HOW DID THE NORDIC

LANGUAGE CHANGE THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE?
Professor: Merja Sinikka Nousia de Matos Parreira

19 MARCH, 2023
MARIANA DOS SANTOS FERNANDES
Nº 70984
Conteúdo
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 2

2. Contrasts between old English and old Norse ........................................................... 3

3. Influence in grammar and syntax .............................................................................. 3

4. Influence in names .................................................................................................... 6

5. Viking words in English dialects .............................................................................. 7

6. Conclusion................................................................................................................. 7

7. References ................................................................................................................. 9

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 1. Introduction
Viking is a term from Old Norse that did not rise to common usage until the 19th
century to depict peoples of Scandinavian heritage who were raiders, settlers and traders.
It is reputed that the Vikings were driven by overpopulation and the scarcity of viable
farmland. In addition to the need to conquer new lands and expand their territory, they
saw unique agricultural opportunities in England. However, the term ‘Viking’ refers to
the Scandinavian invaders rather than the entire Scandinavian culture. Besides, it is
recognised that the Norse civilisation during the Viking Age was very advanced
militarily, technologically and culturally, which had a fundamental effect on history.
The earliest Viking invasions began in the 7th century. Over a period of 300 years,
the Vikings plundered the lands of Britain, until the Norman invasion marked the end of
the Viking Age. The Norse settlers not only left their imprint on English territory, culture
and history through warfare, commerce and art but influenced a remarkable proportion of
the language. The descendants of the Vikings attained growing predominance until 878,
once the accomplishments of Saxon King Alfred resulted in a relatively equitable
partition of the territory, with English command established in the southern and western
regions and Danish command established in the northern and eastern regions.
The conventional usage of the term "Old Norse" refers specifically to the Western
dialects of Old Scandinavian, originating from Norway and Iceland, while excluding the
East Scandinavian dialects of Denmark and Sweden. Considering that the Norsemen who
established settlements in England primarily originated from Denmark and Norway, we
have adopted the infrequently employed term "Norse" as a synonymous alternative to the
unwieldy designation of "Western Mainland Old Scandinavian1".
The English language has been profoundly shaped by a multitude of foreign
influences. Among these, Old German deserves the most significant recognition for its
role in shaping the English language, although languages such as Latin and French also
played substantial parts not only in shaping vocabulary but also in influencing grammar.

1
The word "Norse" is said to be inaccurate, as its origin comes from the word "Norsemen”, an
ethnolinguistic group of Medieval North Germanic origin that forms the ancestral foundation of present-
day Scandinavians. This group is specifically defined as individuals who spoke Old Norse between the 9th
and 13th centuries.
2
 2. Contrasts between old English and old Norse
The most prominent similarity between these two languages lies in their common
origin in the Germanic language family. Furthermore, Old Norse and Old English exhibit
both distinct and shared characteristics across various aspects, including vocabulary,
grammar, and syntax. According to Dennis Freeborn “[…] the two languages were similar
enough in vocabulary for OE speakers to understand common ON words, and vice versa
so that the English and Norsemen could communicate”2.

As mentioned earlier, Old Norse and Old English shared similarities and mutual
intelligibility as Germanic languages. The introduction of certain Old Norse vocabulary
into English was a result of the absence of linguistic equivalents in English, leading to the
incorporation of "new" lexical items. However, due to the separation and isolation of the
Germanic tribes, the languages underwent separate modifications over time. Living in
complete isolation from one another for approximately 200 years, these tribes
experienced distinct linguistic changes, contributing to the division of the Germanic
language into multiple dialect groups.

Old Norse and Old English exhibit differences in their treatment of infinitives,
with Old Norse, featuring only one infinitive case, while Old English encompasses two
infinitives per verb. For example, the verb ‘to have’ would have the infinitive ‘habban’
and ‘to hæbbenne’; the verb ‘to help’ would have the infinitive ‘helpan’ and ‘to helpenne’;
and the verb ‘to drink’ would have the infinitive ‘drincan’ ‘to drincenne’. Besides, both
languages had a different alphabet, while Old English used the Latin alphabet, Old Norse
used runes. The first known inscriptions in Old Norse were made during the 8th century,
and the use of these runes persisted until the 15th century.

3. Influence in grammar and syntax

The English language has gone through some great changes in its vocabulary and
grammar due to its influences from other languages. Different groups of people who
invaded England had a significant impact on the way people spoke in the northern and
southern parts of the country. These invaders mixed with the locals, which caused
differences in how people pronounced words, their structure, the way they used them, and
how they put sentences together. The Norse invaders, especially in the north, exerted a

2
Kapetanović, Nataša, The influence of Old Norse on English, 2018, page 3.

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notable influence on the English language, including its sentence structure. The
Scandinavian elements precipitated the transition of English from a synthetic language to
an analytic one.

