Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Page 18

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Faroese Bird-Name Origins
from the lapwing to the godwit, particularly since the loud
calls of these two birds can be very similar, as bird books
frequently confirm, and compare the identical second element
in the English names peewit ‘lapwing’ and godwit. But this
argument is not quite so strong when applied to the Faroes,
for here the lapwing occurs more commonly, though granted
it is not prominent.
But there are more cogent reasons for suspecting the validity
of such argumentation. Supposing the Scandinavian settlers
had no indigenous name for the godwit, they certainly had one
for the lapwing, namely vípa, for the lapwing is a common
bird in Norway. One could understand their borrowing a
Gaelic term for the unfamiliar godwit, but not for the well-
known lapwing, and the Vikings surely weren’t so perverse
as to borrow the Gaelic word for lapwing just to name the
godwit. And this is not all. Gaelic loans in Norse are by now
pretty well known. There are 30 or so in the medieval records
(listed by De Vries, Altnord. etym. Wb., xxi) and a few more,
about half as many, have been identified in the modern langu-
ages. In general, these loans are clearly recognisable as terms
reflecting Gaelic influence on Scandinavian life in the Viking
Age, cf. W. B. L., ‘Chr. Matras’ Studies on the Gaelic Element
in Faroese: Conclusions and Results’, Scottish Gaelic Studies,
xiii, 112-26. True, there is a bird name among these loans, i. e.
dunna ‘tame duck’ (FBN, 13 f., Fróð., xxv, 12), but this bor-
rowing is explicable in terms of material culture. However,
as far as is known, there is no comparable motivation to ac-
count for the adoption of the name of a wild species like the
lapwing for which, as already noted, the Scandinavians had a
perfectly good name of their own.
There are thus, we submit, too many unanswered questions
for one to have any confidence in the proposed derivation
from Gaelic, and we therefore turn to consider the second
interpretation. According to this, the name will be native
Scandinavian, ON jaðrakárn consisting of a first element
jaðra- associated with jaðarr m. ‘edge’, i. e. ‘edge of a marsh