Walter Sutherland (Norn)

Walter Sutherland (died c. 1850) was a Scottish man who was reportedly the last native speaker of Norn, a North Germanic language which had once been spoken throughout Shetland, Orkney and Caithness.^[1]^[2] Sutherland was from Skaw, on the island of Unst and lived in the northernmost house in the British Isles, near the present-day Unst Boat Haven.^[3]

Sutherland may, however, have been merely the last native speaker of Norn on Unst. Some unnamed Norn-speakers of the island of Foula were reported by Jakob Jakobsen to have survived much later^[when?] than the middle of the 19th century.^[4]

Notes[edit]

^ North-western European language evolution: NOWELE, vols. 50-51 (Odense University Press, 2007), p. 240
^ Area Guide Unst^{[dead link]}
^ June Skinner Sawyers, Maverick guide to Scotland (2000), p. 557
^ P. Sture Ureland, George Broderick, eds., Language contact in the British Isles: proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Language Contact in Europe, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1988 (M. Niemeyer, 1991), p. 455

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[1] North-western European language evolution: NOWELE, vols. 50-51 (Odense University Press, 2007), p. 240

[2] Area Guide Unst^{[dead link]}

[3] June Skinner Sawyers, Maverick guide to Scotland (2000), p. 557

[4] P. Sture Ureland, George Broderick, eds., Language contact in the British Isles: proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Language Contact in Europe, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1988 (M. Niemeyer, 1991), p. 455

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