The Scandinavian Influence: The Viking Age.

The end of the Old English period English underwent a third foreign influence, the result of contact with another important language, the Scandinavian. In the course of history it is not unusual to witness the spectacle of a nation or people, through causes too remote or complex for analysis, suddenly emerging from ob­scurity, playing for a time a conspicuous, often brilliant, part, and then, through causes equally difficult to define, subsiding once more into a relatively minor sphere of activity. Such a phenome­non is presented by the Teutonic inhabitants of the Scandinavian Peninsula and Denmark, one-time neighbors of the Anglo-Saxons and closely related to them in language and blood. For some centuries the Scandinavians had remained quietly in their northern home. But in the eighth century a change, possibly economic, possibly political, occurred in this area and provoked among them a spirit of unrest and adventurous enterprise. They began a series of attacks upon all the lands adjacent to the North Sea and the Baltic. Their activities began in plunder and ended in conquest. The Swedes established a kingdom in Russia; Norwegians colonized parts of the British Isles, the Faroes and Iceland, and from there pushed on to Greenland and the coast of Labrador; the Danes founded the dukedom of Normandy and finally conquered England. The pinnacle of their achievement was reached in the beginning of the eleventh century when Cnut, king of Denmark, obtained the throne of England, conquered Norway, and from his English capital ruled the greater part of the Scandinavian world. The daring sea-rovers to whom these unusual achievements were due are commonly known as Vikings,¹ and the period of their activity, extending from the middle of the eighth century to the beginning of the eleventh, is popularly known as the Viking Age. It was to their attacks upon, settle ments in, and ultimate conquest of England that the Scandinavian influence upon Old English was due.

The Scandinavian Invasions of England. In the Scan­dinavian attacks upon England three well-marked stages can be distinguished. The first is the period of early raids, beginning according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 787 and continuing with some intermissions until about 850 The raids of this period were simply plundering attacks upon towns and monasteries near the coast. Sacred vessels of gold and silver, jeweled shrines, costly robes, valuables of all kinds, and slaves were carried off. Note-Worthy instances are the sacking of Lindisfarne and Jarrow in 793 and 794. But with the plundering of these two famous mon­asteries the attacks apparently ceased for forty years, until re­newed in 834 along the southern coast and in East Anglia. These early raids were apparently the work of small isolated bands.

The second stage is the work of large armies and is marked by widespread plundering in all parts of the country and by extensive settlements. This new development was inaugurated by the arrival in 1850 of a Danish fleet of 350 ships. Their pirate crews wintered in the isle of Thanet and the following spring captured Canterbury and London and ravaged the surrounding country. Although finally defeated by a West Saxon army they soon renewed their attacks. In 866 a large Danish army plundered East Anglian and in 867 captured York. In 869 the East Anglian king, Edmund, met a cruel death in resisting the invaders. The incident made a deep impression on all England, and the memory of his martyrdom was vividly preserved in English tradition for nearly two centuries. The eastern part of England was now largely in the hands of the Danes, and they began turning their attention to Wessex. The attack upon Wessex began shortly before the accession of King Alfred (871-99). Even the greatness of this greatest of English kings threatened to prove insufficient to with­stand the repeated thrusts of the Northmen. After seven years of resistance, in which temporary victories were invariably suc­ceeded by fresh defeats, Alfred was forced to take refuge with a small band of personal followers in the marshes of Somerset. But in this darkest hour for the fortunes of the English Alfred's courage and persistence triumphed. With a fresh levy of men from Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hampshire, he suddenly attacked the Danish army under Guthrum at Ethandun (now Edington, in Wiltshire). The result was an overwhelming victory for the English and a capitulation by the Danes,_(878J.

The Treaty of Wedmore (near Glastonbury), which was signed by Alfred and Guthrum the same year, marks the culmination of the second stage in the Danish invasions. Wessex was saved. The Danes withdrew from Alfred's territory. But they were not com­pelled to leave England. The treaty merely defined the line, running roughly from Chester to London, to the east of which the foreigners were henceforth to remain. This territory was to be subject to Danish law and is hence known as the Danelaw. In addition the Danes agreed to accept Christianity, and Guthrum was baptized. This last provision was important. It might secure the better observance of the treaty, and, what was more im­portant, it would help to pave the way for the ultimate fusion of the two groups.

