Scandinavian Settlement Research Articles

Lox(h)am revisited

Starting from the lost Lancashire place-name Lox(h)am < OE *Loxhūsum or Anglo-Scandinavian *Loxhúsum, a compound of a British river-name Lox and the dative plural of OE hūs, ON hús n. ‘house’ with the meaning ‘at the houses associated with a stream called Lox’, the present article goes on to discuss place-names in Lancashire containing the dative plural -um. Although such names can be formally Old English or Old Scandinavian, their currency in Lancashire must have been reinforced by Scandinavian usage. Lox(h)am was probably located in Penwortham parish in Leyland Hundred and further evidence for Scandinavian settlement in this region is provided by the presence of Scandinavian personal names, such as Gamall, Hrafnkell, Ormr, Steinólfr, Sveinn and Úlfkell, in medieval records, these names being examined in the concluding part of the article.

Pre-Romanesque Irish chapels in Scandinavian Scotland: international building typologies and the pagan gap

ABSTRACT This paper will reconsider the evidence relating to ecclesiastical buildings in Atlantic Scotland which have been ascribed to various early medieval constructional dates on the basis of Irish comparanda and historical accounts associated with Scandinavian settlement. Critical discussion will consider how archaeological, architectural, historical, and independent dating evidence have been used at different times to present consistent narratives for these buildings, and how recent investigations at Teampull Ronain (North Rona) and St Columba’s Shrine (Iona) might inform these international typologies.

Reconstructing early shieling landscapes & land-use in Cumbria during the Viking Age

ABSTRACT This paper presents a historical and cultural geographic approach to landscape development in Cumbria, through an examination of shieling names. A lack of contemporary written sources and few archaeological excavations leave place-names as an important source of evidence. This paper examines cultural practices associated with shielings to help explain how landscape was exploited and what this tells us about Scandinavian settlement in the Viking Age.

Food and Power in Early Medieval England: a Lack of (Isotopic) Enrichment

ABSTRACTThis work tackles long held assumptions in both archaeology and history surrounding elite diets in early medieval England i.e., that higher status individuals had a more meat-heavy diet and that this was especially true for males. We utilise the largest isotopic dataset on early medieval diets to date to show that not only were high protein diets extremely rare in England before Scandinavian settlement, but that dietary differences cannot be linked to gender or social status from the funerary record. Comparisons with the calculations made in our companion article and the bioarchaeological evidence demonstrate further that the lists of food demanded by eighth-century kings were not the basis for regular elite diet, and that these texts probably represent the supplies for infrequent feasts.

Degrees of Separation: Icelandic Perceptions of Other Scandinavian Settlements in the Faroes, Orkney, Ireland, and the Hebrides

Despite their shared ancestry with the Icelanders, it is evident that people of Scandinavian origin in other settlements are not depicted monolithically in the Icelandic sagas. This article examine...

Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c.950–c.1015, by Katherine Cross

This book sets out to ask how identities developed in tenth- and eleventh-century Normandy and Wessex in response to relations—real and imagined, present and past—with Scandinavia. Solid and well-researched, the book explores the impact of Scandinavian settlement on changing perceptions of identity and ethnicity by drawing on a wide range of evidence, including saints’ lives, genealogies, origin myths, annals, histories, coins and poetry. Katherine Cross breaks down the basic elements of ethnicity—ancestry, a clear idea of a shared origin, and a shared history—and examines how medieval commentators viewed the role of a viking past therein (Cross argues for the lower-case ‘v’). Consistent with recent scholarship on identity, which she considers in careful detail, Cross stresses dependence of identity on time, location and circumstance. Her conclusions show, unsurprisingly, that individuals’ sense of their own identity changes depending upon circumstances, and that their membership in a group also varies by situation. Cross goes beyond showing this dependent complexity of viking heritage, and endeavours to explain the nature of that complexity by running a comparative experiment between Normandy and England after c.950.

