The Wendol tribesman at the mouth of the cave say several distinct words before they are dispatched by the Northmen. Does anyone know what language they are speaking?
When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.
The Wendol tribesman at the mouth of the cave say several distinct words before they are dispatched by the Northmen.
In the book, and presumably the film, the intention was the primitive tribe were a relict congress of Neanderthal which somehow survived in the receding glaciers of 1000 CE Europe. So the language was made-up.
I'm not sure what inspired the sounds they used, but it sounds like Theo Vennemann's wet dream, or some such nonsense.
Neanderthal went extinct 40,000 years ago, although there may be some evidence of a pocket of them surviving around Gibraltar 24,000 years ago. The idea of some surviving into recorded history is quackery of the highest caliber, but people were obsessed with European prehistory in the '70s, and I'm sure thence comes the idea. No doubt Crichton saw it as just a fun way to retell Beowulf.
Amusingly the film Beowulf & Grendel (2005) also features a last tribe of Neanderthal.