Ravenserodd and other lost settlements of the East Yorkshire coast

The aim of the following post is primarily to share a map of the villages, towns and lands that have been lost to the sea along the east coast of Yorkshire since the Roman period, along with some details of what is arguably the most interesting of these lost settlements, the medieval 'island town' of Ravenserodd. The post also includes some maps of the potential far-future coastlines of this region if coastal erosion and sea-level changes continue in the manner that they are expected to.

The lost towns and villages of the East Yorkshire coastline, based on the map in T. Sheppard, The Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast (London, 1912), with some modifications. The coastline at the end of the Roman period is shown in orange-brown and is set against the modern landscape (green), showing the extent of the erosion on the east coast. Also depicted are the lost settlements of this coast and some of the major population centres today. Note: the 'new lands' on the north side of the Humber were created via reclamation from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries (image: C. R. Green).

The above map is a simplified version of that published by Thomas Sheppard, the first curator of Hull Municipal Museum, in his Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast (London, 1912). Shown on it are 29 towns and villages that Sheppard considered lost, or partially lost, to the sea along the coast of East Yorkshire—some in the medieval period and others, such as Old Kilnsea, much more recently—along with a depiction of the potential amount of land lost from the east coast since the Roman era. Although each of the lost settlements mapped on there has a potential story, perhaps the most interesting (and certainly one of the best documented) is that of Ravenserodd, or Ravenser Odd, a town and port that was not only destroyed by the sea but also apparently born from it, being said by near-contemporary witnesses to have been founded on an island thrown up by the waves in the mid-1230s:

[B]y the casting up of the sea, a certain small island was born, which is called Ravenserodd, which is distant from the town of Grimsby by the space of one tide. And afterwards fishers dried their nets there, and men little by little first began to dwell and stay there, and afterwards ships laden with divers kinds of merchandise began to unload and sell there... 

The above account is taken from an inquisition of 1290, and the same source goes on to give further details of the foundation of the town, stating that:

forty years ago a certain ship was cast away at Ravenserodd, where no house was then built, which ship a certain man appropriated to himself, and from it made for himself a hut or cabin, which he inhabited for so long a time that he received ships and merchants there, and sold them food and drink, and afterwards others began to dwell there. 

The exact location and nature of Ravenserodd is open to some debate, but it is often believed to have been located to the east of the present-day Spurn Point and was said in the fourteenth-century Chronica Monasterii de Melsa to have been 'distant from the mainland a space of one mile and more', with George de Boer considering it part of a cyclical history of Spurn Point, although his model of the development of Spurn has been disputed by other researchers. Whatever the case may be, it appears clear that the settlement on this new island or semi-island at the mouth of the Humber expanded rapidly under the lordship of William de Forz, Count of Aumale, and his heirs, who obtained a charter for a market and a fair at Ravenserodd in 1251. Certainly, it had begun to seriously threaten the trade of Grimsby by 1290, with the men of that Lincolnshire port accusing those of Ravenserodd of piracy, stating that the Ravenserodd men arrested 'with a strong hand' any merchant ships headed to Grimsby and 'by fear and force have compelled and daily do compel them to turn aside to the aforesaid new town, and to sell their merchandize there', leading to the growth of Ravenserodd and the partial desertion of the port of Grimsby!

Detail of Spurn Point and Grimsby at the mouth of the Humber in the late sixteenth century, from the pocket atlas of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, dated 1595; click for a larger view (image: BL).

Despite these complaints, Ravenserodd continued to prosper as a significant mercantile centre, and in 1299 it received a borough charter from Edward I and a 30 day fair, purchased by the people of the town for £300. Indeed, it is perhaps telling with regard to its importance in the early fourteenth century that the first port marked north of The Wash on Pietro Vesconte's c. 1325 map of England—which is based on his earlier portolan chart and mariners' reports—appears to be Ravenserodd. Nonetheless, by the mid-fourteenth century the tide had quite literally begun to turn. As a number of contemporary documents detail, the island port suffered increasing erosion and destruction by the sea from the 1330s onwards, barely a century after it had reportedly first emerged from the waves. In 1346, for example, it was stated that two parts of the tenements and soil of the town of Ravenserod had been destroyed by inundations of the sea, with the town being 'daily diminished and carried away'. A subsequent writ from 1347 indicates that the destruction had begun in the eighth year of Edward III (1334/5) and that over 200 buildings and properties had been lost by the mid-1340s. The final destruction of the town and port came in the following years and is recorded by the fourteenth-century Chronica Monasterii de Melsa ('Chronicle of Meaux Abbey'). This relates that:

the inundations of the sea and of the Humber had destroyed to the foundations the chapel of Ravenserodd, built in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that the corpses and bones of the dead there horribly appeared, and the same inundations daily threatened the destruction of the said town.

The Abbot of Meaux was consequently directed to gather up the disinterred bodies from the chapel yard of Ravenserodd and rebury them in the churchyard of Easington in 1355, and the Chronicle records that 'the whole town of Ravenserodd' was not long after 'totally annihilated by the floods of the Humber and the inundations of the great sea', giving a broad summary of the nature of the place and the supposed reasons for its undoing as follows:

that town of Ravenserodd, in the parish of the said church of Easington, was an exceedingly famous borough devoted to merchandise, as well as many fisheries, most abundantly furnished with ships, and burgesses amongst the boroughs of that sea coast. But yet, with all inferior places, and chiefly by wrong-doing on the sea, by its wicked works and piracies, it provoked the wrath of God against its self beyond measure. Wherefore, within the few following years, the said town, by those inundations of the sea and the Humber, was destroyed to the foundations, so that nothing of value was left.

With regard to the date of this 'total annihilation', the last evidence for commercial activity at Ravenserodd comes from 1358, when 'ships from Ravensrode' are mentioned as being made to carry wool from Boston to Flanders, and its final abandonment appears to have taken place by 1362, when a number of men were brought before Easington manorial court for 'throwing down and rooting up the timber of the staithes at Ravensrod', implying that the town was by then derelict.

The end of the road at Aldborough, East Yorkshire, showing the continuing coastal erosion here (image: British Geological Society, used under their non-commercial licence).

If Ravenserodd thus represents the most dramatic tale from the Yorkshire coastline, a town and port that was said to have risen from and fallen back into the sea in the space of little over a century, there are nonetheless numerous other instances of the destructive power of the sea that might be cited too. For example, Hyde, in the manor of Skipsea and Cleeton, was totally destroyed by the sea as early as 1396, having suffered damage from at least as early as 1344–5, whilst St Mary’s Church at Withernsea was lost to the sea in around 1444 and that of Owthorne (or Sisterkirke), located immediately to the north of Withernsea, was finally demolished in 1816, after the last traces of the village were destroyed by the waves in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Similarly, the settlement of Hornsea Beck is mentioned in the early thirteenth century and rivalled Hornsea itself for size in the late fourteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries, but in 1609 it was said that 38 houses had been destroyed since 1547 and by 1695 all but one or two houses had been washed away. On the other hand, it is worth noting that the settlements of Northorpe and Southorpe by Hornsea probably weren't eroded by the sea as Sheppard thought, but instead were simply deserted, with traces of both still to be found on the ground according to the recent Victoria County History account of this parish.

Turning finally to the question of any potential future losses along the coastline of East Yorkshire, this has been the subject of a number of studies. The continuing erosion of the coast here is reportedly occurring at the fastest rate seen in Europe and is part of a long-term trend that began at the end of the last 'Ice Age', as has been discussed in two previous posts on this site. Looked at from a historical, multi-millennial perspective, the continued erosive force of the sea on the glacial till of Holderness is thought likely to result in the drowning and loss of a significant part of the coastline here over the next 5,000 to 10,000 years, as the following two maps depict. The first shows the suggested natural end-point of the erosion of the east coast, assuming no further significant sea-level rises, with a wide bay ultimately taking shape between the two hard headlands at Flamborough and Cromer, Norfolk, over the course of the next several thousand years. The second map shows the likely final coastal retreat if there is a significant degree of sea-level rise on a multi-millennial scale, which the Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies indicates will deepen the offshore waters and thus cause the eventual retreat of the coastline back to its pre-glacial position. With regard to these two scenarios, it is worth noting that the present-day climate appears to be approaching 'a level associated with significant polar ice-sheet loss in the past', as one recent study put it, something that may ultimately imply six metres or more of future sea-level rise spread over the next several thousand years. If so, then the second scenario could well be the most credible of the two outlined below, albeit one set perhaps 10,000 or so years in the future.

