Reflections 2012
Series 12
August 1
Norse Expansion I: The Norse - Eastward to Russia

 

From Travemünde, the MS Deutschland stopped at Stavanger (Norway), Shetland (Scotland, UK), the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland (six stops), then back to Iceland to fly home. In later postings I’ll discuss the ship and the voyage, and then each stop. But those that planned the itinerary had one goal in mind, while I had two. I agreed with their geographic theme, “Ewiges Feuer und Eis” / “Eternal Fire and Ice”, an obvious reference to both Iceland and Greenland. But beyond the geographic, I had a secondary purpose, the historic. How were all these places settled? The Norse expansion, of course, but absolutely no reference was made on the ship to it at all. I wasn’t the only one interested in the history, since I met an American named Mark who had even stronger interests in the Norse settlement of Greenland than I did.

 
 

With each location, we’ll discuss the geography, of course, such as the geysers, volcanoes and waterfalls of Iceland and of course, the ice cap and icebergs of Greenland. But there’s a lot to know about the Norse expansion aspect, and that’s the purpose of this posting. I knew some, but learned a lot more when researching it, and I’m sure a lot will be new to readers.

 
 

Indo-European   Peoples and cultures are bound together by language, and, although we’ve talked about this before, we should have a quick review. Most of the languages of Europe (many expanded to other continents) belong to the Indo-European family, a name that indicates that languages of India are connected to European languages. Where the single language of Indo-European originated is in dispute, however, through backtracking, linguistic scientists have made educated guesses as to its grammar and vocabulary. However, IE words are always indicated with an asterisk, since they are not proven.

 
 

As Indo-European spread over larger and larger areas, people in different locations developed their languages differently, and in time, Indo-European began to break down into daughter dialects. This is 1500 BCE (Before the Common Era), the Indo-European homeland between Europe and India developing subgroups. By 500 BCE Indo-Iranian, one of the big four daughter groupings, began to manifest itself, the other three being Italic in blue, Germanic in purple, and what I like to call Russic (or Slavic), in brown. Notice how widespread Celtic (in green) was at one time. By 500 CE (Common Era), Celtic had been pushed to the western end of the British Isles, as others continued to develop.

 
 

But this is the map you should remember, the present-day location of the daughter branches of Indo-European. Somewhat simplified, there are:

 
 
 The Big Four: Germanic in red, Italic (Romance) in dark blue, Russic (Slavic) in dark green, Indo-Iranian in brown.

The Little Five: Greek in yellow, Albanian in light blue, Celtic in orange, Baltic in light green, Armenian in purple. However, for our purposes, just keep in mind these big three within Europe: Germanic, Italic, Russic (Slavic).
 
 

Germanic   As we’re heading toward discussing the Norse, the topic will now move to Germanic. Picture again those Germanic red areas we just saw spread across northwestern Europe, but let’s go back earlier to see how they spread around that region. The middle of the earlier Indo-European maps showed a much smaller Germanic area in 500 BCE, and we’ll now look at that in detail in this map of Proto-Germanic, also in 500 BCE, which is the latest part of the Bronze age into the earliest part of the Iron Age in Scandinavia and North Germany. Proto-Germanic is already breaking down into a north-south division. The northern part in red is called North Germanic, and the southern part, in magenta, is somewhat illogically called West Germanic. The reason for this is that there was at one time an East Germanic as well, spoken in the area east of the Elbe, most of which is in Poland today. East Germanic died out. It had included well-known wandering Germanic tribes such as the Vandals (without the V, Andalusia in Spain bears their name), the Burgundians (Burgundy in France bears their name), the Goths (Gothic architecture bears their name [“Gothic” was originally a disparaging word]), and others. The only remnant of East Germanic is some inscriptions in the extinct Gothic language, so just remember “North” and “West”.

 
 

Look at the NORTH GERMANIC, and you can see, that developed into Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. With western expansion, North Germanic added Faroese and Icelandic at a much later date. To show the historical development of the five North Germanics, consider them 3+2, that is, three older Continental ones, and two later Insular ones.

 
 

Now look at WEST GERMANIC. As shown, it covers Low(land) German and Dutch, but spread south toward the Alps and also formed High(land) German, which is standard German today. Also at a later date, the West Germanics expanded, when the Angles and Saxons (and Jutes) invaded and settled in England. To simplify matters, consider the West Germanics to be three in number: German, Dutch, and English.

