“Go shag a horse!”: The 17th–18th Century Basque-Icelandic Glossaries Revisited
Viola Giulia Miglio*
Abstract - This paper takes a fresh look at what is known about the 17th–18th century Basque-Icelandic glossaries and reassesses
their historical importance from a cultural perspective. These anonymous glossaries have been published a number
of times since Deen’s fi rst publication (1937) and attracted some interest in the 1980s because of the few Basque pidgin
sentences included in the second glossary. I maintain that their importance goes well beyond the undoubtedly interesting
pidgin section of glossary II. To prove this point, I sketch a brief history of the context in which Basques and Icelanders
came together, and analyze some of the words in the glossaries to offer an explanation of some obscure terms, as well as to
re-assess the origin of the informants and the circumstances that gave rise to these unique documents.
*Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; miglio@span
port.ucsb.edu.
Introduction
The 17th-century Basque-Icelandic glossaries
undoubtedly attracted some attention in the 1980s,
especially thanks to two linguists’ interest in the
pidgin sentences at the end of the second glossary
(e.g., Bakker 1986; Hualde 1984, 1991a, 1991b).
They are known in the Basque Country1 and have
been recently mentioned in the fi rst conference on
contacts between Basques and Icelanders held in the
Icelandic West Fjords in June 2006.2
However, while known, the glossaries do not
seem to have received the attention they deserve
among Basque philologists or even Icelandic
historians. Since the elicited Basque words were
written down phonetically, so to speak, by a
compiling Icelander that knew no Basque, they
provide substantial evidence for 17th/18th-century
pronunciation—at least of those Basque dialect(s)
represented in the texts. After careful perusal
of the manuscripts, as well as of Deen’s (1937)
printed version of the glossaries, I found that the
nature of the glossaries themselves—the words
contained therein, including swearwords and nonsensical
bilingual Icelandic-Basque verse, and the
fact that there have been at least three independent
glossaries from this time period—demand a new
assessment of these documents.
In this paper, I will comment briefl y on the ideas
about the glossaries present in Icelandic publications,
and revise some of them concerning the origin of the
informants and the nature of contacts between Icelanders
and Basque whalers. Informants are usually
said to be from the northern Basque provinces, currently
under French administration, and the contacts
between the two populations have been described as
sporadic and based on common commercial interests
or needs; hence the existence of a Basque-based
pidgin language. I maintain that informants were
multiple and of mixed origin, offer an explanation
for some obscure words, analyze possible elicitation
methods, and fi nally suggest that these documents
bear witness to a different type of contact than that
brought about by mere commercial interest: they
are rather the result of cultural curiosity on the part
of the Icelanders for people from mainland Europe
with a markedly different language and customs.
Corroborated by Edvardsson and Rafnsson’s (2005)
archeo-historical research, my analysis of the glossaries
stresses the importance of these documents,
not only from a philological point of view, but also
from a cultural-historical one.
The Glossaries
The glossaries are anonymous; the fi rst and
second are contained in manuscript AM 987 4to
at the Institute Árni Magnusson in Reykjavík, the
third is a loose page contained in JS 284 8vo at the
Manuscripts Department of the National Library of
Iceland. The most accessible version of the glossaries
is Deen’s 1937 edition, and although he talks
about two glossaries, it would be more appropriate,
as Guðmundsson (1979) pointed out, to talk about
three glossaries (henceforth I, II, and III).
The glossary I is titled Vocabula Gallica, or
“French words,” suggesting a possible French
Basque origin of the source (Fig. 1). It comprises 517
words, phrases, or short sentences, and 46 numerals
and was found among the documents Jón Helgason
was researching for his doctoral dissertation on Jón
Ólafsson from Grunnavík (1705–1779), a learned
Icelander with a degree in theology and multifaceted
interests, who wrote treatises on science, language,
and history among many other things (Grímsdóttir
1994, 1999, 2001). He spent most of his life working
in Copenhagen, fi rst copying manuscripts for
Árni Magnússon and later working in research and
writing his own books. The glossary is anonymous
and the calligraphy suggests that it was written in
the second part of the 17th century or around 1700.
Apart from being the most exhaustive list that has
2008 Journal of the North Atlantic 1:25–36
26 Journal of the North Atlantic Volume 1
270 oratsa – näl “nail” or orotsa). Words and phrases
are grouped together according to semantic fi elds,
although it is a principle that is followed loosely at
best. Perhaps “semantic association” might be a better
way to characterize the author’s organizational
patterns. For instance, it starts with general names
(man, woman), moving on to names of posts on a
ship (skipper, cook), but then goes on from “mast”
to “schnapps” (I 19 and 20 respectively), from types
of wine to water, and from water to sea and pack ice.
The Icelandic glosses are always indefi nite, whereas
most Basque nouns (and some adjectives) are in the
citation form, which in Basque consists of the noun
followed by the suffi xed defi nite article –a.3
The second glossary is less extended: 229
words, phrases, or sentences and 49 numerals; entries
are organized along the same loosely respected
guidelines according to semantic field. This glossary,
titled Vocabula Biscaica or “Biscayan words”
exists only in the copy made by Jón Ólafsson from
Grunnavík (Fig. 2), who mentions the glossary in
a letter dated 1728 (Grímsdóttir 1999:107). He
copied it from an extant source at the time he was
writing.4 That source is now lost to us. Jón Ólafsson
also explains in a short preface in Icelandic
to the second glossary that he omitted words that
were identical in both manuscripts, the first glossary
and the one he was copying from, as well as
made connections between different forms of the
same concept that appear in both glossaries (he put
a dash before the Basque words in question and the
number of the equivalent forms in I, after the Icelandic
gloss in II). It is unclear why Deen (1937:86)
would attribute the preface to one Olgason (possibly
Olgason for Ólafsson).
