One thing has to be said about the women of Norse myth: they were often better at the business of war than the men. Very often their names were borrowed from the wars they fought; one of them, Gunnhildr, is a compound of gunnr and hildr, both of which mean battle.
They came raiding the coast of England in the ninth century; afterwards they settled down to live among the natives, who, right through the Middle Ages, gave their daughters old Scandinavian names. The men of England did something similar, giving their weapons and other things that were thought to belong to men's domain the names of Norse women, just as today's men like to name their boats after women.
The name gun is named from a war engine the above-named warrior gave her name to, many centuries after her glory days. Around 1350, Windsor Castle was defended by a ballista, a huge weapon rather like a crossbow, which fired missiles rather than arrows. This they called Domina Gunilda, after our Norse she-warrior.
There are other examples of this lady's influence: Gonnylde, for instance, was the name of a cannon mentioned in the 14th century Song Against the Retinues of the Great People. And the word gun, with us from the 14th century, is simply a shortening of Gunnhildr. In Middle English, the word appeared as gunne and gonne (pronounced "gun"; it was adopted by Irish as gunna, by Welsh as gwn.
The Norse gave us window. The Old English had eagthyrel, eye-thirl, eye-hole (thirl is still used in many English dialects and survives in the standard language as nostril, the descendant of Old English nosthyrel, "nose-hole"). Around 1200, eagthyrel began to be replaced by the Norse borrowing vindauga, from vindir, air and auga, eye. Hello window and fuinneog.
Hello too to Helga Murphy, a Cork schoolgirl, who asked about the above matters, and whose first name, incidentally, means to make holy in Old Norse.
Speaking of sanctity, the use of two words, hallowed and sanctuary, in a loose sense irks me. That the Manchester United dressing-room is a very hallowed place, I was assured on television lately. Hallowed, made holy, from Old English helgian, to sanctify, to purify? I doubt it.
And after a match, the players reach the sanctuary of this place. Sanctuarium, from sanctus, holy: is it really a holy place? Or are the immunity laws of the Medieval church still in place there? Ah well. Maybe I'm getting crotchety in my old age.