English has borrowed more than 100 words from Norse, and a good example is
the word "they" that it is used to talk about a group of people. It came from the word
‘their’, which came from the Old Norse word ‘þeir’. The changes in grammar, sentence
structure, and how words are pronounced also impacted on Old English. Even the
personal pronoun system suffered changes, with ‘they’, ‘them’, and ‘their’ replacing the
older forms. Another important impact from the Norse invasion was on the verb ‘to be’.
as evidenced by the replacement of ‘sindon’ with ‘are’. Their influence can also be seen
in how the third-person singular added ‘-s’ in the end of the present tense of other verb,
representing a remarkable linguistic invasion.

The Scandinavian presence played a role in simplifying English grammar through

the modification of the inflectional system, particularly by eliminating grammatical
gender. The genitive case, marked by the suffix '-s,' was inherited from Old English and
carried over into Middle English. Another distinguished change in Middle English was
the loss of personal pronouns. The Old English pronouns 'hie', 'hiera', 'him', and 'hie' were
replaced by third person pronouns 'they', 'them', and 'their' from Old Norse and
incorporated into Middle English.

Old Norse has made several contributions to English grammar, including the
introduction of phrasal verbs and the acceptable omission of the conjunction 'that'.
Furthermore, among many acquisitions one can find adverbs such as ‘aloft’, ‘athwart’,
‘hence’, ‘together’, ‘whence’, conjunctions as ‘though’, and certain prepositions, such as
'till' and 'fro', which have entered the English language through the Viking presence.
Examples of borrowed verbs from Old Norse include the verb 'to call', derived from
'kalla', meaning "cry loudly". The verb 'to die' originated from 'deyja', meaning "to pass
away", while 'to ransack' finds its roots in 'rannsaka', meaning "to search the house". The
verb 'to whirl' can be traced back to 'hvirfla', signifying "to go around". Furthermore, the
Old Norse verb 'haggen', meaning "to chop", has survived in English as "to haggle".

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 Baugh and Cable (2002, p. 87)3 provide an example highlighting the phonetic
variation between Old English and Old Norse. They note that the sound ‘sk’ in Old
English underwent palatalization, resulting in the pronunciation ‘sh’ (written as ‘sc’).
However, in the Scandinavian countries, the ‘sk’ sound remained unchanged. As a result,
certain Old English words like ship, shall, and fish maintained the "sh" sound in Modern
English. On the other hand, loanwords from Old Norse are pronounced with the "sk"
sound, as seen in words like skin, skill, sky, and bask. Another phonetic characteristic
that indicates an Old Norse origin is the hard pronunciation of "k" and "g" in words like
kid, get, give, and egg.

The influence of Scandinavian on English may be underestimated due to the

spelling conventions of the English language, which often differ from its pronunciation.
This discrepancy in spelling and pronunciation are due to the phenomenon of the Great
Vowel Shift. The Great Vowel Shift occurred between 1350 and 1600 during the period
of Middle English, and it involved a series of changes in the pronunciation of long vowels,
influenced by the French language following the Norman Conquest. The vowels /iː/ and
/uː/ transformed into diphthongs, while the other long vowels /eː ɛː aː ɔː oː/ underwent a
raising of tongue height. During the Great Vowel Shift, the long 'e' in words like 'meet'
was pronounced as /eː/, resulting in Middle English 'meet' sounding like Modern English
'mate' /meɪt/. Similarly, the long 'i' in 'bite' was pronounced as /iː/, leading Middle English
'bite' to sound like Modern English 'beet'. The long 'a' in 'gate' was pronounced as /aː/,
similar to the vowel sound in 'rather'. The long 'o' in 'loot' was pronounced as /oː/,
approaching the modern 'oa' sound in 'toad'. Old English had a long /ɛː/ sound in words
like 'heat', similar to the short 'e' in 'bed' but pronounced longer. The long /ɔː/ sound in
words like 'goat' was pronounced as in the modern English word 'goat'. Consequently, the
Great Vowel Shift resulted in the peculiarities observed in the spelling and pronunciation
of Modern English.

The English language has borrowed adjectives from Old Norse. One example is
the adjective 'awkward', which originates from the Old Norse word 'afugr'. This term can
be translated as "turned backwards". Another borrowed adjective is 'sly', derived from

3
Antonius Gerardus Maria Poppelaars, Husbands, Outlaws and Kids: The Influence of Old Norse on The
English Language, Scandia: Journal of Medieval Norse Studies N. 3, 2020, page 367

5
'sløgʀ' in Old Norse, which means "cunning". The adjective 'ugly' comes from the word
'uggligr', meaning "repulsive".

Old Norse played a significant role in the decline of inflected adjectives in Old
English. These adjectives were characterized by indefinite or definite forms and
underwent inflection for singular and plural number, as well as masculine, feminine, and
neuter gender. They were inflected through the nominative, accusative, genitive and
dative instrumental cases.

