The Danelaw, 9th-11th century
/The Regions and Culture of the Danelaw
The Danelaw was a product of the peace agreed between Alfred (the Great), King of Wessex, and Guthrum, King of East Anglia, in the late 9th century (c.878 – 890). This peace was made up of two texts: the Treaty of Wedmore (also known as the Treaty of Chippenham, hereafter Wedmore) and the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum (hereafter Alfred-Guthrum). Wedmore established a peace between the West-Saxons and the Vikings following a decades-long intermittent conflict and saw Guthrum and several of his men baptised in the Christian faith by Alfred personally. We only know of this peace because of accounts within the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles; no copies of this agreement survive in other medieval manuscripts.1 Alfred-Guthrum established the Danelaw through the creation of its western bounds and introduced new regulations to aid the relationship. Copies of the Alfred-Guthrum text do survive within medieval manuscripts.2 The Danelaw was composed of five regions: the Eastern Danelaw, the Five Boroughs (which were the administrative heart of the Danelaw), the Northern Danelaw, the Outer Danelaw, and the Southern Danelaw (Hart, p. 9). The regions of the Danelaw were also sub-divided into many districts but were principally made up of the latterly established historic counties and ridings listed below. Each region seems to have had its own distinct identity and feel depending upon whether it had its own ruler, its own coinage, and whether it had a close or distant affinity to the Five Boroughs and the rest of the heart of the Danelaw (Hart, pp. 8–19). The true extent of regional variation and intraregional influence within the Danelaw is still a topic of discussion. The distribution of Danes who settled within the Danelaw and the extent to which they imposed their customs and legal culture lies at the heart of this debate. It would seem feasible to suggest that whilst some regions wholly adopted Danish law and its customs, other regions – even individual districts – may have opted to continue to follow West-Saxon law and customs instead (Abrams, pp. 178–179). The Danelaw, therefore, was seemingly a place where Danish law was enforced to varying degrees according to its regions. Moreover, it was a socially constructed area because it was created by humans via a treaty, and subsequently maintained and developed.
Below is a list of the Danelaw regions and the latter historic counties which form them (Hart, pp. 8–19).
The Eastern Danelaw
Norfolk
Suffolk
Lindsey (Holland only)
The Outer Danelaw
Bedfordshire*
Huntingdonshire
Cambridgeshire
Northamptonshire
The Five Boroughs
Leicestershire
Derbyshire
Nottinghamshire
Lincolnshire
Lindsey (Kesteven only)
The Southern Danelaw
Buckinghamshire*
Middlesex
Hertfordshire*
Essex**
The Northern Danelaw
Yorkshire
Lindsey (the North, South and East Ridings)
*It is unclear whether all or only part of this county was within the Danelaw due to the Danelaw’s western bounds and conflicting evidence. **The governance of this county is contested.
The existence of two legal systems within the Danelaw may have affected the effectiveness of its western boundary and the variation of its route over time. It is generally accepted that the western bounds of the Danelaw could not have lasted more than seven years, due to subsequent events recorded within the Chronicles and some of the land-grants evident within extant charters (Davis, p. 806). The route of the boundary is especially problematic in the historic counties of Bedfordshire3 and with Essex.4 However, there exists no surviving positive evidence that the western bounds did change or what this new boundary’s route was. If the western bounds had changed, then it would seem likely that the whole of the latter historic counties of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire were incorporated into the Danelaw due to the subsequent accounts and charters (Davis, p. 803). This uncertainty questions the degree of enduring West Saxon and / or Danish influence within, as well as the extent of, the Outer and Southern Danelaw regions.
