A conclusion drawn only from the number of the words would not be sufficient to prove the affinity between Shetland Norn and the speech of the south-west or south of Norway, unless there was an unusually great preponderance of words from the south and south-west of Norway in the Shetland dialect. When I have, nevertheless, so decidedly asserted the close connection of Shetland Norn with the speech of the south-west of Norway, I have done so for more than one reason.
In the first place, the preponderance in the number of the words from south-south-west Norway, in Shetland Norn, is large enough to make it possible to form a definite idea as to the quarter from which the Norse inhabitants of the Islands, in the main, have come. The number of the words belonging quite specially to the south-south-west corner of Norway and to the most southerly portion of the country, Telemarken and Smålenene, to be found in Shetland Norn, is greater than the number of the words from all the other parts of Norway put together. But to this is still to be added an important circumstance, namely the kind of the words, to which one must pay as much attention as to their number. Investigation into the nature of the Norwegian vocabulary in the Shetlandic makes it evident that most of such words as are characteristic of the northern parts of Norway are not strongly-marked dialect words, but are rather words of a general character. Several of them are to be found in other Northern languages also: Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Færoese. Of the words from the north of Norway to be found in the Shetlandic one may specially adduce such as refer to fishing and occasionally to the weather.
A portion of the vocabulary peculiar to the dialects of the east of Norway also is found in Shetlandic, words of a mixed character.
As regards, on the other hand, the large element of the south-south-west Norwegian in Shetlandic, a very large proportion of the vocabulary consists of strongly-marked dialect words, words that have deeply impressed on them the stamp of domestic use. By far the greater number of the so-called ‘lower’ words, the numerous words denoting foolish or awkward appearance or walk, everything peculiar or ludicrous, whims, fretfulness, ill-nature, etc., which are distinctly domestic words — the great majority of these are words that especially belong to the south-west corner of Norway, particularly to Jæderen, Ryfylke, Lister and Mandal, and to some extent also to the most southerly parts of the country, Telemarken, Sætersdal. Such words are of special significance when the vocabulary of a dialect is examined for the purpose of comparison.
The fact that some words of the class here mentioned are found again in the Norwegian of the east, or of the north, cannot in any way shake the main proportion just pointed out, and the conclusion that one is forced to draw from it.
Next to the Norwegian of the south-west and of the adjacent southerly parts of the country, the Norwegian of the south-east is the
dialect group that is most fully represented in Shetland Norn. In
