Scandinavian borrowings in the English language

The similarity between Old English and the language of the Scandinavian invaders makes it at times very difficult to decide whether a given word in Modern English is a native or a borrowed word. Many of the more common words of the two languages were identical, and if we had no Old English literature from the period before the Danish invasions, we should be unable to say that many words were not of Scandinavian origin. In certain cases, however, we have very reliable criteria by which we can recognize a borrowed word. These tests are not such as the lay person can generally apply, although occasionally they are sufficiently simple. The most reliable depend upon differences in the development of certain sounds in the North Germanic and West Germanic areas. One of the simplest to recognize is the development of the sound sk. In Old English this was early palatalized to sh (written sc), except possibly in the combination scr, whereas in the Scandinavian countries it retained its hard sk sound. Consequently, while native words like ship, shall, fish have sh in Modern English, words borrowed from the Scandinavians are generally still pronounced with sk: sky, skin, skill, scrape, scrub, bask, whisk. The OE scyrte has become shirt, while the corresponding ON form skyrta gives us skirt. In the same way the retention of the hard pronunciation of k and g in such words as kid, dike[35] (cf. ditch), get, give, gild, and egg is an indication of Scandinavian origin. Occasionally, though not very often, the vowel of a word gives clear proof of borrowing. For example, the Germanic diphthong ai becomes ā in Old English (and has become ō in Modern English) but became ei or ē in Old Scandinavian. Thus aye, nay (beside no from the native word), hale (cf. the English form (w)hole), reindeer, and swain are borrowed words, and many more examples can be found in Middle English and in the modern dialects. Thus there existed in Middle English the forms geit, gait, which are from Scandinavian, beside gāt, gōt from the OE word. The native word has survived in Modern English goat. In the same way the Scandinavian word for loathsome existed in Middle English as leiþ, laiþ beside lāþ, lōþ. Such tests as these, based on sound- developments in the two languages, are the most reliable means of distinguishing Scandinavian from native words. But occasionally meaning gives a fairly reliable test. Thus our word bloom (flower) could come equally well from OE blōma or Scandinavian blōm. But the OE word meant an ‘ingot of iron’, whereas the Scandinavian word meant ‘flower, bloom’. It happens that the Old English word has survived as a term in metallurgy, but it is the Old Norse word that has come down in ordinary use. Again, if the initial g in gift did not betray the Scandinavian origin of this word, we should be justified in suspecting it from the fact that the cognate OE word gift meant the ‘price of a wife’, and hence in the plural ‘marriage’, whereas the ON word had the more general sense of ‘gift, present’. The word plow in Old English meant a measure of land, in Scandinavian the agricultural implement, which in Old English was called a sulh. When neither the form of a word nor its meaning proves its Scandinavian origin we can never be sure that we are dealing with a borrowed word. The fact that an original has not been preserved in Old English is no proof that such an original did not exist. Nevertheless when a word appears in Middle English that cannot be traced to an Old English source but for which an entirely satisfactory original exists in Old Norse, and when that word occurs chiefly in texts written in districts where Danish influence was strong, or when it has survived in dialectal use in these districts today, the probability that we have here a borrowed word is fairly strong. In every case final judgment must rest upon a careful consideration of all the factors involved.

4.6. Scandinavian Place-Names

Among the most notable evidences of the extensive Scandinavian settlement in England is the large number of places that bear Scandinavian names. When we find more than 600 places like Grimsby, Whitby, Derby, Rugby, and Thoresby, with names ending in -by, nearly all of them in the district occupied by the Danes, we have a striking evidence of the number of Danes who settled in England. For these names all contain the Danish word by, meaning ‘farm’ or ‘town’, a word that is also seen in our word by-law (town law). Some 300 names like Althorp, Bishopsthorpe, Gawthorpe, and Linthorpe contain the Scandinavian word thorp (village). An almost equal number contain the word thwaite (an isolated piece of land)—Applethwaite, Braithwaite, Cowperthwaite, Langthwaite, Satterthwaite. About a hundred places bear names ending in toft (a piece of ground, a messuage)—Brimtoft, Eastoft, Langtoft, Lowestoft, Nortoft. Numerous other Scandinavian elements enter into English place-names, which need not be particularized here. It is apparent that these elements were commonplace in the speech of the people of the Danelaw. It has been remarked above that more than 1,400 Scandinavian place-names have been counted in England, and the number will undoubtedly be increased when a more careful survey of the material has been made. These names are not uniformly distributed over the Danelaw. The largest number are found in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. In some districts in these counties as many as 75 percent of the place-names are of Scandinavian origin. Cumbria contributes a large number, reflecting the extensive Norse settlements in the northwest, while Norfolk, with a fairly large representation, shows that the Danes were numerous in at least this part of East Anglia. It may be remarked that a similarly high percentage of Scandinavian personal names has been found in the medieval records of these districts. Names ending in -son, like Stevenson or Johnson, conform to a characteristic Scandinavian custom, the equivalent of Old English patronymic being -ing, as in Browning.

