it must be acknowledged that while norse influence was everywhere in dark ages europe, it isn't now and nationalities have since become rather defined and separate from each other. the only crossovers still remaining, and these are rare, are some linguistic connections between scandanavia and place and proper names in england, local dialects in holland, and a little place in france called normandy. oh, and a couple of holiday traditions, like christmas trees and yule logs. but who really goes out and drags in a giant yule log these days, eh? point being, anyone not of direct, modern (18th century-present) scandanavian descent (meaning norway, sweden or denmark to make it clear) are probably not going to find sven svensson in their ancestral closet, not without some unbelievable documentation that has survived the ages.
but, as i alluded to above, the one norse connection we can all claim, however, is that of language. ok, swedish doesn't sound a whole lot english, but at the time the vikings were doing their raiding/colonizing thing, english didn't sound a whole lot like english either (nor did it until shortly before chaucer came round). and while magnus was making friendly with the anglo-saxons' daughters, he was also dropping in a few new words (they had to communicate if they were to live together, so it paid to learn a word or two), though most of his influence came in the form of suffixes and grammar changes. and, no, don't ask me for specifics, cuz i can't remember; i have an english degree and that settles it.
