A Viking family - the sea was never far away - image from the York Jorvik Centre
I’ve already blogged about Latin words and Celtic words in the English language, but now it’s the turn of the Scandinavian languages.
These contributed to our language during the 9th and 10th centuries, according to that old favourite book of mine, The English Language – Grammar, History, Literature by Professor Meiklejohn, printed in 1905. I would also note that in our global society we are still adding Scandinavian words to our language today.
The English Language by Professor Meiklejohn
Here’s a summary of Meiklejohn on the Scandinavian element in English…
Towards the end of the eighth century the English (Anglo-Saxon) settlements of the East coast of Britain found themselves under attack from the Teutonic peoples of Scandinavia – the Northmen, Norsemen or Danes. Interestingly Meiklejohn doesn’t ever call them Vikings. There is a good map showing the timeline of Scandinavian expansion on Wikipedia .
Despite the resistance of the English, the Danes held sway in much of the East of England by the end of the ninth century and a Danish dynasty sat on a unified English throne from 1016 to 1042 (starting with Canute and ending with Hardicanute).
The early contributions of Scandinavian to English are or two kinds – place-names and ordinary words.
Scandinavian place-names
“The most striking instance of a Danish place-name is by, a town. Mr Isaac Taylor tells us that there are in the East of England more than 600 names of towns ending in –by.
“Almost all of these are found in the Danelagh (Danelaw), within the limits of the great highway made by the Romans to the north west and well known as Watling Street”.
Whitby is the town on the white cliffs…
Whitby in North Yorkshire is the 'town on the white cliffs' - picture by Mark Harrington...
Grimsby is 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 is Dane-town – and here I move away from Meiklejohn for a moment to mention that although Wales was not heavily colonised by Vikings, they did settle in some parts of North and West Wales before their defeat by the Welsh kings.
Tenby ('Dane-town') in West Wales - click on the image to see more pictures from the Visit Pembrokeshire website...
Their settlement led to place names such as Anglesey, Bardsey, Milford, Fishguard, Goodwick and Swansea (apparently founded by Sweyne Forkbeard, who was shipwrecked in the bay).
In the Gower Peninsula there is Worm’s Head – worm was the Norse word for dragon, and the Vikings believed the island was a sleeping dragon.
Worm's Head by Barri Elford - looking like a dragon in the distance...
Tusker Rock, an island in the Bristol Channel, took its name from Tuska, a Danish Viking who settled in the fertile Vale of Glamorgan. The island names of Skokholm (“wooded island”), Ramsey, Grassholm and Skomer also show Scandinavian origins.
But back to the English…
By-law means a law specific to a particular town. Other Scandinavian words found alone or in compounds are:
Beck – a stream
Fell – a hill
Firth or Fiord – an inlet of the sea
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
Vik or Wick – a station for ships, or a creek
Fellbeck ('hill stream') in the Yorkshire Dales by Stephen Paylor
Ordinary words from Scandinavian
The most useful and most often used word the Scandinavians gave us is “are”. The pure English (Anglo Saxon) word for this would have been beoth or sinden.
The Scandinavians also gave us the habit of using the word “to” before an infinitive – so we can blame them, I guess, for making it so easy for us to split infinitives (as in “to boldly go…”)
Other old Norse words in English are:
Blunt, bole (of a tree), bound (on a journey), busk (to dress), cake, call, clog, clumsy, curl, cut, dairy, daze, dirt, droop, fellow, flit, hustings, ill, irk, kid, kindle, loft, odd, plough, root, scold, sky, tarn (a small mountain lake), weak and ugly…
Anthony Dowell and Wayne Sleep as the Ugly Sisters in Frederick Ashton's ballet Cinderella at London's Royal Ballet in 2004 - ugly is a Scandinavian word, along with clumsy...
One word whose absence from Meiklejohn’s list disappoints me is berserk – meaning “bear-shirt” and applied to a frenzied warrior. This came into English from Old Norse and I find remembering the meaning helps prevent you from mis-spelling it beserk…
Berserker by Frank Frazetta - click on the image to go to my recent blog post about Frazetta's art...
Some other Old Norse words missing from this list might be: axle, blunder, dregs, gosling, hack, haggle, husband, knife, knot, lad, litmus, mire, mistake, oaf, ransack, reindeer, saga, scare, scarf, scathe, scrape, skill, skin, slaughter, sleuth (sloð means “trail”), take, thrall, troll, whirl, whisk, window (meaning wind-eye), work…
Litmus solutions (or more often litmus papers for dipping) are used to test for acidity and alkalinity - the word litmus means 'coloured moss' but it actually comes from lichen...
In Meiklejohn’s day, at least, the use of Scandinavian words and place names was commonest in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and the western side of Cumberland and Lancashire.
It was during the time when the English and Scandinavians lived side by side that we lost so many of the niceties of the language – not bothering any more with declensions and conjugations and with matching adjectives with their nouns in terms of gender and number etc. The adjective black can be applied to a cat whether male or female and to cats plural, without changing the ending. This was the biggest influence of the Scandinavians on our language.
