Þúsund

Meaning of Old Norse word "þúsund"

As defined by the Cleasby & Vigfusson Old Norse to English dictionary:

Old Norse word þúsund can mean:þúsund

þúsund

f.; sérhverja þúsund, Stj. 298; á þúsund (dat.), SkS. 705; tvær, þrjár … þúsundir, 623. 53: in mod. usage it is mostly neut. (influenced by Latin?), but also fem. It is spelt þús-hund, Barl. 53; þús-hundum, FmS. vi. 409 (v. l.), Geisli 49; another form þús-hundrað (q. v.) is freq., esp. in Stj., Barl.; this double form -hund and -hundrað answers to the equally double form of ‘hundred,’ see p. 292, and is a proof that þúsund is a compound word, the latter part of which is ‘hund’ or ‘hundred;’ the etymology of the former part ‘þús’ is less certain; it is, we believe, akin to þysja, þyss, þaus-nir (a lost strong verb þúsa, þaus, þusu); þúsund would thus literally mean a swarm of hundreds: [in Goth. the gender varies, þûsundi, pl. þusundjos = χίλιοι, or þusundja, neut.; A. S. þûsend; Engl. thousand; O. H. G. dusunta; Germ. tausend, qs. dausend; Swed. tusende and tusen; Dan. tusinde; Dutch tuysend: this word is also common to the Slavon. languages: again, the Lapp, duhat and Finn. tuhat are no doubt borrowed from the Slavon. or Scandin.; the Gr., Lat., and Sansk. use other words]—a thousand.

þúsund

B. There is little doubt that with the ancient heathen Scandinavians (and perhaps all Teutons), before their contact with the civilised southern people, the notion of numbers was limited, and that their thousand was not a definite number, but a vague term, denoting a swarm, crowd, host (cp. the Gr. μυρίοι): in ancient lays it occurs thrice (Hkv., Em., FaS. i. 502), but indefinitely; hvat þrym er þar sem þúsund bifisk eðr mengi til mikit, what a din is there as if a thousand were shaking, or an over-mickle multitude, Em. 2; sjau þúsundir, Hkv. 1. 49, literally = seven thousands, but in fact meaning seven hosts of men.

þúsund

2. the dat. pl. þúsundum is, like huudruðum, used adverbially = by thousands, in countless numbers, FmS. vi. 409 (in a verse), Geisli 49.

þúsund

3. in the ancient popular literature, uninfluenced by southern writers, ‘þúsund,’ as a definite number, occurs, we think, not half-a-dozen timeS. As the multiple of ten duodecimal hundreds, ere the decimal hundred was adopted, ‘þnsund’ would mean twelve decimal hundreds; and such is its use in the Sverris Saga, FmS. viii. 40, where one vellum says ‘tvær þúsundir,’ whilst the others, by a more idiomatic phrase, call it ‘twenty hundredS.’

þúsund

II. in ecclesiastical writers, and in annals influenced by the Latin and the like, it is frequent enough; tíu þúsundir, fjórtán þúsundir, FmS. i. 107, 108 (annalistic records); fimm þúsundir, xi. 386, Al. 111; tíu þúsundum, SkS. 705; tíu þúsundum sinna hundrað þúsunda, Hom.; þúsund þúsunda, a thousand of thousands, i. e. a million, (mod.); hundrað þúsundir rasta ok átta tigir þúsunda, … hundrað þúsund mílna, Fb. i. 31 (in the legend of Eric the Far-traveller and Paradise, taken from some church-legend); fjórar þúsundir, Þiðr. 234: or of the years of the world, sex þúsundir vetra, FS. 197; sjau þúsundir vetra, Landn. 34.

