Heritage

On 8 June 793, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, ‘the raiding party of the heathen miserably devastated God’s church in Lindisfarne (Holy Island) by looting and slaughter’. Thus, began our centuries-old love/ hate relationship with the ‘Vikings’.

by Dr Avril Lumley Prior

Although the Lindisfarne attack was possibly the most famous, it was by no means the first. The AngloSaxon Chronicles (compiled by Christian monks, a century or more after events occurred), state that in 789, ‘three ships of Northmen’ (an estimated 100 participants) wreaked havoc in Dorset. By 792, the brethren of Lyminge (Romney Marsh) had abandoned their monastery to take refuge in Canterbury and King Offa was preparing for the defence of Kent against ‘pagan peoples’. The Chronicles catalogue subsequent assaults set against a backdrop of Anglo-Saxon infighting, regicide and famine. The sandy beaches of Northumbria were perfect for landing longships and Jarrow, further down the coast, was an attractive target. There, a severe storm whipped up, vessels were wrecked and some of the raiders drowned, whilst others, including their leader, were killed by locals as they staggered ashore. Afterwards, the ‘Northmen’ turned their attentions elsewhere, surrounding the Hardanger Fjord, in Norway. Confusingly, in the same text, they are also described as ‘the first ships of the Danish men who sought out the land of the English race’. This ambiguity may be explained by the fact that both the Norwegian and Danish raiders were ‘heathens’ and spoke their own dialect of Danish! Now, it is generally understood that the ‘Northmen’ or Norsemen came from Norway and the Danes from Denmark and Northern Germany. Driven by a lust for adventure or a shortage of prospects and viable land at home, they chose to visit (and later settle) terrain similar to their homelands; the Norwegians opted for Scotland and Northern England and the Danes the flatlands of Lincolnshire and East Anglia. Moreover, whilst the Old-Norse word Vikingr translates as ‘pirate’, the term ‘to go a-Viking’ simply means to partake in an overseas

leading to the colonisation of Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, Dublin and beyond. Raids on England were sporadic until 835, when a highly organised ‘ship-army’ of Danes landed in Cornwall, marking a new reign of terror. Until recently, there was controversy over the nationality of these ‘Viking’ pirates. The ‘three ships of Northmen’ who ravaged Dorset are recorded as ‘from Hordaland’, an area expedition, a traditional Scandinavian summer pastime, which could involve trade and reconnaissance as well as piracy. Of course, raiding parties were not just confined to Britain but across the whole of Christendom, where monastic houses with their treasuries guarded by docile monks were rich pickings and easy prey. Northern France was a particular favourite, and it was there that ‘Northman’ Rollo of Ålesund (died 930) founded the Norman dynasty, which produced William the Conqueror. (Hence, the similarity of the vessels embroidered on the Bayeux tapestry to longships.) Such was the frequency and ferocity of ‘Viking’ attacks there that, by the mid-ninth century, the brethren of St Medard de Soissons added the following prayer to their liturgy: ‘Deliver us, oh Lord, from the savage race of Northmen which lays waste our realm’. Various conflations are in circulation.

Lindisfarne gravestone depicting Vikings (9th-century)

Rollo, First Duke of Normandy

Meanwhile, back in England, attempts were made to buy off the intruders with protection money or Danegeld, raised by taxation. But, as the saying goes, once you pay the Danegeld you will never get rid of the Danes, and although the enemy withdrew, they inevitably returned for the next instalment the following year. And, by now, the invaders were organised into larger contingents, which enabled them to progress inland on stolen horses, capturing strongholds like York and London, overwintering and plotting the next season’s plunder. During the winter of 869/70, a ‘Great Heathen Army’ crossed from Mercia into East Anglia and camped at Thetford. King Edmund and his troops put up a brave resistance but he was captured and martyred for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. Afterwards, the enemy rampaged across the land, ‘and did for all the monasteries that they came to’. The twelfth-century Peterborough additions to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, bewail that its abbey did not escape, for the Danes ‘burned and demolished, killed the abbot and monks and all that was found there’.

