Exam time is coming up, that means it’s time for another verbose blog entry about the history of English stuff – in this case, the vikings (yes!). English, though rooted in the West Germanic family, has had significant influence from the Old Norse language (part of the North Germanic language family). So much, that a Norwegian professor even claims that English is a Scandinavian language. That’s of course ridiculous, you could just as well claim that English is a Romance language because of its huge amount of French influence. But the language is still very Germanic at heart. As Bill Bryson neatly put, it, we [the English] feel more at home with a hearty welcome than with a cordial reception.

The vikings had their first contact with the British mainland in the year 793, when they raided Lindisfarne monastery on Holy Island, just off the shore of Northumberland. They didn’t make themselves very popular, because in the following ~100 years they continued to pillage and plunder all the monasteries they could find in England. They found that monasteries were a brilliant place to raid, because they were usually wealthy and did not have any defenses. The monks believed that God would protect them from harm, but the heathen vikings couldn’t care less.

In the 2nd half of the 9th century, the viking raids became even more serious. The vikings were joined by Danish armies (usually not actually from Denmark) and organized systematic raids. They even stayed in England over the winter. From 865 onward, a large army brought the north under its control, where is sacrificed the king of East Anglia in a ritual murder and appointed puppet kings in the other areas. Only Wessex remained as the last unoccupied kingdom.

In the year 871, Alfred the Great became king of Wessex and played an important role in relation to the viking threat. That year, the West Saxons under Alfred defeated the vikings, who withdrew to their base in London. For a while, the vikings stayed in the north, but new military conflicts arose between 876-878. These ended with Alfred again winning a decisive battle in 878 at Edington, after which the viking leader Guthrum and 30 of his leading men were baptized as Christians. Peace followed, during which Alfred increased his defenses. This proved useful, because as you should have guessed by now, the vikings tried their luck again in the 80s and 90s – albeit unsuccessfully, because Alfred had conquered London in 886. Finally, in 890, Alfred and Guthrum made a new treaty which established the Danelaw, an area in the north of England which was under Danish rule (most Danes were not actually from Denmark).

After Alfred’s death, his successors slowly but surely gained control over the areas of the Danelaw. A first milestone was Athelstan’s victory over the vikings at the battle of Brunanburh in 937. He also arranged Anglo-Scandinavian marriages, merging the two cultures inseparably.

Much later, another important king who played a great role in relation to the vikings, was Ethelred. He was known as “Ethelred the Unread”, because his reign was very unlucky due to bad advisers. He became king when he was only 11 years old. His reign suffered many viking attacks from 980-983 from viking bases in Normandy. He tried to prevent this and improve relations to Normandy by marrying the sister of the Norman king, Emma. Not so successfully, Because more vikings attacked from other areas. Another decisive battle was the Battle of Maldon in 991. After that, Ethelred tried to pay off the vikings so they would not attack, but naturally the vikings thought this was a great source of money and attacked again and again, being paid off again and again. Eventually, Ethelred was so cranky that he ordered a revenge killing off all people of Scandinavian origin currently living in England in 1002. That was of course quite ridiculous, because those people had been living in England peacefully for generations and had intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons.

During the last years of Ethelred’s reign, the viking leader Swein conquered England in 1013. Ethelred fled to Normandy into exile, but soon Swein died and Ethelred returned for his last few years of reign in 1014 and drove off Swein’s successor Cnut. But as vikings are like a bad penny and always turn up again, Cnut invaded again and became king of England in 1016. To ensure his reign, he married Ethelred’s widow Emma of Normandy and had almost all of Ethelred’s male heirs killed (how charming). Cnut had two sons, who both succeeded him – Harold and then Harthacnut. But eventually, Harthacnut accepted his half-brother Edward (the Confessor), son of Ethelred and Emma, as his heir, so Edward became the last Anglo-Saxon king before the Norman Conquest.

That’s quite a lot of historic background, but I think it’s important to understand why there was such extensive contact between the two languages Old English and Old Norse. Though the picture I painted above looks quite grim, many Scandinavians actually settled peacefully in England and sometimes even married the locals. In general, the vikings were very willing to adapt to a local culture, as they had done before in Normandy, another country they initially plundered. There, there was not such an extensive influence on the local language because they soon adopted Norman French as their own language.

In England, however, the two language spoken by the locals and settlers were so alike, that it was easy for them to understand each other. The difference often lay in the inflectional endings – unlike Modern English, Old English was a highly inflected language which didn’t rely as strictly on word order. Since the roots of the words were the same, the people eventually started to drop the inflectional endings, which led to the typological change, slowly turning Old English into the analytic language Modern English is today.

Since most of the language contact happened between farmers, traders and lower class citizens, the very core of the English language was influenced by Old Norse. Even things as basic as function words were taken over from ON to OE, like for example they or to be. But of course other regular words were integrated into Old English as well, for example egg, birth or to die …. . In some cases, both words remained but underwent a partial semantic change. Therefore we now have shirt (OE) and skirt (ON), skill and craft or sick and ill.

We also find a lot of evidence of the closeness between the two peoples in place names and personal names. In northern England, places ending with -by, -thorp, -thwaite or -toft bear Scandinavian names. Sometimes there is even a mixture of Old English and Old Norse in place names, with one part being OE and the other being of ON origin.

But Old Norse was not the only major language contact the English language went through. Quite important is of course Latin as the language of the church during Christianization and later as a language of science, administration, etc. But by far the biggest impact on the English language stems from French. English had its first contact with Norman French after the Norman Conquest, after which England was under French rule. French became the language of administration and the upper class. This results in the social divide between the usage of English: until today, English words which are of Romance origin are regarded as more prestigious and upper class. However, an interesting distinction has to be made between Norman French and Central French. After the Plantagenet’s started their rule over England, Central French became the official language in England, replacing Norman French. This may sound a bit trivial, but thanks to those two languages, we now have several doublets of Romance origin in English as well; for example warranty (NF) and guarantee (CF), wardrobe and garderobe, or catch and chase.

Well, that’s all for language contact and the typological change (for now). I hope you will now never need to consult wikipedia about these topics again… (of course you will, I haven’t even begun to go into the details).