Moving house-Flitting

Growing up in Lancashire we called the off licence "the outdoor"

GabriellaG: We called off-licences 'the beer-off' in Yorkshire.

a moon light flit when someone couldnt pay the rent.....or doing something they shouldnt do at midnight..

Well, we flit here in Norfolk! Moving at speed, in a hurry. Not just with house moves either. My mum used to flit around the house with a duster if she was in a hurry to make the place look respectable. I myself don’t do much flitting these days. More plodding which has to be carefully thought through.

Moonlight flit stems from a dead of night unannounced move to avoid debtors.

And I too remember the flit guns full of DDT to kill flies. I thought it was a trade name.

I contributed to this thread a couple of days ago and this morning I was in a museum in the Arctic in Kirkenes, Norway, just 8 miles from the Russian border when I spotted a display on Sesongflytting- annual migrations of the Sami people.
We knew the Sami people as Laplanders in my youth and every year they take all their worldly belongings and migrate from their winter accommodation to their summer homes near the coast.
So in Norway they too use the word "flitting"
As my granny used to say "It's a small world".

Esspee That's amazing, thank you so much for posting. You learn such a lot on GN!

I'm from Fife too and we always said "flitting" when moving house. There's lots of "scottitisms" you never hear anywhere else.

So that means flitting is probably a Viking word then Esspee.

NfkDumpling. On this trip I have learned that Vikings were not a race of people (or ethnic group) as I had thought but more a term like pirate. They came from different ethnic groups and banded together to rape and pillage. For some it was a part time way of providing for their people. In summer they would farm and in winter pillage.

Old Norse has the word flytja meaning to move or relocate so you are probably correct NfkDumpling.

I said Viking as opposed to Dane - not the modern Dane. I suppose I should have said Norse. Or perhaps Scandinavian. Its amazing how our language developed.