Old English: The Viking invasions and their consequences

1. Characterize the nature of Viking raids and Viking settlement in England.

Viking raids (787+)

• Reasons for the Vikings leaving their home:

- over-population

- too few natural resources

- primogeniture system

• Nature of the raids = similar like the Anglo-Saxons

- Raiding, pillaging and burning the coast + returning home with gold, silver, slaves etc.

- Monasteries sacked and manuscripts destroyed in Lindisfarne, Jarrow and Iona (793-795)

Viking settlement (850+)

• Less raids, more settling - Danish Vikings in large parts of North and East England, Norwegian Vikings in Western Scotland + parts of Ireland

• They established farms in these areas => territorial conflict between inhabitants + newcomers, BUT no forced removal of Celts as Anglo-Saxons have done

• West Saxon kings undertook defence against the Danes, ex. Æthelwulf (recorded as a descendant of Seth, the son of biblical Adam) in 854

• Æthelwulf’s son Alfred the Great of Wessex (initiator of the A-S Chronicle) stopped the advance of Danish Vikings at battle of Edington in 878

• Peace under Treaty of Wedmore:

1) Stable boundary set between kingdom of Wessex and Danelaw (Northumbria, East Mercia & East Anglia)

2) The defeated Danish king of East Anglia Guthrum became Christian (= step towards assimilation of Viking conquerors)

• Æthelstan (Alfred’s grandson) helped the West Saxons reconquer territories in Danelaw and then whole England

• Settlements of Danes and Anglo-Saxons = relative proximity, similar ways of life, bilingualism

• Eventual renewed attacks by the Danes => establishment of Danish king over all England: Sweyn Forkbeard

- Æthelstan put into exile

- His son Cnut (= king of Denmark and Norway) ended Danish raids, though not Danish claims to the throne

- Official language at court: English, x Danish

Compare OE borrowings from Latin and ON.

• Latin borrowings = mainly religious (bishop, Saturday etc)

• Borrowings/loan words from ON

- War + maritime: ransaka “ransack”, dreng “warrior”

- Legal + administration: laga “law”, hūsting “tribunal”

- Common verbs: get, want, call

- Bodily features: leg, freckles, skin

- Farm & animal terms: bull, egg, axletree

- Life: birth, slaughter, die

- Relations: sister, husband

• BUT ex. ON taka “take” replaced OE “niman”, but “nim” = “nimble”

• Most loan words adopted in OE do not appear in writing until ME

- Reason: lack of a literary tradition in Danelaw