Music

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

This is Episode 52, Bloody Axis and a Battle Royal.

In this episode, we're going to continue our look at the Norse influence on English.

This time, we explored how sound changes reveal many of the Viking words in modern English.

This time, we'll continue to look at the North-South divide in 10th century England.

We'll look at the final years of King Atholstand's rule, and we'll explore how a great alliance of northern kingdoms culminated in one of the greatest battles of the entire Anglo-Saxon period.

A battle commemorated in a well-known Old English poem, The Battle of Brunenburg.

We'll also continue to explore the large number of Viking words which entered English.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com

and my email is kevinathistoryofenglishpodcast.com and you can follow me on Twitter at EnglishHistPod.

In this episode, I'm going to explore the Old English poem, The Battle of Brunenburg, and I'm going to be reading some of that poem in its original Old English.

But if you want to listen to even more Old English, let me recommend the Bay of Wolf deconstructed audiobook, which is available at the website iTunes and Amazon.com.

One more quick note before we begin. In the last episode, I included a clip from the story of English documentary which PBS did back in the 1980s, and which is available on YouTube.

And I stated that Jim Lear was the host of that series. And as soon as I posted that episode, I realized that I misspoke.

It was actually Robert McNeil. And I guess all of those years of watching the McNeil layer news hour got me confused.

But several of you contacted me to note the corrections, so I thought I would mention it here.

That particular series is actually quite good, and it's worth the time if you want a good overview of the history of English.

I also noticed that Melvin Bragg series, The Adventure of English, is also available on YouTube. And it's actually titled The History of the English Language when I looked at YouTube a few days ago.

So you might want to check that out as well. Of course, if you don't want any spoilers, just check out the early episodes and wait for the podcast to catch up, which may take another year or two, but we'll get there eventually.

So let's turn to this episode.

At our point in the overall history of English, we're focusing on the early Norse influences on the language in the 10th century.

...