POLITICAL HISTORY 



umbria among his followers, who exchanged the sword for the plough. It would 

 appear that this division was confined to Deira, the later Yorkshire. Of the 

 fate of the western parts of the kingdom no historical record survives save 

 that Healfdene in 875 harried the Picts and Strathclyde Welsh, on which 

 occasion he probably destroyed Carlisle. That the Northmen settled in con- 

 siderable numbers from the mouth of the Dee to the Solway is, however, 

 proved by the evidence of place and personal names. It seems on the whole 

 probable that most if not all of these settlements were made by the western 

 wing of the invaders, who came round the north coast of Scotland. South of 

 the Ribble their position points strongly in this direction. They lie thickest 

 on both sides of the Mersey estuary — in the Wirral peninsula and round (West) 

 Derby,"' extending northwards along the coast to the mouth of the Ribble 

 and some distance inland." But east of a line drawn from Widnes to the latter 

 river there are practically no Scandinavian place-names in South Lancashire."* 

 North of the Ribble this evidence of approach by sea and not by land 

 fails us, for here Scandinavian names extend right across the county. An 

 attempt has been made to demonstrate the western provenance of the settle- 

 ments in Furness (and the Lake District) by a different Une of proof which 

 involves the double assumption that the Scandinavians who came down the 

 west coast were necessarily Norwegians, and that the names of their new 

 homes can be philologically distinguished from those settled by men of 

 Danish blood, that thwaite, for instance, which abounds in the Lake District, 

 is a purely Norwegian suffix, and by exclusively Danish." But it is certain 

 that at least from the middle of the eighth century Danes found their way 

 into the Irish Sea, and bys are not unknown in Norway and in Furness itself, 

 nor thwaites in undoubtedly Danish districts. The predominance of one or 

 the other depends upon the nature of the country or the settlement rather 

 than upon racial and dialectical differences. The date of these Scandinavian 

 settlements in what is now Lancashire can only be approximately fixed. 

 Some if not all may have preceded the Danish conquest of Deira, for that event 

 happened nearly seventy years after the first appearance of the Northmen 

 in the Irish Sea, since when, as stated, they had already planted themselves in 

 Ireland and the Isle of Man." In any case we seem justified in assuming 

 that their settlements between Ribble and Mersey were made before the 

 conquest of that district by Edward the Elder and Athelstan at the end of 

 the first quarter of the tenth century. This assumption is strengthened by 

 the fact that in 930 the land between the Ribble and the Cocker already 

 bore the unmistakably Norse name of Amounderness." There is authority, 

 though it is not contemporary, for the presence of Northmen in the Lake 



"There is a Thingwall (Old Norse ThingvOllr= field of assembly) on each side of the estuary. The by 

 suffix is fairly common. 



" Mr. Henry Harrison {Place Names of the Liverpool District, 7) makes out a list of twenty-five places 

 in the hundred of West Derby which have Scandinavian names as against eighty-three bearing Anglo-Saxon 

 appellations ; but some of the twenty-five are perhaps doubtfiil cases. 



" Anglezarke {Jnlafsargh) is a certain, Ince (in Makerfield), a possible exception. 



" Robert FeTguson, Northmen in Cumi. a«il PFestmU. ; R. C. Ferguson, Hist, of Cumb. 151-3. For a 

 map with conjectural restorations of the original forms of the names in part of this district see H. S. Cowper, 

 tiawkshead. 



'* War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill (Rolls Ser.) ; Green, Conquest of Engl 65-7, 276. 



" Hist, of the Ch. of York (Rolls Ser.), iii, l . Amounderness is ' the promontory of Agmundr.' The 

 preservation of the Old Norse genitive flexion ar (Agmundarnes) is, according to Mr. Stevenson, very rare, 

 and suggests strong Scandinavian influence in the district. 



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