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- missionaries brought the roman alphabet and Christianity between the 5th and 7th century. -They spoke Latin therefore the people who ran the churches also spoke Latin.
- it soon became compulsory for people to attend church
- all the churches were Catholic/papal and were led by Rome
- the first people who began to translate the Bible to English were killed and burnt for heresy. this is because the church would lose its power over dominating society through religion.
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Lakenheath, Suffolk
The Undley Bracteate medallion, found at Lakenheath, has been dated to 475 and provides the first evidence of written English -
old English lies roughly between 500AD - 1150AD and came from Germanic invaders
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In Roman Britain, Latin was used by the upper echelons of society. Conversion of Anglo-Saxon's to Christianity began in the late 6th century and early 7th century which brought about the introduction of writing in the Roman alphabet.
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Winchester, Hampshire
Translations from Latin into the West Saxon dialect of Old English were commissioned by King Alfred of Wessex between 871 and 899. He is the first person known to have called the language "English". -
- King Alfred of Wessex defeats Guthrum leader of the invading Norse Army.
- Results in the setting up of the Dane Law
- Dane Law becomes a Norse Kingdom e.g Slaitwaith
- both sides of the kingdom would mix for trade and even intermarriage - language starts to mix.
- comprised of 14 shires e.g York, Derby, Norfolk etc -
Wessex is overrun by Vikings and King Alfred goes into hiding
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Norwegin words start coming in to the Engish language
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- Cnut the Great ruled over a unified English Kingdom which empired Denmark and parts of Sweden.
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- The last Anglo-Saxon king Harold was defeated by the Norman king William The Conqueror.
- All Anglo-Saxon lords and landowners were driven north into Scotland.
- They were replaced by Norman nobles who spoke old French hence Old English went 'underground'.
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- Reflects (roughly) the period when these changes in grammar and vocabulary started to become noticeable in texts.
- 'transitional English': the number of distinct inflections becomes fewer and word order takes on an increasing functional load.
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- Feudalism was a combination of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
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- 40%-60% of the population died who lived in close quarters to one another, workers and clergy men, meaning there were less labourers so feudalism didn't work as well.
- Peasants = "selfs" in the feudalism system
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Westminster, London
On October 13 the Chancellor of England opened Parliament with a speech in English rather than French for the first time. -
-John Wycliffe produced the first translation of the Bible in 1384, however this is guesswork as no one bothered to put a date on anything then.
-As a result Wycliffe was executed for translation of the Bible
-it was created so that it would be more accessible to those who were literate and not have to rely on the church.
- Wycliffe's view on the Church was that it was lazy
-the Bible was translated literally; Latin syntax was used which did not make sense in English but people got used to it -
- Clement Paton was a Seif = he had land, borrowed money to educate his son John in law.
- The Paston Letters are an important historical document as they show how language has changed over 3 generations. we're able to analyse changes in society, politics, relationships and law through these letters
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Thorn, which was pronounced exactly like the "th" in its name, is actually still around today in Icelandic. We replaced it with “th” over time—thorn fell out of use because Gothic-style scripting made the letters y and thorn look practically identical. And, since French printing presses didn’t have thorn anyway, it just became common to replace it with a y. Hence naming things like, “Ye Olde Magazine of Interesting Facts”.
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Another holdover from the Futhark runic alphabet, wynn was adapted to the Latin alphabet because it didn’t have a letter that quite fit the “w” sound that was common in English. You could stick two u’s (technically v’s, since Latin didn’t have u either).
Over time, though, the idea of sticking two u’s together actually became quite popular, enough so that they literally became stuck together and became the letter W (which, you’ll notice, is actually two V’s). -
Yogh stood for a sort of throaty noise that was common in Middle English words that sounded like the "ch" in "Bach" or Scottish "loch." French scholars weren’t fans of our weird non-Latin letters and started replacing all instances of yogh with “gh” in their texts. When the throaty sound turned into "f" in Modern English, the "gh"s were left behind."
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It’s still used stylistically in words today, like æther and æon. What you may not know, however, is that at one time the ae grapheme was an honorary English letter back in the days of Old English. It still had the same pronunciation and everything, it was just considered to be part of the alphabet and called “æsc” or “ash” after the ash Futhark rune, for which it was used as a substitute when transcribing into Latin letters.
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Eth is kind of like the little brother to thorn. Originating from Irish, it was meant to represent a slightly different pronunciation of the “th” sound, more like that in “thought” or “thing” as opposed to the one found in “this” or “them.” (The first is the voiceless dental fricative, the second is the voiced dental fricative).
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Back in the old days, the difference was much more distinct. As such, you’d often see texts with both eth and thorn depending on the required pronunciation. Before too long, however, people just began using thorn for both (and later “th”) and so eth slowly became unnecessary.
