If I had my college years to do over again, which I'm too old to consider at almost 47 now, then I probably would do history. It's my avocation rather than my vocation.

The Saxons aren't Vikings, no. They're closely related; but they are different branches of an early Germanic people who probably settled in Jutland, and the littoral areas of southern Scandinavia and the southern Baltic. These are the proto-Germanic tribes. From there they spread north into the rest of Scandinavia, and south, southeast and southwest into greater Europe. By the time of the Roman Republic, they'd even spread far southeast along the Danube to Scythia, Dacia and Pannonia, as the Gothi and east into what is now Poland as the Vandals; both of whom would later wreak so much havoc on Rome. But at the time, there were also the Frisii and Batavi in the Lowlands, the Suoines (Swedes) and Geatas in Scandinavia, the Chatti in what is now the Rhineland, the Markomanni and Gepids and Lugii south and east of what is now Austria, and the parent tribes of the later Saxons and Angles and Jutes - the Danes, Cimbri, Ambrones (who were possibly a mix of Celtic and Germanic), Teutoni, Langobardi, Semnones and Hermunduri, all spread out in what is now Jutland and northern Germany. All of these tribes spoke related languages, which over time drifted apart, some more than others. Some were absorbed into larger tribes, like the Geatas into the Swedes or the Cimbri into the Danes. Some had more contact with Celtic speakers than others, which had a lot to do with language drift.

By the time of the Viking invasions, however, their languages and cultures were very much separate. Just as the Celtic languages diverged into what are called the p-Celtic and q-Celtic. There are still some similarities; but by then Saxon was much more closely related to the southern Germanic dialects. At the time, it might have been possible for an Anglo-Saxon speaker in England to just barely understand an Old Norse speaker from southern Jutland, due to similarities. However, an Old Norse speaker from what is now Norway would not have been as easily understood; because the language drift was already that large after just 3-4 centuries.

As for -sen versus -son, they are almost the same thing. Modern Norse is not the same as Old Norse. The patronymic ending of -sen is a more modern dialect change which originated with -son. The closest existing language to Old Norse is Icelandic. In Icelandic, you'll find the patronymic (or sometimes matronymic) of -son much more often than -sen; but both are used.

The Regia Anglorum society has a wonderful web site discussing the Anglo-Saxon and Viking remnants in English names and places - http://www.regia.org/languag.htm

/pedant mode off

Sorry about that. I got carried away.