Danelaw
Danelaw Danelagen ( Old English) | |||||||||||||||
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878–954 | |||||||||||||||
Common languages | Old Norse Old English | ||||||||||||||
Religion |
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History | |||||||||||||||
878 | |||||||||||||||
927 | |||||||||||||||
• Fully conquered | 954 | ||||||||||||||
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Today part of | England |
The Danelaw (
The Danelaw originated from the invasion of the Great Heathen Army into England in 865, but 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, having sought treasure and glory in the nearby British Isles, "proceeded to plough and support themselves", in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 876.[6]
Danelaw can describe the set of legal terms and definitions created in the treaties between Alfred the Great, the king of Wessex, and Guthrum, the Danish warlord, written following Guthrum's defeat at the Battle of Edington 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 language spoken in England was affected by this clash of cultures, with the emergence of Anglo-Norse dialects.[7]
The Danelaw roughly comprised these contemporary 15 shires: Leicester, York, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Essex, Cambridge, Suffolk, Norfolk, Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford, Hertford, Middlesex, and Buckingham.[8][9][10]
Background
From around 800, there had been waves of Norse raids on the coastlines of Britain and Ireland. In 865, instead of raiding, the Danes landed a large army in East Anglia, with the intention of conquering the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. The armies of various Danish leaders had collaborated to make one combined force under a leadership that included Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless, the sons of the legendary Viking leader Ragnar Lodbrok.[11] The combined army was described in the annals as the Great Heathen Army.[12] After making peace with the local East Anglian king in return for horses, the Great Heathen Army moved north. In 867 they captured Northumbria and its capital, York ("Jórvík"), defeating both the recently deposed King Osberht of Northumbria and the usurper Ælla of Northumbria. The Danes then placed an Englishman, Ecgberht I of Northumbria, on the throne of Northumbria as a puppet ruler.[13]
King
Under Ivar the Boneless, the Danes continued their invasion in 869 by defeating King
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. The Danish leader Ivar died during this campaign. Ivar was succeeded by Guthrum, who finished the campaign against Mercia. In ten years, the Danes had gained control over East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia, leaving just Wessex resisting.[15]
Guthrum and the Danes brokered peace with Wessex in 876, when they captured the fortresses of
The reasons for the waves of immigration were complex and bound to the political situation in Scandinavia at that time; they occurred when Viking settlers were also establishing their presence in the Hebrides, Isle of Man, Orkney, Shetland, Faroe Islands, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, L'Anse aux Meadows, France (Normandy), the Baltics, Russia and Ukraine (see Kievan Rus').[21]
Cnut and his successors
The Danes did not give up their designs on England. From 1016 to 1035,
Edward died in January 1066 without an obvious successor, and an English nobleman,
The Danelaw appeared in legislation as late as the early 12th century with the Leges Henrici Primi, where it is referred to as one of the laws together with those of Wessex and Mercia into which England was divided.
Danish–Norwegian conflict in the North Sea
In the 11th century, when King
Chronology
793 − Viking raid on Lindisfarne[22]
800 − Waves of Danish assaults on the coastlines of the British Isles.
865 − Danish raiders first began to settle in England. Led by the 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 the 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 effect peace, King Burgred of Mercia ceded Nottingham to the Danes in exchange for leaving the rest of Mercia undisturbed.
868 − Danes captured Nottingham.
869 − Ivar the Boneless returned and demanded tribute from King Edmund of East Anglia.
870 − King Edmund refused Ivar's demand. Ivar defeated and captured Edmund at Hoxne, 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 7 January, Æthelred and Alfred 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
King Æthelred died on 23 April 871 and Alfred took the throne of Wessex. 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 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 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. 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 Dorset, well inside 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 in a 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 arrived 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 their superior 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 Edington. 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.[23]
902 −
903 − Æthelwald incited the East Anglian Danes into breaking the peace. They ravaged Mercia before winning a pyrrhic victory that saw the death of Æthelwald and the Danish King Eohric; this allowed Edward the Elder to consolidate power.
