Viking Names
Aslockton
Aslockton, in the Bingham Wapentake of Nottinghamshire, comes from the Old Norse male personal name Áslákr and the Old English element tun ‘farm, settlement’. It is thus a hybrid name like others nearby, such as Thoroton and Colston Bassett.
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Viking Names
Eakring
Eakring, in the Bassetlaw Wapentake of Nottinghamshire, comes from the Old Norse elements eik ‘oak’ and hringr ‘ring’ and must have been named after a circle of oak trees.
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Viking Names
Wood Enderby
The name Enderby probably comes from the Old Norse male personal name Eindriði and the Old Norse element by ‘farm, settlement’. ‘Wood’ was added later to distinguish this part of the settlement from Bag Enderby and Mavis Enderby.
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Viking Names
Legsby
Legsby, in the South Riding of Lindsey of Lincolnshire, comes from the Old Norse male personal name Leggr and the Old Norse element by ‘farmstead, village’. The boundary between Legsby and Linwood was recorded as Leggeshou/ Legeshou/ Leggeshow ‘Legg’s mound, burial mound’ presumably named from the same man and Old Norse haugr ‘hill, mound, a burial mound’.
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Viking Names
South Ferriby
The name of Ferriby (there is also a North Ferriby across the Humber), in the Yarborough Wapentake of Lincolnshire, comes from the Old Norse elements ferja ‘ferry’ and by ‘farm, settlement’. Both North and South Ferriby were in existence by 1086 and are mentioned in Domesday Book.
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Viking Names
Bothild
Bóthildr, -hilda is a compound name with the first element being Bót- probably to be compared with Old Norse bót ‘remedy, improvement’. While some scholars believe this element is a loan from the continent or England, it is certain that in Scandinavia it was interpreted as bót. The second element of the name is Old Norse -hildr ‘battle’, Both forms of the name are fairly frequent in Norway after c 1300 and it is also found in place-names there. It was rare in Iceland but common in Denmark and also found in Sweden. Bóthildr, -hilda appears as the first element in the medieval field names Botildewellewong in Anston, West Yorkshire, and Botildehau in East Yorkshire. It is also possibly the first element in the field name Botilgarth in Fishlake, West Yorkshire. The name is also well-attested in medieval Yorkshire and Lincolnshire documents.
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Viking Objects
Reproduction Rune Inscribed Rib
Runes were used not only for monumental inscriptions, or to mark ownership of valuable objects, but also in more informal contexts. In this case the animal bone suggests an after-dinner pastime after a good meal in the Anglo-Scandinavian trading centre of Lincoln. The runes read ——l × hitir × stin × … Only two words of the Old Norse inscription can be read with certainty, and even so they are ambiguous. One possible interpretation is ‘[someone] is heating a stone’ the other is ‘[someone] is called Stein’. The bone is fragmentary, but the inscription may never have been intended to make much sense. The original object dates from around the tenth century. It is one of only three runic inscriptions from the East Midlands.
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Viking Names
Claxby
Claxby, in the North Riding of Lindsey in Lincolnshire, is formed from the Old Norse male personal name Klakkr and Old Norse by ‘a farmstead, a village’. There are two other identical formations of the place-name in the South Riding of Lindsey of Lincolnshire, Claxby, and Claxby Pluckacre.
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Blog Post
A Silk Headscarf from Lincoln
A Viking Age silk headscarfImage (c) Erik Grigg In the archaeology stores of The Collection in Lincoln is a very rare Viking silk headscarf found in the early 1970s. There was an excavation in advance of a development at Saltergate in Lincoln that uncovered a previously unknown Roman gateway as well as a Roman house, part of an Anglo-Saxon graveyard and in a pit, a silk headscarf about 20 centimetres wide and 60 centimetres long. The pit was found under a council office that was being demolished and the brick-lined cellar created the perfect conditions for this fragile item to survive. The pit has been dated to the tenth century, so roughly when Lincoln was an important Viking trading settlement. The name Saltergate means the street of the salt-makers or traders, gata being the Old Norse word for street. The earliest reference to Saltergate is in the thirteenth century, although the street later became Corporation Lane, and the name Saltergate was only reintroduced in 1831. A reconstruction of how a headscarf could have been wornImage (c) Erik Grigg Occasionally silk headscarves have survived on sites in Sweden and the Netherlands, but most have been found in the Viking towns of the British Isles (four from Dublin, three from York and this one from Lincoln). The secret of making silk was jealously guarded in the medieval period and the Byzantine Empire was the only place outside China where it was made. The weave from this scarf matches Byzantine silk suggesting it came from the eastern Mediterranean and amazingly it is so similar to one found in Coppergate in York that we think the two examples came from the same larger piece of