The Viking Effect
The arrival of people from the Scandinavian countries, beginning in the late eighth century and continuing for more than 300 years, started as a series of raids and ended in a combination of conquest and colonization. There were two waves of Viking settlement and triumph, one leading to their effective control of half the country (known as the Danelaw) and the second, briefer one marked by the accession of the Danish king Cnut (Canute) to the English throne in 1016. Overall, the Viking impact was felt most strongly in the northeast of England, where even today there are signs of their presence in place names and dialect terms. The contribution of Scandinavian words to general English was also considerable, although it took many years for them to percolate through to general use.
For about 200 years before the arrival of the Vikings, England had enjoyed relative peace. Although there was sporadic fighting among the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as well as a continued threat from the Welsh and Scottish borders, there was also a general stability which allowed for the Christian conversion of the country. All this was to change, beginning in the year 793 when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, dreadful portents of doom appeared in the skies over Northumbria (lightning, dragons). The portents, or at least their imaginative interpretation, may have been retrospective but they more than hinted at the destructive impact of the Vikings.
The reasons behind the sudden migrations/incursions from Scandinavia are obscure. It may have been a growing population in northwest Europe that pushed people westwards across the North Sea. It was certainly facilitated by the seafaring skills of the Vikings, one of several generic terms for the inhabitants of present-day Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The very origin of the term ‘Viking’ is something of a mystery too. It has been traced back to the Norse vik (creek or inlet) or to the Old English wic meaning ‘camp’, because of the Viking practice of setting up temporary bases. An alternative derivation is another Old English term, wicing or ‘pirate’.
To this day there is some uncertainty about what to call these aggressive settlers. To the Anglo-Saxons they were Danes, irrespective of their place of origin. They were also called ‘Norsemen’ (signifying ‘men from the North’) and their language Old Norse, which is the usual term applied today. Popular imagination thinks of them as Vikings, perhaps because of its faintly exotic associations, summoning up a world of beak-prowed longships, of ale-quaffing, manly combat and general rapine.
Whatever the precise meaning of the word ‘Viking’, their early raids were certainly piratical. The northern monasteries of Lindisfarne, Jarrow and Iona were plundered one after the other in the years between 793 and 795. No coastal part of the country was immune, and during the first half of the next century Viking attacks and encampments were recorded from the Thames estuary to Cornwall. These pin-pricks turned into a full-blown assault on northeast England and by the second half of the ninth century half of the country was under Viking control. They might have overrun the rest of it had it not been for the resistance and eventual victory of the forces led by King Alfred. After that there was a lengthy period of coexistence between the two sides.
King Alfred the Great
Alfred is one of the handful of decisive rulers in English history. As far as the survival and spread of English are directly concerned, he is the most important. Had he and his army not driven back the invading Viking forces and then made peace with them, there would have been no English-speaking kingdoms left and the dominant tongue would almost certainly have been Norse, the common language spoken with some variations by the inhabitants of Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
Alfred (849–99) inherited the kingdom of Wessex in 871 after his brother died fighting against the Danes. For several years the Danes overran increasingly large areas of Wessex until Alfred and his followers were forced into refuge on the Somerset Levels, a low-lying area of marshes and islands near the Bristol Channel. It was here on the island of Athelney, close to modern Bridgwater, that the probably apocryphal incident of the cake-burning occurred. According to the legend, which first surfaced in the tenth century, an old woman left a disguised Alfred in charge of the cake-baking but the king was so preoccupied with the woes of his kingdom that he neglected the simple domestic task.
Whatever the fate of the cakes, Alfred succeeded in the more important job of saving his kingdom by mustering an army and defeating the Danes in 878 under their leader Guthrum at the Battle of Ethandune (present-day Edington in Wiltshire). The white horse carved into a nearby hillside at Westbury supposedly commemorates his victory. The Treaty of Wedmore (878) resulted in the withdrawal of the Danes and, effectively, the splitting of the country roughly along the line of Watling Street, then a still-passable Roman road that ran northwest from London to Chester. The area above this line was under Danish law, hence ‘Danelaw’ (‘law’ comes from the old Norse lagu).
After his victory, Alfred set about consolidating control over the south and southwest. He seems to have been the first English ruler to employ language for political ends, as a way of cementing the union of his realm. The old knowledge of Latin had been lost, putting religious and other texts out of reach. Translation into Anglo-Saxon was required. In a preface to one such book Alfred wrote:
Our ancestors [. . .] loved wisdom, and through it they created wealth and left it to us. Here we may yet see their footprints, but we cannot follow their tracks after them [. . .] Therefore it seems better to me [. . .] that we translate certain books, which are most needful for all men to know, into that language that we all can understand.
Alfred’s dedication to learning was notable. He started learning Latin when he was almost 40 and he then oversaw or instigated the translation of works such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He was concerned too with secular history as it reflected national identity, and he was the first to bring together the writings known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a kind of diary-cum-history of events that started in 55 BC, with the arrival in Britain of Julius Caesar and continued well beyond another more significant invasion, that of William the Conqueror in 1066. Copies of the Chronicle were made and sent to monasteries, where they were updated. The king earned his respectful soubriquet of ‘the Great,’ the only English monarch with such a title.