Two possible scenarios for future coastal erosion of East Yorkshire on a multi-millennial scale, as per the Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies, Hull, and assuming that the sea defences on this coast are unsustainable in the very long-term: A, the scenario if there is no significant future sea-level rise, after IECS, Humber Estuary & Coast (Hull, 1994), p. 7; B, the scenario assuming significant sea-level rise on a multi-millennial scale, based on the pre-glacial coastline during MIS 5e (images drawn by C. R. Green).

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2016, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

A brief note on Britons and wealhstodas

The following is just a very quick post about the historically interesting Old English word wealhstod, 'translator' or 'interpreter' (plural wealhstodas), which is used of a variety of people including St Jerome, who is praised by Ælfric in the late tenth-century as the 'first wealhstod between Hebrew, Latin and Greek'; the seventh-century king St Oswald of Northumbria, who is said by Ælfric to have acted as wealhstod for St Aidan because he, unlike the churchman, knew both Old English and Gaelic; and King Alfred the Great, who is described as the translator—wealhstod—of the Old English Boethius in the Prose Preface to that work.

The entry for wealhstod from J. Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. T. N. Toller, Oxford 1898, p. 1174 (image: Bosworth-Toller). 

The historical interest of OE wealhstod, 'translator/interpreter', stems primarily from its likely early origins and etymology. With regard to the former, it is worth emphasising that this occupational term occurs several times as a personal name for people who lived in the later seventh and early/mid-eighth centuries. So, we read of in both the Anonymous Life of St Cuthbert and Bede's Prose Life of St Cuthbert of a seriously ill but faithful monk of Lindisfarne named Wealhstod (Walhstod, Walchstod) who was healed by St Cuthbert and was there at the saint's death in 687. Similarly, a Glastonbury charter (S1410) dated AD 744 is witnessed by a priest named Wealhstod (Walcstod), who may also have been an early abbot there, and Bede and other sources refer to a man named Wealhstod (Walhstod, Walcstod) who served as 'bishop of the people who dwell west of the river Severn', i.e. Bishop of Hereford, in c. 727–36 (HE v.23). It thus seems clear that a personal name Wealhstod was in existence by the mid-seventh century at the latest, when Wealhstod of Lindisfarne was presumably named, and this in turn implies that the occupational term wealhstod is of even greater antiquity, given that 'such a name could not become used as a baptismal name until it had become first used as a "nickname" or occupational name', as J. R. R. Tolkien long ago observed.

These indications of an early origin for the term wealhstod become even more interesting when one turns to the etymology of the word, as wealhstod is based upon Old English wealh/walh. Although wealh/walh gained the generalized meaning of 'slave' by the end of the ninth century, this is a later, secondary development of an original sense of 'Briton' or 'Welsh-speaker', and it is with this sense that the word is found in the late seventh-century Laws of Ine and in English place-names such as Walton, 'the farmstead or village of the Britons'. In this light, the word wealhstod is clearly of some potential historical interest: given that it appears to have its origins in the mid-seventh century or before, wealhstod must—as Margaret Faull notes—'originally have referred to someone who could understand the languages both of the Wēalas [the Britons] and the English and so could act as the medium between the two'. Of course, the probable existence of such bilingual individuals in the post-Roman period is nowadays largely uncontroversial, especially as it is now usually agreed that 'Anglo-Saxon' immigrants from north-western Europe cannot have made up the majority of the population of what became England in the fifth and sixth centuries and that there must have been a significant degree of British acculturation and bilingualism during the pre-Viking era, but it is nonetheless intriguing to note that the Old English word for translator/interpreter seems to directly reference this!

Image from NLW MS. Peniarth 4 (The White Book of Rhydderch), 84r, showing a section of Culhwch ac Olwen that reads 'Gỽrhẏr gỽalstaỽd ieithoed ẏr holl ieithoed aỽẏdat', 'Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd—he knew all languages' (image: National Library of Wales, Public Domain).

Finally, by way of a conclusion, it is worth pointing out that this early medieval word for a translator was not confined only to Old English speakers, but was actually borrowed by the Britons (Welsh) themselves at some point too. The most frequently discussed evidence for this comes from the early Arthurian prose tale Culhwch ac Olwen, the extant redaction of which is generally placed in the late eleventh century. One of the recurring characters in this tale is Arthur's interpreter, Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd, literally Gwrhyr the 'wealhstod of languages' or 'interpreter of tongues', with gwalstawd representing Old English wealhstod borrowed into Welsh. Moreover, Gwrhyr's character in Culhwch ac Olwen lives up to this billing, with Arthur himself stating that not only does Gwrhyr 'know all languages', but that he 'can speak the same language as some of the birds and the beasts' too, something that Gwrhyr proceeds to do as part of the quests undertaken in Culhwch ac Olwen. However, this is not the only evidence for a Welsh borrowing of Old English wealhstod. Indeed, whilst wealhstod appears to have been superseded as a term for a translator in England—replaced by latimer, translator and drugeman—the word actually survives in Wales through to the end of the medieval period and beyond. So, for example, there was a Walstot/Walstottus of the Carmarthen commotes of Elfed and Widigada in the later medieval and early modern eras, who is variously described as an official interpreter/translator or steward and whose title reflects Welsh gwalstot/gwalstawd from Old English wealhstod, and the word continued to be recorded and used in both its original sense and a new one into the modern era as well, as the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru notes.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2016, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Out of the cold far north and east? Some oxygen isotope evidence for Scandinavian & central/eastern European migrants in Britain, c. 2300 BC–AD 1050

This post offers a brief discussion of some isotopic evidence for the presence in Britain of people from the cold far north and east of Europe between the Bronze Age and the Late Saxon/Viking eras, following on from a previous posting that looked at the evidence for African and southern Iberian migrants in Britain between c. 1100 BC and c. AD 800.

The geographic distribution of areas with rainwater/drinking water oxygen isotope values below ‑10.0‰, shown in dark grey, and below -12.0‰, shown in black; note, drinking water in the UK has δ¹⁸O values ranges from around -9.0‰ to -4.5‰. Image: C. R. Green, based primarily on the IAEA's 2013 RCWIP model and L. J. Araguas-Araguas & M. F. Diaz Teijeiro, 'Isotope composition of precipitation and water vapour in the Iberian Peninsula', in IAEA, Isotopic composition of precipitation in the Mediterranean Basin in relation to air circulation patterns and climate (Vienna, 2005), pp. 173–90 at fig. 3. Note, this map used the 2013 IAEA precipitation models as its source; other published maps, such as the BGS/Chenery 2004 drinking-water map, show a smaller area of southern Sweden/Norway and a greater area of Central/Eastern Europe as having values below ‑10.0‰, although a more detailed drinking-water map of Germany offers a picture much closer to that depicted here.

