THE INFLUENCE OF THE VIKINGS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

INTRODUCTION
The English language has gone through many developments throughout its 1500 year
history that the Old English is barely recognisable by Modern English speakers today. One of
the changes that happened was through language contact with the Viking invaders that came
to the British isle in the 8 th century and brought along their language, Old Norse. As Baugh
and Cable (1993) asserts: (B)ecause of its extent and the intimate way in which borrowed
words were incorporated, the Scandinavian influence is one of the most interesting of the
foreign influences that have contributed to the English language(p. 103). This topic has been
widely debated by many scholars as to its importance; whether the Old Norse influence
reached all parts of the language or rather the grammatical changes during the Middle English
was not of the consequences of the Vikings invasion. This essay showcaseS the impact Old
Norse had on the English language by first looking at the historical context of the languages
association with English and later their influences on the lexicon, morphology and syntax of
the English language.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Scandinavian invasions started in 787 CE which continued until the 11 th century
where the period was known as The Viking Age. This invasion caused Vikings settlement in
the British land which brought a great impact on the English language due to the contact of
the people of England with the settlers. The 8 th century saw the Scandinavians which
consisted of Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, ventured out of their home and started to look

for new lands. There were many possible causes for such activities; Barber (1993) explained
that overpopulation in a region of poor natural resources and the family tradition of leaving
an inheritance to the oldest son caused the people seeking out wealth and resources from
other places (p. 127).
In 878 King Alfred of Wessex defeated the Vikings and signed the Treaty of Wedmore
which saw England divided by a line from Chester to London, to the east of which where the
Danes were allowed to dwell and later to be known as the Danelaw. The word viking is
usually thought to be derived either from Old Norse vik which means bay indicating a man
from the inlets of the sea or from Anglo-Frisian word wic, meaning settler. These words
pointed out the nature of the Danes coming into the island and living side by side with the
English people (Fennell, 2001, p. 58).
Viking invasions led to the settlement of the Danes in England where they peacefully
lived side by side with the native people. In the districts where the Vikings settled in, social
contact happened between them and the English people. Thus the English language was
influenced by the Scandinavian due to communicative necessity of ordinary people as they
interchanged common everyday items. Baugh and Cable (1993, p. 93) described the
condition where such influence was made favourable by settlers who intermarried with the
English and assimilated into the English lifestyle, adopting many of their customs. The
similarity between Old English and Old Norse, further increased the amalgamation of the two
people where they could probably understand each other and were habitually influenced by
each other. This promoted a bilingual environment where (t)here would be Englishmen
speaking Old Norse, Danes speaking Old English, and when they didnt know a word from
the other language they would use a word from their own giving it a pronunciation and
inflections appropriate to the other language (Barber, 1993, p. 130). Their mutual
intelligibility made the process of borrowing and adoption of language much easier.

THE IMPACT ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The language contact between the two had an external influence on the Old English (OE)
on many aspects. However, Old Norse (ON) was largely spoken rather than written in
England, and greatly affected the spoken language (Pardo, 2008, p. 238). Due to the
standardization of the English language, most of the Scandinavian words were left out of
written record before the Norman Conquest and only during the Middle English period these
words started to appear (Barber, 1993, p. 132; Smith, 1996, p. 131). Smith (1996, p. 127) also
wrote that the impact on the English language by the Vikings was greater as Norse affected
not only the vocabulary, but other features as well such as morphology, grammar and syntax.
1. Lexical Items and Loanwords
As the Danes adapted into the community, many of their words began to enter into the
English language. Baugh and Cable (1993) categorize the early loanwords in Old English into
two groups. The first group are words associated with sea-roving and predatory people (p.
97). Examples of these words are barada (beaked ship), cnearr (small warship), dreng
(warrior), btswegen (boatman, source of Modern English boatswain), and orrest (battle).
The second group is made out of words relating to the law or characteristic of the social and
administrative system of the Danelaw (p. 97). Barber (1993) explains that the Danes had a
highly developed legal sense as a result of borrowing of the word law (OE lagu) from Old
Norse and include other terms such as outlaw and wrong (p. 133). Old English also adopted
several other words such as ml (action at law), hold (freeholder) and wapentake
(administrative districts). However, after the Norman Conquest most these words were
replaced by the French terms (Baugh & Cable, 1993, p. 97).
Afterwards, more words were brought into the English language as the result of the
two languages being used side by side. The product of this interaction is Old Norse loan

words which are very basic in character and of common everyday items. There are about 900
borrowed words from Scandinavian (Fennell, 2008, p. 92) and these words can be found in
all parts of speech, including verbs, adjectives and especially nouns pertaining to nature,
tools, animals, as well as common items. The following table is a short list of some borrowed
words from Old Norse from Freeborn (2006, p. 107).
Modern