þúsund

C. REMARKS.—The popular way of counting high numbers was not by thousands, but by tens (decades) and duodecimal hundreds as factors; thus ten … twenty hundreds, and then going on three, four, five, six … tens of hundreds (a ‘ten of hundreds’ being = 1200). The following references may illustrate this—tíu hundruð, ellefu hundruð, tólf hundruð, þrettán hundruð, fimtán hundruð …, Íb. 17, Ó. H. 119, 201, FmS. vii. 295, xi. 383, 385. From twenty and upwards—tuttugu hundrað manna, twenty hundreds of men, FmS. vii. 324, viii. 40; hálfr þriðitugr hundraða skipa, two tens and a half hundreds of ships, i. e. twenty-five hundreds, FaS. i. 378; þrjá tigu hundraða manna, three tens of hundreds of men, FmS. viii. 311; var skorat manntal, hafði hann meirr enn þrjá tigu hundraða manna, vii. 204; þrír tigir hundraða, D. n. v. 18; user fjorir tigir hundraða manna, nearly four tens of hundreds of men, FmS. vii. 275; á fimta tigi hundraða, on the fifth ten of hundreds, i. e. from four to five tens of hundreds, viii. 321; sex tigir hundraða, six tens of hundreds, 311, xi. 390; sex tigu hundraða manna, Fb. ii. 518, D. I. i. 350,—all odd amounts being neglected. The highest number recorded as actually reckoned in this way is ‘six tens of hundreds’ (fimtán tigir hundraða, fifteen tens of hundreds, FmS. viii. 321, v. l., is a scribe’s error): it is probable that no reckoning exceeded twelve tens of hundredS. All high multiples were unintelligible to the ancients; the number of the Einherjar in Walhalla is in the old lay Gm. thus expressed,—there are ‘five hundred doors in Walhalla, and five tens beside (the ‘five tens’ are, by the way, merely added for alliteration’s sake), and eight hundred Einherjar will walk out of each door when they go out to fight the Wolf’ (on the Day of final Doom). There seems to have been some dim exaggerated notion of a definite thousand in an ancient lay, only preserved in a half alliterative prose paraphrase, FaS. i. 502, where a mythical host is given thus,—there were thirty-three phalanxes, each of five ‘thousand,’ each thousand of thirteen hundreds, each hundred four times counted. The armies in the battle of Brawalla, the greatest of the mythical age, are given, not in numbers, but by the space the ranks occupied, Skjöld. S. ch. 8. This resembles the story in Ó. H. ch. 59, of the two young brothers, king’s sons: when asked what they would like to have most of, the one said: ‘CowS.’ ‘And how many?’ ‘As many,’ said he, ‘as could stand packed in a row round the lake (Mjösen in Norway) and drink.’ ‘But you?’ they asked the other boy: ‘House-carles’ (soldiers), said he. ‘And how many?’ ‘As many,’ said he, ‘as would in one meal eat up all my brother’s cowS.’ Add also the tale of the King and the Giant, and the number of the giant’s house-carles, Maurer’s Volksagen 306. No less elementary was the rule for division and fractions, of which a remarkable instance is preserved in an ancient Icelandic deed, called Spákonu-arfr, published in D. I. i. 305. See also the words tigr, hundrað, skor, skora, and the remarks in Gramm. p. xix. The Homeric numeration, as set forth in Mr. Gladstone’s Homeric Studies, vol. iii, p. 425 sqq., is highly interesting, and bears a striking resemblance to that of the ancient ScandinavianS. We may notice that in Iceland land and property are still divided into hundreds (hundreds of ells = 120), see hundrað B; in this case a thousand is never used, but units and hundreds of hundreds as factors, thus, sex tögu hundraða, in Reykh. Máld, (a deed of the 12th century), and so still in mod. usage; a wealthy man of the 15th century is said to have bequeathed to his daughters in land, ‘tólf hundruð hundraða ok ellefu-tíu og tvau hundruð betr, en í lausafé fimm hundruð hundraða,’ i. e. twelve hundreds of hundreds and ‘eleventy’ and two hundreds, and in movables five hundreds of hundreds, Feðga-æfi 16 (by the learned Bogi Benidiktsson of Staðarfell in Iceland, A. D. 1771–1849); sjau hundruð hundraða og þrjátigi hundruð betr, 21; hann eptir-lét börnum sínum fjármuni upp á níu hundruð hundraða, 22,—a proof that in very remote times, when this valuation of land first took place, ‘thousand’ was still unknown as a definite number.

Possible runic inscription in Younger Futhark:ᚦᚢᛋᚢᚾᛏ
Younger Futhark runes were used from 8th to 12th centuries in Scandinavia and their overseas settlements