The latter part of the 11th century was a period of transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English.
The influence of Old Norse certainly helped move English from a synthetic language towards a more analytic or isolating word order, a deep change at the grammatical level.[2][6] The eagerness of Vikings in the Danelaw to communicate with their southern Anglo-Saxon neighbors produced a friction that led to the erosion of the complicated inflectional word-endings;[6][7] Old Norse likely had a greater impact on this deep change to Middle and Modern English than any other language.[8][9][10] Simeon Potter notes: "No less far-reaching was the influence of Scandinavian upon the inflexional endings of English in hastening that wearing away and leveling of grammatical forms which gradually spread from north to south. It was, after all, a salutary influence. The gain was greater than the loss. There was a gain in directness, in clarity, and in strength".[11]