Possible Origin Of "viking"

Another Possible Origin of “Viking” By Ed Lark

Copyright 2009, Ed Lark All rights reserved

We may never know, with certainty, the true origin of the word “Viking”. One can only follow a path that offers the most logical conclusion. Some Viking scholars hypothesize that the Scandinavian word “Viking” may have its roots in the word VIK (meaning “bay”) since the Vikings generally sailed on their adventures from their home bay. However, the Scandinavians never referred to themselves as Vikings, but rather used the word as a “verb”, such as Vi går Viking (We are going Viking). Pronounced VEE-KING. During the Viking Era (between the 8th and 11th century), every Scandinavian village had its own dialect, as you still find today in many communities such as in the Swedish province of Dalarna. Even today, Swedes in the northern part of the country have difficulty understanding those in the southern province of Skåne. The differences become even more pronounced between Sweden and Denmark. Without a literary language, except for the limited Runic text which was used to record battles, deaths, business transactions, etc., the Scandinavians communicated verbally through sagas . Pronunciation of words could vary greatly from community to community. Therefore, it is not surprising that it would be easy to misinterpret words as well as Runic text. In the early days of the Viking era the Runic alphabet consisted of 16 characters, one of which was the letter Y - expressed as a “K” sound. The Viking word “to battle” was VIG (pronounced VEEG). There was no “G” sound in the early Runic text. The closest Runic sound was “K”. Only later, a “G” sound was added to the Runic alphabet by merely putting a dot in the cradle of the Runic Y, VEEGING and VEE-KING are so close in sound, when used in this context, that it would be easy to misinterpret the two because of the countless dialects and accents in the Scandinavian languages. Note: It was not unusual for a raiding party to contain Swedes, Norwegians and Danes.

It seems logical that the Vikings were saying “VI GÅR VIGING” (We’re going battling) and not “VI GÅR VIKING” (We’re going baying, which makes no sense).

Viking Ship