Norn
A cautionary tale from northern language history, with a contemporary twist
by Jennifer Morag Henderson
Norn is the language that was spoken in Orkney and Shetland, and in Caithness in the Far North of Scotland. It is now extinct – so I was surprised to find it used in a very current song from folk-rock band Hamradun, from the Faroe Islands. What is the link between the Faroe Islands and Norn, and why is a rock band interested in an old Scottish language?
The last speaker of Norn supposedly died in about 1850, but the language had been current in the islands of Orkney and Shetland much earlier, and then co-existed with Scots for many years. Orkney can be seen from the northern coast of Scotland, and Norn was spoken in Caithness, but did not spread much further into mainland Scotland.
Norn is in the same language family as Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian, and there was some limited mutual intelligibility between speakers of these languages. Norse settlement had taken place on Orkney and Shetland from about the early 9th century, and this is where the language came from. The islands only became officially part of Scotland in the 1460s, as part of dowry negotiations when James III married Margaret of Denmark. Norn and Scots were both spoken in the northern isles from the 1400s on – possibly, especially in Orkney, from the 1300s on – but once Scots became the language of the people in charge, it became the prestige language.
Norn lasted longest in Shetland, due to the distance from mainland Scotland, but the process of decline was gradual. Travel, both in and out of the islands, was a driver of change. By the end of the 1400s Norn was probably gone from Caithness, by the late 1600s it was almost gone from Orkney, and by the 1700s it was on its way out in Shetland. Remnants of the language survived however, and people could recite phrases, songs and texts, and knew many Norn words. This is where the great Faroese linguist Jakob Jakobsen came in.
Jakob Jakobsen is thought to be the first Faroe Islander to earn a doctorate, and his thesis was on the Norn language. The son of a bookbinder and bookshop owner (H.N. Jacobsen’s bookshop still exists in Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands), Jakob Jakobsen originally studied the Danish language (Danish being the ‘government’ language of the Faroe Islands at the time), with French and Latin as his secondary languages. He came to Scotland, and became interested in Norn, travelling to Shetland in 1893 and staying for three years. In Shetland, he interviewed a large number of Shetland dialect speakers and scholars, work which became the basis of his thesis and helped to preserve what we know of Norn. In 1928 Jakobsen published his giant “Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland”, which had over 10,000 definitions of Norn words.
There was a huge interest in the study of languages at the time that Jakob Jakobsen was working in the late 1800s, including the development of the system of phonetics and an International Phonetic Alphabet, a way of describing and writing all the sounds in a language. This meant that languages could be effectively preserved, and even recreated, even if all the speakers were gone.
Jakobsen’s curiosity around languages, though, was not just theoretical. He was invested in the idea of whether his own language, Faroese, could survive or not – and what that meant politically. In the 19th century the Faroe Islands were part of Denmark. Danish was the main language, and Faroese was discouraged. However, by the late 1800s there was increasing support for home rule or independence, and the Faroese economy was growing. The Faroese language was very strong, even if it wasn’t the official language of government, and Jakobsen was part of a group of scholars who were interested in Faroese language and culture, wanting to preserve and strengthen these, and make the political situation with regard to Danish rule fairer.
Norn was a cautionary tale: this was how language and culture could be lost. Jakob Jakobsen and others worked to create a standard written form of Faroese (though Jakobsen’s phonetic approach and simplified spelling suggestions were ultimately passed over in favour of a different system), and to promote Faroese literacy. The growth of Faroese literacy – the spread of newspapers, for example, as well as the growing literature in the language – played an important part in the preservation of the language.
Faroese today is spoken by the 55,000 or so people who live in the islands, and around 20,000 people abroad (mainly in Denmark). It became the official language of government in the Faroe Islands after the Second World War, after a controversial vote on independence that saw the islands remain part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but gain considerable freedom and Home Rule. As the official language, Faroese is spoken in parliament, in schools and churches – all the places where it had been excluded when Jakob Jakobsen started his studies in the late 1800s. It is no longer under serious threat from Danish – but, like all smaller languages nowadays, there is the threat of the global language of English.
