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Ian Hill's avatar

One of the biggest influencen of old Norse on English is the fact we form the pluralen of worden by adding an "s" instead of the Germanic "en" - as hinted at by your eggs/eyren example.

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Funnily enough, both -s and -en plurals are found in Old English as -as and -an: wer 'man' pluralizes to weras 'men', and oxa 'ox' pluralizes to 'oxan'.

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Ian Hill's avatar

"Children" and "oxen" being throwbacks to pre-Norse days!

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Brock's avatar

"Children" was a Middle English innovation. In Old English the plural was "childer". "Oxen", though, is a throwback to Old English.

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Chris's avatar

I remember one of my great aunts, born in the early years of the 20th century in Leeds, UK, using the word childer.

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Lapachet’75's avatar

I recently finished reading “The Vikings: A History,” by Robert Ferguson. I never realized how large an impact the Vikings had throughout Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, not just on our language, but also on our system of government.

Interest in Vikings seems to be having a modest bump, which just could be I’m noticing it more. (Insert bad football team joke here.)

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Helen Gordon's avatar

Extremely interesting. I am also interested in the names of our days of the week. A writer recently asked a theoretical question about Early Saxon religion and how we could know what that was. Alone in Europe, Britain has (some) days of the week named after Norse gods, offering a glimpse into this area. When I pointed this out to a colleague, they were flabbergasted. They had truly never noticed Thursday as Thor’s Day. Also fascinating that Wales still has a Roman god’s name for Friday (Venus day). Possibly the influence of the Saxons was not as strong there.

I wonder whether such close links, although Christianity was well established in Britain, could have cemented the two cultures, as well as the similarity of the two languages.

Happy to hear if this is idiotic.

One more point though, being a complete pedant, the 793 Vikings attack was probably not the first on Britain, just the first against people who could write it down, monks. I suspect the Vikings had been raiding up and down the coast prior to Lindisfarne.

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

It's possible that there had been earlier raids — as you say, we're stuck relying on the written evidence.

I don't think that idea is idiotic — there were surely lots of cultural similarities between the two groups. I wish we had more sources from the Danelaw which might tell us about how everyone got along and whether the cultural links made things easier or harder.

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Cynthia Phillips's avatar

My mother's great grandmother from Northern England's maiden name was Loftus or Lofthouse. This was to denote a Viking because they lived in loft houses. When National Geographic was sequencing genomes to find Neanderthal lineages, she did it. National Geographic indicated she had Viking ancestry. The Neanderthal lineage was pretty high too.

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Helen Gordon's avatar

My family name was Anderson and we hailed from Shetland. Oddly, a dentist once told me that I had diagnostically Neanderthal teeth. Strange world.

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Brock's avatar

"Strangely, many Norse loanwords don't appear in written English until centuries after the Vikings settled. This suggests that words of Norse origin circulated in everyday speech long before they were deemed acceptable enough to write down."

Isn't this explained by the Danelaw being almost entirely illiterate after the destruction of the monasteries? The texts we have from the period are from Wessex, right?

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Right, although interestingly there are a few Norse loans in literary Old English, e.g. griþ 'truce', which we see in the Battle of Maldon.

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Omar Acevedo's avatar

This is excellent! Thanks Colin!

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Thank you, Omar!

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Valerie's avatar

þancword! A word of thanks!

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Þē sīe þanc! Thanks to you!

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Zara's avatar

super interesting, thank you!

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Thanks, Zara!

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Mark Canada, Ph.D.'s avatar

Thank you for your essays, which give me the opportunity to scratch my linguistic itch. (Years ago, I taught a college course that included a unit on the history of English—one of my favorite subjects.) This essay reminded me of the story that printer William Caxton told of a woman who, when asked for eggs, said she didn’t speak French. She was familiar with the Old English word “eyren” instead of the Norse-inspired term. Do I have that story right? I had to look online to check it, since I’m away from my library.

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Yes, that's right! That story is from Caxton.

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Kyle Rodgers's avatar

This article seriously tickled my etymological fancy. Thank you for your writing!

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Thanks, Kyle!

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Chris's avatar

Something else I've noticed is that here in England there's something I call the "Eccles cake line". Eccles cakes are small round cakes make of flaky pastry and containing currants. It seems you only get them north and east of a line that I like to think corresponds to the boundary of the old Danelaw. Here in Birmingham you never see them in cafes but you do if you do about 20 miles to the northeast towards Leicester, which was in the Danelaw.

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Ah. that's amazing! Are they any good?

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Chris's avatar

I really like them but live the wrong side of the line 😉

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Julia Griffiths's avatar

Delicious Eccles cakes were normal fayre in cake shops in Birmingham in the 1970s and 80s. I've since moved west to Wales..are Eccles cakes a rarity in English Midlands now?

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Chris's avatar

I’ve never seen them here in the 25 years I’ve lived in the West Midlands.

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Julia Griffiths's avatar

Damn, that's a shame.

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L Johnson's avatar

Is there a difference between vikings and pirates?

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

To think of vikings as pirates is a good way of thinking about it. The Old English version of "viking" (wicing) is actually used to translate the Latin word pirata.

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Mad Dog's avatar

Seriously, I appreciate the article. I have learned to look at the origin of words (etymology) from reading Tolkien (as a philologist).

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Thanks! Tolkien is the perfect gateway drug to philology.

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Mad Dog's avatar

Because I'm a six foot, blue-eye, red head?

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William Webster's avatar

Was there any changes to old Norse from English?

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Good question! Not to my knowledge.

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Bruce Dale's avatar

I’ve always wondered if my surname (Dale) is Norse in origin. England’s Yorkshire Dales are just south of Northumberland, after all, so it’s likely Viking settlement occurred there. And there is a town in Norway named Dale, famous for its sweater industry (https://us.daleofnorway.com/).

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Colin Gorrie's avatar

Old English does have the ancestor to dale (dæl), but the use of dale may have been strengthened by the Old Norse equivalent (dalr), since dale continued as the normal word for valley longest in the North.

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Suzume's avatar

Oh, how cool!

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