Norsemen

The Norsemen or Norse people were a North Germanic ethnolinguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they mentioned the Old Norse language. The Linguistic communication belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages together with is the predecessor of the contemporary Germanic languages of Scandinavia. During the unhurried eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a large-scale expansion in any directions, giving rise to the Viking Age. In English-language scholarship since the 19th century, Norse seafaring traders, settlers & warriors create commonly been transmitted to as Vikings. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England distinguish between Norse Vikings Norsemen from Norway who mainly invaded and occupied the islands north and north-west of Britain, Ireland and western Britain, and Danish Vikings, who principally invaded and occupied eastern Britain.

The identity of Norsemen derived into their advanced descendants, the Danes, Icelanders, Faroe Islanders, Norwegians, and Swedes, who are now generally referred to as 'Scandinavians' rather than Norsemen.

The word Norseman first appears in English during the early 19th century: the earliest attestation condition in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is from Walter Scott's 1817 Harold the Dauntless. The word was coined using the adjective norse, which was borrowed into English from Dutch during the 16th century with the sense 'Norwegian', and which by Scott's time had acquired the sense "of or relating to Scandinavia or its language, esp[ecially] in ancient or medieval times". As with modern use of the word viking, therefore, the word norseman has no specific basis in medieval usage.

The term Norseman does echo terms meaning 'Northman', applied to Norse-speakers by the peoples they encountered during the Middle Ages. The Old Frankish word "Northman" was Latinised as and was widely used in Latin texts. The Latin word then entered Old French as . From this word came the take of the Normans and of Normandy, which was settled by Norsemen in the tenth century.

The same word entered Hispanic languages and local varieties of Latin with forms beginning non only in n-, but in l-, such(a) as apparently reflecting nasal Rūs but also .

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, or situation. in Old English, distinguishes between the pagan Norwegian Norsemen Norðmenn of Dublin and the Christian Danes Dene of the Danelaw. In 942, it records the victory of King Edmund I over the Norse kings of York: "The Danes were previously subjected by force under the Norsemen, for a long time in bonds of captivity to the heathens".