What the Vikings Brought Us
Like any invader-colonizer, the Vikings brought their language with them. Old Norse was a Germanic language, as was Old English or Anglo-Saxon. The two tongues had much in common, to the extent that it is sometimes difficult for specialists to tell which language contributed which word to later English expressions. One of the principal markers for the Old Norse effect on England, and one that demarcates the areas under their control, consists in place names
Not surprisingly, there is a preponderance of place names in the northeast of England that show the influence of Danish settlement and the Old Norse language. The simple by, for example, signifies a farmstead and provides the suffix to many places, small and large, that would once have been part of the Danelaw. An area of a few square miles around Grimsby on the River Humber yields more than a dozen, including Aylesby, Keelby, Grainsby, and even a double helping in Ashby-cum-Fenby.
Anglo-Saxon already had a word to describe a valley or area of low ground in dœl, but the reinforcing effect of the Old Norse dalr combined with the up-and-down geography of the north of England, accounts for the number of ‘-dale’ names there, from Arkengarthdale to Wharfedale. The equivalent valley suffix in southern and western England is the Celtic comb(e), although it tends to describe less spectacular landscape features.
Thorp(e), Old Norse for ‘village’, is a frequent place name in the east and northeast of England, almost always as part of a longer title (Thorpe Bassett, Burnham Thorpe). Although Old English also had the word, in two slightly differing forms, there are virtually no ‘thorps’ to be found in the south or west, areas beyond Danish influence. A similar pattern is evident with -thwaite (Old Norse thveit meaning ‘clearing’ or ‘reclaimed land’), either standing by itself or more usually as a suffix (Bassenthwaite, Braithwaite). In addition to place names, the Danish influence extended to people’s surnames, for example in the case of the Scandinavian -son suffix (Johnson, etc.) which had a much higher frequency in the east of the country according to early records.
But for all their shared linguistic background, it is unclear how far the two sides – Anglo-Saxon and Norse/Danish/Viking – would have been capable of understanding each other at first in the areas they were compelled to share. If there was a gap in understanding, the onus would have been on the indigenous inhabitants, the Anglo-Saxons, to come to linguistic terms with newcomers who were, after all, their conquerors.
In the long run, however, it was the Old Norse speakers who ceded to the English language. There was still a large proportion of native speakers in Danelaw, and within a few years of King Alfred’s death in 899 his son Edward had begun a campaign to restore English rule over the whole country. For most of the tenth century under leaders such as Athelstan – the first ruler who could justifiably be referred to as the king of all of England – the Vikings were defeated or kept at bay. Additionally, the fact that Old Norse was an oral rather than a written culture would have weakened its chances in the ‘battle’ with English. Nevertheless it did leave a considerable mark on the English language.
There are a number of current English words that can definitely be traced back to Old Norse. They include very familiar terms such as skin, skull, skill, egg, husband and sister. This does not mean, of course, that the Anglo-Saxons did not already possess words for these everyday items. For them, ‘skin’ was rendered by hyd (hide), while the concept of ‘skill’ was expressed by crœft (craft) while ‘skull’ required the more elaborate and characteristically Anglo-Saxon formation of brœgnpanne (brain-pan). In some cases, Norse eventually pushed out Old English but in others, like ‘skin/hide’ or ‘skill/craft’, it added to the general stock of words.
Several bellicose words in modern English can be traced back to the Viking era, and testify to the fearsome reputation of these Scandinavian warriors.
Berserk(er), to describe a frenzied fighter, is not recorded in English before the early 19th century but was retrieved from Old Norse berserkr. This has a probable literal meaning of ‘bear-sark’ which, in turn, designates a coat or upper garment made of bearskin. An alternative explanation is that the term means ‘bare-shirt’ and indicates that such fighters were so reckless and hardy that they fought without armour.
Ransack originally suggested making an authorized search of a place or person (for stolen property) but, by the Middle Ages, the word had done an about-turn and acquired its modern sense of ‘rob’, ‘plunder’. Given the piratical nature of the early Viking raids, it is not inappropriate that ransack also derives from Old Norse (rann = house + sœkja = to seek). Curiously – and confusingly – the noun/verb ‘sack’, also meaning ‘destruction’ or ‘to plunder’, is not a shortening of ‘ransack’ but comes from a different source altogether, the French sac (into which you might put your looted goods).
The Old English cnif was probably a simple adaptation of the Old Norse knifr (knife). As a word it displaced the Old English seax (hip-sword, dagger) from which, it is thought, the Saxons themselves may have been named, presumably on account of their own warlike habits. Similarly, ‘club’ derives from a Scandinavian word, klubba. As does ‘slaughter’ (the Old Norse slatr denoted ‘butcher’s meat’), which was originally applied to the killing of livestock but was extended to human beings by the Middle Ages.
