Normen
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Etymology: Based on men, plural of man (itself cognate with the -man in Norman); cf. Northmen.
Senses: examples: text: All the low German tribes were early distinguished for maritime enterprize, but the Danes and Scandinavians, who all passed by the name of Northmen, or Normen, were by far the most remarkable for bold adventure in the middle ages. […] Westwards the Feroe, Orkney, Shetland, and Western Islands were often visited, and partly peopled by the Normen; […] If we were to relate all the bold deeds which in pilgrimages, in the service of Constantinople, and in expeditions in almost every land and sea, even to Greenland and America, were achieved by the Normen, the relation would seem a romance. […] The Normen were true to one another, and virtuous men in their own eyes; […] The plundering Normen held murder, in the acquisition of their booty, no crime; […] We doubt if Christianity made the Normen more scrupulous, with regard to the property of others, than it did our Scotch and English borderers, who received absolution one day, and stole cattle the next. The Normen settled the matter with their conscience, on the terms of the following low German adage: […] which means that robbing and devastating were no shame, as they were practised by the best in the land.
ref: 1821 October, “On the Songs of the People of Gothic or Teutonic Race”, in The London Magazine, volume IV, number XXII, London: […] Taylor and Hessey, […], pages 412–413:
text: Musulman. The plural of this word, in respectable writers, is often written musulmen, as if the English word man entered into its composition. The true root, however, is salam, an Arabic word. […] It is remarkable that for the words German, Norman, which are really made up of our word man, the plurals Germen, Normen, are never thought of.
ref: [1838 May 26, H. D. S., “On Illusive Etymologies”, in The New-Yorker, volume V, number 10 (whole 114), New York, N.Y.: H[orace] Greeley & Co., page 157, column 2:
text: The Danes and Normen were making descents upon France and Germany, and inflicted upon those countries losses not much less grievous than England had suffered.
ref: 1840, Edward Churton, “From the Reign of Alfred to Archbishop Dunstan. Troubles of Europe and England in the Dark Ages.”, in The Early English Church, London: James Burns, […], page 229:
text: The King said: “Better would it be that the Swedes should sit at home and lick their bowls of sacrifice than try to mount Ormen Långa with their arms. But who are those who steer the ships to the left?” The people said: “That is Jarl Erik and his men.” Then said the King: “He has a lawful cause of fight against us, and there will be a hard battle for they are Normen like ourselves.” […] Then Jarl Ragwald stood up, and set forth Olof Haraldson’s proposal of peace and courtship of the Princess Ingegerd; he also spoke of how all West Gothland longed for peace, partly because the Normen robbed them of the provisions they were expecting by sea, and partly because they lived in continual fear and uncertainty by the invasions and marauding excursions which ruined their frontier.
ref: 1844, Anders Fryxell, translated by Anne von Schoultz, edited by Mary Howitt, The History of Sweden, volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 143 (Olof Tryggwason’s Preparation) and 152 (Upsala Ting):
text: When “the Normen were put to flight,” says the Saxon Chronicle, “the English from behind hotly smote them, until they came, some to their ships, some were drowned, and some also burned; and thus in divers ways they perished, so that there were few left, and the English had possession of the place of carnage.”
ref: 1847, Charles Whitehead, “The Wooden Walls of Old England. […]”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume XXII, London: Richard Bentley, […], pages 515–516:
text: When full of hope to clasp thy Alfbright form, / Oft am I driven by the envious storm / On Valland’s coast where Normen are enticed, / With snow-white garments to acknowledge Christ. […] I perceive that I have called the ancient Norwegians indifferently Normen, Northmen, and Norsemen. In writing of times subsequent to Rollo’s settlement in France, a distinction should be observed, but Normans (plural of Norman) appears to be a barbarism in our language.
ref: 1849, Zavarr [pseudonym], The Viking; an Epic. […], London: E[dward] Churton, […], →OCLC, pages 56 (Sjöfnarillska, lines 355–357) and 170–171 ([Notes.] Ari of Dûfa. (The Eagle and the Dove.)):
text: As I lay in the sublime calm of that midsummer night stretched on the grass beside my last salmon, I thought what cleverer fishers the Normen were of old—fishers of men. But the will and the might have gone from them. Have they forgotten the glory and the guilt?
