Scandinavian influence in Old English poetry: a study of The Battle of Brunanburh

Abstract

One of the ways in which the general interest on the Viking world has been reflected in academia is the study of the influence that the language of these Northern peoples had in Old English during the Scandinavian invasion (8th -11th century). This paper aims to shed some light on this topic by studying the Scandinavian elements appearing in the Old English poem The Battle of Brunanburh (937). In order to do so, the events involved in the contact between Old English and Old Norse, as well as in the composition of the poem will be contextualised. After this, a review on the nature of The Battle of Brunanburh (i.e. heroic poetry) will be presented together with the proposal of a translation of the poem into contemporary English, with the objective of improving the understanding of the work and thus facilitating its subsequent analysis. Finally, the phenomenon of Scandinavian borrowing in Old English will be introduced, followed by a study of the etymologies of the vocabulary employed in The Battle of Brunanburh. The results of the analysis of the poem’s lexis will help to measure the extent of Scandinavian influence in Old English, not only in terms of the amount of borrowings found in the poem but also in accordance to their nature. Apart from this, factors such as the date and the origin of the poem will also have to be taken into consideration for the sake of reaching a sensible conclusion.