Since Meiklejohn’s day we have been keen to take into English words from languages all over the world, when the object or concept does not already exist in English. Thus we have taken on…
From Norwegian
Aquavit (a kind of spirit distilled from potatoes), floe (as in ice floe), Kraken (sea monster), krill (small shrimp-like animals), lemming, quisling (from a wartime traitor, Vidkun Quisling), ski, slalom and Yngling (a sailing boat class from an old Norwegian word for “youngster”
A Kraken in the new film Clash of the Titans - although originally it was imagined as more like a giant octopus or squid...
From Swedish
Angstrom (scientific measurement, from Anders Angstrom), gravlax (preserved salmon – originally “grave salmon” as it was preserved underground), moped, ombudsman, orienteering, smorgasbord (sandwich table), tungsten (meaning hard stone)
Smorgasbord - a Swedish buffet but also now meaning 'a varied collection'...
The Norwegian traitor Vidkun Quisling (July 18, 1887 – October 24, 1945) and the Swedish physicist Anders Angstrom (August 13, 1814 – June 21, 1874) both gave their names to words in the English language...
From Danish
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard gave us the word angst
These are all a bit indirect, but here we go…
Frisbee is an interesting one. Inspiration for the toy came from the airworthy pie tins of the Frisbie Bakery in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The family name comes from a place in Leicestershire called Frisby on the Wreak, the name meaning “farmstead or village of the Frisians” – there’s that by ending again…
The word angst was introduced from the Danish via existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, although it’s similar in German and Dutch.
Several words come from the Danes’ nautical exploits: flense, meaning to strip the blubber or skin from a whale or seal; iceberg (from isbjerg, meaning mountain of ice); maelstrom, meaning a violent whirlpool or turbulent situation, may come from the Danish malstrom, although my Chambers dictionary has it coming from a similar Dutch word; walrus came from Danish hvalros, from Old Norse hrosshvalr (“‘horse-whale’”). It’s similar in Dutch (walrus), Icelandic (hvalur) and German (Walross).
The Saltstraumen maelstrom or whirlpool off the coast of Norway...
Disney's The Walrus and the Carpenter
Finally the word midden is a lovely one in an archaeological sense, as I have visited shell middens close to Mesolithic settlements in Denmark. The word came to us through Middle English myddyng, apparently, from the Danish mög-dynge, meaning muck+dung. It now means a dung heap, a refuse heap near a dwelling or a prehistoric pile of discarded bones and shells.
Mesolithic shell midden at Newburgh, Aberdeenshire, by Martyn Gorman
The Squirrelbasket 
What about brother and sister? These words are very similar in the modern Scandinavian/Germanic languages. Also, some of the local vocabulary of Northern England and Scotland have similarities to some Scandinavian words, e.g. “bairn” means child, which is similar to barn in Danish etc. Newcastle people also say “hjem” instead of “home”, pronounced as in Danish.
Some good points there – my dictionary has brother and sister coming from Old English, which was Germanic, so I’m not surprised about the similarities. In this post I was thinking more of SOME of the words that came direct into our modern language from Scandinavian words, rather than ones very similar because of common roots. According to the dictionary bairn also comes from an Old English word meaning “to bear”. But you are very right about the dialect in many parts of the North, where the Danish and Viking people stayed around much longer than “down South”. Thanks ever so much for reading the blog and commenting 🙂
I know that the words son and daughter were used to show lineage (i.e. Leif Eriksson), are these from direct Scandanavian roots or also Germanic/Old English in origin?
No idea, really! I think the idea of putting son or daughter on the end of a parent’s name to create a person’s surname is almost worldwide and seen in many languages.
I suppose you have the -ov or -off ending in Russian-type languages, and -dottir in Icelandic and I have a feeling the “papa-” bit at the start of Greek surnames probably means the same…
Thanks for your interest 🙂
Re the use of hjem for home in Newcastle. I spent the first 25 yrs of my life near Tadcaster, N. Yorks. “I’m going home, you know” was “I’s gannin yam, tha knows”.
I have relatives in North Yorkshire, so I know what you mean. Although I hadn’t really thought about the “hjem” pronunciation (and all the other bits of Geordie, I expect) in connection with the Scandinavians.
Thanks for your insight 🙂
This is fascinating post. I’m half Danish (and speak some too), I studied Latin at school and I love etymology. I think if one looks back at European history and who invaded where, and when, I guess it’s unsurprising that etymological roots can become confused!
And no wonder “English” spelling is so difficult!
my father always used the words laking for playing and druffen for drunk, He told me that these were old norse words.He was born in wakefield west yorks
Do you have any knowledge of these words
I’m no expert, but see this link about lakin’ and this one for druffen. Both seem to come from old Norsk – leika and drukkin.
Lots of Vikings up that way in Yorkshire!
All the best 🙂