Place Names in Kent :: The Northmen in Kent.

The Northmen in Kent.

A Furore Normanorum was a petition in an old litany in England before it had gained that name. And with reason, for the success of Angles, Jutes and Saxons in the conquest of England drew the attention of Scandinavian and other Vikings, who found that booty could be gained by rapid raids. It was at the end of the eighth century that the Danes (as they came to be called, although the wider “Northmen” would be a better term), reached the land of the Angles, coming from Norway to Dorset, and generally harrying the eastern and southern coasts for a couple of hundred years. They also remained and settled, mainly to the north of the Humber, until at last the greater part of England came under their power, and in 1016 Cnut became the Danish King of England.

Our forefathers in Kent should have our sympathy for the continuous state of alarm in which they were kept. In 832 Scandinavian pirates ravaged Sheppey. In 838 they won a battle in Merscware (i.e., the land of the Marsh-folk, i.e., Romney Marsh), and slew many in Canterbury. In 851 nine of their piratical ships were taken in battle at Londovic (Sandwich) by Æthelstan, the under-king of Kent; but they remained to winter in Thanet for the first time, and in the same year 350 of their ships entered the Thames and took both Cantwaraburg and Lundenburg (London). In 853 the men of Kent, under the Alderman Ealchere, with the men of Surrey, fought in Tenet (Thanet), but were worsted. Next year they wintered in Sceap-ige (Sheppey). In 865 the men of Kent tried to buy off the heathen invaders, who, however, ravaged all East Kent.

Then arose the great man, Alfred, who in 871 had eight battles with the Danes south of the Thames. In 885 they besieged Hrofceastre (Rochester), but King Alfred relieved it, and the Danes took to their ships, having lost all their horses. In 893 two hundred and fifty Danish ships came to Limenemouth (Lympne), took their fleet four miles up the river, and made a strong fort at Apuldore, while Hasting with 80 ships entered the Thames estuary, made a fort at Milton, and later one at Sceobyrig (Shoebury). In 969 Eadger orders Tenet land to be pillaged, and in 980 Thanet is overrun by the Danes. In 986 the bishopric of Hrofceastre was devastated. In 993 a fleet of nearly four hundred ships came to “Stone,” which may be the one in the Isle of Oxney, or another near Faversham on the Watling Street, or another on the Swale, and went on to Sandwic, which was their chief southern haven, and embodies in its name the Scandinavian wic or bay (Sandwic is a common place-name in Iceland and Norway).

In 994 Anlaf, King of Norway, and Sweyn, King of Denmark, with a fleet of nearly 500, failed to take London, but ravaged Kent and other counties. In 998 they sailed up the Medway estuary to Rochester, and there beat the Kentish army. In 1005 a fleet came to Sandwic and despoiled the country.

In 1007 England despaired, and paid a tribute of £36,000, while Thurkell’s army came to Sandwich and thence to Canterbury, where the people of East Kent bought peace at the cost of £3,000, while the Danes spent the winter in repairing their ships. In 1012 they took Canterbury and martyred the Archbishop Ælfheah, better known to us as S. Alphege. In 1013 Sweyn came again to Sandwich; but in 1014 Eadmund (Edmund Etheling) attacked the Danes in Kent, drove them into Sheppey, and met their leader in battle at Æglesforda (Avlesford). But in 1016 Cnut (Canute) became King of all England, and to him in 1018 £72,000 was paid in tribute.

In 1203 the body of S. Alphege was allowed by Cnut to be taken to Canterbury, and England remained a Danish province. In 1040 Harda-Cnut was brought from Bruges to succeed Harold as King, and landed at Sandwich. In 1046 Thanet was ravaged again by the Northmen; but in 1049 King Edward gathered a great fleet at Sandwich against Sweyn, and later this fleet lay at DÆrentamutha (i.e., Darentmouth, i.e. Dartford). In 1051 King Edward’s brother-in-law, Eustace, lost some followers in a fracas at Dofra (Dover).

But a great change was imminent, and England was to change one domination for another, and in 1052 Wilhelm (afterwards the Conqueror) visited King Edward the Confessor (or Saint) with a great host of Normans, and he exiled Earl Godwin, who came from Bruges to Noesse (Dungeness) was driven back. Returning with his son Harold to Dungeness, they took all the ships they could find at Rumenea (Romney), Heda (Hythe), and Folcesstane. Thence to Dofra and Sandwich, ending up with ravaging Sheppey and Middeltun (Milton, near Sittingbourne). Then, in 1066, Harold dies in battle at Hastings, and William begins our Norman dynasty, Northmen being succeeded by Normans.

Traces of the visits to Kent are found in various place-names, though more common in other parts of Britain, and indeed in other countries, since as marauders, colonists, or conquerors they were for three centuries the terror of Europe, from Iceland to Italy. The many places with the suffixes byr or by, thorpe, throp, or trop, toft, thwaite, ville in Normandy, or well and will in England, garth, beck, haugh, with, tarn, dale, force, fell, are all almost exclusively northern to Kent and mainly Norwegian. As to “by” for town, there are 600 north of the Thames and east of Watling Street, and hardly any in the south. The one apparent exception in Kent—Horton Kirkby—is no exception, for it was simply Horton until the time of Edward the First, when Roger de Kirkby, from Lancashire, married a Kentish heiress and the manor and place were re-named after him.

We have, however, certain records of their piratical visits, as at Deptford and Fordwich, where the termination is not the Anglo-Saxon ford, meaning a passage across a river, but the Norse fiord, a roadstead for ships. Deptford is the deep fiord, where ships could anchor close to the bank, and Fordwich, the smallest “limb” of the Cinque Ports, was once the port of Canterbury on the Stour, and gives us wic, the Norse for station for ships, a small creek or bay. So, in Kent, we have also from the same source Wick in Romney Marsh, Greenwich, Woolwich, and Sandwich. Inland, however, Wich or Wick, is an Anglo-Saxon borrowing from the Latin vicus, and means houses or a village.

Another Norse word in Kent is Ness or Naze, a nose or promontory, such as Dungeness, Shoeburyness, Pepperness, Foulness, Shellness, Sheerness, Sharpness Cliff at Dover, whence criminals were hurled, Whiteness, Foreness, Bartlett Ness and Oakham Ness. The Nore, in Kent, is the Norse, or perhaps Jutish, NÔr, a bay with a narrow entrance, and the word is unique in Britain, unless we may find it also in Normarsh, near Rainham. Again attributable to our invaders, and again purely coastal, are the places ending in fliot, a small river or creek, such as Northfleet, Southfleet, Ebbsfleet, with Purfleet on the opposite bank of the Thames. Thanet and Sheppey were for us their chief points of attack and their naval stations, while the Danelagh or Kingdom whence the Norse element predominated had the Wash as the chief entrance whence they radiated out.

The suffix “gate” may be either from the Saxon geat or the Scandinavian gata, but when we find Ramsgate, Dargate, Margate, Westgate, Kingsgate, Snargate, and Sandgate, all on the coast, while in Romney Marsh “gut” takes the place of “gate,” as in Jervis Kut, Clobesden Gut, and Denge Marsh Gut, we may incline to a Scandinavian origin.

It is in the north, and the north only according to the best authorities, that the suffix ing represents the Norse eng for grass-land.

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