Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 49, Vikings among the English and French.

In this episode, we're going to turn our attention back to the Vikings, specifically the Viking

region of Britain known as the Dane Law, and we'll also examine the creation of a separate

Viking kingdom in France, called Normandy.

As we look at these regions, we'll take our first detailed look at the Scandinavian influence

on English.

So once again, we'll be keeping an eye on all three pieces of our puzzle, the Old English

of Wessex, the Norse influence of the Dane Law, and the French influence of Normandy.

But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that the Bay of Wolf deconstructed audiobook

is now available on iTunes and Amazon.com, as well as through the website historyofenglishpodcast.com.

And I wanted to make a quick note about my discussion of the word good in the last episode.

I noted that the construction, good, better, best, was the result of a substitution which

occurred very early on, in which the original root word boat was replaced by the original

version of the modern word good.

And I stated that that substitution occurred during the Anglo-Saxon period.

But a couple of listeners noted that the same basic construction exists in most Germanic

languages.

And that widespread use confirms that the substitution actually occurred before the Anglo-Saxons

arrived in Britain, and it's therefore pre-old English.

So it's a very old construction older than English itself.

So with that note, let's turn to this episode.

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