Viking

Okay, so the last few articles in this series were, let’s say, difficult, as evidenced by their sparse publication. To remedy this key issue, it is prudent to designate for the next installment a word known to have a fun, interesting, and most importantly straightforward etymology. I’m kidding, of course, I showed my wife my list of incomplete articles and from among them she chose “viking,” so here’s something of a historiographical discussion on various theories on the etymology thereof.

Once again, contemporary sources provide us with some answers and a number of further questions. Per Etymonline, ‘viking’ is a “historian’s revival,” that is a learned borrowing, introduced first to English as vikingr by the historian Sharon Turner in 1801.¹ Verifying this attestation has proven difficult, as on-line microfilm scans of Turner’s The History of the Anglo-Saxons, in which the usage supposedly first appears, are limited to the first volume.² For some consolation, there do exist reviews from the time, such as The Imperial Review, with heavy excerption, allowing some manner of verification:³

“The sea-kings had the name of honour; but they were only a portion of those pirates or vikingr, who, in the ninth century, were covering the ocean. […] The name by which these pirates were at first distinguished was vikingr, which, perhaps, originally meant kings of the bays.”

Here we see not only use of vikingr but a baffling etymology as well. This reads as though Turner believed that -kingr is related to ‘king,’ perhaps motivated to parallel other terms he had used, such as “sea-kings” or “land-kings.” The ‘-ing’ in ‘king’ is remarkably similar to Old Norse (ON) -ingr (“denoting an inhabitant or original of a particular place, a student of a particular school, etc.”⁴) in that it marks a noun as related to its root (e.g. ‘clothing’ relates to ‘cloth’) yet has nothing to do with rule. The Old Norse for ‘king’ is, as it survives in Icelandic, konungr or kongr.⁵ This statement, interestingly, appears not only in the first edition, but in all subsequent editions of the work as well.⁶

In defense, Turner cites Wormius’ Danicorum Monumentorum p. 269 and Bartholin’s Antiquitatum Danicarum p. 446, though only to support that “viig means bay.” It turns out, both of these sources do support the idea that there is some link between bays and vikings, take Bartholin for example:⁷

“Denique communissime Piratæ à veteribus nominati Vikingar, quos dictos sic volunt a vik, quod Danis sinum maris notat, in iss enim delitescebant à tempestatum iniuriis tuti, vel hostibus insidias structuri.”

“Finally, the most common pirates were the Vikings, named by the ancients, who were so called from vik, which the Danes call a bay of the sea, for in them they hid, safe from the harms of storms, or laid ambushes for their enemies.”⁸

A really funny note about this quote, is that Wormius says the same thing word for word from “dictos sic…” with the exception of vik being written Viig.⁹ Bartholin was something like a ward of Wormius, so this isn’t surprising.

The form ‘viking,’ returning to Etymonline’s explanation, “is attested in 1820, in Jamieson’s notes to ‘The Bruce.’”¹⁰ This Jamieson being John Jamieson and “The Bruce” being his edition of John Barbour’s The Bruce. The instances of the term’s usage in said notes are exceptionally limited, but the context is particularly exciting:¹¹

“Viking-fiord would signify, the sound, or firth, of the pirates or sea-kings, the place where they were wont to land. […] Camden has observed that the Latin writers of the English history called the Danes in general Wiccingi, because they exercised piracy; as Anglo-Saxon wiccing signifies a pirate. […] It may be suspected that the Irish term viginge, given by Obrien, as signifying ‘a fleet or navy,’ has been corrupted from the viking of the northern nations;”

This text is perhaps most notable for the implicit use of viking as synonymous with vikingr, but it is also notable that Jamieson included some discussion on both Anglo-Saxon, that is Old English (ANG), and Irish vocabulary (discussion of the latter of which falls too far out of the scope of this article and thus further investigation shall be left to the reader’s discretion¹²). The relationship between wiccing and vikingr is also mentioned in Etymonline’s entry instead as the ANG wicing being a probable derivation from ANG wic (village/camp) since “large temporary camps were a feature of the Viking raids.”¹³ The entry also notes that the Anglo-Saxons of the time typically referred to the supposed Vikings as þa Deniscan (the Danes), this is similar to Wiktionary’s usage notes on ANG wīcing which state the more frequent descriptors as Norþmenn, hǣþene, and Dene.¹⁴ Regardless, following these attestations, along with the antiquarian trends at the time, the terms vikingr and, more presciently, viking were thus borrowed into modern languages, so let us next tackle the other side of this exchange.

