Viking Influence on English

A detailed Summary of Viking Influence on English

Invasions and conquests were quite common during the first millennium AD in Britain (Baugh 76). From the ninth century the Vikings came to England invading from every corner of the secluded island of Britain, changing the English language forever. The invasions were led by both the Danes, in the North, and the Norwegians, in the south. Some people do not consider these raids of any importance, but in fact without these invasions the English language would have never accumulated into the internationally accepted language that is today.

The Viking invasions, starting somewhere around 912 AD, were successful in territorial gains admittedly after their landing in East Anglia (187). Britain, at the time, was occupied by the Celtics, Anglos, Saxons, and the Jutes. After settling down in their new settlements the Vikings would marry to English females, since the Vikings traveled alone with no wives or females (http://www.ua.es/dfing/personal/profs/historia/web09/). This contributed to the mixture of the two ancestral languages and adaptation of certain words and sounds. Since the Vikings were close with the locals of the town or territories these words flourished throughout the whole of England, leaving its mark forever to be

Another influence, brought about by the Vikings, on the English language is that of the appearance of new vocabulary into the language. Some of these words included: anger, axle, bag, bait, berserk, birth, blunder, bore, bulk, by-law, call, cast, club, crawl, creek, die, dirt, dregs, egg, get, gift, give, gosling, haggle, hit, husband, knife, lad, lathe, law, loose, low, mistake, muck, mug, oaf, odd, plough, raft, ransack, reindeer, root, rune, scarf, scrap, scrape, seem, skate, skill, skirt, skin, sky, slaughter, sleuth, snub, stagger, steak, stumble, take, they, their, thrift, troll, ugly, wand, want, weak, whirl, whisk, window and wing (http://www.xrefer.com/entry/443144). These words that used far less diction, and that easily flowed, were therefore adopted into the English language.

The Vikings influence can also be seen in certain aspects in English, such as the usage of Loanwords, as in bank, gap, and sky and the loss of weak verbs. Finally it lead to the loss of certain prefixes, as for example ge, je, and v that was often used in Old English to signal the past participle of verbs. The locals also adapted certain language adoptions as for example: the usage of Scandinavian place names along with personal names.

The Vikings have p

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Approximate Word count = 843
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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Viking Influence on English

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