Scandinavian conquest.

8th c. raiders from Scand. " Danes". made first attacks on England. Struggle-300 years. The Scandinavians subdued Northumbria and East Anglia, ravaged the eastern part of Mercia and advanced on Wessex. Like Germans, founded many towns and villages in northern England: in many regions there sprang up a mixed population made up of the English and the Danes. Linguistic amalgamation was easy since their tongues belonged to the same linguistic group. In the 12th-l3th cc. the Scandinavian element was incorporated in the central English dialects. Wessex-head of resistance. Under Alfred, it was one of the greatest figures in English history; by the peace treaty of 878 England was divided into 2 halves: the n-eastern under Danish control- Danelaw, and the south-western-under the leadership of Wessex. In the late 10th the Danish raids were renewed again; headed by Sweyn and Canute. Attacks were followed by demands for regular payments of large sums of money (called Danegeld " Danish money"). In 1017 Canute was acknowledged as king and England became part of a great northern empire comprising Denmark and Norway. On Canute's death (1035) his kingdom broke up and England regained political independence; by that time it was a single state divided into 6 earldoms. Most important role in the history of the English language was played by the introduction of Christianity. In 597 a group of missioanaries from Rome landed on the shore of Kent, East Anglia- Essex, and other places: movement was supported from the North; missionaries from Ireland brought the Celtic variety of Christianity to Northumbria. In less than a cent. -all England was Christianised.=major factor in the centralization; growth of culture and learning; monasteries and monastic schools; high standard of learning was reached in the best 9th c. During the Scand. Invasion, the Northumbrian culture was largely wiped out. English culture shifted to the southern kingdoms, most of all to Wessex, where a cultural efflorescence began during the reign of Alfred (871-901) from that time till the end of the OE period of Wessex, with its capital at Winchester, remained the cultural centre of England. The phonetic and grammatical structure of these two languages was the similar. They had the same morphological categories, strong and weak declination of substantives falling into several types, according to the stem vowel; strong and weak declination of the adjectives; seven classes of strong and three classes of weak verbs. A considerable part of vocabulary in OE and Scandinavian was similar. In many words the root was the same, while the endings were different (fisc-fiscr-fish) Another part of Scandinavian voc-ry did not correspond to English, for example in sphere of politic and economic. Even the 3rd person singular personal pronoun was taken from Scandinavian. Among Scandinavian loan words there were some military terms, but later they were superseded by French words. Scandinavian elements became part of many geographical names (village in Kirkby, hill in Langtoft)