The most important territorial divisions of the Danelaw were the five boroughs of Nottingham, Leicester, Derby, Stamford and Lincoln. Those boroughs of course still survive, all except Stamford becoming county towns. Yet the evidence of Scandinavian loan-words suggests that the entire region of north and east was assimilated by the new settlers. There are hundreds of place names of Danish and Swedish origin, the most notable being those that end with -by or with -thorpe. Streoneshalch was renamed as Whitby, and Northworthig became Derby. The plethora of Kirbys or Kirkbys in the area of the Danelaw suggests that ‘settlements by the church’ were recognized by the invaders. The survival of English place names, however, sometimes in close proximity to the newly named settlements, suggests that the native people of humble stock were left undisturbed.
The Danes brought trade and prosperity to the areas under their control. It is not at all surprising that in the eleventh century the three most wealthy shires were Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire, which had all been part of the Danelaw. York itself was one of the richest and most flourishing cities in the kingdom. It was guarded by strong walls, and excavations have revealed streets of narrow and tightly packed wooden houses complete with workshops and warehouses. Jewellers and metalworkers lived beside workers in wood and in textiles. And everywhere there were merchants, trading with Ireland, with France and, of course, with Scandinavia. They were engaged in the business of pepper, and of vinegar; of fish, and of wine; of salt, and of slaves.
After the treaty was concluded with Guthrum, Alfred had the opportunity to rebuild the defences of his kingdom against any further incursion. Throughout southern and western England he set up a system of fortified towns similar to those established in the Danelaw. An elaborate network of these towns was created to ensure that no one lived more than 20 miles (32 kilometres) from a refuge. It was the beginning of the first true or systematic urbanization within England, springing from the urgent military necessities of the moment, since the Roman epoch. Within a hundred years most of the burghs had become fully ordered towns with courts and markets.
Iron Age hill forts such as those at Hastings and Southampton, and early Romanized settlements like those at Bath and Winchester, were restored with stronger walls. New towns were built, employing a grid system of streets that still survives in towns such as Wallingford and Cricklade that are sited by the Thames. Alfred knew the importance of guarding the major rivers that flowed through his land. Each burgh had a large force of defenders, placed there with their families. In addition Alfred began the formation of a permanent navy to deter any further hostilities from Scandinavian warbands. An early warning system of beacons, set on hilltops, was put in place. His territories, therefore, were militarized in a great programme of public works.
But, for a while, Alfred’s protection did not seem enough. In 896, six years after the death of Guthrum, another Danish king invaded East Kent with a force of 4,000 or 5,000 warriors; they had brought their women and children with them, and their purpose once again was to settle. Alfred led his army into the region and forced them to retreat to their encampments. But he then became aware of a greater threat. The arrival of these new settlers destroyed the uneasy peace between the English and the people of the Danelaw; ships from East Anglia and from Northumbria sailed around the coast and attacked the northern reaches of Devon. Another Danish contingent besieged Exeter. All the parties of the Danes colluded. The plan was to force Alfred to concentrate in the west, while the new invaders took over Kent and Essex.
In the course of the next few months Alfred defeated the Danish forces in the west, while sending reinforcements to the support of southeast England. The chronology of what became known as Alfred’s ‘last war’ is not entirely clear, but the result is not in doubt. The invading Danes gave up their attempt to acquire the territories of the southeast and instead settled among their compatriots in East Anglia and Northumbria. They may have been bribed to leave Essex and elsewhere. They may have bowed to the inevitability of the strong defence set up by the system of burghs. In any event, Alfred had defended his kingdom.
Yet he also defined his kingdom. He generally termed himself ‘the king of the Angles and of the Saxons’, but one of his newly minted pennies uses for the first time the legend ‘Rex Anglo’. With the pagans settled on the very borders of his land, he did his best to assert English identity. He was a Christian king in the face of heathen warlords. The Danes had attempted to extirpate the spiritual civilization of the English; Alfred would do everything within his power to cultivate English learning and the study of English history. Even as he was creating the system of burghs and building a navy, he was fostering a programme of translating major Latin texts into the West Saxon vernacular. He wished to commission books ‘which are most necessary for all men to know’. He is one of the very few kings of England who himself wrote books. He translated Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care, the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius and the Soliloquies of St Augustine; he caused to be translated Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Histories against the Pagans by Orosius, thus defining the context for his devoted scholarship. The English, at least according to their sacred historians, were the people of God.
In the reign of Alfred’s son, Edward the Elder, the English began to conquer the territories of the Danelaw and to absorb its people into the larger society. The Danes were more vulnerable because they had settled; they were no longer the roving warbands that had threatened Alfred, and they had always been more skilled at attack than at defence. In 917 and 918 Edward’s soldiers marched out into the Danelaw, building fortresses as they moved forward. They seized Derby and Nottingham; then the men of Lincoln submitted to King Edward. By 920 all of the country south of the Humber had recognized him as overlord. This was a true conquest, since the rulers of Wessex had never before been lords of the eastern lands. The battles were remembered for many centuries, and it was said that the purple pasqueflower grew in the meadows where Danish blood had been spilled.
The people of the Danelaw were converted to Christianity within two or three generations, and their old burial customs were forgotten. They were in any case so close to the Angles and the Saxons in custom and character that they effortlessly mingled with them. The English language is filled with Scandinavian words such as ‘sky’ and ‘die’, ‘anger’ and ‘skin’ and ‘wing’, ‘law’ and ‘birth’, ‘bread’ and ‘eggs’. There is scarcely a phase of human activity that has not been deeply influenced by Danish nomenclature.
The memory of the Danish occupation survived. The Orkney islands and the Shetlands were in fact not surrendered to Scotland until the latter half of the sixteenth century, and Norwegian was still being spoken in the Shetlands at the end of the eighteenth century; the island accent is still much closer to Norwegian than to Scots or English. In the middle of the nineteenth century the people of Northamptonshire, according to a local historian, maintained ‘a traditional remembrance of their oppression’. In Cornwall, at the end of the same century, a colony of red-headed people were called ‘Danes’ with whom the local population would not marry. Samuel Pepys was informed that the west door of Rochester Cathedral was covered with ‘Dane-skins’. All this suggests that the viciousness of the early invasions and battles had left a deep and abiding mark.