Act 5

Scandinavian Kirkdale

The History of Kirkdale from c 793 CE to 1066

Kirkdale Minster

It might be thought that the period of Viking invasion which impacted heavily on northeast England from the mid ninth century CE, would have been devastating for our ancestors. However the lands of Kirkdale were nestled at the protective edge of the moors and dales, and were not at the heart of Viking violence. Whilst they cannot have escaped disruption and some experience of violence, the cultivated region seems to have been quickly subsumed into a new Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian culture.

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You might enjoy a scene setter before you start this page. The scene setter is fiction, but it might help to paint a picture.

Scene 1 – Becoming Scandinavian

Attack

The best known Viking raid on the British Isles was the attack on Lindisfarne off the modern Northumbrian coast in 793 CE. There had in fact been attacks from Scandinavia before that time, mostly further to the north.

The Judgement Day Stone, Lindisfarne

The effects of Viking raids on the indigenous peasant population, who were exposed to violence and enslavement, must have been profound. Opportunistic raids by Viking warrior seamen continued over the next half century. By 835 CE larger Viking fleets began to engage in more significant confrontations with royal armies.

A great Scandinavian army arrived in 865 CE. By 876 CE, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, written in the age of King Alfred, records “Healfdene shared out the land of the Northumbrians, and they turned to ploughing and making a living for themselves.” Place name evidence of settlement, especially in North Yorkshire, is plentiful.

By the mid ninth century there was an increasing influence of Scandinavian culture including upon the language. Many words of modern use in local dialect have Norse origins, including dale (from the Norwegian ‘dalr’, valley), beck (stream) and fell (mountain).

It is likely that rather than a wholesale transplanting of Scandinavian culture into the Anglo-Saxon world, the old Anglo Saxon world of continued but increasingly absorbed new traditions and ideas to create an Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian culture, especially in the region around the new Scandinavian heart of Jorvik.

Settlement

For the lands around Kirkdale the evidence of the early Scandinavian period is slim. Whilst our ancestors there might have witnessed unrest, disruption and violence, Kirkdale was off centre to the known locations of Danish upheaval. In fact Kirkdale might have found itself with more responsibility over an increasingly dispersed population. By the time the Scandinavian government was more firmly established at Jorvik (York), Kirkdale might have become directly associated with the city, and by the later Scandinavian period, the local elite had acquired property in York.

It therefore seems likely that the home of distant ancestors of modern Farndale family was a place of general stability, and likely political influence for most of the thousand years of the first millennium of the Common Era. This stability probably continued through the Scandinavian period, perhaps with some violent and unstable interludes.

Scene 2 – A new Culture

Rebuilding

The archaeological record shows that the old church of Kirkdale was destroyed by fire, probably at about the turn of the first millennium. It had previously been thought that the church might have fallen during the Viking period, but it seems more likely that the church suffered a fire perhaps not many years before Orm tells us that he came to rebuild it.

So it was Orm Gamalson who, as he recorded on his sundial, rebuilt Kirkdale Church in about 1055.

Although we’re not certain that the sundial was built into the church during the 1055 building work, it’s likely that it was, possibly in its current position.

The south doorway with the sundial The original west doorway which was part of Gamal’s rebuilding

The sundial’s inscription refers to Edward the Confessor and to Tostig, the son of Earl Godwin of Wessex and brother of Harold II, the last Anglo Saxon King of England. Tostig was the Earl of Northumbria between 1055 and 1065 who rebelled against his brother Harold Godwinson to join the Dane, Harold Hardrada in the invasion of northern England which immediately preceded the Battle of Hastings. It was therefore during that last relatively peaceful decade, immediately before the Norman conquest, that Orm, son of Gamal rebuilt this Church, dedicated to St Gregory and when he did, he placed that sundial in the doorway.

Our ancestors found themselves at a place of historical significance in the year 1066, not so far from the first of the two great battles of that year, the most significant year of change in English history. And our ancestors’ home had direct cultural and political links with the world of Edward the Confessor, Tostig and Harold Godwinson and others, who were the main actors in that story.

Orm Gamalson was clearly a substantial figure, and the place he chose to articulate his power was Kirkdale.

Kirkdale had political significance in this pivotal historical episode.

An Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian World

The sundial is written in the Old English of the late Anglo Saxon period. There is a single Old Norse word, solmerca, which means sundial. The old Norse word might just have been borrowed from the Norse language. The Scandinavian names, particular Orm, have been Anglicised from the Norse Ormr. So when you first interpret the words of the sundial, it doesn’t seem particularly Scandinavian.

