Part 3

Partly as a result of the expeditions of the Vikings, and the frequent contact into which they were thus brought with Christian States, Christianity began, towards A.D. 900, to spread itself in the countries of Scandinavia. About the same time occurred there, as in the rest of Europe, a union of many small kingdoms under a single sovereign: and the Scandinavian tribes were subjected to the kings of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Some powerful and malcontent ones had indeed migrated beyond the sea; but, nevertheless, there were materials enough left for dissension in the new kingdoms, before Christianity could be generally introduced, and the power of the kings firmly established. A time arrived when the internal struggles in Denmark and Norway scarcely allowed the inhabitants to send any availing support to their friends in Northumberland, or to the other Danes on the coasts of England. Towards the middle of the tenth century, therefore, the hitherto almost independent Danish provinces in England were compelled to submit to the Anglo-Saxon kings, whose sovereignty, however, was but of short duration; for after the year 980 Danish and Norwegian Vikings again swarmed throughout England. Nor was it now, as formerly, merely the petty kings, who, with a comparatively inferior force, conducted these warlike expeditions. By degrees the Danish and Norwegian kings’ sons, and even the kings themselves, endeavoured, with large fleets and well-appointed armies, to wrest the sceptre from the hands of the feeble Anglo-Saxon monarchs. It was in vain that the latter strove against them. They laid a tax on the whole land, called _Danegelt_, in order to defray the great expenses which the defence of the country against the Danes occasioned. But the money thus raised it was often necessary to expend in buying off the Danes, or in supporting their victorious hosts whilst they wintered in the country. The Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelred, after seeing his kingdom harried and fearfully devastated by the Danish king, Svend Tveskjæg, in conjunction with Olaf Trygvesön, the son of the king of Norway, first succeeded in making peace with Olaf in 995, and with Svend in 1002, after paying immense sums as Danegelt, and agreeing to many humiliating conditions.

As a last resource against the daily-increasing number and power of the Danes, Ethelred determined secretly and cruelly to murder these who were settled in England. The massacre took place on St. Bridget’s eve, the 13th of November, 1002. Old and young, women and children, were murdered with the most frightful tortures. Not even the churches could protect the Christian Danes against the fury of the Anglo-Saxons. The slaughter was, however, confined almost exclusively to the south of England; since towards the north, and particularly in Northumberland, the population was chiefly of Danish and Norwegian extraction.

No sooner did the news of Ethelred’s perfidious and sanguinary act reach Denmark, than a strong fleet was fitted out, and in the following year (1003) the Danish flag waved on the coasts of England. After numerous sanguinary battles, the Anglo-Saxons were compelled to submit to Svend Tveskjæg and Canute. What could not be conquered by force of arms was obtained through prudence and cunning. The Danish conquest of England was completed, and for about one generation Danish kings wore the English crown.

SECTION III.

The Thames.—London.

London, and its wealthy neighbourhood, was naturally the main object of the Danish attacks in the south-east part of England. Under the Romans it had already become considerable as a commercial mart; but afterwards, under the Anglo-Saxons, it increased so much in wealth and importance, that it was, if we may use the expression, the heart of England. It was for this reason that the old northern bards used the term “Londons _Drot_” in their songs about the kings of England. From the first London is undoubtedly indebted for its greatness chiefly to its situation on the Thames, which opened an easy communication both with the opposite shores of the Continent and with the interior of England. In our days it is certainly a remarkable sight to observe the numberless ships that assemble there from all parts of the world, and to mark the activity that everywhere prevails on the beautiful shores of the river. But it becomes doubly remarkable when we recollect that this spectacle is neither a new one, nor has arisen under a single people; but that it has been repeated, in a somewhat altered form, for about two thousand years, under the most different circumstances: namely, under the dominion of the Britons, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans. In this respect there is no river whatsoever that can be compared with the Thames. Had it not been one of the most, or indeed quite the most, favourably situated stream in Europe for commerce, the greatest commercial city in the world would hardly have risen on its banks.

