Two hundred years pass onwards from the coming of Saint Aidan to Northumbria, and we are again among scenes of famine, sword, and fire. Let us see what the records of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles have to tell.

These records show that the history of the fifth and sixth centuries was being repeated at the close of the eighth century, and during the ninth. They tell us of the inroads of a new race of free-booters, men of Northern Europe—coming from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—men among whom was a passionate love of the sea and an overwhelming desire for the plunder of other lands. Sea-pirates they are now often called, but we must remember that among them what we should call piracy was looked upon as the most honourable career in life.

Each year as Spring came round these Danish sea-rovers would gather together their men, take advantage of the north-east winds, and sail away to Britain, or the northern coast of France, or even to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and return laden with plunder on the coming of Autumn.

One thing the records which have been quoted make very clear. In 787 ‘first came three ships of the Northmen’; less than fifty years later King Egbert of Wessex was fighting against the crews of thirty-five vessels; and in 851 the fleet of ships entering the Thames numbered no fewer than three hundred and fifty. What does this astonishing increase in numbers mean? It can mean only one thing—that the Northmen found their marauding expeditions to England profitable. England, in other words, was worth plundering. In fact, England was so prosperous a country, and its churches and monasteries contained such treasures of gold and silver, that the Northmen found it worth their while to build more ‘long-ships’—as their ships of war were called—in order that they might plunder it more completely.

But as time passed away the Northmen came not merely to plunder and return home, but to seek new homes in the fertile lands of Britain. In later records we find mention of peace being made between the Angles and the Danes without the fighting of a battle:—

Two years after the last record Alfred, King of the West Saxons, made with Guthrum, the Danish leader, a treaty by which all Northern and Eastern England—all England, that is, north of Watling Street, the Roman road leading from London to Chester—was ceded to the Danes to be ruled according to their laws. Henceforth this district becomes known as the Danelagh.

So history goes on repeating itself. For just as the Angles and Saxons had warred against the Britons, and then made settlements and turned to forest-clearing and ploughing, sowing and reaping; so a few centuries later came the Danes to make war upon them in turn, and finally to take possession of uncleared and hitherto unclaimed lands whereon to make for themselves new homes.

Very numerous settlements were made by the Danes in the part of England known as the Danelagh, and most of these may be recognised by the village names of to-day. What to an Angle were a tūn and a wīc^[13] were to a Dane a bȳr^[13] and a thorp. Hence the name-endings by and thorp denote respectively the sites of a Danish farmhouse and a Danish village; and it is interesting to pick out such names on a large-scale map, and see how they occur in groups or succeed one another along the line of an old highway.

Thus in the East Riding, within a radius of five miles of the Anglian settlements of Bridlington and Hessle, we shall find the Danish names Hilderthorpe, Wilsthorpe, Fraisthorpe, Haisthorpe, Caythorpe, Carnaby, Bessingby, Sewerby; and Anlaby, Willerby, Skidby, Wauldby, Tranby, Ferriby. Other groups will be found round York, Malton, and Pocklington. The best example of the occurrence of a succession of Danish names along the line of an ancient highway is to be found on the other side of the Humber. Here, along the road from the Humber to the old Roman station at Caistor, passing through the Anglian settlements of Horkstow and Brigg, there are no fewer than fifteen villages whose names end in by, and one of them has in addition the suffix Thorpe.^[14]

Place names ending in by and thorp by no means exhaust the list of Danish settlements. A complete list of name-endings which are Norse in origin would include the following:—

Examples of all these can be found on the map of Yorkshire, and most of them occur in the East Riding. But it must be remembered that the modern place name is not always a sure guide in this direction. Names have in many cases changed during the course of centuries. For example, the name ‘Nunburnholme,’ which looks Danish in origin, was originally Brunham; while, on the other hand, ‘Kilnsea’ and ‘Withernsea’ have replaced the older Danish names Hornes and Witfornes.

The two name-endings which conclude the list given above are very interesting, because it was the Danish word vīk^[15] that gave rise to the name by which the sea-rovers became generally known in our country. Vikings, or men of the creeks—so they were called; and so may we call them, if we remember that their letter v stood for the sound of our w, and that their name is to be pronounced Wik-ings and not, as it is so commonly mispronounced, Vi-kings.

A hardy and a daring race were these old Vikings. There were no ‘wasters’ and few ‘slackers’ among them. When a Viking’s son was born, the babe was shown to its father for his approval or disapproval. If the father liked the look of his babe, and thought that it showed signs of growing up into a manly and sturdy boy, it was taken back to its mother to be ‘raised.’ But woe betide the babe that looked puny and sickly, or that showed signs of deformity! The father’s orders were that it should be taken outside his dwelling and exposed to the cold so that it died.

‘What a cruel custom!’ you will think. Yes, so it was. But the Vikings lived in an age when men looked upon things very differently from the way in which we look upon them. In a cruel age the Northmen were so cruel, and the fear that they inspired in the hearts of the people whose lands they plundered was so great, that the monks inserted in their Litany the prayer:—

There is little wonder that, with such a rearing as the children of the Vikings received, a race of warriors grew up among whom was the unwritten law that ‘a Dane who wished to acquire the character of a brave man should always attack two enemies, stand firm and receive the attack of three, retire only one pace from four, and flee from no fewer than five.’

Social distinctions among the Danes were similar to those among the Angles. In place of the Anglian eorl, ceorl, and theow were the Danish jarl,^[16] karl, and thrall; with this difference—that the Danish jarl was a military commander and not a man who could pride himself on being descended from the gods. It is from the word ‘jarl’ that our English word ‘earl’ has arisen.

Like their cousins the Angles, the Northmen were heathens when they invaded our shores.

The Wōden, Tīw, and Frīg of the Angles were the Odin, Tȳr and Freya of the Danes. But their greatest god was Thor, the Thunderer, whose name will be recognised in the name for the fifth day of the week.

Like the Angles, also, the heathen Northmen eventually became Christians, and evidences of their Christianity have come down to us. In the vicarage garden at North Frodingham is a broken cross head of Danish tenth-century workmanship, and in the churchyard at Nunburnholme is preserved a broken cross shaft sculptured with figures of men, women, children, and animals.

But the most interesting relic of Danish Christianity is a sun-dial now built high up in one of the interior walls of the church at Aldbrough. Round it, in Anglian letters, is the inscription:—

Put into modern English this would read:—

Though written in Anglian letters, the names Ulf and Gunvör are both Danish names, and the word ‘Hānum’ is likewise a purely Danish word. Who this Ulf was we do not know, for the name was a common one. One jarl Ulf married the sister of King Cnut, and another was the owner of lands at Aldbrough and Brandesburton during the reign of King Edward the Confessor.