2000 : 72 – 7 ; Holman 2001 : 3 ). Indeed, the Danishness of northern and eastern England
was but rarely documented, typically during times of political and military strife, and
regional terminology continued to be employed to describe those regions (Reynolds
1985 : 408 – 9 ). There is, finally, little evidence to support modern assumptions that the
descendants of earlier Scandinavian settlers were predisposed to support Danish raiders
of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries (Reynolds 1985 : 406 – 12 ). Assaults
launched at this time on southern England via the Danelaw are as likely to have been
determined by its remoteness from the heartlands of the English king as by an
expectation of ethnic loyalty, and regional grievances, rather than ethnic sympathies,
provided the grounds for supporting the Danish raiders, who also received support
elsewhere in England (Innes 2000 : 74 ).
The regions of the Danelaw can be distinguished from ‘English’ England by a range
of characteristics, but not consistently so. Scandinavian place names occur most fre-
quently in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, although there
are smaller concentrations in the Wirral, Cumbria and Norfolk (Fellows-Jensen 1975 ).
Stone sculpture influenced by Scandinavian art styles of the ninth and tenth centuries is
most common in Yorkshire and the north-west, although the latter region was generally
omitted from medieval lists of Danelaw shires (Bailey 1980 ; Abrams 2001 : 130 – 1 ). Free
peasants (liberi homines and sokemen) are often deemed to be characteristic of the
Danelaw, but while numerous in the entries in the Domesday Book for East Anglia and
Lincolnshire, they are found in much smaller numbers elsewhere (Stenton 1971 : 515 –
17 ). The tenth century witnessed the emergence in eastern England of many new centres
of trade and manufacture and the expansion of others, including Lincoln, Torksey,
Thetford and Norwich. Pottery production became an urban phenomenon, and the
industry was revolutionised by the adoption of new manufacturing techniques common
on the Continent (Hinton 1990 : 112 ). Coins minted in eastern England and York from
the late ninth century display a mixture of influences, reflected in the use of Continental
moneyers, the copying of West Saxon prototypes, the adoption of regional weight
standards and the incorporation of Scandinavian personal names and insignia (Blackburn
2001 ). Recently large amounts of metalwork displaying Scandinavian characteristics
have been recovered from eastern England, but although it has been suggested that this
supports arguments for a mass migration of Scandinavians, relatively few items are
typically Scandinavian and many more display a fusion of Scandinavian and English
styles, along with Continental and Irish influences. Notably, eleventh-century Scandi-
navian art styles were more widely adopted in southern England than in the Danelaw
(Leahy and Paterson 2001 ).
BIBLIOGRAPHYAbrams, L. ( 2001 ) ‘Edward the Elder’s Danelaw’, in N. Higham and D. Hill (eds), Edward the
Elder 899 – 924 , Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Attenborough, F. ( 1922 ) The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bailey, R. ( 1980 ) Viking Age Sculpture in Northern England, London: Collins.
Blackburn, M. ( 2001 ) ‘Expansion and control: Anglo-Scandinavian minting south of the
Humber’, in J. Graham-Campbell, R. Hall, J. Jesch and D. Parsons (eds) Vikings and
the Danelaw, Oxford: Oxbow.
–– chapter 27 ( 1 ): The creation of the Danelaw––