The Scale and Impact of Viking Settlement in Northumbria

Abstract

Based on previous research at the winter camp of the Viking Great Army at Torksey and Anglo-Scandinavian settlement at Cottam over 25 categories of metal artefacts are defined as diagnostic of Viking activity in Northumbria. Applying this model to over 15 sites, largely known only from metal-detecting, a common pattern is observed. At the majority, a large and fairly standardised Middle Anglo-Saxon finds assemblage is succeeded by just a few Viking finds, which we attribute to raiding following Halfdan's return to Northumbria with a portion of the Great Army in AD 876. At a smaller number of sites there are also assemblages of Anglo-Scandinavian finds, relating to the establishment of new settlements. The overall picture is of major settlement disruption and dislocation of existing land holdings in the late 9th century. This demonstrates, for the first time from archaeological evidence, the scale and impact of Viking activity in Northumbria.

Evidence of Viking trade and 'Danelaw' connections? Inset lead weights from Norway and the western Viking World

“…Along with lead weights, the presence of other types of Irish-style metalwork within the Danelaw is often interpreted as evidence of second-hand exchange of looted material (Youngs 2001, 254;Kershaw 2016, 98-100), and such metalwork is often found on sites that have lead weights. This is especially true of deliberately fragmented pieces which were recovered in large numbers from the Viking camps at Torksey and Aldwark, as well as a number of other places either visited or settled by the Great Army and its offshoot in the late 9th and early 10th century (Hadley and Richards 2018;Richards and Haldenby 2018;Hall et al 2020, 59-61). Some of this material was probably intended to be melted down, as indicated by the increasing number of copper-alloy ingots found in the Danelaw.…”

The Danelaw Reconsidered: Colonization and Conflict in Viking-Age England

“…At Goltho in Lincolnshire, a fortified manorial site enclosing a bow-sided hall and associated structures was established on the site of an existing settlement during the late Saxon period. The emergence of the manorial complex was accompanied by the appearance of Scandinavian-and Continental-style objects, and while the exact dating of the enclosure has been debated a late ninth-or early tenth-century date is possible (Beresford 1987;Richards 2004;Hadley 2006). If this is indeed the case (though cf.…”

“…Recent work by Dave Haldenby and Julian at Cottam, East Riding of Yorkshire, has identified possible evidence for an intrusive Scandinavian presence at an Anglian settlement and periodic marketplace during the 860s or 870s. The range and concentration of the finds recovered at the site, which includes weights, parts of weighing scales, and pieces of silver bullion, has been taken to indicate that the site was briefly occupied by a contingent of the Great Army, either during its early incursions into Northumbria in 866-67 or as part of Halfdan's later campaigns and settlement during the mid-870s (Haldenby and Richards 2016;Richards and Haldenby 2018). The initial occupation was soon followed by a second phase of Scandinavian activity, which saw the establishment of a farmstead to the north of the Anglian settlement.…”

With víkingr into the Identity Trap: When Historiographical Actors Get a Life of Their Own

“…69 However, these days, scholars studying the British Isles during the Viking period assume that a variety of colonization strategies were pursued, and that responses to them were subject to regional and chronological variation. 70 Along with toponyms, various settlement and building forms in particular have been interpreted as indications of the composition of populations specific to each. Thus settlements have been termed Viking or Scandinavian, Hiberno-Norse, Anglo-Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon.…”