Canute: The Danelaw and the Vikings of Sherwood

By Stuart Reddish.

CANUTE1000 May 2016

Thynghowe Viking Spring Thing 2016

The recent event Canute1000 organised by Lynda Mallett and committee members of the Friends of Thynghowe was a great success. In association with the Forestry Commission and Regia Anglorum and sponsored by Canute Group the two day event attracted thousands of people. Held at Sherwood Pines Nottinghamshire the 2016 Spring Thing recreated the heritage of the Vikings of Sherwood and its connections with a 1000 years of history since the crowning of the Danish Viking Canute as the King of All England

Arena displays, a living history camp, a specially transported Viking boat and perfect weather combined to provide a major event in the celebration of 1000 years since the creation of Nottinghamshire as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronical.

Arena battle Mercian army against the Vikings of Canute

In conjunction with this event a booklet was published setting the history of how Vikings came to live in Sherwood Forest and how the Thynghowe Viking Assembly Site may have been an important part of Canute's invasion campaign in 1016.

Click here to read booklet

Nottinghamshire 1000 : 365 Reasons to celebrate a County's Heritage

Great New webpage provided by Mercian Archaeological Services CIC to support the Nottinghamshire 1000 project in partnership with Sherwood Forest Trust, The Friends of Thynghowe, King John's Palace and the Public Information Research Organisation.

Nottinghamshire 1000 is a group of organisations that have joined together to help celebrate the 1000th anniversary of this great shire.
We are encouraging people to post memories of significant people, places and events that have connections with Nottinghamshire. These events can have happened anytime in the last 1000 years. We would then like to make a timeline, with an event for every day of the year. 365 reasons to celebrate our Nottinghamshire heritage and create a resource for anyone to use.

To achieve these goals we need funding. We'll do that. But we need as much support as possible. The more posts we get, and the more 'likes' for the page, the more evidence we will have to show funders.
We know how much knowledge you have, and we believe in people driving their own heritage and cultural development.
Simply post your suggestion onto facebook.com/Nottinghamshire1000

http://mercian-as.co.uk/notts1000.html

Nottinghamshire Canute and the Danish Warrior Farmers

Nottinghamshire is fortunate in that it has a tangible link to its origins. In this year 2016 we have an opportunity to celebrate 1000 years of history. Our first celebration is to mark 1000 years since the Danish Viking Canute became King of England. Our second celebration is to mark 1000 years since Nottinghamshire was recorded as a Shire in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. This may not be a coincidence as the connections are deeply rooted in the Danelaw and the existence of the Five Boroughs within it. (See previous posts).

These extremely important events will be celebrated at Sherwood Pines Nottinghamshire on 14th and 15th of May. A Viking Spring Thing, using the traditions of our Thynghowe Viking Assembly Site, will provide a perfect setting to tell the story of our important Nottinghamshire heritage.

Fig 1. Event Leaflet Front

Fig 2. Event Leaflet Back

The Seven Boroughs of The Danelaw

Canute1000 The Nottinghamshire Connection

By Stuart Reddish

                                                                                                     Canute and his Empire, G.N. Garmonsway 1963

Canute's Seven Boroughs of the Danelaw 1013 -1016

Interestingly, this account of events in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, leading to the eventual Danish rule of England in the early 11^th century, has a particular significance. It provides a connection between Canute and a possible tactical link to the Viking assembly site at Thynghowe in the boundary forest of Sherwood in Nottinghamshire. This link would have been vital in the strategic preparations for the arrival of a Danish invasion fleet via the river Humber and the river Trent and the subsequent consolidation of territorial gains. For king Svein Forkbeard and his son Canute to ensure their military success they would require the support of a large number of followers already in England with sympathies for a Danish king. This support would come from those very families of the early Viking warrior farmers of the northern Danelaw and their support would make a lasting invasion possible. It is evident that there was a consolidation of Northumbria (York), Lindsey, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Leicester and Stamford which came 'into the charge of Canute' in 1013.

Again the source of the existence of the Seven Boroughs is limited to one document that is mentioned in the book by Sir Frank Stenton Anglo Saxon England. In a footnote to page 388 he refers to a short lived extended confederation of the Danelaw's 'Five Boroughs' between the time of the Danish invasions of 1013 and 1016. In the summer of 1015 Canute returned to England with his fleet. During a great council held at Oxford earlier in that year Eadric of Mercia had procured the murder of Siferth and Morcar, sons of Angrim, the Chronicle describes them as the chief thegns belonging to the 'Seven Boroughs”. The phrase does not occur again and the exact meaning is uncertain but Stenton clearly felt that it included the five Danish boroughs of Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Leicester, and Stamford. The sixth borough was thought to be Torksey (or the larger area of Lindsey of which Torksey was part) on the river Trent. Torksey was strategically placed on the Nottingham Lincoln boundary and had an influential growing population that eventually totaled over 200 burgeeses. The seventh borough being York as under Edward the Confessor many thegns belonging to Danish Mercia also held land in Yorkshire.

This would indicate the confederation of seven boroughs could have formed prior to Svein Forkbeards arrival in 1013. The confederation was then placed into the charge of Canute by his father and this confederation was thus consolidated under Canute and was still in place to support his return in 1015. This supporting confederation being part of two planned preparations for Danish invasion.

