II.—Late Saxon, Viking, and Early Medieval Finds from York

Abstract

The study of the Viking Age in this country has in the past remained largely the province of the historian, using the material afforded by the written sources and by the scientific investigation of place-names, and what systematic work has been done on the antiquities of the period, outside the fields of architecture and sculpture, illumination, and fine metalwork, is in considerable measure due to the labours of Scandinavian scholars. The contribution of archaeology to the problems of the period has until recently been quite inadequate and this state of affairs is all the more surprising in view of the important and controversial question of the origin of the English towns, the historical evidence for which, being both sketchy and ambiguous, has now been argued almost to the point of exhaustion. The publication in 1927 of the material remains of the Viking period from London in a manner appreciative of their equal value with the documentary and place-name evidence for the history of the site was exceptional, and in recent years the investigation by deliberate excavation of towns and settlement sites of the Viking Age, at Norwich, Oxford, Southampton, and Thetford, and far away in Shetland at Jarlshof, has gone some way towards compensating for earlier neglect. The systematic investigation of such sites, however, is only now beginning and so far no comparable work has been undertaken in the lands north of Humber, where from the time of Halfdan's settlement in 876 a thriving Viking province maintained with varying fortune its individuality until the Conquest and beyond. At York, the political centre of the Danelaw, the historical and place-name evidence indicates a thoroughly Scandinavian occupation, but the abundant archaeological material of the period, considering the importance of the site, has never received the attention in detail that it deserves. This material constitutes one of the largest groups of town finds of the Viking Age in the country and although for the most part recovered by chance in modern building operations and ill recorded in consequence has far too long been ignored.