The Legacy of Medieval Scandinavian Encounters with England and the Insular World

Edited by Richard Dance Edited by Sara Pons-Sanz Edited by Brittany Schorn

Book cover: The Legacy of Medieval Scandinavian Encounters with England and the Insular World

Extent: 454, 454 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Language & Linguistics, Medieval Studies

Series: Studies in the Early Middle Ages

Series volume number: 34

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(March 2025)

ISBN: 9782503607702

Price: $157.00

In stock

This volume reveals how Viking contact transformed English language and culture. Featuring thirteen new essays from leading scholars on linguistic, historical, and literary topics.


The Vikings had a major and lasting impact on the English language. This volume is a unique companion to the study of Anglo-Scandinavian language contact, providing expert discussions of its contexts, backgrounds, and the considerable afterlife of its effects through the Middle Ages and down to the present day. It contains thirteen new articles by leading specialists in the fields of early medieval languages, literature, and history, specially commissioned in order to explore as wide a range as possible of the historical and cultural contexts for Anglo-Scandinavian encounters in the Viking Age and the evidence for them. These essays analyse in detail the Old Norse influence on English, offering studies of words and their meanings in their textual and literary contexts, and including lexicography, dialectology, and syntactic research; they explore findings from archaeology, inscriptions, and place-names; and they situate Anglo-Scandinavian contacts in the larger multilingual, multicultural contexts of the North Sea and Irish Sea worlds.

  • Edited by Richard Dance
  • Edited by Sara Pons-Sanz
  • Edited by Brittany Schorn