1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my

faculty Pratyush Kaushik who gave me this golden opportunity to
do this wonderful project on the topic “SCANDINAVIAN
INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE” which also helped
me in doing a lot of Research and I came to know about different
nuances associated with this topic of our English language. While
making this project I learnt a lot about research and editing of the
documents.
Secondly I would also like to thank my parents and friends who
helped me a lot in finalizing this project within the limited time
frame.

(Signature of Student)

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ANKIT KUMAR
2007

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I hereby declare that the work which is submitted
for the fulfilment of the course of B.B.A.L.L.B
(Hons.) at Chanakya National Law University,
Patna under the supervision of Dr. SP Singh is an
authentic record of my work. In this project I took
help from other sources. I have not submitted this
work elsewhere.
I am fully responsible for the contents of my
project report.

Sign:
ANKIT KUMAR
Roll- 1969
Semester- 1st
Year -1st

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 Contents

Introduction................................................................... 1

Background................................................................... 2

Scandinavian Settlement............................................... 4

Scandinavian Place-Names........................................... 5

Scandinavian Loanwords.............................................. 9

Conclusion....................................................................15

Bibliography

5
 Introduction

English is a Germanic language, as are German, Dutch and

the Scandinavian languages. Those who know one or the other
can easily see the relationship to English, but English is
certainly the one that has broken away the most from the
others. A closer look shows how deeply it has been influenced
and affected by other languages. The British Isles have been
the home of Romans, Picts, Celts, Angles, Saxons and Jutes,
Frenchmen, and the subject of this essay, Scandinavians, or
Vikings. The Age of the Vikings, starting around year 750
AD, had an important role in the making of modern Europe.
Building ships was something the Vikings were especially
good at, and they had excellent skills as sailors and
navigators, which took them not only all over Europe but also
as far as Constantinople and North America. However, it is
their interest in Britain that will be focused upon here. The
Scandinavian colonisation of the British Isles had a
considerable effect on the English language and vocabulary,
as well as culture. There are many hundreds of Scandinavian
place-names that can still be found in the British Isles, and
endings such as -by, -ness, and -thorp, are some typical
Scandinavian place name elements. The Vikings also had a
major influence on the English language itself, judging by the
amount of words that were borrowed and the fact that they are
part of everyday vocabulary even today.

6
 Background

The Viking Age lasted roughly from the eighth century to the
eleventh, with the Viking attacks on Europe beginning around
750 AD (Barber 1993:127). The Scandinavians were excellent
sailors, and they had impressive ships and navigational skills
that carried them as far as North America (‘Vinland’) long
before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. The Scandinavian
peoples were also engaged in extensive trade (128), not only
amongst themselves but also with people as different and
geographically widespread as the English, Irish, Germans,
Frisians, Slavs, Greeks, Arabs of Spain and the East, the
Turks of Constantinople and the inhabitants of the Atlantic
islands from the Faeroes to Labrador (Jones 1984:165).

However, the Vikings were mostly seen as barbaric

warriors, rather than tradesmen, and the areas of western
Europe that suffered the most from Viking attacks were
Britain and Ireland. There are several possible reasons why
the Scandinavians took to the sea and headed for the British
Isles; one might have been overpopulation in the harsh and
poor landscape of the north. Another reason was that in the
old Scandinavian society it was customary to leave
inheritances to the eldest son, which led to the younger sons
wanting to seek their fortune elsewhere, perhaps at sea.
However, the major reason might have been the fall of the
Frisians, who were, until the late eighth century, the greatest
maritime power of North-West Europe. This opened up the
sea-routes and thus enabled the Scandinavians to travel south
(Barber 1993:127).

The first Viking attacks on England took place around 800

AD and started as merely plundering raids, but some fifty

7
years later the attacks had become more serious and groups
had even started spending the winters in Britain (128).
Previously these expeditions had been seasonal; winter was
not a good time for war or travel, neither by sea nor by land.
They now found that winters in the south were milder, there
was plenty of good land to take and, of course, the seas stayed
open, so there was no reason to return home. (Jones 1984:211-
12).

