Words derived from Old Norse in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: an etymological survey

The influence of Old Norse on English vocabulary is one of the great issues for historians of the English language. Together with famous accounts of sea-borne invasion and pillaging, and the enduring Scandinavian impact on names and material culture, it contributes to the potent idea of 'the Viking legacy' that still resonates so strongly in modern constructions of British identity and heritage. A large number of important English words have been ascribed an Old Norse origin by scholars, including such basic items of vocabulary as 'sky', 'egg', 'law', 'leg', 'take', 'window', 'knife', 'die' and 'skin', not to mention the personal pronouns 'they', 'their' and 'them'. But there is much about the early histories of these words, including their occurrences in medieval English literature, that should be far better understood; and the confidence with which we attribute to some of them a Scandinavian origin is in need of careful, thorough reassessment. In particular, the Scandinavian influence on the lexicon of the great medieval English literary monuments, especially those composed in the language of areas settled by Norse speakers, has never seen sustained exploration. Nowhere is the need for such an investigation more compelling than in the case of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. Despite this poem's celebrity as one of the pinnacles of Middle English literary achievement, and, what is more, though its vocabulary has frequently been held up as one of the most striking known instances of Scandinavian influence, there remains no complete survey of Norse loans in 'Sir Gawain'. My project will remedy this deficiency, and will result in a detailed, fully-annotated description of the more than four hundred words in this poem for which an origin in Norse has previously been suggested, directly or indirectly, in editions, historical dictionaries and other studies of the poem. Along the way, I shall analyse in-depth the arguments and 'tests' that scholars have applied in order to identify Norse influence upon the histories of English words, and develop a more refined system of etymological classification. My aim is therefore to present the most secure survey yet available of Norse-derived words in a major Middle English text, and a new model for the collection and description of Norse loans from any English source.

The nature of my research, which consists of a detailed etymological investigation of medieval English vocabulary, means that it does not lend itself readily to being targeted at non-academic beneficiaries, at least not in its necessarily technical original form. Several of the subjects and disciplines that form the focus of my investigation have nevertheless generated, and continue to generate, considerable public interest: there is an enduring fascination with the Vikings and their influence on British history and culture, as also at a popular level with the findings of etymology, and 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' is one of the better-known Middle English poems. In my 'Impact Plan', I set out a number of ways in which I might engage with interest in these subjects in order to introduce some of the consequences of my research to a wider audience. These include public events such as the University of Cambridge's annual 'Festival of Ideas' and the regular 'Midlands Viking Symposium', and outreach to secondary school pupils in the context of awareness-raising about university education, as well as the publicity pertaining to such events. In the longer term, it is moreover my intention that my work on the Norse-derived vocabulary of 'Sir Gawain' should serve as the foundation for a large-scale, collaborative project to collect words of Scandinavian origin from the Middle English textual record at large, something which would generate media and heritage-sector interest in its own right, both in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia.