Language & culture
Understanding Scandinavian place-names in the British Isles by Katherine Holman One of the most distinctive features of the Scandinavian settlement in the British Isles during the Viking Age is the many and varied place-names that are still in use today. Readers in northern and eastern England in particular will no doubt be familiar with several placenames ending in -by such as Derby, Whitby, Grimsby, which are compounds containing the Old Norse word for farmstead or village: ‘village of the deer or animals’ (Derby); ‘white village’ (Whitby) and ‘Grim’s village’ (Grimsby) respectively. But the linguistic legacy of Viking colonisation and conquest is much more varied and extensive than this: it has been estimated that something like just under a half of settlement names in East and North Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire are derived from a whole range of Scandinavian words; nearly all the place-names in the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland are Scandinavian, and even in places that saw relatively little Scandinavian settlement, such as the Welsh coast, key elements of the coastline bear Scandinavian names, reflecting the impact of Vikings on navigation and shipping routes. Understanding the significance of place-names which bear Scandinavian names is therefore an important element in establishing the nature of Viking influence in different parts of the British Isles. Distribution maps certainly help in indicating the broad areas where
Danelaw place names in England
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settlement took place: the Danelaw (defined roughly on its southern and western border by Watling Street, a Roman road that ran from Dover to Wroxeter); Orkney and Shetland; along the northern and western Scottish seaboard; the Hebrides and the Isle of Man. However, a place that has a Scandinavian place-name does not not,, as may often be thought, mean that the settlement was established by a Viking or group of Vikings who named it in their own language. As such then, a map of Scandinavian place-names cannot be used simply to provide a map of Scandinavian colonisation. There are, for example, a number of places in England that we know were already in existence before the Vikings arrived, but which had their Anglo-Saxon names replaced by Viking names – Derby and Whitby are well-known examples of this, being previously known as Northworthig and Streoneshalh – so a Scandinavian placename does not necessarily imply a brand 12