4. Influence in names
Languages often borrow terms when they encounter unfamiliar or non-existent
concepts, thereby incorporating loanwords to improve their vocabulary and knowledge.
Through this process, a language adopts new words or terms from foreign languages and
may occasionally modify these borrowed terms. Native speakers also borrow foreign
words because they think they sound more powerful or important than their own native
words. In the context of ON and OE, proper names and place-names were among the most
frequently borrowed words from the Old Norse.

English nouns with Old Norse origins are quite abundant, “These include many of
our modern words which use [sk-] sounds (an Old Norse feature), such as skirt (skyrta),
sky (ský), and skin (skinn) [...]”4. Other borrowed nouns from Old Norse include ‘kid’,
derived from ‘kið’, meaning 'a young goat', and ‘husband’, derived from ‘husbondi’,
meaning 'master of the house'. Old English also adopted warlike and violent terminology
from the Vikings, such as ‘knife’ from ‘knífʀ, ‘slayer’ from ‘safra’, and ‘skull from
‘skulle’, meaning 'head' in Old Norse. However, it is important to note that not all
borrowed nouns from Old Norse carry negative connotations. For example, ‘cake’ from
‘kaka’, ‘guest’ from ‘gestr’, and ‘steak’ from ‘steik’, meaning 'to fry' are borrowings with
neutral or positive meanings.

The influence of Old Norse on place names is notable, particularly in towns

located in the northeast of England. These towns are characterized by names ending in
-by, which signifies 'farm' or 'town' in Old Norse. Examples of such towns include
Whitby, Willerby, and Grimsby. In contrast, Old English place names typically ended

4
Antonius Gerardus Maria Poppelaars, Husbands, Outlaws and Kids: The Influence of Old Norse on The
English Language, Scandia: Journal of Medieval Norse Studies N. 3, 2020, page 376.

6
with -tun. Another category is marked by names ending in -thorp, denoting 'village',
examples of these include Althorp, Astonthorpe, and Linthorpe. Additionally, there are
place names that end in -toft, indicating 'homestead', such as Eastoft, Lowestoft, and
Sandtoft. Lastly, a distinct group of place names ends with -thwaite, meaning 'clearing',
as seen in names like Applethwaite, Braithwaite, and Storthwaite.

The influence of Old Norse extends to the names of days in the English language.
Thursday, derived from the Old Norse word "Þorsdagr," is a prominent example as it
signifies 'Thor's day'. While Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday are occasionally associated
with the Norse gods Tyr, Odin, and Freya, respectively, these days are actually named
after their Anglo-Saxon counterparts: Tiw, Wodan, and Friga.

Besides all these influences previously enacted, the old Norse also had a great
influence on the surnames we use nowadays. Certain surnames ending in -son or -sen,
like ‘Anderson’, ‘Johnson’, ‘Madsen’, ‘Pederson’, and ‘Thompson’, can be traced back
to Old Norse influence. Examples of specific names influenced by Old Norse include
‘Osmond’, originating from ‘Ásmundr’, ‘Ronald’ from ‘Rögnvaldr’, ‘Carl’ from ‘Karl’,
and the female name ‘Erica’. The integration of Scandinavian names into the English
language primarily occurred through intermarriage. Consequently, the subsequent
generations of individuals with mixed Scandinavian and Anglian heritage would have
been significantly shaped by Scandinavian customs, laws, and language.

5. Viking words in English dialects

A considerable portion of the Scandinavian vocabulary has not been integrated
into the standard English language but has instead persisted within regional speech and
dialects. It is estimated that approximately 7% of the vocabulary in northern dialects can
be traced back to Old Norse origins. Illustrative examples of Norse-origin words still
found in regional speech include ‘garth’ meaning ‘yard’, ‘kirk’ meaning ‘church’, ‘laup’
meaning ‘leap’, ‘nay’ meaning ‘no’ , and ‘trigg’ meaning ‘true’.

6. Conclusion
The enduring interaction between Old Norse and Old English has had a profound
influence on the English language. Norse words have seamlessly integrated into
contemporary English, becoming essential components of everyday speech. Their

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absence would have fundamentally altered the appearance and auditory characteristics of
English as it exists today.

In summary, the introduction of Norse vocabulary into English not only left a
linguistic imprint but also played a role in reshaping the language and leaving cultural
and historical traces within English territories and historical texts. This influence
extended beyond mere vocabulary, encompassing grammar, syntax, names, verbs, nouns,
adjectives, literature, and non-standard speech.

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 7. References
Emonds, J. E., & Faarlund, J. T. (2014). English: The Language of the Vikings (Vol. 3).
ReseachGate.

Kapetanović, N. (2018a). The influence of Old Norse on English (thesis). Digitalni

Akademski Arhivi i Repozitoriji, Osijek.

Koivisto-Kokko, V. (n.d.). Verb forms. Old English Online.

https://oldenglish.info/advanced3.html

Poppelaars, A. G. M. (2020, November 3). HUSBANDS, outlaws and kids: the

influence of old norse on the english language. SCANDIA: JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL
NORSE STUDIES, pp. 353–386.