The effect of the Scandinavian Conquest.

Effect of the Scandinavian Invasions

§ 281. Though the Scandinavian invasions of England are dated in the OE period, their effect on the language is particularly apparent in ME.

We may recall that since the 8th c. the British Isles were ravaged by sea rovers from Scandinavia, first by Danes, later — by Norwegians. By the end of the 9th c. the Danes had succeeded in obtaining a permanent footing in England; more than half of England was yielded to the invaders and recognised as Danish territory — “Danelaw”. While some of the Scandinavians came to England merely to plunder and return to their homeland, others made their permanent home in North East England,In the early years of the occupation the Danish settlements were little more than armed camps. But gradually the conditions stabilised and the Danes began to bring their families. The new settlers and the English intermarried and intermixed; they lived close together and did not differ either in social rank or in the level of culture and customs; they intermingled the more easily as there was no linguistic barrier between them. (OE and O Scand belonged to the Germanic group of languages and at that time were much closer than their descendants are today.) The colonisation and the intermixture of the newcomers with their former foes continued from the 9th c. on, during two hundred years, which witnessed diverse political events: the reconquest of Da­nelaw under Alfred’s successors, the renewal of Scandinavian onslaughts _in the late 10th c. under Sweyne, and the political annexation of Eng­land by Denmark under Canute (see §98).

§ 282. In the areas of the heaviest settlement the Scandinavians outnumbered the Anglo-Saxon population, which is attested by geo­graphical names. In Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Cum­berland — up to 75 per cent of the place-names are Danish or Norwe­gian. Altogether more than 1,400 English villages and towns bear names of Scandinavian origin (with the element thorp meaning “village”, e.g. Woodthorp, Linthorp; toft ‘a piece of land’, e.g. Brimtoft, Lo­westoft and others). Probably, in many districts people became biling­ual, with either Old Norse or English prevailing.

Eventually the Scandinavians were absorbed into the local popu­lation both ethnically and linguistically. They merged with the society around them, but the impact on the linguistic situation and on the further development of the English language was quite profound.

The increased regional differences of English in the 11 th and 12th c. must partly be attributed to the Scandinavian influence. Due to the contacts and mixture with O Scand, the Northern dialects (to use OE terms, chiefly Northumbrian and East Mercian) had acquired lasting and sometimes indelible Scandinavian features. We find a large admix­ture of Scandinavian words in Early ME records coming from the North East whereas contemporary texts from other regions are practically devoid of Scandinavian borrowings.

In later ages the Scandinavian element passed into other regions. The incorporation of the Scandinavian element in the London dialect and Standard English was brought about by the changing linguistic situation in England: the mixture of the dialects and the growing lin­guistic unification.¹ Yet neither in theSouth nor in Standard English "did the Scandinavian element ever assume such proportions as in the North-Eastern ME dialects.

5. The long-term linguistic effect of the Viking settlements in England was threefold: over a thousand words eventually became part of Standard English; numerous places in the East and North-east of England have Danish names; and many English personal names are of Scandinavian origin. Scandinavian words that entered the English language included landing, score, beck, fellow, take, busting, and steersman.The vast majority of loan words did not appear in documents until the early 12th century; these included many modern words which used sk- sounds, such as skirt, sky, and skin; other words appearing in written sources at this time included again, awkward, birth, cake, dregs, fog, freckles, gasp, law, moss, neck, ransack, root, scowl, sister, seat, sly, smile, want, weak, and window from Old Norse meaning "wind-eye". Some of the words that came into use are among the most common in English, such as to go, to come, to sit, to listen, to eat, both, same, get, and give. The system of personal pronouns was affected, with they, them, and their replacing the earlier forms. Old Norse influenced the verb to be; the replacement of sindon by are is almost certainly Scandinavian in origin, as is the third-person-singular ending -s in the present tense of verbs.
There are more than 1,500 Scandinavian place names in England, mainly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (within the former boundaries of the Danelaw): over 600 end in -by, the Scandinavian word for "village" or "town" — for example Grimsby, Naseby, andWhitby; many others end in -thorpe ("farm"), -thwaite ("clearing"), and -toft("homestead")^.
The distribution of family names showing Scandinavian influence is still, as an analysis of names ending in -son reveals, concentrated in the north and east, corresponding to areas of former Viking settlement. Early medieval records indicate that over 60% of personal names in Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire showed Scandinavian influence.