Old Norse grammar for readers
Short notes for reading the sagas and poems. Every example comes from a text in this course.
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Endings show who does what
Many masculine nouns end in -r when they are doing the action, and lose it when the action is done to them. That -r is your first clue. Word order helps less than in English.
| hestr | nominative | the horse does it |
| hest | accusative | it is done to the horse |
| hests | genitive | of the horse |
| hesti | dative | to, with or for the horse |
Gestr er inn kominn:
A guest has come in:
gestr has the -r: the guest is the one coming.
Grettir lá kyrr,
Grettir lay still
Names take it too, here as -ir.
Same word, different spelling
Nobody spelled this language to a single standard. The editions behind this course differ too: the sagas have ö where the poems have ǫ, and -u where the poems have -o.
So vóru and vóro are one word, as are höfuð and hǫfuð. If a word nearly matches one you know, it probably is that word.
Sængr allar vóru ór stað færðar.
All the beds had been moved out of place.
The saga spelling: vóru.
lítil ero geð guma;
small are the minds of men;
The poem spelling: ero, not eru.
“The” goes on the end
Norse attaches “the” to the end of the noun: -inn, -in or -it, changing with the noun's job. Modern Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic still do this.
| feldrinn | nominative | the cloak does it |
| feldinn | accusative | it is done to the cloak |
| feldinum | dative | to or with the cloak |
Ljós brann í skálanum um nóttina.
A light burned in the hall through the night.
skálanum is “the hall”, nóttina “the night”. Ljós has no “the”, so it is “a light”.
Verbs and glued-on “you”
In the present, “he” and “you” usually share one form, often ending in -r. “We” ends in -um (or -om in the poems). “They” ends in -a in the present and -u (or -o) in the past.
The word for “you”, þú, can fuse with the verb and become -tu or -ðu.
| skal | I, he, she | I shall |
| skaltu | you | you shall |
| skolom | we | we shall |
| skolo | they | they shall |
at háði né hlátri hafðu aldregi gest né ganganda;
never hold a guest or a wayfarer up to scorn or laughter;
hafðu is hafa plus þú, as a command.
Small words choose the ending
Words like “in” and “to” need a particular case. Í and á take the dative for being somewhere, and the accusative for moving somewhere. Til “to” takes the genitive.
Ljós brann í skálanum
A light burned in the hall
Being in a place: dative.
Grettir spyrndi í stokkinn,
Grettir braced his feet against the beam,
Pushing toward something: accusative.
ferð sína til skips,
his journey to the ship,
til takes the genitive: -s.
Sagas switch tense
Saga tellers jump between past and present in one breath, to bring a moment closer. Translations often even it out, so do not worry when the tense wobbles.
Sagas also like to begin with the verb, which in English would sound like a question. In Norse it is plain narration.
Annan dag eptir býr hann ferð sína til skips,
The next day he gets ready for his journey to the ship,
býr is present tense, in a story told in the past.
Fór Grettir þá undan í ýms sætin.
Then Grettir was driven back along the benches one after another.
fór, the verb, comes first. It is not a question.
Two kinds of past
As in English “walked” and “sang”, weak verbs add an ending, usually with -ð-, -d- or -t-, and strong verbs change the vowel.
| hefir, hafði | weak | he has, he had |
| vill, vildi | weak | he wants, he wanted |
| er, var | strong | he is, he was |
| verðr, varð | strong | he becomes, he became |
| lætr, lét | strong | he lets, he let |
Grettir lá kyrr, ok hrærði sik hvergi.
Grettir lay still and did not move at all.
lá changes the vowel; hrærði adds -ði.
Shall, will and “to do”
Skal “shall, should”, man or mun “will”, and vil “want to” go with a verb in its basic form, which usually ends in -a. A form like skyli or skyldi carries the sense “ought to”.
hvar skal sitia siá?
where shall this one sit?
skal with sitia “to sit”.
Meðalsnotr skyli manna hverr,
Each man should be moderately wise,
skyli: “ought to be”.
“Not” in poems and sagas
Sagas say “not” with eigi or ekki. Poems often add -a or -at to the end of the verb instead, so a tiny ending can reverse the whole line.
Era svá gott,
Ale is not as good
era is er “is” plus -a “not”.
Ganga skal, skala gestr vera ey í einom stað;
One must go; a guest should not stay forever in one place;
skal, then skala “should not”.
The ending -sk
An ending of -sk or -z comes from sik, “oneself”. It can mean doing something to oneself or to each other, or it can simply change the verb's sense. Check the gloss when you see it.
Gumnar margir erosk gagnhollir,
Many men are well-disposed to each other,
erosk: “are”, with “to each other” in the -sk.
en at virði vrekaz;
but at a meal they tease one another;
vrekaz has the -z: “one another”.
Practise on real texts
These notes make most sense once you have seen the forms in context. Urling brings each one up as you meet it in a text.
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Notes written by Claude and checked against the Short Grammar in Vigfusson and Powell's Icelandic Prose Reader (1879). Not yet reviewed by an Old Norse teacher.