I wrote:

>> English owes very little indeed to Nordic languages. English is in the
>> Germanic group of languages.

Zhen Lin commented:

> Well, I'm sure you'll be quite happy to go without your disks and skirts
>  and gifts and even the third person plural pronoun. Especially since
> you won't have to die.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old_Norse_origin

QED, I think; the list appears to be about as long as the list for words 
of Japanese origin, and I hope we are agreed that English owes very 
little indeed to Japanese!

That's a bit devious of me, perhaps, since many of the Japanese words 
aren't quite the household words that the Old Norse words are, and 
almost none have been assimilated to the degree that, say, "bungalow" 
and "jungle" and "shampoo" have (all from Hindi), but then no one would 
claim that English has much to do with Hindi, either!

> Admittedly, it's not quite the deluge from Old/Norman French and Latin,
> but the Vikings did bring some words with them.

They brought plenty of words, but - given the extent of their presence 
(the Danelaw, King Canute, etc.) - surprisingly few of them stuck! Of 
the ones listed on Wikipedia, some are hypothetical and others may have 
found their way into English via other routes.


John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com