Nice! I assume all sorts of revelries have happened there over the years. The gods would be proud. :P

Nice, I will check this out further, and leave this easy link here :P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_languages

Nice! Good job on avoiding sacrifice ;)

Yup. "Have" (two syllables; ha-ve) is a fancy word for garden in Norway. Today however, everyone other than the elderly in the fancy parts of Oslo says "hage".

I believe the Norwegian have and the dutch hof is related.

Frisia especially (maybe the rest of the country as well?) were originally populated by pre-viking age scandinavians (germanics? norsemen? I don't know what the distinctions are sadly), who clearly brought their language with them, in the same sense that even the saxons that populated England in the viking age could with relative ease understand norse and vice versa. Which I assume was useful in later trade and settlements.

So, my logic goes that if germanic spread from saxony to England, it is no far stretch to assume that norse words also took the relative short jump down the coast to the trading areas of Frisia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfGRuWTV_rg&t=

I recently watched this series, and Frisia was heavily settled by scandinavic peoples at a certain point.

Isn't Saami also distantly related? By related I mean all languages in the Finno-ugiric language group, which I believe includes the aforementioned languages, plus probably some more I don't know.

I get your point, but there was much interaction between the swedish vikings and the Finnish peoples. Besides, loan words through trade is common, as well as political terms if an area has been colonized (and I believe there were some viking settlements in Finland). Consider only of how much of the English language comes from norse words, latin or french.

I can definitely imagine that a hov for worship becomes an important gathering place for settlers or colonialists, and as such, that big men or kings would base their power from there, perhaps leading to some development of the word into being related to courts. I don't know. My knowledge of how etymology works comes from youtube channels and amateur word studies in Biblical Hebrew and Greek. :P

But the contact between vikings and baltic lands, Finland etc. is often overlooked.

I am no etymologist, but I will throw up a couple loose threads that might be relevant.

"Hov" in Norwegian, is a word used in the viking age for a place of worship. Torshov = Place for worship of Thor. Gudehov = Place for worship of the gods, etc.

There is also something called Hovefestivalen in modern times. The festival in Hove, a popular music festival in Norway.