress. The paper (entitled 'First Catch Your Viking: Identifying the Old Norse Borrowings in English') drew on and introduced the research of the Gersum Project, with a focus on the etymological principles by which Old Norse lexical input in Middle English can be identified (with special attention to _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_). This was part of a panel (Lexicography and Loanwords in Britain and Ireland I) co-organized by the Gersum Project and EDIL (The Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language), which led to some very helpful comparative discussion of etymology and lexicography across three distinct projects: Gersum, EDIL and the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/gfx/IMC/pdf_links_IMC_2017/IMC2017_Final_Programme_Post_IMC.pdf |
Description | Leeds IMC 2017 panel 2 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On Thursday 6 July 2017, the Gersum Project organized a panel at the Leeds International Medieval Congress. The panel (Lexicography and Loanwords in Britain and Ireland II) was chaired by Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project), and consisted of three twenty-minute papers, all with a focus on the study of the Old Norse influence on English lexis: 'Norse-Derived Terms in _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_', by Dr Sara Pons Sanz (CI, Gersum Project) and 'The Scandinavian Element in the Poetic Diction of the Alliterative Revival' by Dr Brittany Schorn (RA, Gersum Project) drew directly on the research of the Project; and the third paper, 'Philology and Folklore: Scandinavian Heritage and 19th-Century Dialect Study' was given by Dr Matthew Townend (University of York, project Advisory Board member) and presented closely related research. All three papers attracted many interested questions. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/gfx/IMC/pdf_links_IMC_2017/IMC2017_Final_Programme_Post_IMC.pdf |
Description | Medieval English in a Multilingual Context talk |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 1 May 2018, Dr Richard Dance and Dr Sara Pons-Sanz (PI and CI, The Gersum Project) gave a short talk introducing the methods and aims of The Gersum Project, and took part in a round-table discussion, at the first meeting of the 'Medieval English in a Multilingual Context' network (funded by the AHRC) in the University of Westminster, London. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | https://memc1500.wordpress.com |
Description | Nottingham public lecture |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 10 January 2018, Richard Dance (PI, The Gersum Project) gave an hour's lecture ('Vikings in Your Vocabulary') to introduce the general public to the subject of the Old Norse influence on English vocabulary, both medieval and modern, including the regional dialects of the East Midlands. This was an event in the series of lectures organized by the University of Nottingham as part of its 'Bringing Vikings Back to the East Midlands' programme (funded by the AHRC, and organized by Dr Roderick Dale), and accompanying two major exhibitions (see ). The lecture took place in the Djanogly Theatre in the Lakeside Arts Centre at the University of Nottingham, and attracted a full house of 187 people. It was also streamed live on the web, and subsequently made available as a video podcast (with transcript) (see ). Within two hours of the beginning of the live stream, the video had been viewed 3000 times, and at the time of writing has been viewed more than 6000 times (making it one of the most popular talks in the series). There were many interested questions from members of the live audience, and feedback questionnaires were collected indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. Publicity for the talk included a short blog post on the University of Nottingham website (http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/eastmidlandsvikings/2018/01/05/vikings-in-your-vocabulary/) and other publicity on the 'Bringing Vikings Back to the East Midlands' site (https://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/special-events/event/3679/vikings-in-your-vocabulary.html). The talk was accompanied by a specially produced poster exhibition of six posters (with content by Richard Dance, Sara Pons-Sanz and Brittany Schorn) about the Gersum Project and the Old Norse influence on English, which was mounted in a public space in the Lakeside Arts Centre on 10 January, and which attracted much interest from those visiting the Centre that day (see attached photograph). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | https://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/whats-on/vikings.html |
Description | Pons-Sanz ICHLL9 paper |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Dr Sara Pons-Sanz (Co-Investigator) gave a paper to the Ninth International Conference on Historical Lexicology and Lexicography, held 20-22 June 2018 at Santa Margherita Ligure (organised by the University of Genova). The paper was entitled 'Classifying Norse-Derived Terms in English: An Update on the Gersum Project', and introduced the typology used by Gersum to identify Old Norse input into Middle English vocabulary, with detailed examples. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | https://ichll9.wordpress.com/programme/ |
Description | Pons-Sanz ISLE5 paper |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 17 July 2018, Sara Pons-Sanz (Co-Investigator) gave a paper at the Fifth International Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English, which was held in London (Institute of English Studies). Her paper, entitled 'The Gawain-Poet's Terms for Speech in the Context of the Gersum Project', introduced the conceptual field of 'speech' in the works of the Gawain-poet, with special reference to the Gersum project's research on Old Norse input. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/isle5/ |
