What was the sociolinguistic situation in the North Atlantic in the Viking Age and its aftermath? In the near-total absence of reliable, contemporary historical sources, enquiry into language maintenance and shift in the Northern Isles, the Hebrides, and the Irish Sea basin is a fascinating, multidisciplinary enterprise, to which Arne Kruse has made very significant contributions. In this chapter, I consider how the Western Norse vernacular of the Scandinavian settlers in much of this region was ultimately replaced by the Gaelic languages. My perspective is grounded in historical sociolinguistics: I interrogate what interplay between the sociohistorical context and specific types of contact-induced change could be expected in this region in the medieval period, and try to match these predictions against what is known about Norse-Gaelic contact.

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