The Influence Of The Vikings On The English Language 314j4l

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 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 language’s 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 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 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 didn’t 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 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), bātswegen (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 istrative 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 such as outlaw and wrong (p. 133). Old English also adopted several other words such as māl (action at law), hold (freeholder) and wapentake (istrative districts). However, after the Norman Conquest most these words were replaced by the French (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 tiðendi lagr sveinn klumsa Steik

Old Norse English both ball wing calf knife cake

baðar böllr vængir kálfi knifr kaka

Natural and topographical Norse were also integrated into the English language which can be grouped into three categories; place name suffixes, common noun and compound proper nouns (Friðriksdóttir, 2014, p. 13). The place name suffixes of Old Norse origin, which can be ed for 1,400 places in England, are; by, ON býr ‘town’ as in Grimsby; thorp ‘secondary settlement’ as in Grimsthorpe; toft ‘plot of land’ as in Langtoft; garth, from ON garðr ‘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 ský ‘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 Friðriksdóttir, 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 ský) replaced OE ūprodor and wolcen. Due to the conditions of that era where both languages were used simultaneously in the same place, “many doublets…survived 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 wræþþ) 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 [ʃ]. 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 [ʤ] and [k] to [ʧ], 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 blōma or ON blōm. 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 hlāf which became

‘loaf’, but in OE the word brēad meant ‘fragment’. However ON brauð 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 þēah) and adverbs hence (ON heþen), 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 beoð (Al-Wer, 2015, p. 14) and due to language with the Vikings, they later were replace by earun, aron and earan (ON forms erum, eruð, eru) which later turned into the Modern English form are (Friðriksdóttir, 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 frā. 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 þverr ‘adverse, contrary’ to become þvert 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 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 was…propelled 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 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 –þ (from OE -ɑþ) (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, má, 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 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 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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