Description | Pons-Sanz paper at Cambridge symposium |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 4 November 2023, Dr Sara Pons-Sanz (Co-Investigator, the Gersum Project) gave a paper entitled 'What the Adoption of Words Actually Involves: Norse-Derived Terms in English' at the 'Contact and Language Change: Peter Matthews Memorial Symposium' organised by the Philological Society at St John's College, Cambridge. The paper drew on the methodology and typology developed for the Gersum Project, and resulted in an interested discussion by those attending. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Pons-Sanz paper at Oxford symposium. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 22 September 2023, Dr Sara Pons-Sanz (Co-Investigator, the Gersum Project) gave a paper entitled '"All iss þwerrtut soþ & all þwerrtut to trowwenn": Truths and Myths about Orrm's Norse-Derived Vocabulary' at a symposium on the Ormulum ('An Afternoon with Orrm') organised by the Early English Text Society at St Hilda's College, Oxford. The paper drew on the methodology and typology developed for the Gersum Project, and resulted in an interested discussion by those attending. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Prague talk 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 1 November 2017, Dr Brittany Schorn (RA, Gersum Project) gave an hour's guest lecture to the Centre for the Study of the Middle Ages at Charles University, Prague, as part of their guest lectures series 'Digital Humanities and the Study of the Past'. The lecture, entitled 'Gersum: Identifying Old Norse lexis in the Poetry of the Alliterative Revival', focused on the methodology of the Gersum Project, using several sample database entries to illustrate our use of digital humanities to support a more involved presentation of the evidence for Old Norse input into medieval English lexis and the productive ways in which it can be interrogated. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Richard Dance paper in St Andrews |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 4 April 2022, Prof. Richard Dance (Principal Investigator, the Gersum Project) gave the 2022 George Jack memorial Lecture at the University of St Andrews. The paper (entitled 'Many Meetings: Medieval English and the Etymologist') drew on the methods and research findings of the Gersum Project and Prof. Dance's 2019 book (Words Derived from Old Norse in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), and was attended by an in-person audience in St Andrews and an international audience online (over Teams). The lecture sparked a range of interested questions by attendees. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://events.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/george-jack-memorial-lecture-2022-many-meetings-medieval-engl... |
Description | Sara Pons-Sanz lecture in Castellon |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
Results and Impact | On 19 November 2022, Dr Sara Pons-Sanz (Co-Investigator, the Gersum Project) gave a lecture at the University Jaume I, Castellon, Spain, entitled 'Norse-Derived Terms in Old English Texts: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a Case Study'. The lecture drew on the methods and typology of the Gersum Project, and gave rise to an interested discussion by the students who attended. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Sara Pons-Sanz lecture in Utrecht |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | On 18 November 2022, Dr Sara Pons-Sanz (Co-Investigator, the Gersum Project) gave a lecture at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, entitled 'Understanding the Impact of Norse-Derived Terms on Medieval English: Overview and Methodology'; this was a guest lecture for the MA module 'Language Variation and Change: From Old English to Middle English'. The lecture drew on the methods and typology of the Gersum Project, and gave rise to an interested discussion by the students who attended. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Sara Pons-Sanz paper in Ljubljana. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 4 April 2022, Dr Sara Pons-Sanz (Co-Investigator, the Gersum Project) gave a paper entitled 'Norse-Derived Terms in La Estorie del Evangelie: Original Composition and Scribal Substitutions' to the Linguistics Circle seminar at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The paper drew on the methodology and typology developed for the Gersum Project, and resulted in an interested discussion by those attending. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Schorn talk at Festival of Ideas 2016 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 29 October 2016, Brittany Schorn (Research Associate, Gersum Project) gave a 30-minute interactive talk ('Speak Like A Viking') charting the influence of the Vikings on everyday modern English, and introducing the audience to phrases in the Old Norse language. This was an event in the University of Cambridge's annual 'Festival of Ideas'. There were many interested questions from members of the audience (total of about 100), and feedback questionnaires were collected indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/speak-viking |
Description | Seville lecture (Dance) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