As in the previous post, the evidence presented below primarily derives from recent research into the British oxygen isotope data retrieved from archaeological dental enamel. The burials in question all have tooth enamel phosphate oxygen isotope (δ¹⁸O_p) values of 16.2‰ or lower, a level generally believed to fall below the range expected for people who spent their childhood in Britain and to be probably indicative of an origin in a colder and/or more northerly climate than is found here.(1) Moreover, according to both of the major equations used for relating tooth enamel oxygen isotope results to the drinking-water values that produced them, such values reflect the consumption of drinking-water with an oxygen isotope level below -9.2‰/-10.0‰. This is depleted beyond the usual range of drinking-water oxygen isotope values encountered in Britain—around -9.0‰ to -4.5‰—and instead strongly indicates an origin in either Scandinavia (where values varying from below -14‰ up to c. -8‰ are found) or central/eastern Europe (where, in the high Alps, values fall as low as -12.9‰) especially in light of the fact that it is now recognised that there are very few environmental, biological, or cultural processes that that can result in human tooth oxygen isotope values that are lower than would be expected on the basis of the consumed drinking-water.(2)

Rather than discuss each site in turn, I've decided instead to present a list of people with results that fit the above criteria, based on a 2012 catalogue of all oxygen isotope results retrieved over the previous c. 15 years by NIGL plus some more recent and important results, primarily from the fascinating Cliffs End, Thanet cemetery. The results are presented below in a table format arranged by broad era and then from lowest to highest values within these eras, with the tooth enamel δ¹⁸O_p results converted to drinking-water values using both the 2010 revised Levinson equation (Drinking-water value A) and the 2008 Daux et al equation (Drinking-water value B). Although only a relatively limited number of archaeological sites have been investigated from Britain using isotope analysis, there is probably now enough for some conclusions to start to be drawn, and a brief discussion and chronological overview of this data is consequently offered after the table.(3)

Burials from Britain with tooth enamel oxygen isotope values of 16.2‰ or lower

Era	Site & burial ID	Oxygen isotope value	Drinking-water value A	Drinking-water value B	Strontium value
Early Bronze Age	Amesbury – Archer	16.2	-10.0	-9.2	0.709400 & 0.710340
Late Bronze Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3673	14.0	-14.8	-13.0	0.7101
Late Bronze Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 2058/ON101	15.4	-11.7	-10.6	0.7123
Late Bronze Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3649	15.6	-11.3	-10.3	0.7104
Late Bronze Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3680	16.1	-10.2	-9.4	0.7083
Iron Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3651	13.9	-15.0	-13.2	0.7088
Iron Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3662	14.1	-14.6	-12.9	0.7098
Iron Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3656	14.4	-13.9	-12.4	0.7120
Iron Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3644	14.5	-13.7	-12.2	0.7090
Iron Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3660	15.1	-12.4	-11.1	0.7103
Iron Age	Cliffs End, Thanet – 3616	15.4	-11.7	-10.6	0.7105
Roman	York – DRIF6-24	14.7	-13.3	-11.8	0.708500
Roman	Winchester – Lankhills 081	14.7	-13.3	-11.8	0.709300
Roman	York – DRIF-10	15.0	-12.6	-11.3	0.709563
Roman	Winchester – Lankhills 426	15.1	-12.4	-11.1	0.709400
Roman	Gloucester – 44-77-I46	15.2	-12.2	-11.0	0.711010
Roman	Winchester – Ay21-1119	15.8	-10.9	-9.9	0.709416
Roman	Winchester – Lankhills 013	15.8	-10.9	-9.9	0.706400
Roman	Winchester – Lankhills 351	16.0	-10.4	-9.6	0.709000
Roman (Iron Age)	Galson, Isle of Lewis – Gals-93	16.1	-10.2	-9.4	0.713033
Roman	Winchester – Lankhills 357	16.2	-10.0	-9.2	0.709100
Anglo-Saxon	Bamburgh – D48	15.0	-12.6	-11.3	0.711486
Anglo-Saxon	Ketton – KCC 065	15.5	-11.5	-10.4	0.710489
Anglo-Saxon	Bamburgh – BH 04/245	15.7	-11.1	-10.1	0.709420
Anglo-Saxon	Bamburgh – BH 06/416	15.8	-10.9	-9.9	0.712764
Anglo-Saxon	West Heslerton – G169	15.9	-10.7	-9.7	0.709032
Anglo-Saxon	Bamburgh – BH 03/176	15.9	-10.7	-9.7	0.709995
Anglo-Saxon	Bamburgh – BH 99-134	16.0	-10.4	-9.6	0.710478
Anglo-Saxon	Bamburgh – BH 04/293	16.0	-10.4	-9.6	0.710493
Anglo-Saxon	Empingham – EMP-031B	16.1	-10.2	-9.4	-
Anglo-Saxon	Ketton – KCC 98 54	16.1	-10.2	-9.4	0.709835
Anglo-Saxon	Ketton – KCC 98 9	16.1	-10.2	-9.4	0.709349
Anglo-Saxon	Bamburgh – D54	16.2	-10.0	-9.2	0.710946
Anglo-Saxon	Ketton – KCC 047	16.2	-10.0	-9.2	0.709372
Anglo-Saxon	Ketton – KCC 98 40	16.2	-10.0	-9.2	0.709564
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3711	13.7	-15.4	-13.5	0.713770
Viking	Oxford – Sk1787	14.9	-12.8	-11.5	0.712919
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3707	15.1	-12.4	-11.1	0.713060
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3704	15.2	-12.2	-11.0	0.711560
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3739	15.4	-11.7	-10.6	0.710890
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3720	15.6	-11.3	-10.3	0.712940
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3724	15.8	-10.9	-9.9	0.720510
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3744	15.8	-10.9	-9.9	0.710720
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3706	15.9	-10.7	-9.7	0.710320
Viking	Oxford – Sk1898	16.0	-10.4	-9.6	0.710943
Viking	Oxford – Sk1990	16.0	-10.4	-9.6	0.710348
Viking	Weymouth – WEY08 SK3730	16.1	-10.2	-9.4	0.710130

Finds from the grave of the Amesbury Archer, c. 2300 BC (image: Wessex Archaeology).

Discussion

In total, just over 5% of the 579 medieval and earlier oxygen isotope results obtained by NIGL up to 2012 are recorded in the above table, and the total corpus of individuals buried in Britain who almost certainly grew up in Scandinavia or central/eastern Europe recorded above is distributed across the entire period of study from the Bronze Age through to the Late Saxon/Viking era. As can be seen from the above, the earliest—and perhaps most famous—of these migrants was the Early Bronze Age individual known as the Amesbury Archer, who was interred in the richest Bronze Age burial known from Britain at Amesbury, near Stonehenge, in c. 2300 BC. Given his gravegoods and the fact that he seems to have consumed drinking-water with an oxygen isotope value of perhaps -10‰ in childhood, it has been argued that it is extremely unlikely that the man spent his childhood in Britain and he instead probably grew up in a mountainous part of central Europe, perhaps Austria, Hungary, parts of Germany or the Czech Republic (see the map included above for an illustration of areas with water oxygen isotope values of -10‰ and lower). Interestingly, the 'Companion' burial found with him had results which suggest he consumed water with an only slightly higher value than the Archer in later childhood, but that he had spent his early childhood somewhere with water values more akin to those found in southern Britain where he was buried.(4)

Moving into the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, some extremely interesting results have recently been obtained from 10 individuals interred at Cliffs End, Thanet, Kent. Four of the Cliffs End individuals belong to the Late Bronze Age (eleventh to ninth centuries BC) and six to the subsequent Early and Middle Iron Ages, and their results suggest the childhood consumption of drinking-water with values primarily between -15.0/-13.2‰ and -11.3/-10.3‰—needless to say, the lowest of these are only really compatible with an early life spent in the more northerly, Arctic parts of Scandinavia, and an origin in Norway or Sweden is thought very probable for most if not all of the rest too.(5) Two things are particularly interesting in this context. The first is that the same cemetery also includes a number of people with values at the opposite end of the scale, indicative of a childhood spent in southernmost Iberia and North Africa, including two individuals (one from the Late Bronze Age and one from the Iron Age) who have the highest δ¹⁸O values ever recorded from Britain, implying that they very probably grew up somewhere like the Nile Delta region, as was discussed in an earlier post.

The second, related point is that recent work on the Bronze Age suggests that there was a significant degree of contact and exchange taking place between the Mediterranean, Iberia and Scandinavia in that era. So, not only have Egyptian and Mesopotamian glass beads been found in Scandinavia and Baltic amber items in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, but recent work on metalwork in Scandinavia suggests the existence of a 'maritime' Atlantic route carrying metal ingots and metalwork north from the Mediterranean/Iberia to Sweden via Britain in the Bronze Age, with tin from Cornwall playing a potentially significant part in this, as a ring-ingot of pure Cornish tin found at Vårdinge, Sweden, and dated to c. 950–700 BC seems to confirm. Indeed, it has been argued that, as part of this, 'ports in the British Isles acted as transit centres for copper from other parts of Europe as well as providing local tin ore' during the Bronze Age.(6) Needless to say, this is a point of considerable interest both in the present context and in light of the southern Iberian/North African isotopic results that were also retrieved from Cliffs End, Thanet, and this site has, in fact, been interpreted as a key strategic 'Late Bronze Age trading centre' within this system, visited by groups from both the north and the south.(7)

Bronze Age amber beads, probably made from Baltic amber, found in the grave of an adolescent at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, dating to around 1550 BC; the boy they were buried with reportedly has a tooth enamel oxygen isotope value of 18.8‰, indicative of an early life spent in southern Iberia (image: Wessex Archaeology, used under their CC BY-NC 3.0 license).