The resistance from the English was badly organised and

often ineffective. From the sixth century and onwards
England had consisted of seven kingdoms: Kent, Essex,
Sussex, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria. This
was called the Heptarchy, and the different kingdoms were
often at war with each other, competing for domination
(Odenstedt 2000:52). The lack of unity, especially in England,
made it a great deal easier for the Vikings to roam and raid the
countryside. The Vikings, usually referred to as ‘Danes’,
successfully took control of large parts of England, and
towards the end of the ninth century their eyes turned to
Wessex, the strongest of the Saxon kingdoms not yet under
Danish control. Here, their conquering of England came to a
stop when King Alfred and his followers put up resistance,
eventually forcing the Viking troops to surrender in 878.
Alfred and the Viking leader Guthrum reached an agreement,
called the Treaty of Wedmore, where the Vikings promised to
leave Wessex alone and to accept Christianity (Jones
1984:223). The northern and eastern counties already
belonged to the Danes, and now a southern boundary was
drawn. This area was what would be called the Danelaw.
The Viking activities thus “began in plunder and ended in
conquest” (Baugh 1993:90).

8
 Scandinavian Settlement

As the name implies, the Danelaw was the part of England

where Danish law and custom were followed. The boundary
between the English territories and the Danelaw ran roughly
along a line from London to Chester on the west coast (Barber
1993:128). It included the conquests and settlements in
Northumbria, East Anglia, the southeast Midlands and the five
boroughs of Stamford, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and
Lincoln (Jones 1984:421). Although they were usually
referred to as ‘Danes’, there was a large number of
Norwegians among the Scandinavians as well, and through
the discovery of Swedish rune stones in England we also
know that several Swedes took part in the raids (Odenstedt
2000:53). The establishment of the Danelaw probably led to a
wave of immigrants from Scandinavia in the late ninth and
early tenth century (Kastovsky 1992:323).

Map 1
.The Danelaw (Source: Barber
1993:129)

The
Scandinavian
settlement was rapid
and heavy; the Danes
settled mainly in the
East Midlands and
East Anglia,
whereas the
Norwegians
settled in the north,
mainly Yorkshire, on the Isle of Man and on Ireland (Clark

9
1992:467). Although little is known about the relations
between the settlers and the English, it appears that the
Scandinavians did not often force the Anglo-Saxon population
to move elsewhere (Leith 1997:22); instead, they mainly
founded new settlements in areas that were less populated.
Many Norwegians also arrived in northern Scotland from the
Orkneys, and these settlements survived far into the
seventeenth century (Kastovsky 1992:324-325).

Map 2.Scandinavian settlement (source: Ritchie, BBC)

Scandinavian Place-Names

One very noticeable difference between the area where the

Scandinavians settled and the rest of England is the hundreds
of place-names with Scandinavian origin in the Danelaw.
Place names often begin as topographical descriptions or

10
descriptions of the founders of the sites (Clark 1992:471), and
place-name elements like -by (Grimsby), -beck (Tossbeck),
-ness (Furness) -kir[k] (Kirkcaldy), -scale, -sough, -thwait[e]
(Inglethwaithe), -thorp[e] (Scunthorpe), and -toft (Lowestoft)
are all of Scandinavian origin. Of these, Loyn (1994:85)
considers -by and -thorp to be the most significant elements,
of which -by is found to a large extent in Yorkshire and in the
areas of Lancashire, Lincolnshire and the central Midlands.
Many of the -bys are compounded with a Danish personal
name, and they mainly include settlements established during
the generations of migration after the successful conquering in
the 860s and 870s. Baugh (1993:96) estimates that there are
over 600 –by names, nearly all of them in ‘Danish’ areas. The
–by suffix originally had the meaning of a farmstead, but
many grew into villages or towns, keeping the –by name.
Examples are Grimsby, Derby, and Rugby. It is clear that
some place-names are more Danish than Norwegian; for
instance,-thorp was not often used by the Norwegians, so it is
an indication of Danish settlement (Barber 1993:128). Like
the –by names, the –thorp names were also usually
Scandinavian compounds, and usually used of secondary
settlements, a hamlet or farmstead, and in the Yorkshire area
also often more specifically associated with sheep-farming.
Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire in particular are
counties rich in –thorp names. The question of the –thorp
names is however more complicated than that; there was also
a related Old English element, -throp/-trop, which may have
encouraged the use of the Norse –thorp (Fellows-Jensen 180).