The third stage of the Scandinavian incursions covejrs__the period of political adjustment and assimilation from 878 to 1042. The Treaty of Wedmore did not put an end to Alfred's troubles. Guthrum was inclined to break faith and there were fresh in­vasions from outside. But the situation slowly began to clear. Under Alfred's son Edward the Elder (900-25) and grandson Athelstan (925-39) the English began a series of counterattacks that put the Danes on the defensive. One of the brilliant victories of the English in this period was Athelstan's triumph in 937 in the battle of Brunanburh, in Northumbria, over a combined force of Danes and Scots, a victory celebrated in one of the finest of Old English poems. By the middle of the century a large part of eastern England, though still strongly Danish in blood and custom, was once more under English rule.

Toward the end of the century, however, when England seemed at last on the point of solving its Danish problem, a new and formidable succession of invasions began. In 991 a fleet of ninety-three ships under Olaf Tryggvason and his associates Suddenly entered the Thames. They were met by Byrhtnoth, the valiant earl of the East Saxons, in a battle celebrated in another famous Old English war poem, The Battle of Maldon. Here the English, heroic in defeat, lost their leader, and soon the invaders were being bribed by large sums to refrain from plunder. The invasions now began to assume an official character. In 994 Olaf, who shortly became king of Norway, was joined by Svein, king of Denmark, in a new attack on London. The sums necessary to buy off the enemy became greater and greater, rising in 1012 to the amazing figure of £,48,000. In each case the truce thus bought was temporary, and Danish forces were soon again marching over England, murdering and pillaging. Finally Svein determined to make himself king of the country. In 1014, supported by his son Cnut, he crowned a series of victories in different parts of England by driving Ethelred, the English king, into exile and seizing the throne. Upon his sudden death the same year his son succeeded him. Three years of fighting established Cnut's claims to the throne, and for the next twenty-five years England was ruled by Danish kings.

The Settlement of the Danes in England. The events here rapidly summarized had as an important consequence the settle­ment of large numbers of Scandinavians in England. However temporary may have been the stay of many of the attacking parties, especially those which in the beginning came simply to plunder, many individuals remained behind when their ships returned home. Often they became permanent settlers in the island. Some indication of their number may be had from the fact that more than 1400 places in England bear Scandinavian names. Most of these are naturally in the north and east of England, the district of the Danelaw, for it was here that the majority of the invaders settled. Most of the new inhabitants were Danes, al­though there were considerable Norwegian settlements in the northwest, especially in what is now Cumberland and Westmore­land, and in a few of the northern counties. The presence of a large Scandinavian element in the population is indicated not merely by place-names but by peculiarities of manorial organ­ization, local government, legal procedure, and the like. Thus we have to do not merely with large bands of marauders, marching and countermarching across England, carrying hardship and devastation into all parts of the country for upward of two centuries, but with an extensive peaceable settlement by farmers who intermarried with the English, adopted many of their customs, and entered into the everyday life of the community. In the districts where such settlements took place conditions were favorable for an extensive Scandinavian influence on the English language.

CHAPTER III

The Amalgamation of the Two Races.

