The Viking raids consequences. The Vikings were often described as “dire portents” and the Viking raids as “immense whirlwinds … flashes of lighting…and fiery dragons…flying in the air”. The Viking raids had begun. The earliest raids were carried out by Norwegians. Their immediate consequences were beyond dispute: material loss, humiliation for men and women (rape figures as well as murder). Regarding the linguistic consequences, the Scandinavian influx left its mark on English place-names. Common …showed first 75 words of 400 total…

…showed last 75 words of 400 total…part of the stem, and incorporated in the English word. Thus there was an Old Norse ending –t which was added to adjectives to mark the neuter gender, and also to form adverbs. The total number of Scandinavian loans is in fact rather small, compared with the number of words later borrowed from French and Latin. However, in the areas of densest Viking settlement, a larger vocabulary of Scandinavian loan-words is preserved in regional dialects.