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História da Língua Inglesa   

The Medieval Transformation of the English Language

English Language Program, Kingston University (UK)

Scandinavian influences, 8th-11th century

For almost thirteen hundred years, from about the mid eighth to the mid eleventh centuries, England was subject to waves of raids, invasions and settlement by peoples from Scandinavia. Mostly they were Danes, but some Norwegians were also involved, particularly in the North West. This long period of exposure to another language and culture had a major impact on the development of English. The process can be subdivided into three main periods.

(1) The period of raids: 787-850

At first the Scandinavians came as raiders. They would attack coastal settlements, monasteries, etc., and take away whatever was valuable and portable. Probably only bands of warriors were involved, and there was no attempt at permanent settlement. An important moment came in 793/4, when the monasteries of Jarrow (where Bede had been a monk) and Lindisfarne were raided, ending a period of remarkable ecclesiastical and literary culture in the North East.

(2) Invasion and settlement, 850-878 and later

In 850, the Danes arrived in force, with 350 ships, at the Isle of Thanet in Kent. They began a major invasion, advancing on Canterbury and London. Their purpose now was conquest and settlement. Over a fairly short period of time they took control of most of northern and eastern England. By 866, East Anglia was Danish, and in 867 they seized York.

Having overrun the north and east, the Danes began to press south and west against the Kingdom of Wessex. Alfred became king in 871 and was immediately involved in fighting off the Danes. He had some success: at Ashdown in 871 and at Ethandun (Edington, Wiltshire) in 878. The latter victory forced the Danes to sign the Treaty of Wedmore (878), by which they agreed to withdraw from Wessex to north and east of a line from London to Chester. This area was to be subject to Danish law (the Danelaw). At the same time, the Danes agreed to accept Christianity. Danish settlement probably continued into the areas under Danish control after the signing of this treaty.

(3) Reconquest and assimilation, 878-1042

This did not end the Scandinavian threat. But for a period of about seventy years, English monarchs (successors to Alfred, who died in 899) were able gradually to recover control of most of the country. By 937 Athelstan (crowned, like most English kings in that century, in Kingston Parish Church) was in a dominant position throughout all of England.

After another fifty years, however, the Danish attacks were resumed. In 991 a large Danish fleet arrived off the east coast. The Old English poem The Battle of Maldon records the defeat of the English at Maldon in Essex. Under Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, and Sveinn, King of Denmark, they attacked London in 994. Large sums of money had to be found to buy them off (these protection payments were known as "Danegeld").

This state of affairs grew worse, until in 1014 Sveinn decided to take control of England and the English King, Ethelred, was driven into exile. For about thirty years, at first under Sveinn and then under Cnut (Canute), England was incorporated into the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1042, on Cnut's death, the English Edward (the Confessor) succeeded to the throne.

The social and linguistic situation

The new arrivals had, in a sense, simply done what the English tribes had done four centuries earlier. The Scandinavaians, like the English, were a Germanic people looking for new living-space. During the centuries of their invasions of England, they were also moving to Ireland, the North and West of Scotland, the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland and even North America. One group went south and settled Normandy (the land of the Normans, Northmen, Scandinavians). Others went into the Mediterranean and reached Sicily and Cyprus. Others went east into Finland and Russia, and were actually the first princes of Rus, the state which began to develop around Kiev in the ninth century.

Economically, they lived by raiding, fishing and subsistence farming. Thus when they settled in England, their pattern of life was very similar to that of the English and it was relatively easy for the two groups to mingle. Their speech, a North Germanic language related to Old Norse, was (at least in simple expressions) probably comprehensible to the West Germanic English. The linguistic gap was small compared with that between English and the Celtic languages in Britain in the early fifth century.

In some parts of the country, place-names suggest that the level of Scandinavian settlement was very high (e.g., East Yorkshire, where some 75% of place names are of Norse derivation). In the south and west (Wessex) there was little impact; English society continued much as it had been, and local speech was relatively unaffected. One consequence of the invasions was that the English dialect pattern was changed. In areas that had been part of the Danelaw, local dialects came to show Norse elements. In those (like Wessex) where Danes did not settle, this did not happen.

The effect on English

The Scandinavian invasions produced permanent changes in the English language, many of which survive to the present. Modern English inherits these influences because it derives from a dialect of the Danelaw: the East Midland dialect.

The influences were on vocabulary, grammar and syntax, and on placenames and personal names.

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