The amalgamation of the two races was greatly facilitated by the close kinship that existed between them. The problem of the English was not the assimilation of an alien race representing an alien culture and speaking a wholly foreign tongue. The policy of the English kings in the period when they were re-establishing their control over the Danelaw was to accept as an established fact the mixed population of the district and to devise a modus vivendi for its component elements. In this effort they were aided by the natural adaptability of the Scandinavian. Generations of contact with foreign communities, into which their many enterprises had brought them, had made the Scandinavians a cosmopolitan people. The impression derived from a study of early English institutions is that in spite of certain native customs which the Danes continued to observe they adapted themselves largely to the ways of English life. That many of them early accepted Christianity is attested by the large number of Scandinavian names found not only among monks and abbots, priests and bishops, but also among those who gave land to monasteries and endowed churches. It would be a great mistake to think of the relation between Anglo-Saxon and Dane, especially in the tenth century, as uniformly hostile. One must distinguish, as we have said, between the predatory bands that continued to traverse the country and the large numbers that were settled peacefully on the land. Alongside the ruins of English towns—Symeon of Durham reports that the city of Carlisle remained uninhabited for two hundred years after its destruction by the Danes—there existed important communities established by the newcomers. They seem to have grouped themselves at first in concentrated centers, parceling out large tracts of land from which the owners had fled, and preferring this form of settlement to too scattered a distribution in a strange land. Among such centers the Five Boroughs—Lincoln, Stamford, Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham —became important foci of Scandinavian influence. It was but a question of time until these large centers and the multitude of smaller communities where the Northmen gradually settled were absorbed into the general mass of the English population.

The Relation of the Two Languages. The relation between the two languages in the district settled by the Danes is a matter of inference rather than exact knowledge. Doubtless the situation was similar to that observable in numerous parts of the world today where people speaking different languages arc found living side by side in the same region. While in some places the Scandi­navians gave up their language early¹ there were certainly com­munities in which Danish or Norse remained for some time the usual language. Up until the time of the Norman Conquest the Scandinavian language in England was constantly being renewed by the steady stream of trade and conquest. In some parts of Scotland Norse was still spoken as late as the seventeen century. In other districts in which the prevailing speech was English there were doubtless many of the newcomers who continued to speak their own language at least as late as 1100 and a considerable number who were to a greater or lesser degree bilingual. The last-named circumstance is rendered more likely by the frequent intermarriage between the two races and by the similarity between the two tongues. The Anglican dialect resembled the language of the Northman in a number of par­ticulars in which West Saxon showed divergence. The two may even have been mutually intelligible to a limited extent. Con temporary statements on the subject are conflicting, and it is difficult to arrive at a conviction. But wherever the truth lies in this debatable question, there can be no doubt that the basis existed for an extensive interaction of the two languages upon each other, and this conclusion is amply borne out by the large number of Scandinavian elements subsequently found in English.

The Tests of Borrowed Words. The similarity between Old English and the language of the Scandinavian invaders makes it at times very difficult to decide whether a given word in Modern English is a native or a borrowed word. Many of the commoner words of the two languages were identical, and if we had no Old English literature from the period before the Danish invasions, we should be unable to say that many words were not of Scandinavian origin. In certain cases, however, we have very reliable criteria by which we can recognize a borrowed word. These tests are not such as the layman can generally apply, although occasionally they are sufficiently simple. The most reliable depend upon differences in the development of certain sounds in the North Teutonic and West Teutonic areas. One of the simplest to recognize is the development of the sound sk. In Old English this was early palatalized tojh (written sc), except possibly in the combination scr, whereas in the Scandinavian countries it retained its hard sk sound. Consequently, while native words like ship, shall, fish have sh in Modern English, words borrowed from the Scandinavians are generally still pro­nounced with sk: sky, skin, skill, scrape, scrub, bask, whisk. The O.E. ycyrlc has become shirt, while the corresponding O.N. form skyrla gives us skirt. In the same way the retention of the hard pronunciation of k and g in such words as kid, dike¹ (cf. ditch) get, give, gild, egg, is an indication of Scandinavian origin. Oc­casionally, though not very often, the vowel of a word gives clear proof of borrowing. For example, the Teutonic diphthong ai became â in Old English (and has become ö in modern English), but became ei or e in Old Scandinavian. Thus aye, nay (beside no from the native word), hale (cf. the English form (w)lwle), reindeer, swain are borrowed words, and many more examples can be found in Middle English and in the modern dialects. Thus there existed in Middle English the forms geit, gait, which are from Scandinavian, beside gat, göt from the O.E. word. The native word has survived in Modern English goat. In the same way the Scandinavian word for loathsome existed in Middle Eng­lish as leip, laif) beside Id}), loft. Such tests as these, based on sound-developments in the two languages are the most reliable means of distinguishing Scandinavian from native words. But occasionally meaning gives a fairly reliable test. Thus our word bloom (flower) could come equally well from O.E. blorna or Scandinavian blöm. But the O.E. word meant an "ingot of iron', whereas the Scandinavian word meant 'flower, bloom'. It happens that the Old English word has survived as a term in metallurgy, but it is the Old Norse word that has come clown in ordinary use. Again, if the initial g in gift did not betray the Scandinavian origin of this word, we should be justified in suspecting it from the fact that the cognate O.E. word gift meant the 'price of a wife', and hence in the plural 'marriage,' while the O.N. word had the more general sense of 'gift, present'. The word plow in Old English meant a measure of land, in Scandinavian the agri­cultural implement, which in Old English was called a sulh. When neither the form of a word nor its meaning proves its Scandinavian origin we can never be sure that we have to do with a borrowed word. The fact that an original has not been preserved in Old English is no proof that such an original did not exist. Nevertheless when a word appears in Middle English which cannot be traced to an Old English source but for which an entirely satisfactory original exists in Old Norse, and when that word occurs chiefly in texts written in districts where Danish influence was strong, or when it has survived in dialectal use in these districts today, the probability that we have here a borrowed word is fairly strong. In every case final judgment must rest upon a careful consideration of all the factors involved.

