The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity
The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity
The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity
Carl Edlund Anderson Abstract: This study addresses the medieval Norse term dnsk tunga (meaning common Scandinavian language). The origins of the term are obscure, but it may indicate that the ethnic name Danes may have once referred to all Germanic-speaking Scandinavians, a usage which may have evolved with the emergence of a pan-Scandinavian identity deriving from certain socio-political developments in southern Scandinavia during the pre-Viking period. It may be that this larger sense of Danish is comparable to the way in which English came to identify the Germanic language of Britain regardless of its various speakers differing Continental tribal ancestries. By the Viking Age, continuing political developments may have ended the use of Dane as a generic term (with the development of the distinct Scandinavian kingdom-states, in contrast with the single English kingdom-state), though elements of the earlier sense were perhaps fossilized in the continuing use of the term dnsk tunga to mean common Scandinavian language.
1 The contents of this document consist of materials that were originally part of a conference presentation at
Mid-America Medieval Association (MAMA) Annual Conference, Tulsa, OK, USA on 26 February 2000.
Carl Edlund Anderson, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) Annual Conference, Tulsa, OK, USA (26 February 2000).
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2 Normalized version in Sigvatr rarson, Vkingarvsur, in Skjaldedigtning, B.1, 213-16 (p. 216). Translation in
Specvlvm norroenvm: Norse studies in memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre, ed. by Ursula Dronke (Odense: Odense University Press, 1981).
3 Verse 15 of Sigvatr rarsons Vkingarvsur, c. 1014-15; see Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur
Jnsson, 2 vols (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1908-15; reprinted Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1967-73), B.1: 216.
4 From the Hauksbk version of Hervarar saga ok Heireks (compiled c. 1330s); see Hervarar saga ok Heireks konungs,
ed. by Jn Helgason, Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, 48 (Copenhagen: Jrgensen, 1924; reprinted 1976), p. 5.
Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.
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Grgs.5 The term appears numerous times, but I will highlight one example from a section on homicide:
Ef utlendir menn vera vegnir a landi her. danskir e a snskir. ea nornnir. r eirra konunga veldi .iii. er vr tunga er. ar eigo frndr eirra r sakir ef eir ero ut her. En af llum tungum av rom en af danskri tungo. a a engi mar her vg sk at skia af frndsemis savkom. nema fair e a sonr e a brir. oc viat eino eir. ef eir hf o her ar vi kennz.6
This passage clearly identifies Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians as foreigners (from the Icelandic point of view), but also as being from kingdoms where our tongue (that which is spoken in Iceland) is used. Having defined one legal situation for this group, the passage then describes a separate legal situation for anyone speaking a language other than the Danish tongue. Hence, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and Icelanders are recognized as belonging to separate countries but one linguistically defined communitythat of the Danish tongue.
5Grgs: Islndernes Lovbog i Fristatens Tid, udgivet efter det kongelige Bibliotheks Haandskrift, ed. by Vihjlmur Finsen,
2 vols (Copenhagen: Berling, 1852), I, 172; Grgs: Efter det Arnamagnanske Haandskrift Nr. 334 fol., Staarhlsbk, udg. af Kommissionen for det Arnamagnanske Legat, ed. by Vihjlmur Finsen (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1879), pp. 74-5, 338; Grgs: Stykker, som findes i det Arnamagnanske Haandskrift Nr. 351 fol. Sklholtsbk, og en Rkke andre Haandskrifter, ed. by Vihjlmur Finsen (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1883), p. 448; Jnsbk: Kong Magnus Hakonssons Lovbog for Island, vedtaget paa Altinget 1281, og Rttarbtr de for Island givne Retterbder af 1294, 1305 og 1314, ed. by lfur Halldrsson with Gunnar Thoroddsen, supplemented edn (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlage, 1970), pp. 9394.
6 From Grgss Sta arhlsbk (compiled mid-13th century); see Grgs: Efter det Arnamagnanske Haandskrift Nr.
334 fol., Sta arhlsbk, udg. af Kommissionen for det Arnamagnanske Legat, ed. by Vihjlmur Finsen (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1879), p. 338.
7See overview in Peter Skautrup, Dansk tunge in KLNM , II, 662-64. 8An exhaustive catalogue (with references) of the various terms used for Scandinavian languages, including
quotations of the contexts in which they appeared, may be found in Hkon Melberg, Origin of the Scandinavian Nations and their Languages: An Introduction, 2 vols (Halden, Norway: Aschebourg, 1951), pp. 89-146.
Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.
