Henry Loyn, The Vikings in Britain, (Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1994), 86-87. The author writes: "The Danes did not enter an empty land, nor did they clear the land of indigenous inhabitants before turning to settlement themselves. Theirs was a settlement on terms, buttressed by military power but not accompanied by wholesale massacre and eviction. Place-names survive in pure unadulterated English forms even in the most heavily Danicized areas. There also exists a substantial body of names in the Danelaw proper that contain a first element in a Danish personal name, compounded with the English element -tun (a village or a farmstead). These names are known, not completely happily but conveniently, as 'Grimston hybrids'."...and...(keeping in mind that Farthingstone is a Grimston hybrid)..."they may in fact well represent a very early stage in the Danish settlement when army leaders took over the lordship and initiated a degree of settlement on already favoured agricultural sites. Much of the most perceptive modern analysis attributes a priority in time to the Grimston hybrids and associates; many of the names may be associated with the land-taking of the 870s." F. Donald Logan, The Vikings in History, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Second edition), 166-168, 170. "Danes came in very large numbers to work the land, their migration exceeding in size even the migration that settled Normandy."......"The widely accepted 'two-step' theory argues that the Danes migrated to England in two stages: first as warrior-settlers and then as settlers who came later, protected by the military shield. According to this theory, the colonizing took no more than about seventy-five years, probably less, and was a period of settlement comparable to the Norwegian settlement of Iceland. The Viking warriors, whatever their initial intention - they were capable, as are we, of multiple intention - settled in England."......"The second step in the 'two-step' theory is known only by way of inference. The argument runs that the place-name and personal-name evidence as well as the linguistic evidence suggest a very considerable Scandinavian colonization, and, since the relatively small armies cannot explain a settlement of such a great size, another immigration, an immigration behind the shield of the warrior, must have occurred. The inference merits elaboration."......"In general, three forms of place-names of Danish origin appear, and they seem to indicate three phases in the settlement process. A group of place-names called 'Grimston-hybrids' are names with an English suffix such as -tun (a village, a farmstead) but with a Danish personal or appellative name preceding it. Examples abound: Grimston (Leicestershire, Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk, Yorkshire), Barkston (Lincolnshire), Thurvaston (Derbyshire), and Colston (Nottinghamshire). A strong case can be made for the argument that these names represent previously existing English villages taken over at the beginning of the Danish colonization, the individual colonizer replacing an English name with his own."......"No one can provide numbers for the settlers who gave names to places and who changed the English language, but thousands upon thousands of them must have entered the Danelaw under the protection of the warrior-settlers." Norman Davies, The Isles, A History, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 245, 246, 266. "For reasons of convenience, modern scholarship calls both sorts of Scandinavians 'Vikings', thereby blurring the distinction. Furthermore, there is another mistaken tendency to identify the 'Northmen' or 'Norsemen' with modern Norway, and the 'Danes' with modern Denmark. This is not appropriate for the simple reason that in the period in question the separate Scandinavian nations of Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes had not yet come into existence."......"Similarly, in its origins, the name 'Dane' was not a national or an ethnic one. It is akin to the Old English thegn, and in the sense of 'warrior' was applied to the Northmen who took to fighting in consolidated bands, especially on the northern marches of the Carolingian empire. In due course, when these battling Northmen established themselves in a permanent homeland, they called it Danmark or 'Denmark'. When they invaded England in force, they were usually dubbed Daniscmen; and the territory which their armies controlled was called the Danelagh or 'Danelaw'."......"The Danish impact, therefore, was considerable. The 'Great Army' brought in colonists and settlers in such numbers that place names with the typical Danish endings -by, -thorpe, and -dale became a standard feature of the north-east, the east, and the Midlands."..."...the Danish villages possessed better farming methods, more freemen, and greater commercial contacts than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. The Danelaw was the most populous and most prosperous region of the Country." Previous Page......Next Page