Act 5
Scandinavian Kirkdale
c 793 CE to 1066
Kirkdale Minster
Kirkdale under Scandinavian influence
It might be
thought that the period of Viking invasion which impacted heavily on northeast
England from the mid ninth century CE, would have been devastating for our
ancestors. However the lands of Kirkdale were nestled at the protective edge of
the moors and dales, and were not at the heart of Viking violence. Whilst they
cannot have escaped disruption and some experience of violence, the cultivated
region seems to have been quickly subsumed into a new Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian
culture.
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This
is a new experiment. Using Google’s Notebook LM, listen to an AI powered
podcast summarising this page. This should only be treated as an
introduction, and the AI generation sometimes gets the nuance a bit wrong.
However it does provide an introduction to the themes of this page, which are
dealt with in more depth below. |
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As
a scene setter, you might enjoy a dramatic interpretation of the Viking
threat. It is fictional, but might help to set a scene. |
Scene 1 – Becoming Scandinavian
Attack
The best
known Viking raid on the British Isles was the attack on Lindisfarne off the
modern Northumbrian coast in 793 CE. There had in fact been attacks from
Scandinavia before that time, mostly further to the north.
The
Judgement Day Stone, Lindisfarne
The effects
of Viking raids on the indigenous population, who were exposed to violence and
enslavement, must have been profound. Opportunistic raids by Viking warrior
seamen continued over the next half century. By 835 CE larger Viking fleets
began to engage in more significant confrontations with royal armies.
A great
Scandinavian army arrived in 865 CE. The Anglo Saxon
Chronicle, written in the age of King Alfred, recorded that year that
there sat the heathen army in the isle of Thanet, and made peace with the
men of Kent, who promised money therewith; but under the security of peace, and
the promise of money, the army in the night stole up the country, and overran
all Kent eastward. By 867 CE, the army went from the East-Angles over
the mouth of the Humber to the Northumbrians, as far as York. And there was
much dissension in that nation among themselves; they had deposed their king
Osbert, and had admitted Aella, who had no natural claim. Late in the year,
however, they returned to their allegiance, and they were now fighting against
the common enemy; having collected a vast force, with which they fought the
army at York; and breaking open the town, some of them entered in. Then was
there an immense slaughter of the Northumbrians, some within and some without;
and both the kings were slain on the spot. The survivors made peace with the
army. The same year died Bishop Ealstan, who had the
bishopric of Sherborn fifty winters, and his body lies in the town. Given
the proximity of York, this must have been a traumatic time for the region.
However, by 876 CE Healfdene shared out the land of the Northumbrians, and
they turned to ploughing and making a living for themselves. Place name
evidence of settlement, especially in North Yorkshire, is plentiful.
By the late
ninth century there was an increasing influence of Scandinavian culture
including upon the language. Many words of modern use in local dialect have
Norse origins, including dale, from the Norwegian ‘dalr’,
valley; beck, stream and fell, mountain.
It is likely
that rather than a wholesale transplanting of Scandinavian culture into the
Anglo-Saxon world, the old Anglo Saxon world continued, but increasingly
absorbed new traditions and ideas to create an Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian
culture, especially in the region around the new Scandinavian heart of Jorvik.
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The
Scandinavian centre of northern England |
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A reconstructed journey into Scandinavian Yorkshire
and a glimpse of Scandinavian objects which tells its story |
Settlement
For the
lands around Kirkdale
the evidence of the early Scandinavian period is slim. Whilst our
ancestors there might have witnessed unrest, disruption and violence, Kirkdale was off centre to
the known locations of Danish upheaval. In fact Kirkdale might have found
itself with more responsibility over an increasingly dispersed population. By
the time the Scandinavian government was more firmly established at Jorvik, Kirkdale might have become
directly associated with the city, and by the later Scandinavian period, the
local elite had acquired property in York.
It therefore
seems likely that the home of distant ancestors of modern Farndale family was a
place of general stability, and likely political influence for most of the
thousand years from the Roman period to the Norman. This stability probably
continued through the Scandinavian period, perhaps with some violent and
unstable interludes.
Scene 2 – Thinking like a
Scandinavian
Rebuilding
The
archaeological record shows that the old church of Kirkdale was destroyed by
fire, probably at about the turn of the first millennium. It had previously
been thought that the church might have fallen during the Viking period, but it
seems more likely that the church suffered a fire perhaps not many years before
Orm Gamalson, as he recorded on
his sundial, rebuilt Kirkdale Church in about 1055.
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Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian Kirkdale Kirkdale
in the Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian period from about 800 CE to 1066 |
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The
powerful figure at the heart of the aristocracy, who rebuilt Kirkdale and put
our ancestral lands firmly onto the national political stage |
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A unique treasure whose secrets transport us into the
world of the eleventh century upon which you can stare today, imagining
direct ancestors who did the same a thousand years ago |
Although
we’re not certain that the sundial
was built into the church during the 1055 building work, it’s likely that it
was, possibly in its current position.