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However, when teaching children the alphabet, the & was often placed at the end, after Z, and recited as “and per se and,” meaning “and in and of itself” or “and standing on its own.” So you’d have “w, x, y, z, and, per se, and.” Over time, the last bit morphed into “ampersand,” and it stuck even after we quit teaching it as part of the alphabet.
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This letter (referred to as “insular G” or “Irish G” because it didn’t have a fancy, official name) is sort of the grandfather of the Middle English version of yogh. Originally an Irish letter, it was used for the previously mentioned zhyah/jhah pronunciation that was later taken up by yogh, though for a time both were used.
It also stood alongside the modern G (or Carolingian G) for many centuries, as they represented separate sounds. -
The Carolingian G was used for hard G sounds, like growth or good, yogh was used for “ogh” sounds, like cough or tough, and insular g was used for words like measure or vision. As Old English transformed into Middle English, insular G was combined with yogh and, as mentioned earlier, was slowly replaced with the now-standard “gh” by scribes, at which point insular G/yogh were no longer needed and the Carolingian G stood alone (though the insular G is still used in modern Irish).
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Much like the way we have a symbol/letter for “and,” we also once had a similar situation with “that,” which was a letter thorn with a stroke at the top. It was originally just a shorthand, an amalgamation of thorn and T (so more like “tht”), but it eventually caught on and got somewhat popular in its own right (even outliving thorn itself), especially with religious institutions. There’s an excellent chance you can find this symbol somewhere around any given church to this day.
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Similar to Æ/ash/æsc above, the digraph for OE was once considered to be a letter as well, called ethel. It wasn’t named after someone’s dear, sweet grandmother, but the Furthark rune Odal, as œ was its equivalent in transcribing. It was traditionally used in Latin loan words with a long e sound, such as subpœna or fœtus. Even federal was once spelled with an ethel. (Fœderal.) These days, we’ve just replaced it with a simple e.
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For this particular letter, we can actually point to its exact origin. It was invented by a scribe named Alexander Gill the Elder in the year 1619 and meant to represent a velar nasal, which is found at the end of words like king, ring, thing, etc.
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When used by English scribes, it became known as “ond,”. If they wanted to say “bond,” they’d write a B and directly follow it with a Tironian ond. For a modern equivalent, it’d be like if you wanted to say your oatmeal didn’t have much flavor and you wrote that it was “bl&.”
The trend grew popular beyond scribes practicing shorthand and it became common to see it on official documents and signage, but since it realistically had a pretty limited usage and was confusing, it eventually faded away. -
Sometimes the letter s will be replaced by a character that looks a bit like an f. This is what’s known as a “long s,” which was an early form of a lowercase s.
And yet the modern lowercase s (then referred to as the “short s”) was still used according to a complicated set of rules (but most usually seen at the end of a word), which led to many words (especially plurals) using both. For example, ?uper?titous is how the word superstitious would have been printed. -
It was purely a stylistic lettering, and didn’t change the pronunciation at all. It was also kind of silly and weird, since no other letters behaved that way, so around the beginning of the 19th century, the practice was largely abandoned and the modern lowercase s became king.
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Long before there were stenographers, Roman Marcus Tullius Tiro (Cicero’s P.A.) invented a shorthand system called Tironian notes. It was a fairly simple system that was easily expanded, so it remained in use by scribes for centuries after Tiro’s death. One of the most useful symbols (and an ancestor to the ampersand) was the “et” symbol above—a simple way of tossing in an “and.” (And yes, it was sometimes drawn in a way that’s now a popular stylistic way of drawing the number 7.)
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Gill intended for the letter to take the place of ng entirely (thus bringing would become bri?i?), and while it did get used by some scribes and printers, it never really took off—the Carolingian G was pretty well-established at that time and the language was beginning to morph into Modern English, which streamlined the alphabet instead of adding more to it. Eng did manage live on in the International Phonetic Alphabet, however.
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Today we just use it for stylistic purposes (and when we’ve run out of space in a message), but the ampersand has had a long and storied history in English, and was actually frequently included as a 27th letter of the alphabet as recently as the 19th century.
It’s because of its placement in the alphabet that it gets its name. Originally, the character was simply called “and” or sometimes “et” (from the Latin word for and, which the ampersand is usually stylistically meant to resemble). -
• Caxton was the first English printer and a translator and importer of books into England. • Caxton affiliated himself with the household of Margaret, the duchess of Burgundy, sister of the English king Edward IV. She became one of his most important patrons and encouraged him with his translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' from French to English.
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- Caxton introduced a house standard for spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation and orthography.
- Printing was developed in the south which is why southern spelling is more frequently used
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- chancery standard contributed significantly to the development of a standard English.
- The Printing Press was responsible for carrying through the standardisation process.
- Books became cheaper so more people began to read and used a more standardised English.