 
 

If you see the logic of the above, then look at the present map of all the Germanic Languages. The North Germanics are as described; the Faroes are the islands closest to Iceland. Note that Swedish speakers also live in Finland, where Swedish is the second national language.

 
 

[Note also that northern Scandinavia is shown in gray, due to the prevalence of Saami speakers (the term “Lapp” is considered derogatory). Saami is not in the Indo-European family, but part of the Uralic Language Family (yu.RA.lic = coming from the Urals). The Uralic languages with the most speakers, though, are Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian. Talking of westward expansion, these languages have expanded from the Urals into Europe.]

 
 

Back on our Germanic map, the German-speaking countries are in green. Since High German is the standard throughout Germany, Low German is indicated in dotted form in northern Germany, next to Dutch in yellow. There is a minor West Germanic language, Frisian, shown in gold on the Dutch and German coasts.

 
 

English is shown in orange, while the areas where the Celtic (also Indo-European) languages are in the majority are in gray: Welsh, Irish Gaelic on Ireland’s west coast, and Scottish Gaelic in the Scottish highlands. The Scottish lowlands, including the islands of Shetland and Orkney to the north, are where Scots is spoken, a variety of English. Robert Burns wrote both in Scots and in more standard English.

 
 

But as a rule of thumb, just keep the 3+2 North Germanics differentiated from the West Germanics of German, Dutch, English.

 
 

North Germanics   Within the North Germanics, on the continent there are more speakers of Swedish than any other, 10 million, plus 300,000 Swedish-speaking Finns. Danish has 6 million and Norwegian 5 million. On the islands, Icelandic has 320,000 and Faroese 70,000.

 
 

In 2006/4 we explained how similar the three continental North Germanic languages are, with examples about halfway down the posting. Any educated person speaking one of these languages, with minimal practice, can pick up a newspaper in one of the other two languages and get the gist of the story. Doing so orally is a little harder, but also possible. The two insular languages, however, show similarities between each other, but are not easily intelligible with the continental three.

 
 

The Norse   It’s nice to have ethnic umbrella terms, since they unify, but you don’t come across them often. Languages like Russian are called by the umbrella term Slavic, as are the peoples. This has allowed Russia to consider itself protector of the Slavic peoples, which is a prime reason why it entered WWI, to protect (Slavic) Serbia. There is no umbrella term for speakers of the Germanic languages, nor for speakers of West Germanic, but there are plenty of umbrella terms to cover the North Germanics: 1) Scandinavian; 2) a cluster of NOR- terms: Northman, Norman, Norse, Norseman, Nordic; 3) Viking. The terms are essentially synonymous, except that Scandinavian is the term for the people today, and sometimes, Nordic. All the other terms, including Nordic usually, refer to the people of a millennium ago.

 
 

SCANDINAVIAN The term has been around only for the last couple of centuries to refer to the North Germanic peoples and languages. I’ve always suspected where it came from, so I recently checked, and I was right. The first part of the word is based on Skåne, the southernmost traditional province in Sweden. (Remember the Scandinavian letter Å, an A with a superimposed O, where you disregard the A and pronounce the O, so that Skåne is pronounced SKO.neh.)

 
 

It’s logical that an area like Skåne, lying so close to Central Europe, should be the connection to the word “Scandinavia”. Not only that, it’s been Swedish only since 1658; before that it was part of Denmark, so it can be historically representative of both countries.

 
 

Do remember the difference we discussed between an endonym (a local name) and an exonym (a foreign name). “Japan” is an exonym, while locally, the exonym Nihon (or Nippon) is used. Skåne (an endonym), is the only Swedish province that developed an exonym, the Latinized form “Scania”, which appears that way in many languages, but sometimes with variations, such as French Scanie or Spanish Escania. The German version is Schonen. (In practice, since Skåne isn’t that well known, many people in all languages are unaware that there is an exonym and use the original endonym, anyway.) In any case “Scandinavia” has the same etymology as Skåne/Scania, which in some ways may be considered an entrance to the Scandinavian peninsula.

