Norse

Norse (originally Norshr, Norsk, from root Nordhr, "north"), collective name of the northern branch of the Teutonic race (q.v.). In this sense the term is practically synonymous with Scandinavian, comprising the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and Icelanders, that is, the four main divisions of the Norse or Scandinavian group, which presents certain distinctive physical and linguistic features now best preserved in Iceland (q.v.). These distinctive features do not appear to be of great age, and 2,000 years ago the Norse peoples probably differed little, either in appearance or in speech, from the other branches of the Teutonic family; but then began a gradual divergence, resulting in the present differentiation of physical and linguistic forms. Physically the Norse peoples have remained truer to the primitive Germanic type, characterised by tall, bony figures, robust frames, long head, regular oval features, blue or grey eyes, long, wavy flaxen, and even red, hair, disproportionately large extremities. At least, this blonde or "Saxon" type is still far more prevalent in Scandinavia than in Germany, where great interminglings have taken place with the dark pre-Aryan aborigines. Hence the Norse peoples, though far from the ideal blondes, now best represent Huxley's Xanthochroi, or "fair white," as distinct from the Melanochroi, or "dark whites" of southern Europe; and recent research has traced back for at least 4,000 years the presence of this blonde race in the Scandinavian peninsula, where in fact many ethnologists suppose that it originated in the Neolithic age. In early mediaeval times (9th to 12th century) the Norsemen (chiefly Danes and Norwegians) overran a great part of Russia and the European seaboard, extending their predatory and conquering excursions from Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles, up the Mediterranean to the Levant. They even founded flourishing kingdoms in the Seine basin (Normandy) and in Sicily, but were everywhere rapidly absorbed in the surrounding populations, except in the Faroe Islands, and especially in Iceland, where they came rather as settlers than as corsairs or conquerors, and where the Norse race and speech are still best preserved. [Iceland.] The Norse language is a modified form of early Low German, that is, of the primitive Germanic tongue as best represented by the Gothic of TJlphilas [Gothic], from which it differs partly in its phonetics (normal change of final s to r, as in Goth, sunns, Icel. sunr, "son"), but much more in its grammatical forms. Of these the most characteristic are the evolution of a passive or rather a middle voice, and of a definite article agglutinated at the end of the noun, as in Roumanian (liomu-l, "manthe"), and some other south-east European languages. These, however, are comparatively recent changes, although traces of them occur in the Icelandic Edda, which suffixes the article, and even in the Norrcena Tunga, that is, the original "Norse Tongue" as preserved in the early Runic inscriptions. They receive their full development only in Swedish and Danish, the chief modern representatives of the old language, which are thus distinguished in a marked way from all other members of the Teutonic linguistic family.