- Caxton was inconsistent in his spelling; the workers involved in the production of the printing press would have been dutch as it was brought over from Europe; there will have been some Dutch spellings.
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Caxton was the first English printer and a translator and importer of books into England.Caxton was born in around 1422 in Kent. He went to London at the age of 16 to become an apprentice to a merchant, later moving to Bruges, the centre of the wool trade, where he became a successful and important member of the merchant community.
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In 1476 Caxton returned to London and established a press at Westminster, the first printing press in England. Amongst the books he printed were Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales', Gower's 'Confession Amantis' and Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur'. He printed more than 100 books in his lifetime, books which were known for their craftsmanship and careful editing. He was also the translator of many of the books he published, using his knowledge of French, Latin and Dutch. He died in 1492.
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From 1462 to 1470 he served as governor of the 'English Nation of Merchant Adventurers', which allowed him to represent his fellow merchants, as well as act as a diplomat for the king.
Caxton affiliated himself with the household of Margaret, the duchess of Burgundy, sister of the English king Edward IV. She became one of his most important patrons and encouraged him with his translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' from French to English. -
- King Richard III died and Henry Tudor won = start of the Tudor period.
- we were ruled by weak leaders before the Tudors.
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Lancashire vs Yorkshire
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-The Tudor period is between 1485 and 1603 in England and Wales and includes the Elizabethan period which ends with the completion of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1603. The Tudor period coincides with the rule of the Tudor dynasty in England whose first monarch was Henry VII (1457–1509).
-Agriculture was the main industry in England (farmers)
-average life expectancy was 38 years old because of the black plague.
-the role of the church pre-reformation was to bound communities together. -
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- The Renaissance came about because of a change in the way of thinking. In an effort to learn, people began to want to understand the world around them. This study of the world and how it works was the start of a new age of science. Science and art were very closely related during this time. Great artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, would study anatomy to better understand the body so they could create better paintings and sculptures
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- The English Reformation was a series of events in 16th century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
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Near the end of the Renaissance, the scientific revolution began. This was a time of great strides in science and mathematics. Scientists like Francis Bacon, Galileo, Rene Descartes, and Isaac Newton made discoveries that would change the world.
The most important invention of the Renaissance, and perhaps in the history of the world, was the printing press. It was invented by German Johannes Gutenberg around 1440. By 1500 there were printing presses throughout Europe. -
• Cheke – ‘English should not be polluted with other tongues’
• Thomas Wilson and John Cheke argued against using borrowings from other languages.
• The ‘controversy’ arose over the massive influx of new words pouring into English from foreign languages. -
The Scientific Method was further developed during the Renaissance. Galileo used controlled experiments and analyzed data to prove, or disprove, his theories. The process was later refined by scientists such as Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton.
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-Tyndale brought in lots of idioms in his translation, D.Crystal found over 200 (see reading book)
-Tyndale translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek, but there was no issue with Latin Syntax
-'every boy who driveth the plough' = everyone would be able to understand this.
-groups of people translated the Bible not just one person = new testament for everyone
-Tyndale went to jail for a year in 1335 and was found guilty of heresy and executed in 1536
-Lots of neologisms came from Tyndale's Bible -
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The church hated Tyndale so much that they dug his bones up and burnt them
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The Both the microscope and the telescope were invented during the Renaissance. This was due to improvements in making lenses. These improved lenses also helped with making eyeglasses, which would be needed with the invention of the printing press and more people reading.
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• He was an English diplomat, judge, and privy councillor in the government of Elizabeth I.
• He laid down rules that we should put the male form e.g. man and wife.
• Patriarchal society
• Placing men before women was the ‘natural order of things’ however phrases such as ladies and gentlemen defies this rule.
• This may been due to a feminist movement. -
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
William Shakespeare, regarded by many as the greatest writer in the English language, is born. -
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The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth-eighteenth centuries. The long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift had long-term implications for, among other things, orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English-language text written before or during the Shift.
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Definition: A view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than others.
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Hampton Court, Surrey
King James's Hampton Court Conference set a translation team working on what came to be known as the King James Bible, published in 1611 -
- 80% came from Tyndale's Bible meaning there was more Latin style creating a higher level of formality as well as being more old fashioned.
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- Historical (in the UK) a public institution in which the destitute of a parish received board and lodging in return for work.
- The provision of state-provided poor relief was crystallised in the 1601 Poor Relief Act, which gave parish officials legal ability to collect money from rate payers for the sick, elderly and infirm.
- Workhouses really became part of Britain's social landscape after 1723 - Sir Edmund Knatchbull's Workhouse Test Act won parliamentary approval.
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Oxford
The first newspaper in English was the London Gazette, first published in Oxford in 1665 as the Oxford Gazette. -
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Lichfield, Staffordshire
The birthplace of Samuel Johnson, creator of A Dictionary of the English Language. Published in 1755, it set new standards for the writing of English prose -
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- The Workhouse Test Act embodied the principle that the prospect of the workhouse should act as a deterrent and the relief should only be available to those desperate enough to need it.