What is particularly interesting about the second
glossary is that entries 193–228 are verbs, phrases,
and short sentences in what appears to be a pidgin
language used to communicate in Iceland between
the Basque whalers and the Icelandic locals. These
few phrases and sentences are important from a linguistic
point of view even if they bear witness only
in a rather rudimentary way to what communication
between these two unintelligible languages must
have been like. It is also interesting from a historical
point of view because it is evidence of extended communication
and mutual curiosity between Basques
and Icelanders; their relation has not been correctly
evaluated in the past and this misconception will reveal
itself as more important than previously thought
(however, see Einarsson 1987).
Glossary III has been lost, unfortunately, but
it was extant until the 19th century, when Sveinbjörn
Egilsson5 described it and copied 11 words
that were unintelligible to him and their glosses
into Icelandic. The manuscript he had consisted of
eight pages in duodecimo format, “followed by two
Figure 1. First page of glossary I, dating back to the second
half of the 17th century. Its author is anonymous and
so is the copy.
survived till today, it sometimes suggests alternative
words for the same concept (I 266 brosia – borjarn
“drill” or gimbalita) or alternative spellings, which
no doubt are intended to point to differences in pronunciation
(I 1 gisona – madur “hombre” or gizuna,
2008 V. Miglio 27
pages with funny words and glosses.” Behind the
main manuscript was written “1685. Helga Jónsdóttir.”
(the manuscript’s author? or the owner?).
Sveinbjörn’s information is to be found on a loose
page of blue paper (Fig.3). The note is signed, but
it is apparently something he writes for himself,
almost as an afterthought at the end of a poem he
had copied, which was evidently his main interest.
He copies the words just as examples, there
is therefore no specific system or logic to them:6
passamana – borð “table;” cikumuturra – únliður
“wrist;” brasa – faðmur “bosom;” baso rikunja
– hægri handleggur “right arm;” bushua – handleggur
“arm;” udula – blóð “bood;” estomaka – bringa
“breast;” silkhua – nafli “navel;” sussura – blása
þungan “sigh;” goetta – þenkja “reflect, consider;”
tinta – blek “ink;” and ends with “etc.”
History of Basque Whaling and the Icelandic
Connection
Interactions between men and whales are lost
in time. Some of the more ancient encounters are
recorded in the petroglyphs of northern Norway and
go back 9000–10000 years, others from Alaska go
back at least 6000, if not 8000 years ago (Ægisson
et al. 1997:5) (Fig. 4). The Basques have an ancient
tradition of fi shing—at least coastal, shallow-water
fi shing—judging from the fi ndings of bone harpoons
Figure 2. First page of glossary II, dating back to the fi rst
quarter of the 18th century. Its author is anonymous, but the
copy was made by Jón Ólafsson from Grunnavík. The original
from which Ólafsson copied it is no longer extant.
Figure 3. Verso of the loose page signed by Sveinbjörn
Egilsson (1791–1852), which reproduces eleven words
from glossary III, originally contained in a ten-page
manuscript that is now lost.
28 Journal of the North Atlantic Volume 1
in caves, such as the Lumentxa cave by Leikeitio,
that go back at least to the Magdalenian period
around 13,000 years ago.
The beginning of Basque maritime activity is
certainly shrouded in the mists of time. However,
as Caro Baroja (2001:217) points out, Basque fi shing
and navigation on a more advanced scale seem
to have begun almost ex nihilo and very suddenly
around the 9th or 10th century. Caro Baroja suggests
that the inception of Basque fi shing and the
settlement of the northwestern French coast by the
Normans in the 9th century cannot have been fortuitous
and unrelated events. It is possible, therefore,
that the Normans, equipped with better shipbuilding
techniques that they brought with them from Scandinavia,
taught the Basques both shipbuilding and fi shing
techniques. If this is true, maybe the Normans
also instructed them in whaling techniques (Jenkins
1971:59–60 and sources cited therein), but recent
scholarship convincingly argues that collaborative
efforts between Normans and Basques cannot be
dated earlier than the 11th century (Campos Santacana
and Peñalba Otaduy 1997) (Fig. 5). Regardless
of where the Basques learned how to fi sh for whales,
it is clear they had over time refi ned the techniques
that made them the masters of whaling until well
into the 17th century (Fig. 6).
The Basque whale-hunting tradition can be traced
back to early medieval times, possibly to the 10th
century and certainly since the 12th century (Yraola
1983:27). The importance of this activity is clearly
laid out by Michael Barkham (2006, also sources
Figure 4. Drawing of a blue whale from an Icelandic 17thcentury
manuscript with observations on nature by Jón
Guðmundsson “the Learned” (1574–1658).
Figure 5. Reproduction of a medieval coat of arms from
the municipality of Getaria, Gipuzkoa, showing a harpooned
whale, and attesting to the importance of whale
hunting along the Basque coasts from the Middle Ages
onwards.
Figure 6. Modern rendition of the Getaria coat of arms.
2008 V. Miglio 29
cited therein) and symbolically attested by the coat
of arms of numerous Basque coastal communities,
such as Biarritz, Getaria, Hendaia, Hondarribia,
Mutriku, Bermeo, and Lekeitio7 (Fig. 7). Most
famous is probably that of Biarritz from 1351,
portraying fi ve fi shermen, including a man with a
harpoon and an oarsman in a typical Basque txalupa
approaching a whale (Yraola 1983:28; Itsas Begia,
no date). Documentation and archeological fi nds attest
to the numerous lookout points (talaiak), from
which sentinels would warn of approaching whales
and the hunters would get in their rowing boats and
either circle the whales and push them to beach
on the shore, or harpoon them at sea and let the
wounded animal drag the boat towards the shore. In
fact, Baiona seems to have requested a monopoly on
selling whale meat as early as 1059, and there are
legal documents from Donostia referring to taxes
and regulations on the sale of baleens from 1181
(Azkarate 1992:20).
However, fi shing enterprises of some importance,
such as fi shing and hunting whales on the high seas,
required a certain social, political, and economic
infrastructure that was not to be attained until the
Reconquista8 was well under way. For instance, as
pointed out by Caro Baroja (2001:217), an increase
in the importance of the coastal towns, commerce,
and the rise of artisans and their guilds, including
those of fi shermen, implied better roads, an increase
in population in the hinterland that would require
fi sh, as well as better means of preserving fi sh for
transportation. The good fortune of fi shing towns
certainly benefi ted from the consolidation and expansion
of the Northern Christian kingdoms, their
political protection, and their need for fi sh during
ritual and prolonged periods of fast such as Fridays
or Lent.