911 − The English defeated the Danes at the Battle of Tettenhall. The Northumbrians ravaged Mercia but were trapped by Edward and forced to fight.
917 − In return for peace and protection, the Kingdoms of Essex and East Anglia accepted Edward the Elder as their suzerain overlord.
Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, took the borough of Derby.
918 − The borough of Leicester submitted peaceably to Æthelflæd's rule. The people of York promised to accept her as their overlord, but she died before this could come to fruition. She was succeeded by her brother, the Kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex united in the person of King Edward.
919 − Norwegian Vikings under King Ragnvald Sygtryggsson of Dublin took York.
920 − Edward was accepted as father and lord by the King of the Scots, by Rægnold, the sons of
954 − King Eric was 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.
1002 –
1066 − Harald Hardrada landed with an army, hoping to take control of York and the English crown. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. This event is often cited as the end of the Viking era. The same year, William the Conqueror, himself a descendant of Vikings, successfully took the English throne and became the first Norman king of England.
1069 − Sweyn II of Denmark landed with an army, in much the same way as Harald Hardrada. He took control of York after defeating the Norman garrison and inciting a local uprising. King William eventually defeated his forces and devastated the region in the Harrying of the North.
1075 − One of Sweyn's sons, Knut, set sail for England to support an English rebellion, but it had been crushed before he arrived, so he settled for plundering the city of York and surrounding area, before returning home.[24]
1085 − Knut, now king, planned a major invasion against England but the assembled fleet never sailed. Other than
Geography
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
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 wergild.
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
Under the Danelaw, between 30% and 50% of the population in the countryside had the legal status of '
According to many scholars, "... the Danelaw was an especially ‘free’ area of Britain because the rank and file of the Danish armies, from whom sokemen were descended, had settled in the area and imported their own social system."[30]
Legacy
The influence of this period of Scandinavian settlement can still be seen in the North of England and the East Midlands, and is particularly evident in place-names: name endings such as -howe, -by (meaning "village") or -thorp ("hamlet") having Norse origins. There seems to be a remarkable number of Kirby/Kirkby names, some with remains of Anglo-Saxon building[31] indicating both a Norse origin and early church building.[32] Scandinavian names blended with the English -ton give rise to typical hybrid place-names.[33]
Four of the five boroughs became county towns—of the counties of Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Stamford failed to gain such status—perhaps because of the nearby autonomous territory of Rutland.
Genetic heritage
In 2000, the
Archaeology
Major archaeological sites that bear testimony to the Danelaw are few. The most famous is the site at York. 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.
See also
- List of generic forms in British place names
- Longhouse
- Mjölnir
- Norse–Gaels
- Raven banner
- Runestone
- Stave church
- Subpoena ad testificandum
- Valknut
- Anglo-Scandinavian
- Scandinavian Scotland
- Scandinavian York
- List of monarchs of Northumbria
- Kingdom of Dublin
- Kingdom of the Isles
- English language in Northern England
- Viking activity in the British Isles
References
- JSTOR 10.7722/j.ctt9qdh4m. Retrieved 16 November 2022.
- ^ Starkey, Monarchy, p. 71
- ISBN 978-87-7674-196-9.
- Old English word Dene ("Danes") usually refers to Scandinavians of any kind; most of the invaders were indeed Danish (East Norsespeakers), but there were Norwegians (West Norse [speakers]) among them as well." Lass, Roger, Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion, p. 187, n. 12. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- ISBN 0-415-21497-1.
- Shire Archaeology), 2010:22; Gwyn Jones, A History of the Vikings. Revised ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984: 221.
- ^ "Danelaw Heritage". The Viking Network. Archived from the original on 26 February 2021. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- ^ K. Holman, The Northern Conquest: Vikings in Britain and Ireland, p. 157
- ^ S. Thomason, T. Kaufman, Language Contact, Creolisation and Genetic Linguistics, p. 362
- ^ The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge (2008), p. 136
- ^ Sawyer. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. pp. 52–55 [ISBN missing]
- ^ ASC 865 – English translation at project Gutenberg Archived 5 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 16 January 2013
- ^ Flores Historiarum: Rogeri de Wendover, Chronica sive flores historiarum, pp. 298–299. ed. H. Coxe, Rolls Series, 84 (4 vols, 1841–42)
- ^ Haywood, John. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings, p. 62. Penguin Books. 1995. [ISBN missing]
- ^ Carr, Michael. "Alfred the Great Strikes Back", p. 65. Military History Journal. June 2001.
