CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN ( 1 )

THE CREATION OF THE DANELAW

Dawn M. Hadley

T

he term Danelaw is widely used to refer to those regions of northern and eastern
England conquered and settled by Scandinavians in the ninth and tenth centuries.
The term first occurs in legal compilations produced by Archbishop Wulfstan of York,
the so-called ‘Laws of Edward and Guthrum’, dated to between 1002 and 1008 , and
a law code issued on behalf of King Æthelred II at Wantage (Berks.) in 1008 , both of
which draw a small number of distinctions between legal process in districts under
English law and those under Danish law (on Deone lage) (Whitelock 1941 , 1979 : 439 –
46 ). Later legal compilations occasionally distinguish between laws among the English
and those among the Danes (mid Denum), and shires are periodically, if inconsistently,
grouped into those that follow the laws of the West Saxons, Mercians and Danes
(Danelaga [scire]) (Stenton 1971 : 505 – 6 ; Holman 2001 : 2 – 3 ).
The legal provisions of the Danelaw were distinguishable from those of other parts
of England in several respects, including the imposition of heavier payments for trans-
gressions (Stenton 1971 : 507 – 10 ). The legal terminology of the Danelaw incorporates
many Scandinavian terms, including landcop (referring to the purchase of land), lahslit (a
penalty for infringement of the law) and witword (possibly meaning ‘the right to prove
one’s case’), and even the word law is borrowed from Old Norse (Stenton 1971 : 507 ,
512 ; Neff 1989 : 278 – 88 ). Yet direct Scandinavian influence on legal practice is difficult
to demonstrate (Fenger 1972 ; Neff 1989 ; Holman 2001 : 3 – 4 ). For example, the local
administrative and law-enforcement districts known as wapentakes (ON vápnatak ‘a
taking of weapons’), which are found in the territory of the Five Boroughs and parts
of Yorkshire (Loyn 1974 ), do not occur in Scandinavia as a legal district (Geipel 1971 :
62 ; Holman 2001 : 4 ), but rather served similar functions to the hundreds found else-
where in England (Loyn 1974 ; Stenton 1971 : 504 – 5 ).
Nevertheless, there was an enduring perception that the regions known as the
Danelaw were distinctive. A peace treaty of c. 880 – 90 contracted between King Alfred
of Wessex and Guthrum, the leader of a Viking army that had occupied East Anglia,
regulated relations between the English and the Danes, and also defined ‘the boundaries
between us’ as running along the rivers Thames and Lea, then in a straight line to
Bedford, and up the River Ouse to Watling Street (Whitelock 1979 : 416 – 17 ). This has
provided the basis for many modern maps of the Danelaw, which typically depict its