The Norse occupation of the Lake District

Abstract

There is no direct documentary record of a Norse occupation of the Lake District, and the region does not appear to have had any of the features which would normally attract Vikings. Yet the place-names and pre-Conquest sculptured stones make it certain that a considerable Norse immigration took place, and useful inferences may be drawn from incidental information in a few documents. For the purpose of this study, distribution maps of the Norse place-names have been made, and are discussed in detail, as are the mom monuments. Considerable weight is attached to the findings of the Freshwater Biological Association in Lake Windermere, and to the derails of the probable horse invasion of Wirral. Most significant among these disparate strands of evidence have been found the element setr, and the Goidelic element, especially inversion-compounds and the element - erg, in the place-names of the Lake district; the styles and subjects of its carved monuments; and the pollen data from Windermere. These give grounds for a belief that horse immigration continued for some considerable time, and that immigrants came from Shetland and Orkney, Ireland, Man, and probably Galloway, thus producing a more complex horse culture in the Lake District than in any of the other Irish Sea horse settlements with which it is compared in the study. Geographical and archaeological evidence support the view that the immigrants were chiefly horsemen who sought a free, though hard and unadventurous life, but there are notable differences in the types of horse-brought culture in the various parts of the district.