- ISBN 0-582-04047-7.
- ^ ASC 878 – English translation at project Gutenberg Archived 5 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 9 June 2014
- OCLC 314512470.
- ^ Hadley, D. M. The Northern Danelaw: Its Social Structure, c. 800–1100. p. 310. Leicester University Press. 2000. [ISBN missing]
- ^ Lesley Abrams, 'Edward the Elder's Danelaw', in N. J. Higham & D. H. Hill eds, Edward the Elder 899–924, Routledge, 2001, pp. 138–139
- ^ "The Viking expansion". hgo.se. Archived from the original on 12 May 2009. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
- ^ "The Viking Raid on Lindisfarne". English Heritage. Archived from the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 13 April 2023.
- ISBN 9780404565459. Retrieved 31 July 2013.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-285434-8.
- ISBN 0521829925.
- ^ Falkus & Gillingham and Hill
- ^ Emma Day (2011), Sokemen and Freemen in Late Anglo-Saxon East Anglia in Comparative Context Archived 1 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine cam.ac.uk
- ^ What is Sac and Soke in Anglo-Saxon England? Archived 10 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine (2015)
- ^ Emma Day (2011), Sokemen and Freemen in Late Anglo-Saxon East Anglia in Comparative Context Archived 1 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine p. 21, cam.ac.uk
- ^ Taylor, H.M. & Taylor, Joan, Anglo-Saxon Architecture. Cambridge, 1965.
- ISBN 978-1-897999-48-6.
- ^ The "Grimston hybrids", noted by Richard Hall, Viking Age Archaeology (series Shire Archaeology) 2010:22.
- ^ Henry Loyn, The Vikings in Britain (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 85.
- ^ Joan Beal, "English Dialects in the North of England: Morphology and Syntax," in A Handbook of Varieties of English vol. 2, ed. Bernd Kortmann et al. (New York: Martin De Gruyter, 2004) 137.
- ^ Katie Wales, Northern English: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 55.
- ^ G.H. Cowling, The Dialect of Hackness:Northeast Yorkshire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), xxi–xxii.
- ^ "ENGLAND | Viking blood still flowing". BBC News. 3 December 2001. Archived from the original on 1 January 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
- ^ "Blood of the Vikings". Genetic Archaeology. 2014. Archived from the original on 6 June 2014. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
- from the original on 26 March 2021. Retrieved 17 September 2020 – via www.nature. com.
- ^ Stahl, Anke-Beate (May 2004). "Guide to Scandinavian origins of place names in Britain" (PDF). Ordnance Survey. Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 March 2016. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
- ^ "Detailed Result: Thynghowe". Pastscape. 22 November 2007. Archived from the original on 27 July 2011. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
Further reading
- Abrams, Lesley (2001). "Edward the Elder's Danelaw". In Higham, N. J.; Hill, D. H. (eds.). Edward the Elder 899–924. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 128–143. ISBN 0-415-21497-1. Discusses definitions of "Danelaw".
- Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw, Frank M. Stenton, London, 1910.
- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Tiger Books International version translated and collated by Anne Savage, 1995.
- Community archaeology at Thynghowe, Birklands, Sherwood Forest by Lynda Mallett, Stuart Reddish, John Baker, Stuart Brookes and Andy Gaunt; Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, Volume 116 (2012)
- Mawer, Allen (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 803–804.
- Heen-Pettersen, Aina Margrethe (2021). "Evidence of Viking trade and 'Danelaw' connections? Inset lead weights from Norway and the western Viking World". Internet Archaeology (56). hdl:11250/2825187.
- Stattel, Jake A. (2019). "Legal culture in the Danelaw: a study of III Æthelred". Anglo-Saxon England. 48: 163–203.