glæd

Glæd is a historical North Germanic adjective used in Old Norse and other medieval North Germanic varieties to denote happiness, cheerfulness, or brightness. The form appears in older orthographies and is cited in linguistic descriptions of the language’s earlier stages. In modern Scandinavian languages, the direct everyday equivalent is typically spelled glad in Danish and Norwegian, while related nouns express the concept of joy: glæde in Danish and gleði in Icelandic.

In scholarly and literary contexts, glæd is most often encountered as part of discussions of older language stages rather than as a current everyday term. The word figures in historical texts, poetic passages, and philological work that reconstructs how North Germanic adjectives varied by gender, number, and case in earlier periods. Today it is generally regarded as an archaic or dialectal form rather than a standard spelling.

Etymologically, glæd shares a common North Germanic heritage with cognate forms meaning “glad” or “bright” across medieval Scandinavian languages. The modern descendants include Danish glad and Norwegian glad as the usual adjectives for happiness, and Danish glæde, Norwegian glede, as the corresponding nouns for joy. In Icelandic, gleði serves the related noun meaning joy. Thus glæd is best understood as an historical nameplate within the broader family of related words signifying positive emotional or visual brightness in the North Germanic languages.