A VIKING JARL / IARL (4) : PORTRAIT

The jarl (pronounced "yarl") designates a Scandinavian leader or a great noble below the rank of King. Originally, in Old Norse or Danish it designates a clan chief or a sub-king. In the Scandinavian language, he was the equivalent of warlord or count. Jarl gave the English word earl, a noble title equivalent to the count. The term jarl has been compared to the name of the Heruli and the runic erilaz. According to John D. Bengtson, it would correspond closely to the Indo-Iranian term Arya: "person of high rank", the two terms being formed with different Proto-Indo-European suffixes. Among the different jarls of Scandinavia, we can notably cite the jarls of Lade in Norway.