From: john@jfeldredge.com
On Thu, 02 Jul 2015 16:05:41 -0400, Brian M. Scott wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Jul 2015 18:46:31 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt
> wrote in in rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> [...]
>
>> A Viking is a Norseman who lives on his farm most of the year, but once
>> the crops are planted and he has nothing much to do till harvest time,
>> outfits his ship, calls in his friends, and sails down the _vik_
>> (fjord) to raid, trade, or both.
>
> ( is 'inlet, small bay', not 'fjord'.) The etymology of
> 'pirate, freebooter', later 'robber, highwayman', is unclear.
> Derivation from , with the original sense 'freebooter who lies in
> wait in inlets', is one very reasonable possibility, but there is also
> evidence against it: Old English 'pirate' occurs already in the
> 8th century applied to sea raiders on the Saxon Shore, before the Viking
> period, and the apparently cognate Old High German personal name
> also occurs in the 8th century. There’s also an Old Frisian
> cognate or borrowing with the sense 'pirate'.
>
> [...]
>
> Brian
Waiting in an inlet for a vessel to come along the coast was the standard
pirate technique in many cultures, and still is in some parts of the
world. In the days before modern navigation instruments, the standard
sailing technique was to travel in the approximately-right direction
until you came into view of land, and then travel along the coast until
you got to your destination. Hiding in an inlet meant that a vessel
traveling along the coast couldn't see you until it got close. The
pirate vessel then would pursue the target (merchant vessels tended to be
slower, as the fast vessels used by pirates and navies had limited cargo
space).
Also, Old English, Saxon, Old High German, and the Scandinavian languages
are all linguistic cousins. So, it isn't surprising that a term cognate
to "viking" would exist in all of them.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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