This does not accord with the fact that the dialect as a whole, even now at the end of the 19th century, is fairly saturated with Norn words, although that stock of words, with each generation that has passed during the last century and a half, has been growing smaller and smaller, and especially so in the course of the very latest generation.
Even in 1600 the knowledge of English (Lowland Scottish) seems to have been very meagre in Shetland; for, according to the “Fasti Ecclesiæ Scotticanæ”, Magnus, surnamed “Norsk”, minister of Unst (the most northerly of the Islands), made a voyage to Norway to learn the language spoken there, because his congregation did not understand any other language than “Norse”. It is said that he got his surname on account of this voyage. Even if it may be doubtful whether the minister went to Norway only to learn the language, out of consideration for his flock in Shetland, and got his surname for that reason, the interesting remark in “Fasti” still remains, that his congregation did not understand any other language than “Norse”.
The statement, made by both earlier and later writers who mention Shetland, that after the extinction of the Norn, only a few Norn names of objects were preserved, is simply a general phrase, resting on ignorance of the actual circumstances, which have never been sufficiently investigated.
That the Shetland Norn was still a living language in the middle of the 18th century, one may conclude from what is said by the Scottish writers George Low and Samuel Hibbert about the Shetland dance-songs.
Even rather late in the 18th century, Norn songs and ballads survived in the mouths of the common people, and were sung as the music to the native dance, which was the same as, or somewhat similar to, the chain-dance in a circle, still popular in the Faeroe Isles. The dance is described by Low in his “Tour thro’ Orkney and Shetland”, written in 1774 (first published in Kirkwall in 1879 by Joseph Anderson): …“There is one species of dance, which seems peculiar to themselves [i.e. the Shetlanders], in which they do not proceed from one end of the floor to the other in a figure, nor is it after the manner of a Scottish reel; but a dozen or so form themselves into a circle, and taking each other by the hand, perform a sort of circular dance, one of the party all the while singing a Norn visick. This was formerly their only dance, but has now almost entirely given way to the reel”.
Hibbert, in “Description of the Shetland Islands”, Edinburgh 1822, says: “Not longer ago than seventy years (about 1750) a number of popular historic ballads [according to the context is to be understood ballads in Norn] existed in Shetland…”; and in another place: “It was not many years before Mr. Low’s visit to Shetland in 1774, that numerous songs, under the name of Visecks [viz.: ballads in Norn], formed the accompaniment to dances that would amuse a festival party during a long winter’s evening”.
