Verbs: bait, bask, batten, call, cast, dawn, droop, drown, gain, gabble, ransack, scare, scour, scrape, skim, skip, squeal, stint, take,
Nouns: anger, billow, boon, dusk, fellow, gait, grime, haven, husband, husk, husting, scull, scurf, skill, skin, skirt, sky, window,
Adjectives: awkward, ill, odd, rotten, scant, sly, ugly, weak, and a good many words in which Scandinavian forms have replaced the cognate English ones, e.g. aloft, athwart, awe, birth, egg, get, gift, give, guest, raid, sister, swain, Thursday.
These words are for the most part of the very stuff and substance of our language, giving vivid expression to clear-cut ideas, and though numerically they are outnumbered by the loan-words from French, they are in themselves more essential to our speech than the rich vocabulary derived from that language.
For the extent and character of the Viking settlements in England we have however a far more delicate and accurate index than that to be found in the evidence of place-names and dialects. When we study the pages of Domesday, the great record of English social organisation in the 11th century, we find that in the counties which came under Viking influence there are many details of land-division, tenure, assessment and social organisation generally wherein those counties differ from the rest of England, and some of these differences can still be traced.
The 'ridings' of Yorkshire and the Lindsey division of Lincolnshire were originally 'thrithings' (O.N. þriþjungr, a third part), the initial th being later absorbed by the final consonant of the preceding 'East,' 'West,' 'North' and 'South' (in Lincs.).
The chief tests of Scandinavian influence, drawn from Domesday and allied sources, are however as follows:
(1) The use of the Danish 'wapentake' as the chief division of the county in contrast to the English 'hundred.' This is found in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire (with one exception on its southern border), Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, and one district of Northamptonshire, now included in Rutland. We have wapentakes in Yorkshire, except in certain districts along the sea-coast, while in Lancashire the term was applied to the court of the hundred or shire long after the Conquest. There is some evidence also for the belief that the use of the hundred (or wapentake) as an administrative unit is in itself due to Scandinavian influence. The proportion of names of hundreds (or wapentakes) which are definitely of Danish origin is very high and, unless we assume wholesale renaming, this points to their having been first named at a period subsequent to the Danish conquest.
(2) The assessment by carucates in multiples and submultiples of 12 is characteristic of the Danelagh, as opposed to that by hides, arranged on a decimal system in the strictly English districts. This is found in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Rutland, with the exception of the above mentioned district. There are traces of a duodecimal assessment in the two N.E. hundreds of Northamptonshire, while in Lancashire a hidal assessment has been superimposed upon an original carucal one. Carucal assessment is found also in Yorkshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
(3) In Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire we have traces of the use of the Danish 'long' hundred (= 120), e.g. the fine for breaking the king's peace is £8, i.e. 120 ores[16] of 16 pence.