Depending on how one defi nes the “apogee” of
whale hunting, different centuries are indicated as
the golden age of Basque whaling. Jenkins (1971:
61) points to the 12th and 13th century, judging from
the number of documents referring to whale hunting
in the coastal waters of the Bay of Biscay. At this
time, whaling was not subject to any restrictions and
whales were still abundant a short way off the coast.
It is known that the Church received a voluntary gift
of the whales’ tongues in this period. By the 13th
century, the Church levied a tithe, and the kings of
England, as Dukes of Guyenne, also demanded a
sum levied on the Basque whale fi sheries.
According to Caro Baroja (2001:218), the most
prosperous period for whale hunting in the Basque
Country must have been the 14th and 15th centuries
(see also Barkham 2000). By the 16th century, however,
whales had become a rare sight off the coasts
of the Gulf of Biscay, and therefore Basque hunters
were forced to travel further north to fi nd these
animals (Fig. 8). Yraola (1983:29) maintains that
Figure 7. Front and back of a 1297 seal of the Municipality
of Hondarribia reproduced by painter Javier Sagarzazu.
Figure 8. Drawing of right whale and map showing its modern distribution.
30 Journal of the North Atlantic Volume 1
the golden age of Basque whale fi shing and transoceanic
expeditions in search of whales took place
at the end of the 15th century and beginning of the
16th century. The discrepancy is no doubt due to the
fact that Yraola considers transoceanic expeditions
as a mark of the heyday of Basque whale hunting,
whereas those gruelling and dangerous expeditions
were simply brought about by the extinction of the
right whale (Eubalaena spp.) in coastal waters were
they had been initially exploited (Fig. 9).
When can we surmise that Basques began to
regularly fi sh in North Atlantic waters? Various
sources cited in Azkarate (1992:24) report of 17thand
18th-century documents mentioning a date of
1372 for the arrival of Basques in Newfoundland.9
It may be that by the 15th century, Basques had
reached Newfoundland, but unambiguous sources
stating their presence in Newfoundland are from
1517 for cod fi shing and 1530 for whale hunting
(Azkarate 1992:24–25) (Fig. 10). At that time, they
set up fat-liquefying stations devoted solely to the
processing of whales, although fi shing of cod always
seems to have gone hand in hand with whale
hunting.10 The 16th century was then a period of
apogee in whale hunting at more northern latitudes,
and it seems plausible to surmise that by the time
they had reached Newfoundland, they would have
at least known about the Icelandic coasts too, since
one of the routes to reach that part of north America
goes by Ireland and turns west just south of Iceland
Figure 9. Drawing of a right whale from an Icelandic
17th-century manuscript with observations on nature by
Jón Guðmundsson “the Learned” (1574–1658).
Figure 10. This map (from Barkham 1991) shows some of the usual routes taken by Basque mariners to reach the Newfoundland
fi shing grounds and fi sheries in the 16th and 17th centuries. The arrows showing routes are only indicative. It should
be noticed that M. Barkham (pers. comm.) maintains that “there is no fi rm evidence of Basques in the 16th century having
sailed further north than Ireland or coming from Terra Nova,”
2008 V. Miglio 31
(Bernier and Grenier 2001). If the Basques did not
experiment with Iceland at this point, it may have
been due to the abundance of whales and cod off the
coasts of Newfoundland that made it unnecessary to
try anywhere else.
According to the Association for Basque Maritime
Activities, Itsas Begia, there is an Icelandic
chronicle dated 1412 that places twenty Basque
vessels off the coasts of Iceland to hunt for whales
(Itsas Begia, no date; but see Einarsson 1987 fn.1 for
the original references—Einarsson thinks that this
interpretation is a misunderstanding and the ships
in question were English). Yraola (1983:37) states
that Basques were coming to Icelandic shores at the
end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century. It
is more likely that Icelandic waters would start being
exploited by whale hunters once Newfoundland
waters had stopped being productive because of
overfi shing around 1600, as suggested in Edvardsson
and Rafnsson (2005:6). Certain records of Basque
presence in Iceland date, in fact, from the beginning
of the 17th century: Guðmundsson argues convincingly
that a fi rst Basque ship came to Iceland in
1604, based on the report by Jón Ólafsson Indíafari
(1593–1679) in his biography (Guðmundsson 1979:
77). Certainly the most vivid records of encounters
and confrontations on Icelandic soil and waters are
about the year 1615, when Basque sailors were shipwrecked
and subsequently killed by the local population
in the West Fjords of Iceland, an action probably
orchestrated by the local governor Ari from Ögur
(Guðmundsson 1979:77–80, Huxley 1987).
During the 16th century, however, we can surmise
that Basque whaling is already in decline, since
we have numerous records that Basque expertise in
whale hunting is being farmed out to foreign countries
such as Holland and Great Britain, or even
Denmark. At this time, big commercial enterprises,
such as the British Muscovy Company, have gotten
wind of the lucrative whale hunting business and
are imposing embargoes endorsed by local governors
and sovereigns to other companies or nations,
prohibiting anyone else to participate in independent
whale hunting. As a last resource, Basque hunters
fi nd employment on English or Dutch ships and
have to teach these other nations the highly specialized
tasks involved in whale hunting and in the
processing of the carcasses. The declining whale
stocks required going further and further to fi nd
these animals (as far as the Svalbards), as well as
considerable investments.11 Economic reasons, the
considerable danger of running afoul of pirates, and
the monopolies imposed by foreign nations all contribute
to explain the decline of whale hunting in the
Basque Country.
