While many Celtic names of places remain to attest the prolonged
sovereignty of the Britons in Cumbria, by far the greater number
refer to a period when the enterprising Northmen, coming from
various shores, but all included under the comprehensive title
of Danes, had pushed their conquests into the mountain country
of Cumberland and Westmorland and those portions of the north of
Lancashire, which are comprised within the district of the English
Lakes. This territory had become the exclusive possession of the
Norwegian settlers. Every height and how, every lake and tarn,
every swamp and fountain, every ravine and ghyll, every important
habitation on the mountain side, the dwelling place amidst the
cleared land in the forest, the narrow dell, the open valley,
every one is associated with some fine old name that belonged to
our Scandinavian forefathers. Silver How is the hill of Sölvar,
and Butter-lip-how, the mound of Buthar, surnamed Lepr the Nimble;
Windermere and Buttermere, and Elter-water are the meres and water
called after the ancient Norsemen, Windar, and Buthar or Butar,
and Eldir, Gunnerskeld, and Ironkeld, and Butter-eld-keld, are
the spring or marsh of Gunnar, and Hiarn, and Buthar the Old, or
Elder. Bekangs-Ghyll, and Staingill, and Thortillgill, indicate the
ravines or fissures, which were probably at one time the boundaries
respectively of the lands of Bekan, and Steini, and Thortil;
Seatallau and Seatoller were once the dwelling places whence Elli
and Oller looked on the plains below them; and in Ormthwaile, and
Branthwaite, and Gillerthwaite we recognise the lands cleared amid
the forests with the axe, whose several possessors were Ormr, and
Biorn, and Geller; while Borrodale, and Ennerdale, and Riggindale,
and Bordale recall the days when these remote valleys were subject
to the lordly strangers Borrhy, and Einar, and Regin, and Bor. All
these names are Scandinavian proper names, and are to be found in
the language of that ancient race, of whose sojourn amongst our
hills so many traces remain in the nomenclature of the district.
Coming from the wildest and poorest part of the Norwegian coast,
and mixing with the Celtic tribes of these regions, in the early
ages; those hardy sons of the sea made extensive and permanent
settlements among them. They penetrated into the remotest recesses
of the mountains, carrying thither their wild belief in the old
northern gods, and their rude ideas of a future life. Their warlike
recollections, and their attachment to the scenes of their valorous
exploits, fostered the notion which was not uncommon among them,
that the spirits of chieftains could sometimes leave the halls
of Valhalla, and, seated each on his own sepulchral hill, could
look around him on the peaceful land over which in life he had
held rule, or on that beloved sea which had borne him so often to
war and conquest. It was this thought that induced them to select
for their burial places high mountains, or elevated spots in the
valleys and plains. As a natural result of their long continued
dominion in the North of England, they came to be classed in the
imagination of the people with invisible and mystic beings which
haunted that district. The shadows of the remote old hills were
the abodes of enchantment and superstition. And the spirits of the
departed were supposed to be seen visiting the earth, sometimes in
the guise of a Celtic warrior careering on the wind, and sometimes
in the form of one of the old northern chieftains sitting solitary
upon his barrow. It is related of one being permitted to do so for
the purpose of comforting his disconsolate widow, and telling her
how much her sorrow disquieted him. Hence also the dwellers among
the hills, it is said, still fancy they hear on the evening breeze
musical tones as of harp strings played upon, and melancholy lays
in a foreign tongue; a beautiful concert, to which we owe the
exquisite medieval legend of the cattle, in thraldom to the potent
spirit of harmony that rings through the air, often when no musical
sound is audible to the organ of man, pricking up their ears in
astonishment, as they listen to the Danish or Norseland Boy, sadly
singing the old bardic lays over the barrows of his once mighty
forefathers.
It has been conjectured that the colonization of this district by
the Northmen was effected at two distinct periods, by two separate
streams of emigration, issuing from two different parts of the
Scandinavian shore. The first recorded invasion of Cumberland by
the Danes appears to have taken place about the year 875; when an
army under the command of Halfdene, having entered Northumberland
and made permanent settlements there, commenced a series of
incursions into the adjacent countries lying on the north and
west, and thereby reached the borders of the lake region, first
plundering them and finally settling there. The indications of
the presence of the northern adventurers in that quarter are
found to be more purely of a Danish character than those which
abound beyond the eastern line of the district, and which may with
great probability be referred to a colonization more particularly
Norwegian.