There is also a large number of so called hybrid names, where

one element is Scandinavian and the other is English. These
are generally known as the Grimston hybrids; ‘Grim’ because
it is a Scandinavian name, and ‘–ton’ because it is an Anglo-

11
Saxon place-name element (‘-tun’), meaning a village or a
farmstead. Many of these represent villages that were taken
over and renamed by Scandinavian settlers (Loyn 1994:86).

However, it is important to remember that the Vikings did not

populate all the places with Scandinavian names in the
Danelaw. It is possible that the Anglo-Saxons adopted their
naming tradition and, similarly, places were often renamed;
thus, we cannot count on the place-name when deciding
whether a place was originally a Scandinavian settlement.
Townend (2002:48) discusses three possible scenarios
concerning place-names where there is
contact between speakers of two different languages:

1. The speakers of the incoming language may use the names

they encounter without changing them.
2. The incomers may coin their own names, unrelated to the
existing ones.
3. The incomers may adapt the names they encounter, to suit
their own speech habits.

Concerning the Anglo-Scandinavian relationship, all three

possibilities were probably in use, but it is the third option that
appears to be the most common one. Speakers then either
change the phonetic sounds in the foreign name, or translate
the name into their own language, by sound or by element.
(50)

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 Map 3. Place-names with Scandinavian origin (Source: Loyn 1994:83)

Townend (51) goes on to argue that the many records of the

Scandinavisation of Old English place-names is the best
evidence for how well the Scandinavians understood the
Language they heard from the Anglo-Saxons.

Naturally, the place-names are not the only legacies left

behind by the Vikings; there is also an impressive collection
of words with Scandinavian origin in the English language of
today.

Scandinavian Loanwords

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When the Vikings arrived in the British Isles the dominant
language was the Old English of the Anglo-Saxons, while the
Vikings themselves spoke Old Norse. Loyn (1994:78-79) and
other scholars claim that the two languages, both of the
Germanic branch, were probably still rather similar, thus
making it possible for both sides to understand each other,
although with a little effort. The two languages were cognates,
and similar in their basic structures. Additionally, a certain
degree of bilingualism may have developed over time, but
there is however much disagreement over this issue. It is not
clear if the Danes, the English, or both, became bilingual
(Ruiz-Moneva 1997:187).

By 1100 the English in the north and east had been modified
to what Loyn (1994:79) calls Anglo-Scandinavian. This was
at the end of the Viking Age but that did not mean that Old
Norse stopped being used in Britain; it was spoken for a long
time thereafter as well. Travelling by sea was still important,
and contacts were kept with the Isle of Man, Irish ports
and the Northern Isles, which helped to keep the language
alive. These places all contained a large and influential Norse-
speaking population until the late twelfth century, and
sometimes longer (Loyn 1994:81). The Orkney and Shetland
Islands also had an important role in keeping the language
alive. The Orkneys are particularly interesting, since the
Norse language was spoken there throughout the Middle
Ages, and remained the common language until the 1500s
when the Anglicisation began and the population probably
became bilingual. The complete Scandinavisation of Orkney
and Shetland was quite unique; nowhere else did the same
thing occur (Loyn 1994:103-104).

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The Anglo-Saxon literary tradition shows few signs of the
long coexistence of the two languages, other than in the legal
field, but the impact of the Scandinavians’ language would
prove to be very deep and far-reaching (Loyn 1994:82).
However, the majority of the Scandinavian loanwords are first
recorded after 1100, during the Middle English period; the
main reason for this is that there are so few Old English texts
from the Danelaw. Kastovsky (1992:331) also mentions the
possibility that Danish could have been an exclusively spoken
language, which might explain the everyday character of the
Scandinavian loans, and the lack of written records.
Additionally, it sometimes takes a long time for a new word to
appear in written form even though it may be frequently used
in the daily oral language (Ruiz-Moneva 1997:189). However,
one very important loanword, the verb to call, was recorded in
a war poem around 991 (Hug 1987:2), so it is clear that the
Scandinavian linguistic influence was starting to show, even
this early.

