Reflecting on Norwich

Fifty | Garden | Ninety | Norwich | October Game | Twenty-Five

13 October 2022

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So this was the year I finally made to England. Well, England outside of the airport. Odd that the Western European country most connected with my homeland was the last I visited (excluding microstates). And what is a country, really? I was in the United Kingdom in May on the island of Ireland for several days. Ireland, Northern and the rest, didn't feel like two countries though. Even though the Irish language is being fiercely defended in signage outside of the north, I never heard it spoken outside of airport announcements. Contrast that with my experience in Spain, where Castillano was spoken alongside Catalan in Barcelona, Basque in Navarra, and Galician in Galicia. Those three languages are alive and well and I heard them every day in those places, even as a tourist and caminero. There's political devolution in both countries and England still plays a leading role in the UK.

My trip to England was as a guest rather than just a tourist though, as we stayed with Iwona's sister in Norwich. Norwich is a lovely little town on the River Wensum. On the one hand many of the streets reminded me architecturally and horticulturally of New England and small town America. There really are a lot of cultural commonalities. On the other hand, going into pubs dating from the 17th century with their old wooden beams and churches built nearly a thousand years ago one realizes that history goes much further back here. And, while Norwich was once one of the largest cities in Britain, today it is a mid-sized town with only a couple hundred thousand living in the area. Of course my linguistic curiosity was piqued as we drove around and I got to see little placenames. Places ending in -by show the Nordic influence as that suffix is still being added in Norwegian. Most recently Longyear City on Spitsbergen was renamed Longyearbyen when Norway took it over from Charles Longyear's coal company. The -wich suffix in my mind has always been related to the Norse -vik, which means creek and is used extensively in placenames in Norway. Sandvik is always located by a sandy creek, just like England's Sandwich. The prevailing theory, however, seems to be that -wich came from Anglo-Saxon -wic which was itself derived from the Latin vicus, meaning village. English's obsession with Latin roots makes me doubt this though. My language bias toward the Nordic tongue also leads me to see -hamn, a variant of -havn like the English haven in the -ham suffix on many place names. The fact that all the hams we drove through, like Wroxham, had docks for boats supports this theory. Although the theory that it's derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for home is also plausible.

I ran every other day while I was there, so I got to see a fair among of the town and the countryside along the Wensum. We went to the seaside a couple days where I swam and we saw seals preparing for mating season by scoping out the beach from the waves at Horsey Gap. Fish and chips with malted vinegar by the dunes was everything I hoped it would be. And the pubs were a font of conversation just like the good ones are back in the States. I will definitely be coming back!