Shetland, some belong to certain larger portions of the Islands, as, for example, North Shetland, more strictly, the North Isles; the Westside; South Shetland; but many are limited to a single district or to a single island.
Of the great mass of words that have become antiquated, some cannot be said to have perished, as they are still used by old people, though often only in certain islands, districts or neighbourhoods; they are not to be heard in the speech of younger people. Other words are remembered only by elderly people, as having been used, at an earlier time, by their parents and grand-parents. A third and smaller group consists of the words that old people can remember being used only on certain occasions. Finally, there are the words that are known only through old writings, or lists of words.
Very many words that are current, or to some extent so, are used in different senses in different places; see, for example, aber, adj., one of the first words in the Dictionary.
The Shetland Norn is, in a lexical sense, specially allied with the dialects in the south-west of Norway, from Bergen to Mandal in the west, with Telemarken and Smålenene in the south. This becomes obvious on a closer examination of the localities given in connection with the words contained in the Norwegian dictionaries of Aasen and Ross.
Aasen’s stock of words is fairly evenly distributed over the different parts of Norway, in such a way, however, that the parts of the country lying farthest to the south-west are rather weakly represented. Such being the case, it is fortunate that the south-west of Norway is strongly represented in Ross’s large dictionary, which appeared as a supplement to Aasen’s.
Even taking into account the circumstance that some of the words recorded by Aasen, and particularly by Ross, as belonging to the south-west of Norway, are also to be found or were formerly to be found in other parts of Norway, the character of the word-material in the Shetland Norn points so decisively to the south-west of Norway, that one can conclude that the Shetland Islands were peopled to an altogether preponderating extent from these parts: the stretch of country from Bergen down to Lister and Mandal. The centre-point of this Norwegian emigration to Shetland in ancient times was Agdesiden (Jæderen, Dalene). To this part of the country, and the parts lying nearest to it, one can refer by far the largest number of those words in the Shetland Norn vocabulary that are not of a general Norwegian character.
Although Ross’s dictionary is a supplement to Aasen’s, it also contains, in addition to a more exact account of words given by Aasen, a very important independent stock of words, with explicit reference to the localities concerned. This weighty supplement has been of great value in connection with my investigations into Shetland Norn, and that in a double sense.
Very many of the Norn words in the Shetlandic are of an insignificant character and apparently of a lower class, half-comic,
