Indigenous Norwegian Travellers




The indigenous Norwegian Travellers are an ethnic minority group in Norway. They are a wandering people who once travelled by foot, with horse-drawn carts and with boats along the southern and southwestern coastline of Norway.
They are not to be confused with Romanisæl Travellers.
Indigenous Norwegian Travellers have traditionally almost exclusively been centred around Southern Norway and the very Southern parts of Southwestern Norway. They have managed to prevent their culture, language, identity, traditions and history from being absorbed up by the larger Romanisæl group of Norway due to being isolated off from where they have historically travelled, as Romanisæl have traditionally travelled other parts of Norway, particularly Central Norway.

Names for the group

Known to the settled majority population as fant/fanter/fantefolk or skøyere, they prefer the term reisende. This term is also used by the Tater people , though the two groups are distinct.
Eilert Sundt, a 19th-century sociologist, termed the indigenous Travellers småvandrer or småvandringer, to contrast them with the Romanisæl Travellers, which Sundt called storvandrer or storvandringer who ranged further in their journeys.

Language

The indigenous Norwegian Travellers used to speak their own language. This language was known as Rodi.
Rodi has heavy lexical borrowings from German Rotwelsch as well as lexical borrowings from Romani too. The German Rotwelsch lexicon found within Norwegian Rodi is theorised to be from Yenish Travellers migrating to Norway and mixing with indigenous Norwegian Travellers, ite also theorised that indigenous Norwegian Travellers are descended from Yenish Travellers who migrated to Norway centuries ago, although this hasn’t been proven.
The Romani lexicon found within Norwegian Rodi is not as prominent as German Rotwelsch lexicon. Romani lexicon is found in Norwegian Rodi because of the nearby Romanisæl Travellers who live close by to the Indigenous Norwegian Travellers, also some Romani lexicon has come via Yenish Travellers, as their language has Romani lexical borrowings as well. There are mentions of Romanisæl Traveller-Indigenous Norwegian Traveller intermarriage, although despite this the two groups have remained distinct.
The morphology, syntax and grammar of the language is entirely Norwegian. If you exclude the lexicon of Romani and Rotwelsch origin, the language is entirely Nordic derived.