Results and Impact | On 29 March 2017, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum project) gave an hour's lecture to students and staff of the University of Seville, as part of a two-day student conference called 'Intertwining Cultures: Latin, Old English and Old Norse in Medieval England' hosted by the Depto. de Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana and organised by Dr Mercedes Salvador Bello. The lecture (entitled 'Sir Gawain and the Vikings: Adventures in the Glossary') described the research of the Gersum project, and used a number of examples from 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' to introduce the problems with the interpretation and etymological identification of Middle English words. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Seville paper (Pons-Sanz) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | At the 'Workshop on Medieval Northern English, which took place on 6-7 November 2017 at the University of Seville, Sara Pons-Sanz (CI, Gersum Project), gave a 20-minute paper entitled 'Norse-Derived Terms for Speech in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. The paper introduced the Gersum Project, mainly its aims, phases and classification, by paying particular attention to the Norse-derived terms associated with the lexico-semantic field of SPEECH. After discussing the project's corpus and the principles behind the classification of the Norse-derived terms followed by Gersum, the paper focused on the semantic and stylistic interaction between some Norse-derived terms referring to SPEECH and their native and French near-synonyms in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. In this respect, the second part of the paper aligned itself with Gersum's interest in the semantic and stylistic relationships between the members of particular lexico-semantic fields as a way to establish the process of adaptation and integration of the Norse-derived terms into English. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Short notice in Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | A short (2-page) article by Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) introducing The Gersum Project appeared in the 2017 volume of the 'Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society', ed. Clive Upton (part cxvii, volume xxiii, pp. 14-15). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | Stavanger ICOME paper |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On Wednesday 31 May 2017, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) gave an hour's plenary lecture to the Tenth International Conference on Middle English at the University of Stavanger, Norway. The lecture was entitled 'The Trouble with Vikings: "Difficult" Old Norse Borrowings in Middle English', and drew on the research for the Gersum Project (focusing especially on _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_) in order to exemplify the types of etymological difficulties which attend the identification of Old Norse input in Middle English. The talk resulted in a number of discussions in and around the conference. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | http://www.uis.no/news/conferences/10th-international-conference-on-middle-english/ |
Description | Talk at St Mary's Primary School, Bristol |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Schools |
Results and Impact | On 16 May 2016, Sara Pons-Sanz gave a talk about the Vikings and their influence on English to a group of thirty Year 4 pupils and their teacher at St Mary's Primary School, Bristol. The pupils enjoyed the talk, and their teacher commented afterwards that they 'were really surprised to learn that many of our common everyday words come from Vikings and I think it helped them to view Vikings as explorers, farmers and settlers, rather than just invaders who stole things'. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Talk at the Letchworth Settlement |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 4 April 2019, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) gave an hour-long lecture ('Vikings in Your Vocabulary: How Old Norse Words Moved In') to introduce the general public to the subject of the Old Norse influence on English vocabulary (both medieval and modern, including regional dialects). This was an event in the regular series of guest lectures organised by The Letchworth Settlement (an adult education provider; tickets cost £5 each). There were many interested questions from members of the audience (total of about 40), and feedback questionnaires were collected indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.letchworthsettlement.org.uk |
Description | Talk in Steeple Morden |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 11 April 2019, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) gave an hour-long talk ('Vikings in Your Vocabulary: How Old Norse Words Moved In') to introduce the subject of the Old Norse influence on English vocabulary (both medieval and modern, including regional dialects). This was an event organised by a local group of modern language professionals (members of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, specifically the Scandinavian network and the Northern Home Counties regional group), who met in Steeple Morden village hall, Cambridgeshire. There were many interested questions from members of the audience (total of about 12), indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. The talk was subsequently described in a short article written by the organiser for the 'Bulletin of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting'. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | That JORVIK Viking Thing: Pons Sanz talk |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | In February 2021, Gersum Project team member Dr Sara Pons Sanz took part in the online event 'That JORVIK Viking Thing', held by the JORVIK Viking Centre in York. The event ran between 15-20 February, and welcomed viewers from 61 countries, selling 2573 tickets and significantly increasing JORVIK's Facebook, Instagram and Twitter followings. Dr Pons Sanz gave a thirty-minute online talk on 'The Integration of Norse-derived terms into English' (which has received 93 views and 152 impressions). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://www.jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk/whats-on/that-jorvik-viking-thing-2021/ |