 
 

THE NOR- WORDS All the other words referring to the North Germanics are more historic, and a number of them are based on the concept of “north”, so that should be where we start. Where that word comes from gives us a chance to delve into some very old words. It is believed to come from Primitive Germanic *nurtha-. Remember that we said that all unproven words are written with an asterisk, no matter how probable they may be. And that form comes possibly from Proto Into-European *ner-, so we’re now reaching way back into prehistory. That word means “left” as in left-handed, but what’s the connection? Whenever you reach way back to Indo-European, you always come way down to basics, as you look into a very primitive world. When you watch the rising sun, and turn left, you’re looking north. It’s as simple and basic as that.

 
 

All languages that use the basic NOR- follow it with a dental consonant. In English and Icelandic, it’s the dental consonant TH: “north”, “norð(ur)” (we’ll have a lot more to say about the letter ð, a TH sound, later). In ALL other Germanic languages, it’s the dental consonant D, either as “nord”, “noord(en)”, or “Nord(en)”. Rather surprisingly, this Germanic word has been borrowed wholesale by the Italic (“Romance”) languages in southern Europe. French, Italian, and even distant Romanian keep with “nord”, while Spanish and Portuguese use a third dental consonant sound, T in “norte”. In contrast, none of the Slavic languages use the NOR- root; as an example, the Russian word for “north” is север / sever (SYE.vyer).

 
 

It’s also obvious that the name “Norway” has a relationship with “north”. But where does the “way” come from in the West Germanic languages, English NorWAY, German NorWEGen, Dutch NoorWEGen?

 
 

In Old English it was Norweg or Norþweg (again, we’ll discuss þ and ð, two “TH sounds”, later), which came from the Old Norse norveg or *norð vegr, which did mean “north way”. As it turns out, it all comes down to early water-oriented and sailing-oriented transportation. There had been a suthrvegr (south way), which was Germany, and an austrvegr “east way”, which were the Baltic lands and Eastern Europe, so between the Baltic, North Sea, and Norwegian Sea, Norway was indeed the “north way” to go anywhere, but that was the only one of the three names that stuck.

 
 

[There are two varieties of Norwegian, Bokmål, used by 86% of the people, and Nynorsk, used by 7.5% (the rest use both). “Norway” in Nynorsk is “Noreg”. It’s lost the V of the old “norveg”, but it’s the only Scandinavian version that really resembles what the West Germanics use. Danish, Swedish and Bokmål use Norge (NOR.yeh), with only the G remaining from “veg”, making it hard to mentally connect to all the others.]

 
 

Nordic The adjective form in -ic consistently uses D in most languages: GE Nordisch, SW Nordisk, FR nordique, SP/PO nórdico, IT nordico. Even English with its TH doesn’t have a word such as *Northic, but uses Nordic.

 
 

Norman We come to the word “Norman”, as in someone from Normandy. An Old English word for Norwegian was Norðman, a word that has not stayed with us. But the word did go from Old English into French, which they used to describe the Vikings that had settled in Normandy. Norðman appeared in French as Normand, and where the Normands lived became Normandie. Then, as so often happens with borrowed words, “Normand” re-entered English as Norman, following the French pronunciation of the word. It’s fun to contemplate how “Norðman” took a trip to France and came back home as “Norman”. You see, travel CAN change one.

 
 

Norse The Dutch noun for “Norwegian” is Noor, but the adjective is Noors, which seems to mean BOTH “Norwegian” and “Norse”. However, English borrowed the Dutch word Noors and respelled it Norse, using it to refer only to the historic people and keeping it apart from the word “Norwegian”, which refers to the contemporary people.

 
 

Norseman The word Norsemen can be used, perhaps a bit poetically, and it would seem puzzling why it doesn’t have a dental TH, or D, or even T, but that S. Wouldn’t the old Norðman, even if spelled Northman, work just as well? I find the explanation, actually, humorous. As thoroughly as the word has engrained itself, it isn’t historical, but is a made-up word. It was invented by the poet Sir Walter Scott, who wrote a poem, published in 1821, about the first king that unified Norway, Harald Fairhair (Old Norse: Haraldr Hárgagri). Of the four verses of Scott’s poem that I’ve seen, all but the first verse end in varying couplets rhyming “horsemen” with “Norsemen”, such as this one:’

 
 
 Onward footmen, onward horsemen,
To the charge, ye gallant Norsemen!
 
 

My guess is that he didn’t use “Northmen” because he was enamored of the cavalry charge and the word wouldn’t rhyme with “horsemen”, so he found the solution by extending the already existing word Norse and inventing “Norsemen” as a word. I think it’s a fine word, albeit perhaps a bit insulting in its derivation, since you’re using a horse to name a people.