- Honley had a new workhouse erected in 1763
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• He was an actor, lecturer and writer.
• Sheridan’s influence was through his lectures on elocution and ‘correct’ English, noticeably in Scotland.
• Sheridan criticised regional accents but also of the Scots and Irish. -
• The dictionary was published 1755
• It took him 7 years to complete it; he said he could do it in 3 he was unsatisfied with it and needed longer.
• 43,000 words
• It's not much use now because he left out proper nouns, law, and medicine and included archaic words.
• After finishing the dictionary Johnson said ‘trying to fix the language was like trying to lash the wind’.
• He though a word could only have 7 applications
• He didn’t feel as though he was fully praised for his accomplishment -
• He was a bishop of the Church of England, oxford professor of poetry and a grammarian.
• Lowth is remembered for his 1762 ‘A Short Introduction to English Grammar’ publication.
• His most famous contribution to the tentative suggestion that sentences ending with a preposition such as ‘what did you as for?’ are incorrect
• Lowth’s method included criticism of ‘false syntax’
• Preposition stranding -
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South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh
The birthplace of Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone in 1876, initiating a major stage in worldwide communication. -
• Mocked prescriptivism by writing in nonsense in Alice in Wonderland e.g Jabawocky
• Introduced new neologisms -
Poldhu, Cornwall
In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio transmission to St John's, Newfoundland. North American and British English began to converge again after 300 years of separation. -
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- Victorian socialism emerged in Britain along with other movements, such as new conservatism, new liberalism, new trade unionism, anarchism, social Darwinism, secularism, spiritualism and theosophy. It developed from diverse traditions, ideologies and backgrounds, but intense dislike of the social effects of the Industrial Revolution underlie the various strands of Victorian socialism, which was essentially a middle-class, home-made project with little foreign influence.
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Portland Place, London
The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) begins transmission, influencing dramatically the way English language is used and spoken. -
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• He wrote ‘politics and the English Language’ in 1946
• Any struggle against the abuse and impoverishment of English online (blogs and emails) becomes a ‘sentimental archaism’
• Language is a natural growth.
• Orwell lists six rules that ‘one can rely on when instinct fails.’ Orwell hoped it would be possible to halt the decline in the language which he saw as intimately connected with the ‘political chaos’ of the time. -
London
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, is born. English is the dominant language of the internet, and the net is a major factor in the globalisation of English. -
the first English speakers were the Anglo-Saxons. Before them most people spoke Celtic languages.
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- Kentish (South East)
- West Saxon (South West)
- Mercian + Northumbrian (Anglian)
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- Victorian socialism emerged in Britain along with other movements, such as new conservatism, new liberalism, new trade unionism, anarchism, social Darwinism, secularism, spiritualism and theosophy. It developed from diverse traditions, ideologies and backgrounds, but intense dislike of the social effects of the Industrial Revolution underlie the various strands of Victorian socialism, which was essentially a middle-class, home-made project with little foreign influence.
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In the early 1470s Caxton spent time in Cologne learning the art of printing. He returned to Bruges in 1472 where he and Colard Mansion, a Flemish calligrapher, set up a press. Caxton's own translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' was the first book printed in the English language.
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• Produced the first dictionary ‘tabel alphabeticall’ ‘list of hard words’
• Its purpose was ‘for the benefit and helpe of ladies, gentlewomen, or other unskilful persons’.
• The first edition listed 2543 head words. -
- A modern day prescriptivist who argues we must safe guard grammar and clarity.
- He called the misuse of an apostrophe 'vandalism'
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• He was a prescriptivist who proposed to establish an academy to rule on the correct forms of English.
• He was a satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric.
• The academy was to be based on that of the French academy which had been regulating France since 1634 -
• He made a point of shoeing that not ending words with a preposition didn’t make sense
• He showed this in his famous speech when he said ‘this is the sort of thing I will not put’ -
• He was a grammarian who published a prescriptive ‘English Grammar’ book.
• This book became the most popular and frequently reprinted grammar of English during the 19th century.
• In his prescriptivism Murray follows his predecessors Robert Lowth and Thomas Sheridan. -
• All long vowel sounds changed.
• Spelling standardised but pronunciation was still changing. -
Celts pushed in to Wales and Northern Scotland; Northern Germanic roots begin to appear which led to the creation of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
- Northumbria - Mercia - East Anglia - Wessex -
- Lindisfarne monastery is raided and destroyed meaning the loss of OE manuscripts
- Vikings started off by season raiding: by mid 9th century they began to stay.
- they began to seize land from the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants.
- Monks in each area wrote the Anglo-Saxon chronicles
- Vikings = Danes/Old Norse (ON)