In fact I'd say England was special: why it should have been so remains shrouded in mystery, but that it could engorge Scandinavia with more money than raiders knew what to do with and then lured Norman rulers even at the expense of their powerful Continental duchy suggests there was something of note going on there.

This isn't to invoke any spurious English exceptionalism: any country's only as special as its resources and characteristics make it in the wider conditions of a particular time - but you can see even in this early formative period indications that there's a capacity that seems not to have gone unnoticed even among contemporaries.

Research in the past half-century on the origins of later British growth has tended to push the start back well beyond the onset of the classic period of industrial prosperity and imperial expansion: I think we can see the beginnings at a very early stage, even as the country struggled to keep up with the sophistication or military prowess of Continental neighbours.