To what degree this degree of contact, exchange and movement occurred elsewhere along the British coast is unclear, due to a general lack of relevant isotopic analysis at other sites, although it is thought likely that similar Atlantic 'transit centres' might exist at obvious nodal sites on the south and east coasts, such as Mount Batten, Plymouth.(8) Similarly, the degree to which such north–south contact and movement persisted into the Iron Age is less clear, although the presence of both Scandinavians and at least some probable North Africans in the Cliffs End cemetery during that era is certainly suggestive. In this context, it is worth observing that previous posts on this site have discussed the increasing archaeological, numismatic, literary and linguistic evidence for Mediterranean traders being active in Iron Age Britain, with Thanet standing out as a possible key centre then too. It might also be cautiously noted that a case has recently been made for the presence of at least some speakers of a Germanic language in East Anglia during the Late Iron Age too, although such a suggestion is certainly not uncontroversial.(9)

Turning to the Roman era, several cemeteries have been subjected to isotopic analysis and a number of these show the presence of people with tooth enamel oxygen isotope results at or below 16.2‰, in particular those at Winchester (Lankhills), York and Gloucester. The most common interpretation of these results is that they represent the presence of people in these Roman cities who grew up elsewhere in the Roman Empire where drinking-water with significantly lower values is found, in particular Roman Pannonia (now split between a number of countries including Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia). In general, this has proven a popular solution for such individuals. There are, however, reasons to be cautious here about assigning all of the Roman-era individuals with very low oxygen isotope results to central European areas within the Roman Empire. First, a contemporary 'Iron Age' burial from Galson on the Isle of Lewis, well beyond the area ever controlled by Rome, also has an oxygen isotope result below 16.2‰, and Scandinavia is surely a more plausible region of origin in this case, at least. Second, one of the people in question is the famous early fifth-century 'Gloucester Goth', whose silver belt fittings have parallels in eastern Europe and south Russia and whose oxygen isotope results have been interpreted as indicating a childhood origin 'way outside of the Roman Empire', in the cold climate of those same areas. Third and finally, nearly half of the Roman-era people listed above have results even more depleted than those of the 'Gloucester Goth' and probably indicative of the childhood consumption of drinking-water with values below -12.4‰, with two of then having results that may reflect drinking water with a exceptionally low value of -13.3‰, whilst at the same time none has a strontium isotope result outside of the range found in Norway and Sweden. In such cases, at least, either a Scandinavian origin or one in the very far east of Europe, beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, might well be considered credible.(10)

A probable late fifth- or early sixth-century buckle tongue, which has its best parallels in finds from Norway and Estonia; found Thimbleby, Lincolnshire (image: PAS).

Looking finally to the post-Roman era, it is perhaps unsurprising that there is at least some isotopic evidence for the presence of immigrants potentially from the Scandinavian peninsula in Britain at that time. Certainly, it is now well-established that the late fifth- to early seventh-century archaeology of eastern England region exhibits strong and convincing cultural links with western Scandinavia right up to Sogn og Fjordane, Norway, which are most credibly explained via a degree of immigration from that area in the immediate post-Roman era followed by a period of continued contact, and it has even been suggested that the East Anglian royal Wuffingas were potentially either of Swedish/Geatish origin or claimed to be so.(11) Similarly, few now doubt the reality of at least a degree of significant Scandinavian settlement in eastern and northern England during the ninth- to eleventh-centuries—the 'Viking Age'—with this being testified to not only by documentary sources, but also by small finds, personal names and place- and field-names.(12) However, several points are worth making when it comes to the isotopic evidence relating to the fifth- to eleventh centuries AD.

The first point is that the evidence from the early part of this period isn't actually quantitatively that much greater than that from other earlier and later eras—some early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, such as those at West Heslerton and Empingham (though not, for example, those at Wasperton or Berinsfield), do include individuals whose tooth enamel oxygen isotope results are below 16.2‰ and thus clearly indicate that they were first-generation immigrants from probably Norway or Sweden, but even where such people occur they are in a significant minority within their cemeteries, representing around 5% or less of the total analysed, similar to the overall proportion for Bronze Age to Late Saxon/Viking Age Britain noted above. This could, of course, simply reflect the fact that the 'core of the Germanic culture' that appears in post-Roman eastern England is still, despite the above, usually considered to derive from the traditional Anglian and Saxon 'homelands' of southern Denmark and northern Germany, where drinking-water oxygen isotope levels are similar to those found in eastern Britain, rendering attempts to use isotopic analysis to positively identify migrants from these areas very difficult, rather than from Norway and Sweden, with their much lower values. It might also reflect any first-generation Norwegian migrants being from more southerly, coastal locales where the drinking-water isotope values are often higher than -9‰ and so within the lower end of the British range. Nonetheless, the lack of any great increase in the number of people with results below 16.2‰ δ¹⁸O_p in the immediate post-Roman era is certainly worthy of note.(13)

The second point is that a similar proportion of probable migrants from Norway and Sweden is actually found amongst the people buried in the massive seventh- to early ninth-century Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Bamburgh, Northumberland, despite the fact that this site falls, chronologically, between the above two presumed major periods of post-Roman contact with Scandinavia. So, three of the 21 results from Bamburgh reported in the 2012 catalogue are indicative of the consumption of water with oxygen isotope values between -12.6‰ and -10.0‰, and a further four out of the 91 reported separately in 2013 have similar values—in total, 6.25% of those tested from seventh- to ninth-century Bamburgh have results indicative of an origin in an area with a drinking-water value below -10.0‰. With regard to this, it ought to be emphasised that there is no especial reason to think that movement and contact between Norway/Sweden and Britain must have ceased during the seventh and eighth centuries. Certainly, Bede, for example, writing in the early eighth century at Jarrow mentions both the Arctic phenomenon of the 'midnight sun' and actual Arctic travellers/inhabitants in his In Regum xxx Quaestiones, making reference there to ‘the stories of the elders and the men of our time who come from these regions’ and who ‘see it happen’. It may also be of some significance that documentary sources make it clear that Bamburgh was, in fact, the 'royal city' of the pre-Viking Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. As such, it is perhaps likely to have been more cosmopolitan than the norm, and in this context it is worth observing that there are a number of people buried in the cemetery with exceptionally elevated oxygen isotope results too, indicative of an origin in North Africa.(14)

A 3D view of the Weymouth mass-burial pit containing the remains of 51 decapitated Vikings (image: Oxford Archaeology, used under their CC BY-SA 3.0 license).

The last point is that we seem to be able to identify the burials of at least some Scandinavian people and/or immigrants of the Viking Age in Britain from the oxygen isotope evidence, including at least one potential mass-burial of a failed Viking raiding party. As was noted above, people who grew up in Denmark and some other parts of southern Scandinavia are likely to have oxygen isotope values within the British range and so are both hard to identify isotopically and not considered in the present post. However, even accepting this limitation on the evidence (which, for example, results in the probable Viking warrior in Grave 511 at Repton not being listed above, as his δ¹⁸O results are within the British range), we can still identify some likely Viking Age migrants from Norway and Sweden. Of particular interest here is a mass-burial of 51 decapitated (executed?) men who were buried sometime between AD 970 and 1025 to the north of Weymouth, Dorset, 10 of whom were selected for isotopic analysis. All of these individuals have tooth enamel oxygen isotope results below 16.5‰, equivalent to a drinking-water value of -9.2‰ using the revised Levinson equation, and nine have results sufficiently low to be included in the above table—indeed, 50% have results indicative of the childhood consumption of water with a value of -10‰ on both conversion equations, whilst one actually possesses the lowest value ever recorded from Britain, 13.7‰ δ¹⁸O_p, which implies the consumption of drinking-water with a value potentially as low as -15.4‰! Such a result clearly implies a childhood spent in the Arctic, either in an inland area of the most northerly part of Scandinavia or on the southwestern coast of Greenland, based on the IAEA's 2013 RCWIP model and oxygen isotope results reported from the Inuit of Greenland. The latter in particular is an intriguing possibility, given that the Norse settlement of the southwest coast of Greenland took place during the 980s and it is therefore chronologically plausible that someone brought up there might have taken part in a failed Viking raid in perhaps the early eleventh century.(15)