But just as the Thames brought, in the olden times, numerous merchant vessels, and, along with them, wealth and prosperity to the south of England, so must it also have frequently drawn down ruin on the surrounding districts, since it attracted thither almost all the Vikings who sought for booty and conquest. Nature herself has cut a deep bay into the eastern coast of England, at the mouth of the Thames, and thus pointed out to the Vikings the way they should pursue. The ships of the Danish Vikings constantly swarmed at the mouth of the Thames. “When they were not strong enough to sail up the river and attack London, or when the winter approached, they anchored under the coast, in places where they could lie in wait for and seize the merchantmen, and whence they could easily reach the open sea, if attacked by too superior a force. Some of their most important stations were under the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, and the Isle of Sheppey, (_Anglo-Saxon_, Sceapige, or the Sheep Island,) which lies at the mouth of the Thames. Thus these islands, whose remote situation rendered them sufficiently dangerous before, suffered doubly from the ravages committed by the Vikings on the coasts. Another place near the Thames, where the northern Vikings and conquerors generally landed when they harried the south of England, and where they often wintered, was the present Sandwich, in Kent. As it was an important landing-place even in the times of the Romans, they had already fortified it. Sandwich (_Ang.-Sax._, _Wic en Stad_) became in the mouths of the Northmen “Sandvic,” or the sandy bay; an appellation which perfectly agrees with the nature of the place. We find the same name for places in Orkney and the Shetland Isles, in Iceland, and Norway. From Sandwich it was but a few miles to Canterbury (in the northern tongue “Kantaraborg”), which, being a rich bishopric, was on that account exposed to remorseless plunder. In the year 1011 especially, the Jarl Thorkel the Tall, visited it with fire and sword. Christchurch, the principal church in England, was burnt down; the monks were put to death, and only one in ten of the citizens spared. Many, and among them Archbishop Elfeg, who was afterwards cruelly murdered, were cast into prison.

To the south of Canterbury, on the channel, lies “Dungeness;” and at the mouth of the Thames, “Foulness,” and “Sheerness.” The termination _ness_, in these names, seems to be neither Saxon, nor Celtic, but plainly the Danish and Norwegian _Næs_ (a promontory, or lofty tongue of land, running out into the sea).

The nearer we approach London by the Thames, the more memorials we find of the Danes. Just before we reach the metropolis, we sail past Greenwich on the left, called by the northmen “Grenvik” (nearer, perhaps, “Granvigen,” the pine-bay), whose celebrated hospital contains in our days a little host of England’s superannuated seamen, who have fought in defence of her honour, and who, supported by the public, enjoy an old age free from care. In the eleventh century Grenvik was also for a long time the resting-place of a host of naval warriors, who were supported at the public expense; but that was a host of bold Danish Vikings, who, after having fearfully devastated England under their chief, Jarl Thorkel the Tall, had now, in 1011, allowed themselves to be bought off for an immense sum of money, and to settle down peaceably in the service of the English king Ethelred. From this time it became the custom for the English monarchs to have continually a standing army, composed mostly of Danes, “Huskarlene,” or “Thingmen,” as they were called (Þingmannalið), whose duty it was to keep the country quiet, and to defend it against foreign invasion; whence they sometimes came to fight against their own countrymen. King Athelstan (925-941) had, however, almost a century earlier, made use of Danish warriors to suppress revolt in his kingdom; for which purpose it was ordered that one of these men should be maintained in every house, in order that they might be always ready for the king’s service. The Thingmen were to the English kings much what the Varangians were to the Greek emperors in Constantinople. They had certain rights and privileges, and later, in particular, two places were assigned to them for their headquarters—London in the south of England; and in the north, Slesvig (Nottinghamshire). Under King Canute, they played, as is well known, a considerable part.

The name of Canute the Great is connected not only with the town of Brentford (Brandfurda), on the Thames, near the western parts of London, and with Ashingdon (Assatun), in Essex, to the north-east of London, and, as the legend says, to the north of “Daneskoven” (the Danish forest), in which places he fought bloody battles with Edmund Ironsides, before he subdued England; but it is also connected in the closest manner with London itself.

When I sailed up the Thames for the first time, and when at length, above a forest of masts, the gray turrets of the Tower appeared on one side, and London Bridge in the distance, I was involuntarily led to recall the time when King Canute long lay in vain with his ships before the fortress and bridge of the metropolis, whilst a great part of the rest of England submitted to his sway. London Bridge was defended by three castles, one of which stood on the bridge itself. The Danes attempted to dig a canal round the foot of the bridge; and though Canute, who was well supported by Thorkel the Tall, and by Erik Jarl, the Norwegian, is said to have resumed the siege several times, yet it was by negociation alone that he seems to have obtained possession of London.

Even amid the varied impressions created by the metropolis of the world, I could not forget—and what Dane could?—that it was chiefly here that for a long period the Northmen found, as it were, another home, from which they returned to their native land enriched by fresh knowledge, and on the whole with a higher degree of civilization, which they afterwards turned to account in the north; that it was here that not a few of the most zealous promoters and defenders of Christianity in Scandinavia, and amongst them particularly the Norwegian king, Olaf Trygvesön, had dwelt before they began the work of conversion; that it was here, lastly, that several Danish chieftains, and especially Canute the Great, had played the sovereign, and held their court, surrounded by the _Thingmen_ and the bards, who in those times usually accompanied the northern kings. On surveying London, its proud river, and beautiful uplands, one cannot help doubly admiring the power of that king, who, at a distance from his native land, was not only able to command all this, as well as the whole of England, but Norway and Denmark in addition. One feels the truth of the words of the Saga about Canute: “Of all kings that have spoken the Danish tongue, he was the mightiest, and the one that reigned over the greatest kingdoms.”

