Perhapts I ought to have been a little more specific. I meant to say
literary transmission (of what we have today) of Old Norse begins by
the time English is dated to be Middle rather than Old English. This
would be Old Norse from 1150 until about 1400 (or even later as you
suggested). Whereas Old English literary transmission sets in from
the 8th century onwards and is dated to end after the Battle of
Hastings, thus ca. 1100. Of course the problem with these datings is
that transitional periods can always be assigned to either period -
thus you can make Old English and Old Norse "academically" overlap.
My point was though, that these ancient language we learn today are
from different centuries. We learn the Old English of the 9th, 10th
and 11th centuries, and Old Norse from 12th, 13th and 14th century -
that 500 years in the extremes!!!

I tend to call runic Old Norse either Runic Old Norse or Primitive
Old Norse. This is the language before chistianisation and before
the transmission of literature. Seen thus there is an early period
(200-550) with inscriptions in the older Futhark, and a later period
which also encompasses the transitional phase to Old Norse (500-
900). The same terminology applies to Runic Old English and
Primitive Old English in a similar definition.

When Old English was in its heyday and the Vikings raded and
invaded, the two languages came into contact after subsequent
settlement of Scandinavians from various areas of Scandinavia. Loan
words from Norse into English suggest that certain phonological
developments which are usually called "typical" of Old Norse were
not yet part of the language by that time (u-umlaut,
syncope/apocope). So this Norse has a more "primitive" edge to it
compared with the language we learn.

<Are you sure about this; that they were of a different period in
time? Old
<English was around from the 400/500's till 1100/1200's, and norse
from the
<700's till 1300/1400's (and even longer some might say :) ). Old
English <was recorded from the 600's until the Normans made French
and Latin the <official languages in the 1100's. I'm not sure when
Old Norse was first <recorded, but if you count the runes (which the
Anglo-Saxons also used) the <two languages don't seems to be that
far apart in time.

I would even go so far as to say that the further development of
English was strongly influenced by a kind of a hypothetical trade
pidgin used between English and Norse. English shows some typical
features of creolisation and some philologists have suggested that
English is a Norse/English creole. I do not believe this though. But
the idea of a trade pridgin seems very likely to me. Regularise the
syntax, chop off the useless endings and use words from either
language indiscriminately. For me this is the only explanation how
something as deeply rooted in a language as the system of pronouns
can be disrupted by outside influence (<they, their> are Norse, not
English). The desire was to make this trade pidgin clear and easily
comprehesible and the English pronouns were somewhat ambivalent
<he> "he", <heo> "she", <hie> "they".

What you syntactically describe is something you will find in all
Germanic languages. This is no proof of Norse syntactical influence.
The use of post positioned compound adverbials (<stand up>, <go
forth>, <sit in>) however are. Otherwise English hast lost features
typical to all Germanic languages, including Norse, like the verb
second position in the sentence (though it is maintained in many
cases by use of an auxiliary).

By the way Old English word order can be just as free as the Old
Norse in poetry. If you look into "Beowulf" for example, you will
find a common Germanic literary tradition that makes use of
aliteration and free word order.

<Old Norse had an impact on Old English due to the vikings, this can
be <found in vocabulary and the manner of making sentences. Old
Norse is <usually freer than Old English in its word order, but when
norsemen and <Anglo-Saxons spoke together, word order was often
fixed, to make sure they <understood one another. This is visible in
modern English; Subject - Verb -
<Object/Nominative - Verb - Accusative.
<Terje