The Gersum Project: the Scandinavian Influence on English Vocabulary

在中世纪早期，斯堪的纳维亚人对英国人的生活、语言和文化的影响是深远的。早在“北欧黑色”和丹麦高级烹饪兴起之前，维京人就产生了重大而持久的影响，他们的遗产仍然在现代英国身份和遗产的建构中产生强烈的共鸣。斯堪的纳维亚人在9世纪晚期开始定居，特别是在英格兰北部和东部，其最重要，最持久，最普遍的影响，可能是对英语的影响。大量重要的英语单词都来源于古斯堪的纳维亚语（ON），包括sky、egg、law、leg、call、take、window、knife、die和skin等基本词汇，甚至代词they、their和them。这些文物将我们与维京人直接联系起来，所有说英语的人每天都在使用；在标准英语和地区英语用法中，尤其是北方方言中，还有数百个类似的借词。在过去的几十年里，维京时代的英格兰，古英语和ON之间的接触的性质和背景一直是重要的研究课题。但令人惊讶的是，对外来词本身的深入研究仍然很少，而且还有大量关于这些词的早期历史的研究尚未被发现。甚至确定哪些英语单词确实是从ON借用或受ON影响也是一件非常复杂的事情。在这些词被引入英语后的最初几个世纪里，我们对这些词是如何被谁使用的仍然知之甚少，尤其是在关键的中世纪英语时期，中世纪英语最重要的文本——尤其是那些由英语使用者大量定居的地区创作的文本——从来没有从这个角度进行过持续的探索。Gersum项目的主要目的是弥补这一缺陷（以德文Gersum命名，借用了德文gersemi的“宝藏”一词）。它的研究将产生一份详细的词汇目录，其中多达1600个单词的来源是来自英格兰北部的主要的、晚期的押头诗，其中包括hernez的“大脑”、muged的“毛毛雨”、strange的“极点”和wothe的“危险”等各种各样有趣的单词。该目录将作为一个公众可访问的在线数据库呈现，可以通过它所包含的单词的含义、分布（地区和时间）、词源和其他方面进行全面搜索，并链接到所选诗歌的电子文本。这些将包括著名的文学作品，如《高文爵士与绿衣骑士》、《珍珠》和《头韵小说》；这个项目将极大地提高人们对他们词汇的认识和欣赏，以及最初的ON元素如何影响他们的风格和意义。简而言之，这将是对ME中从ON衍生的单词进行的最全面的调查，并为所有未来对英语语言历史这一主要领域的研究提供一个持久的平台。除了这项调查及其相关的研究问题之外，该项目还将积极协调人们对英语语言遗产这一迷人主题的兴趣，并将其传达给各种受益者。公众参与将包括与讲现代版本的项目文本方言的当地群体进行对话，探索和庆祝英格兰北部的当地语言及其在中世纪一些伟大文学纪念碑中的作用。该项目的网站将作为所有对该主题感兴趣的人的一般资源，向专家和非专业用户介绍关键问题和背景。通过附带的会议和书籍，Gersum还将以一种前所未有的方式，在维京遗产的语言分析和盎格鲁-斯堪的纳维亚文化互动的学术研究的其他方面之间建立跨学科的对话。

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.