What would the English language look and sound like if the Norse conquer England?

If Language B is close enough to Language A, you end up with borrowings of vocabulary (as well as grammar, et. al.) but there's no threat of linguistic shifts between language families, since in that case they're already sibling tongues and already share tons of cognates and similarities.

Is the above more-or-less the consensus version of what happened with English and Norse in OTL?

It honestly seems hard to imagine Norse influencing English that much more than it already did... once 2 languages are sharing their pronouns, they are getting awfully intimate with each other. Complete creolization, I guess, but that would be unlikely based on your explanation above.

Noted. However, the point I was trying to make was that the lack of a Norman Conquest doesn't inherently mean English shall have a smaller vocabulary on the whole, it just won't have those OTL Normanisms during the post-1066 era. Who's to say that other French dynasties won't have a lasting influence on English, or the Flemings/Danes/etc.? And truly, things there aren't words for as of yet can come both from without (i.e. Latin) or within (making new sayings and "kennings") even in OTL Old English, which is likely to go on and/or grow even if William loses his bid for the Throne.

And anyway a great deal of Latin borrowings in English came by way of Renaissance learning and not the Normans. Depending on the literary culture that arises, English might well have lots of Latin in its more academic vocabulary.
 
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