Kirkdale provides a graphic illustration of the process of Anglo-Scandinavian privatisa-
tion of minster estates. It relates how Ormr, son of Gamal – both Old Norse names –
bought the minster when it was tumbled and ruined, and erected a new church on the
site in 1055 – 65 (Watts et al. 1997 ).
Identifiable Scandinavian settlements have been elusive. In the upland areas of
northern England isolated farmsteads such as those excavated at Simy Folds and
Ribblehead have often been assumed to be the homes of colonists on the basis of their
morphology (Batey 1995 ; Coggins 2004 ; King 2004 ). Farther south the appearance of
bow-sided halls at sites such as Goltho (Beresford 1987 ) and Waltham Abbey (Huggins
1976 ) might indicate the residences of new Scandinavian lords, although there is
nothing ethnically Scandinavian about the shape or form of a building. The date
of the creation of the fortified aristocratic manor at Goltho has been debated, but the
consensus is now that it took place in the later ninth or early tenth century, after the
Viking takeover of Lincolnshire. At Wharram Percy, Borre-style belt fittings have been
found on what became the site of one of the medieval manor houses, and it seems likely
that the village was first laid out with regular plots in the tenth century (Stamper and
Croft 2000 ). This process of village nucleation is repeated throughout lowland England
during the tenth century, and represents part of an ongoing process of land privatisation.
Former great estates, previously owned by the king or the Church, were divided up into
smaller units held by individual lords. This process was happening both in the Danelaw
and in Wessex and was not a direct result of Viking raids, although the disruption of
the monasteries and the subsequent dislocation of landholdings clearly accelerated the
process (Richards 2004 a: 49 – 77 ).
The recording of finds recovered by metal-detecting has also transformed our
knowledge of settlement density (Margeson 1997 ; Leahy 2004 ). In eastern England
there is a growing number of finds of Scandinavian brooches and other personal orna-
ments which suggests more direct and continuing contact with Scandinavia in the tenth
century than previously thought, and the presence of a peasant class. The indigenous
population also acquired a taste for mass-produced copper-alloy costume jewellery.
Although craftsmen often retained Anglo-Saxon forms, such as the disc-brooch, they
frequently decorated them with Scandinavian motifs. There are also completely new
types, such as tiny hexagonal bells, which may have been amulets or costume fittings.
Such finds indicate widespread acceptance of an Anglo-Scandinavian cultural identity in
tenth-century England.
The settlement at Cottam, East Yorkshire, was first discovered by metal-detectorists
(Richards 1999 ). In the eighth and ninth centuries there had been an Anglian farmstead
at Cottam, possibly an outlying dependency of a royal estate at Driffield. The residents
had been part of a trading network and there were large numbers of low-denomination
Northumbrian copper-alloy coins, or stycas. In the late ninth or early tenth century
the Anglo-Saxon farm was abandoned and replaced by a new planned settlement set
within rectangular paddocks and with a rather grand gated entrance. Judging by the
Anglo-Scandinavian artefact types introduced, the new occupants may well have been
Scandinavian colonists. They were no longer able to buy and sell with coins as the
Northumbrian mints had ceased production, but this did not prevent them trading west
with York and south of the Humber to Lincolnshire, weighing out bullion to conduct
their transactions. They lived in their new farm for only a couple of generations before
relocating to the site of what became the medieval village.
–– chapter 27: Viking settlement in England––