their names in the old Germanic languages, it would, perhaps, be more accurate to say that the dialects of the settlers were mutually intelligible. The many synonymous words which came into use in Old English are proof that the dialects of different tribes were blended into that speech. The old Dönsk tongue was the language of Northern England, and it, or something very like it, must have been the speech of the Northern Angles. It must have been the dominant language used on the coasts of the Baltic, and we may therefore look to allies of the early Anglian settlers in England, and of the later Danish ones, for traces of other immigrants from the Baltic coasts.
The earliest example of the language of the Old English, or one of the earliest, is the Saga and poem known as the ‘Beowulf.’ Its scenery and personages are Danish,[1] and by Danish we must understand that early kingdom whose seat was in what is now Sweden. Marsh says: ‘The whole poem belongs, both in form and essence, to the Scandinavian, not to the Germanic School of Art. The substance of “Beowulf.” either as a Saga or as a poem, came over, I believe, with some of the conquerors, and its existence in Anglo-Saxon literature I consider one of the many proofs of an infusion of the Scandinavian element in the immigration.’ This poem in its written form is of about the eighth century.
The extent to which the dialects of the old Northern language were spoken in England during the Anglo-Saxon period has probably been under-estimated. Wherever there were Northern settlers, some dialect of the Northern speech must have been used, and evidence will be shown in succeeding chapters of its use in other parts of England than the Northern and Eastern Counties. To how great an extent this was the language of the Northern Counties in the early part of the tenth century may be estimated
- ↑ Marsh, G. P., ‘Origin and History of the English Language,’ 101.
