BBC - History - Legacy
of the Vikings Danelaw
and the English. The 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' of 793 gives us a vivid
picture of Britain under attack from Viking invaders. 'Terrible portents
appeared over Northumbria and ...www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/conquest/after_viking/legacy_vikings_
01.shtml ·
History: Vikings More than the
raiders of tradition, the Vikings were also traders and colonists who
left an enduring mark on Britain.www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/
index.shtml ·
When half of England was
Viking More on this page... cultural influences
continued to be important there for many generations. Even today there
are clear clues which show this area to be different from the rest of
England.
As part of the Treaty of Wedmore, a boundary was drawn
across England from London to the Mersey. South of this line, the laws
and customs would be those of the ...Go to the page When half of
England was Viking. Written for The Viking Network by Barrie Markham
Rhodes. Though The Danelaw was brought back under
English control within 50 years, Scandinavian ...www.viking.no/e/england/
danelaw/index.html ·
Danelaw
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (also known
as the Danelagh; Old English: Dena lagu;
Danish: Danelagen),
is a historical name given to the part of England
in which the laws of the "Danes" held sway[1]
and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons.
It is contrasted with "West Saxon Law" and "Mercian law". The term has
been extended by modern historians to be geographical. The areas that
comprised the Danelaw are in northern and eastern England. The origins
of the Danelaw arose from the Viking
expansion of the 9th century, although the term was not used to describe
a geographic area until the 11th century. With the increase in
population and productivity in Scandinavia,
Viking warriors sought treasure and glory in nearby Britain.
Danelaw is also used to describe the set of legal terms and
definitions created in the treaties between the English king, Alfred the Great, and the Danish warlord, Guthrum the Old, written following
Guthrum's defeat at the Battle of Ethandun in 878.
In 886, the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum
was formalised, defining the boundaries of their kingdoms, with
provisions for peaceful relations between the English and the Vikings.
The Danish laws held sway in the Kingdom of Northumbria
and Kingdom of East Anglia, and the lands
of the Five Boroughs of Leicester,
Nottingham,
Derby, Stamford and Lincoln.
The prosperity of the Danelaw, especially Eoferic (Danish Jórvík, modern York), led to
its becoming a target for later Viking
raiders. Conflict with Wessex and Mercia
sapped the strength of the Danelaw. The waning of its military power
together with the Viking onslaughts led to its submission to Edward the Elder in return for protection. It was to be part
of his Kingdom of England, and no longer a
province of Denmark, as the English laid final claim to it.
History: Danelaw
From about AD
800 waves of Danish assaults on the coastlines of the British
Isles were gradually followed by a succession of Danish settlers.
Danish raiders first began to settle in England starting in 865, when
brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless wintered in East Anglia. They soon moved
north and in 867 captured Northumbria
and its capital, York, defeating both the recently deposed King Osberht of Northumbria, as well as
the usurper Ælla of Northumbria. The Danes then placed an
Englishman, Ecgberht I of Northumbria, on the
throne of Northumbria as a puppet.[2]
King Æthelred of Wessex and his brother,
Alfred, led their army against the Danes at Nottingham,
but the Danes refused to leave their fortifications. King Burgred of Mercia then negotiated peace with Ivar, with the
Danes' keeping Nottingham in exchange for leaving the rest of Mercia
unmolested.
Under Ivar the Boneless, the Danes continued
their invasion in 869 by defeating King Edmund of East Anglia at Hoxne and
conquering East Anglia.[3]
Once again, the brothers Æthelred and Alfred attempted to stop Ivar by
attacking the Danes at Reading. They were repelled with heavy losses. The Danes
pursued, and on 7 January 871, Æthelred and Alfred defeated the Danes at
the Battle of Ashdown. The Danes retreated to Basing (in Hampshire),
where Æthelred attacked and was, in turn, defeated. Ivar was able to
follow up this victory with another in March at Meretum (now Marton,
Wiltshire).
