The Muddled Origins of the Word 'Viking' | Hacker News Reader

The Muddled Origins of the Word 'Viking'

atlasobscura.com

42 pointsdrdee31 comments

Muddled? Vik means Bay in norwegian today also (not just in Old Icelandic), -ing is used similarly as in english, so bay-ers or bay dwellers is a straightforward translation. The county Viken, a big part of the Oslofjord bay area is named of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viken_(region)

"Various theories have been offered that the word "viking" may be derived from this place name, meaning "a person from Viken". According to this theory, originally the word "viking" simply described persons from this area"

Probably just folk etymology (and from the 18th-19th century?).

Note that the county of Viken was established in 2020, (though roughfly based on a historical name).

The first documented viking raids to England was described as coming from Hordaland, on the west side of (southern) Norway, while Viken is/was on the east side (and partially in Sweden today).

Also, people from Viken was in old norse called víkverir, not vikings.

I think you confuse what OP meant.

The words viking and Viken probably both stem from the word vik, as in bay. Any bay.

Or... Maybe both the word viking and vik as in Viken comes from the same verb vikja that means to move (away). The idea being that a vik is where the costline moves away from the "sea road", the "NorWay" ;)

By the way, another word used for Viken (when used for the Oslofjord) is Folden, which means "the fold", so it is where the costline moves or folds away. Also, the counties on the west and east side of Oslofjord was until resently Vestfold and Østfold (meaning west and east (of the) fold)

Thanks for that extra info, that was interesting. I've also been taught that viking (víkingur in Faroese) simply means person who lives in a bay (vík in Faroese). But it does sound likely it would originally refer to someone from Viken.

I think it is a bit muddled as the term we use for viking today comes from the verb (in modern Norwegian) "å dra i viking" which is a term used back in the days as seen from the sagas. I see it is mentioned in the article too.

However it could be that it originally described a person from Viken, but it was also actively used as a verb a thousand years ago in western Norway.

Being Norwegian myself I've actually never connected it with the word vik which is also seen in English often as the word wick at the end of place names.

The sagas using it as a verb have to be the authoritative source here, right? We have actual text written by contemporaneous norse.

I agree.

Also, in Denmark and today's Northern Germany, Wik is used in particular to designate places where boats could be beached and where trade was conducted in a non permanent fashion, i.e. a beaching harbour used for trade events.

Quite a few of those places became permanent settlements and the toponymy kept the -wik.

While a very unscientific thing to say, this makes sense if Viking included sailing from place to place exploring and trading.

It's the same in Middle English (-wic), which is still present in the names of old market towns by rivers like Greenwich or the street name Aldwych (i.e. something like "old village") in London.

lovely.

finally nick makes sense :)

My grandfather was born in Vikvåg in Austevoll, Norge.

Vik means bay. Våg also means bay. Bay bay!

The article is really about why we recently began using this particular word, not the etymology of the word itself.

The problems with the title claim as others have commented aside, this is actually a good article about how the "vikings" were called and conceived in the various parts of the world where they became known - primarily for their barbaric violence and war prowess.

The vikings are probably the closest thing we have to understanding the nature of the Yamnaya culture rapid expansion in Europe some millennia prior, where the preexisting male lineages in the conquered lands all but disappeared.

I am curious. Is there a reason to think Vikings are closer to yamnaya __culturally__ than, say, other Germanic people? (Other than slightly higher steppe DNA).

Close cultural relationships are tricky to substantiate. But Germanic people (that likely spread from Scandinavia before dawn of history) were all fairly warlike and had religious beliefs and cultural norms that glorified war and conquest. But in this they didn't differ much from other Yamnaya descendants, like the Celts, Greeks or Romans - or other peoples that did not have any steppe connection like the Mongols or Japanese for that matter.

Still, it is likely that the viking ethos does draw from the culture they inherited from the Yamnaya - and if not, their behavior was likely (often) perceived as similar to how the Yamnaya would have been perceived by the megalithic farmers they displaced: a brutal conquest that largely eliminated or sold off the men as slaves while keeping the women and children.

> Still, it is likely that the viking ethos does draw from the culture they inherited from the Yamnaya

This is intuitive to me as well. But my question is, are there evidences in support, eg their language, mythology or "pots" likely being more closer to yamnaya / PIE than others?

