The Scandinavian invasion and its influence on the development of the English

Language.

Near 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 Germanic 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 coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland; 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,[33] 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, settlements in, and ultimate conquest of England that the Scandinavian influence upon Old English was due.

 

4.1. 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, and valuables of all kinds were carried off, and English people were captured to be made slaves. Noteworthy 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 850 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 defeated by a West Saxon army, they soon renewed their attacks. In 866 a large Danish army plundered East Anglia 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 assault upon Wessex began shortly before the accession of King Alfred (871–899). Even the greatness of this greatest of English kings threatened to prove insufficient to withstand the repeated attacks 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 (878).

 

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 covers 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 (900–925) and grandson Athelstan (925–939) 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, 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 substantial Viking fleet, which may have been under the command of Olaf Tryggvason, attacked and pillaged various towns along the southeast coast of England. It then sailed up the Blackwater to the vicinity of Maldon, where it was 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 Æthelred, 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 claim to the throne, and for the next twenty-five years England was ruled by Danish kings.

 

4.2. 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 that 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 1,400 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 Cumbria, and in a few of the northern counties. The presence of a large Scandinavian element in the population is indicated not merely by placenames 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 also 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.

 

4.3. The Amalgamation of the Two Peoples

 

The amalgamation of the two peoples was greatly facilitated by the close kinship that existed between them. The problem of the English was not the assimilation of an alien people representing an alien culture and speaking a wholly foreign tongue. The policy of the English kings in the period when they were reestablishing 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 that the Danes continued to observe, they assimilated to most of 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 200 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.

 

4.4. 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 are found living side by side in the same region. Although in some places the Scandinavians gave up their language early[34] 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 seventeenth 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 peoples and by the similarity between the two tongues. The Anglian dialect resembled the language of the Northmen in a number of particulars in which West Saxon showed divergence. The two may even have been mutually intelligible to a limited extent. Contemporary 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.

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. The older English literature and the modern dialects are full of words that are not now in ordinary use. The ballads offer many examples. When the Geste of Robin Hood begins “Lythe and listin, gentilmen” 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 no we, wight yonge man, What is nowe thy name?” he uses the ON 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 doughetë theДа garde to dy”—that is, 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 maid. 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 (ON verre) more commonly found in the form used by Chaucer in the Book of the Duchess: “Allas! how myghte I fare werre?” Examples could be multiplied, but it is sufficiently evident that there is much Scandinavian material in the dialects besides what has found its way into the standard speech.

 

4.12. Effect on Grammar and Syntax

 

That the Scandinavian influence not only affected the vocabulary but also extended to matters of grammar and syntax as well is less capable of exact demonstration but is hardly to be doubted. Inflections are seldom transferred from one language to another. A certain number of inflectional elements peculiar to the Northumbrian dialect have been attributed to Scandinavian influence,[38] among others the -s of the third person singular, present indicative, of verbs and the participial ending -and (bindand), corresponding to - end and -ind in the Midlands and South, and now replaced by -ing. The words scant, want, athwart preserve in the final t the neuter adjective ending of Old Norse. But this is of no great significance. It is much more important to recognize that in many words the English and Scandinavian languages differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of the word was so nearly the same in the two languages that only the endings would put obstacles in the way of mutual understanding. In the mixed population that existed in the Danelaw these endings must have led to much confusion, tending gradually to become obscured and finally lost. It seems but natural that the tendency toward the loss of inflections, which was characteristic of the English language in the north even in Old English times, was strengthened and accelerated by the conditions that prevailed in the Danelaw, and that some credit must be given the Danes for a development that, spreading to other parts and being carried much farther, resulted after the Norman Conquest in so happily simplifying English grammar. Likewise, the way words are put together in phrases and clauses—what we call syntax—is something in which languages less often influence one another than in matters of vocabulary. The probability of such influence naturally varies with the degree of intimacy that exists between the speakers of two languages. In those parts of Pennsylvania—the “Pennsylvania Dutch” districts—where German and English have mingled in a jargon peculiar to itself, German turns of expression are frequently found in the English spoken there. It is quite likely that the English spoken in the districts where there were large numbers of Danes acquired certain Danish habits of expression. A modern Dane like Jespersen[39] notes that the omission of the relative pronoun in relative clauses (rare in Old English) and the retention or omission of the conjunction that are in conformity with Danish usage; that the rules for the use of shall and will in Middle English are much the same as in Scandinavian; and that some apparently illogical uses of these auxiliaries in Shakespeare (e.g., “besides it should appear” in the Merchant of Venice, III, ii, 289) do not seem strange to a Dane, who would employ the same verb. Logeman[40] notes the tendency, common to both languages, to put a strong stress at times on the preposition and notes the occurrence of locutions such as “he has some one to work for” that are not shared by the other Germanic languages. It is possible, of course, that similarities such as these are merely coincidences, that the Scandinavian languages and English happened to develop in these respects along similar lines. But there is nothing improbable in the assumption that certain Scandinavian turns of phrase and certain particular usages should have found their way into the idiom of people in no small part Danish in descent and living in intimate contact with the speakers of a Scandinavian tongue.

 

4.13. Period and Extent of the Influence

 

It is hardly possible to estimate the extent of the Scandinavian influence by the number of borrowed words that exist in Standard English. That number, if we restrict the list to those for which the evidence is fully convincing, is about 900. These, as the examples given above show, are almost always words designating common everyday things and fundamental concepts. To this group we should probably be justified in adding an equal number in which a Scandinavian origin is probable or in which the influence of Scandinavian forms has entered. Furthermore there are, according to Wright, the editor of the English Dialect Dictionary, thousands of Scandinavian words that are still a part of the everyday speech of people in the north and east of England and in a sense are just as much a part of the living language as those that are used in other parts of the country and have made their way into literature. He notes that “if we exclude all sc- words of various origins which are common to the standard language and the dialects, it is a remarkable fact that the English Dialect Dictionary contains 1,154 simple words beginning with sc- (sk-).”[41] Locally, at least, the Scandinavian influence was tremendous. The period during which this large Danish element was making its way into the English vocabulary was doubtless the tenth and eleventh centuries. This was the period during which the merging of the two peoples was taking place. The occurrence of many of the borrowed words in written records is generally somewhat later. A considerable number first make their appearance in the Ormulum at the beginning of the thirteenth century. But we must attribute this fact to the scarcity of literary texts of an earlier date, particularly from the region of the Danelaw. Because of its extent and the intimate way in which the borrowed elements were incorporated, the Scandinavian influence is one of the most interesting of the foreign influences that have contributed to the English language.