Viking Names
Miningsby
Miningsby, in the Bolingbroke Wapentake of Lincolnshire, is a very difficult name with a great variety of spellings. The best suggestion for the first element is the Old Norse male personal name Miðjungr, but this name is only known as that of a mythical giant, recorded in an early skaldic poem cited in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, or as an appellative for ‘giant’ in skaldic poetry more generally. The second element is Old Norse by ‘a farmstead, a village’.
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Viking Names
Moorby
The first element of Moorby, in the Horncastle Wapentake of Lincolnshire, is either Old English mor or Old Norse mór ‘a marsh; barren upland’ here in the sense ‘moor’. The second element is Old Norse bý ‘a farmstead, a village’. The village is on the slope of the Wolds.
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Viking Names
Wigtoft
Wigtoft, in the Kirton (in Holland) Wapentake of Lincolnshire, is likely an Anglo-Scandinavian compound. The first element is uncertain, but it is probably Old Norse vík ‘a small creek, an inlet, a bay’. The second element is Old English toft ‘a curtilage, the plot of ground in which a dwelling stands’. Wigtoft is situated near Bicker Haven, which was formerly an arm of the sea.
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Viking Names
Fotherby
Fotherby, in the Ludborough Wapentake of Lincolnshire, comes from the Old Norse male personal name Fótr and the Old Norse element bý ‘a farmstead, village’. The same personal name occurs in other place-names in Lincolnshire including Foston and Fosdyke. There is also a Foston in Derbyshire.
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Viking Names
Skirbeck
Skirbeck, in the Skirbeck Wapentake of Lincolnshire, is a Scandinavian compound from Old Norse skírr ‘bright‘ and Old Norse bekkr ‘a stream, a beck’. These elements may have been replaced an Old English name formed from the elements scīr and bece. The stream is now dry, but in the nineteenth century it was asserted that the stream could be traced with little difficulty.
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Viking Objects
Globe-Shaped Weight (PUBLIC-D94974)
A globe-shaped copper-alloy weight, with a flat top and bottom each displaying 3 small ring-and-dot motifs. Weights are an important form of evidence for Viking Age commerce and the use of standards across the different economic systems within which Vikings were integrated. Many of the weights discovered, particularly ones in Ireland and those of Arabic type, suggest that a standardized system of weights existed in some areas. These standard weights, alongside standard values of silver, are what allowed the bullion economy of Viking occupied areas to function. A bullion economy was a barter economy that relied on the exchange of set amounts of precious metal in various forms, such as arm-rings or coins, for tradable goods, such as food or textiles. Each merchant would have brought their own set of weights and scales to a transaction to make sure that the trade was conducted fairly.
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Viking Objects
Copper-Alloy Mount Fragment (NLM-92AFEC)
This copper-alloy mount fragment is likely from a horse harness and is decorated with closely-spaced diagonal hatching framing for a zoomorphic openwork design of four battling beasts around a central roundel. The front of the mount contains extensive traces of gilding. The object is considered an example of Irish or Hiberno-Norse metalwork and thus is associated with Viking activities around the Irish Sea region.
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Viking Objects
Square Mammen Style Brooch ( LEIC-6AF276)
This small brooch features a bird depicted in the Mammen style. This style of brooch appears to have been produced in the Danelaw but, generally, Mammen-style decoration is rare in Britain. This brooch from Linwood, Lincolnshire, is paralleled by examples from West Stow Heath, Suffolk, and Bergh Apton, Norfolk, but further examples from Cambridgeshire and East Anglia were found in 2015 and 2016. It is a type which has Carolingian-inspired shapes and Scandinavian decoration. Such brooches were an accessory for women who wore Scandinavian dress. For more information on Scandinavian jewellery in England check out our blog: Brooches, Pendants and Pins: Scandinavian Dress Accessories in England.
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Viking Objects
Quartered Carolingian Gold Solidus (CM.163-2010)
This gold solidus of the Carolingian emperor, Louis the Pious (778-840 CE), was cut into pieces as hack-gold. Unlike the imitation gold solidus from the same era, it has not been cut carefully into quarters. Instead it has been snipped to the right size for weighing. Gold coins were used in the Carolingian empire until it adopted a silver standard.
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Viking Names
Torksey
Torksey, in the Lawress Wapentake of Lincolnshire, is a difficult name. The second element is Old English eg ‘an island, dry ground in fen, raised land in wet area’, but the first element, though apparently a personal name, is hard to interpret. The most plausible suggestion is that it is the Old English male personal name Turoc. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 872 records that Her nam se here winter setle. æt Turces ige ‘And it [the Great Heathen Army] took winter-quarters at Torksey in Lindsey, and then the Mercians made peace with the host’. Recent excavations and other archaeological finds at Torksey are helping to build up our understanding of what that here was and what it did during the winter of 872-3.
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Viking Designs
Drawing of a Trefoil Brooch
A drwaing of a copper alloy trefoil brooch of a type that would have been common in the Danelaw. Trefoil brooches were characteristically Scandinavian women’s wear. However, many examples found in the East Midlands were probably made in the Danelaw, and may have been copies of Scandinavian styles, instead of being imported from Scandinavia. Scandinavian brooches came in a variety of sizes and shapes which included disc, trefoil, lozenge, equal-armed, and oval shapes. The different brooch types served a variety of functions in Scandinavian female dress with oval brooches typically being used as shoulder clasps for apron-type dresses and the rest being used to secure an outer garment to an inner shift. Anglo-Saxon brooches do not match this diversity of form with large disc brooches being typical of ninth century dress styles with smaller ones becoming more popular in the later ninth and tenth centuries. However, since disc brooches were used by both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian women they are distinguished by their morphology. Scandinavian brooches were typically domed with a hollow back while Anglo-Saxon brooches were usually flat. Moreover, Anglo-Saxon brooches were worn singly without accompanying accessories.