Could the first Vikings to land in the British Isles understand the speech of the Anglo Saxons they raided?

by Jackissocool

In the early Viking era of the British Isles, around 800, the Vikings were speaking Old Norse, while Old English was the dominant tongue among the people of southern Britain. These languages shared a common ancestor perhaps 500 years previous, but the Saxons on the mainland (before migration) were immediate neighbors of Proto-Norse speakers in Denmark, and the languages continued to influence each other until migration to Britain.

Given this very close relationship, were the Vikings able to speak with those they raided and eventually conquered? If there wasn't immediate intelligibility, am I right to assume that for one group to learn the other's language would've been very easy?

y_sengaku

This is actually a bit debated issue among the researchers (and there maybe some difference in the tone of the historiography between the historical linguists and historians/ philologists now.

To give some examples, please compare the diverse answers in Did the Vikings that raided and invaded England during the 8th to 10th centuries know that they shared kinship with the Anglo-Saxons? And could they understand each other's Germanic language? and mine in In the TV show Vikings. It is shown that the norse and saxons in england could not understand each other. Given how close the languages are how much mutabilty was there?.

The problems are mainly twofold:

  • While we have some amounts of the sources on the beginning of the 10th century onward, there was not so good account on the mutual intelligibility between the Norse people and the English in the 8th century as asked in OP.
  • The premise of 'the very close relationship' between these two languages, that is to say, the mass immigration of the people those who spoke proto-Norse from Jutland Peninsula to the southern part of the British Isles, has now been questioned especially by historians (Check the answers by /u/BRIStoneman and /u/Platypuskeeper in the first thread above).
yummytummyyes

The closest modern language to old English is Frisian, and some people say that old Frisian was a Viking language but im not sure. Yes, it is easy to learn a Germanic language, if you already speak a Germanic language (dutch and german for example). But not all languages are created equally so the easiness of learning the other language varies.