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1. Introduction and aim
Being Scandinavian, I am curios how, when, why and to what extent Scandinavians influenced the English language. In the essay, I intend to answer these questions and perform a small investigation of my own, which will be accounted for in the next paragraph. Furthermore, I will refer to Scandinavian as the language of the Scandinavians in the period 750-1066, not Scandinavian today.
2. Method and material
Most facts are taken from Baugh A History of the English Language (1951) but I also used Barber The English Language, a Historical Introduction (1993) often to find that they said practically the same thing. A few details has been taken from Lindqvist Historien om Sverige. Från islossning till kungarike. In the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology I searched for words with Scandinavian origin under the letter [s]. The reason why I chose this section is that it is one of the biggest sections of the dictionary, which increases the likelihood of finding many non specialized words. I started on page 780, then I searched every 5th page to page 895 (approx. 480 words examined), again, in order to minimize the risk of specialized words. Words with many possible origins (ModE: shield-ON: skjoldr or OFris: skeld; or ModE: slay-ON: sla or OFris: sla) have been ignored. I will then check the result in order to see if there are any typical type of words and depending on the result, I will draw conclusions.

3. Previous research
3.1.1 Cause of Viking movement
Why did the Scandinavians travel to England, and when? Already in the bronze age, ore was shipped between what today is Sweden and England (Lindqvist 1992) but in the 750s there was a sudden expansion. It is not known exactly why so many Scandinavian Vikings suddenly left their homes. The reasons may have been political or economical (Baugh 1951) or overpopulation in a region of poor natural resources. A contributing cause was probably that the Frisians, who ruled the seas in north-west Europe, were beaten, leaving the sea open for the Northmen (Barber 1993). What is certain, though, is that the Vikings traveled to the monastery Lindisfarne where they arrived June 8, 793. According to the chronicles of Europe, this date marks the start of the Viking age which would not end until the battle of Hastings, October 14, 1066 (Lindqvist 1992).
3.1.2 The attacks
The attacks upon England could be divided into three stages, which I will summarize short. The first stage is the period of early raids, 787-850 according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This period is characterized mostly by plundering attacks upon towns and monasteries near the coast where the Vikings took slaves and all sorts of valuables (Baugh 1951). During the second stage, more widespread plundering were undertaken by large Danish armies who also settled rather extensively, probably something that influenced the language a lot. I will come back to this in the next paragraph. The Danes were very successful in their conquest but capitulated at Ethandun (now Edington, Wiltshire) in 878. A treaty, the treaty of Wedmore, was signed by both parts but the Danes were not compelled to leave England. Furthermore, the Danes was to accept Christianity and this paved the way for the ultimate fusion of the two groups. The third period 878-1042 covers political adjustment and assimilation. But the battles continued. Danish and Scottish forces were joined but beaten in 937 in Brunanburh. In 991, a substantial Norwegian Viking fleet attacked and pillaged several towns on the south coast of England. In 994, Danes and Norwegians joined forces in an attack on London and in the years 1017-1042, England was ruled by Danish kings (Baugh 1951).
3.1.3 Settlements
The consequence of the attacks mentioned above was of course that a large number of Scandinavians settled permanently in England, that is they remained behind when the ships returned home. The two peoples later amalgamated out of several reasons. Firstly, there was a close kinship between them. Secondly, the policy of the English kings was to accept a mixed population and thirdly, the Scandinavians showed high adaptability. An example of the latter is their early acceptance of Christianity. This is attested by the large number of Scandinavian names found among monks, priests, bishops, abbots and those who gave land to monasteries and endowed churches. So, the relation between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes was not only hostile. One must distinguish between the bands and the large numbers that settled down peacefully (Baugh, 1951)
In some places, the Scandinavians gave up their language early, while it remained for a long time in other places, where it was also renewed for a long time through trade and conquest. In some parts of Scotland, Norse was spoken as late as the seventeenth century. On a few locations, the peoples were more or less bilingual due to intermarriage and similarity between the languages. The Anglian dialect resembled the Scandinavian in a number of ways, which the West Saxon did not.
Another strong evidence of the extensive Scandinavian settlements and influence in England is the vast number of Scandinavian place names. Over 1,400 have Scandinavian origin and the largest numbers of them are found in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. More than 600 names of places ends with -by, meaning farm or town (Grimsby, Derby, Rugby etc.); 300 ending in -thorpe, meaning village (Althorpe, Bishopsthorpe, Gawthorpe etc.); almost another 300 ending in -thwaite, meaning an isolated piece of land (Applethwaite, Braithwaite, Cowperthwaite etc.) and about 100 ending in -toft, meaning a piece of ground, a messuage (Brimtoft, Eastoft, Langtoft etc.) (Baugh 1951).

