The Anglo-Scandinavian connection: Reading between lines and layers

Abstract

Though there is much done on the early linguistic history of Norse-related loanwords in historical and comparative linguistics in the last two decades, a thorough study of their early social history is still needed. The limits imposed by the fragmentary evidence of sources and lack of information about the individual profile of informants —Scandinavian incomers and native population in Britain between c. 850-1100— increase the difficulties when trying to recreate the social reality which surrounded this phenomenon. Hence this paper intends to benefit from recent developments in socio-historical linguistics and archaeology to reconstruct the social context of usage of certain loanwords.