NORSE WORDS
Roger Williams, in his book, Key to the Indian Language, 1644, had no trouble believing the Algonquins were speaking Norse, he wrote:
"There are two kinds of Old Norse. One is called "Gamle-Norsk" (Old Norse); the still older language is called "Ur-Norsk" (Primitive Norse). By marking the various words used by several tribes it should be possible to determine when each Norse settlement was made in America. I am in hopes it may be possible to do this at some future date, as it would give an idea how long the Norsemen did travel to these shores. It appears from my translations that such migrations continued into the fourteenth century or to the time of the Black Death." (Sherwin, 1940, p. 338)
Sherwin had no problem believing Algonquin words had Norse roots. He grew up speaking a dialect similar to Old Norse in remote Norway. After migrating to northeast North America, he was surprised to recognize that many Indian place names, when spoken out loud, described the land he was seeing. Sherwin compared over 15,000 phrases with Old Norse roots to Algonquin words. (Sherwin, 1940)
For example, Sherwin recognized Algonquin "Agawam" as "marsh." There were six "Agawam" place names in Massachusetts. Early Europeans defined three of them as "ground overflowed by water," two of them were defined as "marsh," and one had no definition. (Douglas-Lithgow, 1909)
Stromsted also could speak a dialect similar to Old Norse, because her parents sent her to a remote island for safety during World War II. She added to the list of northeast North American place names that had Norse roots. For example, she thought "Massachusetts" meant "The land of many hills." (Stromsted, 1974)
The Algonquin language must have been close to Old Norse because some Algonquin words can still be translated using a modern Norwegian dictionary. "Quebec" and "tomahak" are two examples. (Gabrielsen, 1999)