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9 From Nils Sigvastssons letter to the pope (c. 1321-22); see Letter 2322 in Svenskt Diplomatarium: ren 1311-1326,
ed. by Emil Hildebrand, Diplomatarium Suecanum utg. av Kungl. Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien och Riksarkivet, 3 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1842-50), p. 537.
10According to Ari orgilsson, the earliest Icelandic law, lfljtslg, was based on Norwegian law; slendingabk, pp.
6-7.
Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.
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This passage stipulates that in cases concerning wounds, any man of the Swedish kingdom, or any Dane or Norwegian, has the same value and is awarded the same compensation for wounds as a native of Vstergtland.
It seems likely that Dudos Latin term has, if not a Scandinavian model, at least a Germanic model, as it appears to contain the Germanic isk suffix. Later writerssuch as William of Jumeiges, Wace, and Benoit de Sainte Maureused similar terminology in Latin or Old French with such labels as lingua Danica, la Danesche lange and Daneis.12 The origin of Normandys Scandinavian
11 The term Dacisca reveals the very common medieval confusion of Denmark, or Dania, with the old Roman
province of Dacia. Much, both good and bad, has been written on this subjectwhich shall not be entered into herebut see further Jane Acomb Leake, The Geats of Beowulf: A Study in the Geographical Mythology of the Middle Ages (London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), particularly pp. pp. 13-83, 129-133, 139, as well as criticism in Eric Gerald Stanley, In the Foreground: Beowulf (Cambridge: Brewer, 1994), p. 48; G.V. Smithers (review of Leake), English Historical Review, 86 (1971), 346-49; C.L. Wrenn (review of Leake), Review of English Studies, 20 (1969), 204-07; T.A. Shippey (review of Leake), Modern Language Review, 64 (1969), 851-2; Jackson J. Campbell (review of Leake), Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 67 (1968), 691-94; J.D.A. Ogilvy (review of Leake), English Language Notes, 5 (196768), 303-05. Leakes main points, however, are broadly accepted in Inge Skovgaard-Petersen, Oldtid og Vikingetid, in Danmarks historie, ed. by Aksel E. Christensen and others, 10 vols (Copenhagen: 1977-92), I: Tiden indtill 1340, ed. by Inge Skovgaard-Petersen and others (1977), 15-209 (pp. 34-36, 43). Indeed, it seems likely that difficulties with particular details in Leakes analysis have led to the main understanding explored in her studythat the modern historical-philological understanding of Beowulfs Geatas as Gtar (or Jutes) need not have been the understanding of medieval writersbeing largely overlooked and perhaps unduly dismissed.
12Dudo, Dudonis Sancti Quintini De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, ed. by Jules Lair, Mmoires de la
Socit de Antiquaires de Normandie, 23 (Paris: Maisonneuvre, 1865; Caen: Le Blanc-Hardel, 1865), pp. 154, 197, 198, 221-22; William of Jumeiges, Guillaume de Jumieges: Gesta Normannorum ducum, ed. by Jean Marx (Rouen and Paris: Picard, 1914), pp. 40-41. Wace, Le Roman de Rou des Ducs de Normandie par Robert Wace: poete normand de
Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.
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settlers is much disputed, and the waters are often muddied by Norwegian and Danish scholars arguing an ethnic origin that matches their own. Nevertheless, that the region was named for Northmen while the language was designated Danish suggests that, whatever the settlers geographic origin, their tongue was known as Danishjust as it seems to have been throughout the medieval Scandinavian world.
XIIe siecle, ed. by Frdric Pluquet, 2 vols (Rouen: 1827), i, pp. 126; Benoit de Sainte-Maure, Chronique de Ducs de Normandie par Benoit, trouvere anglo-normand du XIIe siecle, ed. by Francisque Michel, 3 vols, Collection de documents indits sur lhistoire de France (Paris: , 1836; 1838; 1854), I, pp. 197, 446-47, 479-80. Noreiz is used of the language only once, in Wace, p. 6.
13lfric, De Falsis Diis, in Homilies of lfric: A Supplementary Collection, Being Twenty-One Full Homilies of his
Middle and Later Career for the Most Part Not Previously Edited, with Some Shorter Pieces, Mainly Passages Added to the Second and Third Series, ed. by John C. Pope, Early English Text Society, 259-60, 2 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1967-68), II (1968), 676-712 (pp. 684, 686).
Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.