In the 17th century, therefore, we fi nd Basque
whalers mostly employed as harpooners by Dutch
and English companies; some, however, still went
independently as far as the Svalbards from St. Jean
de Luz, such as the ships captained by de Haristeguy
and d’Etchepare in 1613. In the 1630s, a partnership
between French and Danes brought the Biscayan
Basques back to the Svalbard fi sheries. However,
soon Danes and French parted ways, and incidents
with the Danes and Dutch made French whaling
in Svalbard problematic. In 1636, fourteen French
ships were captured by the Spaniards upon their return
from the Svalbards, when these sacked St. Jean
de Luz and other Basque coastal towns (Jenkins
1971). In this light, it is understandable to surmise
that fi shing for cod and whales in the waters around
Iceland may have been less sought after, and consequently
less dangerous.
The 17th century is, therefore, the most important
period of interaction between Basques and
Icelanders. It is not surprising that Glossary I was
produced in this century. The importance of facilitating
communication with the Basque fi shermen that
came for whales and cod is still felt at the beginning
of the 18th century, when Glossary II is copied. I
believe that previous scholarship has somewhat
underestimated the importance of the interactions
between these two groups on Icelandic soil, as some
of the recent archeological scholarship is setting out
to prove. In this light, the research carried out by
Edvardsson and Rafnsson (2005) is very important
and sheds light on the subject. According to these
authors, in fact, the ruins found in Strákatanga in
the bay of Hveravík in the Icelandic West Fjords
are to be interpreted as ruins of a Basque whaling
station, comparable to those unearthed at Red Bay
in Newfoundland (Azkarate 1992). If true, this interpretation
would prove that the Basques fi shermen
that came to Iceland actually came ashore and must
have interacted with the local population, something
that was previously discounted, as it was believed
that the catch would be processed on board the ships
(Edvardsson and Rafnsson 2005).
Origin and Nature of the Glossaries
It seems very likely that all glossaries, both the
extant ones, as well as the ones that have not come
down to us, were all produced in the West Fjords of
Iceland, since to my knowledge there are no records
of Basque whaling or fi shing ships in other parts of
Iceland for the period considered, except perhaps
for Snæfellsness (Einarsson 1987:288). Guðmundsson
(1979:76) quite rightly deduces that the lack of
cross-referencing among the three glossaries and
their being known from one manuscript only, points
to the fact that there may have been either more copies
of the same glossaries, or even other unrelated
glossaries, given how many Icelandic manuscripts
were lost throughout the centuries.
32 Journal of the North Atlantic Volume 1
“church” or I 38 rege “king”). Fewer words (15)
are clearly of French origin, such as glac “pack
ice” from Fr. glace, and 14 could be either Spanish
or French loans (rida “ligas” from Sp. brida or
Fr. bride, bala “weight” from Sp. bala or Fr. balle).
The same is true of the second glossary (51 of 228
entries are of Spanish origin), such as II 90 boca
“mouth”, and II 91 lingua “tongue,” as already
noticed by Hualde (1991). The many loans from
Spanish13 point to Southern (Spanish) Basque informants,
not solely from north of the Pyrenees as
maintained by Michelena (1961:172, esp. fn. 10)
and implied by Deen (1937:1–2). Thus, the origin
of the Basque informants would not preclude Jón
lærði as a possible author of one of the glossaries.
Jón Ólafsson from Grunnavík, who copied the
second manuscript and wrote a brief preface to
it, asks his uncle, pastor Ormur, to send him “my
Biscayan glosses” in 1728 (Grímsdóttir 1999:107).
He was fostered and schooled in the home of Páll
Vídalín, an important political and cultural fi gure in
his time. Jón Ólafsson also worked for Páll Vídalín
copying manuscripts from a very early age and had
great respect and admiration for Vídalín’s mother,
Hildur Arngrímsdóttir. Given that Jón Guðmundsson
lærði was Hildur’s grandfather (Grímsdóttir 1994:
11), as well as a friend of the Basques, I fi nd it likely
that he could have written the second glossary that
ended up in Jón Ólafsson’s hands.
From the third glossary, we have 11 words that
were copied during the fi rst half of the 19th century
from a manuscript that bore the writing Helga
Jónsdóttir 1685 (Deen 1937:106 and Fig. 3). She
was most probably the owner of the manuscript and
she was Kristín Magnúsdóttir’s aunt; the two women
belonged to an important family in the West Fjords
that counted two bishops among its members. We
know from Jón Ólafsson that this Kristín was very
interested in languages and culture in general and
that she spoke Danish and German well, and some
English, Dutch, Spanish, and Basque (which he calls
“Biscayan”), since “in that period those peoples
came often to the West Fjords” (Pétursson 2004:
131–2). It is only appropriate and likely that her
knowledge of this language would have benefi ted
from the existence of the glossary among the family
books, although it is also possible that she composed
the glossary and gave the manuscript to her aunt.
Revealing Words
Although this topic will be left for more in-depth
philological work, I would like to express some
ideas as to how the words were elicited. Hualde
(1984:41) states that words were elicited by pointing
to objects; however, this seems to be possible
only for some, and rather diffi cult for others (lion
I would add that the fact that in no contemporary
source is any of them mentioned (as something
extraordinary or otherwise) means that they were
either common in that part of Iceland, or that they
were hidden from common knowledge, or possibly
both. If the former is true, this would point to the existence
of a certain cultural interest on the part of the
Icelanders towards the Basque language and culture,
which in turn would require more than occasional,
chance encounters between the two peoples.12
Although the glossaries are anonymous, two
people have been suggested as the author of one or
the other glossary (see, for instance, Guðmundsson
1979:85–6, Edvardsson and Rafnsson 2005:7). I
would like to further assess their choice as to whom
could have had an interest and the capacity to produce
the glossaries. The fi rst one, which was written by an
older hand, could have been made by Jón Ólafsson
Indíafari (1593–1679), the most widely travelled
Icelander in his day (his nickname, Indíafari, means
“who travelled to India”). He wrote about his many
adventures and travels in his autobiography and
produced an Icelandic-Tamil glossary. He had had
contacts with Basques in 1627 in Iceland as well
as on a whaling expedition to Svalbard (Edvardsson
and Rafnsson 2005:7). The second one could
have been written by Jón Guðmundsson hinn lærði
“the Learned” (1574–1658), a talented man from
the West Fjords, who had no formal schooling, but
was well read and wrote a number of works, copied
manuscripts, composed verses, as well as practiced
medicine. He was ahead of his time in condemning
contemporary superstition; he was in fact accused
of sorcery, for which he was condemned and exiled.
