Noticias
Russenorsk: the pidgin of the Far North
The historical links between Russians and Scandinavians are no mystery. Less known is that the two communities have gone as far as establishing a lingua-franca in the Far North of Europe.
Unsung heroes of this original linguistic adventure are the Pomors, a Russian community known as "the people who live by the sea". The Pomors were originally based along the coasts of the White Sea, with the city of Archangelsk as their main center, but their commercial ventures brought them further north well beyond the Arctic Circle to the islands of Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Pomor trade consisted mainly in selling or bartering flour, wooden planks, corn, honey, wax and fur in exchange for fish. The Pomor northward thrust brought them to a harsh isolated borderless territory of windswept coast and barren rocks inhabited by a mix of Norwegian, Sami, Karelian, Russian and Finn populations.
This European Far North lay outside the grasp of governments. Poverty was widespread in the Norwegian province of Finnmark during the 17th and 18th centuries and demand for fish, the only resource these Northern communities disposed of was on the wane in Western Europe. The King lived in Copenhagen miles and mindsets away making it difficult for the subjects in Finnmark to complain and press their case. The Russian orthodox calendar called for many days of fasting in which eating meat was forbidden and the quest for fish to feed a growing population was of paramount concern. If the Pomor trade had a religious underpinning for Russia, for Finnmark it was a godsend. The merchant class of Bergen, which held the monopoly over all trade there lobbied to keep the Pomors out. Thus the Pomors and Finnmark had to trade in secrecy: the Russians smuggled flour and the Norwegians sold or bartered their fish below board. By the mid 18th century this illegal trade was so successful that the Crown caved in and decided to grant free trade facilities for Finnmark.
This Northern multi-lingual population developed a lingua franca consisting mainly of a compound of Norwegian and Russian: Russenorsk. Most examples of Russenorsk were handed down mainly by merchants who worked in the area. A surprising amount of uniformity among such examples collected from the 1880s to the 1920s enables to consider Russenorsk an independent language. Russenorsk has neither conjugations nor declensions, there is essentially only one preposition (pa°) and the notion of tense, gender and number hardly exists. The people who actually spoke this pidgin refer to it as «moya pa° tvoya» or «kak sprek» meaning «mine for yours» or «how speak».
The 20th century stopped the Pomor trade in the tracks. German U-Boot submarine warfare made all Russian sea travel dangerous during the First World War; the Russian Revolution dug an ideological ditch between the two countries. Cooperation between the Norwegian resistance and the Red Army during World War two was short lived. The Cold War pitted Russians and Norwegians on opposing ends of the political divide.
Today, however, as Scandinavians and Russians look for creative cooperation formulae to face the common challenges in the Far North of Europe, the memory of the Pomor pidgin could work as a positive avatar.
A short example of Russenorsk pidgin of Finnmark: Drasvi, gammel god venn pa° moja= Good day to you my good friend. Kak ju leva?= How are you living? How are you? Jes pa slipom= Yes, he's sleeping. Mera better pa moja= It's better for me. Tvoja pa° moja sprek= You said to me, you told me. Moja grot krank= I'm very sick. Tvoja pa° vara trokkom trokk= Will you exchange goods for goods.
A slightly longer passage gives the idea of the mixing that took place: «Moja skasi pa° ju: kak ju vina trinke, Kristus grot vre» («I say to you that when you drink wine Christ is angry at you»). «Omer njet pa Kristus, men drogoj plass kom» («when you die you won't go to Christ but the other place»).
Robert Scarcia
Journalist