4.7. The Earliest Borrowing

The extent of this influence on English place-nomenclature would lead us to expect a large infiltration of other words into the vocabulary. But we should not expect this infiltration to show itself at once. The early relations of the invaders with the English were too hostile to lead to much natural intercourse, and we must allow time for such words as the Anglo-Saxons learned from their enemies to find their way into literature. The number of Scandinavian words that appear in Old English is consequently small, amounting to only about two score. The largest single group of these is such as would be associated with a sea-roving and predatory people. Words like barda (beaked ship), cnearr (small warship), scegþ (vessel), liþ (fleet), scegþmann (pirate), dreng (warrior), hā (oarlock) and (rower in a warship), bātswegen (boatman, source of Modern English boatswain), hofding (chief, ringleader), orrest (battle), rān (robbery, rapine), and fylcian (to collect or marshal a force) show in what respects the invaders chiefly impressed the English. A little later we find a number of words relating to the law or characteristic of the social and administrative system of the Danelaw. The word law itself is of Scandinavian origin, as is the word outlaw. The word māl (action at law), hold (freeholder), wapentake (an administrative district), hūsting (assembly), and riding (originally thriding, one of the former divisions of Yorkshire) owe their use to the Danes. In addition to these, a number of genuine Old English words seem to be translations of Scandinavian terms: bōtlēas (what cannot be compensated), hāmsōcn (attacking an enemy in his house), lahcēap (payment for reentry into lost legal rights), landcēap (tax paid when land was bought) are examples of such translations.[36] English legal terminology underwent a complete reshaping after the Norman Conquest, and most of these words have been replaced now by terms from the French. But their temporary existence in the language is an evidence of the extent to which Scandinavian customs entered into the life of the districts in which the Danes were numerous.

4.8. Scandinavian Loanwords and Their Character


It was after the Danes had begun to settle down peaceably in the island and enter into the ordinary relations of life with the English that Scandinavian words began to enter in numbers into the language. If we examine the bulk of these words with a view to dividing them into classes and thus discovering in what domains of thought or experience the Danes contributed especially to English culture and therefore to the English language, we shall not arrive at any significant result. The Danish invasions were not like the introduction of Christianity, bringing the English into contact with a different civilization and introducing them to many things, physical as well as spiritual, that they had not known before. The civilization of the invaders was very much like that of the English themselves. Consequently the Scandinavian elements that entered the English language are such as would make their way into it through the give-and-take of everyday life. Their character can best be conveyed by a few examples, arranged simply in alphabetical order. Among nouns that came in are axle-tree, band, bank, birth, boon, booth, brink, bull, calf (of leg), crook, dirt, down (feathers), dregs, egg, fellow, freckle, gait, gap, girth, guess, hap, keel, kid, leg, link, loan, mire, race, reef (of sail), reindeer, rift, root, scab, scales, score, scrap, seat, sister, skill, skin, skirt, sky, slaughter, snare, stack, steak, swain, thrift, tidings, trust, want, window. The list has been made somewhat long in order to better illustrate the varied and yet simple character of the borrowings. Among adjectives we find awkward, flat, ill, loose, low, meek, muggy, odd, rotten, rugged, scant, seemly, sly, tattered, tight, and weak. There are also a surprising number of common verbs among the borrowings, like to bait, bask, batten, call, cast, clip, cow, crave, crawl, die, droop, egg (on), flit, gape, gasp, get, give, glitter, kindle, lift, lug, nag, raise, rake, ransack, rid, rive, scare, scout (an idea), scowl, screech, snub, sprint, take, thrive, thrust. Lists such as these suggest better than any explanation the familiar, everyday character of the words that the Scandinavian invasions and subsequent settlement brought into English.