His friendship with the Basque fi shermen was well
known. He composed verses remembering the Slaying
of the Spaniards (Spánverjavígin) in 1615, and
was the only one who openly condemned it, something
that pitched him against the local governor
Ari from Ögur and undoubtedly contributed to his
condemnation as a sorcerer, as well as his exile.
Both these men would have had the curiosity
and interest in a different culture, as well as close
contacts with native informants that could have
produced the glossaries. Rafnsson also supports this
idea about the authorship of the glossaries; however,
I disagree with his statement that “[because of the
surmised French Basque origin of the glossaries] it
is unlikely that Jón lærði had anything to do with
them, since the Basques that he had contacts with
were unambiguously from Spain” (in Edvardsson
and Rafnsson 2005:7).
After reading the glossaries carefully, I found
that there are many Basque entries of Spanish
origin. In I, 107 words of 517 are Spanish, not
counting the Basque entries with Latin roots that
are probably older loanwords (such as I 36 elisa
2008 V. Miglio 33
could have understood if Basques used single
Dutch words, phrases, or short sentences.
Two examples of the unintelligible words mentioned
by Deen (1937:42) seem in fact to be Dutch
words: II 31 scheidas – blad “sheet, page” is a form
probably related to scheiden “separate in different
parts.” Also for the curious cavinit (II 223, in Cavinit
trucka for mi – eckert kaupe eg “I am not buying
anything”), Deen (1937:104) surmises the presence
of a Dutch negation niet. I would suggest that cavinit
is the equivalent of modern German emphatic
gar nichts “nothing at all.” Dutch gaar, which now
means “exhausted,” was used as the emphatic negation
“not at all” in centuries past.15
As stated elsewhere (Miglio 2006), one can
expect that the Basque words in the glossaries may
have been mangled by the Icelanders that were writing
them down and had a limited or no knowledge
of Basque. We fi nd for instance III 2 cikumuturra for
eskumuturra “wrist” or III 4 baso rikunja for beso
eskuña “right arm.”16 So that Deen’s mystery word I
425 kikomiciuka – blindesleykur “blind man’s buff”
may well be a corrupted form of the Basque equivalent
itsumando (in its adverbial form itsumandoka).
What is interesting about this form is that the practical
need for a translation of this concept is certainly
very limited, and its existence points again to a
wider cultural signifi cance of the glossaries.
The fi rst mystery word17 (I 244) mentioned by
Deen (1937:42), ithecalbua, is translated as “ginger”
(Zingiber offi cinale) into Icelandic, but with no explanation
for the Basque term. It is possible that the
sailor was not familiar with the spice (or its name)
and that he tried to give a descriptive name to the
shape of the root he was shown, such as itsiki (variant
of atxiki) “to adhere or be glued together” and
arba “twigs” (or arbola “trees”), with the meaning
of “little branches stuck together.”18 Apart from the
phonetic/grammatical plausibility of the phrase, it
should also be remembered that ginger was indeed
very popular both as a food ingredient and as a medicine
in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but without
further research, it is hard to evaluate how familiar a
Basque sailor was likely to be with this root.
From the second glossary (II 134), plamuna19
is translated as fl yðra into Icelandic, or “Atlantic
halibut” (Hippoglossus hippoglossus), the largest of
fl atfi shes, which is rarely found in waters warmer
than 8 °C (and never warmer than 15 °C).20 Given
that the temperature of Basque waters fl uctuates
around 12 °C in the coldest months, and 21 °C in
the warmest, the halibut was probably not a familiar
fi sh. Because of its form, plamuna may be related to
plama “a sheet” (as a sheet of metal or paper), that
is, something fl at (B. plaun).
Finally, I would like to draw attention to word
I 483 tampissa. Deen doesn’t offer any gloss or inand
bear, for instance, or even more so, God and
devil). Guðmundsson (1979:85), on the other hand,
maintains that while some may have been cases of
direct elicitation by pointing to an object (see for instance
the amusing explanation for the mysterious II
10 saildia), others were probably translations from
a tongue commonly understood by informant and
interviewer, possibly Latin.
Even if some ships’ captain may have indeed
known Latin (such as Martín de Villafranca, killed
in the Spánverjavígin of 1615), it is unlikely that
many sailors had access to that language. Moreover,
knowledge of Latin in the 16th century was so scarce
in Iceland that even many Icelandic bishops knew
none (Pétursson 2004), and even if schooling clearly
improved at the end of the 16th century and during
the 17th century (Pétursson 2004), it is not likely for
less important church or administrative fi gures in the
West Fjords to have commonly known Latin.
What is plausible is that another living
language would be used as a means of communication
between Icelanders and Basques, and I agree
with Guðmundsson that there must have been a
language used in the composition of the glossaries,
as pointing would not have been sufficient. A
third language was probably used to elicit a series
of adjectives (I 470–476), although it is interesting
to notice that those that could have easily been
elicited with pointing or mimicry are in the indefinite
form (“blind,” “mute,” “limping,” “bald”), but
the definite suffix-citation form marker is found in
the last three of the series, “naked” (unlikely to be
available as an example), “ugly,” and “beautiful,”
all subjective evaluations, and in case they are applied
to people, also likely to cause offense, as the
case may be.