Hamradun are a folk-rock band, hugely popular in the Faroe Islands, who have played across Europe, part of a thriving music scene. Their songs combine original hard rock with renditions of the traditional kvæði, or ballads, of the islands – ballads which played a huge part in the preservation of the Faroese language. The kvæði are long stories, many telling the tales of the Viking age, and verses are sung by a caller, with the chorus repeated by the crowd – all to the accompaniment of the traditional (and still common) Faroese chain dance.
Hamradun’s latest album, their third, is called “Nætur Níggju”, or Nine nights – the title referring to the nine nights that the Norse god Odin spent in the tree of life Yggdrasil in order to gain knowledge. The band’s lyrics sometimes refer to old Norse legends – but more often to specifically Faroese history and culture. However, the song “Hildinakvæði” on the newest album comes from Scotland: it is based on a Norn song collected by a clergyman called George Low in 1774 from Foula in Shetland, from a man named William Henry. George Low was collecting songs a little earlier than Jakob Jakobsen, and when Jakobsen came in search of more details, all memory of this song had already been lost: even when George Low wrote it down, neither he nor the singer William Henry knew exactly what it meant.
“Hildina”, as it is called in Norn, is thought to have been composed in Orkney in the 1600s, and tells the story of how the Earl of Orkney made off with Hildina, the daughter of the King of Norway. Hildina loves the earl, and tries to make peace with her father, but it all goes wrong and the Earl of Orkney is killed by a Norwegian man called Hiluge. Hildina is forced to marry Hiluge, but at the wedding-feast in a great hall she drugs the wine and then, when everyone is drunk, she burns down the hall and everyone in it.
The singer of Hamradun, Pól Arni Holm, nominated for the 2025 Faroese Music Awards ‘Lyricist of the Year’ for his original compositions on the album “Nætur Níggju”, explains that their version of “Hildinakvæði” is sung half in Norn, and half in Faroese – he translated the original into his own language, showing the similarities (and differences) between the two tongues. “I have always been interested in history and especially the Viking era,” Pól Arni Holm explained. “The Viking world is not only in present Scandinavia, but the seafarers reached the shores of North America and used all lands and islands as stepping stones westwards” – including both Shetland and the Faroe Islands.
He went on to add “If we did not preserve actively our Faroese language we could have met the same destiny as with the Norn on the Shetland Isles.” Hamradun’s version of “Hildina” is a tribute to the Norn speakers and to the people who preserved what is left of that language – and a warning: if language is not used, it will not survive.
When I asked writers working in Shætlan or Shetlandic about their knowledge of Norn, there was limited interest – perhaps understandably, since the Shetland dialect doesn’t come from Norn, but evolved instead from the language which contributed to Norn’s decline: Scots. The Shetland dialect has the underlying structure and grammar of Scots, relying on word order rather than the case system and inflected word endings familiar to modern Faroese speakers. However, many individual words of Norn origin have survived in in the northern isles – particularly words to do with the natural environment, such as bird and animal names. Pól Arni Holm noticed this from a Faroese perspective as well: “I have read stories written in the late 1800s where seamen from Shetland came ashore on the Faroes and… they find out that they used all the same words about fishing, sheepfarming, agriculture and many daily words and could have a decent conversation without major problems!” Norn is also preserved in place names of the northern isles, with the best known being perhaps “Hamnavoe” – the old name for Orkney’s Stromness, now used as a ferry name. There is even a small project on ‘Nynorn’ – or new Norn – which aims to recreate the language, and some interesting material can be found online.
I loved the chance to hear this old language recreated in song – especially with such a powerful singer and band. I was delighted to contribute a small part to the translation (into English) of the explanations of Hamradun’s songs on their newest album, and I highly recommend you check out their music – and this strange little link to a northern Scottish extinct language. For the band Hamradun, “to make our own interpretation of the ballad and put a melody to this ancient rhythm was a privilege.”
↑