Reflections on Teaching the Convergence of Scandinavian Settlement and Native American Removal in the Upper Midwest

Reflections on Teaching the Convergence of Scandinavian Settlement and Native American Removal in the Upper Midwest

Medieval Dublin XII, XIII, XIV, ed. Seán Duffy

This beautifully produced series continues to showcase the considerable interest of Dublin throughout the Middle Ages (and beyond). The seemingly endless wealth of material available for its study, originally presented in papers delivered at the annual symposia organised by the Friends of Medieval Dublin or commissioned later, has been brought to publication year after year by Seán Duffy, backed by the Department of History of Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City Council. A paper in Medieval Dublin XII on the manuscripts in the library of Trinity College continues the series’ custom of drawing attention to available historical sources for the history of the city. Others examine the impact of the Hospitallers and Templars who held the manor of Clontarf after 1171 and the origins (from the county, not the town) of Dublin’s fourteenth-century sheriffs. The bulk of Medieval Dublin XII, however, continues the documentation of the physical character of the early medieval town that has been at the heart of the series since its inception in 1999. Here we have papers reporting on excavations within the Viking-Age settlement and its expanding (often industrial) suburbs over the centuries, especially extending to the west and south, plus an important consideration of how discoveries elsewhere in Ireland have affected interpretation of the first Scandinavian settlement on the site. Excavations at an early church site at Dundrum, now a suburb of the modern city, raise questions about its fate during the Viking takeover and its evolution over succeeding centuries. Investigations in the precinct of St Mary’s Abbey on the north bank of the Liffey demonstrate the physical legacy of that religious house, exemplifying the evidence so often provided in this series of the remarkable degree to which the past has left its mark on Dublin’s modern streetscape. That so much new physical evidence is available is largely thanks to the building boom in Ireland in the second half of the twentieth century. While allowing unprecedented access to Dublin’s archaeology, it has also contributed to the destruction of a great deal of the urban framework that had been built up over more than a millennium. The paper that closes Medieval Dublin XIII, an architect’s account of the plan commissioned (but not since implemented) in 2007 by Dublin City Council, raises the question of how to reclaim ‘the damaged memory’ of the town (p. 320) and build in the present in a way that does not forget the past. Medieval Dublin XIII also includes three important papers on the politics and material culture (especially coins) of the Viking-Age town and a report on excavations of a medieval priory and the early buildings of the institution that replaced it, Trinity College. Other articles follow the development of municipal government in Dublin from its Scandinavian origins to the end of the Middle Ages, chart the links between the city and Bristol, and document a medieval ‘Black Monday’ (in 1209). The early holdings of the diocese of Dublin and the early history of Ireland’s Dominicans are also examined. Discussions of the historical writing of James Yonge in the early fifteenth century and an eighteenth-century survey of the city by John Rocque continue the task of drawing attention to the wealth of sources for Dublin, to which a study of Elizabethan-era literary memories of the battle of Clontarf in 1014 (which preserve a different view from the one that became traditional) is a welcome addition. This theme of the recycling of traditions about Clontarf is reprised in its anniversary year in Medieval Dublin XIV, with discussion of a twelfth-century story about Hereward from Lincolnshire which likewise might reflect a Scandinavian perspective on the conflict. Several reports of archaeological investigations continue the process of considering the town’s material culture in the Viking Age and mapping the medieval suburbs, while others investigate the conversion of its Scandinavians to Christianity, the system of grange farms that supported Dublin’s Cistercian abbey (St Mary’s) and the early stages of St Patrick’s Cathedral. Dublin’s mayors take centre stage in three papers, a discussion of a dispute with the archbishop in 1266–7, an account of the mayor’s role in the coronation of Lambert Simnel, and a study of mayors, bailiffs and sheriffs from c.1200 to the present, listed in an appendix.