Given the Basques’ extensive travels at northern
latitudes and their involvement with British and
Dutch whaling enterprises, it is likely that both
Dutch and English would be used. These sailors
may not have been fluent in either, but could have
used words from both.14 The British had commercial
interests in Iceland during the 16th and 17th
century, and there are records of the presence of
various English-speaking individuals dwelling in
Iceland for months and sometimes years at this
time, as well as of Icelanders in Britain during the
same period (Pétursson 2004). German merchants
had kept commercial ties with Iceland until 1602,
when the Danish monopoly on commerce forced
them little by little to desist from dealings with
Iceland. It is also known that affluent families from
the West Fjords had cultural and family ties with
Hamburg, sent their children to live and study in
Germany for periods lasting up to several years
(Ari from Ögur was one of them; Pétursson 2004)
and would have spoken German, enough that they
34 Journal of the North Atlantic Volume 1
Ungetorre Sappelle gorre “Hello, Red Hat”). Prudish
Mr. Deen, who for all other entries provides a
German and a Spanish gloss, turns to Latin when
it comes to the vulgar expressions: II 209 fenicha
for ju – liggia þig becomes Lat. cum te coire, and II
210 tricha – ad fara ä is again coire, but rather than
“make love to you,” as perhaps implied by the neutral
Latin word, these seem to be insults (of the “fuck
you!” type). I 212 gianzu caca – jettu skÿt – ede excrementum,
“eat shit” and I 213 caca hiarinsat23 – et
þu skÿt ur rasse is translated very accurately as ede
excrementum ani “eat asshole shit” (the Latin is
based on the Icelandic gloss, rather than the Basque,
which simply means “shit for you,” according to
Deen). In two cases, Deen cannot decipher the
Basque word, even if the Icelandic is very clear: II
214 jet sat – kyss þu ä Rass “kiss [my] ass,” but jet
sat remains mysterious. In the colourful expression
II 211 Sickutta Samaria – serda merina “defi le the
mare,” Deen maybe did not ask some contemporary
sailor: xikotu is apparently still in use and literally
translates “to fuck,” or its imperative,24 so the
Basque expression is literally “(go) fuck a horse!”
(or a mare)—I will leave it to the anthropologist to
decide whether this was an exotic sexual practice or
simply an insult.
We may fi nd these expressions surprising, especially
if the main use of the glossaries was practical
communication, but very often we tend to impose
our moral values on past centuries. A comment
found in Helgason’s book about Jón Ólafsson from
Grunnavík, who copied the second glossary, is enlightening:
among Jón Ólafsson’s papers, there is an
Icelandic primer he had made for a Norwegian pupil
of his that was learning Icelandic. In light of very
modern, context-based, realistic language teaching,
Ólafsson made up a dialogue at the local shop. He
set up two situations: one in which the merchant
complied and the customer would manage to buy
schnapps; the alternative, however, shows what
would happen if merchant and customer did not
reach an agreement. Helgason (1926:137) is shocked
to read the “many, serious insults” exchanged in this
scenario, but comments laconically that “that may
well have been a true representation of Icelandic
commercial relations at that time.”
In conclusion, I would like to state once again
that the glossaries are invaluable documents not just
from a linguistic point of view, something both Bakker
(1986) and Hualde (1984) had recognized, but
that they are also invaluable snapshots of a period
when the Danish monopoly cast a shroud around
Icelandic life and forced two centuries of isolation
on her inhabitants. Or so we thought. This does not
mean that all Basque-Icelandic interactions were
positive,25 but that some were positive, others negative,
at times even tragic. In any case, there were
terpretation from modern Basque, but the Icelandic
Surtarbrandz spialld translates into “lignite tablet.”
There are two possible (partial) explanations: one
is that tampissa is a considerably distorted form of
ikatz bizi-a “coal ember-def.,” and the other is that
the word is not Basque at all.21 In the glossaries, we
fi nd words of Spanish (I 362 pissu < peso “weight,”
corresponding to the Ice. “heavy”) or French origin
(I 359 syrota < sirop), as well as from different
languages such as Dutch or English; this multilingualism
is not surprising, since sailors would pick
up words from people of different origin in their
voyages. Given that the word does not conform to a
Basque pattern, but could be Romance, it might be
ascribed to a different Romance language, such as
Gascon, which was also commonly spoken on the
coasts of what is now the French part of the Basque
Country in the XVII century. As for its interpretation,
I have not found a plausible Gascon source, but
if it is indeed a Romance word, it could relate to the
meaning of “to light (fi re)” found in many Northern
Italian dialects (cf. Mantuan impisá).
Re-assessing Basque-Icelandic Relations
Through the Glossaries
Helgi Guðmundsson (1979:76) had already
paved the way to revise our understanding of the
relationship between Basque whalers and Icelanders
in the 17th century when he said that the existence
of the three (or more) glossaries meant that “it must
clearly have been considered quite interesting to
talk to the Basques.” Recent scholarship reinforces
this idea and supports it with convincing historical
and archaeological proof (Edvardsson and Rafnsson
2005). The nature of the glossaries also implies a
type of relation between Basques and Icelanders
quite different from that suggested by the dramatic
events of the Slaying of the Spaniards in 1615.
As we have seen, some of the entries are what
we would expect if the glossaries served a purely
practical function: terminology related to ships,
clothing, food, and practical commands such as
“give me [something] to drink” (I 187), or “wash
me a shirt” (II 196). However, it is hard to see
the practical purpose of the words for heaven
and hell (I 460 and 461), or even more so of I
425 Kikomiciuca “blind man’s buff” (a children’s
game), or the bilingual verse at the end of I.22 I believe
that many entries betray a purely intellectual
interest for a different culture.
There is a section devoted to scurrilous words
at the end of the second glossary that may have had
the purpose of allowing Icelanders to know what the
Basques were saying behind their back, so to speak,
but that clearly turns into locker-room banter or
simply nonsensical expressions or in-jokes (II 215
2008 V. Miglio 35
Erlingsson, G. 1995. Við strandir norður staðnæmdist sú
strákaþjóð: Þrjú baskneskíslensk orðasöfn frá 17. öld.
Stafrétt útgáfa, mállýsing og orðskýringar. Unpublished
B.A. Thesis, University of Iceland, Reykjavík,
Iceland.
Einarsson, T. 1987. Sobre los primeros balleneros vascos
en Islandia. Pp. 287–288, In S. Huxley (Ed.).
Itsasoa (3) Los Vascos en el Marco Atlantico Norte.
Siglos XVI–XVII. Eusko Kultur Eragintza Etor,
Donostia.
Grímsdóttir, G.Á.. 1994. Um Jón Ólafsson úr Grunnavík.
In Friðrik Magnússon and Guðrún Kvaran (Eds.).