The south
doorway with the sundial
The original west doorway which was part of Gamal’s rebuilding
The
sundial’s inscription refers to Edward the Confessor and to Tostig, the son of
Earl Godwin of Wessex and brother of Harold II, the last Anglo Saxon King of
England. Tostig was the Earl of Northumbria between 1055 and 1065 who rebelled
against his brother Harold Godwinson to join the Dane, Harold Hardrada in the
invasion of northern England which immediately preceded the Battle of Hastings.
It was therefore during that last relatively peaceful decade, immediately
before the Norman conquest, that Orm, son of Gamal rebuilt this Church,
dedicated to St Gregory and when he did, he placed that sundial in the doorway.
Our
ancestors found themselves at a place of historical significance in the year
1066, not so far from the first of the two great battles of that year, the most
significant year of change in English history. And our ancestors’ home had
direct cultural and political links with the world of Edward the Confessor,
Tostig and Harold Godwinson and others, who were the main actors in that story.
Orm Gamalson was clearly a substantial figure,
and the place he chose to articulate his power was Kirkdale. Kirkdale had political significance in this
pivotal historical episode.
An
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian World
The sundial is written in the Old
English of the late Anglo Saxon period.
“Orm the
son of Gamal acquired St Gregory’s Minster when it was completely ruined and
collapsed, and he had it built anew from the ground to Christ and to St Gregory
in the days of King Edward and in the days of Earl Tostig”.
The sundial
itself bears the inscription “This is the day’s sun circle at each hour”
and then “The priest and Hawarth me wrought and
Brand”.
There is a
single Old Norse word, solmerca, which means
sundial. The old Norse word might just have been borrowed from the Norse
language. The Scandinavian names, particular Orm, have been Anglicised from the
Norse Ormr. So when you first interpret the
words of the sundial, it doesn’t seem particularly Scandinavian.
It would
appear that Orm rebuilt an ancient, ruined church, which he re-dedicated to St
Gregory, rejecting the disorder of the earlier Viking attacks, in order to
restore the Christian traditions of the pre-Scandinavian period. The sundial
might reflect a rejection of Scandinavian culture and a recovery of the earlier
Anglo-Saxon Christian period.
And yet,
there is tangible evidence of Scandinavian culture on the local community.
The
inscription provides the names of Orm Gamalson, the elite landholder; of a
priest called Brand and of Hawaro, probably an
artisan. It therefore records a reasonable cross section of society. There is
little doubt that Orm Gamalson
came from a Scandinavian tradition and probably was of Scandinavian descent.
Brand was the priest and was likely to have been responsible for the design of
the sundial. Brandr was a common personal name from Denmark and Iceland.
Hawaro was probably the craftsman, responsible for
the inscription. This is also a Scandinavian name, as in the Icelandic saga of
Hávarður of Ísafjörður.
The use of a
Scandinavian name might evidence Scandinavian descent, or simply an increased
use of fashionable Norse names. Yet the way that names were used in this period
followed strict genealogical form. Orm Gamalson had a father and son each
called Gamal son of Orm, and his grandfather was probably also Orm Gamalson.
Names were used in a carefully controlled manner. They bound families together
and created a network of obligations. Analysis of the Domesday Book shows the
proportion of Old Norse to Old English names was more than two to one. The
highest of all such names was in Yorkshire and the Ryedale Wapentake, which
included Kirkdale, had a higher than county average. There were 92 Old Norse to
8 Old English names. Although Norman names were adopted in large numbers after
the conquest, the total number of different names adopted from the
Normans was very small. Yet the use of Norse names at the time of the Norman
invasion reflected a large number of different names which were used.
By the tenth
century there was extensive interaction between England and Scandinavia.
In 1016 the
Danish King Cnut assumed the throne from his conquering father Swein Forkbeard and granted estates to many of those who
had supported the reconquest. Orm’s father Gamal probably benefited from this
redistribution of land. In later marrying Ealdred’s daughter Aethelthryth, Orm
became embedded into the Scandinavian and English elite society.
Old Norse
was still spoken at the eve of the Norman Conquest, particularly in Yorkshire.
Old Norse speakers continued to arrive, with another influx during the reign of
Cnut. The Old Norse language flourished in Cnut’s court. In the north there was
a rich culture of elite poetry, read in the Old Norse language for English
audiences.
