The Vikings' Linguistic Legacy   By Emily Monroy The Vikings. Their name conjures up images of bravery and adventure on one hand and piracy, plunder and lawlessness on the other. But while thousands of Britons and North Americans have dreamed of Viking ships, voyages and sagas, fewer are aware of a perhaps more important legacy bestowed by the Vikings: their influence on the English language. The language spoken by the Vikings - alternately referred to as the Norsemen - is called Old Norse. Old Norse belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and to the Germanic subfamily, the branch that also includes English, Dutch and German. Just as Latin developed into the various Romance languages, Old Norse eventually evolved to become the modern-day Scandinavian tongues – Danish, Norwegian (with two principal dialects), Swedish, Icelandic, and Faeroese, spoken on Denmark's Faeroe Islands in the Atlantic. The Norsemen’s contact with England began in the late eighth century, when they plundered the monastery of Lindisfarne (monasteries were a favorite target because they had plenty of precious items but precious little protection). In the mid-800s the Vikings conducted other raids on various parts of England, after which they made “peace” with their victims and proceeded to collect a tribute called Danegeld (literally, Dane gold) from them. The Danegeld was basically the Viking equivalent of Mafia “protection money” - people literally paid the Norsemen to leave them alone! From the ninth to eleventh centuries the Vikings established a number of settlements in England and in fact controlled much of the country, through the Danish King Canute, between 1018 and 1042. Their stranglehold over England came to a definite end, however, in 1066 with the Battle of Hastings, when William the Conqueror of Normandy (ironically a Viking descendant himself; the region of Normandy in Northern France was among the lands under the Norsemenís rule) became king of England. One impact of the Vikings’ contact with England was the proliferation of Norse words in the English language (then Old English). This linguistic exchange was facilitated by the fact that Old English and Norse were already closely related - as mentioned before, they were both Germanic languages. A noteworthy aspect of the Vikings’ influence on English was the “ordinariness” of the terms borrowed. Most English words of Norse origin refer to everyday items and tend not to be “formal,” as opposed to, say, many Latin borrowings. Examples of Norse-derived terms include “egg,” “knife,” “ill,” “call” and “angry” One clue that a word might have come with the Vikings is a “sk” at the beginning, such as “sky,” “ski,” and “skill” (though this rule is not infallible; “skeptic” for instance comes from the Greek “skeptesthai,” to reflect). Among the most significant Norse contributions to English vocabulary were the third person plural pronouns “they,” “them” and “their.” The Vikings were also the source of many place names in England. For example, the “by” at the ending of “Derby,” “Holtby,” and “Swainby” stems from the Norse word for “city” or “town” (seen as well in “by-law” and “by-election”). In addition, Old Norse affected the English spoken in Scotland (as distinct from Scottish Gaelic). In fact, a language derived from Old Norse was used in the Orkney and Shetland islands to the north of Scotland until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively. Even today, most of the place names on these islands are of Scandinavian origin, like Egilsay, from “Egils ey” or “Egil’s island.” Viking contributions to Scots English include such well-known terms as “lass,” “bairn,” and the hallmark of Scottish identity “kilt,” from the Scandinavian word for “to tuck up.” Perhaps because they lacked a strong centralized state, the Vikings never spread their language to the extent that the Romans did theirs. (Nor have modern Scandinavians; most inhabitants of Greenland, for instance, a Danish protectorate with a largely mixed-race population, speak an Inuit language as their native tongue. Unlike in Latin America, colonial rule and miscegenation did not lead to substantial Westernization.) But the impact they had on the English language should remind us that the Vikings left more than plunder, destruction and pillage in their wake. Emily Monroy is a professional translator and is of Irish, Italian and Norwegian descent. Born in Windsor, Ontario, she now resides in Toronto. Her articles have appeared in several publications, including Interracial Voice, Cats Canada, and Urban Mozaik. She welcomes feedback on her articles.You can contact Emily at emonroy@beachestoronto.com   This website: Copyright © 2004 Dream World Media, LLC. / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher or the previous publisher of original republished materials.