Danelaw

The Danelaw is a term in English history. It denoted the area in which the laws of Denmark applied - that ruled by Danes and other Scandinavians in the Viking age. (At a certain stage of historiography - the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries - the habit was to spell it danelagh. This should be avoided, as an affectation; the Old English form was Dęna lagu 'Danes' law', and trhe current English 'danelaw', better written with the upper case 'D-', Danelaw, is now the established version.)

• The Danelaw has been variously defined, not least because boundaries shifted in an age of frequent warfare. It has been defined as being the territory north and east of Watling Street (London to Chester|); the land between the rivers Thames and Tees; "The Danelaw roughly comprised 15 shires: Leicester, York, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Essex, Cambridge, Suffolk, Norfolk, Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford, Hertford, Middlesex, and Buckingham" ([Wikipedia, 2021]).
• It may be best to think of it as comprising the four areas of Northumbria; the territory of the Five Boroughs (Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, and Stamford); East Anglia; and the south-eastern midlands ([[Hey 2003).

What may be the most relevant feature of the Viking control of half of England to AWE and its users is its effect on the English language. Old Norse , a North Germanic language was similar enough to the West Germanic Old English for mutual comprehension to be possible. The difference between their inflections and small words may have been a difficulty, one that led to the simplicity of the inflection systems of modern English. The difference in vocabulary and idiom is reflected in the current difference between northern and southern dialects of British English - see also AWE's page on Old Norse and its list of Some Viking words in English.