2002-04-11 Vikings

[nibot]

Did you know that the word `Viking' should be read as `Vik-ing' and not `Vi-King'? The word vik means `harbor' or `bay' in old Swedish... The world could be translated almost literally as `sailor' I think, rather than a sort of king.

Comments

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

Oh silly Tob. In general, the separate morphemes that phonemes belong to has a rather indirect effect on their final syllabification when composed into a larger word. So you can vi-king away, most likely without stepping on anyone's etymological toes.

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

But cool tidbit of info! Still, does it take away some of the glamor? It would be more awesome if vik meant "I kill you and plunder your village" or some such thing.

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

VikTor.

Hm. Thunder god of sailing?

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

When I think about a Vik, I think about the spectacular glacial valleys on the west coast of Norway. Though they rise thousands of feet (hundreds of meters!) upward to snowy tops, they also plunge a similar depth into the shockingly cold waters of the fjords that fill them. Gushing, turbulent waterfalls plunge down the precipitous hillsides. Small farms cling to the few barely level places found here and there along the slopes. The joke is that the cows all have legs of two different lengths- the better to stand up on the steeply slanted fields.

Now that's the kind of rugged "bay" a Viking hails from.