Carl Johan Sverdrup Marstrander

Epithet: Celtic linguist and historian (1883-1965)

Record type: Biographies

Biography: From ‘New Manx Worthies’ (2006):

Professor Carl Marstrander arrived on the Isle of Man on 12th May 1929. His intention was to carry out an investigation into the position of Manx Gaelic and to learn the language for himself. This was something he had done some 20 years previously on the Great Blasket, to learn Trish Gaelic. His tutor there was Thomas O'Crohan who was ideal for his purpose as he spoke it as his first language and had very little English. O'Crohan writes of Marstrander in his book The Islandman:

He was a tall, lean, fair complexioned, blue eyed man. He asked the King [of the Great Blasket] to teach him Irish. The King explained to him that I was the man, for I was able to read it and had fine correct Irish before I ever read it.

He went on to ask whether O'Crohan had any English. O'Crohan replied he had very little. This was what Marstrander wanted to hear, as then the language would not have 'too much English'. O'Crohan spent five months teaching the language to him. O'Crohan finishes by saying, 'This was Carl Marstrander. He was a fine man with the same manner to low and high'.

On his arrival in the Isle of Man Marstrander met with all sorts of people who were to be useful to him in gaining the same sort of contact on the Island. These included Philip Moore Callow Kermode, the first director of the Manx Museum, William Cubbon, the librarian and, most importantly, John Joseph Kneen, the authority at the time on Manx Gaelic and the place-names of the Island. In his diary Marstrander tells how he began work in earnest on 15th June, cycling about the Island and 'selecting his victims' (as he describes them) as he went along the route south to Castletown. He started by talking to a man in Kewaigue whom he asked to translate a sentence into Manx. As Marstrander had very little Manx at the time it is not clear how he knew what he heard was correct, but it does not seem to have satisfied him. Eventually his contacts led him to J.Q. Killey, headmaster of Albert Road School, Ramsey who in turn introduced him to Thomas Christian of Ramsey who was prepared to teach him Manx. He was delighted with Christian.

He writes 'He is an excellent old man, a Nordic type through and through. Here I seem finally to have found the man to work with. His pronunciation is clear. The man is intelligent and patient'.

Later on he writes, 'I am quite satisfied with my stay here. The material I have collected will, without doubt, have significant value
when Celtic speech has completely disappeared in 5-10 years time ...' As a result of his lessons with Christian he writes 'I have really got the hang of Manx'.

His assessment of the position of Manx Gaelic in 1929 was, however, bleak. Writing in Revue Celtique he says:

I have spent about three months in thisbeautiful Island. I started by crossing it in all directions to gain an impression of the position of Manx. I am sorry to say I have come at least five years too late. There is no fluent Manx speaker left, three or four pretty good speakers, and about thirty who have some smatterings of it. The language is practically dead without hardly any phonetical transcription having been taken.

This may sound like a very gloomy verdict to today's Manx Gaelic enthusiasts, but his was a view prevalent at the time. Five years earlier J.J. Kneen expressed similar sentiments, pointing out that since the formation of the Manx Language Society (later Yn cheshaght Ghailckagh) in 1899, 3000 native speakers had died. He referred to the society as merely 'offering oxygen to a dying man'.

The following year Marstrander returned to study the southern dialect, using Harry Kelly of Cregneash and Joseph Woodworth of Port Erin as his teachers. He was very impressed with Kelly who, he said, 'is the one who speaks best and most idiomatically ...'

By the time he had the cylinders to record the speech, two of his most important sources, Christian and Woodworth, were dead but Marstrander recorded 48 cylinders of Harry Kelly, Caesar Cashen, John Cain, a Mr Fayle, Thomas Quayle, William Quane and also two non-native speakers, J.J. Kneen and William Cubbon. Twenty-nine of these were of Harry Kelly. So far only 23 have come to light. These are housed in the Keltisk Institut, Universitetet i Oslo. Much of the value of his notes is that whether or not they were recorded on wax cylinders Marstrander noted the contributions of his speakers in phonetic form, thereby giving an accurate picture of the language at the time of his visits. Sadly, among the missing items are graphs recording the sonority, nasality, pitch, consonant and vowel sounds of the speakers recorded on the wax cylinders. Manx scholar Dr George Broderick, in his three volume work Late Spoken Manx, analyses Marstrander's work, which includes recordings made after World War II and which the author records phonetically.

Marstrander also completed research into aspects of Manx history, and even today his work is of great significance. His work on place-names compiled from his phonetic studies led him to assist J.J. Kneen in his place-names studies - occasionally disagreeing with him as to derivation and origin. His conclusions, generally accepted today, were that with a few exceptions Manx (as opposed to Norse) place-names dated from post-Norse speaking times, beginning around 1266. He also suggested a link between keeills and treen boundaries, a conclusion at least partially accepted today by Manx historians.

Marstrander's generosity and respect for Kneen meant that he was instrumental in having him created a Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav by the King of Norway in 1933. He felt strongly that Kneen was unappreciated. In The Norse Colonisation of the Isle of Man he wrote of

... this England which grudges every single sixpence expended on humanist studies. Had he been given a small annual grant to collect together the fragments of the language which have been spoken in Man for five centuries ... without it ever having occurred to anyone to lift so much as finger to record it.

Marstrander did not publish all his findings, despite a number of learned articles in journals.

In 1951 the original copies of his work were presented to the Manx Museum, bound in red with gilt tooling. They include four volumes of phonetic manuscripts, and a study of the Norse colonisation of the Island together with his diary. In 1964 Professor Carl Marstrander was awarded the Manannan Trophy for his Manx researches. Sadly he was unable to receive the trophy in person due to ill health although he was delighted with the honour. However local journalist Margery West travelled to Oslo to present the trophy to him. He also visited the Island on a private visit the following year. He died in December 1965.

Biography written by John Wright.

(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.298-300.)

Culture Vannin

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Nationality: Norwegian

Gender: Male

Date of birth: 26 November 1883

Date of death: 24 December 1965

Name Variant: Professor Carl Johan Sverdrup Marstrander

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