HOTEL Lecture 3.2 — The Germanic and Scandinavian Invasions

This is where English arrives. The second part of Lecture 3 follows the Angles, Saxons and Jutes across the Channel about the middle of the fifth century, asks how much weight the traditional date of 449 will actually bear, and traces the seven kingdoms that grew out of the settlement. It then follows the Scandinavians from the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 to the Danish kings of 1016–1042, and asks why a contact of only a few generations left English with several hundred of its commonest words — and three of its pronouns.