Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Blaðsíða 115

Shetland speech today
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in post*Conquest England and Anglo»Saxon similarly ousted
Gaelic from the Lowlands of Scotland in the same period.
It was a stark necessity for the Shetlanders themselves to
learn as much Scots as they could to defend their rights
and liberties in the Baron’s Courts. Documents for this
early period in Scots^Shetland relationships are scanty. The
first Scots one dates from 1525, and these gradually incre*
ase in frequency throughout the century. Protests came to
a head in 1576 and a Royal Commission was appointed to
investigate the misgovernment and took evidence from many
inhabitants, some at least of which must have been given
in Scots and is preserved in the Commission’s report. The
Court Books themselves have been preserved for the years
at the beginning of the 17th century and even allowing for
the fact that they were written in Scots by a Scots clerk,
there is surprisingly little trace of the vernacular language
of the country in them. Naturally the Norse legal terms
survive like airff (erf), domra (dómrof), foud (fogeti), law=
richtman (lpgrettumaðr), odal (óðal), ranselman (<rannsaka),
saxteraith (settareiðr), schuynd (sjónd, sýn), upgestry (cf.
Faer. uppgávumaður), wattle (veizla), though it can be seen
that there has been some adaptation of the forms to Scottish
phonetics. Norse methods of agriculture and landholding,
weights and measures, food and domestic articles also sur*
vived the coming of the Scots and have in many cases even
yet not entirely died out, e. g. bland (blanda), bucht
(Dan. bugt), bismar (bismari), kassie (kassi), kenningmerk
(kennimark), leispund (líspund), meill (mælir), pennyland,
pundar (pundari), scattald (<skatt), setting (settungr),
skeo (Norw. skjaa), ure (øre), wodmal (vaðmál). What
remained almost entirely unaffected by the newcomers were
the placemames, compounded in the typical Norse fashion,
with elements like bister (bólstaðr), field (fjall), gard (garðr),
ness, setter (sætr), sta (staðr), ting (Júng), voe (vágr, though
also Scotticised to Waa, Wall), wick (vík). This of course
repeats the pattern over most of Western Europe where