These essays radically rethink the origins of Scandinavian influence on England. Unquestionably Scandinavian people settled here. Their language is deeply embedded into English and their place names dominate much of the North and East. Unfortunately modern historians have jumped to the conclusion that, since the Vikings were Scandinavian, it must have been they who were responsible. In fact, Scandinavian influence is much older. It was already old when the seventh century historian, the Venerable Bede, included the Angles and the Jutes among the tribes who settled England after the Romans left. This collection of essays presents overwhelming evidence that this was the case.
The first essay ("1. Viking Related place names in England and Europe") presents the most powerful evidence against the Viking origins theory. It addresses the question that should have been asked by those who advocated it. Did the Vikings have an equally profound effect on their other colonies? The answer is a resounding "no". Nowhere else were entire regions like Lincolnshire and Yorkshire dominated by the same Scandinavian place names, typified by the place name ending "by". Neither in Normandy nor Ireland was this the case. Even in Iceland, where the country was completely taken over by Vikings, there are only a few. I also looked at Finland, but it is a somewhat different case. It was settled by the Swedes after the Viking period.
From a place name point of view, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire look more like an integrated extension of northern and insular Denmark than a separate country with scattered Scandinavian estates that one might expect from a country divided up as the spoils of war.
The second essay ("2. The Documentary Evidence for Settlement from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.") looks at the question of what the written history says about the nature of Viking settlement. The evidence for a mass migration and settlement is shown to be, at best weak. This does give the impression of a country divided up as the spoils of war; of an army, rampaging round England. They were victorious in much of the North, but were eventually repulsed in much of the South and West.
The third essay ("3. The Origin of Danish Settlement in England") looks at the question of what the written history tells us about how an elite Scandinavian fighting force waged war against the kingdoms of England (see section3, "Forms of Conquest"). It also introduces some of the other evidence for previous Scandinavian occupation.
The next essay ("4. Do Anglo-Saxon Place Names Cluster into Groups?") takes a novel look at the distribution of Germanic place names throughout England. The underlying rationale is that the post Roman, Germanic, conquest of England involved a melange of warring tribes. These tribes and factions of them, created their own mini kingdoms. Accordingly we might expect a corresponding melange of dialects from the various Angles, Saxons and Jutes etc. Fortunately these dialects are often embedded into the names they gave to their settlements, for example "ham" or "by", "kirk or church, "beck" or "stream" according to the preferences or language of the speaker. So, theoretically, we can use these place name endings to examine if, and where, tribal people cluster together. I used a simple factor analysis of place names to test the idea. The results suggest that there is indeed some clustering of people into linguistic groups.
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