Description | That JORVIK Viking Thing: Schorn talk |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | In February 2021, Gersum Project team member Dr Brittany Schorn took part in the online event 'That JORVIK Viking Thing', held by the JORVIK Viking Centre in York. The event ran between 15-20 February, and welcomed viewers from 61 countries, selling 2573 tickets and significantly increasing JORVIK's Facebook, Instagram and Twitter followings. Dr Schorn gave a thirty-minute talk on 'Gods and poets: the mythology of Old Norse literature' (which has received 108 views and 168 impressions). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://www.jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk/whats-on/that-jorvik-viking-thing-2021/ |
Description | University of Westminster Research Seminar |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 2 November, Brittany Schorn (RA, Gersum Project) gave a 50-minute paper introducing the project and its research to the University of Westminster Research Seminar in English Language and Linguistics. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | https://www.westminster.ac.uk/english-language-and-linguistics |
Description | Viking Society student conference talk 2018 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | On 17 February 2018, Dr Brittany Schorn (RA, The Gersum Project) gave a twenty minute talk ('Gersum: Rediscovering the Linguistic Legacy of the Vikings') at the Viking Society Student Conference at the University of Nottingham. The talk introduced the audience to the methodologies pertinent to identifying Old Norse lexical influence on English, with examples from the Gersum database and a look at some East Midlands dialect words. The audience of about 50 comprised a mix of academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students and interested members of the public. The talk was accompanied by a poster exhibition of six posters (with content by Richard Dance, Sara Pons-Sanz and Brittany Schorn) about the Gersum Project and the Old Norse influence on English, which was mounted during the conference at lunchtime, and which attracted much interest from those attending. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | Viking Society talk 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On 8 July 2017, Dr Brittany Schorn (RA, Gersum Project) gave an hour-long talk to The Viking Society for Northern Research in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. The paper, attended by about 45 people, was entitled 'Gersum: the Old Norse vocabulary of the Gawain-poet reconsidered'. It examined what insights can be drawn from the Gersum project's completed study of the four poems traditionally attributed to the Gawain-poet, analyzing the significance of statistical findings as well as presenting several in-depth case studies taken from Cleanness and Patience. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Wuffings Study Day April 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On 22 April 2017, Dr Richard Dance (PI, Gersum project) gave a day of talks at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, to an audience of 35 members of the general public who had booked to attend. The event was called 'Vikings in your vocabulary', and consisted of four hours' of talks introducing the audience to the influence of Old Norse on English vocabulary and its presence in medieval poems including 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. This was one of the regular series of Wuffings Education Study Days organised by Dr Sam Newton (cost: £38, or £25 to those attending a study day for the first time), and was fully booked. There was much enthusiastic discussion throughout the day, and written feedback was collected; several participants reported an increased interest in the history of the English language and the value of regional dialects. Sutton Hoo is a possible venue for a future poster exhibition deriving from the Gersum Project, and this possibility was discussed with Dr Newton. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | http://wuffingeducation.co.uk |
Description | YDS and YAHS talk |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | On Saturday 14 October 2017, Dr Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) and Dr Brittany Schorn (RA) gave an hour's talk to a joint meeting of the Yorkshire Dialect Society and the medieval section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society. The talk, entitled 'Tykes and Vikings: Looking for the Old Norse Influence on Northern English Vocabulary', introduced the audience to the influence of Old Norse on the English language, with a special focus on words in local northern dialects. There were many interested questions from members of the audience (total of about 60), and feedback questionnaires were collected indicating that the talk had provoked in the audience new attitudes towards language change and the history of English. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | https://www.yas.org.uk/content/fulldiary.html |
Description | York Medieval Literatures seminar 2020 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | On Thursday 19 November 2020, Richard Dance (PI, Gersum Project) gave an hour's talk to the Medieval Literatures graduate seminar at the University of York (online via Zoom). The lecture was entitled 'Sir Gawain vs. the Vikings: "Difficult" Old Norse Borrowings in Middle English', and drew on the research for the Gersum Project (focusing especially on _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_) in order to exemplify the types of etymological difficulties which attend the identification of Old Norse input in Middle English. The talk was followed by a lively and interested discussion online. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |