The Anglo-Saxons lived in England before the Vikings arrived. So no, they are two distinct languages. The Angles and the Saxons came from Northern Germany, long before the Vikings decided to invade. The Viking invasion was significant, heavily influencing English society and language. Many old towns in England still have the old Norse town ending -by.
Effectively, there are three main sources for English:
* The Anglo-Saxons, arriving around the time where the Romans left.
* The Vikings, arriving around 800-1000.
* The Normans, arriving around 1066.
Not that English haven't changed significantly since then, but these three periods represent the largest number of words increases. The other changes have primarily been spelling.
Also remember the Normands spoke not only French but some kind of Norse. Still in Normandy there are Norse/Scandinavian names for places. Besides, Saxon and Norse languages must've been pretty mutually intelligible, even today German and Swedish is pretty similar even with a millennium or two apart.
There were a lot of cognate words and similar grammar, but genders and inflectional endings didn't match well at all. That drove the dramatic simplification of English grammar, for the most part. As for the Norman influence, it was mostly vocabulary... but changing the languages of documentation to Latin (mostly) and French (in law, for the most part) left English a lot of room to progress away from the Old English that was, by that time, already playing the same sort of role that Latin did in the Early Romance period - it no longer reflected the language that people lived in.
> There were a lot of cognate words and similar grammar, but genders and inflectional endings didn't match well at all. That drove the dramatic simplification of English grammar, for the most part.
It's why English nouns lost their masculine and feminine grammatical gender. The people who used both languages had more important things to worry about.
English doesn't quite meet the criteria of being a creole, though.
Superstratum/substratum theory applies here. English has an Ingvaeonic superstratum and multiple substrata, from Old Norse and Norman French at least, if not more.
I had always chalked up the Viking invasions to "more of the same" after the Anglo-Saxons had settled, but you're of course right that the two (well, three, I guess) groups came from different geographical areas and the Vikings would of course have spoken a distinctly different language.
I guess I conflated the common view that English is originally a Germanic language with French influences with "English is Anglo-Saxon plus French over time".
I vaguely recall hearing something about Aelfric's "neorxnawang" (Paradise) being a derivation from Old Norse "norn," though IIRC Grimm said this wasn't possible.
Effectively, there are three main sources for English:
* The Anglo-Saxons, arriving around the time where the Romans left.
* The Vikings, arriving around 800-1000.
* The Normans, arriving around 1066.
Not that English haven't changed significantly since then, but these three periods represent the largest number of words increases. The other changes have primarily been spelling.