The Danelaw, the Danevirke and Offa’s Dyke
The problem of the Danelaw’s western bounds is especially pertinent following the sequencing of the Danevirke in Germany. The Danevirke is a monument located at the Isthmus of Schleswig, around 77km (about 48 miles) northwest of Hamburg and is composed of a series of earthworks defining a boundary close to today’s border between Germany and Denmark.5 There is archaeological evidence to suggest the boundary was re-used up to the 12th century, thanks to the work of Astrid Tummuscheit and Frauke Witte.6 This new evidence, combined with the work of Keith Ray and Ian Bapty,7 has led to the re-evaluation of the biographies of Offa’s Dyke and the Wan’s Dyke on the Welsh borders. It has also led to the convening of the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory Research Network.8 The reasons for the re-use of boundaries in the early medieval period are not wholly understood,9 and this is where the Danelaw’s western bounds could be helpful. The existence of the evocatively known Alfred-Guthrum Treaty Appendix,10 together with the Laws of Henry I,11 seems to suggest the western bounds of the Danelaw may have an extended biography, and may provide a possible rationale for re-use. Indeed, they may have potentially been re-used and re-purposed to provide the bounds for regional divides and perhaps to even afford an administrative measure to guarantee certain Danish customs.12
The Place Names and Material Culture of the Danelaw
There are many places throughout what was the Danelaw that could be said to be Danish in some way. The most obvious are the so-called Five Boroughs of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, and Stamford – which were the administrative heart of the area (Hart, p.16). There was also York, or Jorvik, the Danelaw “capital” where exceptionally preserved wooden objects and buildings at Coppergate gave a unique insight into life during the Viking Age.13 Place names with -býs or -thorps endings have been classically associated with Danish influence, for example Aylesby (Alesbý or “Ali’s Farm”) in Lincolnshire or Ashwellthorpe (Æscawellathorp or “Ashwell's remote farm or settlement”) in Norfolk (Cullen et al., p. 39; Watts, p. 23; p. 29). So too have places known as Grimston Hybrids where the ending -tūn (or -ton) is preceded by a Viking name, such as Thruxton (from the name Thorkel + -tūn) in Herefordshire or Gonalston (from the name Gunnolfr + -tūn) in Nottinghamshire.14 For the most part, the material culture of the Danelaw, such as the pottery, is indistinct and obscure from that of the West Saxons. Nevertheless studies, especially that of Jane Kershaw, have shown that many metal objects demonstrate distinctive Scandinavian features. Kershaw’s (pp. 20–41) study showed there were several distinguishing features to Scandinavian jewellery, including repeated brass use. Moreover, Scandinavian jewellery shows a greater variety of brooch shapes from trefoil to lozenge; they also had distinctive double or H-shaped pin fittings. Recognisable attachment loops, the use of tin on the reverse of some examples, and diagnostic decoration motifs are also features (Kershaw, p. 21). The Danelaw may have been a socially constructed area, but it was certainly a place that saw a complex hybrid political and societal culture develop. This hybrid culture appears to have left a legacy – one which we are only just beginning to understand today.15
Bibliography
Abrams, L., ‘King Edgar and the Men of the Danelaw’, in Edgar, King of the English, 959-975: New Interpretations, ed. D. G. Scragg (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 171–191. Baker, P. S. (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition (MS F) (D. S. Brewer, 2000). Bately, J. M. (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition (MS A) (D. S. Brewer, 1986). Cubbin, G. P. (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition (MS D) (D. S. Brewer, 1996). Cullen, P., R. Jones and D. N. Parson, Thorps in a Changing Landscape (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2011). Davis, R. H. C., ‘Alfred and Guthrum’s Frontier’, The English Historical Review 97 (385) (1982), pp. 803–810. Dobat, A. S., ‘Danevirke Revisited: An Investigation into Military and Socio-Political Organisation in South Scandinavia (c. AD 700 to 1100)’, Medieval Archaeology 52 (1) (2008), pp. 27–67. Downer, L. J. (ed.), Leges Henrici Primi (Clarendon Press, 1972). Dumville, D. N., ‘The Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum’, in Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar: Six Essays on Political, Cultural and Ecclesiastical Revival, ed. D. N. Dumville (Boydell Press, 1992), pp. 1–27. Fellows-Jenson, G., ‘Bursting the Bounds of the Danelaw’, in Towns and Topography: Essays in Memory of David H. Hill, ed. G. R. Owen-Crocker & S. D. Thompson (Oxbow, 2014) pp. 85–92. Hart, C., The Danelaw (Hambledon Continuum, 1992). Irvine, S. (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition (MS E) (D. S. Brewer, 2004). Jayakumar, S., ‘Some Reflections on the “Foreign Policies” of Edgar “the Peaceable”’, Haskins Society Journal 10 (2002), pp. 17-38. Kershaw, J. F., Viking identities: Scandinavian Jewellery in England (Oxford University Press, 2013). Lapidge, M., J. Blair, S. Keynes and D. Scragg (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Blackwell, 2001). O’Keeffe, K. O. (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition (MS C) (D. S. Brewer, 2001). Ray, K. and I. Bapty, Offa’s Dyke: Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth Century Britain (Windgather Press, 2016). Taylor, S. (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition (MS B) (D. S. Brewer, 1983). Tummuscheit, A. and F. Witte, ‘The Danevirke: Preliminary Results of New Excavations (2010–2014) at the Defensive System in the German-Danish Borderland’, Offa’s Dyke Journal (1) (2019), pp. 114 – 136. Watts, V., The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Williams, H., and L. Delaney (2019), ‘The Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory and the Offa’s Dyke Journal’, Offa’s Dyke Journal (1) (2019), pp. 1 – 31. Wormald, P., The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Vol. 1, Legislation and Its Limits (Blackwell, 1999).