On 23 April 871, King Æthelred died and Alfred succeeded him as King
of Wessex. His army was weak and he was forced to pay tribute to Ivar in
order to make peace with the Danes. During this peace the Danes turned
to the north and attacked Mercia, a campaign that lasted until 874. Both
the Danish leader Ivar and Mercian leader Burgred died during this
campaign. Ivar was succeeded by Guthrum the Old, who finished the
campaign against Mercia. In ten years the Danes gained control over East
Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia, leaving only Wessex to resist.[4]
Guthrum and the Danes brokered peace with Wessex in 876, when they
captured the fortresses of Wareham and Exeter. Alfred laid siege to the Danes, who were
forced to surrender after reinforcements were lost in a storm.
Two years
later, Guthrum again attacked Alfred, surprising him by attacking his
forces wintering in Chippenham. King
Alfred was saved when the Danish army coming from his rear was destroyed
by inferior forces at Countisbury
Hill. Alfred was forced into hiding for a time, before returning in
the spring of 878 to gather an army and attack Guthrum at Ethandun. The
Danes were defeated and retreated to Chippenham, where King Alfred laid
siege and soon forced them to surrender. As a term of surrender, King
Alfred demanded that Guthrum be baptised
a Christian;
King Alfred served as his godfather.[5]
This peace lasted until 884, when Guthrum again attacked Wessex.
Alfred defeated him, with peace codified in the Treaty of Alfred and
Guthrum.[6]
The treaty outlined the boundaries of the Danelaw and allowed for
Danish self-rule in the region. The Danelaw represented a consolidation
of power for Alfred; the subsequent conversion of Guthrum to
Christianity underlines the ideological significance of this shift in
the balance of power.
The reasons for the waves of immigration were complex and bound to
the political situation in Scandinavia at that time; moreover, they
occurred when Viking settlers were also establishing their presence in
the Hebrides,
Orkney,
the Faroe Islands, Ireland,
Iceland,
Greenland,
France (Normandy), Russia and Ukraine
(see Kievan Rus').[7]Polabian Slavs (Wends) settled in parts of England,
apparently as Danish allies.[citation needed]
The Danes never gave up their designs on England. From 1016 to 1035 Canute the Great ruled over a unified
English kingdom, itself the product of a hitherto resurgent Wessex, as
part of his North Sea Empire, together with Denmark,
Norway and part of Sweden. Canute was succeeded in England by his son Harold Harefoot, until he himself died in 1040, after
which another of Canute's sons, Harthacnut,
took the throne.
Since Harthacnut was already on the Danish throne,
this reunited the North Sea Empire.
Harthacnut lived only another two years, and from his death in 1042
until 1066 the monarchy reverted to the English line in the form of Edward the Confessor.
Edward died in January 1066 without an obvious successor, and an
English nobleman, Harold Godwinson, took the
throne. In the autumn of that same year, two rival claimants to the
throne led invasions of England in short succession. First, Harald Hardrada of Norway took York in September, but
was defeated by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, in Yorkshire.
Then, three weeks later, William of Normandy defeated Harold
at the Battle of Hastings, in Sussex,
and in December he accepted the submission of Edgar the Ætheling, last in the line of Anglo-Saxon
kings, at Berkhamsted.
The Danelaw appeared in legislation as late as the early twelfth
century with the Leges Henrici Primi, being referred to as one of
the laws together with those of Wessex and Mercia into which England was
divided.
[edit]
Danish-Norwegian
conflict in the North Sea
In the years between the Sack of Lindisfarne
in 793 and the Danish invasion of East Anglia in 865, Norwegian
settlers founded the site of modern Dublin and fought as mercenaries in
Irish tribal wars, liberally intermarrying with their Irish allies. Some
10 years later a Danish fleet probably from the Great Heathen Army in Anglia
arrived and attacked the settlement with the Irish and Norwegian enemies
of the Hiberno-Norse, but were
repulsed. It is also said in Irish and northern English oral history
that Ivar the Boneless, and in some accounts
also Ubbe Ragnarsson, died not in the Mercian campaign, but
drowned fighting the Hiberno-Norse in the Irish sea. Dublin and other
major Irish towns were under Danish rule for the next 100–200 years.