4.9. The Relation of Borrowed and Native Words

It will be seen from the words in the above lists that in many cases the new words could have supplied no real need in the English vocabulary. They made their way into English simply as the result of the mixture of the two peoples. The Scandinavian and the English words were being used side by side, and the survival of one or the other must often have been a matter of chance. Under such circumstances a number of things might happen. (1) Where words in the two languages coincided more or less in form and meaning, the modern word stands at the same time for both its English and its Scandinavian ancestors. Examples of such words are burn, cole, drag, fast, gang, murkДа scrape, thick. (2) Where there were differences of form, the English word often survived. Beside such English words as bench, goat, heathen, yarn, few, grey, loath, leap, flay, corresponding Scandinavian forms are found quite often in Middle English literature and in some cases still exist in dialectal use. We find screde, skelle, skere with the hard pronunciation of the initial consonant group beside the standard English shred, shell, sheer; wae beside woe, the surviving form except in welaway; trigg the Old Norse equivalent of OE trēowe (true). Again where the same idea was expressed by different words in the two languages it was often, as we should expect, the English word that lived on. We must remember that the area in which the two languages existed for a time side by side was confined to the northern and eastern half of England. Examples are the Scandinavian words attlen beside English think (in the sense of purpose, intend), bolnen beside swell, tinen (ON) beside lose, site (ON) beside sorrow, roke (fog) beside mist, reike beside path. (3) In other cases the Scandinavian word replaced the native word, often after the two had long remained in use concurrently. Our word awe from Scandinavian, and its cognate eye (aye) from Old English are both found in the Ormulum (c. 1200). In the earlier part of the Middle English period the English word is more common, but by 1300 the Scandinavian form begins to appear with increasing frequency and finally replaces the Old English word. The two forms must have been current in the everyday speech of the northeast for several centuries, until finally the pronunciation awe prevailed. The Old English form is not found after the fourteenth century. The same thing happened with the two words for egg, ey (English) and egg (Scandinavian). Caxton complains at the close of the fifteenth century that it was hard even then to know which to use. In the words sister (ON syster, OE sweostor), boon (ON bōn, OE bēn) loan (ON lān, OE), weak (ON veikr, OE wāc) the Scandinavian form lived. Often a good Old English word was lost, since it expressed the same idea as the foreign word. Thus the verb take replaced the OE niman;[37] cast superseded the OE weorpan, while it has itself been largely displaced now by throw; cut took the place of OE snīðan and ceorfan, which survives as carve. Old English had several words for anger (ON angr), including torn, grama, and irre, but the Old Norse word prevailed. In the same way the Scandinavian word bark replaced OE rind, wing replaced OE feþra, sky took the place of ūprodor and wolcen (the latter now being preserved only in the poetical word welkin), and window (=wind-eye) drove out the equally appropriate English word (eye-thirl, i.e., eye-hole; cf. nostril=nose thirl, nose hole). (4) Occasionally both the English and the Scandinavian words were retained with a difference of meaning or use, as in the following pairs (the English word is given first): no—nay, whole—hale, rear—raise, from—fro, craft—skill, hide—skin, sick—ill. (5) In certain cases a native word that was apparently not in common use was reinforced, if not reintroduced, from the Scandinavian. In this way we must account for such words as till, dale, rim, blend, run, and the Scottish bairn. (6) Finally, the English word might be modified, taking on some of the character of the corresponding Scandinavian word. Give and get with their hard g are examples, as are scatter beside shatter, and Thursday instead of the OE Thunresdæg. Some confusion must have existed in the Danish area between the Scandinavian and the English form of many words, a confusion that is clearly betrayed in the survival of such hybrid forms as shriek and screech. All this merely goes to show that in the Scandinavian influence on the English language we have to do with the intimate mingling of two tongues. The results are just what we should expect when two rather similar languages are spoken for upwards of two centuries in the same area.

4.10. Form Words

If further evidence were needed of the intimate relation that existed between the two languages, it would be found in the fact that the Scandinavian words that made their way into English were not confined to nouns and adjectives and verbs but extended to pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and even a part of the verb to be. Such parts of speech are not often transferred from one language to another. The pronouns they, their, and them are Scandinavian. Old English used hīe, hiera, him (see p.35-36). Possibly the Scandinavian words were felt to be less subject to confusion with forms of the singular. Moreover, though these are the most important, they are not the only Scandinavian pronouns to be found in English. A late Old English inscription contains the Old Norse form hanum for him. Both and same, though not primarily pronouns, have pronominal uses and are of Scandinavian origin. The preposition till was at one time widely used in the sense of to, besides having its present meaning; and fro, likewise in common use formerly as the equivalent of from, survives in the phrase to and fro. Both words are from the Scandinavian. From the same source comes the modern form of the conjunction though, the Old Norse equivalent of OE þēah. The Scandinavian use of at as a sign of the infinitive is to be seen in the English ado (at-do) and was more widely used in this construction in Middle English. The adverbs aloft, athwart, aye (ever), and seemly, and the earlier heþen (hence) and hweþen (whence), are all derived from the Scandinavian. Finally the present plural are of the verb to be is a most significant adoption. While we aron was the Old English form in the north, the West Saxon plural was syndon (cf. German sind), and the form are in Modern English undoubtedly owes its extension to the influence of the Danes. When we remember that in the expression they are both the pronoun and the verb are Scandinavian we realize once more how intimately the language of the invaders has entered into English.