This dire state of affairs continued well into the reign of King Alfred of Wessex (c.848-99), until he decisively defeated the Danes at Edington (Wiltshire), in 878. Alfred made a truce with Guthrum, their leader, who showed his commitment by converting to Christianity, with Alfred acting as his godfather. It was agreed in the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum that Guthrum would rule England roughly north of Watling Street, the old Roman thoroughfare which bisected Map of Danelaw (Wikipedia)

the kingdom of Mercia. His domain included Yorkshire, East Anglia and ‘Danish’ or Eastern Mercia (including Tribland) and the ‘shires’ or administrative areas of The Five Boroughs, namely Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford. The region became known as Danelaw, with Jorvik (York) as its capital. Alfred, whose capital was at Winchester, retained Wessex, Cornwall, ‘English’ or western Mercia, Kent and Surrey.

Written information concerning the ‘Vikings’ in our area is scant. Ingulph’s History of the Abbey of Croyland relates that the area was pillaged, first by the Danes and then by King Burgred of Mercia (852-74), who sequestrated the estates of Peakirk Monastery to pay his troops. We cannot vouch for the accuracy of ‘Ingulph’s’ account since the work is an early-fifteenth-century forgery, concocted to promote the antiquity of Crowland and stake a claim to territory (including Peakirk) from its neighbours and rivals, Peterborough Abbey and Spalding Priory. ‘Ingulph’ makes no mention of Crowland Abbey succumbing to marauding Danes. Not surprisingly, since it wasn’t founded until c.972, a century after Peterborough was sacked!

Nevertheless, in an attempt to hoodwink his readers, ‘Ingulph’ completely overlooks this fact and describes with great relish how the Crowland monks hastened to Peterborough in the aftermath of the Danish attack and surveyed a scene of total devastation. In addition to the massacre of the entire complement of 84 monks and their abbot, the relics of the Mercian princesses, St Kyneburgha and St Kyneswitha, were desecrated. This is astonishing since the sisters’ bones were peacefully reposing in their church at Castor at the time. It was not until after the second phase of Danish incursions (1013-16) during the reign of Æthelræd II (the Unready), that they were uprooted and re-interred in a purpose-built chapel in Peterborough.

Despite ‘Ingulph’s’ flaws, and the dearth of ‘hard’ archaeology, there is plenty of other evidence to substantiate that the Vikings were active in our area. Take place-names for example. Even before Alfred and Guthrum made peace, in 878, economic migrants had been landing in family groups, putting down roots, farming and co-existing in reasonable harmony with the locals. They certainly did not find an empty landscape for many of our settlements already existed in prime locations and had been given descriptive Romano-British or Anglo-Saxon monikers: Castor (‘fortress’), Ashton (‘ash-tree farm’), Bainton (‘Badda’s farm’), Etton (‘Etta’s farm’), Maxey (‘Maccus’ island’), Ufford (‘Uffa’s ford’) and Barnack (‘Warrior’s oak’), etc. It seems that, at first, incomers may have been confined to marginal lands, like Southorpe (‘southern outlying farm’ {of Barnack}) and Deeping Gate (‘road to {Market} Deeping’). In contrast, there may have been more of a concentration at the fen-edge hamlet of Peakirk, causing the Old-English Peichirche (‘Pega’s church’) to be Scandinavianised. We also have the manorial site of Torpel. Its first recorded lord-of-themanor was Robert Torpel, a knight of Peterborough Abbey and Battle of Hastings veteran, who was rewarded with estates across Tribland. We may assume that Robert was a Norman of ‘Northmen’ ancestry and it seems that Torpel represents the diminutive form of the OldNorse ‘thorp’, a dependency of Helpston. Across the Welland, in the area once known as ‘Stamfordshire’, equally descriptive ‘Viking’ place-names containing the elements ‘thorp’, ‘by’ (‘settlement’) and ‘toft’ (‘houseplot’) are plentiful. Along the fen-edge and bounded by Car Dyke, we have Langtoft (‘long house-plot’), Thurlby (‘Thorulf’s settlement‘) and its northern outlier, Northorpe, whilst on the uplands lie Toft and Manthorpe (Manni’s thorp’), outposts of Lound, and Obsthorpe (‘Ubi’s thorp’) and Wilsthorpe (‘Vifill’s thorp’) of Anglo-Saxon Braceborough. Whilst, to the south, on the outskirts of Peterborough are Dogsthorpe (‘Dodd’s thorp’) and Gunthorpe (‘Gunni’s thorp’) and, in town, Cumbergate, Cowgate, Priestgate and Westgate. Scandinavian surnames survive too. Triblanders called Barnes, Bland, Bond, Brand, Goodman, Grimes, Hanks, Harald, Kettle, Orme, Osbourne, Roffe, Thorold, Starbuck and anything ending in ‘by’ may well have ‘Viking’ blood in their veins!