Naturally, the massive migration and settlement that the

Scandinavians undertook led to extensive use of the Norse
tongue in the area of the Danelaw, and we can see evidence of
it even today through its influences on the English language.
Scandinavian vocabulary penetrated nearly every area of the
language (Jones 1984:422), but most words of
Scandinavian origins in English are concrete everyday words.
A few examples follow here:

o The nouns bank, birth, booth, egg, husband, law, leg, root,
score, sister, skin, trust, wing and window

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o The adjectives awkward, flat, happy, ill, loose, low, odd,
sly, ugly, weak, and wrong

o The verbs to cast, clip, crawl, cut, die, drown, gasp, give,
lift, nag, scare, sprint, take,
and want. And of course the present plural of ‘to be’, are.

o The pronouns both, same, they, them and their

A few examples of later borrowings from the Scandinavian

languages are fjord, saga, ski, slalom, smorgasbord and
Viking (Odenstedt 2000:88).

The fact that even the pronouns ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’
were accepted into the language shows what massive effects
the Viking settlement had. Of course, since the development
of the Old English pronouns had led to them being very
similar and a cause of ambiguity and misunderstandings, it
was easy to accept the Norse variant (Loyn 1994:82).
Nevertheless, it is very unusual that grammatical items are
borrowed. Furthermore, ‘they’ appears to have been brought
into the language earlier than the other pronouns; writers in
the 15th century used ‘they’ but were still using the older
forms her (‘their’) and hem (‘them’) (Odenstedt 2000:87).

It can be difficult to recognise the Scandinavian words since

the languages are so closely related; many words that look
Scandinavian are actually native English words. For instance,
arm, foot, tree, cow, stone, land, eat, and drink are all
recorded in early Old English (Odenstedt 2000:87).

Odenstedt continues by mentioning certain ways to decide

whether a word is a Scandinavian loan:

16
1.Germanic / sk / became /∫ / (sh) in all positions. This change
occurred later in Scandinavia, and therefore words like shall,
shoulder and shirt are native English words whereas skin, sky
and skirt are Scandinavian words.

2. In early Old English the Germanic /g/ before front vowels

became /j/, and /k/ became /t/. In Old Norse /g/ and /k/
remained. Thus, child, choose and yield are all native words,
while give, gift, kid and kindle are Scandinavian.

3. Date of first appearance. For instance, the Old English

word for ‘take’ was niman, but in late Old English tacan is
found. The Old Norse word was taka, which shows that it
must have been borrowed from the Scandinavians. In the
same way, the word for ‘law’ was originally æ but a later
recording is lagu, which comes from Old Norse.

In fact, judging by the large number of Scandinavian words in

the legal area, The Vikings had a considerable impact upon
the law and order of the Anglo-Saxons. Some examples are
fellow (‘partner’), law, and outlaw. Even more Scandinavian
words related to the legal area existed in Old English but were
later replaced. Not only did the Scandinavian peoples bring
their laws and customs to the Danelaw, but their view on law
and legal custom was to a great extent acknowledged by all of
England (Jones 1984:423).

Baugh (1993:95) also mentions that, in addition to the rules

above, the vowel of a word can sometimes indicate that it is a
loanword; for instance, in Old English the Germanic
diphthong /ai/ became /a:/, whereas it became /ei/ or /e:/ in
Old Norse. Thus words like aye, nay, and reindeer are

17
borrowings. Baugh further concludes that tests based on these
kinds of sound-developments are the most reliable ways to
separate Scandinavian from native words, but sometimes it is
also possible by looking at the meaning of words. The word
bloom, for instance, could derive from Old English bloma or
the Scandinavian blom. The Scandinavian word had the
meaning of ‘flower’ or ‘bloom’, while the OE word meant
‘ingot of iron’. Both meanings have survived in Modern
English; the Scandinavian meaning of ‘flower’ has been
retained in the daily use of the word, and the Old English
form exists as a metallurgic term. The same can be applied to
the word gift, which was previously discussed. The initial g
does point to the Scandinavian origin of the word, but if we
did not know this a look at the meaning of the cognates might
help. The Old English gift had the meaning ‘price of a wife’,
whereas the Old Norse word meant ‘gift, present’.

Many of the new Scandinavian words must have made their

way into the English language simply by chance; the Old
Norse and Old English words were used side by side, and
which would survive depended on things such as differences
in meaning and form (Baugh 1993:98).
In the words of Ruiz-Moneva (1997:190):
“The preferred form must have been the one with which
maximum mutual understanding was achieved.”