Also of considerable interest, finally, are the isotope results from the late ninth- to mid-eleventh-century Late Saxon cemetery at Ketton, Rutland, although for different reasons. Whilst the burials from Weymouth and Oxford probably represent those of executed Viking raiders, those at Ketton are thought to be the graves of rural workers on a manorial estate in the Danelaw. In such circumstances, the fact that there are no less than five individuals in this cemetery with oxygen isotope results indicative of a Scandinavian origin is both important and intriguing, particularly in terms of the debate over the degree of Scandinavian settlement in the Danelaw—indeed, one individual has a very depleted δ¹⁸O_p value of 15.5‰, clearly far outside of the British range and indicative of the consumption of water with a value of perhaps -11.5‰ during an early life spent in Norway, Sweden or Iceland. In this context it is worth observing that whilst the name Ketton is Old English, there is a Normanton—'the farm or estate of the Norwegians'—three miles to the northwest of Ketton, something that is arguably suggestive given the isotope results obtained.(16)


Conclusion

In conclusion, a survey of the total available isotopic evidence for the presence of Scandinavian and central/eastern European people in Britain before the mid-eleventh century AD produces some potentially very interesting results, even if we narrow our focus only to those people who possess results indisputably outside of the British ranges and so exclude all those potential migrants who fall just on the edge of this range or who come from areas such as southern Denmark—or even southernmost, coastal Norway—that have drinking-water oxygen isotope levels that overlap with the lower parts of the British range.

Perhaps the most intriguing conclusion to draw from the above presentation of the evidence is that there was arguably a persistent Scandinavian element in the population of Britain for several millennia, with evidence for such first-generation migrants and settlers not being restricted simply to the 'early Anglo-Saxon' and 'Viking' eras, as might be expected from the documentary and artefactual evidence, but rather occurring throughout the whole period under study. So, for example, people from that region are thought to have been present during the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age in Kent based on the exceptionally depleted results of people buried there, and it is arguable that at least a proportion of the Roman-era individuals with very low oxygen isotope results may have grown up in Scandinavia too (see above). Similarly, over 6% of the individuals analysed from the seventh- to early ninth-century royal cemetery at Bamburgh, Northumberland, are considered to have grown up in Norway or Sweden, despite the fact that this cemetery falls chronologically between the above two presumed post-Roman episodes of significant British–Scandinavian contact. Of course, we do need to recognise that only a few cemeteries have been properly analysed, that the Thanet and Bamburgh sites have features which suggest that they may be unusual in their degree of cosmopolitanism, and that it cannot be forgotten that any Anglo-Saxon or Viking migrants from, say, Denmark rather than much of Norway and Sweden are largely invisible to the present survey, as was observed above. Nonetheless, the above situation is at the very least intriguing and certainly worthy of note, and might be taken to suggest that a multi-millennial pattern of a degree of British–Scandinavian movement and contact, with peaks and troughs, might be worth some consideration, in contrast to the more usual assumption of simply a handful of discrete, post-Roman migrationary episodes.

With regard to central/eastern European migrants, the situation is rather less clear. The Early Bronze Age Amesbury Archer is certainly believed to fall into this category, and some of the Thanet burials could potentially have such origins, although the highly depleted oxygen isotope values of many of the individuals buried here suggest that Scandinavia is a more plausible place of origin, as the excavators argue. For the Roman period, a central/eastern European origin in perhaps Roman Pannonia has often been favoured for at least some of the people with δ¹⁸O results below the British range, but it arguably doesn't work for them all—around half of the Roman-era individuals listed above have extremely low results of the sort seen at Thanet, and the early fifth-century 'Gloucester Goth' is certainly now usually considered to have origins that lie beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, perhaps in central/eastern Europe or southern Russia. As to the post-Roman period, it is by no means impossible that some of the less extreme oxygen isotope values listed above could reflect people who grew up in the cold areas of central/eastern Europe rather than Norway or Sweden—and a previous post on this site has certainly discussed some possible evidence for Huns, Goths and others in post-Roman Britain—but at present no candidates for such an origin have yet been identified in the published literature.