Modern
Old Norse

English
sister
tidings
low (adj)
swain
clumsy
steak

systir
tiendi
lagr
sveinn
klumsa
Steik

Old Norse
English
both
ball
wing
calf
knife
cake

baar
bllr
vngir
klfi
knifr
kaka

Natural and topographical Norse terms were also integrated into the English language
which can be grouped into three categories; place name suffixes, common noun and
compound proper nouns (Fririksdttir, 2014, p. 13). The place name suffixes of Old Norse
origin, which can be accounted for 1,400 places in England, are; by, ON br town as in
Grimsby; thorp secondary settlement as in Grimsthorpe; toft plot of land as in Langtoft;
garth, from ON garr garden in Applegarth; and thwaite woodland clearing as in
Micklethwaite (Barber, 1993, p. 128). Examples of Modern English common and compound
proper nouns with Old Norse origin are, brink, ON brekka slope, hill; mire, ON swamp;
sky, ON sk cloud; fell, ON fjall mountain, geyser, ON geyser hot spring; and reef, ON
rif ridge under the sea (Geipel, 1971; Harper, 2013; Ritcher, 2010 as cited in Fririksdttir,
2014, p. 13).
During the Vikings Age, Old English and Old Norse were used alongside each other and
there were probably words existed in Old English that had the same meanings with the new
borrowed words. These everyday words do not fill any gap or have a real need in the English

vocabulary. However, they still managed to enter into the English language and Baugh and
Cable (1993) explained six scenarios that might have occurred.
(1) Where words in the two languages coincided in form and meaning, the
modern word stands at the same time for both its English and its Scandinavian
ancestors (2) Where there were differences of form, the English word often
survived (W)ords such as bench, goat, yarn, (their) corresponding
Scandinavian forms are found in Middle English literature and some cases
still exist in dialectal use (3) In other cases the Scandinavian word replaced
the native word, often after the two had long remained in use concurrently
(For example), ey (English) and egg (Scandinavian) (4) Occasionally both the
English and Scandinavian words were retained with a difference of meaning or
use, as in the following pairs: craft skill, sick ill (5) In certain cases a
native word that ... was not in common use was reinforced from the
Scandinavian (6) Finally, the English word might be modified, taking on some
of the character of the corresponding Scandinavian word, (such as) give and get
with their hard g (p. 98-99).
Dawson (2003) reported that many English words that had been influenced by Old Norse
are original words which had no parallel OE words, such as sprint (ON spretta) and steak
(ON steik). However, there are also Norse words that replaced Old English words such as
window (ON vindauga wind eye) which replaced OE eyethurl eye hole; take (ON taka)
replaced OE niman; and sky (ON sk) replaced OE prodor and wolcen. Due to the
conditions of that era where both languages were used simultaneously in the same place,
many doubletssurvived into modern English where English words and their cognate
Scandinavian loanwords both survived but with a semantic difference (Miller, 2012, p. 107).
Die (ON deyja) replaced OE steorfan in its original sense, but the English word was

narrowed in its meaning to die of hunger starve. The same are also true for word pairs
such as anger (ON angr) wrath (OE wr) and cast (ON kasta) warp (OE weorpan).
There are several ways to recognize Scandinavian words in English even though these
two languages were similar. The origin of some of these words can be determined through
phonological developments that distinguish the two languages (Dawson, 2003, p. 44). For
example, the cluster [sk] did not become palatalized in Old Norse whereas in Old English it
became []. Therefore, words such as sky, skin and skill came from Old Norse, and words
such as shall, fish and shrub are of English origin due to the separate phonological
developments. As a consequence, this development gave rise to Modern English word pairs
where two etymologically related words now have two different meanings such as shirt (from
OE scyrte) and skirt (from ON skyrta) which both meant a short garment (Dawson, 2003, p.
44; Smith, 1996, p. 125). Apart from that, Old Norse also did not undergo palatalization of
[g] to [] and [k] to [], unlike Old English. Therefore, words such as egg, kid, get and give
can be traced back to Norse origin.
Other Norse influences can also be found in the semantics of lexical items. For example,
the modern word bloom could come from OE blma or ON blm. However, its English
meaning is ingot or iron and therefore it is logical to say the word bloom must have been
influenced by the Norse word which meant flower (Baugh & Cable, 1993, p. 95). Another
lexical feature that occurred due to the Vikings influence is hybridization where forms and
meanings of the words integrated to produce a new modern word where the form originated
from one language, but used the meaning of the other language (Miller, 2012, p. 98).
Examples of such occurrence are the modern words dream, gift, dwell and bread. Barber
(1993) explained that for the word bread, the OE word for bread was hlf which became

