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Apparently there was very little difference. They shared a common language and pre-Christian religious beliefs.
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I cannot stress strongly enough that this is not the case. Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse are members of the same group of languages; they have the same roots, but they are not the same language; and to what extent the speakers of the Norse dialects and the Anglo-Saxons could understand one another is still a matter of debate in historical circles.
As for beliefs, the early Anglo-Saxons do bear more than a passing resemblance to the Vikings, but our records of their beliefs are incomplete, and the Anglo-Saxon English who first encountered the Vikings, and those living around the time that
Beowulf was written were not these early piratical pagans, but Christians with, by the standards of the time, a sophisticated and literate society. To these people, the Vikings were completely alien: a rapacious, merciless and godless scourge that could only have been a punishment from God. Incidentally I'd be curious to see the source for that Anglo-Saxon complaint about washing. Most amusing and no doubt originating from around the time of Athelstan's reconquest of the Danelaw.
On the subject of Ibn Fadlan's references, we can tell that this man was not talking about Anglo-Saxons simply because they were not the great traders and explorers that the Vikings became. The Vikings were the European seafarers
par excellence, raiding, exploring and trading farther afield than any of their neighbours. This is also probably where this economy with water evolved: there may be a lot of it in Denmark, but there certainly isn't on board ship (washing in sea water makes for such discomfort that only a society as obsessive about cleanliness as our own would consider it).
As for the dissimilarity with Tolkien's Anglians, the Rohirrim, it's not a common feature of the epic that it should dwell on such mundanities as the personal hygiene of its protagonists.
Beowulf, for example, makes no mention of its hero's bathing habits;
The Nibelungenlied glosses over such matters as though they were of little or no importance; and so too does
The Lord of the Rings, although I can't see much of an opportunity for a quick bath amongst the arguably weightier matters to which characters in epics must invariably attend. Cleanliness, it would appear, is not so closely linked to nobility of spirit as some people would have us believe.
[Edit: ps I loved
The 13th Warrior. You can't help but admire those Norsemen.][ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: Squatter of Amon Rudh ]