The known Viking Assembly site at Thynghowe would provide a central geographic location within this confederation. Torksey, a former Viking winter camp, is on the river Trent, as is Gainsborough Svein Forkbeard's main camp, and is situated close to York, Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, Derby and Stamford. By having a high topographical border location, this would have made it a perfect assembly site for the confederation of the Seven Boroughs. The tradition of Viking legal assemblies was that their location was on a convergence of boundaries and borders. This geographic position was to strengthen the independence of the court and to ensure its freedom from any one kingdom's 'ownership' or patronage. Thynghowe as an established higher regional Thing site would have been an obvious choice. In any event something happened at Thynghowe that was so significant that the site was still recorded on maps hundreds of years ^{1 .}

1. Community Archaeology at Thynghowe, Birklands, Sherwood Forest Lynda Mallett, Stuart Reddish, John Baker, Stuart Brookes and Andy Gaunt. Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, Volume 116; 2012

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Canute1000 Celebration 2016

Danish Viking Settlement in the Five Boroughs

Photo: Lynda Mallett

The 10th and 11th century settlements of the Danes differed from those of the English; they were the encampment of armies, and their boundaries were the fighting fronts sustained by a series of fortified towns. Stamford, Nottingham, Lincoln, Derby, and Leicester were the bases of the new invading force. Behind their frontier lines the warriors of one decade were to become the colonists and landowners of the next. The Danish settlement in England was essentially military. They cut their way with their swords, and then planted themselves deeply in the soil, as did their English predecessors. The warrior type of farmer asserted from the first, a status different from ordinary agriculturist.

They had a status of freemen or Sokemen. By the time of the Norman invasion free peasants formed the third largest group among the peasantry, almost 14% of the recorded population. In economic terms, they were among the most substantial groups within the peasantry, possessing on average 30 acres of land and two plough oxen.

Freemen (Status) and freemen (Peasant) appear in large numbers only in the Danelaw where their numbers were very considerable, up to half the rural population in some counties. The peculiarities of this distribution have excited considerable debate. Most historians would agree that the distribution reflects the impact of the Viking invasions of the ninth century, though just how this effect was produced is disputed. Some believe that the free peasantry of the Danelaw recorded in the Doomsday Book represent descendants of the rank and file of the Danish armies who had settled in the ninth century, others that they were the descendants of a mass immigration of Scandinavian peasants which followed in the wake of this military conquest. A third view is that the effects of Viking conquest were indirect and cultural, the native peasantry of the Danelaw acquiring free status under Viking rule. It has also been argued that the free peasantry were widely distributed throughout the country before the Viking invasions, the once free peasantry of Wessex losing their freedom in the struggle for survival against the Vikings. However, in the area of the Five Boroughs within the Danelaw the rights and customs of freemen continued long after the Norman conquest.

The Ancient Boundary Wood of Sherwood

The Ancient Boundary Wood of Sherwood

Stuart Reddish

We are all familiar with the mythical stories of Robin Hood but what do we know about the name of his forest home Sherwood.

The first references are over a thousand years old and come from a family name. An ancient English surname which is derived from the Old English elements 'Scir' (pronounced 'sher') meaning 'bright' or 'shire', and 'Wudu' - a Wood or collection of trees. So the name may have begun to describe a 'dweller in the bright wood' or a 'dweller in a wood near a Shire or County boundary'. That would mean the name is of topographic origin (like the surname Wood) and may have developed independently in several regions at the same time. As it is the name of the forest and the place in Nottinghamshire it could be associated with a surname of toponymic origin. The earliest reference is in 958AD, when a SCIRWUDU was a prominent Saxon during the reign of the Wessex King Edwig ('The Literary Digest', 29 December 1928). Another early reference is to William de Shirewude 1219 Assize Rolls: Yorks.

There are other possible explanations. This is from The place-names of Nottinghamshire by John Eric Bruce Gover, Allen Mawer, F. M. Stenton:

"Others connect the first element with modern shire. In the earliest records, Sherwood is often spoken of as the "forest of Nottingham " (Victoria County Hist. I 365), which would seem to support the derivation from shire-wood, " the wood belonging to, or forming part of, the county."

This explanation is not thought to be wholly satisfactory either. The authors venture to suggest that the word sclr- is used here in the same sense as in Shireoaks, and Shire Dyke, a little stream forming part of the boundary between the counties of Nottingham and Lincoln. Its meaning is "boundary, division." Jellinghaus (p. 316) connects the word with modern Westphalian Sckier* y of the same meaning, which enters into numerous Low German field names, such as Sckiereneiken, " Shire-oaks," Schierenboken, "-beeches,"Schierholz, "-holt, or wood." There exists also a Shirland in Derbyshire, which goes back to older Scirlund, lund being the Scandinavian word for " wood."

If this explanation is adopted, the meaning would be " boundary forest." This seems a most appropriate name, seeing that Sherwood Forest stretches along the boundary between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and that part of its ancient bounds, as laid down in the perambulations, actually coincides with the modern line dividing the two counties.

Our research at Thynghowe has included a further early boundary implication between Mercia and Northumbria and maybe a Viking role between the Five boroughs of the Danelaw and the Kingdom of York. This emphasis on boundary and dispute resolution underpins the long history of the Thynghowe assembly site in the heart of Sherwood.

Surveying the summit of Thynghowe Viking Assembly site where the boundary's of Budby, Edwinstowe and Warsop meet.