Although London was at that time one of the most considerable towns in Europe, it was of course but very small compared with what it is at present. The walls inclosed only that proportionally small part of modern London called the “City,” and which forms the centre of its busy commerce. Close by lay a castle (whence the Northmen’s name for London, “Lundunaborg”), and undoubtedly on the same spot where, not long after Canute’s time, William the Conqueror built the Tower. Somewhat higher up the Thames, on an island which, from the many thorns growing there, obtained the name of Thorney (_Anglo-Saxon_, Thornege), or the Thorn Island, stood another castle, said to have been inhabited at different times by Canute. This island, in whose name we find both the Anglo-Saxon _ege_, and afterwards the northern _ey_ (island), and which is therefore sometimes very incorrectly called Thorney _Island_, has now lost both its ancient name and appearance. Under the name of Westminster, it forms at present a continuous part of London.

The Dane who wanders through this immense city, will not only be reminded by such names as “Denmark Court,” “Denmark Street,” and “Copenhagen Street,” and by monuments in St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, of the sanguinary battles which have taken place in modern times between England and Denmark, as well as of the older ties of friendship, which for a long time found increased support by means of the relationship and reciprocal marriages which occurred in the reigning families of the two countries; but he will also find traces even to this day, of the power and influence which his forefathers, both before and after King Canute’s time, possessed in the most important commercial city of wealthy England.

Approaching the city from the west end, through the great street called “the Strand,” we see, close outside the old gate of Temple Bar, a church called St. Clement’s Danes, from which the surrounding parish derives its name. In the early part of the middle ages this church was called in Latin, “Ecclesia Sancti Clementis Danorum,” or, “the Danes’ Church of St. Clement.” It was here that the Danes in London formerly had their own burial-place; in which reposed the remains of Canute the Great’s son and next successor, Harald Harefoot. When, in 1040, Hardicanute ascended the throne after his brother Harald, he caused Harald’s corpse to be disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey, and thrown into the Thames; where it was found by a fisherman, and afterwards buried, it is said, “in the Danes’ churchyard in London.” From the churchyard it was subsequently removed into a round tower, which ornamented the church before it was rebuilt at the close of the seventeenth century.

It has, indeed, been supposed by some that this church was called after the Danes only because so many Danes have been buried in it; but as it is situated close by the Thames, and must have originally lain outside the city walls, in the western suburbs, and consequently outside of London proper, it is certainly put beyond all doubt, that the Danish merchants and mariners who, for the sake of trade, were at that time established in or near London, had here a place of their own, in which they dwelt together as fellow-countrymen. Here it should also be remarked, that this church, like others in commercial towns, as, for instance, at Aarhuus in Jutland, at Trondhjem in Norway, and even in the city of London (in East Cheap), was consecrated to St. Clement, who was especially the seaman’s patron saint. The Danes naturally preferred to bury their dead in this church, which was their proper parish church.

The Danes and Norwegians also possessed an important place of trade on the southern shore of the Thames, opposite the city—in Southwark, as it is called, which was first incorporated with London, as part of the city, in the middle ages. The very name of _Southwark_, which is unmistakably of Danish or Norwegian origin, is evidence of this. The Sagas relate that, in the time of King Svend Tveskjæg, the Danes fortified this trading place; which, evidently on account of its situation to the south of the Thames and London, was called “Sydvirke” (Sudrvirki), or the southern fortification. From Sudrvirki, which in Anglo-Saxon was called Suð-geweorc, but which in the middle ages obtained the name of Suthwerk or Suwerk, arose the present form, Southwark, through small and gradual changes in the pronunciation. The Northmen had a church in Sydvirke dedicated to the Norwegian king, Olaf the Saint. Olaf, who fell in the battle of Stiklestad, in 1030, was so celebrated a saint that churches were built in his honour, not only in Norway, where he became the patron saint of the kingdom, and in the rest of Scandinavia, but also in almost every place where the Northmen established themselves; nay, even in distant Constantinople the Varangians had a church called after him. There is still a street in Southwark, close by London Bridge and the Thames, which bears the significant name of Tooley Street, a corruption of St. Olave’s Street. On the northern side stands a church, called St. Olave’s Church, and which is found mentioned by that name as early as the close of the thirteenth century.

