The Gersum Project: the Scandinavian Influence on English Vocabulary

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.

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.