The haste with which the Danes resumed their attack on Norse Dublin
before consolidating their control of Saxon England indicates that the
entire Danish invasion was not primarily aimed at the conquest of Saxon
England, but to secure a North Sea base of operations to use as a
springboard in the conflict with the Norwegians, who controlled an
extensive trade network in the Orkney Islands, the Hebrides, the Isle of
Man, the Isle of Wight, and Ireland, which exported goods as the Danes
did, from the British Isles south-east through Kievan Rus as far as Constantinople and Baghdad,
following the Dniepr from the Baltic
to the Black Sea.
In the 11th century, when King Magnus I had freed Norway from Cnut the Great, the terms of the peace
treaty provided that the first of the two kings Magnus (Norway) and Harthacnut (Denmark) to die would leave their
dominion as an inheritance to the other. When Edward the Confessor ascended the throne of a united
Dano-Saxon England, a Norse army was raised from every Norwegian colony
in the British Isles and attacked Edward's England in support of
Magnus', and after his death, his brother Harald Hardråde's, claim to the
English throne.
Timeline of the Danelaw 800 Waves of Danish assaults on the coastlines of the British
Isles were gradually followed by a succession of settlers.
865 Danish raiders first began to settle in England. Led by
brothers Halfdan and Ivar the Boneless, they wintered in East Anglia,
where they demanded and received tribute in exchange for a temporary
peace. From there they moved north and attacked Northumbria, which was
in the midst of a civil war between the deposed king Osberht and a
usurper Ælla. The Danes used the civil turmoil as an opportunity to
capture York, which they sacked and burned.
867 Following the loss of York, Osberht and Ælla formed an
alliance against the Danes. They launched a counter-attack, but the
Danes killed both Osberht and Ælla and set up a puppet king on
Northumbrian throne. In response, King Æthelred of Wessex, along with
his brother Alfred marched against the Danes, who were positioned behind
fortifications in Nottingham, but were unable to draw them into battle.
In order to establish peace, King Burhred of Mercia ceded Nottingham to
the Danes in exchange for leaving the rest of Mercia undisturbed.
869 Ivar the Boneless returned and demanded tribute from King
Edmund of East Anglia.
870 King Edmund refused, Ivar the Boneless defeated and
captured him at Hoxne and brutally sacrificed his heart to Odin in a
so-called “blood eagle ritual”, in the process adding East
Anglia to the area controlled by the invading Danes. King Æthelred and
Alfred attacked the Danes at Reading, but were repulsed with heavy
losses. The Danes pursued them.
871 On January 7, they made their stand at Ashdown (on what is
the Berkshire/North Wessex Downs now in Oxfordshire). Æthelred could
not be found at the start of battle, as he was busy praying in his tent,
so Alfred led the army into battle. Æthelred and Alfred defeated the
Danes, who counted among their losses five jarls
(nobles). The Danes retreated and set up fortifications at Basing in
Hampshire, a mere 14 miles (23 km) from Reading. Æthelred attacked the
Danish fortifications and was routed. Danes followed up victory with
another victory in March at Meretum (now Marton, Wiltshire).
King Æthelred died on April 23, 871 and Alfred took the throne of
Wessex, but not before seriously considering abdicating the throne in
light of the desperate circumstances, which were further worsened by the
arrival in Reading of a second Danish army from Europe. For the rest of
the year Alfred concentrated on attacking with small bands against
isolated groups of Danes. He was moderately successful in this endeavour
and was able to score minor victories against the Danes, but his army
was on the verge of collapse. Alfred responded by paying off the Danes
in order for a promise of peace. During the peace the Danes turned north
and attacked Mercia, which they finished off in short order, and
captured London in the process. King Burgred of Mercia fought in vain
against the Ivar the Boneless and his Danish invaders for three years
until 874, when he fled to Europe. During Ivar’s campaign against Mercia
he died and was succeeded by Guthrum the Old as the main protagonist in
the Danes’ drive to conquer England. Guthrum quickly defeated Burgred
and placed a puppet on the throne of Mercia. The Danes now controlled
East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia, with only Wessex continuing to
resist.