Within the city, in what may be strictly called ancient London, where the Sagas already mention a St. Olaf’s Church, there are to be found at this day no fewer than three churches consecrated to St. Olave: namely, in Silver Street; at the north-west corner of Seething Lane, Tower Street; and in the Old Jewry (St. Olave’s Upwell). The two last-named stand in the eastern extremities of the city, yet within its ancient boundaries. In the same neighbourhood, near London Bridge, there is also a church dedicated to St. Magnus the Martyr, which likewise undoubtedly owes its origin to the Northmen, either the Norwegians or Danes. St. Magnus was a Norwegian jarl, who was killed in the twelfth century in Orkney, where the cathedral in Kirkwall is also consecrated to him.

That so many churches in London should be named after these Norwegian saints, Olaf and Magnus, who, moreover, were not canonized till after the death of Canute the Great, and the overthrow of the Danish dominion in England, furnishes no mean evidence of the influence of the Northmen in London. It confirms in a remarkable manner the truth of the old statements, that the Danes who dwelt in London could at times even turn the scales at the election of a king; as, for instance, after the death of Canute the Great. An English chronicler, speaking of the power of the Danes at that period, adds, that the citizens of London had, by reason of their frequent intercourse with “_the barbarians_” (the Danes), almost adopted their manners and customs. And it was, indeed, natural that the long voyages of the Northmen, and the important commerce carried on between the countries of Scandinavia and England, should have long secured to the northern merchants an influential position in a city like London, which was in the highest degree a commercial city, and particularly when these merchants had once been established there in great numbers.

But the most striking and remarkable memorial of the early power of the Danes and other Northmen in London is this—that the highest tribunal in the city has retained to our days its pure old northern name “Husting.” The word _Thing_, whereby, as is well known, both deliberative and judicial assemblies were designated in the north from the earliest times, does not seem to have been employed by the Anglo-Saxons in that signification, or at all events not before the Danish expeditions and Danish immigrations into England. The Anglo-Saxons used in that sense the term _gemót_, as in “Witena-gemót,” which was the name of their parliament. Husthings are also especially mentioned in the Sagas as having been held in the north, particularly by kings, jarls, and other powerful individuals. The Husthing in London was originally established in order to protect and guard the laws and liberties of the city and the customs of the courts of judicature; and the principal magistrates were judges. In the Latin of the middle ages it is said of a person who attended there—“Comparuit in Hustingo.” A similar Husting was also formerly found in the Isle of Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames.

London, beneath whose walls and gates the Danes have fought numerous battles with various success, contains within it memorials both of their greatest power and of the decay of their dominion. On the same side of the Thames as Sydvirke, or Southwark, but somewhat higher up, lies Lambeth (formerly Lambythe, Lambgathre), which is now a part of London, and the residence of the Primate of England, but which in olden times was a village outside the capital. At a country-house there a Danish jarl celebrated his marriage in the year 1042. King Hardicanute, with a number of his followers, was present at the banquet; but just as he was drinking to the bride, he suddenly fell to the ground, in a fit of apoplexy, and shortly afterwards breathed his last at the age of only twenty-six years.

Hardicanute was the last Danish king in England.

SECTION IV.

Watlinga-Stræt.—South England.—Legends about the Danes.—The graves of Canute the Great and Hardicanute.

In the heart of the city of London, near St. Paul’s Cathedral, is a street called “Watling Street.” Anciently it was connected with the great high road of the same name (or more properly Watlinga-Stræt), which had been made by the Britons from the Channel and London through the midst of England to the north-east of Wales, Chester, and the Irish Channel. On account of the importance of this road, as communicating with the interior of England as well as with Ireland, the Romans improved it. But, like most of the high roads of ancient times, it was carried over heights, with the constant view of avoiding streams which would require the erection of bridges. It followed, as nearly as possible, the natural division of the watercourse in England, or the ridge of the land watershed whence rivers take their course in all directions.

About the year 1000 this road not only showed the natural boundary between the northern and southern river-valleys, but likewise indicated in the clearest possible manner a political boundary between the inhabitants of different extraction, and different manners and customs. The districts to the north and east of this road belonged for the most part to the so-called “Dena-lagu,” or “Dane-lagh,” that is, the Dane’s community (from _lag_, whence in the north itself, in Norway, for instance, _Thröndelagen_, and in Sweden, _Roslagen_). For here the Danes, and other conquerors or immigrants of Scandinavian origin, had gradually subdued and expelled the Anglo-Saxons, and here the Danish laws, habits, and customs, chiefly prevailed.

In the districts to the south, on the contrary, the repulsed Anglo-Saxons had concentrated the last remnants of their former power. A great number of wealthy and leading Danes were indeed also settled here, either in the country, or, with a view to commerce, in the principal towns on the coast; as in Winchester, which, like London, long had its “Husting;” Exeter, where a church was in later times dedicated to St. Olave; and Bristol. But, out of London, the Danes scarcely formed at that time any really strong and united power in the south of England. The predominating people was the Anglo-Saxon, and in general the old Saxon characteristics had been preserved.