As previously mentioned, I’ll be taking a historiographical approach to the Norse etymology of the term given its “contested” status. The outline for this is primarily provided by Eldar Heide’s paper “Viking — ‘rower shifting’? An etymological contribution,” which provides sources and refutations for a number of then and/or now popular theories. It is perhaps necessary, before getting into theories on origin, to define the word(s): ON víkingr m. refers to a sort of “sea warrior” and ON víking f. a “freebooting voyage,” the type a “Viking” would have gone on.

Let’s start with 1840, when Karl Richthofen published his Altfriesisches Wörterbuch (Old Frisian Dictionary); the entry for “(wiking), witsing, wising” provides both a refutation of the -king = king notion as well as Richthofen’s own theory on the etymology:¹⁵

“Das wort ist night aus wich-king (kriegs-könig), auch nicht aus wik-king (stadt-könig) oder wik-king (buchten-könig) zusammengesetzt […]; denn könig heisst fries. kining, ags. kyning, isl. konungr oder kongr; sondern ing ist ableitung, und wiking, vom verb. wika (recedere), bezeichnet den welcher zurückweicht, enflieht, sobald er beute gemacht har;”

“The word is not composed of wich-king (war-king), nor of wik-king (city-king) or wik-king (bay-king) […]; for king is called in OFS kining, ANG kyning, IS konungr or kongr; but ing is a derivative, and wiking, from the verb wika (recede), means one who retreats, flees, as soon as he has made booty;”

While entirely concerned with Frisian, this theory of Old Frisian (OFS) wīka > wiking could be extended backwards with Proto-West Germanic (GMW) *wīkwan < Proto-Germanic (GEM) *wīkwaną (to yield, retreat) hence ON víkja (to turn, move) > ON víkingr; or, as Heide interprets it¹⁶ via Askeberg: ON víka (withdraw, leave)¹⁷ > ON víkingr.

I will admit here that I have not read Fritz Askeberg’s Norden och Kontinenten i Gammal Tid (1944) as it is not available on-line and shipping from Sweden is both expensive and slow,¹⁸ I will consider appending errata regarding any further discussion on the work if/when I acquire a copy. That being said, Heide presents Askeberg’s own etymology of viking as such: ON vík(j)a (deviation, detour) > vík f. > víking f. > víkingr m. where then a Viking would be “a person who makes a detour from home.”¹⁹ Yet another, similar, theory comes from Host Haider Munske, again via Heide,²⁰ which also originates from ON vík(j)a but in the sense of “to travel,” where a Viking would then be “a man who makes a journey abroad.”²¹

To return a bit to Richthofen, spinning off the notion of “wich-king,” Falk and Torp’s 1903-06 etymological dictionary of Danish also briefly discusses some possible connection with ON vîg (fight) before ultimately settling that the origin is more likely with ON vig (bay).²² Of course, while Falk and Torp presented the ‘fighter’ origin as rather popular notion (and, perhaps, it was with their contemporaries), the ‘bay’ origin pops up with a much greater frequency (as seen with Wormius, Bartholin, and Turner). A particularly interesting example from 1852 can be found in P. A. Munch’s Det Norske Folks Historie:²³