 
 

Viking We finally come to the V-word. It’s used very popularly as the name of several sports teams, ships, a cruise line, and much more. So be it; it’s part of the pop culture. Perhaps it implies adventure and daring.

 
 

However, while it’s a name applied historically to the Norse, I’m not fully comfortable with the word. Early on, the Norse/Vikings were pirates and plunderers, especially in the British Isles. Later they were also explorers, merchants, and settlers, but the word “Viking” does not imply that elevation of image, retaining coarse overtones. Look up the word in any dictionary, and “plunderer”, “pirate”, “raider”, “attacker” will come up more frequently than “sea rover” or “seafarer”, showing that the word continues to carry a lot of baggage. Fortunately, the two Viking spacecraft that went to Mars in the 1970’s reflect very positively the Viking reputation for exploration into the unknown instead.

 
 

There was what can be considered a positive upturn in the Vikings’ reputation in the 19C during what can be called the Romanticist Viking Revival. Most typical would be the operas of Richard Wagner, who combined Nordic and other Germanic stories in his themes, such as in Der Ring des Niebelungen. However, this elevated representation of Vikings as noble savages, led later on to parodies of the theme, which remain to this day. A principal object of derision is the (presumed) horned Viking helmet, which is apparently a figment of stage artists’ imaginations. There is essentially no actual depiction of genuine historic helmets with horns, and close-quarters combat would have made such horns cumbersome and hazardous. I suspect it’s just used to further a stereotype.

 
 

Popular culture perceives a clichéd image of Vikings, presenting them as familiar caricatures of wild-eyed, dirty savages, certainly a distorted picture of reality. Because of these inaccuracies, I hesitate to use the word when describing the Norse. I will use “Vikings”, since it’s so well-known, but will concentrate on “Norse”.

 
 

Actually, one reason to use the word “Viking” is its derivation, which is complex, but lends a view into a lifestyle of a millennium ago. I have gotten to love the word vík (rhymes with “seek”), and will talk more about it later. That’s the Old Norse form that still exists in Scandinavian, and appears at the end of the name Reykjavik and in other place names. It means “bay, cove”, and lately I’ve seen “inlet”, a translation I like even better. I’ve felt for quite a while that that was the origin of the word “Viking”, and a few dictionaries still state that (which means, don’t believe everything you see in print). It seems a romantic thought to picture Vikings sailing from one vik to another in search of adventure. Another source thinks that the “inlet” might be a fjord, so that Vikings are somehow “fjord people”. But I have now read that in recent decades, four different scholars have all come up with the same, more accurate, derivation, which is the one I now accept. I’ll consolidate what I found and present it in a more understandable form.

 
 

It all started before the age of sail had reached northern Europe, and boats were still being rowed, although eventually, both sail and oars could be used. The thought alone of rowing a ship brings us back into a different world. There was a word in Old Scandinavian, which appears in Old Icelandic as víkja, which meant “yield, turn to the side”. (The Old English verb “to yield” was very similar, wican.) It describes when one tired rower had finished his shift, and he yielded/moved to the side/slid down the bench so that a rested rower could take over. In this manner, the act of yielding began to connotate a shift, so that one shift measured a certain distance at sea. This led to the development of the Old Scandinavian maritime distance unit, víka (rhymes with “seek a”), in other words, to get by sea from A to B took X víkas (call them “sea-miles”). This developed into the Old Norse noun víking (rhymes with “seeking”) to refer to a (long-distance) sea journey, or expedition characterized with many shiftings of rowers, as in the phrase fara í víking “to go on an expedition”. A person who participated in a víking would have been a vikingr, essentially an expedition-er. Note how the words were originally different: a vikingr goes on a viking. However, in English and other languages the distinction between the two words was lost, as the R-word disappeared and Viking shifted to refer from the expedition to the expeditioner instead. With this complex and interesting derivation, maybe I’ll enjoy using the word more frequently, hoping the negative connotations will abate.

 
 
 In case you have any doubts about that “yielding” verb, consider a more familiar development it’s involved in. If you have a group of days, which then yields to another group of days, what should you call this shifting of places? The Old Norse vika is related to the Old English word wican, as mentioned, which in turn yielded (pun intended) wice (rhymes with “seek a”) in Old English, which is now our word “week”. How’s that for the rotation of one unit to another on the calendar?
 
