This paper addresses several words and ethnonyms that are used in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and its medieval Latin translations to denote the notion of 'the Danes, Vikings'. These names do not stay stable overtime but are first construed in tribal or geographical terms ('the Danes' or 'the Northmen') and later in ideological ones ('the heathens'). The paper thus analyzes when the change to a different name occurs and how it can be accounted for by the changes in historical circumstances and in attitudes/stances of the chroniclers. Although the Anglo-Latin chronicles are either overt translations or compilations of the earlier Old English sources, in their choice of the names for the Vikings their authors seem not to be influenced by the source texts alone but also by the political situation they are living in. The data for the paper is derived from a corpus study of about a dozen Old English (manuscripts A and F) and Anglo-Latin (Asser, John of Worcester, Symeon of Durham, Henry of Huntingdon) chronicles ranging from the ninth to the twelfth century. From these, samples of equal length (c. 12,000 words) are selected, and the annals for the same years are analyzed in each of the chronicles. These are then examined through the lense of the communities-of-practice framework (Wenger 1998), which demonstrates continuities and well as discontinuities of lexical practices between the Old and Middle English periods.
Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.