CHAPTER IV

Scandinavian Place-names.

Among the most notable evi­dences of the extensive Scandinavian settlement in England is the large number of places that bear Scandinavian names. When we find more than six hundred places like Grimsby, Whitby, Derby, Rugby, and Thorcsby, with names ending in -by, nearly all of them in the district occupied by the Danes, we have a strik­ing evidence of the number of Danes who settled in England. For those names all contain the Danish word by, meaning 'farm' or 'town', a word which is also seen in our word by-law (town law). Some three hundred names like Althorp, Bishopsthorpe, Gaw-thorj)C, Linthorpe contain the Scandinavian word thorp (village). An almost equal number contain the word thwaite (an isolated piece of land)— Applcthwaite, Braithwaite, Cowpcrthwaite, Langthwaite, Satlerthwalte. About a hundred places bear names ending in toft (a piece of ground, a messuage)— Brimtoft, Eas-toft, Langtoft, Loivestoft, Nortoft. Numerous other Scandinavian elements enter into English place-names, which need not be particularized here. It is apparent that these elements entered intimately in the speech of the people of the Danelaw. It has been remarked above that more than 1400 Scandinavian place-names have been counted in England, and the number will undoubtedly be increased when a more careful survey of the material has been made. These names are not uniformly distributed over the Danelaw. The largest number are found in Yorkshire and Lin­colnshire. In some districts in these counties as many as 75 per cent of the place-names are of Scandinavian origin. Cumberland and Westmoreland contribute a large number, reflecting the extensive Norse settlements in the northwest, while Norfolk, with a fairly large representation, shows that the Danes were numerous in at least this part of East Anglia. It may be remarked that a similar high percentage of Scandinavian personal names has been found in the medieval records of these districts. Names ending in son, like Stevenson or Johnson, conform to a characteristic Scan dinavian custom, the equivalent Old English patronymic being -ng, as in Browning.

The Earliest Borrowing. The extent of this influence on English place-nomenclature would lead us to expect a large infiltration of other words into the vocabulary. But we should not expect this infiltration to show itself at once. The early relations of the invaders with the English were too hostile to lead to much natural intercourse, and we must allow time for such words as the Anglo-Saxons learned from their enemies to find their way into literature. The number of Scandinavian words that appear in Old English is consequently small, amounting to only about two score. The largest single group of these is such as would be as­sociated with a sea-roving and predatory people. Words like barda (beaked ship), cnearr (small warship), scegfi (vessel), lij> (fleet), sccgpmann (pirate), dreng (warrior), ha (oarlock) and hd-sxta (rower in a warship), bdtswegen (boatman), hofding (chief, ringleader), orrest (battle), ran (robbery, rapine), and fylcian (to collect or marshal a force) show in what respects the invaders chiefly impressed the English. A little later we find a number of words relating to the law or characteristic of the social and administrative system of the Danelaw. The word law itself is of Scandinavian origin, as is the word outlaw. The word mâl (action at law), hold (freeholder), wapentake (an adminis­trative district), hüsting (assembly), and riding (originally thrid-ing, one of the three divisions of Yorkshire) owe their use to the Danes. In addition to these, a number of genuine Old English words seem to be translations of Scandinavian terms: bötlcas (what cannot be compensated), hdmsocn (attacking an enemy in his house), lahceap (payment for re-entry into lost legal rights), landceap (tax paid when land was bought) are examples of such translations.¹ English legal terminology underwent a complete reshaping after the Norman Conquest, and most of these words have been replaced now by terms from the French. But their temporary existence in the language is an evidence of the extent to which Scandinavian customs entered into the life of the districts in which the Danes were numerous.

