The making of the English language is connected to two components. The geographic area and the people living in this area. Whereas the shape of Britain did not alter too much in the first millennium, its inhabitants got through many alternations.

In order to understand the foundation of the English language, we have to trace back the historical events that shaped its early speakers. Therefore we will divide the Old English period in two distinct eras.

The events of the first one, covering the first seven centuries are almost identical to all of western Europe. Thus the beginning of English is comparable to the early stages of German.

The second era however, from the 8th to the 11th century, finds no correspondence in any other country and for any other language. As a result of this era, the English language underwent a singular and decisive development, the result of which is still visible in ModE.

Considering the evolution of the English language, we will have to start with the earliest historically attested inhabitants of Britain - the Celts.

The Celtic people settled from the Continent at the beginning of the Iron Age. The few records of their life are all from secondary sources as their culture was based on oral transmission.

Huge Fort Hills (Dolebury, So) found in many places, mostly in the South, give evidence about the late Celtic society. The language they brought along may only scantly be reconstructed with respect to actual Celtic languages.

As early as 55 BC Julius Caesar sailed across the Channel on two occasions. In the year 43 the Emperor Claudius succeeded in invading Britain, whereupon Romans will stay in this northern military outpost for almost 400 years.

Besides Mediterranean flair, like the Roman Gardens in Chester, the Latin language and beginnings of Christianity were imported to Britain during this period. In 407 however all Roman legions hastily withdraw from the isle in order to support the weakened Empire at the eve of its fall.

Soon after the withdrawal of the Roman legions, British (i.e. Celtic) lords were at war and destabilized the country. The story goes that in the year 449 Saxon mercenaries were invited by a certain Vortigern and after having fought a victory they initiated a settlement of the country.

We almost have no evidence of what exactly happened in the couple of centuries after the Roman retreat. It was the time of King Arthur. Fact is, that the Celts were defeated and had to retreat to the outlying parts of the country.

About two centuries after their first appearance in Britain, the Germanic people, now called Anglo-Saxons, occupied most of England and had established stable power politics consisting of 7 kingdoms (Heptarchy). Each of these kingdoms alternately provided the King for the whole country.

Again, evidence of the living condition in this times is sparse. Nevertheless, the splendid treasures from the Sutton Hoo ship burial (7th c.) offer an insight into the wealth of the aristocracy at this time and interestingly enough they point to a Scandinavian background.

One of the major events in the early stages of English history was the coming of Christianity. First contacts with Christianity were already attested during the Roman occupation. But is was until the 6th century that a sustainable missionary work was carried out. Two relevant dates are connected to this event.

In 563 St Columba came from Ireland and founded a monastery on Iona (Scotland). St. Aidan, a monk of Iona, became the first bishop (635) in the newly founded see in Lindisfarne in Northumbria.

In the meantime, an emissary sent by Pope Gregory - St. Augustine - landed in Kent with the mission to christianize the English people (597). Canterbury became the first archbishopric in England.

At this moment, two institutions were at work in England, one based on Irish monasticism and another one, strongly linked to Rome. Both achieved that at the beginning of the 8th century Christianity was introduced all over England. In 664 during the Withby Synod the Roman Catholic church was claimed decisive for all of England

Besides Christian faith, conversion introduced the Latin tradition of writing and reading. Monasteries promoted the teaching of Latin amongst their members and installed scriptoria for the production of manuscripts.

Coming from Canterbury, Benedict Bishop, eventually founded the double monasteries Monkwearmouth and Jarrow (674/681). Together with Lindisfarne, they developed a leading erudite a cultural center in Northumbria. The Lindisfarne Gospels count amongst the world's greatest works of art in book form.

The monasteries of Northumbria were highly renowned exporting institutions in relation to cultural achievements and to Christianity. Missionaries from England were at work in many parts of the continent.

Bede (690-735) a scholar and later deacon of Jarrow writes numerous scientific treatises, that were copied all over Europe. His most famous work however is Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (731), made up as a blending of a chronicle based on the compilation of many historic sources. Most of the evidence we have of the former centuries come from this survey. In two copies, worked out soon after Bede's death, Caedmon's Hymn, the first OE poem is attested (on the picture above, the three lines at the lower margin).

In his History of the English church, Bede himself offers a precise account on the language situation of the early 7th century.

This information fits the overall language situation in western Europe at this time, Latin being the erudite language and vernacular varieties being attested for everyday use. British, Scottish and Pictish refer to Celtic varieties, spoken in the outlying parts of the country.

Almost identical to continental findings, lexical borrowing between the two strata Latin and vernacular is attested for many words. Those related to Christianity (angel, candle, hymn, mass, noon, priest) form the largest stock of Latin loanwords. But also expressions concerning clothing, household, education and medicine are to be found (sock, silk, oyster, school, gloss, plant, fennel, fever) and even some other like place, sponge, to temper, to turn and to crisp.

The Celtic language and a possible infiltration of early Latin words through Celtic is almost non existent, except for some place names (Kent < Celtic *Canti, Thames < Celtic *Tamisa, -ceaster < Lat. castra).