 

Visualizing the Norse   Norse-related items exist in original form and in reconstructions. We should start with ships. The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo has several, two of which are particularly impressive. In 1904-5, a large burial mound on a farm belonging to an Oseberg family was excavated on the west side of the Oslo fjord, which yielded the very well-preserved Oseberg ship, many artifacts, and two female skeletons. The ship was buried in 834, but parts date from around 800, and the ship itself is thought to be older. The ship is one of the finest finds to have survived the Viking Age. This is the prow, this is some prow detail work (click to enlarge), and this shows the interior, where you can picture oarsmen taking turns as one vika shifted to the next.

 
 

Way up on the northern coast near Tromsø, they found in 1880, also in a burial mound, on a farm belonging to a Gokstad family, the Gokstad ship, along with artifacts and a male skeleton. It’s made of oak and was built to carry a maximum of 70, including 32 oarsmen. It also could utilize a square sail. Wood analysis suggests the timber was felled at around the year 890, at which time the ship was commissioned during the reign of Harald Fairhair (see Sir Walter Scott above). At 23.24 m (76.2 ft) long and 5.20 m (17.1 ft) wide, it’s the largest ship in the museum. It was intended for warfare, trade, and transportation of people and cargo. This is a view of the very graceful prow. Of all ship replicas, replicas of Viking ships are the most common, such as this full-scale replica in Poland.

 
 

Reconstructions of Viking houses are notably located in L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, but this house reconstruction is in Denmark. The Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm has this exhibit on replicas of Norse clothes (click to enlarge). We talked earlier about reenactors of the American Revolution in the US and Canada. There are also Viking reenactment groups in the UK, Canada, and the US. These are reenacting a Viking battle. Click to confirm there are no horns on the helmets, nor on this reenactor. I don’t know where the two previous reenactors are from, but this final one is a US Viking reenactor--with no horns on his helmet, either.

 
 

The Viking Age   We mentioned above the Viking Age, the centuries in which the Norse were most active, starting with the late 8C through the 11C. These were the years that the Norse explored Europe via its waterways, through warfare, trade, and settlement. I suspect the extent of the travels of the Norse will astound some readers, who may be familiar with stories of Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland/Newfoundland. But it was much more extensive than that, as is shown on this fascinating map of Norse expansion beyond Scandinavia; we’ll be coming back to this map again. As an introduction, concentrate on the 8C in darkest red, a time before much expansion began. Note that Skåne (here spelled Skane) is prominently mentioned. Then follow the centuries with lighter colors to watch the progression. Light green, for the 11C, shows where the Norse had the least amount of influence.

 
 

As I read the map, I see three directions of movement, and this is the sequence in which we’ll discuss Norse expansion: 1. Eastward to Russia; 2. Southwestward to England and Normandy; 3. Westward to the Atlantic Islands and America, at which point we’ll be back on topic to discuss the second half of this summer’s trip. For now, you can follow very clearly on this historic map the voyage we took on the Deutschland, virtually in the wake of the Norse longboats. We stopped in Norway, where they set out from, to Shetland (originally with Orkney and northern Scotland, a Viking settlement) to the Faroes, to Iceland, to Greenland.

 
 

Note in Greenland the three original Norse settlements, the Western, Middle, and, the largest, the Eastern. Also note the route the Norse took to Vinland (Newfoundland) and America. Not only is Shetland no longer Norse, but Scottish, all the Norse settlements in Greenland are completely gone, after having survived nearly five centuries. Both topics, Norse Greenland and Vinland, are large, and will be discussed separately at the end, after the trip discussion.

 
 

I have another map on the general topic of Norse expansion. It’s similar to the one we just saw, but it has the advantage of giving specific dates and routes rather than centuries-by-color. (German “um” means “around, circa” and “ab” means “as of”.) You’ll note on this map, as on the first one, the following striking symmetry. While the Scandinavians involved were all Norse, with even more of a common language than even today, it was the Swedes, in eastern Scandinavia, who were the ones who went east to Russia; the Danes, in southwestern Scandinavia, who went southwest to England and Normandy, and the Norwegians, in western Scandinavia, who went west to the islands and America.

