THE RUTHWELL Cross. 47 
They certainly destroyed, in their first onslaught, the abbeys 
and churches of central and east Yorkshire and County 
Durham; but the Archbishop of York found a secure refuge 
no farther away than Addingham, in Wharfedale, until the 
time, only twelve years after the first invasion, when the Danes 
elected a Christian king. Meanwhile, in 875-6 they raided 
Northumberland, burnt Carlisle, and marched through Dum- 
friesshire, no doubt by the Roman road, to attack the Strath- 
clyders and the Picts of Galloway; but they made no stay in 
these parts, for in 876 Halfdan dealt out the lands of North- 
umbria (i.e., part of Yorkshire and Durham) to his followers, 
and they thenceforth continued ploughing and tilling them, 
as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says. In the raid to the north- 
west most likely they sacked Hoddom, but probably passed 
Ruthwell, off the main line, unnoticed. Early raids, like 
Robert Bruce’s in Cumberland, kept pretty closely to the 
roads, and did not spread out widely over the country. 
Now, when the Danes settled down and continued 
ploughing and tilling, they very soon adopted the manners 
and religion of che country. They must have required monu- 
ments for their dead, when they were once converted. They 
did not, like the Normans, bring in a ready-made art of 
masonry, though they had their own style in wood-carving 
(e.g., the grotesque figures in the Tune ship, dated by Dr 
Haakon Schetelig to about this time, Tuneskibet, Kristiania, 
1917, p. 10) and metal-work. Any monuments they set up 
must have been made by such Anglian workmen as remained 
(for the Angles were not exterminated, though the best work- 
men seem to have left the country; there are traces of their 
emigration to the Pictish North), gradually assimilating 
Danish and Scandinavian taste, and creating the art of the 
Viking Age. And even monuments to Angles under Danish 
rule must have approximated more and more to Danish ideas 
of art. 
For example, the cross at Collingham to Erswith (the 
false reading ‘‘ Onswini’’ has obscured the dating) shows 
scroll-work debased into straps (Fig 26) and beasts which, 
though Anglian in origin, are becoming roth century dragons. 