Scandinavian Loan-words and Their Character. It was after the Danes had begun to settle down peaceably in the island and enter into the ordinary relations of life with the English that Scandinavian words commenced to enter in numbers into the language. If we examine the bulk of these words with a view to dividing them into classes and thus discovering in what domains of thought or experience the Danes contributed especially to Eng­lish culture and therefore to the English language, we shall not arrive at any significant result. The Danish invasions were not like the introduction of Christianity, bringing the English into contact with a different civilization and introducing them to many things, physical as well as spiritual, that they had not known before. The civilization of the invaders was very much like that of the English themselves, if anything somewhat inferior to it. Consequently the Scandinavian elements that entered the English language are such as would make their way into it through the give and take of everyday life. Their character can best be conveyed by a few examples, arranged simply in alphabetical order. Among nouns that came in are axle-tree, band, bank, birth, boon, booth, brink, bull, calf (of leg), crook, dirt, down (feathers), dregs, egg, fellow, freckle, gait, gap, girth, guess, hap, keel, kid, leg, link, loan, mire, race, reindeer, reef (of sail), rift, root, scab, scales, score, scrap, scat, sister, skill, skin, skirt, sky, slaughter, snare, stack, steak, swain, thrift, tidings, trust, want, window. The list has been made somewhat long in order the better to illustrate the varied and yet simple character of the borrowings. Among adjec­tives we find awkward, flat, iÜ, loose, low, meek, muggy, odd, rot­ten, rugged, scant, seemly, sly, tattered, tight, and weak. There is also a surprising number of common verbs among the borrow­ings, verbs like to bait, bask, batten, call, cast, clip, cow, crave, crawl, die, droop, egg (on), flit, gape, gasp, get, give, glitter, kindle, lift, lug, nag, ransack, raise, rake, rid, rive, scare, scout ( an idea), scowl, screech, snub, sprint, take, thrive, thrust. Lists such newcomers and that not a single Briton was left alive. The evi­dence of the place-names in this region lends support to the statement. But this was probably an exceptional case. In the east and southeast, where the Teutonic conquest was fully accom­plished at a fairly early date, it is probable that there were fewer survivals of. a Celtic population than elsewhere. Large numbers of the defeated fled to the west. Here it is apparent that a con­siderable Celtic-speaking population survived until fairly late times. Some such situation is suggested by a whole cluster of Celtic place-names in the northeastern corner of Dorsetshire.¹ It is altogether likely that many Celts were held as slaves by the conquerors and that many of the Teutons married Celtic women. In parts at least of the island, contact between the two races must have been constant and in some districts intimate for several generations.

CHAPTER V

Celtic Place-names.

CHAPTER VI

Form Words.

