I took an Old English module on a whim during my first year at university. I came across it at a foreign language informational session, and having never seen or heard Old English before, I was astonished to learn that my own mother tongue could be considered 鈥榝oreign鈥� to me. Old English is the vernacular language spoken and written during Britain鈥檚 early medieval period, from around 550 to 1150. Somehow in the midst of grammar drills and the painstaking parsing of Beowulf line by line, I fell in love with this dead language. I discovered that I could learn so much about a distant era from even a single word.
Take gafol-fisc (pronounced GA-voll-FISH), for instance. Its literal translation is 鈥榯ax-fish鈥�. Today we are familiar with both taxes and fish鈥� but what is tax-fish? Gafol-fisc appears in an eleventh-century charter detailing the gifts to be granted by King Cnut to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. The fish that the king wished to give to the abbey was gafol-fisc, fish collected as tax or tribute from the maritime district. Gafol-fisc is not a common word, appearing only in this particular charter, but its existence tells us something about life in eleventh century England. People could pay their taxes in fish. If you do some more digging through Old English charters, you鈥檒l come across other means of payment: gafol-bere (tax-barley), gafol-wydu (tax-lumber) and ealu-gafol (ale-tax).
Old English has words that don鈥檛 exist any more like gafol-fisc, and modern English, of course, has many words that Old English lacks. But these are not always obvious modern words like airplane and television. For example, Old English doesn鈥檛 have a word meaning 鈥榥ature鈥�, something that people undoubtedly experienced in the early medieval period, perhaps a great deal more so than we do today. Many of us live in cities and have to travel to parks or even out of town to witness 鈥榥ature鈥欌�攑lants and animal life, things not human or human-made. Middle English 鈥榥膩t奴r鈥� doesn鈥檛 appear until the thirteenth century. Old English ge-cynd (yeh-KUEND) is sometimes translated as 鈥榥ature鈥�, but this word actually refers to one鈥檚 condition or kind, (鈥榟uman nature鈥� for instance), not the wilderness kind of nature we think of today. Perhaps the division between what we think of as nature and not nature was less significant for speakers of Old English. Early medieval poems and sermons instead refer to sceaft (creation, pronounced SHEH-oft), which included human beings, plants, animals, mountains, and even entities we鈥檇 call 鈥榮upernatural鈥� (dragons, elves, monsters).
Sometimes it鈥檚 not whether or not a concept exists that sets Old English speakers apart from us moderns but the sheer number of words for a particular concept. You鈥檙e left thinking that a thousand years ago some subjects must have been far more complex in their layers of meaning. Modern English has the words 鈥榖lood鈥� and 鈥榞ore鈥�, for instance, but Old English has 产濒艒诲, 蝉飞腻迟, 诲谤脓辞谤, heolfor and s膩wel-诲谤脓辞谤. 叠濒艒诲 (pronounced BLOAD) is the most prosaic of these, with the others found mostly in poetry. S膩wel-诲谤脓辞谤 (SAH-well-DRAY-or) literally means 鈥榮oul-blood鈥�, perhaps because the soul was thought to be located in the blood, or because blood was in some other way connected to the soul. An Old English poem about Judgement Day uses 产濒艒诲, 诲谤脓辞谤 and 蝉飞腻迟 in the space of three lines, leaving the modern English translator scrambling to find enough synonyms.
Similarly, Old English has many more words for 鈥榦cean鈥� than modern English with its limited stockpile of synonyms (the sea, the deep鈥�?). In Old English there鈥檚 蝉牵 (from which we get 鈥榮ea鈥�) but also holm, brim, secg, mere and 飞忙迟别谤-蝉肠颈辫别, as well as poetic compounds like 瘸冒-濒腻诲 (wave-path), 产谤颈尘-濒腻诲 (sea-path), 濒补驳耻-蹿忙冒尘 (sea-embrace), 丑飞忙濒-飞别驳 (whale-way) and 蝉别驳濒-谤腻诲 (sail-road). Today we have so many different words for different types of roads (street, avenue, lane, boulevard, highway, freeway, etc.), so it鈥檚 really not surprising that people in early medieval England would also have an extensive vocabulary for their main 鈥榬oad鈥�.
What I love the most about Old English is stumbling upon words that are now obsolete but that still resonate strongly in my own life. These include 奴丑迟-肠别补谤耻 (care that comes early in the morning) and 腻苍-驳别苍驳补 (鈥榦ne-goer鈥�, the perfect word for someone who鈥檚 a bit of a loner). But my favourite word in Old English is wordhord. Appearing only seven times in extant Old English literature, wordhord is literally 鈥榳ord-hoard鈥�, a hoard or stockpile of words. In the early medieval period, stories were often passed on through speaking and singing rather than writing. A storyteller in a mead-hall would need a well-stocked hoard of words to draw upon in order to weave a tale from memory. A wordhord wasn鈥檛 a physical object like a dictionary but a metaphor for the store of words and phrases a poet kept in their mind, ready to use when practicing their craft.
Obviously a word like wordhord tells us something about the experience of storytelling more than a millennium ago, but it鈥檚 also surprisingly relevant. I wrote my book to be a wordhord of sorts. Over the years many Old English words have found a place in my personal hoard, words that have brought me joy and bewilderment, surprise and confusion. There鈥檚 even a word to describe the emotion that comes from collecting and treasuring whatever is most precious to you鈥�hord-wynn (hoard-joy).
Not all the words in The Wordhord are strange or mysterious. Some haven鈥檛 changed a bit (like word). Words that have endured reveal what has remained significant over time, and obsolete words tell us about concepts and ideas that are foreign to the modern world. Each chapter in The Wordhord explores a different aspect of daily life in Old English, from our basic needs (like eating and drinking) to our loftiest pursuits (like religion and life goals).
My book won鈥檛 teach you Old English grammar. You won鈥檛 walk away being able to read Beowulf in the original. But I hope you鈥檒l discover some of the hord-wynn that can be found when exploring the secret histories of words, stories about the language you thought you knew.
Hana Videen has been hoarding Old English words since 2013, when she began tweeting one a day. Now more 20,000 people follow these gems from her wordhord. A writer and blogger, she holds a PhD in Old English from King鈥檚 College London and lives in Toronto. Website Twitter @OEWordhord