3.2 Loan words
3.2.1 The word test
It is difficult to decide whether a Modern English word is native or borrowed from Scandinavian, due to the similarity between Old English and Scandinavian. In some cases, though, there is a test that could be performed to see if the word is borrowed or not. The most reliable test concerns the differences in the development of certain sounds. An easy one to recognize is the development of the sk sound which was early changed into sh (written sc) in Old English, while the Scandinavian countries kept the hard sk sound. So, words like ship, shall and fish are native and sky, skin, skill, scrub, scrape, bask and whisk are loans. In the same way, the Old English word scyrte changed to shirt and the Old Norse word skyrta became skirt. The consonants g and k acted in the same way, so words as kid, dike (cf. ditch), get, give, gild and egg are Scandinavian in origin (Baugh 1951). Among the vowels, the Proto Germanic ai became ei in Scandinavian and a in English. This means that the Old Norse word nei became Modern English nay, and the Old English na became no. Furthermore, the Proto Germanic au becomes ea in Old English but remained au in Old Norse. So, the Old English word leas corresponds to Old Norse lauss which became loose (Barber 1993). Another way of spotting loan words is looking at the meaning. The word bloom could come from either Old English, bloma, or Scandinavian, blom. However, the Old English word means 'ingot of iron' while the Scandinavian word means 'flower' or 'bloom'. But when neither the form nor the meaning of a word proves the Scandinavian origin, we can not be sure of its origin. Simply the fact that there is no original preserved in Old English does not mean that it did not exist (Baugh 1951).

3.2.2 Stages of loans
The earliest borrowings had to do with sea-roving and predatory people and a little later we find words relating to law (see appendix 1). However, after the Norman conquest the legal language was completely reshaped and most Scandinavian words are now replaced with French (Baugh 1951). Yet later, as the Scandinavians had settled peacefully, loan words came into the everyday language. The character of the words was varied and simple. Examples of words are to find in appendix 2, where nouns, verbs and adjectives are listed. The list is long to demonstrate the rich variety of everyday words, especially nouns. Not only nouns, adjectives and verbs made their way into English. Pronouns, such as they, their and them, prepositions, such as till, also survived until today.

4. Results and discussion
4.1 Table
The following words were found:

Modern English		Old Norse
Sackless			saklaus
Same			same
Scare			skirra
Scat			skattr
Scathe			skadi
Scout			skuta
Scrape			skapa
Shide			skid
Shuttle			skutill
Sister			systir
Skald			skald
Sledge			sleggja
Sleight			slaegd
Sleuth			slod
Snake			snakr
Sneak			snikja
Spar			sperrask
Stack			stakkr
Sting			stinga
Stithy			stedi
Sunder			i sundr

As we can see, there are words (mostly nouns) that can be related back to a society, a thousand years ago. This corresponds well with the previous researched made, considering the variety of everyday words.

4.2 Summary and conclusion
As we have seen, many factors caused the Scandinavian influence on the English Language and the ways of influence was at first attacks but later extensive settlements. What is influenced is not only place names but also words and when trying to see if a word is a loan or not there are a few tests that can be performed. Of course, those tests depend much on at what period in time the word was borrowed, since different sound laws are active in different periods. 
Judging from my investigation, truly a lot of words were borrowed. There were not a great deal of special words which does not indicate Scandinavian influence on just one area but on the language as a whole. One of the largest causes for this to happen was probably the similarity of the peoples' languages and cultures. This made it easy to understand each other and easy for the Scandinavians to adapt to society.

References
Lindqvist, H. 1992: Historien om Sverige. Från islossning till kungarike pp128-139. Nordsteds Förlag AB, Stockholm.

Baugh. 1951: A history of the English language pp. 90-103. London.

Barber, C. 1993: The English Language, a Historical Introduction pp. 127-131. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. 1966: pp. 780-890. Oxford University Press, Oxford
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