# Old Norse dictionary access

> A grounding service over the English Wiktionary's Old Norse entries — the
> normalized orthography of the classical North Germanic language of the sagas
> and the Eddas. Use it to read and write Old Norse with attested words and
> correct inflected forms instead of inventing them. Read-only.

## What it does
- Looks an Old Norse word up (any form) and returns its senses plus full
  declension/conjugation tables — including the nouns' definite forms, the
  adjectives' strong/weak/degree family and the verbs' mediopassive voice.
- Finds the Old Norse equivalents of an ENGLISH word (search_language=eng): each
  sense's translations from Wiktionary's translation tables (the result's
  translations block), expanded into their full dictionary entries.
- Resolves an inflected query to its dictionary lemma automatically via paradigms
  already cached — the result says so (search_method=lemma_index, with
  resolved_from/resolved_lemma). No external analyzer exists for Old Norse, so a
  form not yet in any cached paradigm won't resolve — look the lemma up directly.
- Folds diacritics and special letters, so ASCII spellings work once a paradigm
  is cached: marks drop (á→a, ǫ→o — 'monnum' finds mǫnnum) and ð/þ/æ/ø/œ fold
  two ways ('madr' AND 'mathr' find maðr; 'thing' AND 'ting' find þing).

## How to connect (MCP)
Remote streamable-HTTP endpoint (no auth, read-only): https://norse.valksor.com/mcp
  Claude Code:  claude mcp add --transport http norse https://norse.valksor.com/mcp
  Cursor / Cline (~/.cursor/mcp.json):
    {"mcpServers": {"norse": {"url": "https://norse.valksor.com/mcp"}}}
  stdio-only clients — bridge with mcp-remote:
    {"mcpServers": {"norse": {"command": "npx",
       "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://norse.valksor.com/mcp"]}}}
Tools (each returns Markdown plus typed structuredContent per its outputSchema):
- search_norse(query, search_language='non'|'eng', include_forms=true, max_forms=N)
    Senses plus inflection handles (entry_id = the lemma/page title, word_class =
    the part-of-speech section). With include_forms (default TRUE on MCP; the JSON
    API defaults it false), each match's full table comes back inline. With
    search_language='eng' the query is an English word and the result lists its
    per-sense Old Norse equivalents plus their entries (English→Old Norse).
- get_inflections(entry_id, word_class)
    The full paradigm for one handle. Its structuredContent nests the paradigm
    under a "result" key (the other tool's payload is unwrapped); the JSON API
    returns it directly. Both shapes are discriminated by "category":
    nominal gives case keys -> {singular, plural} (nouns prefix the
    definiteness — 'indefinite nominative'; adjectives prefix the declension
    class/degree and suffix the gender — 'strong nominative feminine'); verbal
    gives finite "<mood> <tense>" -> "<person> <number>" -> form (the
    mediopassive table's keys carry a 'mediopassive ' prefix) plus the
    non-finite forms; "not_found" when no table exists.
Search tips: one Old Norse word per call; any form works, and ASCII spellings
('madr', 'mathr', 'monnum') resolve once the lemma's paradigm is cached; for
English→Old Norse pass search_language='eng' (multiword entries like 'apple
tree' work).
Prompts & resources (MCP):
- Prompts translate_to_norse(text) and translate_from_norse(text, target_language)
  package the grounded-translation method.
- Resource norse://glossary/grammar-labels documents the paradigm keys; this
  document is the llms.txt resource.

## How to call (JSON API)
- GET https://norse.valksor.com/api/search?query=maðr
- GET https://norse.valksor.com/api/search?query=water&search_language=eng
- GET https://norse.valksor.com/api/inflections?entry_id=kasta&word_class=verb
- GET https://norse.valksor.com/api/health
- Interactive docs: https://norse.valksor.com/api/docs  ·  schema: https://norse.valksor.com/api/openapi.json

## Caching and politeness
Dictionary responses are cached server-side with a long TTL (Wiktionary content
changes slowly). Upstream calls are serialised with a polite minimum interval.
Calls are rate limited per client IP — on a 429, wait a few seconds and retry.

## Source and licence
- Dictionary: Wiktionary, the free dictionary (en.wiktionary.org), Old Norse entries. Wikimedia Foundation. Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0; attribution and share-alike required when republishing.
- Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 — attribute and share alike when republishing dictionary text.