Our own histories make no mention of anything bearing upon the
subject, but there seem to be good reasons for concluding that
Cumberland was also invaded from the sea coast. The Norwegian
sea-rover Olaf, according to Snorro Sturlessen, had visited, among
other countries, both Cumberland and Wales. And Mr. Ferguson
supposes, from various circumstances, which concur to fix the date
of the Norwegian settlements here in the interval between 945 and
1000, that his descents must have taken place somewhere about the
year 990. At that period the Cumbrian Britons had been for half
a century in subjugation to the Saxons, and since the death of
Dunmail their country had been handed over to Malcolm to be held in
fealty by the Scottish crown. The scattered remnants of the Celtic
tribes were for the most part shut up amongst their hills, or had
retired into Wales. The plains of Westmorland and Cumberland on
the north and east were probably chiefly occupied by a mixed Saxon
and Danish population; for nearly a century had elapsed since the
Danes from Northumberland had overrun them. In fifty years more the
result of events was, as we are informed by Henry of Huntingdon,
that one of the principal abodes of the "Danes," under which title
old writers comprehend all Northmen, was in Cumberland. A stream of
Northern emigrants, issuing, it may be supposed, from the districts
of the Tellemark, and the Hardanger, a name signifying "a place of
hunger and poverty," had descended along the north of Scotland,
swept the western side of the island, fixed its head-quarters in
the Isle of Man, and from thence succeeded in obtaining a firm
footing upon the opposite shore of England; a land, like their
own, of mountains and valleys, waiting for a people as they were
for a settlement, a wild and untamed country, always thinly
populated and never cultivated, a land of rocks and forests and of
desolation. These protected by their ships, having command of the
coast, and being unopposed except by the apparently impenetrable
mountain barriers before them, these warlike settlers cleared for
themselves homes amidst the woods, began to gather tribute from the
mountain sides, and laid the foundations of those "thwaites" and
"seats" and "gates" and "garths," which at the end of almost nine
centuries of fluctuation and change still bear testimony to their
wide-spread rule and are called by their Northern names.
Not only do traces of them everywhere survive in names which
indicate possession and location, or in words which particularise
the multiform features of the country and describe the minor
variations of its surface; but the sites of their legislative and
judicial institutions, and their places of burial, as well as their
towns and villages, are preserved in that local nomenclature which
lives in the language spoken by their kinsmen in the mother-land
at the present day. The old Norse element has penetrated, and
diffused itself, and hardened into the dialect of the Cumberland
and Westmorland "fell-siders," and emphatically pronounces from
whom it came. And, lastly, the physical and moral characteristics,
as well as the manners and customs of the people, are those of the
hardy race, whose transmitted blood gave the larger nerve and more
enduring vigour which characterise their frame. Tall, bony, and
firmly knit; fair-haired, and of Sanguine complexion; possessing
strong feelings of independance, and a large share of shrewdness
and mother-wit; intolerant of oppression; cautious, resolute,
astute and brave; these people, and the Cumbrians, especially,
crown their list of claims to be of Norse descent with one more
striking feature, a litigious spirit. Litigation appears to be
almost as natural and necessary to their minds, as wrestling and
other manly exercises are to their limbs: in respect to which, as
well as to other amusements in which they are said to bear some
resemblance to the old Icelanders, they bear away the palm from the
rest of England.
Dungeon Ghyll in Great Langdale is a deep chasm or fissure in the
southern face of the first great buttress of the Pikes. It is
formed by a considerable stream from Pike o' Stickle; which after
making several fine leaps down the mountain side, tumbles at length
over a lofty precipice about eighty feet between impending and
perpendicular rocks into a deep and gloomy basin. A few slender
branches are seen springing from the crevices in either face of
the chasm near the top; and immediately above the basin, a natural
arch, made by two large stones which have rolled from a higher
part of the mountain, and got wedged together between the cheeks
of rock. By scrambling over some rough stones in the bed of the
stream, the largest and finest chamber may be reached; and the
visitor stands underneath the arch, and in front of the waterfall.
Over the bridge thus rudely formed, Wordsworth's "Idle Shepherd
Boy" challenged his comrade to pass; and even ladies have had the
intrepidity or temerity to cross it, undeterred by the narrowness
and awkwardness of the footing, and the threatening aspect of the
dismal gulf below.
The station in the field adjoining the farm house called
Skelwith-Fold, is the site where the Danish fortress is assumed to
have stood.