Another effect of Norse additions was to produce words that are related but not absolutely synonymous. For example, the Old English for ‘to die’ was steorfan. Norse had its own word: deya. Rather than ditch one of these terms, English kept both while giving steorfan a twist to particularize a type of death. We can see the word in transition during the Middle Ages, when steorfan could be used to mean both ‘die’ and ‘starve’, the exclusive sense in which it has been used ever since. Another addition was the Norse skyrta, originally a ‘shirt’, but a garment which the English pushed down the body and transformed into a ‘skirt’. Similarly related pairs are ‘wish’ and ‘want’ (OE wyscan, ON vanta); ‘sick’ and ‘ill’ (OE seoc, ON illr); ‘rear’ and ‘raise’ (OE rœran, ON reisa).
An important Norse contribution was to make clearer the distinctions between pronouns. The Old English for ‘they’ was hie, not very different from the singular he (he), while hiera (their) was close to hiere (her). The modern ‘they’, ‘their’, etc. are descendants of original Scandinavian forms, although it took a long time for them to filter into standard English (Chaucer was still using hem for ‘them’ in the late Middle Ages). It is also likely that the use of an -s ending in the third person singular (e.g. ‘he talks’, ‘she sings’) came from contact with Old Norse. It eventually replaced the Anglo-Saxon form -eth, even though this old ending also hung on for several centuries – Shakespeare used singeth once (in Hamlet) but otherwise he wrote sings.
But the linguistic and cultural legacy of the Norse/Danish/Viking settlement of Britain was not restricted to individual words or word-endings. It is also visible in literature, especially in the most famous poem of the Anglo-Saxon era, Beowulf.
Beowulf
Hwœt! We gar-dena in geardagum,
þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða œþelingas ellen fremedon.
[Modern English: ‘Lo, praise of the prowess of the kings of the spear-armed Danes in days long gone by, we have heard, and what honour the princes won!’]
So begins the most famous surviving poem written in Old English, Beowulf. It is usually dated to the eighth century, but survives only in a tenth-century manuscript. The language of the poem appears daunting and even some of the letters used will be unfamiliar – the runic þ and ð symbols represent a ‘th’ sound – but the story it tells is timeless and still has great appeal. So much so that it was turned into a computer-generated-imagery feature film in 2007, starring Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie.
The story tells of the beginning and end of the heroic life of Beowulf, a warrior from the Geatish people in Sweden. In his young days Beowulf slays Grendel, a monster that has attacked the Danish king’s mead-hall (see Mead-Hall, page 32), and then Grendel’s equally monstrous mother, who is seeking revenge for her son. The second part recounts Beowulf’s own death in mortal combat with a dragon many years later after he has become king of the Geats. The story ends with Beowulf’s ceremonial burial.
The world of the poem is highly ritualized and formal but also precarious, a world constantly threatened by darkness and the monsters who live there. In his Ecclesiastical History (completed c.731) the Venerable Bede made a comparison between human life and the flight of a sparrow through a great dining-hall in the middle of winter. Inside, there is warmth, food and company; outside is the rain and snow and the unending night. The sparrow’s time in the light is soon over. This is the context of the Beowulf poem. The complicated warrior-culture needed to face the darkness is reflected in the elaborate diction. The poem is full of complex language (such as the many compound terms for the ‘sea’ like ‘whale-road’) using the favourite Anglo-Saxon linguistic device of coupling two words together to make a new one. Indeed, the name of the hero is an example. Beowulf means ‘bear’ from ‘bee-wolf’, and reminds us of a time when bears roamed northern Europe – and raided hives.
In common with some later Middle English poetry such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf is structured in blocks of alliterative words. Gawain and Beowulf are linked too in that the manuscripts survived a near-disastrous fire in the 17th century in the Cottonian Library in Ashburnham House in London. The Library, named for its founder Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631), was made up largely of works that had been salvaged at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in 1540. The Beowulf manuscript was damaged by fire and seems to have been neglected for many more years until it was transcribed by an Icelander called Grímur Thorkelin – fortunately just in time, since its fire-charred edges were already crumbling away. Thorkelin was looking for stories of Danish heroes in British archives. His relative ignorance of Anglo-Saxon prevented him from filling gaps in the manuscript, as had been the practice of medieval scribes. The originals of Beowulf and other Old English manuscripts are now in the British Museum, but at one point the survival of almost all Old English poetry hung by a thread.
KEYWORD
Sky
It took several hundred years for the Norse word sky to establish itself in English with its current application to everything that lies above our heads. In old Norse it meant no more than ‘cloud’ and was related to an older root-word signifying ‘to cover’. The cloudy sense continued until the late Middle Ages. Geoffrey Chaucer writes of the wind blowing so hard that it ‘left not a skye in alle the welkene.’ Welkin or heaven(s) were the Old-English-derived equivalents for sky and they lasted into Shakespeare’s time, with the addition of firmament. ‘Sky’ is so simple and expressive a word that it lends itself naturally to more than two dozen compound terms (e.g. sky-dive, skyscraper, sky-writing).