The Old Tongue
Not everything can be translated.
Some words carry a weight that doesn’t cross cleanly. You feel them in the teeth. In the thread. In the breath behind the words.
This page holds the ones we come back to again and again.
Words you’ll see woven into Seiðr. Into story. Into bone-deep memory.
Think of it less like a dictionary—
More like a cairn.
A place to return when you forget what a word meant to the old ones. And to you.
Sacred Words & Their Meanings
Below are terms that matter deeply in the Norse threadwork.
Click any to explore its full story—what it meant, how it was used, and why it still echoes.
(If you want to explore all known terms alphabetically, you can download the full PDF here.)
Interactive Keyword Hub:
-
Blót – ritual sacrifice and sacred offering
-
Fylgja – the spirit that follows
-
Frith – peace born of oath, not ease
-
Grith – the shelter of protection granted
-
Hamingja – luck that lives in the bloodline
-
Landvættir – the spirits of the land
-
Nið – insult, shame, and sacred offense
-
Örlög – the threads laid before you were born
-
Seiðr – the magic in the breath, the weaving
-
Vé – the place made holy
-
Vörðr – the watcher, the spirit that guards
-
Wyrd – fate as becoming, not as fixed
-
Yggdrasill – the tree that holds all things
Want More?
Every one of these deserves a story.
So we’ve given them one.
Click through as we build each thread—some are live now, others are being stitched by hand. Check back as more become visible.
And if you want the full set of Old Norse-English translations for names, words, and phrases from the sagas, mythology, or reconstructed culture, you can always:
Download the Full Dictionary PDF
This is a labor of love and memory.
Not a textbook.
If you feel a word stir something in you—write it down. Say it out loud. Ask why.
The old language is not dead.
It’s waiting.
Ross G. Arthur has compiled an enormous collection of Norse words, and published it as a PDF book, the English-Old Norse Dictionary.
Download here -