I think such "cultural distances" would be really hard to prove, and there are no such attempts that I'm aware of. But I would also be interested if someone were to attempt or know of such a cultural comparison project.

The archeological material from the Yamnaya is not overabundant, and the content of their beliefs and language is largely inferred in ways which leave many things open to debate. But we can likely be certain that different descendant cultures all fanned out culturally, both as a consequence of internal driving forces as well as influences from the other peoples they encountered.

The latter could actually speak in favor of the Scandinavians keeping more of their ancestral culture, since that part of the world was relatively more isolated compared to rest of the Europe.

16 paragraphs deep they admit that the word vikingr is from old norse, but don't state from when. It's actually from 12th century, which is of course very close to the viking age. It's also when Snorri was writing down the oral stories of the vikings.

Then they even push the use of the word in old english back as far as the 10th century. So this article first tries to say the word is modern, and then reveals it's not.

I agree, the story is pretty long winded, but they are not wrong: Vikings never referred to themselves as vikings, nor did anyone else at the time. The word is old Norse of course but as far as I know was not used by Snorri. My understanding is that it was almost a derogatory term. They are also correct in that modern usage of the word started with the national romantics of the 19:th century.

So the word itself is a (almost) modern invention or at least re-purposing. Does not matter. We need words for things.

Snorri uses it in several sagas (given time I might look it up, but not now).

In the christian middle ages it could be used as a translation for the word for pirat. So talking about "the age of the vikings" is really like talking about "the age of the pirats", where the people themselves are norse, danes or swedes etc.

It was simply the word for pirate. They described pirates in the Mediterranean as vikings, despite them not being of Norse ethnicity or culture in any way.

Yep, this kind of meaning seems to have been in use until quite recently at least.

The 1967 Movie "The Viking Queen" is about a fictitious eastern English queen during the time of Roman occuption. She's definitely not Norse, but the intended meaning of "Viking" here is "a raider or plunderer".

Job description?

* Viking * Hedge Fund Manager * Miami Crypto Bro * Richard Gere in the beginning of Pretty Woman

Snorri Sturulson definitely used the word viking if, as most scholars hold, he was the author of Egil’s Saga. That text is replete with the term, and it isn’t used in a derogatory sense at all. It is an activity performed by the characters considered heroic. It’s even right there in the first paragraph:

“Úlfr hét maðr, sonr Bjálfa ok Hallberu, dóttur Úlfs ins óarga. Hon var systir Hallbjarnar hálftrǫlls í Hrafnistu, fǫður Ketils hængs. Úlfr var maðr svá mikill ok sterkr, at eigi váru hans jafningjar. En er hann var á unga aldri, lá hann í víkingu ok herjaði.”

> Rus, meaning “red.”

In what language? There is no understanding among Russian historians regarding the meaning of this word. The version with "rowmen" is dominant though. Though it is agreed that originally it was the name of some Scandinavian tribe/clan/region, whoose descendants became the first Russian rulers in 9th century.

> The version with "rowmen" is dominant though

The Finnic Venäjä / Venemaa also has boating implications (vene = boat). Maybe the land you go to by boat?

There was no Russia in the 9th century, it was founded much later.

It is so boring to discuss if you want to challenge the official history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia

> Later Old Norse Scandinavian written sources call a raider a vikingr and a raiding expedition of such people a viking. For Scandinavians, the word “viking” is something you did rather than what you were.

This concurs with a book I read recently. To go 'i viking' (roughly, 'go adventuring') is given as the origin of the word to the Anglo-Saxons of King Alfred's era in 'The White Horse King' [0].

[0] https://www.amazon.com/White-Horse-King-Alfred-Great/dp/1595...

How about this?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

Of course, this assumption is based on that the "k" sound was preserved here, instead of going through the shift to "h".

"Viking" is indeed listed there as an English term derived from this root [0] - together with vicinity, villa and villain among others. But the actual invention of the term is not likely directly related to the root. Personally I favor the explanation mentioned elsewhere: since Viken was both a place where many vikings came from, as well as a name for a topography where vikings often gathered before their raids (vik~=bay) then this is the most likely explanation, to me.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_derive...

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