ref: 1849 September, “Loose Leaves from the Note-Book of a Norwegian Fisher. The West Coast.”, in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, volume XL, number CCXXXVII, London: John W[illiam] Parker, […], chapter I (Fishers as they are and have been), page 301, column 2:
text: The Norwegians–the Normen were such inveterate mariners that they called the summit of the mt chain which separates Norway from Sweeden–the Keel ridge of the Country as if it were a vessel turned up.
ref: 1852 September 16, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, edited by Robert Sattelmeyer and Patrick F. O’Connell, Journal (The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau), volume 5 (1852-1853), Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, published 1997, →ISBN, page 346:
text: The deacon proposed we should visit the tombs, or rather the coffins, of the “Normen,” as he called them, who, by records still existing, are proved to have been here interred. […] The vault was so crowded up with Skeels—pronounced Scales, like Shakespeare’s Lord Scales—and Beens, great people in their time, if you may judge by their quarterings—that the massive oak coffins of the Normen were scarcely visible. The chapel under which the Normen lie is styled the Høg Chapel, and here may be seen one of the finest monuments of the Renaissance period existing in Denmark or elsewhere, erected to the memory of Sir Erik Høg, one of Christian IV.’s crack men, of Biørnholm, and Dame Sophia Lange, his wife, date 1647.
ref: 1860, Horace Marryat, “Aalborg or Eel Castle—Its armes parlantes—Death of King John—[…]”, in A Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles, and Copenhagen. […], volume II, London: John Murray, […], pages 90–91:
text: TRAVELING through the wilds of Norland, her tender limbs exposed to the snows of winter and the rains of summer, often without a shelter in the severest storms, it was expected that the frail Fredeema, if not captured by her enemies, would at length sink under the hardships she had to endure. […] [A]s long as he did not meddle with the Normen and Norwomen, it was deemed highly impolitic to stir up his wrath by interfering in behalf of the wretched and helpless creatures who had the misfortune to fall under his power.
ref: 1867, Kristofur Kadmus [pseudonym; Nathan Brown], “Ossamie Dies for Fredeema”, in The History of Magnus Maharba and the Black Dragon. […], New York, N.Y.: […] [T]he Proprietor, pages 22 and 25:
text: Horstord, Cornelia, Vinland and its ruins. Some of the evidences that Normen were in Massachusetts in pre-columbian days. (Repr. fr. „Appletons’ Popular Science Monthly” for December, 1899.) New York 1899. 17 S. (v. d. Verfasserin.) 8.
ref: 1900, Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, volume XXVII (overall work in German), Berlin: W. H. Kühl, page 262:
text: Normandy, formerly a province in the north of France, so-called from the north rovers or Northmen, otherwise called Normen, was founded by Charles the Simple, in A. D. 912. […] The Norsemen or Normen were a bold and venturous people, engaged, in the main, in farming; with the more intrepid in commerce, especially in Sea Commerce.
ref: 1913, Alexander Taylor Strange, “Historical Introduction”, in Gresham: Biographical and Historical sketches of the Greshams of America and Across the Seas, →OCLC, page 4:
text: It is also known that many Normen settled in Kent after the Conquest as well as a number of Huguenots of a later date.
ref: 1938, Harry Wright Newman, The Lucketts of Portobacco: A Genealogical History of Samuel Luckett, Gent. of Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland, and Some of His Descendants, with a Sketch of the Allied Family of Offutt, of Price Georges County, Maryland, Washington, D.C.: […] [T]he Author, →OCLC, page 4:
text: We were originally Celts here with an ancient civilization and systems of law. The Norsemen and the Normen were invaders. They secured the supreme political power but, underneath, the overwhelming majority of our people – the great body of the nation – adhered to their own way of thought and preserved their original Celticity.
ref: 1968 autumn, Mary C[ogan] Bromage, quoting Eamon de Valera, “Image of Nationhood”, in Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies, volume III, number 3, Saint Paul, Minn.: Irish American Cultural Institute, →ISSN, pages 11–26; quoted in “The Irish People”, in Suheil Bushrui, compiler, The Wisdom of the Irish: A Concise Anthology, Oxford, Oxon: Oneworld Publications, 2004, →ISBN, page 11:
synonyms: Normans
glosses: plural of Norman