The Viking word hidden in the Declaration of American Independence

From Roman freedom to Viking happiness, the iconic words in the Declaration of Independence reveal thousands of years of humans wrestling with how to live well together – and the power of language to put those ideas into action.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." 

When Thomas Jefferson drafted these words in the Declaration of Independence, two things were on his mind. One: he needed to find "terms so plain and firm as to command their assent" by the colonies, as he later explained, and justify independence from Great Britain. Two: beyond the practical purpose, he wanted the text to be "an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion". 

250 years ago, Congress approved the Declaration on 4 July 1776. But the meaning of those seemingly simple terms – "created equal", right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" – continue to provoke debate.  

"These phrases seem always to be running automatically in the American background, rather like software," says Michael Ditmore, professor of English at Pepperdine University in Malibu, US, and the author of Texting the Nation: Agencies and Actions in the Declaration of Independence. "Still, considered purely in their textual wording, we hardly agree on what they mean or obligate us to," he adds. 

A closer look at the origins of these words reveals that we're not the first to wonder about their meaning. From pre-Roman cultures to the Vikings, an extraordinary range of civilisations grappled with concepts like "liberty" and "happiness" – and in the process, coined the words that ended up declaring America's independence.  

A 'mongrel language' 

Let's start with the brief phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".  

"This iconic line is actually a great demonstration of what a mongrel language English is," says Tom Birkett, a professor of Old English and Old Norse at University College Cork in Ireland.  

"Life" is rooted in Old English, a language brought to Britain by Germanic tribes from around AD400-500. "Liberty" and "pursuit" are Latin-rooted, then evolved into French and arrived in Britain with the Norman French conquest in AD1066.  

And then there is "happiness": a word echoing with distant voices telling stories of trolls, battles and seafarers. 

"Happiness has an interesting etymology, as it comes from Old Norse happ, meaning 'fortune' or 'good luck'," says Birkett. "When 'happy' is first attested in Middle English it means 'fortunate', or 'blessed by good luck'."  

Old Norse, a Scandinavian language, was spoken by Viking raiders and Scandinavian settlers who brought the word to Britain from around AD800 onwards. Happ appears, for example, in the nickname of the Norse explorer Leif Erikson, who was also known as "Leif the Lucky", Leif heppni Erikson. He was a member of an early voyage to North America in the 11th Century, and saved a group of shipwrecked sailors – which may have partly inspired his nickname. 

One way to interpret "happ" is as something fixed and fated, which can't be controlled. It still echoes with that meaning in English words such as "hapless" – luckless, unfortunate – and "happen" – to occur by chance.  

But over time, the English meaning of "happy" and "happiness" gradually shifted from "favoured by fortune" to "glad, pleased, content". In the 17th and 18th Centuries, the Enlightenment movement, with its ideals of human rights, fundamentally challenged the idea that one's fortune was fixed or divinely steered: instead, human reason and action took on a central role. 

By the time the Declaration was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, with inspiration from the Virginia Declaration........

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