Danelaw
The
Danelaw (from the
Old English Dena lagu,
Danish:
Danelagen ) is an 11th century name for an area of northern and eastern
England under the administrative control of the
Vikings (or Danes, or Norsemen) from the late
9th century. The term is also used to describe the set of legal terms and definitions established between
Alfred the Great and the Viking
Guthrum, which were set down following Guthrum's defeat at the
Battle of Edington in
878. Later, around
886, the
Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum was created, which established the boundaries of their kingdoms and made some provision for relations between the English and the Danes.
The area occupied by the Danelaw was roughly the area to the north of a line drawn between
London and
Chester.
Five fortified towns became particularly important in the Danelaw:
Leicester,
Lincoln,
Nottingham,
Stamford and
Derby, broadly covering the area now called the
East Midlands. These strongholds became known as the "
Five Boroughs".
Borough derives from the Old English word
burg, meaning a fortified and walled enclosure containing several households â€" anything from a large stockade to a fortified town. The meaning has since developed further.
From about
800 AD on, 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 Osbert, as well as the usurper
Ælle. The Danes then placed an Englishman,
Ecgberht, on the throne of Northumbria as a puppet.
[Flores Historiarum: Rogeri de Wendover, Chronica sive flores historiarum, p. 298-9. ed. H. Coxe, Rolls Series, 84 (4 vols, 1841-42)]In response to this Danish invasion,
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.
The Danes under Ivar the Boneless continued their invasion in 870 by defeating
King Edmund at
Hoxne and thereby conquering
East Anglia[Haywood, John. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings, p.62. Penguin Books. ©1995.]. Once again, the brothers Æthelred and Alfred attempted to stop Ivar by attacking the Danes, this time at
Reading. However, this time they were repulsed with heavy losses. The Danes pursued, and on
January 7 871, Æthelred and Alfred defeated the Danes at
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).
Shortly thereafter, on
April 23 871, King Æthelred died and
Alfred succeeded him as King of Wessex. However, 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 would last until 874. The Danish leader, Ivar, and the Mercian leader,
Burgred, would die during this campaign, with Ivar being succeeded by
Guthrum the Old, who finished the campaign against Mercia. The Danes had in ten years gained control over
East Anglia,
Northumbria and
Mercia, leaving only
Wessex to resist.
[Carr, Michael. Alfred the Great Strikes Back, p. 65. Military History Journal. June 2001. ]Guthrum and the Danes brokered peace with Wessex in 876, when they captured the fortresses of
Wareham and
Exeter the following year.
Alfred laid siege to the Danes, who were forced to surrender after reinforcements were lost in a storm. Two years later, Guthrum once again attacked Alfred, this time surprising him by attacking him while he wintered in
Chippenham, Wiltshire. King Alfred was saved when the Danish army coming from his rear was miraculously destroyed by inferior forces at
Countisbury Hill. Alfred was forced into hiding for a time, returning in the spring of 878 to gather an army and attack Guthrum at
Edington. The Danes were defeated and retreated to
Chippenham, where King Alfred laid siege and soon forced them to surrender. As a term of the surrender, King Alfred demanded that Guthrum be
baptized a
Christian, which he did (with King Alfred serving as his
godfather).
[Hadley, D. M. The Northern Danelaw: Its Social Structure, c. 800-1100. p. 310. Leicester University Press. ©2000.] This peace lasted until 884, when Guthrum once again attacked Wessex. He was defeated, with Guthrum and Alfred agreeing to peace through the aptly named
Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum.
[The Kalender of Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmunds, ed. R.H.C. Davis, Camden 3rd ser., 84 (1954), xlv-xlvi.] 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 these wave of immigrations are complex and bound to the political situation in
Scandinavia at that time; moreover, they occurred at a time when the Viking forces were also establishing their presence in the
Hebrides, in the
Orkneys, the
Faroe Islands, in
Iceland, in
Russia,
Belarus and
Ukraine (see
Kievan Rus').
The Danelaw was gradually eroded by
Anglo-Saxon raids in later years.
Edward the Elder (reigned
899 -
924) later incorporated the Danelaw into his newfound
Kingdom of England.
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 very compatible; for example the Viking
wapentake, the standard for land division in the Danelaw, was effectively interchangeable with the
hundred.
The influence of this period of
Scandinavian settlement can still be seen in the North of England and the East Midlands, most evidently in
place names: name endings such as "by" or "thorp" being particular giveaways.
Old Norse and
Old English were still mutually comprehensible and the mixed language of the Danelaw caused the incorporation of many Norse words into the
English language, including the word
law itself, as well as the
third person plural pronouns
they,
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 anomalous territory of
Rutland.
Major archaeological sites that bear testimony to the Danelaw are few, but perhaps the most famous is the site at
York, which is often said to derive its name from the
Norse,
Jorvik, though 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), which in turn was derived from a preexisting name for the town, spelled
Eboracum in Latin sources. Other sites include the cremation site at
Ingoldsby.
When considering the Danelaw as agreed in the treaty with
Alfred the Great, in general, 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.
*
List of generic forms in British place names*
UK topics*
Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw,
Frank M. Stenton, London,
1910
