The Danes in Lancashire and Yorkshire

by S. W. Partington

[Settlements]

[CHAPTER II.]
Settlements.

From the year 876 the Danes became colonists and settlers. Raid and plunder gave place to peaceful pursuits. The English Chronicle says that in "this year Halfdene apportioned the lands of Northumbria; and they henceforth continued ploughing and tilling them." This colonisation of Deira by the Danes was soon followed in other districts. The greater part of central Britain with the whole of the north and east came entirely under Scandinavian rule.

THE VIKING SETTLEMENTS

In 877 trading is recorded by the Sagas from Norway, in a shipload of furs, hides, tallow and dried fish, which were exchanged for wheat, honey, wine and cloth. Thus early was established the increase in comfort and wealth, as evidenced by the erection of Christian monuments early in the tenth century.

The origin of "long-weight" and "long-hundred" count is traceable to the Danish settlements. This peculiar reckoning survives in the selling of cheese 120 lbs. to the cwt., and in the counting of eggs, 120 to the hundred. The timber trade counts 120 deals to the hundred. On the East Coast fish are counted 132 to the hundred. Six score to the hundred is still popular in Westmorland measure of crops and timber. This Danish method of count was derived from the Icelandic term "hundred" which meant 120.

Professor Maitland, in his "Domesday Book and Beyond," says that the number of sokemen or free men, owing certain dues to the Hundred Court, or to a lord, who were masters of their own land, like the customary tenants of Cumberland, was greater in Norfolk and Suffolk than in Essex, and that in Lincolnshire they formed nearly half the rural population. At the time of Domesday the number of serfs was greatest in the West of England, but none are recorded in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. In the manors bearing English names the sokemen numbered two-fifths of the population, while in those manors with Danish names they formed three-fifths of the population. (Boyle.)

In the Danelaw they represent the original freeholders of the settlement and owed obedience to the local "Thing" or "Trithing Court." In those districts which were not conquered by Edward the Elder the freeholders settled and prospered, and with the spread of Christianity they became independent proprietors and traders.