Viking Talks
Touring the Vikings
Hear about the national touring exhibition ‘Viking: Rediscover the Legend’. This talk will discuss the inspiration for and development of the exhibition; showcasing a range of iconic objects from across the UK and detailing some of the challenges and successes of this momentous project. Dr Andrew Woods Wednesday 31 January 2018
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Item
Croxall
Croxall, historically in the Repton and Gresley Hundred of Derbyshire, probably comes from the Old English male personal name Croc derived from the Old Norse personal name Krókr and the Old English halh ‘nook, corner of land’. However, it is also possible that the first element is from the Old English topographical element croc ‘crook’, perhaps ‘nook’. The parish was transferred to Staffordshire in 1894.
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Viking Designs
Details from the Hickling Hogback
Detail drawings showing elements of the designs on the hogback stone, a type of Anglo-Scandinavian grave cover, from St Luke’s Church, Hickling, Nottinghamshire.
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Viking Objects
Reproduction Shovel
A reproduction wooden shovel based on fragments found at York.
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Viking Objects
Reproduction Bone Dice
A pair of reproduction bone dice. Viking Age dice were usually rectangular rather than cubes, making it harder to roll the numbers on the ends of the dice. They do not follow the modern convention of having the numbers on opposite faces add up to seven. We do not know what games the people played with dice in this period, but it has been suggested that dice might have been used as part of playing board games like hnefatafl.
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Viking Names
Ravensdale Park
Ravensdale Park, in the Appletree Hundred of Derbyshire, clearly derives its name from either the bird or a person with a name that corresponds to that of the bird, but its linguistic origin is difficult to pin down because of the similarities between Old Norse and Old English. The first element could be Old Norse hrafn ‘raven’, or the Old Norse male personal name Hrafn, or Old English hræfn ‘raven’, or the Old English male personal name Hræfn. The second element is either Old Norse dalr ‘valley’ or Old English dæl ‘a pit, a hollow; later a valley’. It was one of the parks of Duffield Frith hence the later affix ‘park’. In the Nottinghamshire place-name Ranskill, the first element is more likely to be Old Norse as the second element is also in that language, but the difficulty of deciding between the bird and the personal name Hrafn is the same.
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Viking Names
Swarkestone
Swarkestone, in the Repton and Gresley Hundred of Derbyshire, is derived from a Scandinavian male personal name which appears in Old Danish as Swerkir, in Old West Norse as Sorkir and in Old Swedish as Swerker. This is combined with Old English tun ‘farm, settlement’ and it is thus a hybrid name, as so many in the Trent Valley.
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Viking Names
Ketsby
Ketsby, in the Hill Wapentake of Lincolnshire, comes from the Old Norse male personal name Ketill and the Old Norse element by ‘farmstead, village’. It is a joint parish with South Ormsby.
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Viking Names
Caythorpe
Caythorpe, in the Thurgarton Wapentake of Nottinghamshire, probably comes from the Old Norse male personal name Káti and the Old Norse element þorp ‘outlying farm, settlement’. There is also a Caythorpe in Lincolnshire.
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Viking Names
Appleby
Appleby, in the Manley Wapentake of Lincolnshire, is a hybrid name coming from Anglian æppel ‘an apple; fruit, tree-fruit; an apple-tree’ and Old Norse by ‘a farmstead, a village’. It is likely, from the situation of the village that this was formerly Appleton, in which the second element, originally Old English tun ‘a farmstead, village, estate’, was later replaced by by.
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Viking Names
Gunness
Gunness, in the Manley Wapentake of Lincolnshire, is an Old Norse compound from the male personal name Gunni and nes ‘a ness, a headland, a promontory’. The name is topographically appropriate as it is located on a marked promontory on the River Trent. The same personal name also occurs in Gunby and Gunthorpe, Lincolnshire.