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

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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.