Scandinavian Influences on the English Language

Therése Thornemo

Department of Humanities

Mid-Sweden University

English C, Linguistics

Supervisor: Mats Deutschmann

January 2004

Contents

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography

1

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.

2

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 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).

3

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).

4

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)

5

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 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 descriptions of the founders of the sites

(Clark 1992:471), and place-name elements like -by (Grimsby), -beck (Tossbeck), -ness

6

(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-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

7

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)

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

8

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.

9

Scandinavian Loanwords

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).

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

10

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 origin 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

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 effectsthe 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

11

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:

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).

12

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 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 number 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. For instance gate (meaning ‘street’ or

‘road’), ken (‘know’), and kirk (‘church’) (Odenstedt 2000:88). ‘Gates’ in London, such as

13

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 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).

15

Conclusion

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.

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mirror”. Scandinavian Settlement in Northern Britain: Thirteen Studies of Place-Names

in their Historical Context. Ed. Barbara E. Crawford. London: Leicester University

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