Norse

How to spell norse

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce norse

What does norse mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the people, language, or culture of medieval Scandinavia.
2. nounThe language or the people of medieval Scandinavia.

Norse in a sentence

• adjective

  The museum opened a new gallery devoted to norse weapons and jewellery.

• noun

  She learned to read Old norse in order to study the original sagas.

• adjective

  His thesis examined norse trade routes across the North Sea.

• noun

  Many English place names were left behind by the norse who settled the coast.

Where does norse come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Norse came into English in the seventeenth century from the Dutch word noordsch, sometimes written noorsch, which meant 'northern' or 'Norwegian'. That Dutch word was built on noord, the ordinary Dutch word for 'north', so the original sense was simply 'belonging to the north'. English writers adopted it to describe the people, language, and culture of medieval Scandinavia, the Vikings and their kin. Over time it narrowed to refer chiefly to the ancient Scandinavians and their tongue, as in the phrase Old Norse for the language of the sagas. The spelling trap is the silent flavour of the ending: it sounds like 'norss' but keeps the 'e', echoing the related family of words for north, and the single 'r' before 's' should not be doubled.

How the word is built

• norse (from Dutch noordsch 'northern', based on noord 'north')