In late October I took a long weekend trip to Norway, to be honest it wasn’t intended to be a journey to learn about anything religious themed. But I did make an interesting discovery looking at shop signs. In Norwegian Lordag is “Lord’s day”
Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden I have learned all became Christianised between 900 and 1200AD. I visited Finland in 2002 its a bit different, as it has a different language and I’m not sure about its history as modern Finland became a nation in 1918.
There’s always been confusion over if Saturday or Sunday should be a holy day and if it got interfered with over the years by the Greeks, or the Vatican or whatever. I’m still undecided on this, so I decided to do some research using Google Translator.
So what is saturday in other languages, Saturday, Lord’s Day, Sabbath, or something completely different?
Norwegian – lørdag
Danish – lørdag
Swedish – lördag
Faroese – leygardagur
Icelandic – laugardagur
Estonian – laupäev
Finnish – lauantai
Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) – Arfininngorneq
Northern Saami – lávvordat
Ok, now lets head back southwards;
Serbian – Субота (Sebota)
Polish – sobota
Romanian – sâmbătă
Uzbek – shanba
Urkainian – субота
Azerbajani – şənbə
Albanian – e shtunë
Russian – суббота
Macedonian – сабота
Czech – sobota
Hungarian – szombati
Slovak – sobota
Catalan – dissabte
Lithuanian – šeštadienis
Latvia – sestdiena
This isn’t a big surprise as Russia and Eastern Europe and the Baltics had a lot of Jews.
More closer to home we have:-
Spanish – sábado
Portugese – sábado
French – samedi
Italian – Sabato
Greek – Σάββατο (Sávvato) Big surprise there!!
Galician – sábado
Welsh – Dydd Sadwrn
Dutch – zaterdag
German – Sonnabend
Hebrew – יום שבת (Yom Shabbat, yeah!!)
Yiddish – שבת (like above)
Maltese – Is-Sibt (Maltese is a Semitic language, therefore distantly related to Arabic and Hebrew)
Amharic – Qdame (Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia)
Arabic – يوم السبت (sebat)
Persian – روز شنبه (shanbe)
Even languages spoken Israel’s worst enemies seem similar!!
Various Hebrew Roots people will say that Greek or Catholicism changed our weekend’s days around, but from what I see here, that my own nation using English, that we got a Pagan word (Saturday, based on Saturn-day) over our neighbours, I find this most interesting….
Norway – The city of Bergen – Days of the week – Norway and Judeo/Christian influence – Bergen’s fish market – Electric automotive Utopia – Bergen’s forest of Christmas
This is the view from my youth hostel. Its up on a hill in a leafy street overlooking the main city with some fantastic views over the rolling hills and harbour. The back end of the youth hostel is mostly where the smokers hang out, but theres also a place for barbeque which no one was using. Mind you it was late October. Actually I found Bergen to be no colder than London at the moment.
My good friend Peter drove us past this place as we went from a Israeli believer friend’s house past this place to a coffee shop close by which was also new, we thought it was a good time to get some coffee, play chess and chat.
Brit In Jerusalem 