Notes

1     See C. Chenery et al, 'Strontium and stable isotope evidence for diet and mobility in Roman Gloucester, UK', Journal of Archaeological Science, 37 (2010), 150–63, and also J. A. Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 27 (2012), 754–64 at p. 762 with regard to the Amesbury Archer, who has a tooth enamel phosphate oxygen isotope value of 16.2‰.
2     For the two equations used to relate δ¹⁸O_p to δ¹⁸O_dw, see Chenery et al, 'Strontium and stable isotope evidence for diet and mobility in Roman Gloucester', pp. 156–7, 159–61 & especially Table A1 which gives both equations, and V. Daux et al, 'Oxygen isotope fractionation between human phosphate and water revisited', Journal of Human Evolution, 55 (2008), 1138–47. For the drinking-water range from Britain, see W. G. Darling et al, 'The O and H stable isotope composition of freshwaters in the British Isles. 2. Surface waters and groundwater', Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 7 (2003), 183–95; for values from Scandinavia and Central/Eastern Europe, see the map included above, which is based on the IAEA's 2013 RCWIP model, and J. I. McKinley et al, 'Dead-sea connections: a Bronze Age and Iron Age ritual site on the Isle of Thanet', in J. T. Koch & B. Cunliffe (eds.), Celtic from the West 2. Rethinking the Bronze Age and the Arrival of Indo-European in Atlantic Europe (Oxford, 2013), pp. 157–83 at p. 167. For the observation that there are very few environmental, biological, or cultural processes that that can result in human tooth oxygen isotope values that are lower than would be expected on the basis of the consumed drinking-water, see J. Montgomery et al, 'Finding Vikings with isotope analysis: the view from wet and windy islands', Journal of the North Atlantic, 7 (2014), 54–70 at p. 63.
3     The main catalogue is extracted from the data included in Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Supplementary Material I (14 pp.). The Thanet results are taken from McKinley et al, 'Dead-sea connections: a Bronze Age and Iron Age ritual site on the Isle of Thanet', figs. 6.5 and 6.6; the Oxford results are taken from A. M. Pollard et al, '"Sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat": The St Brice's Day Massacre and the isotopic analysis of human bones from St John's College, Oxford', Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 31 (2012), 83–102; and the additional Bamburgh results are taken from S. E. Groves et al, 'Mobility histories of 7th–9th century AD people buried at early medieval Bamburgh, Northumberland, England', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 151 (2013), 462–76 and Supplementary Materials: Tables.
4     Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', p. 762; C. A. Chenery & J. A. Evans, 'A Summary of the Strontium and Oxygen Isotope Evidence for the Origins of Bell Beaker individuals found near Stonehenge', in A. P . Fitzpatrick (ed.), The Amesbury Archur and the Boscombe Bowmen: Bell Beaker Burials at Boscombe Down, Amesbury, Wiltshire (Salisbury, 2011), pp. 185–90.
5     McKinley et al, 'Dead-sea connections: a Bronze Age and Iron Age ritual site on the Isle of Thanet', pp. 167–8.
6     J. Varberg et al, 'Between Egypt, Mesopotamia and Scandinavia: Late Bronze Age glass beads found in Denmark', Journal of Archaeological Science, 54 (2015), 168–81; A. J. Mukherjee et al, 'The Qatna lion: scientific confirmation of Baltic amber in late Bronze Age Syria', Antiquity, 82 (2008), 49–59; J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32, quotation at p. 126. See also J. Ling & C. Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', Adoranten, 21 (2014), 23–43, and T. Earle et al, 'The political economy and metal trade in Bronze Age Europe: understanding regional variability in terms of comparative advantages and articulations', European Journal of Archaeology, 18.4 (2015), 633–57, esp. pp. 642–4.
7     Ling & Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', pp. 35–9, and see now J. I. McKinley et al, Cliffs End Farm, Isle of Thanet, Kent. A Mortuary and Ritual Site of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon Period with Evidence for Long-Distance Maritime Mobility (Salisbury, 2014).
8     Ling & Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', p. 37; B. Cunliffe, Mount Batten, Plymouth: a Prehistoric and Roman Port (Oxford, 1988). Note, a possible three-holed Bronze Age stone Mediterranean anchor from Plymouth Sound has been mentioned in news reports relating to the SHIPS Project/ProMare, but is as yet unidentified on the database for this project; see T. Nichols, 'Unique project launched to shed light on hidden treasures in Plymouth Sound', Plymouth Herald, 5 July 2014, online at http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Shedding-light-hidden-treasures-Sound/story-21332210-detail/story.html, although it should be remembered that the dating and geographical origins of such stone anchors is open to debate.
9     See especially C. R. Green, 'Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: place-names, archaeology and pre-Roman trading settlements in eastern Kent?', 21 April 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/04/thanet-tanit-and-the-phoenicians.html, and 'A Mediterranean anchor stock of the fifth to mid-second century BC found off the coast of Britain', 29 August 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/08/a-mediterranean-anchor.html; D. Nash Briggs, 'The language of inscriptions on Icenian coinage', in J. A. Davies (ed.), The Iron Age in Northern East Anglia: New Work in the Land of the Iceni (Oxford), pp. 83–102.
10     J. Evans et al, 'A strontium and oxygen isotope assessment of a possible fourth century immigrant population in a Hampshire cemetery, southern England', Journal of Archaeological Science, 33 (2006), 265–72; H. Eckardt et al, 'Oxygen and strontium isotope evidence for mobility in Roman Winchester', Journal of Archaeological Science, 36 (2009), 2816–25; G. Müldner et al, 'The ‘Headless Romans’: multi-isotope investigations of an unusual burial ground from Roman Britain', Journal of Archaeological Science, 38 (2011), 280–90; M. Pitts, 'Wealthy man in Roman Gloucester was migrant Goth', British Archaeology, 113 (2010), 7; BBC News, 'Gloucester body "is Goth warrior"', 9 October 2009, news report including quotation by D. Rice, curator at Gloucester City Museum, online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/8298825.stm; H. Eckardt et al, 'People on the move in Roman Britain', World Archaeology, 46 (2014), 534–50 at p. 537. For the expected Strontium isotope ranges from Norway and Sweden, see further K. J. Knudson et al, 'Migration and Viking Dublin: paleomobility and paleodiet through isotopic analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 39 (2012), 308–20 at pp. 310–11.
11     See especially J. Hines, The Scandinavian Character of Anglian England in the Pre-Viking Period, BAR British Series 124 (Oxford, 1984); J. Hines, 'The Scandinavian character of Anglian England: an update', in M. O. H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo: the Seventh Century in North-western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 315–29; and now also J. Hines, 'The origins of East Anglia in a North Sea Zone', in D. Bates & R. Liddiard (edd.), East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 16–43. On the Wuffingas theory, see S. Newton, 'Beowulf and the East Anglian royal pedigree', in M. O. H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo: the Seventh Century in North-western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 65–74, and S. Newton, The Origins of Beowulf and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia (Woodbridge, 1993). See also, for example, the evidence for a link between the Sleaford region and the Baltic in the early Anglo-Saxon period, including some possible ceramic evidence for connection between people in the Sleaford inhumation cemetery and those living on the Swedish Baltic island of Gotland—on Sleaford and the early Anglo-Saxon importation of amber, see for example Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 191–4; on the possible ceramic evidence, see J. N. L. Myres, 'The Anglo-Saxon Pottery of Lincolnshire', Archaeological Journal, 108 (1951), 65–99 at pp. 68–9, 81, 99.
12     On the course of the Viking conquests and their impact, a good general overview is available in D. M. Hadley’s The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture (Manchester, 2006), and her The Northern Danelaw: Its Social Structure, c. 800–1100 (London, 2000); P. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1998), and K. Leahy, The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey (Stroud, 2007), are useful on the evidence for settlement in one of the most affected areas of eastern England—note especially Kevin Leahy's discussion of the small finds reported in recent years by metal detectorists. On place-names and field-names, there are innumerable published discussions, but see perhaps L. Abrams and D. N. Parsons, ‘Place-names and the history of Scandinavian settlement in England’, in J. Hines et al (eds.), Land, Sea and Home (Leeds, 2004), pp. 379–431, which argues in favour of the Scandinavian influence on place-names, field-names and personal names being together sufficient to indicate that there was a substantial influx of Scandinavian immigrants in the Viking era.
13     Results from all four of the cemeteries mentioned are tabulated in Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Supplementary Material I (14 pp.), although they have also been separately published too, for example in S. S. Church et al, 'Anglo-Saxon origins investigated by isotopic analysis of burials from Berinsfield, Oxfordshire, UK', Journal of Archaeological Science, 42 (2014), 81–92, and P. Budd et al, 'Investigating population movement by stable isotope analysis: a report from Britain', Antiquity, 78 (2004), 127–41 at pp. 134–6. On the core of early Anglo-Saxon material culture still being considered to primarily derive from southern Denmark and northern Germany, see Hines, 'The origins of East Anglia in a North Sea Zone', esp. p. 39 (quotation), and also, for example, T. Williamson, 'The environmental contexts of Anglo-Saxon settlement', in N. J. Higham & M. J. Ryan (edd.), The Landscape Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 2010), pp. 133–56 at pp. 147–52, along with the other references cited in my very brief discussion of this in a previous post: C. R. Green, 'Were there Huns in Anglo-Saxon England? Some thoughts on Bede, Priscus & Attila', 25 July 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/07/were-there-huns-in-anglo-saxon-england.html. On drinking-water levels for southernmost Norway, see the map above and also the earlier BGS/C. Chenery map from 2004: 'Oxygen isotopes values for modern European drinking water' (map), online at www.wessexarch.co.uk/projects/amesbury/tests/oxygen_isotope.html. Note, whilst identifying first-generation Anglo-Saxon migrants to Britain from southern Denmark and northern Germany is extremely difficult using isotopic analysis, as mentioned above, it may be possible to identify first-generation migrants from northern Denmark/Jutland by looking for immediately post-Roman individuals with relatively enriched results compared to what might be expected, as lake waters from those areas are unusually enriched compared to their local precipitation due to exceptional evaporation—see further on this Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', pp. 758 & 760.
14     The results from Bamburgh are reported in Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Supplementary Material I (14 pp.), and S. E. Groves et al, 'Mobility histories of 7th–9th century AD people buried at early medieval Bamburgh, Northumberland, England', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 151 (2013), 462–76. On Bamburgh as 'the royal city' of Northumbria, see for example Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.6; note, the Jarrow area where Bede was based was itself the second royal centre of pre-Viking Northumbria, see I. N. Wood, ‘Bede’s Jarrow’ in C. A. Lees & G. R. Overing (eds), A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes (Philadelphia, 2006), pp. 76, 79–80, 83. For Bede's reference to Arctic visitors in early eighth-century Northumbria, see Bedae Venerabilis. Opera. Pars II. Opera Exegetica 2, ed. D. Hurst (Turnhout, 1962), p. 317, and see F. Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest. Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old English Literature (Oxford, 2006), pp. 128-29, for discussion and translation; contemporary Irish and arguably Welsh knowledge of the Arctic 'midnight sun' is discussed in Green, 'An alternative interpretation of Preideu Annwwfyn, lines 23–8', Studia Celtica, 43 (2009), 207–13. There is also some artefactual evidence for contacts between eastern England and Scandinavia in the seventh century that is worthy of note, such as a class of small, seventh-century figurines that are found in East Anglia, Sweden and Russia: H. Geake, 'Figurine SF5471', PAS finds database, 8 September 2014, online at https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/19570, & 'Figurine SF3807', PAS finds database, 8 September 2014, online at https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/18358. On the people with elevated oxygen isotope results indicative of North African origins, see C. R. Green, 'Some oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance migration to Britain from North Africa & southern Iberia, c. 1100 BC–AD 800', 24 October 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/10/oxygen-isotope-evidence.html, and Groves et al, 'Mobility histories of 7th–9th century AD people buried at early medieval Bamburgh, Northumberland, England', p. 470.
15     On the Weymouth Vikings, see C. A. Chenery et al, 'A Boat Load of Vikings?', Journal of the North Atlantic, 7 (2014–15), 43–53; another similar probable mass-burial of Vikings has been found at Oxford, see A. M. Pollard et al, '"Sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat": The St Brice's Day Massacre and the isotopic analysis of human bones from St John's College, Oxford', Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 31 (2012), 83–102. On Repton Grave 511, which contained the body of a mature male who appears to have died in battle and was buried with a sword, a silver Thor’s hammer, and a boar’s tusk, see, for example, J. D. Richards, 'Pagans and Christians at the frontier: Viking burial in the Danelaw', in M. O. H. Carver (ed.), The Cross Foes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300–1300 (York/Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 383–95, and J. Montgomery et al, 'Finding Vikings with isotope analysis: the view from wet and windy islands', Journal of the North Atlantic, 7 (2014–15), 54–70 at p. 65. On the possibility that one of the Weymouth Vikings might have grown up in southwestern Greenland in the late tenth century, compare Montgomery et al, 'Finding Vikings with isotope analysis: the view from wet and windy islands', pp. 61–2, discussing an individual with a similarly depleted oxygen isotope value who is buried in Dublin.
16     The results from Ketton are presented and discussed in S. P. Tatham, Aspects of Health and Population Studies in Northern Europe Between the Tenth and Twelfth Centuries (University of Leicester PhD Thesis, 2004), pp. 43–4, 68–72, 77–8, 80-91. Note, the analysis of the isotopic data in this thesis is somewhat out of step with modern approaches; it is reinterpreted in the present post in light of Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain' (2012), and other more recent research, and the tooth enamel results have been furthermore converted afresh to drinking-water values using the 2010 and 2008 equations noted above. On Normanton, see B. Cox, The Place-names of Rutland (Nottingham, 1994), p. 201.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2016, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