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2. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - More telling may be use of the adjective denisc in six of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle manuscripts entries for 787, even though here denisc is used to describe men rather than language:14
MS A: & on his dagum cuomon rest iii. scipu t wron a restan scipu Deniscra monna e Angelcynnes lond gesohton. MS B: & on his dagum cmon rest iii. scipa Normanna t wron a restan scipu Deniscra manna e Angelcynnes land gesohtan. MS C: & on his dagum cmon rest iii. scipu Normanna t wron a restan scypu Deniscra manna e Angelcynnes land gesohton. MS D: & on his dagum comon rest iii. scypu Normanna of Hrealande t wron a restan scipu Deniscra manna e on Engelcynnes land gesohton. MS E: & on his dagum comon rest iii. scipu Normanna of Herealande t wron a erestan scipu Deniscra manna e Angelcynnes land gesohton. MS F: & on his dagan coman rost iii. scipa Normanna of Herea lande. t wran a rostan scipa Deniscra manna e Angelcynnes land gesohton.
MS A simply labels the troublemakers who have landed in England as denisc, though MSS B and C further qualify these Danish men as normenn. MSS D, E, and F extend that description to normenn of hrealand. This hrealand seems most likely to be identified with Old Norse Hraland (modern Hordaland) in western Norway. This situation strongly implies that the adjective denisc is being used in the generic sense of Scandinavian. 3. Narrowing of meaning in late 10th century - Indeed, only with descriptions of the royal campaigns organized by Sveinn Haraldsson in the late tenth century is it possible to detect the Chronicles use of the terms Dene or denisc narrowing to something like the specific national meaning of the modern terms Danes and Danish.
14 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entries for AD 787; see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle According to the Several Original
Authorities, ed. and trans. by Benjamin Thorpe, Rerum Britannicarum medii vi scriptores; or, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland During the Middle Ages, 23, 2 vols (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861), I: 96-97.
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Niels Lund has noted that the descriptive method employed in this example is to locate a given tribe as a point of reference and then enumerate neighboring tribes and geographical features in relation to the reference tribe; the process is then repeated by choosing further reference tribes. Hence, Lund suggests that the passages Sudene may be identified with sumne dl Dene mentioned in relation to the Old Saxons. This places the Sudene on Jutland, north of the Elbe, and the Nordene on the Danish islands and what are now the western and southern coasts of Sweden. 2. Ohthere, Gotland, and Sillende - Additional geographical information in the Old English Orosius was drawn from the account of Ohthere, a ninth-century Scandinavian merchant probably hailing from what we now know as arctic Norway:
Wi su an one Sciringesheal fyl swy e mycel s up in on t land, seo is bradre onne nig man ofer seon mge, & is Gotland on ore healfe ongean & sia[n] Sillende. Seo s li mnig hund mila up in on t land. & of Sciringesheale he cw t he seglode on fif dagan to m porte e mon ht t Hum, se stent betuh Winedum & Seaxum & Angle & hyr in on Dene. a he iderweard seglode fram Sciringesheale, a ws him on t bcbord Denamearc & on t steorbord wids ry dagas; & a twegen dagas r he to Hum come, him ws on t steorbord Gotland & Sillende & iglanda felaon m landum eardodon Engle, r hi hider on land coman& hym ws a twegen dagas on t bcbord a igland e in Denemearce hyra.
From its location, the region called Gotland in Ohtheres account is almost certainly Jutland, while Sillende is probably identified with region of southern Jutland called Sinlendi in the Revised Royal Frankish Annals entry for 815.16
15 From the late ninth-century Old English version of Orosius History against the Pagans; see The Old English
Orosius, ed. by Janet Bately, Early English Text Society: Supplementary Series, 6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 12-13.
16Einhardi Annales, in Annales regni Francorum inde ab a. 741 usque ad a. 829, qui dicuntur Annales Laurissenses
maiores et Einhardi, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 6 (Hannover: Hahn, 1895) (s.a. 815). The etymology of Sillende/Sinlendi is obscure. One possibility is ON *Slende (great land, mainland), though why southern Jutland should have this name not clear (unless it is somehowed
Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.
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3. Both Jutes and Danes - Again, Niels Lund has argued that, up until the time of Haraldr bltnn in the late tenth century, the inhabitants of northern Jutland may have been politically autonomous, ruled by their own Jutish kings. Lund has further suggested that Haraldr bltnn himself was the half-Jutish son of a Jutish king Gormr.17 With this in mind, it may be significant that the ninth-century Old English Orosius appears to describe the people living in Jutland (ostensibly Jutes) as Sudene, contrasting with Nordene living on the islands and mainland. The terms Nordene and Sudene do not appear in any other historical contexts, and it is possible that their use in the Old English Orosius is simply the result of an Englishmans uncertainly about which subdivision of Scandinavians he was dealing with. However, the use of the terms might also imply that one could be particularly a Jute, yet also a Dane in a less specific sensein other words, Dane might have been used as a supra-tribal label. Such a use would be very much in line with the generically Scandinavian sense of the terms Dene and denisc employed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as well as the use of the Old Norse term dnsk tunga to label the common Germanic language of medieval Scandinavia.
intended to distinguish southern Jutland from the Danish islands); R. Ekblom, Ohtheres Voyage from Skiringssal to Hedeby, Studia Neophilologica, 12 (1940), 177-90; see also Old English Orosius, pp. 1168-69 n. 12/31. Another possibility might be ON *Sunnland/*Sunnlnd (southern land/lands); compare OIce norlendingr and sunnlendingr, and the place-names Sunndalr (Sweden), Sunnmrr and Sunnhraland (Norway); Cleasby-Vigfusson, p. 605 (s.v. sunnr).
