Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2004, Page 76

74
Michael Barnes
a rebellious sort of place regarded with uneasy superstition by tax
gatherers. Of the neighbouring parish of Sandwick we hear a com-
plaint in 1725 that “the old broken Danish Language is used among
many of the people which occasions Ignorance in the place”
(Campbell 1954). Possibly there was a strong sense of local identity in
the western part of the Orkney Mainland at that time, a feeling both
among the inhabitants and outsiders of othemess. Of course, one
should always be cautious about conjuring up images of group identi-
ty, social isolation and linguistic alignment in bygone times. The
island of Foula, mentioned above, is one of the most isolated spots in
Shetland. As such it would seem to be an ideal place for the retention
of Norn — but only if its small population remained relatively undis-
turbed. We learn, however, that Foula was devastated by plague (pre-
sumably small-pox), apparently around the tum of the seventeenth
century and again in 1720, and repopulated from other parts of
Shetland (Baldwin 1984:55). There are even stories of Faroemen set-
tling there (Barnes 1998:18). Whatever its fate in specific places,
however, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that Norn retreat-
ed to a few core areas before finally being ousted by Scots. That has
been the way with the encroachment of English on Scots Gaelic, Irish,
and Welsh, and similar patterns of retention are reported for Manx and
Comish. Although the precise mechanics of the language shift in
Orkney and Shetland are thus obscure, there is no reason to believe it
was accomplished by the almost imperceptible transformation of Nom
into Scots — as argued by Jakobsen (1928-32:xix-xx), Marwick
(1929:xxvii) and Flom (1928-9) — or that Norn remained uninflu-
enced by Scots and continued to be spoken in its traditional form until
well into the nineteenth century — as urged by Rendboe (1984,
1987:97-9).
The nineteenth century is far too late a date for the demise of Norn
— notwithstanding Jakobsen quotes reports of a speaker in the
Shetland island of Unst who died c. 1850 (1928-32:xix) and of “two
old men of the last Nom generation” alive in Foula in 1883 (Reid Tait
1953:21). The evidence adduced above makes it plain that the last gen-
eration of native speakers was going to the grave in the late 1700s.