Signals of sedentism: Faunal exploitation as evidence of a delayed-return economy at Norje Sunnansund, an Early Mesolithic site in south-eastern Sweden

Delayed-return foraging strategies connected with a sedentary lifestyle are known from Late Mesolithic Scandinavian settlements. However, recent evidence from the archaeological site of Norje Sunnansund, in south-eastern Sweden, indicates the presence of sedentism from the Early Mesolithic. By analyzing the faunal assemblage from Norje Sunnansund, patterns of delayed-return strategies were examined for five categories of faunal exploitation/interaction: seal hunting, fishing, ungulate hunting, opportunistic hunting and rodent intrusions. The evidence suggests selective hunting strategies, large catches of fish and all year round seasonality indicators as well as evidence of commensal behavior in non-typical commensal species. The data were related to ethnographic accounts and sedentary foraging societies' modes of subsistence. The evidence suggests an expanding, sedentary, aquatically dependent Early Mesolithic foraging lifestyle in southern Scandinavia, which, it is argued, came to dominate the mode of subsistence, implying larger settlements and a larger prevalent population. This process may have been going on for millennia prior to the rise of the Late Mesolithic Ertebølle culture, implying much larger Late Mesolithic populations than previously realized, perhaps comparable with the native cultures of the north-west coast of America.

Bands of brothers: a re‐appraisal of the Viking Great Army and its implications for the Scandinavian colonization of England

Although the ninth‐century Viking Great Army has been subject to intensive historical and archaeological study, it remains an enigmatic entity. This article explores the evidence for the Great Army in England through the consideration of archaeological materials in addition to the organizational structures underpinning the formation of Viking ‘armies’. In light of this, I argue that the Great Army is better considered as a mobile society or polity rather than an armed force. Viewing the Great Army in this way influences not only the interpretation of evidence recovered in the field, but also our understanding of the Scandinavian settlement of northern and eastern England during the late ninth century.

Abstracts of Articles

STEPHEN M. LEWIS, ‘Vikings on the Ribble: Their Origin and Longphuirt’. Parts of north-west England were settled by groups of Scandinavians in the tenth century, certainly Cumbria and the Wirral. South-west and northern Lancashire also witnessed Scandinavian immigration. Some, but very likely not all, of these Scandinavians had come from Dublin after they were temporarily expelled by the Irish in 902. But where did these Irish Northmen establish their initial winter camps and their first ship-bases, what were called longphuirt (sing. longphort) in Ireland? There is little doubt that such bases existed before some of these Irish exiles stopped being a raiding force and started to settle down. Not one ship-base has ever been found in north-west England, unlike in Ireland or even in other parts of England. Based on an examination of geography and longphort site-types, this article proposes and evaluates the three most likely sites for such longphuirt along the Ribble estuary. The historical background and context for Scandinavian activity and settlement in south-west Lancashire is also discussed; as are related events in Ireland and Northumbria. The period covered is roughly 902 to 919.

Pottery Production in Anglo-Scandinavian Torksey (Lincolnshire): Reconstructing and Contextualising the Chaîne Opératoire

ENGLAND IN THE 9TH CENTURY witnessed a revolution in pottery production. For the first time since the Roman period, pottery was wheel-thrown and produced on a near industrial scale. Research into this ceramic revolution has focused on chronology and, in particular, whether the technology was introduced before Scandinavian settlement. Yet, little attention has been paid to technological choices made by the potters or how these choices were influenced by wider societal changes. This paper takes a holistic approach to production, employing a range of analytical techniques to reveal the production sequence followed by potters working at one of the new industries — Torksey (Lincolnshire). With new insights into raw material choices, processing procedures, vessel forming practices and firing regimes, the paper challenges long-standing assumptions about manufacturing practice and the spread of the potters’ wheel. Opening a window into the mind of the potter, this article offers a greater understanding of the mechanisms that facilitated the diffusion and ultimate success of this new technology.

An Early Medieval Polychrome-Enamelled Brooch from Flaxengate, Lincoln: Continental Fashions in an Anglo-Scandinavian Town

THIS SHORT CONTRIBUTION discusses an early medieval copper-alloy disc with polychrome enamel from Lincoln (England), held by ‘The Collection: Art and Archaeology in Lincolnshire’, and identified as a brooch dated to the 10th century and of probable continental manufacture. Only four brooches of this type are currently known, three of which were found in England, with a fourth from France. Following discussion of its stylistic characteristics and metallurgical composition, we discuss the implications of the Lincoln find for the understanding of the relationship between the area of the Danelaw and the Continent, highlighting a growing body of evidence for the popularity of continental ‘fashions’ in areas of Scandinavian settlement.