The monstrous landscape of medieval Lincolnshire

The following brief post lists a number of field and other local minor names from Lindsey that make reference to folkloric and monstrous creatures inhabiting northern Lincolnshire, based on the collection made by I. M. Bowers in 1940 for her Place-Names of Lindsey (PhD thesis, University of Leeds). The majority of these names derive from medieval and early modern sources and suggest the existence of local folklore and tales, long since lost, focused on the pits, mires, fields, pools and mounds of the pre-Modern Lincolnshire landscape.

Theodor Kittelsen's 1904 drawing of a nøkk, the Norwegian equivalent of the English nicor, mentioned below (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Old Norse þurs (thurs)/Old English þyrs (thyrs)—a giant, a monster/ogre/demon

A word indicating a giant or similar monster with a dangerous or destructive nature; most famously found in the Old Norse compound hrímþursar, the 'frost giants', and as a description of Grendel in line 426 of the Old English poem Beowulf. The names imply a number of features thought to be either inhabited by—or made by—such creatures in the medieval/early modern Lincolnshire landscape; note, the dates given below indicate the year in which the name is first documented.

• Thurspit, Alvingham (1579)—'giant-pit' or similar, cf. the Thyrspittes recorded in Foston, Kesteven (S. Lincolnshire) in 1280–90.
• Thrusmyre, Edlington (1579)—a mire, Old Norse myrr, inhabited by a thurs.
• Thruswelker, Selby in Stallingborough (1200s)—literally 'ogre-spring-marsh' or similar, the final element being Old Norse kiarr, 'marsh, wetland'.
• Thursedale, Hemingby (1577)—the second element is either Old Norse dalr, 'valley', or deil(l), 'portion, share, part'.

J. R. Skelton's 1908 illustration of Grendel, who is described as a þyrs/thyrs in Beowulf (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Old English nicor—a water-monster

A word for a water-monster or water-goblin. As above, this term occurs in Beowulf, notably in lines 422 and 575, where Beowulf relates how he has fought nicors. Both it and its continental cognates—such as the Old Icelandic nykr—appear to have been applicable to a wide range of 'water-monsters', including sirens, water-mermaids, hippopotamuses, half-human creatures and water-wyrms!

• Nikerpole, Nykarpole, Nychar-pool, Nicarpool, Lincoln (1296–8)—the pool inhabited by a nicor; the pool in question lay at the junction of Sincil Dyke and the Great Gowt. Compare Nicker Pool, Wimboldsley (Cheshire), first recorded in 1309, and Nicker's Well, Church Holme (Cheshire), first recorded in 1840.

Stukeley's early eighteenth-century map of Lincoln; the Nicarpool is at the bottom of the image, where the Great Gowt met the Sincil Dyke.

Middle English hob(be)—a mischievous spirit/hobgoblin

A word for a mischievous spirit or goblin; a hob in Northern and Midland English folklore was a rough, hairy, creature of the 'brownie' type, whose work could bring prosperity to farms but who could become mischievous or dangerous if annoyed. Household variants might be given new clothes to get them to leave forever, although other hobs lived outside in caves or holes.

• Hoblurke, East Halton (1200s)—self-explanatory; place where a hob lurks/lies hidden, perhaps particularly for an evil purpose.
• Hobbeheadland, Hobheadland, Halton Holegate (1601)—the headland, or 'place where the plough turns', where there is a hob.
• Hob Lane Yate/Gate, Scotter (1567)—hob + lane + Middle English gate/ȝate, 'a gate'.
• Hobbecroft, Theddlethorpe (1200s)—croft, 'small enclosure', with a hob in it.
• Hobcroftheade, Yarborough (1601)—as above + head, 'head, top', cf. Hobbeheadland.
• Hobhole Drain, the East Fen (1805)—name of an artificial drain made in 1805, running N–S across the East Fen; presumably references a pre-existing Hobhole, which is self-explanatory.

Dragons, pixies, ghosts & other creatures

Other local minor names potentially make reference to dragons, pixies, ghosts, shucks and warlocks.

• Drake Acers, Messingham (1577)—Middle English drake, 'dragon, huge serpent', from Old English draca, plus acre, 'field'.
• Dragons Hole, Corringham (1852)—self-explanatory.
• Pixsieacre, Pixsie Acre, Newton-next-Toft (1601)—the field inhabited by a pixie.
• Gasthehowe, Gastehowe, Ashby Puerorum (1200s)—Middle English gast/Old English gāst, 'ghost, dead-spirit', plus ME howe from Old Norse haugr, 'burial mound', so the burial mound haunted by a gast; note, the same parish also contained a place called dedmansgrave in the thirteenth century.
• Shucdale, Haxey (1655)—Probably contains Middle English Shucke, 'demon, devil, evil spirit', from Old English scucca, plus either Middle English dale, 'valley', or deil(l), 'portion, share, part', referencing the area frequented by this creature.
• Wallow Farm, Wharloe, Warlowe Close, Salmonby (1577)—Although late, the name appears to contain Middle English warlowe, from Old English wǣrloga, 'traitor, oath-breaker, liar, devil'; the Modern English descendant of this word is 'warlock'.
• Warlocke Meare, Conisholme (1601)—as above plus mere, 'pool'. 

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2015, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Some interesting early maps of Lincolnshire

This post is primarily intended to share images of some of the interesting early maps of Lincolnshire that still exist, dating from the medieval era through until the early seventeenth century. Details of each map and a brief discussion of the principal points of interest—including the curious region-name 'Ageland' that appears in eastern Lincolnshire on many of them—are provided in the captions to the following image gallery, which I aim to add to over time.

Al-Idrīsī's mid-twelfth-century Arabic map of England, from a late thirteenth-/early fourteenth-century copy in BnF Arabe 2221 f.338v-339r. The map is orientated with south at the top and the east coast on the left; Lincoln is the central inland city depicted correctly as being located on both sides of the River Witham, which runs left-right from the sea on the left (east), with Boston being the town on the top side of the river nearer to the sea; the town below/north of the mouth of the Witham on the sea coast is Grimsby and the shoreline that curves rightwards/north-westwards from Grimsby is actually the south bank of the Humber and the River Ouse, with York being the city on the centre-bottom of the map (the oddly shaped  peninsula after this to the right/north-west is meant to be Scotland). For more on this map, see my note 'Al-Idrisi's twelfth-century map and description of eastern England' , which offers a sixteenth-century copy and Konrad Miller's redrawn and transliterated version of al-Idrīsī's map.(Image: BnF).