Hræringur úr ritum Grunnavíkur-Jóns. Orðmennt
og Góðvinir Grunnavíkur-Jóns, Reykjavík, Iceland.
9–18.
Grímsdóttir, G.Á.. 1999. Úrval bréfaskipta Jóns Ólafssonar.
In G. Ingólfsdóttir and S. Sigmundsson (Eds.).
Vitjun sína vakta ber. Góðvinir Grunnavíkur-Jóns og
Háskólaútgafan, Reykjavík, Iceland. 103–142.
Grímsdóttir, G.Á. 2001. Lærður íslendingur á turni. Gripla
12:125–147.
Guðmundsson, H. 1979. Um þrjú basknesk-íslensk
orðasöfn frá 17. öld. Íslenskt mál 1:75–87.
Helgason, J. 1926. Jón Ólafsson frá Grunnavík. S.L.
Möller, Copenhagen, Denmark. 341 pp.
Hualde, J.I. 1984. Icelandic Basque Pidgin. Journal of
Basque Studies in America 5:41–59.
Hualde, J.I. 1991a. Foreword to Glossaria duo Vasco-Islandica.
In Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca
Julio de Urquijo/Internacional Journal of Basque Linguistics
and Philology 25-2:317–319.
Hualde, J.I. 1991b. Icelandic Basque pidgin. In Anuario
del Seminario de Filología Vasca Julio de Urquijo/
Internacional Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology
25-2:427–437.
Huxley, S. (Ed.). 1987. Itsasoa (3) Los Vascos en el Marco
Atlantico Norte. Siglos XVI–XVII. Eusko Kultur
Eragintza Etor, Donostia.
Itsas Begia. No date. Histoire de peches basques. Available
online at http://assoc.orange.fr/itsas.begia/
baleine.htm. Accessed 1 December 2006.
Jenkins, J. T. 1971. A History of the Whale Fisheries.
Kennikat Press, Port Washington, NY and London,
UK. 336 pp.
Knörr, E. 2006. Basque fi shermen in Iceland: Bilingual
vocabularies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Paper
presented at the conference “Slaying of Spaniards
in the West Fjords in 1615,” Dalbær Snæfjallaströnd,
Iceland, June 24–25.
Michelena, L. 1961. Fonética Histórica Vasca. Imprenta
de la Diputación de Guipúzcoa, San Sebastián, Spain.
Miglio, V.G. 2006. Hvaða gaskónalæti eru þetta?: A Fresh
Look at the Basque-Icelandic Glossaries. Lesið í
hljóði fyrir Kristján Árnason sextugan 26. desember
2006. Menningar- og minningarsjóður Mette Magnussen,
Reykjavík, Iceland. Pp. 198–203.
Oregi, E. 1987. Tres glosarios vasco-islandeses del s.
XVII. In S. Huxley (Ed.). Itsasoa (3) Los Vascos en
el Marco Atlantico Norte. Siglos XVI–XVII. Eusko
Kultur Eragintza Etor, Donostia.
Pétursson, S. 2004. Erlend tungumál á Íslandi a 16. og 17.
öld. Skirnir 178 (autumn):291–317.
many common encounters and they were of many
different kinds. In short, there is so much more that
the glossaries can still reveal to us, both from a historical,
social, cultural, and of course a linguistic
point of view.
Aknowledgments
I wish to thank Brian Frazier, Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir,
Xabier Irujo, Giorgio Perissinotto, Sigurður
Pétursson, Harvey Sharrer, and two anonymous reviewers
for their help with some aspect or other of this paper. I am
greatly indebted to Ricardo Etxepare for many insightful
comments and lengthy discussions of many points about
the Basque-Icelandic glossaries. I would also like to thank
Antonella Baldi for sharing her knowledge of Dutch with
me. The views expressed in this paper are, of course, my
sole responsibility.
Literature Cited
Azkarate, A. 1992. Balleneros vascos del siglo XVI, Chateau
Bay, Labrador, Canada. Estudio arqueológico y
contexto histórico. Servicio Central de Publicaciones
del Gobierno Vasco, Vitoria, Spain. 261 pp.
Bakker, P. 1986. A Basque nautical pidgin: The missing
link in the Fu-debate? Journal of Basque Studies 7(1):
25–32.
Barkham, M.M. 1991. Shipowning, shipbuilding, and
trans-Atlantic fishing in Spanish Basque ports,
1560–1630: A case study of Motrico and Zumaya. Unpublished
Ph.D. Dissertation. Cambridge University,
Cambridge, UK.
Barkham, M.M. 2000. La industria pesquera en el País
Vasco peninsular al principio de la Edad Moderna:
¿Una edad de oro? Itsas Memoria/Revista de Estudios
Marítimos del País Vasco 3:29–75.
Barkham, M.M. 2006. A Brief History of Basque Whaling
in “Terra Nova” in the 16th Century and of Their First
Expeditions to Spitsbergen, Iceland and Norway in the
17th Century. Paper presented at the conference “Slaying
of Spaniards in the West Fjords in 1615,” Dalbær
Snæfjallaströnd, Iceland, June 24–25, 2006. To be
published in the Proceedings of the conference.
Bernier, M-A., and R. Grenier. 2001. Los arqueólogos
de patas de rana. Chapter 14. Available online at
http://www.histarmar.com.ar/Libros/PiedsPalmes/
pieds14expedicion.htm. Accessed December 1, 2006.
Campos Santacana, M.K., and M. Peñalba Otaduy. 1997.
La caza de la ballena. Su infl uencia en los usos y costumbres
desde la Edad Media. Zainak, Cuaderno de
Antropología y Etnografía 15:251–262.
Caro Baroja, J. 2001. Los vascos. In Basques [electronic
resource]: EX08. Human Relations Area Files, New
Haven, CT, USA.
Deen, N.G H. 1937. Glossaria Duo Vasco-Islandica. H.J.
Paris, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 124 pp.
Edvardsson, R., and M. Rafnsson. 2005. Hvalveiðar
Baska við Ísland. Fornleifarannsókn á Strákatanga
í Hveravík, Kaldrananeshreppi. Volume 15-05.