Large numbers of Scandinavian loans are also, not very

surprisingly, found in war and seafaring terms (Kastovsky
1992:333). For instance, keel, knife, and slaughter. Today, a
higher numbers of Scandinavian words are found in the
dialects of Yorkshire and Scotland, than in the rest of Britain.
Similarly, in the northern and Scottish dialects, words that do
not exist in the southern parts of the country are also found.

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For instance gate (meaning ‘street’ or ‘road’), ken (‘know’),
and kirk (‘church’) (Odenstedt 2000:88). ‘Gates’ in London,
such as Newgate, were places literally at gates in the city wall,
whereas in northern cites such as York the –gate means
‘street’. For instance, Briggate – ‘Bridge Street’, and Kirkgate
– ‘Church Street’ (Barber 1993:132).

There also seems to be a difference between the form taken by

early and late Norse loans; in Old English the Norse loans
usually underwent cognate substitution and took an English
form, but in Middle English loans the Norse form is retained
(Townend 2002:201). A possible explanation is that the Old
English loans were borrowed by English speakers while Old
Norse was still a living language, and the Middle English
loans being the result of Norse speakers shifting to English as
their own language slowly died out, and thus brought the
Norse words with them.

Baugh (1993:92) estimates the number of Scandinavian

loanwords in English to be well over 1400, while Odenstedt
(2000:53) mentions a more modest figure of at least 1000.
What is clear is that it is a small number compared to the size
of the English lexicon, but still quite substantial, considering
the nature of the Scandinavian ‘colonisation’.

The Scandinavian influence also reached into matters of

grammar and syntax, although this is more difficult to show
and will not be further explored here. However, the –s of the
third person singular has been attributed to the Scandinavian
influence, as well as the ending –t in words like scant and
want, which was originally the Norse neuter ending. The
inflectional endings were often the only difference and
obstacle to the mutual understanding of Norse and English

19
words, and the loss of the inflections in Old English was
accelerated by the Scandinavian presence (Baugh 1993:101).

The Danelaw collapsed only some fifty years after its

establishment but the Scandinavian settlers nevertheless
remained in the area. The West Saxons had gradually
reconquered it, and eventually the Scandinavians accepted the
Saxon king as their own. They did not, however, live as an
isolated group; they were absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon
population, and 14 intermarriage was frequent (Wilson
1980:174). The importance of the Vikings in Britain did not
end with the fall of the Danelaw; they continued raiding
England sporadically and in 1016 the Danish King Knut
(Canute) also became king over all of England. However, his
reign was short and it is fair to say that with his death the
decline of the Viking Age started (Wilson 1980:178).

Conclusion

20
As we have seen, the Scandinavian legacy left in Britain by
the Vikings is still evident today. The borrowing and
assimilation of language was continuous throughout the
Viking period, and the character of the Scandinavian words
implies that the invading Norse peoples interacted with and
married Anglo-Saxons. For instance, borrowings such as
‘sister’, ‘husband’ and ‘birth’ are intimate family words and
would most likely not have been borrowed unless the different
peoples were living closely together. The new vocabulary was
more general than anything else, and many of the most
common English words of today are often derived from Old
Norse. The very common expression ‘they are’, where both
pronoun and verb come from the Scandinavian language, is a
great indication as to how far the influence on the English
language went. The evidence of Scandinavian place-names in
the Danelaw area further proves the extensive migration and
settlement undertaken by the Vikings, but this evidence is of
course not free of problems in interpretation. Coinage of new
place-names is a complex process, and cannot be too
simplified. Similarly, a Scandinavian place-name does not
necessarily mean that it was a Scandinavian settlement,
although chances are high that this was the case.

In conclusion, the Scandinavian imprint on Britain was very

deep indeed. The Scandinavians managed to penetrate nearly
every British domain; they affected the law system of the
Anglo-Saxons, they modified the agricultural system in areas
of the Danelaw, there are thousands of place-names of
Scandinavian origin, Viking rune-stones have been found in
certain areas, and the English vocabulary has been very much
influenced by the Norse tongue.
Bibliography

21
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Clark, Cecily. “Onomastics” The Cambridge History of the
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mirror”. Scandinavian Settlement in Northern Britain:
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in their Historical Context. Ed. Barbara E. Crawford. London:
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