Anglo-Scandinavian code-mixing in English place-names

Abstract With this paper I wish to investigate the nature of code-mixing found in English place names chiefly, though not exclusively, from the Danelaw area. The paper analyses this code-mixing in the frame-work of contact linguistics in the light of the contact situation between Old English and Old Norse, as described by Townend (2002) and Lutz (2013), that existed from the 8th century onwards, bearing in mind, however, that the Scandinavian place names may not necessarily be direct indicators of the nature and extent of the Scandinavian settlement itself. Historical code-switching usually and generally focuses on describing intersentential and intrasentential code-switching, and this paper aims at broadening the overall scope of the investigation through the inclusion of onomastics. The analysis will be chiefly based on a corpus of 1,915 relevant place-names, with the data drawn from the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (Mills 1998), and Fellows-Jensen’s regional studies on Scandinavian place-names in England (Fellows-Jensen 1972, 1978, 1985). The primary focus of the investigation will be those place names which contain both Scandinavian and English elements, used to contain at least one Scandinavian or English element which was replaced by an element from the other language, contain at least one element which underwent a transformation to accommodate to the phonological system of the other language and contain elements which could belong to either of the languages but cannot be decided with absolute certainty. In this paper I also argue that names (specifically the above mentioned place-names) can conform to Muysken’s (2000) category of congruent lexicalization and that word-internal code-switching, and CS in general, is in fact a phenomenon that can occur in the case of hybrid place-names.

An Irish Motif in Guta saga

This article examines a folk motif occurring in a pivotal scene in Guta saga in light of Irish analogues and parallels. It considers the chronology of the Irish sources alongside the history of Scandinavian settlement in Ireland, in order to establish a possible context for borrowing between Ireland and Gotland.1

The tension between choice and need in the housing of newcomers: A theoretical framework and an application on Scandinavian settlement policies

The settlement and housing of refugees is high on the agenda in most European countries. This article develops a theoretical perspective on the housing provision of newly arrived migrants and applies it on the national discourses on settlement policies in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The theoretical discussion focuses on the ambivalence between choice and need in housing policy, and between promoting demos and ethnos in integration policy. The empirical analysis takes its departure in these tensions and investigates the national discourses in terms of three potential arguments for restricting autonomy in the housing market precisely for newly arrived migrants: the legal status, resource and neighbourhood arguments. This frame of analysis makes it possible to interpret and understand the surprisingly strong differences in settlement policies between the three countries. We argue that our theoretical approach and analytical framework should be relevant for understanding national political discourses on settlement policy more generally.

The Beginning of Scandinavian Settlement in England: The Viking ‘Great Army’ and Early Settlers, c. 865–900 by Shane McLeod (review)

