The Danes and their Quarter.—London Bridge was not only a roadway over the river: it was a fortification linking the walled city to the South-work and barring progress up the river. The Knytlinga Saga refers to this when it says: “King Cnut went with all his host to Tempsa (the Thames). In the river was built a large castle, so that a ship-host might not go up the river.”
It was natural that a suburb should spring up under the shelter of the bridge along the Strand, which is probably a Roman way.
Fig. 26.—Danish Sword
from the Thames.
In Fabyan’s Chronicle is the following curious passage referring to the reign of Ethelred: “In the third year [982] a great part of the city was wasted by fire. But you shall understand that the city of London had most building from Ludgate towards Westminster, and little or none where the heart of the city is now, except in divers places was housing, but without order, so that many cities in England passed London in building, as I have known by an old book sometime at Guildhall named Domysdaye.” From another passage quoted below ([p. 189]) it would appear that this book was about the age of the great Domesday (1087).
FitzStephen also tells us that the Palace of Westminster was joined to the city by a populous suburb. In early thirteenth-century documents the Strand is sometimes called Vico Dacorum. The church still called St. Clement Danes certainly, as we shall see, dates from before the Conquest, and in some special way was the church of the Danes. The early existence of this western suburb would explain satisfactorily the name of Westminster, and possibly its origin. We first hear of the Abbey, independently of its own documents, towards the end of the tenth century, when in 997 Elfwic signs a charter as abbot of Westminster.[119] It is probable that Cnut was the first to choose Westminster for a royal residence, and Harold I. was buried here. All these facts go to show that the Strand in Cnut’s day had become the Danish quarter. And London itself had become so Danish that Malmesbury says Harold I. was elected by the Danes and the citizens of London, who from long intercourse with these barbarians had almost entirely adopted their customs.
An account in the Jomsvikinga Saga, however inaccurate in detail, contains some interesting allusions to the Danes in London.
We are told that Sweyn made warfare in the land of King Ethelred and drove him out of the land; he put “Thingamannalid” in two places. The one in “Lundunaborg” was ruled by Eilif Thorgilsson, who had sixty ships in the “Temps,” the other was north in Slesvik. The Thingamen made a law that no one should stay away a whole night. They gathered at the Bura church every night when a large bell was rung, but without weapons. He who had command in the town [London] was Eadric Streona. Ulfkel Snilling ruled over the northern part of England [East Anglia]. The power of the Thingamen was great. There was a fair there [in London] twice in every twelvemonth, one about midsummer, and the other about midwinter. The English thought it would be the easiest to slay the Thingamen while Cnut was young (he was ten winters old) and Sweyn dead. About Yule waggons went into the town to the market, and they were all tented over by the treacherous advice of Ulfkel Snilling and Ethelred’s sons. Thord, a man of the Thingamannalid, went out of the town to the house of his mistress, who asked him to stay, because the death was planned of all the Thingamen by English men concealed in the waggons, when the Danes should go unarmed to the church. Thord went into the town and told it to Eilif. They heard the bell ringing, and when they came to the churchyard there was a great crowd, who attacked them. Eilif escaped with three ships and went to Denmark. Some time after, Edmund was made king. After three winters Cnut, Thorkel, and Eric went with eight hundred ships to England. Thorkel had thirty ships, and slew Ulfkel Snilling, and married Ulfhild his wife, daughter of King Ethelred. With Ulfkel was slain every man on sixty ships, and Cnut took Lundunaborg.
The massacre of the Danes at the “Bura church” must be the same event as is noticed by Stow in his account of St. Clement Danes, and also by Matthew of Westminster under the year 1012. Stow seems to suggest that it was in consequence of an attack on Chertsey Abbey. Messrs. Napier and Stevenson, in a recent reference to this story in their Crawford Charters, are “inclined to think that this account of the fate of the Jomsborg Thingamenn is based on real events.” They have found Eilif and Thordr signing charters for Cnut. The fight with Ulfkel was at Ringmere, near Thetford.