Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1977, Side 5

Some traces of Gaelic in Faroese
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where (‘Some Celtic Words in Faroese Place-Names’, Árbók
bins íslenzka fornleifafelags, fylgirix (1958), 61) Chr. Matras
notes that the term also occurs in place names; here the mean-
ing is ‘small mound’.
Many years ago, Chr. Matras observed that there were
traces o£ special links between the Faroes and the Gaelic-
speaking area in connection with seal-hunting and expressed
to us his belief that grúkur, unique in Scandinavian, must have
originally applied to the head of the seal and, in that sense,
have been borrowed from Gaelic into Faroese. The word would
thus be of viking age. These assumptions, however, remained
tantalisingly conjectural, since grúkur could not be positively
identified with any known Gaelic word. In his statement
‘írsk orð í føroyskum’, Álmanakki 1966, 29, Chr. Matras had
narrowed down the search for a possible source to two items,
summing up as follows: Grúkur .... er neyvan norrønt, men
tíverri er ilt at siga við vissu, hvørjum gæliskum orði tað er
komið av. Tað kundi verið gæliskt gruag, sum merkir ‘hárið
á høvdi’ .... ella tað kundi verið cruach ‘kollur, rund herða
ella tíl.’
Looking at matters phonologically, it is apparent that if
cruach is the source, then the development has not been regular,
since initial c would normally be kept unchanged in Norse,
as Gael. cró ‘enclosure, fold’ > ON kró, whence Far. krógv.
One would thus have to assume a generalised mutation of c to
g, a change parallel to that of t to d mentioned above (under
'Dunna’), the likelihood of which we have seen reason to
doubt. The second word gruag, on the other hand, sets no
phonological problems (see below) and may therefore claim
our close attention.
As stated, Gael. gruag means ‘hair of the head’. It is, in
general, a dominant word in this sense in the modern dialects,
but a synonym folt (Sc. falt) is also known to a limited extent.
Linguistic considerations, however, indicate that this state of
affairs is not ancient, and that it is the latter word which is