loaf, but in OE the word brad meant fragment. However ON brau did mean bread, so
the modern word has its form from Old English but its meaning from Old Norse (p. 132).
2. Morphology
Some key morphological classes in the English language can also be credited to Norse
influence, namely function words which include pronouns, conjunction, prepositions,
adverbs and even a part of the verb to be. This is not common in language borrowing which
reflects the profound impact Scandinavian language as well as the intimate intermingles of
the two languages (Fennell, 2001, p. 92). Arguably one of the most profound Norse
influences is in the personal pronoun system. During the Middle English (ME) period, Norse
pronouns they, them and their replaced the native h-types OE hie, heo and ME thiem and
theire (Smith, 1996). These h form pronouns were thought to be deficient and the English
people found the new pronouns to be more useful and had different forms from the singular
counterpart unlike the original pronouns. Other examples of functional words are the
conjunction though (cognate with OE ah) and adverbs hence (ON heen), aloft, athwart
and seemly (Baugh & Cable, 1993, p. 100).
Another important adoption of the Scandinavian language is the present plural are of the
verb to be. The OE form of the verb to be were synd (on) and beo (Al-Wer, 2015, p. 14) and
due to language contact with the Vikings, they later were replace by earun, aron and earan
(ON forms erum, eru, eru) which later turned into the Modern English form are
(Fririksdttir, 2014, pp. 16-17). Both and same are also examples of words with
Scandinavian origin, as well as the phrase to and fro. The Modern English from developed
from OE from/from and its equivalent form fro originated from ME fraa/froa from which
were influenced by ON form fr. The form fro only survives today in the aforementioned

phrase (Baugh & Cable, 1993, p. 100). Similarly, ME preposition till which was used
alongside to with both having the same meaning, came from ON til.
Normally when new words were absorbed into the English language, the Scandinavian
words would incorporate Old English inflections. But there are also occasions when Old
English words received Old Norse inflections. Barber (1993, p. 133) gave the example of
ON suffix t that marked neutar form for adjective which was added to OE verr adverse,
contrary to become vert and later on thwart in English. Such manifestation can also be
seen in want and scant. Another example of Norse inflection is the suffix sk, which was
attached to the root of ON verbs to indicate reflexive form, meaning oneself. This suffix
survived in bask to bathe oneself and the archaic busk to prepare oneself (Barber, 1993, p.
134).
3. Grammar and syntax
Many scholars have attributed the changes in the grammatical features in the Late Old
English and early Middle English to the Vikings (Dawson, 2003; Emonds & Faarlund, 2014;
Pardo, 2008). They claimed that the English language had a dramatic shift in the
morphosyntax from a highly synthetic system to one more analytic due to language contact
with the Old Norse (Dawson, 2003, p. 45). Although Baugh and Cable (1993) were also
agreeing on the profound impact of Old Norse, they argued that the change happened only
indirectly and that the change that occurred was strengthened and accelerated by the
conditions that prevailed in the Danelaw (p. 101). Fennell (2003) also rejected the notion that
Old Norse was primarily responsible for the language change shift by arguing that the shift
waspropelled by language internal forces (p. 92). Nevertheless, it cannot be disputed that
the Scandinavian language had a major influence on the English language, though indirectly,

in the way the English language syntax changed from a morphologically rich language to a
syntactically fixed language.
One grammatical development that was partly attributed to the language contact with
the Vikings was the loss of inflections in the Middle English, particularly the loss of
grammatical gender (Pardo, 2008, p. 240). Due to the similarity between English and Norse
as being Germanic languages, there were many words that had similar stems between the two
languages. However the two peoples coexisted in Danelaw still had some confusion with
each other due to the different endings used to indicate gender, case, tense or number. As a
result, the endings were deleted in order to gain mutual understanding and these
simplifications spread across England (Baugh & Cable, 1993, p. 101; Pardo, 2008, p. 240).
Owing to this simplification, many inflectional endings were dropped in the Middle
English, except for a few. One inflection ending that was retained was the Modern English
present participle suffix ing. Baugh and Cable (1993) attributed Old English form of end
and ind which later replaced by ing to the Scandinavian influence where the Norse used
two suffixes, -ung and ing (as in vik-ing) (p. 101). The s inflection for the present third
person singular was also of Norse influence which replaced southern (from OE -)
(Emonds & Faarlund, 2014, p. 152). Some of the English language modals might also have
been influenced by the Scandinavian language. As evidence, the modals can, may, shall and
will have Norse parallels (kann, m, skal and vil respectively) and that the rules for the usage
of shall and will were similar to the ones in Old Norse (Baugh & Cable, 1993, p. 102). Baugh
and Cable (1993) mentioned that these influences may in fact just a coincidence where
English language and Scandinavian language happened to develop in these respects along
similar lines but they could not ignore the fact that the two languages might influenced each
other through constant intimate contact and interaction (p. 102).

CONCLUSION
The impact Old Norse had on the English language cannot be ignored as many of
the evidence can still be seen today and especially more so on the northern parts of England.
Even though Thomason and Kaufman (1992) argued that the Norse influence on English
pervasive, in the sense that its results are found in all parts of the language; but it was not
deep, except in the lexicon (p. 302), the English language still owed many of its syntactical
changes to the Vikings albeit indirectly. The intimate language contact the two peoples had
had provided the perfect environment for the developments to occur. It can be concluded that
the Scandinavian has had significant impact on the English language as asserted by Barber
(1993); (T)he borrowing of central grammatical words such as the pronouns showed great
strength of the Scandinavian influence (p. 133).

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