The language
of the Kirkdale sundial was Old English, as were four similar inscriptions in
the area at Aldbrough (Ulf had this church built for his own
sake and for Gunnvor's soul), the Traveller’s Clock at Great
Edstone (Loðan
made me; Orlogium Iatorum, “The Traveller’s Clock” ); Old Byland (Sumarleoi’s house servant made me); and St
Mary Castlegate, York (and Grim and Aese raised this church in the name of the holy Lord Christ
and to St Mary and St Martin and St Cuthbert and All Saints. It was consecrated
in the … year in the life of …). Yet Old Norse had never become a written
language using the Roman alphabet. The two written traditions were Latin and
Old English. Since Old English and Old Norse were related languages, the
Scandinavian elite did not worry themselves about using existing traditions of
Old English and Latin for the written record.
Whilst
Scandinavian culture was originally pagan, by the tenth century the
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian community had adopted Christianity. There is extensive
evidence of religious piety particularly through Scandinavian inspired stone
sculpture. There are at least nine examples of such inscription at Kirkdale,
apart from the sundial. They were probably funerary monuments for the new local
Scandinavian elite.
Kirkdale is
a place where Scandinavian, Latin and English traditions met and found
expression. It was at the heart of the Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian world.
A concept
of Time
The
sundial’s inscription, This is the day’s sun circle at each hour, takes us
into the imaginations and perceptions of our ancestors who conceived of the
sundial and looked up at it as they regularly walked through the door. It was
unlikely to have been a practical time telling mechanism, given its position on
the minster’s wall surrounded by high ground. It is more likely, particularly
given its position over the doorway into the minster, that the real purpose of
the sundial was not practical and secular, but religious and profound. Indeed
the practice was to bury the dead who had been faithful on the south side of
the church, so the exterior of the south wall was a logical place for such
symbolism.
It was
probably intended to be a symbolic reminder of temporal progression. Time was
perceived as the linear temporal space within which the world moved towards its
final judgement and dissolution. By the fourth century CE, Christian theology
had focused on God’s plans for how life on earth was lived. This brought with
it a conception of history and the passage of time.
This was an
uneasy generation of the period just after the end of the first millennium. In
1014, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, had published his sermon addressed to
the English nation. He anticipated the coming of the Antichrist and found moral
decline in the nation. There was always some uncertainty about the exact span
of the thousand years. What was in doubt was the precise date, but not of the
fact of a Second Coming. So it is possible that Orm’s sundial created not so
long after the turn of the millennium, was recording the passing of the last of
days. If that is so, it is difficult to tell whether it was created with a
sense of foreboding, or whether it was a more optimistic symbol.
In 325 CE
the Council of Nicaea ruled that Christians should hold Easter on the same day,
always a Sunday. The computational method involved complex cycles of years. It
never worked well. Bede’s De temporum ratione
was an attempt to help calculate the dates of Easter up to the millennium and
beyond. There was a renewal of computus
learning in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Aelfric’s De temporibus anni was a development of Bede’s earlier
work. With guidance from texts such as Bede’s and Aelfric’s, it had become
possible for a reasonably educated cleric to make his own calculations. There
was likely to have been a network of ecclesiastical connections, leading to the
restored library at York. Kirkdale’s likely
associations with York would probably have given access to Kirkdale’s
priest, Brand, to these works.
So Brand may
have been a priest who, with Orm’s patronage, was able to articulate complex
ideas of the passage of time, reinforcing the correct calculation of time
through computus science, with a primarily
theological symbolism, inspiring our ancestors to use their time wisely and
piously, particularly against the perceived threat of an ending of time.
So when you
look at the sundial today, it is worth reflecting on what it might have meant
to a person who might be a direct but distant relative. If he or she was
contemplating time, the sundial might now be a portal across a thousand years,
to provide some linkage into our ancestor’s minds.
The
Community in the last days of the Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian world
The Domesday
Book records two churches within the estate of Chirchebi, with one at
Kirkdale and the other being the site of Kirkbymoorside Parish Church.
It evidences
that Kirkdale by the mid eleventh century comprised ten villagers, one priest,
two ploughlands, two lord’s plough teams, three men’s plough teams, a mill and
a church living in an area of five caracutes
of land.
If you visit
Kirkdale today, walk through the gate to the west of the church and into the
field beyond. Look carefully at the ground and you will see that the field is
marked by long ridges in the grass. Ridge and furrow describes the
archaeological pattern of ridges and troughs which evidences the system of
ploughing used during the Middle Ages, typical of the open-field system. It is
predominant in the North East of England and in Scotland. Walk across the field
and imagine the community that lived there in the late Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian
world, listed in some detail in the Domesday Book.
Go Straight to Act 6 – Game of Thrones
or
If your interest is in Kirkdale then I suggest you visit the
following pages of the website.
· The church in Anglo Saxon Times
· The Kirkdale
Anglo Saxon artefacts
· The community in Anglo Saxon Times
· The church in Anglo Saxon
Scandinavian Times
You can also
read about Jorvik.
There is a
chronology, together with source material at the
Kirkdale research Page.