As the Danish settlers intermingled and intermarried with the indigenous folk, ‘Viking’ or Old Norse words began to infiltrate the vocabulary: bag, berserk (originally a frenzied warrior or the coat he wore), blunder, egg, freckles, husband, keel, knife, knit, knot, lad, plough, scare, skin, skirt, window, work, write and, appropriately, mug and ransack, activities that some of the newcomers’ forefathers had excelled at. Thursday, evolved from ‘Thor’s Day’, was dedicated to the Norse god of thunder. Conversely, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday were named after Anglo-Saxon deities, Tiw, Woden and Friga, the equivalents of the Norse, Tyr, Odin and Freyja.

Like the Anglo-Saxons and their predecessors, when it came to constructing their homes, the Danes relied upon locally sourced timber for walls and reeds, shingle and turf for roofs. Unfortunately, all these materials decay leaving only the stains of postholes and, perhaps, scorched earth or stones from hearths for archaeologists to scratch their heads over. To get an inkling of how the Vikings lived in Tribland, we need to look at parallel sites elsewhere. Large halls have been excavated at Cheddar, Goltho, North Elmham and Raunds and single-storey houses with workshops have been identified in most Viking-Age towns. A row of structures, separated by wooden fences, once fronted Stamford High Street, the main road through the late-ninthcentury Danish burh, which ran from the present Red Lion Square to Marks and Spencer’s. However, the best place to see how the Vikings lived is at Jorvik Museum, where you can experience the sights, sounds

Reconstructed mead-hall, Borg, Lofoten Islands

and smells of tenth-century York’s Coppergate. We can all conjure up images of Vikings feasting, sparring and swigging home brew from cows’ horns in the great meadhall as a prelude to another expedition. But in a society whose livelihood was based on commerce, fishing and farming, rather than fighting, and whose members had to rise early, evenings would have been spent relaxing around the central hearth, playing board games, knitting, woodcarving, music making, retelling stories from Norse mythology and sagas and reminiscing. At the World Heritage site of L’Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland (Viking Vinland), a comfortable longhouse has been reconstructed on the site of a well-designed, early eleventh-century homestead (excavated during the 1960s). Specific areas are dedicated to work like textile production and food preparation, with sleeping quarters for an extended family and guests, offering an as-accurate-as-youcan-get glimpse of life on the farm Viking style. When we visited, we were entertained by a skald (bard) who sang extracts from heroic poems with a broad Canadian accent!

The L’Anse aux Meadows pioneers lived there for only about 30 years. The placename, cited in Norse sagas, means ‘the cove of the jellyfish (méduses)’, which may explain their decision to leave.