Regional variation is confirmed through many scribal peculiarities. Altogether three different dialects areas can be distinguished: Anglian (North- and Middle-England), Kentish (Canterbury) and West Saxon (Winchester, the Anglo-Saxon capital).

The runic carvings found on Frank's Casket (7th c.) count as one of the earliest records of OE. Further early records are the runic inscriptions of the Ruthwell Cross (Scotland) and the so-called continental Epinal Glosses. A thorough description of the casket may be found >here<.

The exact use of this whalebone crafted box is still controversial. The runic carving, however, in combination with christian and germanic scenes offers an interesting account for syncretism in these early days of Christianity.

The treasures and wealth of Northumbria did not only attract keen scholars and artists. In the year 793 ships (Dragons) from Norway landed near Lindisfarne and looted the monastery

This was the first Viking raid in Europe and the brutality as well as the devastation it manifested even shocked the whole Carolinian Empire. For the raiders however, loot must have been fulfilling as they repeated their attacks during the next years and expanded them all over Europe.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a compilation of year by year entries in OE, offers an extensive account for this dramatic event.

Whereas most of western Europe was only confronted with Viking raids, the Scandinavians first wintered in England (850) and then took possession of the fertile land. They also settled in Normandy, but especially for England did this arrival and the massive seizure have incomparable effects. By the end of the 9th century the Anglo-Saxon political sphere of influence was reduced to nothing less than the Kingdom of Wessex, all remaining parts of the country being occupied by Scandinavians (called Danes).

On the language side, the new settlers did not find to much rejection as their English cousins were speaking a not so different language to their own.

The Scandinavian settlement in England was conclusive and shaped the history as well as the language in a surpassing and lasting way.

Alfred the Great fought the first victory over Danish troops in 878 (Battle of Eddington) and thus forced the surrenders by treaty to convert to Christianity and to withdraw to an area East of a border stretching roughly from London to Chester. Later this territory was named Danelag (Danelaw) as the legal foundation differed in this area.

Under the reign of King Alfred, OE was promoted as standard language in view of an upcoming national identity. Even the King himself made a couple of translations from Latin masterpieces into OE (Alfred was the only lay person known to have written).

At the beginning of the 10th century however, the Kings of Wessex started regaining all Danish territories and in 973 King Edgar was solemnly crowned in Bath as King of all England. His reign was regarded as a golden age and he supported many cultural and monastic improvements.

During the supremacy of the Wessex' Kings many alliances to the continent were established through marriage. England now had become an equal partner at an international scale.

But starting in 980, new Scandinavian raids harassed England. In 1013 King Ethelred was forced to flee to Normandy, the Queen's homeland and the throne of England passed to Danish Kings with Cnut being the most prominent. For the next coming 30 years England was part of an Anglo-Danish kingdom, which eventually expanded to Norway and to southern parts of today's Sweden. Again Scandinavian immigrants, mostly members of the wealthy society, settled down in England.

The impact of Scandinavian settlement had profound consequences on the English language development.

Resulting from the destruction of the church's infrastructure (6 out of 16 dioceses were disrupted) Latin lost its primary status as standard language and was almost replaced by the West-Saxon dialect. This was the variety of the political dominant region and of the area with the most important monasteries at the 10th and 11th c.).

At the vernacular level the Old English dialects were complemented by the immigrant's Old Norse vernacular. As both populations mixed over generations, we are supposed to postulate an adstratum contact situation (the mutual influence of two equally dominant languages on each other). Scholars even think about bilingualism or creolisation, but unfortunately we don't have any written records out of these areas!

OE and Old Norse are both member of the Gmc. language branch. But Old Norse being a NGmc. language and OE part of the WGmc. sub tree, we are supposed to find the differing sound shifts inside of Scandinavian loanwords. Indeed, all rules mentioned in Lecture 2, that are specific to the WGmc. group are still visible in ModE. and offer some hints on detecting the loanwords.

Besides, meaning is another clue for identifying Scandinavian loanwords.

Related to the fact that OE shifted to standard language, the corpus of vernacular poetry that came down to us bears an overwhelming size (30'000 verse) compared to the vernacular poetry in other languages at the same time (Old High German has a few hundred verse of poetry).

The figure above shows, that most manuscript has survived from the end of the OE period. Those late texts present a great variety of literary genres:

• heroic epic (Beowulf)
• visionary poetry (Dream of the Rood)
• elegiac poetry (Wife's Lament)
• gnomic poetry (Maxims)
• fictional prose (Apollonius of Tyre)
  
  and much more...

It should be kept in mind, that, apart from King Alfred's translations, all OE literary texts were produced in a monastic environment and were primarily addressed to a cleric audience!

Even today's perception of Old English literature is important. JRR Tolkien, professor of Anglo-Saxon in Oxford, e.g. fits the Rohan culture described in Lord of the Rings with many Anglo-Saxon elements. The personal names of its people are mainly OE derivations.

In 2000, the Beowulf translation by Seamus Heaney made it into the bestseller lists!