Reviewed by: The Beginning of Scandinavian Settlement in England: The Viking ‘Great Army’ and Early Settlers, c. 865–900 by Shane McLeod Roderick McDonald McLeod, Shane, The Beginning of Scandinavian Settlement in England: The Viking ‘Great Army’ and Early Settlers, c. 865–900 (Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 29), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013; hardback; pp. xvi, 330; 8 b/w illustrations, 3 b/w tables, 6 b/w line art; R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503545561. Based on his doctoral thesis, Shane McLeod has produced a finely nuanced analysis of the earliest stages of Scandinavian conquest and settlement in England, from approximately 865 to 900. He differentiates between the more commonly used evidence for subsequent generations of Scandinavian settlement in the tenth century and evidence available for the first generation of settlers, associated with the ‘great army’, who (in McLeod’s well-argued view) included others, both domestic and civilian. McLeod’s thesis critiques the limits of available evidence – annalistic/historical, literary, archaeological – and draws upon migration theory to argue in favour of the early stages of conquest and settlement being undertaken not solely by warriors and settlers coming from the Scandinavian [End Page 192] lands of Denmark and Norway. A sound case is developed that the great army and associated settlers included those with prior migration experience, in particular coming from lands that had already been settled by Scandinavians in both Ireland and Francia. McLeod also makes the case that right from the very early stages the invasion and settlement of England involved not just young adult fighting men, but included women and children in greater numbers than scholars have hitherto believed. It also stands to reason that the migrations would have also included administrators, given the nature of the settlement and establishment of Scandinavian rule. McLeod maps out the underlying principles in migration theory, and identifies in particular five of nine principles that can be applied specifically to the evidence for Scandinavian migration to England. The five principles, for which evidence exists in relation to migration of Scandinavians to England, are: migration through the use of advance ‘scouts’ for setting up migration ‘chains’; the tendency for a migratory flow to continue over a period; migrants being a select group of people from the population of origin; migrants being more likely to have experience of previous migration; and migrants often returning to their place of origin. Having mapped out the evidence for supporting his application of migration theory, McLeod then traces the likely origins of the settlers. He uses annalistic and archaeological evidence to argue for the presence of a significant proportion of Scandinavians from both Ireland and the Frisian coastal areas of Francia in the great army, and thus forming the basis of the early stages of migration to England. In comparison, the evidence for great army members coming directly from the Scandinavian homelands in the early phases of Scandinavian settlement in England is shown to be limited. McLeod also looks at a number of other aspects of the migrations, as a means for describing a more complete picture of the people and the circumstances that led to their migration. He discusses the likely motivations behind the migrations, and makes a good argument for the immigrants’ desire for economic and social advancement as an important motivating factor. He argues that this is especially the case in the desire for wealth through land ownership, which was of high cultural value and for which opportunities were limited in both Ireland and Francia. McLeod considers the use of client kings as one example of a number of political and economic innovations that came about during the early phases of Scandinavian migration to England. Inter alia, he argues that the use of a written treaty between Guthrum and Alfred through which boundaries were agreed and administrative units established was another such innovation, possibly reflecting a continental experience of treaties, resulting in the creation of buffer zones on the margins of Scandinavian rule in England. He also makes the case for Scandinavian innovation in the acculturation of administrative and economic conditions (in particular in Mercia and East Anglia) to existing [End Page 193] Anglo-Saxon activities. He argues that the use of...

Environment, society and landscape in early medieval England: time and topography

The Anglo-Saxon period was crucial in the development of England's character: its language, and much of its landscape and culture, were forged in the period between the fifth and the eleventh centuries. Historians and archaeologists have long been fascinated by its regional variations, by the way in which different parts of the country displayed marked differences in social structures, settlement patterns, and field systems. In this controversial and wide-ranging study, the author argues that such differences were largely a consequence of environmental factors: of the influence of climate, soils and hydrology, and of the patterns of contact and communication engendered by natural topography. He also suggests that such environmental influences have been neglected over recent decades by generations of scholars who are embedded in an urban culture and largely divorced from the natural world; and that an appreciation of the fundamental role of physical geography in shaping human affairs can throw much new light on a number of important debates about early medieval society. The book will be essential reading for all those interested in the character of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian settlements, in early medieval social and territorial organization, and in the origins of the England's medieval landscapes. Tom Williamson is Professor of Landscape History, University of East Anglia; he has written widely on landscape archaeology, agricultural history, and the history of landscape design.

West over Sea: Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement Before 1300. A Festschrift in honour of Dr Barbara E. Crawford

West Over Sea. Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement before 1300. A Festschrift in honour of Dr Barbara E. Crawford, ed Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth Williams, Leiden: Brill, 2007; 586pp. ISBN 978 90 04 15893 1

Combs, Contact and Chronology: Reconsidering Hair Combs in Early-Historic and Viking-Age Atlantic Scotland

Analysis of an important collection of bone/antler hair combs from Atlantic Scotland has illuminated the chronology of early-medieval Scandinavian settlement in the region. Application of a new typology, identification of variations in manufacturing practice and analysis of spatial patterning throw light on the development of combs traditionally seen as characteristic of early-historic Atlantic Scotland. The application of new techniques of raw material analysis demonstrates the probable use of reindeer antler in combs of 'native' style. However, none of these combs is from contexts that can confidently be dated to the 8th century or earlier, and the pattern is indicative of Norse-native coexistence (peaceful or otherwise) in the 9th century, but not before. The comb evidence demonstrates a Scandinavian presence throughout Atlantic Scotland from early in the Viking Age, but also highlights the importance of contact with Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England.