Njars
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Njarar or Njars is a name for the people of Nerike that appears in the Scandinavian version of the Lay of Weyland the smith.
- When the Lord of the Njars, Nidud, heard
- That Völund sat in Wolfdale alone,
- He sent warriors forth: white their shield-bosses
- In the waning moon, and their mail glittered.
(Translated by W. H. Auden and P. B. Taylor)
They were early subsumed by the Swedes, and there are otherwise few mentions of the Njarar/Nerikjar in Old Norse sources (for exceptions, see King of Nerike).
Linguistic notes
At first glance, the name is hard to recognize, because the people of Nerike are otherwise called the Nerikjar in Old Norse sources. However, njar is an umlaut having resulted in diaresis of an older ner. The same sound change happened with eg and herto which resulted in jag (I) and hjarta (heart). However, in the case of Njar, the sound change never became established, and the older form ner continued to be used for the province and its population.
Ner is, in its turn, an umlaut from an older nar which is cognate to English narrow. The name referred to the narrow inlets that caracterized the geography. The north-eastern (Kvismaren-Hjälmaren) has disappeared artificially, but the southern part of the province still has a large fjord.