Translation of an article in the major Norwegian newspaper, ”Nationen” (The Nation), March 1st, 2001, ”De glemte vikinger”. Courtesy of Kristen Knudsen.
The Forgotten Vikings
Liverpool: The Briton Stephen Harding has recovered Norwegian vikings from oblivion. In a new book he tells the story of a Norwegian viking state on the Wirral peninsula outside Liverpool. He says that a type of Norwegian was probably spoken there up to the 15th Century
Harding tells: ’The first Vikings arrived here in 902. They were Norwegian, but had lived in Dublin for some years. After being thrown out of there, they set course for England. Wirral was at that time almost uninhabited, and the vikings obtained royal permission to settle here. They formed a Viking state with its own ’Thing’[1] and a chief. They had their own port and clearly defined borders’. For a hundred years to come, Norwegian vikings arrived in Wirral. Some came straight from Norway, mainly from Trøndelag[2], others via Scotland and the Isle of Man.
Little known
Wirral, where the Vikings settled, is a peninsula between Liverpool and Wales. On the one side is the River Mersey, on the other is the River Dee. Across the sea are the Isle of Man and Ireland. Today 340,000 people live here. ’I am from Wirral myself and at school I had heard that Norwegian vikings had lived here. But not until I took interest in the subject as an adult, had I any idea that a distinct viking state had existed in Wirral’, says Harding. "Their arrival was not a military conquest but they were mainly a peaceful people who needed a place to live", he says.
Norwegian Place-names
Other places in Great Britain, like York and the Isle of Man, have put their viking heritage on the tourist map, but the Vikings are currently not mentioned with one word in Wirral’s tourist brochures. Nor have specific major viking excavations taken place in the area. A few discoveries have been made, but no systematic work has been performed.’ But the vikings have left traces in place-names. No less than 600 such names stem from Old Norwegian. For example, we have fourteen place names ending with ’by’[3], and many places have ’carr’ in their name, from the Norwegian word ’kjerr’[4]. Even the local football club, Tranmere, borrows its name from the old vikings: ’Tran’ from the bird crane[5], while ’mere’ stems from ’melr’ (sand bank)’, Harding says.
He considers also that the vikings have influenced the local dialect in the Wirral and Liverpool region. The intonation/ tone variation in the speech here is reminiscent of Norwegian. It will now be investigated if the vikings have many descendants in Wirral. ’We DNA test 200 men above 18 years of age, whose father and mother (mistake in newspaper - should say grandfather) are both from Wirral. In this way we can discover if they have Norwegian DNA. Norwegian DNA is distinct from the Danish and Icelandic[6]. This way it is possible to find out if they have viking blood in their veins, Harding says.
Thors Hammer
Harding hopes that his book[7] will make local tourist authorities interested in their viking heritage, and that some of the places of historic interest will be marked. One such place is Thingwall: the signpost in the picture marks the place were once the Vikings met together in large numbers for their "Thing" or assembly. Nowadays the grassy fields here are rented out to a local farmer and are used for grazing horses.
"Our Thingwall is older than both Thingvellir in Iceland and Tynwald in the Isle of Man. We should certainly have some sign or some other thing which denotes the significance of this place. Hopefully it will be possible to get this site preserved so nobody can build houses on it" says Harding.
A little further north from Thingwall is Thurstaston[8] and Thor's stone, a large red-coloured sandstone and a popular climbing spot for the young. The stone takes its name after the Vikings: legend has it that here lies the head of Thor's hammer Mjølner. In Victorian times it was believed the Vikings had blood sacrifices here. But this didn't happen at all. The first Vikings to come here were already Christian, after being converted in Ireland" says Harding.
His book, "Ingimund's Saga, Norwegian Wirral" was recently launched at a large reception at Wirral Council Hall[9], with representatives from the City of Trondheim and the Norwegian Embassy in London.
Picture on Thor's stone: The old grounds:Thingwall is one of many place names in Wirral in North England whose names derive from the Vikings. This was the site of the Norwegian Viking Thing 1000 years ago, says Stephen Harding
Picture of the Viking ship: Yngre: The Oseberg ship is from about 815. The first vikings came to Wirral in 902. Could they have used the same type of ship?
Just above this picture: "Our Thingwall is older than both Thingvellir in Iceland and Tynwald in the Isle of Man"
1
[1] The ’Thing’ was at the core of the state in viking communities, meaning both the assembly of all free men and the place where they met for the Thing functions. The Thing performed legal settlements, decided upon common matters, legislated. (One says that the older viking communities had two out of the three state functions: Legislation and Courts, but they lacked an Executive branch. Hence if a person was found guilty of say insulting a member of a different familiy, the latter had to see to it themselves that the Thing’s sentence in the case was fulfilled.) The most important historic place in Iceland is Thingvellir, (meaning ’the field of the Thing’). Iceland boasts to have the world’s oldest existing parliament, the ’Allting’. The word is used in traditional and modern institutional names in Scandinavia, i.a. parliaments: In Norway ’Stortinget’, in Denmark ’Folketinget’.
[2] District in mid Norway (300-400 miles north of Oslo), main town Trondheim, a very influential part of the country at the time
[3] ’by’ in Norwegian means ’town’ today, but in Swedish and Danish rather ’village’, I think the latter fits best, perhaps just a hamlet
[4] ’kjerr’ in Norwegian means ’shrubbery’ or brushwood, associated with a marshy area.
[5] ’Trane’ in present day Norwegian
[6] Undoubtedly mistake in the newspaper for Irish (’Irland’ and ’Island’ is Norwegian for Ireland and Iceland)
[7] Stephen Harding: Ingimund’s Saga: Norwegian Wirral (Countyvise, December 2000); also Stephen Harding, Paul Cavill & Judith Jesch: Wirral and Its Viking Heritage (English Place-Name Society)
[8] Thurstaston means "Thorsteinn's farmstead"
[9] Birkenhead Town Hall