If further evidence were needed of the inti­mate relation that existed between the two languages, it would be found in the fact that the Scandinavian words that made their way into English were not confined to nouns and adjectives and verbs, but extended to pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and even a part of the verb to be. Such parts of speech are not often transferred from one language to another. The pronouns they, their, and them are Scandinavian. Old English used hie, hicra, him (see above, p. 68). Possibly the Scandinavian words were felt to be less subject to confusion with forms of the singular. Moreover, though these are the most important, they arc not the only Scandinavian pronouns to be found in English. A late Old English inscription contains the Old Norse form hamım for him. Both and same, though not primarily pronouns, have pronominal uses and are of Scandinavian origin. The preposition till was at one time widely used in the sense of to, besides having its present meaning, and fro, likewise in common use formerly as the equivalent of from, survives in the phrase to and fro. Both words are from the Scandinavian. From the same source comes the modern form of the conjunction though, the Old Norse equivalent of O.E. heah. The Scandinavian use of at as a sign of the infinitive is to be seen in the English ado (at-do) and was more widely used in this construction in Middle English. The adverbs aloft, athwart, aye (ever), and seemly, and the earlier hehen (hence) and hwepen (whence) are all derived from the Scandinavian Finally the present plural are of the verb to be is a most significant adoption. While we aron was the Old English form in the north, the West Saxon plural was syndon (cf. German sind) and the form are in Modern English undoubtedly owes its extension to the influence of the Danes. When we remember that in the expression I they are both the pronoun and the verb are Scandinavian we/ realize once more how intimately the language of the invaders has entered into English.

Scandinavian Influence outside the Standard Speech. We should miss the full significance of the Scandinavian influence if we failed to recognize the extent to which it is found outside the standard speech. Our older literature and the modern dialects are full of words which are not now in ordinary use. The ballads offer many examples. When the Geste of Robin Hood begins "Lythe and listin, gcntilmen" it has for its first word an Old Norse syn­onym for listen. When a little later on the Sheriff of Nottingham says to Little John "Say me nowe, wight yonge man, what is nowe thy name?" he uses the O.N. vigt (strong, courageous). In the ballad of Captain Car the line "Busk and bowne, my merry men all" contains two words from the same source meaning pre­pare. The word gar, meaning to cause or make one do something, is of frequent occurrence. Thus, in Chevy Chace we are told of Douglas' men that "Many a doughete the(y) garde to dy"—i.e., they made many a doughty man die. In Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne the Virgin Mary is addressed: "Ah, deere Lady! sayd Robin Hoode, Thou art both mother and may!" in which may is a Scandinavian form for »note/. Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, in the ballad of that name, "bigget a bower on yon burn-brae", employ­ing in the process another word of Norse origin, biggen (to build), a word also used by Burns in To a Mouse: "Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!... And naething now to big a new ane." In Burns and Scott we find the comparative worse in the form waur: "A" the warld kens that they maun either marry or do waur" (Old Mortality), also an old word (O.N. verre) more com­monly found in the form used by Chaucer in the Boofc of the Duchess: "Alias! how myghte I fare werre?" Examples could be (brock or badger); a group of words for geographical features which had not played much part in the experience of the Anglo-Saxons in their continental home— crag, luh (lake), cumb (val­ley), and torr¹ (outcropping or projecting rock, peak), the two latter chiefly as elements in place-names; possibly the words dun (dark colored), and ass (ultimately from Latin asinus). Words of the second group, those that came into English through Celtic Christianity, are likewise few in number. In 563 St. Columba had come with twelve monks from Ireland to preach to his kinsmen in Britain. On the little island of lona off the west coast of Scotland he established a monastery and made it his headquarters for the remaining thirty-four years of his life. From this center many missionaries went out, founded other religious houses, and did much to spread Christian doctrine and learning. As a result of their activity the words ancor (hermit), dry (magician), cine (a gathering of parchment leaves), cross, chtgge (bell), gabolrind (compass), mind (diadem), and perhaps stxr (history) and cur-sian (to curse) came into at least partial use in Old English.

It does not appear that many of these Celtic words attained a very permanent place in the English language. Some soon died out and others acquired only local currency. The relation of the two races was not such as to bring about any considerable in­fluence on English life or on English speech. The surviving Celts were a submerged race. Had they, like the Romans, possessed a superior culture, something valuable to give the Teutons, their influence might have been greater. But the Anglo-Saxon found little occasion to adopt Celtic modes of expression and the Celtic influence remains the least of the early influences which affected the English language.

Historical background The Vikings that traveled to western and Eastern Europe were essentially from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They eventually made it into Greenland and North America.