Norwegian ármaðr – Swedish ari – Gothic airus

The medieval royal administration in Norway and Sweden had two officials with cognate titles ON ármaðr and OSw āri, both related to Gothic airus ‘emissary, messenger’. The stem ār- in these words denote an itinerant official: in the religious sphere, an angel, in the prophane sphere of the medieval royal administration in Sweden, an emissary, a king’s representative. The Norwegian ármaðr is probably a later developed composition, where the ár- has lost this “itinerant” semantic content and resulted in a term for a “stationary” royal official in the local administration.