Norse

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Norse is a demonym for Norsemen, a medieval North Germanic ethnolinguistic group ancestral to modern Scandinavians, defined as speakers of Old Norse from about the 9th to the 13th centuries.

Etymology

The etymology of the adjective "norse" is somewhat surprising as one would expect it to have entered the English language through either the already present native stem "north" or via a Scandinavian language. Yet "Norse" (which entered English in 1598) derives from the Dutch or West Germanic word "noors", the adjective form of "Norwegian". The Scandinavian equivalent of the word is norrøn, or norrön (Icelandic: norræn). The modern English form (which sounds almost identical to the West Germanic term) may be used in a number of ways:

See also