material. Of course archaeologists from York think it was cut up there while I have a certain Lincolnshire bias, so think Lincoln imported the material and then smaller scarves were made from it and some re-exported north to Jorvik! The material is very expensive and exotic, so whoever wore it must have paid a good price for it. How the headscarf was worn is a matter of debate. Most reconstructions of such scarves have the material laid across the head with the two long seams at the back sewn together so it covers the rear of the head (and hair). There is a reconstruction on display in the Posterngate that has the silk headscarf merely as a strip of material worn sideways across the head with ties attached to the bottom front corners to keep it on the head. The original is in conservation and too fragile to put on display. A reconstruction of how a headscarf could have been wornImage (c) Erik Grigg How Viking women wore their hair is a matter of debate. The only written evidence is from much later Old Norse sagas that give a few clues which are hard to interpret. Representations of Viking women in stone carvings or metal figures are also tricky to understand. The figures in such carvings are often small so it is not easy to know what is a scarf, a cap or a braid of hair. We also don’t know why women wore such scarves; perhaps women were expected to cover their hair for religious or cultural reasons in Viking towns. Perhaps the scarf was there as a fashion statement, to show off the wearer’s wealth or maybe just a way of keeping her hair neat. The reconstruction can be seen as part of the Posterngate tours to see the Roman gateway. They only occur a few times a year, in 2019 it will probably be 1st March, 1st June and 1st of November (but it is worth checking The Collection’s website prior to making a trip in case those dates or prices change) and costs approximately £2 per head to visit.
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Blog Post
Two Languages, One Name: Hybrid Place-Names in the East Midlands
Resting in the Trent river valley are the small villages of Gonalston, Thurgarton, and Rolleston. You are politely asked ‘Please slow down’, whilst you drive through, but don’t be fooled by the signs because Vikings lie in wait. Signs for Rolleston, Thurgarton, and Gonalston © Judith Jesch Gonalston ‘Gunnolfr’s farm/settlement’, Thurgarton ‘ Þorgeirr’s farm/settlement’, and Rolleston ‘Hróaldr’s farm/settlement’ all belong to a group formerly called Grimston-hybrids where the first element of the place-name is a Scandinavian personal name and the second element of the name is Old English tūn ‘an enclosure; a farmstead; a village; an estate’. These names were called Grimston-hybrids because the largest single group of these types of names consisted of places named Grimston ‘Grim’s village, estate’. However, not all Grimstons fit within a certain pattern and not all Grims are derived from from Old Norse. Therefore, the late Kenneth Cameron, formerly professor at the University of Nottingham, suggested that place-names with a Scandinavian personal name and Old English tūn be called Toton-hybrids. The name comes from Toton, Nottinghamshire, an Anglo-Scandinavian compound from the Old Norse male personal name Tófi and the Old English element tūn ‘farm, settlement’. There is continued discussion on the distribution of Toton-hybrids and why they exist, but it is likely that the personal names represent landowners, either Scandinavians granted land in the initial stages of conquest, or individuals with Old Norse names in the decades following. Alternatively, it is possible that these were formerly Old English place-names replaced and renamed by the Vikings. Another suggestion has been that the Vikings borrowed Old English tūn to use in new names because tūn‘s Old Norse equivalent, tún, is sometimes used in Scandinavian place-names, but is very rare in England (Gregory 2017, 60). © Patrick A Griffin, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0. Not all Anglo-Scandinavian compounds are Toton-hybrids, and some place-names appear to be simply the result of the combination of two languages. Sookholme, Nottinghamshire, for example, comes from Old English sulh ‘a plough; a ploughland’ and Old Norse holmr ‘an island, an inland promontory, raised ground in marsh, a river-meadow’. Also, in Nottinghamshire is Eastwood which comes from Old English east ‘east’ and Old Norse þveit ‘a clearing, a meadow, a paddock’. Names of this type often indicate that an Old Norse word has become naturalised as part of the English dialect used in the region. Many other mixed-language place-names are part of the landscape of the East Midlands, perhaps one is just waiting around the corner. Rebecca Gregory, Viking Nottinghamshire. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications, 2017. Kenneth Cameron, English Place-Names. London: B T Batsford Ltd, 1996.
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Viking Names
Spittlegate
Spittlegate, in the Winnibriggs and Threo Wapentake of Lincolnshire, comes from Middle English spitel ‘a hospital, a religious house, a house of the Knights Hospitallers’ and Old Norse gata ‘a road, a street; a right of way; a right of access to pasture-land; a right of pasturage; an allotment of pasture’. The name is first recorded in 1284 and clearly a post-Viking Age formation, though showing the continued use of originally Old Norse vocabulary in name-giving.