According to the show saxons and vikings spoke the same language, didn't they? At least in Vikings this aspect is treated more realistically.
shareI can forgive that contrivance because I think the producers of the series made an honest effort at historical accuracy in many other respects.
Make it so.
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Eh, by that point Old Norse and Old English had departed enough that they wouldn't be intelligible to each other's speakers but they were still very similar languages. The idea that over the course of a couple of generations they were able to pick it up isn't insane. And the number of old Norse words in the English language suggests just that happened in reality. That the Danes settled down and picked up English but kept enough of their own language that natives started picking it up.
Like if someone from Portugal lived in Spain for thirty years they wouldn't have much difficulty picking up Spanish.
And when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes first came to England they did speak a language so similar to Old Norse that it was intelligible and there was a lot of trade and cross-culture before they became Christians. That's why Beowulf takes place in Denmark.
The one thing I can't beat... Competition.
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