Websites
Early English Laws, earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk Jorvik Viking Centre – Coppergate Dig, jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk/about/jorvik-story/coppergate-dig Key to English Place-Names, kepn.nottingham.ac.uk
Footnotes
1 See the various Wedmore accounts: for the Winchester or Parker Chronicle (MS A) see Bately pp. 50-51; for the Abingdon I Chronicle (MS B) see Taylor pp. 36-37; for the Abingdon II Chronicle (MS C) see O’Keeffe pp. 61-62; for the Worcester Chronicle (MS D) see Cubbin p. 27; for the Peterborough or Laud Chronicle (MS E) see Irvine pp. 50-51 and for the Bilingual Canterbury Epitome (MS F) see Baker pp. 71-72. Full references are given in the bibliography.
2 The various copies of the Alfred-Guthrum text can be found on Early English Law [accessed 5th April 2023].
3 The route of the Danelaw Boundary is unclear through Bedfordshire. The text says “ðonne gerihte to Bedanforda” which has been variously translated as either “straight” or “in a straight-line”. It is not obvious if this section of the Boundary follows a geographical feature or not. See Alexander Thomas’s doctoral thesis, pp. 128 – 141, for an extensive discussion of this problem. It can be found within the British Library’s EThOS catalogue, https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.824163.
4 The Kingdom of Essex had been a sub-Kingdom of the Kingdom of Wessex since the early 9th century. It is unclear whether Essex was incorporated into the Danelaw or remained a possession of Wessex. See David N. Dumville’s chapter on The Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, page 9, for a more detailed discussion. Full reference in the biography.
5 See articles by Andreas Dobat – “Danevirke revisited: An investigation into military and socio-political organisation in South Scandinavia (c AD 700 to 1100)” – or by Astrid Tummuscheit and Frauke Witte – “The Danevirke: Preliminary Results of New Excavations (2010–2014) at the Defensive System in the German-Danish Borderland” – for maps and detailed location information. Full references given in the bibliography.
6 See Tummuscheit and Witte’s article “The Danevirke: Preliminary Results of New Excavations (2010–2014) at the Defensive System in the German-Danish Borderland”. Full reference given in the bibliography.
7 See Ray and Bapty’s book Offa’s Dyke: Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth Century Britain. Full reference given in the bibliography.
8 Conveners include Dr Paul Belford (Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust), Andrew Blake (Wye Valley AONB), Christopher Catling (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales) and Dave McGlade (Offa’s Dyke Association). They have been joined by Dr Keith Ray (Southern Marches Archaeological Practice Ltd), Dr Andy Seaman (Cardiff University) and Professor Howard Williams (University of Chester). The author is also a member of the research network.
9 See Howard Williams and Liam Delaney introductory article entitled “The Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory and the Offa’s Dyke Journal” for a discussion. Full reference given in the bibliography.
10 See Patrick Wormald’s The Making of English Law, Volume 1, pp. 379-80, and Shashi Jayakumar’s article “Some Reflections on the “Foreign Policies” of Edgar “the Peaceable””, p. 23, note 30.
11 See L. J. Downer’s translation of the Laws of Henry I within his book, Leges Henrici Primi, especially clause 6 on pp. 96–97. Full reference given in the bibliography.
12 This is a research interest of the author.
13 See the Jorvik Viking Centre’s website for further information on the Coppergate dig [accessed 5th April 2023]. Full reference given in the bibliography.
14 See Fellows-Jenson, pp. 85–86 and the University of Nottingham’s “Key to English Place-Names” [accessed 5th April 2023]. Full references given in the bibliography.
15 My thanks go to Elise Fleming for proofreading this article; any errors remain my own.
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