875 The Danes settled in Dorsetshire, well inside of Alfred’s Kingdom of
Wessex, but Alfred quickly made peace with them.
876 The Danes broke the peace when they captured the fortress
of Wareham, followed by a similar capture of Exeter in 877.
877 Alfred laid siege, while the Danes waited for
reinforcements from Scandinavia. Unfortunately for the Danes, the fleet
of reinforcements encountered a storm and lost more than 100 ships, and
the Danes were forced to return to East Mercia in the north.
878 In January Guthrum led an attack against Wessex that
sought to capture Alfred while he wintered in Chippenham. Another Danish
army landed in south Wales and moved south with the intent of intercepting
Alfred should he flee from Guthrum’s forces. However, they stopped
during their march to capture a small fortress at Countisbury Hill, held
by a Wessex ealdorman named Odda.
The Saxons, led by Odda, attacked the Danes while they slept and
defeated the superior Danish forces, saving Alfred from being trapped
between the two armies. Alfred was forced to go into hiding for the rest
of the winter and spring of 878 in the Somerset marshes in order to
avoid the superior Danish forces. In the spring Alfred was able to
gather an army and attacked Guthrum and the Danes at Ethandun. The Danes
were defeated and retreated to Chippenham, where the English pursued
and laid siege to Guthrum’s forces. The Danes were unable to hold out
without relief and soon surrendered. Alfred demanded as a term of the
surrender that Guthrum become baptised as a Christian, which Guthrum
agreed to do, with Alfred acting as his Godfather. Guthrum was true to
his word and settled in East Anglia, at least for a while.
884 Guthrum attacked Kent, but was defeated by the English.
This led to the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, which established the
boundaries of the Danelaw and allowed for Danish self-rule in the
region.
902Essex
submits to Æthelwald.
903 Æthelwald incites the East Anglian Danes into breaking the
peace. They ravage Mercia before winning a pyrrhic victory that saw the death of Æthelwald and the
Danish King Eohric; this allows Edward the Elder to consolidate power.
911 The English defeat the Danes at the Battle of Tettenhall. The Northumbrians ravage Mercia
but are trapped by Edward and forced to fight.
917 In return for peace and protection The Kingdoms of Essex
and East Anglia accept Edward the Elder as their suzerain
overlord.
Æthelflæd (also known as Ethelfleda) Lady of the Mercians, takes the borough
of Derby.
918 The borough of Leicester submits peaceably to Æthelflæd's
rule. The people of York promise to accept her as their overlord, but
she dies before this could come to fruition. She is succeeded by her
brother, the Kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex united in the person of King
Edward.
919 Norwegian Vikings under King Rægnold (Ragnald son of
Sygtrygg) of Dublin take York.
920 Edward is accepted as father and lord by the King of the
Scots, by Rægnold, the sons of Eadulf, the English, Norse, Danes
and others all of whom dwell in Northumbria, and the King and people of
the Strathclyde Welsh.
954Eric Bloodaxe driven out of Northumbria, his
death marking the end of the prospect of a Northern Viking Kingdom
stretching from York to Dublin and the Isles.
Danelaw is the part of England the Vikings took over and lived in.
The Dane law area was under the control of Guthrum the Old, and on the
other side of the border the English king, Alfred the Great was in
control.
Dane law was also used to describe the set of legal terms
created in the treaty between Guthrum and Alfred, written after Guthrum
was defeated in at the Battle of Ethandun in 878BC. In 886, the Treaty
of Alfred and Guthrum was made official, clearly stating the Boundaries
and requirements for a peaceful relationship between them. Around 600
English words we speak today come from old Norse for example ‘ill’ ‘egg’
‘die ‘knife’ and ‘take.’ English styles of art and craft were also
affected by the Vikings, the Vikings style of stone carving was adopted
by the English, and as the Vikings became Christian, the combined style
of decoration can be found on many stone crosses and hog back (stone
carved grave markers.) gravestones in The Danelaw.
