Did the Vikings ever use Latin as a primary language?

by polaroidswinger
Steelcan909

No.

But I suppose you'll want more than that.

At the height of the "Viking Age", Latin literary was restricted to the upper echelons of Christian society, namely the Clergy and Nobility, and even in those cases it was not universal. King Alfred for example laments the state of Latin (and English) teaching in his day.

The Vikings had no reason to learn Latin at this point, and believe me, no one is going to learn Latin without a damn good reason to do so. They did not have extensive connections with the Latin west, they did not have Christianity (yet), and they had little use for the written word in general until the conversion period started. Latin literary at the time was just not relevant to what the Norsemen were doing.

After the conversion period started Latin quickly took its place as a prestige language as it was in other parts of Europe. It was the language of the Church and of legal matters (though in England this was a little less cut and dry). This stayed true in Scandinavia as well. Supposedly, King Olaf of Norway had to import bishops from Normandy to help in his conversion efforts, and they would have brought Latin literacy.

So as in the rest of the Latin West, Latin took to the Church and the Law quickly, but it was never widespread as a spoken language at this time.