“Navnet ‘Viking’ var derimod forbeholdt Vesten. Her hed det, ‘at fare i Vesterviking,’ og naar man hist og her finder den Talemaade slet og ret ‘at fare i Viking,’ maa den i de fleste Tilfœlde forklares om Krigstog til Vesterhavets Øer og Kyster. […] Man kunde saaledes føle sig fristet til at udlede Navnet af Stedsnavnet Vik, nemlig Viken i Norge, hvorfra Sigurd Kings og Ragnar Lodbroks Krigstog først udgik, og antage, at Ordet Vikingr saaledes allerførst har betegnet ‘en Indbygger af Viken,’ […] Men da man ved Siden af vikingr ogsaa har Ordet viking, det betenger Vikingens Syssel, maa man dog nok heller undlede begge disse Ord af vík i den almindelige Vetydning af ‘Indbøjning,’ ‘Vig,’ fordi det just var Vikingernes Skik at lœgge in i Vige og Bugter…”

“The name ‘Viking’, on the other hand, was reserved for the West. Here it was said, ‘to sail in Vesterviking’, and when here and there you find the colloquial expression ‘to sail in Viking’, it must in most cases be explained as war expeditions to the islands and coasts of the North Sea. […] One might thus feel tempted to derive the name from the place name Vik, namely Viken in Norway, from which King Sigurd and Ragnar Lodbrok’s campaigns first originated, and assume that the word Vikingr thus first designated ‘an Inhabitant of Viken,’ […] But since, along with vikingr, we also have the word viking, which refers to the Vikings’ occupation, for both of these words we should probably take vík in the general meaning of ‘indentation’ or ‘cove,’ because it is precisely the Vikings’ custom to lay in coves and bays…”

This excerpt is of particular interest, similar to Richthofen, for the alternatives it presents before reaching its conclusion. Here, Munch presents a fairly reasonable argument for the theory that n. víkingr is a demonym of Vik(en), ON Vík(in) f., based on the origins of notable Viking campaigns, though ultimately argues against it due to the existence of v. víking. Elof Hellquist’s Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok also presents this theory, though without the narrative introduction, and seemingly disputes it in favor of the ‘bay’ theory per Heide; however, my understanding of Swedish is far too pedestrian to verify this (even with the assistance of Google Translate), so I shall leave the excerpt here for the reader to judge:²⁴

“I ags. redan i den mycket gamla dikten Widsið, alltså äldre än vikingatiden. Av omstridd o. trots alla tolkningsförsök ännu ej faställd härledning. Från ordbildningslärans synpunkt mest tilltalande av dessa äro antagandena av avledn. resp. till vik, alltså: som lägger till i vikarna, el. något därav bildat ortn (t. ex. Vik, nu Viken, kring Kristianiafjorden), i så fall: man från Vik(en). Osannolik är däremot av flera skäl sammanställningen med germ. *wig-, strida, i envig, vig osv., i vilket fall vīk- utginge från ett *wīgn-.”

The first two sentences are irrelevant to both ‘bay’ and Vík(in) theories, but they are interesting for reasons I’ll get into later (oh, this is turning out to be a long one isn’t it?). Munch and Hellquist both mentioning the idea that one might assume vikingr is a demonym from Vík(in) is most interesting when considering that theory has seen some proponents in the time since. Staffan Hellberg, for instance, compiled an extensive paper in 1980 analyzing sagas for this connection among some other possible relations.²⁵

Further along, Finn Hødnebø supported the idea after a brief discussion and refutation of the ‘bay,’ ‘recede,’ ‘detour,’ and yet unmentioned ANG wîc²⁶ origin theories in 1987,²⁷ conveniently also publishing the article in English.²⁸ Hødnebø argues that it’s an “irresponsibility” how easily others have rejected the notion, since “there are no linguistic obstacles to the word formation víkingr/wîcing either in Norse or in the other Germanic Languages” and claims that “[i]t seems likely that Vík is a very old designation for Oslofjord and the sea and surrounding coasts.”²⁹ Heide refutes this theory for a number of reasons: a) Vík having a definite article, as in Víkin, points to it not being as old as ANG wīcing; b) Old Norse -ing was used for composite names (e.g. hvalnes > hvalnesingr) and -ungr for non-composites (i.e. Vík(in) > *víkungar); and c) “there is no reason to believe the people from that area played a prominent role in the naval operations of that time.”³⁰ I’ll spare you any further narration of the discourse, anyone interesting in the full tit-for-tat debates of any of these theories is obviously welcome to read the original papers for themselves.