There are the remains
of more than 500 such gravestones and crosses in Yorkshire alone.
[edit] Geography
The Five Boroughs and the English Midlands in the early 10th century[8]
The area occupied by the Danelaw was roughly the area to the north of
a line drawn between London and Chester,
excluding the portion of Northumbria to the east of the Pennines.
Five fortified towns became particularly important in the Danelaw:
Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford and Lincoln, broadly delineating
the area now called the East
Midlands. These strongholds became known as the Five Boroughs.
Borough derives from the Old English word burh (cognate
with German Burg, meaning castle), meaning a fortified and walled
enclosure containing several households—anything from a large stockade
to a fortified town. The meaning has since developed further.
Legal concepts
of the Danelaw.
The Danelaw was an important factor in the establishment of a
civilian peace in the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon and Viking communities.
It established, for example, equivalences in areas of legal
contentiousness, such as the amount of reparation that should be payable
in weregild.
Many of the legalistic concepts were compatible; for example the
Viking wapentake, the standard for land division in the Danelaw,
was effectively interchangeable with the hundred.
The use of the execution site and cemetery at Walkington Wold
in East Yorkshire suggests a continuity of judicial practice.[9] Enduring impact
of the Danelaw
The influence of this period of Scandinavian settlement can still be
seen in the North of England and the East Midlands, most evidently in placenames: name endings such as
"howe", "by" or "thorp" having Norse origins.
Old Norse and Old English were still mutually comprehensible to a
small degree.
The mixed language of the Danelaw caused the incorporation
of many Norse words into the English language, including the word law itself, sky
and window, and the third personpluralpronounsthey, them and their. Many Old Norse words still
survive in the dialects of Northeastern England.
Four of the five boroughs became county
towns — of the counties of Leicestershire, Lincolnshire,
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
However, Stamford failed to gain such status—perhaps because of the
nearby autonomous territory of Rutland.
[edit] Genetic heritage
In 2000 the BBC
conducted a genetic survey of the British Isles for its programme 'Blood of the Vikings'. It concluded that Norse
invaders settled sporadically throughout the British Isles with a
particular concentration in certain areas, such as Orkney and
Shetland.[10]
This finding referred to Norwegian Vikings only, as descendants of
Danish Vikings could not be distinguished from descendants of Anglo-Saxon
settlers.[citation needed]
Archaeological
sites and the Danelaw
Major archaeological sites that bear testimony to the Danelaw are
few. The most famous is the site at York, which is often said to derive
its name from the Old Norse Jórvík. (That name is itself a
borrowing of the Old English Eoforwic; the Old English diphthong eo
being cognate with the Norse diphthong jo, the Old English
intervocalic f typically being pronounced softly as a modern v,
and wic being the Old English version of the Norse vik.) Eoforwic
in turn was derived from an earlier name for the town, spelled Eboracum
in Latin sources. Another Danelaw site is the cremation site at Heath
Wood, Ingleby, Derbyshire.
Archaeological sites do not bear out the historically defined area as
being a real demographic or trade boundary. This could be due to
misallocation of the items and features on which this judgement is based
as being indicative of either Anglo-Saxon or Norse presence. Otherwise,
it could indicate that there was considerable population movement
between the areas, or simply that after the treaty was made, it was
ignored by one or both sides.
Thynghowe
was an important Danelaw meeting place, today located in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, England.
The word "howe" often indicates a prehistoric burial mound. Howe is derived from the Old
Norse work Haugr meaning mound.[11]
The site's rediscovery was made by Lynda Mallett, Stuart Reddish and
John Wood. The site had vanished from modern maps and was essentially
lost to history until the local history enthusiasts made their
discoveries.
Experts think the rediscovered site, which lies amidst the old oaks
of an area known as the Birklands in
Sherwood Forest, may also yield clues as to the boundary of the ancient Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia and
Northumbria.
English Heritage, recently inspected the
site and believes it is a national rarity. Thynghowe[12]
was a place where people came to resolve disputes and settle issues. It
is a Norse
word, although the site may older still, perhaps even Bronze
Age.
