Names for days of the week

[Ireth]

I'm looking for advice on what I should call the days of the week in my WIP, set during the Viking Age, with Norse-Gaelic humans amoing the heroes. As many of you may know, most of the modern names for days of the week derive from the Norse gods, and others from the sun, moon, etc. So we have names like Tyrsdag, Wotansdag (or Odinsdag, perhaps?), Thorsdag, etc. Should I go with those names, or the modern equivalents, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, etc.? The other Norse names aren't Anglicized at all, so it seems odd to do that to the names of days. Would that be too confusing for people, or am I worrying too much?

 

[Spider]

If I were you, I would just stick to the modern equivalents. I think you should just keep it simple and not worry about it too much.

 

[Devor]

Depending on the tone of your story, maybe you could keep the ones based on the Norse gods and only change the ones that aren't, but modernize them as much as possible, like Balday for Baldur's day. Then only mention it once as a dialogue quip and don't use ot much.

Friday comes from Frigg's Day, right?

 

[skip.knox]

You can surely go with the Norse names. The name for Saturday, for example, is laurdag. You could dress it up a bit by doing something like this:

Monan Day
Tui's Day
Wodan's Day
Thor's Day
Friga's Day
Laur's Day
Sunnan Day

As long as you didn't use the names too much, they would be just a bit exotic without being cryptic.

 

[Penpilot]

I think you could use the Norse names without much confusion. All it takes is a well time and well designed usage of one or two of these names and the reader will understand. For example two people about to part from one another and one could say, "Today's Tirsdag, so I'll see you in two days on Torsdag." Also you could have one character walking down the street and listening and noting that children playing are singing the days of the week.

IMHO put a variation these two instances I mentioned above and I think it would be enough for the reader to catch on.