Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... II. THE DANELAW I. THE AGE OF ALFRED That part of Britain which the Danes conquered in the days of King DEGREESElfred was called in Anglo-Saxon Denalagu, the district in which the Danes' law prevailed. The word lagu in the sense of " laws" comes from the Scandinavian log, which in its secondary use meant not only "laws," but the group of people who were ruled by a given code. Gulathings log, or Thranda Kg, came to be almost geographical expressions for the country which owned the rulings of the Gulathing, or the neighbourhood of Trondhjem. Hence the form "Danelaw," used by recent historians as a convenient rendering of Denalagu, is not misleading, beside being more readable than the hybrid "Danelagh." King Alfred's life covers the period of this conquest, the second half of the ninth century. After the tentative attacks of the first sixteen years, came the invasion of the Great Army, which created the Danelaw, followed by the futile attempt of Hastein (Hasting) to settle in Alfred's realm. By the year 900 the ethnological map of England had been drawn on lines which last, with alterations in details only, to this day. The story is one of stirring deeds on both sides. If we admire the heroic defence of the Saxon king, we cannot forget that most of us who form the English nation have in our veins more than a little of the Viking blood. We owe our existence as much to one side as to the other, and it is a false patriotism and a mistaken view of history which asks us to give our sympathies exclusively to either party in this struggle of a thousand years ago. To tell the story fully in the limits of this work is impossible; we must, however, sketch the course of events in order to make the results intelligible. When DEGREESEthelred, the fourth son of...