only cemetery has been discovered by a metal-detectorist, on a low hill overlooking the
village of Cumwhitton, near Carlisle. It comprised just six burials – four males and two
females – buried with weaponry and jewellery. A mound had been raised over one of the
males (Pitts 2004 ).
In lowland and eastern England such burials are extremely scarce and it is probable
that colonists may have been accommodated within existing Anglo-Saxon graveyards.
A female burial at Adwick-le-Street, near Doncaster, provides an isolated exception
(Speed and Walton-Rogers 2004 ). This woman had been buried with a non-matching
pair of oval brooches, of late ninth-century date, and fragments of an iron knife and key
or latch-lifter. A small copper-alloy bowl, probably manufactured in the Celtic west, had
been placed at her feet. Strontium isotope analysis of her teeth shows she originated
from the Trondheim area of Norway, or possibly north-east Scotland. There is no evi-
dence for settlement or other burials in the locality and she must represent an individual
first-generation immigrant. At Middle Harling (Norfolk), a single furnished burial
recovered from the edge of a Christian graveyard may represent another first-generation
settler (Rogerson 1995 ).
Although identifiable ninth-century graves are rare, in the tenth century subsequent
generations of Scandinavian settlers invented new forms of distinctive grave marker. In
northern and eastern England in particular they adapted the Christian tradition of
erecting stone crosses at monastic sites, and turned them into individual memorials
for the founder burials of rural graveyards (Bailey 1980 ; Everson and Stocker 1999 ;
Sidebottom 2000 ; Stocker 2000 ). At Middleton in North Yorkshire, for example, there
is a small group of warrior crosses, including one depicting an armed warrior on the
front, with a dragon-like beast on the reverse (Lang 1991 ).
The so-called hogback tombstones reflect another newly invented monument type
(Lang 1984 ; Stocker 2000 ). These recumbent stone memorials have arched sides and
tops, like bow-sided halls; some are grasped at each end by animals, sometimes identi-
fied as muzzled bears. Although examples have been found as far afield as Orkney and
Cornwall, the distribution is focused in North Yorkshire, in the Viking kingdom of
York, with a particularly fine group at Brompton. The prototype may have been the
grave slabs of the early Scandinavian rulers of England, such as those found under York
Minster, combined with the form of Irish house shrines. Both the crosses and the
hogback stones date from the first half of the tenth century and may reflect the arrival of
Hiberno-Norse settlers from Ireland.
The patrons of these monuments were at least partially Christianised, and some of
the sculpture incorporates Christian as well as pre-Christian themes. A massive cross at
Gosforth in Cumbria depicts a Crucifixion scene populated with figures in Scandinavian
costume on one face, and a scene from Ragnaro ̨k, the end of the world, on the others
(Bailey 1980 ). They were also partially responsible for the great boom in church build-
ing in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Private chapels were constructed on the estates
of the new landowners; many later developed into parish churches serving their local
communities. At Wharram Percy, fragments of eighth- and ninth-century sculpture
may represent an earlier minster church, and a timber church may have been established
on a new site in the tenth century. This was enlarged in the eleventh century into a stone
church with a separate nave and chancel, which became the focus for the burials of the
early lords of the manor and their retainers (Bell and Beresford et al. 1987 ). An Old
English inscription on the sundial at the site of the Anglo-Saxon minster church at
–– Julian D. Richards––