North Sea Currents: Old English-Old Norse Relations, Literary and Linguistic

Abstract

The following article reviews recent scholarship on the connexions between Old Norse and Old English, especially the possible influences of the one on the other, in literary as well as linguistic terms. It begins by surveying the varying attitudes that have shaped the identification and interpretation of analogues in the two literary corpora: these may be based on the conventional belief that most similarities can be ascribed to shared inheritance from a common Germanic stock; they may reflect challenges to this assumption, which discern the traces of more contemporary influence, especially of Norse on English literary tastes; or they may belong to a more recent school of comparative criticism, typified by a broader consideration of the context of composition in Viking Age England. The article continues with a (briefer) survey of recent work on the linguistic effects of Norse-English contact during the period. It notes the increasingly sophisticated and sensitive application of linguistic theories to the evidence, but concludes that much remains to be done by way of detailed, textually-focussed investigation of the words themselves, especially when it comes to the Middle English record.

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