page22

P. H. Reaney, The Origin of English Surnames, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), 116, 123. Norwegians and Swedes were also members of the Danish armies. On page 119, concerning Scandinavian personal-names which still survive as modern surnames, the author writes: "Among the numerous compounds, all common also in Northern England, we may note ON Farthegn, ODa Farthin, now Farthing,...".

Alfred P. Smyth, Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles, 850-880, (Oxford University Press, 1977), 251. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that Mercia was shared out by the Great Army of the Danes in the winter of 877. The men of the army, after being in the field for many years, "were weary of war and anxious to settle on estates which they had won in Mercia and East Anglia."

Gillian Fellows Jensen, Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, (Copenhagen: I Kommission hos Akademisk forlag, 1968), xxxiii. Jensen tells us that the Danes that "occupied already existing Anglian villages" (such as Farthingstone), were "commanders of the various divisions of the armies...".

Kenneth Cameron, English Place Names, (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1996), 75. Scholars consider Farthingstone to be a "Grimston-hybrid". Cameron tells us that these Grimston-hybrids reveal the true names of the leaders of the victorious Viking armies. Farthegn's association with Farthingstone was manorial, and therefore he was not just a lord, but it's overlord.

J. E. B. Gover, A. Mawer, and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Northamptonshire, English Place-Name Society Volume X, (Cambridge: At the University, 1933), xxv. The authors state that Farthingstone is "clearly" an example of a Viking replacing an Englishman as the lord of a village. On page 22 the authors show how the spelling Farthingeston(e) was derived from Farthegn's tun as early as 1261. On page xxviii, the authors write: "...Scandinavian influence in Northamptonshire was stronger than there has hitherto been reason to suspect, and far stronger than in any other county of the southern midlands whose nomenclature has so far been examined."

Michael Wood, Domesday, A Search for the Roots of England, (London: BBC Books, 1986), 134. In 877, members of the Viking army took "over the holdings of Mercian landowners killed or exiled by the war."

Robert Wernick and the editors of Time-Life Books, The Vikings, (Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1979), 74-75. Quote from Wernick about John of Wallingford.

Erik Bjorkman, Scandinavian Loan-Words in Middle English, Part I, (St. Clair Shores, Michigan: Scholarly Press, republished 1972). On page 279, footnote no.1, the author explains that dane became a term of reproach meaning a "red-haired man". On page 280, the author writes: "The Northmen are constantly called Danes in the records. Nevertheless there is no doubt that also Norwegians took part in the settlements."

P. H. Reaney, The Origin of English Place-Names, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960), 170-171. Farthegn would not have displaced the English peasants but would have retained them as a source of rents and services. Concerning the 'Grimston-hybrids', the author writes: "The etymology of these names creates no difficulty. The personal-names are usually well known: Caxton, C (Klakkr), Farthingstone, Nth (ON Farthegn, ODa Farthin), Gamston, Nt (Gamall), Thurlaston, Wa (Thorleifr)."

Peter Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire, (Lincoln: History of Lincolnshire Committee, 1998) 110-111. The author writes: "The best direct evidence for Scandinavian occupation is provided by the places that are named after Scandinavians, in particular those that combine a Scandinavian personal name with either by or tun."...and..."It has been argued that the people who gave their names to these places were the original settlers, and there has been a wide measure of agreement that the earliest Scandinavian settlements are represented by the place-names in which a Scandinavian personal name is combined with an English element, in particular tun. These places are generally on good settlement sites that the English are most unlikely to have left unoccupied. According to this interpretation, these were among the first places taken over by the invaders, and their names commemorate the individuals who were responsible."

Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue, English & How It Got That Way, (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.) 53. The author writes: "The Danish influence in the north was enormous. The scale of their settlements can be seen from the fact that more than 1,400 place-names in northern England are of Scandinavian origin."

Margaret Gelling, Signposts to the Past, Place-Names and the History of England, (London, Melbourne and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd) 232-233. Concerning Professor Cameron's study on Grimston-hybrids, the author writes: "These observations led him to suggest in 1971 that the Grimston-hybrid names belonged to ancient English settlements taken over and partially re-named by Danes. More recently (Cameron 1976) he has made the specific suggestion that the Danes who took over these English villages may have been the retired Vikings of the army of 865."...and... there was "the sudden arrival of several hundred new 'manorial' overlords when sections of the army were disbanded."...and..."But some of the Danish overlords would have administrative duties in the years when the Danelaw was outside English government, and their position in the community may have been comparable to that of the less powerful English thegns." Concerning Dr Fellows Jensen's study, she writes: "She agrees with Professor Cameron that the settlements with hybrid names in which Old English tun is combined with an Old Norse personal name are most likely to represent the taking over of established English settlements by the victorious Danes of the great army,...".

F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press,1943) 516-517. The first scholar to define Grimston-hybrids (such as Farthingstone), Sir Frank Stenton wrote: "On general grounds it is more than probable that many of the Danes whose names are preserved in the village nomenclature of the Danelaw had taken part in the Danish conquest of that country, and that in some degree the individualistic character of this nomenclature reflects the organization of the army which had divided out the land in the ninth century. No doubt, in some cases, a Dane who gave his name to a village in eastern England may have been its lord in the sense in which innumerable English thegns were lords of villages in Wessex and English Mercia. Many of the numerous place-names in which a Danish personal name is compounded with the native word tun may well stand for the replacement of an Englishman by a Dane as the lord of an existing village."
Previous Page......Next Page