 
 

Eastward to Russia   I don’t know a huge amount of this, but there is some very interesting information, including the fact that some of this history comes down to us via Norse sagas (Icelandic sagas are the most famous, but not the only ones). As the Norse entered eastern Europe, particularly today’s Russia, and established settlements (remember austravegr, the “East Way”, similar to “Nor(th)way”) , they became known by two historic names, Rus’ (Русь, rhymes with “moose”) and Varangian. The Rus’ then gave their name to the medieval states called Rus’, and the centuries-by-color map above shows in orange the Rus’ States in Russia. New, modern DNA research shows a significant, early Nordic presence among the inhabitants in that orange area along the Dniepr River down to the Black Sea.

 
 

Note here in red the Norse settlements in what is today northern Russia (the gray towns are Slavic and the blue circle includes settlements of Khazars, a Turkic people). Holmgård (Holmgarðr), which is Novgorod, was their capital. Another famous old city is Rostov, which the Norse knew as Rostofa.

 
 

Also of importance were the Varangian trade routes (Map by Briangotts). Among other trade routes shown in orange are the Volga trade route in red, which led from Scandinavia down the Volga and Caspian Sea to the Muslim countries, sometimes as far as Baghdad (!!!). In purple is the Dniepr trade route, known far better by the long name “trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks", which functioned in the same period. This route connected Scandinavia, via the Dniepr River, to the Byzantine Empire, particularly Constantinople (earlier Byzantium, today Istanbul).

 
 

Most of us are aware that Swiss soldiers, the Swiss Guard, for centuries have come down to Rome as bodyguards of the Pope. In a parallel situation, there were Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople known as the Varangian Guard.

 
 

But that principal name the Norse had, Rus’, is the more interesting. This is a map of the historic Swedish district of Roslagen. It’s the yellow coastal area just north of Stockholm, which is on the map, as is the historic university city of Uppsala.

 
 

O in Swedish is usually pronounced U, so the first syllable Ros- rhymes with “truce”. The Swedish verb ro (RU) means “to row”, and lag means “team”, so we already can see a Viking connection brewing: the name Roslagen essentially describes a rowing crew of warrior oarsmen, such as the Vikings, and this is indeed where most of the Norse who went to Russia came from.

 
 

The general belief among scholars is that Roslagen (RUS.la.gen) is where the name Rus’ came from, which developed into the names for both Russia and Belarus. The name Belarus (in both Russian and Belarusian Беларусь / Belarus’) is the more straightforward of the two: it means “White Rus”. While the reason for “white” is debated, the last syllable refers to the Norse Rus’.

 
 

The Russian name for itself, Россия / Rossiya, begs the question: why the O? And for that matter, why the two S’s? It seems that when the Varangians reached the Byzantine empire, the early Greek name for them was Ρως / Ros, with an O (omega) instead. This later developed to Ρωσσία / Rossía, with two S’s (sigmas), although today the Greek name is spelled Ρωσία / Rosía. Still in Russian it remains with an O and double-s: Россия / Rossiya.

 
 

But that isn’t the end of the Norse influence on place names in Eastern Europe. We said some time ago, when discussing exonyms (foreign names) for a place, as opposed to endonyms (local names), that the Finnish name for Sweden, in other words, an exonym, is Ruotsi. Neighboring Estonia, with a language closely related to Finnish, uses a similar name, Rootsi. Both Ruotsi and Rootsi derive as well from Roslagen.

 
 

Finally, some given names of people. There are some Russian names that are so quintessentially Russian, that you’d never believe they were Norse in origin, but they are. The Scandinavian name Helga, also used in Germany, seems so Germanic. Yet, when brought to Russia by the Rus’, it developed into the name Olga (Russian: Ольга / Ol’ga).

 
 

There is a male version of the name Helga, used far less outside Scandinavia, Helge, sometimes Helgi. It, too went to Russia, where it became Олег / Oleg (a.LYEK).

 
 

There was a Scandinavian god named Ing, which is used as part of several Scandinavian given names, also in Germany. We all know of Ingmar Bergman. I know an Ingeborg in Germany, and her husband is, curiously, Ingbert. I also knew an Ingvar in Sweden. The feminine form of Ingvar is Inga.

 
 

Of all these Ing- names it was Ingvar that got transferred to Russia, where it developed into Игорь / Igor’ (sounds just like “eager”). (It’s a perfectly normal name in Russia--the association with hunchbacked assistants has its origins of the Universal Studios horror films of the 1930’s).

 
 

Olga, Oleg, Igor. So very Slavic. So very Norse in origin.

 
 
 
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