Longhouse for extended family, Newfoundland

Loom

Vinland skald

Carding wool

Turf-built smithy, Newfoundland

Back in Blighty, the Danish settlers were here to stay and intermingled with the indigenous population through trade and marriage. Within a generation, most had embraced Christianity, though many hedged their bets and simultaneously remained loyal to their old Norse gods. As well as their culture, folklore and religion, they brought to their adopted community technology and key skills, such as pottery, metalworking, stone carving and weaving. The natives were obviously impressed by their range of good-quality, lead-glazed Stamford-ware, which became the ‘must-have’ crockery throughout Tribland and Danelaw from the mid-tenth century onwards. It was so widespread by the eleventh century, that it accounted for almost 25% of all pottery in use in York and Lincoln. Indeed, in the heart of Peakirk, no test pit was deemed thoroughly excavated until PAST had unearthed at least one sherd of Stamford ware

Stamford ware. The immigrants were also adept at metalworking, developed from centuries of experience of forging weapons, ploughshares and jewellery, ranging from the cheap and cheerful to the exquisite and included brooches and pins for holding together garments.

Once King Cnut of Denmark (1016-35) had secured England ...there appears to have been a new trend in monumental masonry. Some memorials took the form of stone crosses, several fragments of which are displayed in Barnack church, whilst a whole section is preserved in the wall of an eighteenth-century dovecote at Sutton.

In the north, the ‘Vikings’ initially erected distinctive ‘hogs-back’ grave-markers to commemorate their dead. Once King Cnut of Denmark (1016-35) had secured England after the second wave of invasions, married Æthelræd II’s widow, Emma, and converted to Christianity, there appears to have been a new trend in monumental masonry. Some memorials took the form of stone crosses, several fragments of which are displayed in Barnack church, whilst a whole section is preserved in the wall of an eighteenth-century dovecote at Sutton. The base of another redundant crossshaft, decorated with a blend of Anglo-Saxon and Norse themes, was redeployed to block a window in Peakirk Hermitage chapel before being relegated to use as a paving-block in a farmyard. It was rescued by the Rector of Spalding and returned to the Hermitage when it was converted into a parish hall, in 1880. Alas! This unique sculpture has been sold to a private collector and has left Peakirk forever.

Flat grave-markers were in vogue too. In 2011, an entire slab was recovered from Barnack churchyard. Its design is reflected in the morerefined ‘strap-work’ patterns on the capitals of the Norman or Romanesque pillars at Castor and Sutton churches, carved a century later, c.1124. Another reminder that the Normans were Northmen too, descendants of Rollo of Ålesund and his followers. Peakirk cross-shaft (c.1025)

Barnack grave-slab (c.1025)

No doubt, those of us of a certain age learned at school that Vikings wore horned and even winged helmets. The fictitious Havelok the Dane ‘the virtuous Viking’, his foster-father Grim (erroneously credited with founding Grimsby) and Hereward ‘the Wake’(reputedly of Danish descent but claimed to be from Bourne) were portrayed as sporting them with aplomb. Needless to say, they were totally impractical for an axe-wielding warrior, as it would have been knocked askew as soon as he raised his sword arm. Still, the myth endured and in 1970, a horned Viking adorned the cover of one of our iconic Ladybird books (though subsequent editions were amended). And yet another horned helm emerged in Dr Who as late as 2015. The tradition is not based on archaeological finds but, embarrassingly, was invented in Britain, the confection of Victorian illustrators!

So, were the Vikings really as bad as we are led to believe? The case against them is undoubtedly biased since, in Anglo-Saxon times, few other than churchmen were literate and they wrote only from the victims’ point of view. Norse sagas, immortalised and embellished through oral tradition, confirm that they were a bloodthirsty and greedy lot. Yet, ‘Vikings’ were also wellorganised, daring, democratic, imaginative, industrious, inventive, multi-talented and hot on hygiene. Regardless of heritage, I believe that there is a streak of Viking in everyone who seeks adventure or sallies forth into the unknown; in people who forge a new life in a faraway place; in those who embark upon a mid-life career change or a challenging project that others would baulk at and who succeed against all odds. A new year is fast approaching and who knows what it will bring? New enterprises, new horizons or simply a yearning for a quiet life? Whatever’s your aim . . . Skol! Yo! Havelok! (1889)

Ladybird book (1970)