A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 | Page 8

Scandinavian Element in English.+-- Towards the end of the

eighth century-- in the year 787-- the Teutons of the North, called
Northmen, Normans, or Norsemen-- but more commonly known as
Danes-- made their appearance on the eastern coast of Great Britain,
and attacked the peaceful towns and quiet settlements of the English.
These attacks became so frequent, and their occurrence was so much
dreaded, that a prayer was inserted against them in a Litany of the
time-- "From the incursions of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us!"
In spite of the resistance of the English, the Danes had, before the end
of the ninth century, succeeded in obtaining a permanent footing in
England; and, in the eleventh century, a Danish dynasty sat upon the
English throne from the year 1016 to 1042. From the time of King
Alfred, the Danes of the Danelagh were a settled part of the population
of England; and hence we find, especially on the east coast, a large
number of Danish names still in use.
11. +Character of the Scandinavian Element.+-- The Northmen, as we
have said, were Teutons; and they spoke a dialect of the great Teutonic
(or German) language. The sounds of the Danish dialect-- or language,
as it must now be called-- are harder than those of the German. We
find a +k+ instead of a +ch+; a +p+ preferred to an +f+. The same is
the case in Scotland, where the hard form +kirk+ is preferred to the
softer +church+. Where the Germans say +Dorf+-- our English word
+Thorpe+, a village-- the Danes say +Drup+.
12. +Scandinavian Words+ (i).-- The words contributed to our
language by the Scandinavians are of two kinds: (i) Names of places;
and (ii) ordinary words. (i) The most striking instance of a Danish
place-name is the noun +by+, a town. Mr Isaac Taylor[2] tells us that
there are in the east of England more than six hundred names of towns
ending in +by+. Almost all of these are found in the Danelagh, within
the limits of the great highway made by the Romans to the north-west,
and well-known as +Watling Street+. We find, for example, +Whitby+,
or the town on the white cliffs; +Grimsby+, or the town of Grim, a
great sea-rover, who obtained for his countrymen the right that all
ships from the Baltic should come into the port of Grimsby free of duty;
+Tenby+, that is +Daneby+; +by-law+, a law for a special town; and
a vast number of others. The following Danish words also exist in our

times-- either as separate and individual words, or in composition--
+beck+, a stream; +fell+, a hill or table-land; +firth+ or +fiord+, an
arm of the sea-- the same as the Danish fiord; +force+, a waterfall;
+garth+, a yard or enclosure; +holm+, an island in a river; +kirk+, a
church; +oe+, an island; +thorpe+, a village; +thwaite+, a forest
clearing; and +vik+ or +wick+, a station for ships, or a creek.
[Footnote 2: Words and Places, p. 158.]
13. +Scandinavian Words+ (ii).-- The most useful and the most
frequently employed word that we have received from the Danes is the
word +are+. The pure English word for this is +beoth+ or +sindon+.
The Danes gave us also the habit of using +to+ before an infinitive.
Their word for +to+ was +at+; and +at+ still survives and is in use in
Lincolnshire. We find also the following Danish words in our language:
+blunt+, +bole+ (of a tree), +bound+ (on a journey-- properly
+boun+), +busk+ (to dress), +cake+, +call+, +crop+ (to cut), +curl+,
+cut+, +dairy+, +daze+, +din+, +droop+, +fellow+, +flit+, +for+,
+froward+, +hustings+, +ill+, +irk+, +kid+, +kindle+, +loft+,
+odd+, +plough+, +root+, +scold+, +sky+, +tarn+ (a small
mountain lake), +weak+, and +ugly+. It is in Northumberland,
Durham, Yorkshire, Lincoln, Norfolk, and even in the western counties
of Cumberland and Lancashire, that we find the largest admixture of
Scandinavian words.
14. +Influence of the Scandinavian Element.+-- The introduction of the
Danes and the Danish language into England had the result, in the east,
of unsettling the inflexions of our language, and thus of preparing the
way for their complete disappearance. The declensions of nouns
became unsettled; nouns that used to make their plural in +a+ or in
+u+ took the more striking plural suffix +as+ that belonged to a quite
different declension. The same things happened to adjectives, verbs,
and other parts of language. The causes of this are not far to seek.
Spoken language can never be so accurate as written language; the
mass of the English and Danes never cared or could care much for
grammar; and both parties to a conversation would of course hold
firmly to the +root+ of the word, which was intelligible to both of them,

and let the inflexions slide, or take care of themselves. The more