Map of Lincolnshire, extracted from the map of England by Matthew Paris, c. 1250. Norfolk is at the bottom with an thin depiction of The Wash above it and then the Holland district with the River Witham to its north—east to west, Spalding, Kirkstead, Thorney, Crowland, Ramsey and Grantham are marked to the south of the river, with Grantham furthest east (surrounded by a brown and red line) and Belvoir to its east (surrounded by a double red line). North of the Witham are Lincoln in red, with a castle drawing, Lindsey in blue, an unnamed and uncoloured river (the Ancholme?) and then Grimsby marked on the coast below the River Humber with its many tributaries (blue)—the other names written south of the Humber are actually the ends of the Yorkshire names Beverley and Whitby, whose first letters are written north of the Humber. Across Lincolnshire and Norfolk are written (Image: BL Cotton MS Claudius D VI, fol. 12v, via Wikimedia Commons).

A map of England attributed to Genoese cartographer Pietro Vesconte in Marino Sanudo's Liber secretorum of c. 1325, based on his earlier portolan chart and mariners' reports; click for a larger view. The Wash is clearly visible as a deep, circular bay halfway up the eastern side of the island; however, whilst numerous ports are marked along the south coast of England and up the east coast as far as The Wash, Lincolnshire is left empty aside from indications of two rivers (the Witham and the Humber?), with the first name inscribed north of The Wash probably representing Ravenserodd, the important thirteenth- and fourteenth-century island port near Spurn Head, East Yorkshire, that was finally destroyed by the sea in the mid-fourteenth century (Image: Wikimedia Commons).

Close up of Lindsey (the northern district of Lincolnshire) on the fourteenth-century Gough Map, with north on the left and major roads, rivers and settlements marked. Lincoln is shown at the bottom right with the Trent running along the bottom edge of the image; Boston is at the top right; and Grimsby is at the top left, with the Humber then running down the left edge of the image. Note the curious name 'Ageland' assigned to roughly the area of the Wolds between Grimsby and Louth, being written in a very similar way to the district-name Lindsey. This name also appears in the fifteenth-century work of Osbern Bokenham, where it seems to again be associated with the Lindsey district of Lincolnshire (Bolingbroke is mentioned shortly afterwards), and it also appears on some sixteenth-century maps of Lincolnshire as a district-name for eastern Lindsey written in the area around Louth, as can be seen below. There are few discussions of this name and its import, sadly; the editors of the Gough Map assume it reflects the wapentake-name Aveland, but it is not clear why this wapentake-name alone would be highlighted like this nor why it would be spelled with a -g- here but nowhere else and then placed in totally the wrong part of Lincolnshire, Aveland wapentake being part of the southern Lincolnshire district of Kesteven, not north-eastern Lindsey (Image: Wikimedia Commons).

Extract from the Angliae Figura, a vellum map probably created in the 1530s and perhaps hanging at Hampton Court (included on the map) as the property of Henry VIII. The coastline of Lincolnshire is clearly faulty between Wainfleet and Spalding, but is close to that seen on the Gough Map; both are thought to derive from a common source map dating from around 1290. As on the Gough Map, the curious name 'Ageland' appears highlighted in red as a major (?district-)name and is once again placed in eastern Lindsey, close to Louth (Image: British Library).

Extract from Sebastian Münster's 1540 map of Britain, showing Lincolnshire. The coastline appears derivative of the tradition of the Gough Map/Angliae Figure, but with more of an indication of The Wash than the latter (as is the case on the 1546 Lily map as well). Only the major rivers are shown along with just a handful of Lincolnshire place-names: Lincoln, Stamford, the Isle of Axholme, Sleaford and 'Walflet', which looks to be Wainfleet or a combination of Wainfleet and Saltfleet. Only two district names appear in Lincolnshire, Axholme and 'Agelon', the latter clearly being equivalent to the earlier 'Ageland' and written across Lindsey in a larger font than the other names, whilst the district-name Lindsey is left out entirely (Image: Lancaster University).

John Leland's sketch map of the Humber district, created c. 1544 to show the drainage basins of the Humber and Witham rivers. Leland's sketch includes a rough approximation of the coastline, rivers and key settlements of Lincolnshire; despite it being a rough sketch, the north and east coasts of Lincolnshire appear to be more realistically rendered than they are on the earlier maps discussed above, although his depiction of the northern Wash coastline to Boston continues to be in the Gough Map/Angliae Figura tradition (image: Sheppard 1912; see further Hearne 1769).

Detail of eastern Lincolnshire from John Leland's sketch map of c. 1544, showing his attempt to sketch both Saltfleet Haven and the early Wainfleet Haven, including the latter's associated tributaries and lakes. Note, Northlod is also mentioned on the 1570 plan of the proposed New Cut at Wainfleet (Image: Sheppard 1912).

Gerard Mercator's engraving of a map of Lincolnshire, originally produced in 1564 and put together into atlas form in the 1570s; north is on the right hand side for this map, which is thought to have been simply engraved by Mercator from an English original, possibly produced by John Elder to assist the French or Spanish in planning an invasion to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I. It is worth noting that not only does the map offer considerably a much improved coastline for Lincolnshire and more detail than many earlier maps, in terms of both rivers and settlements depicted (though Mercator seems to have misread some of the names on his original), but that it also once more includes the odd district-name 'Agland' in the area around Louth, despite the fact that the whole area had clearly been resurveyed. As was observed above, versions of this name also occur on the fourteenth-century Gough Map of Lincolnshire in approximately this position, in a fifteenth-century text relating to Lincolnshire, and on the earlier sixteenth-century Angliae Figura and Münster maps too; it also continued to appear on maps in the later sixteenth-century—being found on, for example, Gerard de Jode's 1578 and 1593 maps and on Sebastian Petri's 1588 map—and even appears on some seventeenth-century maps, as can be seen below (Image: British Library).

Map of Lincolnshire drawn by Humphry Lhuyd before his death in 1568 and published in Abraham Ortelius's Atlas in 1573. The map shows the Lincolnshire Wolds for the first time and other areas of local high ground, along with major rivers and key settlements (Image: Wikimedia Commons).

Proof version of John Speed's 1611/12 map of Lincolnshire, which closely followed the Saxton map of 1576 in offering a much more accurate and detailed depiction of the county; a zoomable version of this map is available here. Of particular interest on both maps is the fact that nearly every settlement in Lincolnshire is mapped and so too are the courses of most of the rivers; the latter are of especial note, given how much these courses changed over the following two centuries—note, for example, the original course of the Lud before its canalisation, with its dual outfalls either side of Conisholme, and the fact that the Long Eau and Great Eau were originally separate rivers (Image: Cambridge University, CC-BY-NC 3.0).

Detail from John Speed's early seventeenth-century proof map of Lincolnshire, showing the coastline of north-east Lincolnshire and a whale menacing the Humber estuary! (Image: Cambridge University, CC-BY-NC 3.0).

Extract from a map of Britain by Johannes Janssonius, printed in 1621 and reprinted in 1630, one of the last maps to feature Agland/Ageland as a district-name located in eastern Lindsey. In support of Ageland/Agland as a genuine east Lincolnshire district-name that somehow largely avoided being recorded outside of maps, can be cited the following. First, there is a single textual mention of Ageland in Bokenham's fifteenth-century Legendys of Hooly Wummen, where it occurs as as a district-name located somewhere in the Bolingbroke/South Riding of Lindsey (modern East Lindsey) area:—'But seyth, as ye doon vndyrstand, It was you sent owt of Ageland From a frend of yourys that vsyth to selle Goode hors at feyrys, & doth dwelle A lytyl from the Castel of Bolyngbrok'. Second, Ageland does make an appearance in medieval surnames, which would seem to add weight to the case for it being a genuine place-/region-name—see, for example, the fourteenth-century merchant and bailiff of York named William de Agland/William Ageland. If it is indeed a real name, then the second element might be either OE land or ON lundr, both of which appear in early district-names in the form 'land' (cf. Rutland/Holland & Framland/Aveland), most probably the former as the second element is always 'land', with the first element perhaps then being a personal name like ODan Aghi (Image: BnF).

The text content of this post and page is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2015, 2020, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.