17Lund, Denemearc, pp. 162, 168-169. 18For example, in Didrik Arup Seip, Norsk sprkhistorie: Til omkring 1370, 2nd edn (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1955), pp.
83, 215.
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their common speech seems rather far-fetched. One would be hard-pressed to find a similar example of such a practice elsewhere. Hardly better is Einar Haugens suggestion that the common Scandinavian language was named dnsk tunga perhaps because Denmark was the first Scandinavian country to receive Christian missionaries.19 Even imagining some kind of connection with use of the Latin alphabet for vernacular writings, it is difficult to derive much sense from this supposition.
B. Dane = Scandinavian?
Considering the Old English examples, might it simply be that the common language of Scandinavia was termed Danish because at some point the Germanic-speaking inhabitants of Scandinavia had reason to identify themselves generically as Danes. This may not be such an unlikely possibility as it seems.
C. Melberg.
However, as far as I can tell, the only previous proponent of this idea was Norwegian amateur scholar Hkon Melberg. Melberg published two lengthy volumes in the mid-twentieth century filled with his musings on the evolution of Scandinavian identity as it related to the term dnsk tunga. Alas, though Melberg displays laudable energy and thoroughness in discussing an impressive collection of data, his methodology leaves much to be desired. A fondness for invasion hypotheses (admittedly, a commonplace in scholarship at that time) and a lack of source criticism led Melberg to produce an argument that was largely a scholarly elaboration of Book Five in Saxos Gesta Danorum. Melbergs essential conclusion was that the basic unity in medieval Scandinavias language and culture was the result of a series of series of Danish military conquests which had taken place during, broadly, the third and fourth centuries AD, culminating in a period of Danish overlordship in Germanic-speaking Scandinavia during the fifth and sixth centuries AD.20 Thus, for good reasons, Melbergs ideas did not catch on.
19Einar Haugen, Dialects, in MSE, pp. 130-34 (p. 131). 20Melberg, pp. 759-61.
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argue that a strong Danish kingdom-state emerged in the third and fourth centuries AD, reaching a peak of power and stability during the fifth through seventh centuries AD.
E. My disagreement.
For various reasons, I would question the development of such an early kingdom-state in southern Scandinavia, and I would suggest rather the development of a society focused around centres of cult and community, perhaps similar to the later Old Saxon Assembly at Marklohe, or the Icelandic Alingithough there is not time to go into these arguments here.21
21 For further discussion on the relatively likelihood of a strong kingdom state versus cult/community central places
in pre-Viking southern Scandinavia, see chapters of Carl Edlund Anderson, Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrasts in the Early History of Scandinavia (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, Faculty of English, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic, 1999), available at http://www.carlaz.com/phd/AndersonCE_1999_PhD.pdf.
22Hines, Cultural Change, p. 84.
Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.
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III. Conclusion: The Term Dnsk Tunga is an old relic. A. Cultural affiliation, not political domination.
This explanation of Anglian and English identities may provide a remarkable model for the Scandinavian situation. The original *Dani might have been a single tribal group in southern Scandinavia, but, as their regions material culture spread more widely within Scandinavia, perhaps their name became used as a supra-regional label. Such a process would be reminiscent of that argued by Reinhard Wenskus (and other scholars of the Vienna school such as Herwig Wolfram) through which, during the same historical period elsewhere in Germanic Europe, outsiders could become Goths through an ideological allegiance to the Gothic Traditionskern. Political domination by a southern Scandinavian Danish monarch need not have entered into the equation, and there is no evidence for Danish overlordship throughout Scandinavia until formation of the Union under Queen Margrethe in the late 1380s.
23Moreover, Hines suggested that English cultural unification would have almost necessarily preceded the political
unification which took place during the tenth century in the wake of the Viking invasions;
Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.
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Anderson, Carl Edlund, The Danish Tongue and Scandinavian Identity, 26 February 2000, Mid-American Medieval Association (MAMA) 2000, Tulsa, OK, USA.