Náttúrustofa Vestfjarða, Bolungarvík, Iceland.
36 Journal of the North Atlantic Volume 1
13 Ricardo Extepare (CNRS/IKER, Baiona, Northern Basque
Country [France], pers. comm., 15 September 2006), a linguist
as well as a native speaker of Basque, mentions that
the native words in the glossaries, not only the loans, seem
to be of mixed origin , and do not belong exclusively to
northern dialects spoken in what is now France.
14 See clearly English forms in II 225 for mi, II 226 for ju.
15 I am indebted to Antonella Baldi for this information, as
well as for the etymological research on older meanings of
gaar (Van Dale, Groot Wooerdenboek der Nederlandse Taal,
Elfde, herziene druk door prof. dr. G Geerts en dr. C. Kruyskamp
Eerste Deel A-I, Utrecht/Antwerpen 1984, p. 803)
16 An anonymous reviewer points out that the order of arm
+ right is not appropriate for a head-fi nal language like
Basque, but there may have been a pause in the elicitation
of the two elements that may justify the unusual word
order. There is, I would agree, something strange about
this form; for instance, there is no defi nite article affi xed
to the noun.
17 The explanation for some of the following words has appeared
in Miglio (2006).
18 R. Extepare (pers. comm.) indicates that the part
may rather refer to isats/itsats “tail” in the sense of little
branches or hairs connected at the same point (also used
as “broom”).
19 Deen (1937:97) erroneously has plamua for this entry .
20 As noted by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (http:
//www.gma.org/fogm/Hippoglossus_hippoglossus.htm;
accessed 29 November 2006)
21 Both R. Extepare and an anonymous reviewer point to the
implausibility of the phonological derivation from ikatz
bizia, I would therefore opt for the non-Basque origin of
this term.
22 Teska skäl, enn Tafl a fjól/ tinta blek, og Lÿma þjól/ Sanua
hüva, Sangua fötur/ Sarra bastua, gamall liötur - which juxtaposes
the Basque and the Icelandic word for, respectively,
bowl, plank, ink, fi le, cap, leg, old, and ugly.
23 An anonymous reviewer suggests that the [h] in this form
points to a French Basque origin of the informant.
24 Many thanks to Ricardo Etxepare for this information.
25 After all, Icelanders still talk of gaskónalæti “ruckus,” a
compound joining the word for “Basque” (or Gaskóni) and
the word for (bad) “behaviour, noise.”
Yraola, A. 1983. Um baskneska fi skimenn á Norður-Atlantshafi
. Saga 21:27–38.
Ægisson, S., J.A. í Aðaldal, and J.B. Hlíðberg. 1997. Icelandic
Whales: Past and Present. Forlagið, Reykjavík,
Iceland. 96 pp.
Endnotes
1 The glossaries have been printed in the Basque Country
in Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca Julio de
Urquijo/International Journal of Basque Linguistics and
Philology, XXIV-2, 1991, and in Itsasoa (3) El Mar de Euskalerria.
Los Vascos en el Marco Atlántico Norte. Siglos
XVI–XVII edited by Selma Huxley in 1987, where they are
introduced by Eneko Oregi, a linguist of the Basque Institute
of Public Administration and author of a brief article
on the web about them (www.ivap.euskadi.net/contenidos/
informacion/admin_euskaraz/eu_3797/adjuntos/
36aldizkaria/36BAAL.pdf). They are also reproduced with
comment in Erlingsson’s (1995) Icelandic B.A. thesis.
2 Henrike Knörr presented a paper on “Basque fi shermen in
Iceland. On the bilingual vocabularies of the 17th century”
at the conference Slaying of Spaniards in the West Fjords in
1615, Dalbær Snæfjallaströnd, Iceland, June 24–25, 2006.
3 Clearly, whoever elicited the Basque words had no knowledge
of Basque and could not distinguish between root and
suffi x. Icelandic generally also suffi xes the defi nite article
after the noun, but not in the citation form; because the defi -
nite article in Basque is usually part of the citation form,
the discrepancy between the Basque and Icelandic forms
(cf. I 305 neguba - i.e., negu+a – vetur “winter”) is simply
a by-product of elicitation (see also Knörr 2006).
4 In JS 401 4to (Guðmundsson 1979:75).
5 He was a theologian, poet, and teacher of the Classics, as
well as headmaster at Bessastaðaskóli, a higher learning
institution.
6 This is my reading of the actual MS JS 284 8vo, the English
translations correspond to the Icelandic glosses.
7 See Barkham (2000), Itsas Begia (no date), also references
in Yraola (1983), and Campos Santacana and Peñalba
Otaduy (1997).
8 The military enterprise led by the Northern Christian reigns
of the Iberian peninsula to conquer the territories lost to
the Arab invasions of the 8th century. This stage of Iberian
history goes from 718–1492.
9 Azkarate (1992), however, also warns of the lack of rigorous
research in the field.
10 This is not surprising, given that cod shares the same living
environment with some whale species and is in fact a food
source for some whales, such as the minke whale.
11 The loss of thousands of pounds sustained by the Muscovy
Company in Britain whenever an expedition went wrong
(Jenkins 1971:79–84, 131–132) are signifi cant and show
what kind of an enterprise whale hunting was becoming in
order to be an economically viable activity.
12 It has recently come to my attention thanks to a personal
communication from Prof. J.I. Hualde (University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, May 13th 2008) and from Prof.
Shaun Hughes (Purdue University, email dated June 3rd,
2008), that there are indeed more of these glossaries out
there. Professor Hughes is working on an edition of a fourth
glossary found among the Icelandic manuscripts bought by
Harvard University Library when they purchased a portion
of the library of Konrad von Maurer of the University of
Munich. Maurer obtained most of his manuscripts during
his trip to Iceland in 1858. Prof. Hughes says the manuscript
in question is from the late 18th century/early 19th
century. The Basque-Icelandic glossary covers nearly two
pages and is one of 68 entries in the manuscript mostly of a
medical nature. The edition promises to be an important addition
to what we know about Icelandic-Basque contacts.