It would appear that Orm rebuilt an ancient, ruined church, which he re-dedicated to St Gregory, rejecting the disorder of the earlier Viking attacks, in order to restore the Christian traditions of the pre-Scandinavian period. The sundial might reflect a rejection of Scandinavian culture and a recovery of the earlier Anglo-Saxon Christian period.

And yet, there is tangible evidence of Scandinavian culture on the local community.

The inscription provides the names of an elite landholder, Orm Gamalson, a priest called Brand and Hawaro, probably an artisan. This captures a reasonable cross section of society. There is little doubt that Orm Gamalson came from a Scandinavian tradition and probably was of Scandinavian descent. Brand was the priest and was likely to have been responsible for the design of the sundial. Brandr was a common personal name from Denmark and Iceland. Hawaro was probably the craftsman, responsible for the inscription. This is also a Scandinavian name, as in the Icelandic saga of Hávarður of Ísafjörður.

The use of a Scandinavian name might evidence Scandinavian descent, or simply an increased use of fashionable Norse names. Yet the way that names were used in this period followed strict genealogical form. Orm Gamalson had a father and son each called Gamal son of Orm, and his grandfather was probably also Orm Gamalson. Names were used in a carefully controlled manner. They bound families together and created a network of obligations. Analysis of the Domesday Book shows the proportion of Old Norse to Old English names was more than two to one. The highest of all such names was in Yorkshire and the Ryedale Wapentake, which included Kirkdale, had a higher than county average. There were 92 Old Norse to 8 Old English names. Although Norman names were adopted in large numbers after the conquest, the total number of different names adopted from the Normans was very small. Yet the use of Norse names at the time of the Norman invasion reflected a large number of different names which were used.

By the tenth century there was extensive interaction between England and Scandinavia.

In 1016 the Danish King Cnut assumed the throne from his conquering father Swein Forkbeard and granted estates to many of those who had supported the reconquest. Orm’s father Gamal probably benefited from this redistribution of land. In later marrying Ealdred’s daughter Aethelthryth, Orm became embedded into the Scandinavian and English elite society.

Old Norse was still spoken at the eve of the Norman Conquest, particularly in Yorkshire. Old Norse speakers continued to arrive, with another influx during the reign of Cnut. The Old Norse language flourished in Cnut’s court. In the north there was a rich culture of elite poetry, read in the Old Norse language for English audiences.

The language of the Kirkdale sundial was Old English, as were four similar inscriptions in the area at Aldbrough (Ulf had this church built for his own sake and for Gunnvor's soul), the Traveller’s Clock at Great Edstone (Loðan made me; Orlogium Iatorum, “The Traveller’s Clock” ); Old Byland (Sumarleoi’s house servant made me); and St Mary Castlegate, York (and Grim and Aese raised this church in the name of the holy Lord Christ and to St Mary and St Martin and St Cuthbert and All Saints. It was consecrated in the … year in the life of …). Yet Old Norse had never become a written language using the Roman alphabet. The two written traditions were Latin and Old English. Since Old English and Old Norse were related languages, the Scandinavian elite did not worry themselves about using existing traditions of Old English and Latin for the written record.

Whilst Scandinavian culture was originally pagan, by the tenth century the Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian community had adopted Christianity. There is extensive evidence of religious piety particularly through Scandinavian inspired stone sculpture. There are at least nine examples of such inscription at Kirkdale, apart from the sundial. They were probably funerary monuments for the new local Scandinavian elite.

Kirkdale is a place where Scandinavian, Latin and English traditions met and found expression. It was at the heart of the Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian world.

The Community at the end of the Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian world

The Domesday Book records two churches within the estate of Chirchebi, with one at Kirkdale and the other being the site of Kirkbymoorside Parish Church.

It evidences that Kirkdale by the mid eleventh century comprised ten villagers, one priest, two ploughlands, two lord’s plough teams, three men’s plough teams, a mill and a church living in an area of five caracutes of land.

If you visit Kirkdale today, walk through the gate to the west of the church and into the field beyond. Look carefully at the ground and you will see that the field is marked by long ridges in the grass. Ridge and furrow describes the archaeological pattern of ridges and troughs which evidences the system of ploughing used during the Middle Ages, typical of the open-field system. It predominant in the North East of England and in Scotland. Walk across the field and imagine the community that lived there in the late Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian world, listed in some detail in the Domesday Book.

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If your interest is in Kirkdale then I suggest you visit the following pages of the website.

· Introduction to Kirkdale

· Kirkdale Cave

· Roman Kirkdale

· The church in Anglo Saxon Times

· The Kirkdale Anglo Saxon artefacts

· The community in Anglo Saxon Times

· The church in Anglo Saxon Scandinavian Times

· Orm Gamalson

· The Sundial

You can also read about Jorvik.

There is a chronology, together with source material at the Kirkdale research Page.