Finally, let’s discuss Eldar Heide’s own theory, which builds off of Bertil Daggfeldt’s 1983 proposition that the word originates from Old Swedish (OSV) vika (turn/shift) as in the shifts of oarsmen.³¹ By far the most interesting argument Heide makes is that the feminine víking couldn’t have been derived from the masculine víkingr in Old Norse, but that the opposite could’ve been the case.³² Thus, his derivation, assuming that the term predates the sailing age and thus originates from rowing, is as such: ON víka (to shift) > víking f. (shifting) > víkingr m. (one who shifts), meaning that Vikings were originally “men rowing in shifts.”

Now for something completely different; I’d say this is the shirttail, but it was the original point of the article before I got distracted by contested etymologies. What I wish to narrate henceforth is far less contested a development, so I shall opt to present it in a more straightforward manner.

Inspired by sagas about Ragnar Lodbrock, the historical fiction novelist Edison Marshall published The Viking in 1951. This novel was then adapted in 1958 as the film The Vikings (directed by Richard Fleischer, screenplay by Calder Willingham). The plot is a far cry from anything in the sagas, as it centers on Einar (Kirk Douglas), son of Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine), and his half-brother Eric (Tony Curtis), both of whom are original characters to the work. Having watched the movie, I agree with many of the critiques that the story is rather lackluster given the grandiosity of both the vikings and the more mythical aspects; at least it was probably more exciting in the ‘50s, though the historical aspects are a bit… anyway.

In 1957, Inumaru Tetsuzou (犬丸徹三), President of the Imperial Hotel (帝国ホテル) in Tokyo since 1945, took a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark!³³ There he discovered the smörgåsbord (I would’ve thought the Danish would call it det kolde bord or even smørrebrød), with its servings of cold fish, bread, cheese, and sometimes deserts, and was instantly taken with it, pushing Murakami Nobuo (村上信夫) to research the idea and bring it to Japan. The following year, on August 1, 1958, they opened a buffet-style restaurant in the Imperial Hotel, opting against simply naming it スモーガスボード (sumôgasubôdo) and instead named it after the previously mentioned film which was then in theaters: (Imperial) “Viking” or バイキング (baikingu, “viking”). Japanese lacks the /v/ sound in general; thus, while it may be sometimes represented in the language as <ヴ>, i.e. ヴァイオリン (baiorin, “violin”), the sound is usually replaced with /b/ such that ‘viking’ is written as ‘biking.’ As this may have been the first all-you-can-eat restaurant established in Japan, combined with its extreme popularity, the name “Viking” came to represent any buffet in Japan and its language.

Tangentially, the etymology of smörgåsbord itself is rather fun: SV smör (butter) + gås (goose) > smörgås (open-face sandwich) + bord (table) > smörgåsbord (cold buffet).

This ran a bit long for an article meant to just provide my friends with enough historical context that I can point to a bicycle and say “一緒にバイキングしたいか?” What didn’t I talk about this time? Worm and Bartholin more or less established the study of the Norse, which had something to do with their relationship with the Möðruvallabók. Hødnebø mentioned Sophus Bugge, I promptly ignored this, but the man had some truly insane theories on Norse mythology and such, that may be interesting to read up on. John Jamieson actually did a lot of work in etymology, that could be fun. I’m still considering getting my hands on Askeberg and Munske’s works, especially the latter. Oh, and Heide mentioned that ON v. víka (turn aside) > n. vík (where the land turns aside), which is actually really cute at the end of all this. The end… send me money so I can afford historiographically notable texts on etymology or something.

Footnotes