Version 1.0 — Last updated: 7 September 2026
This page tests every entry in the English→Old Norse word dictionary that powers our Old Norse Translator and the translator embedded on our homepage, and reports the results honestly — including the entries we think are wrong. See our Methodology page for how the tool works, and our Reviewers page for who checked this benchmark.
What this benchmark covers — and what it doesn’t
This benchmark checks single-word dictionary accuracy only: does each English word map to a real, correctly spelled Old Norse word with a reasonably close meaning? It does not test grammar, case endings, word order, or full-sentence translation — our tool doesn’t attempt full grammatical inflection, and neither does this benchmark. For that limitation, see Methodology.
It also doesn’t cover the rune translator, the Viking Name Generator, or the medieval-language tools, each of which draws on separate data and would need its own benchmark pass.
Methodology and limitations of this benchmark itself
We extracted the complete English→Old Norse dictionary used by the live tool — all 390 entries — directly from the tool’s own code, and checked every single one, not a sample. Each entry was checked against standard Old Norse vocabulary as recorded in reference works such as Cleasby & Vigfússon’s dictionary (see Sources & Corpora), and scored into one of three categories: clean (a real, correctly spelled, reasonably matched Old Norse word), flagged as a concern (a real Old Norse word, but imprecise, a modern respelling, or an uncommon match for the English sense), or flagged as an error (wrong language, wrong word, or a meaning mismatch a reader could be misled by).
As disclosed on our Reviewers page, this site is a single-person project with no separate academic linguist reviewing our work. This benchmark was self-conducted the same way — we are not claiming outside expert validation we don’t have. We built it because we’d rather publish honest, checkable numbers than a marketing claim of “accurate” with nothing behind it.
Results summary
| Category | Entries | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Clean — correct, standard Old Norse | 373 | 95.6% |
| Flagged as a concern — real word, imprecise or modern-spelled | 11 | 2.8% |
| Flagged as an error — wrong word or wrong language | 6 | 1.5% |
| Total dictionary entries tested | 390 | 100% |
Entries flagged as errors (6)
These are the entries we’re most confident are wrong — either the wrong language entirely, or a word whose real meaning doesn’t match the English term it’s mapped to. All 6 are logged as open items on our Changelog; fixing them requires editing the tool’s underlying code, which is outside what we can do by editing page content alone, and is tracked as follow-up work.
| English | Tool currently outputs | Why it’s flagged |
|---|---|---|
| goodbye | farvel | This is Danish/Norwegian, not attested Old Norse. |
| who | hvárr | hvárr means “which of two”; “who” is hverr. |
| when | hvárr | Duplicate of the “who” error; “when” is hvenær. |
| fate | wyrd | This is Old English, not Old Norse — our best-known and longest-standing tool bug (see Changelog). |
| kin | ættvínr | ættvínr is a person noun (“a kinsman”), not the abstract word for kin/lineage, which is ætt. |
| clan | ættvínr | Same mismatch as “kin” — ætt is the correct word, and it’s used correctly for “family” elsewhere in the same dictionary. |
Entries flagged as concerns (11)
These are real Old Norse (or Old Norse-adjacent) words, but each has a caveat worth knowing before you rely on it — an imprecise sense, a modern respelling, or a likely spelling slip.
| English | Tool currently outputs | The concern |
|---|---|---|
| lady | freyja | Freyja is the name of a specific goddess, used here as if it were a generic word for “lady”. |
| deer | dýr | dýr is the generic word for “animal”; a deer specifically is hjörtr. |
| think | þykkja | þykkja means “to seem/appear” (“it seems to me”), narrower than “to think/have an opinion” (hyggja). |
| spring | vorr | Non-standard spelling; the season is normally vár. |
| evening | kveldr | Likely a spelling slip — the neuter noun is kveld, without the -r. |
| warm | hlýrr | Likely a spelling slip — the adjective is normally hlýr. |
| food | matur | This is the modern Icelandic spelling; classical Old Norse is matr. |
| treasure | fjársjóðr | Reads as a modern Icelandic compound rather than an attested Old Norse word. |
| gods | goðin | This is the definite plural (“the gods”); the base plural is goð. |
| magic | galdrar | This is plural (“spells”), used here for the general concept of “magic”. |
| slow | hægr | hægr usually means “easy/gentle”; “slow” is more precisely seinn. |
What passed
The remaining 373 entries — everything from basic pronouns and numbers to family terms, animals, weapons, and common adjectives and verbs — matched standard Old Norse forms without a flag. That includes every example currently used on our translator pages and Important Guides sections, which we cross-checked individually against this same benchmark before publishing them.
Versioning
We version this benchmark like software: the number changes only when the underlying test set or its results change. A major version change (2.0, 3.0) means the dictionary itself changed size or the scoring method changed; a minor version change (1.1, 1.2) means we re-scored some entries, fixed flagged errors, or added new ones, without changing the method. The version number and date at the top of this page are the source of truth — if you are citing a specific result, cite the version.
How this will be updated
This is version 1.0, covering the dictionary as it existed on 7 September 2026. When we fix a flagged entry, add new vocabulary, or re-run this check, we’ll publish a new version here and log the change on our Changelog. Found something we missed? Use our Corrections Policy to report it.