Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - III. The Norse Settlements - 3. Cumberland and Westmorland
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the monuments suggest these Norse were already a
strong colony in the earlier part of the tenth century.
Of pre-Christian relics of the Vikings in these parts
a few examples remain. The Ormside cup, now in
the York Museum, seems to be a Viking’s loot, carried
over Stainmoor from some church in Yorkshire to the
spot in the Eden Valley where the early invader made
his home—at Ormside (Orms-setr), perhaps keeping
his very name. In the churchyard has been found a
grave-hoard of weapons, evidently an early interment
of the days when half-converted heathen were buried
with the grave-goods of the pagan rite, as at Birka, near
Stockholm, tenth-century Christians were interred
with their personal belongings. Earlier still is the
"find" at the tumulus of Hesket-in-the-Forest, near
Carlisle, where a sword, bent and broken, as in
heathen burials, was found with various weapons and
the spur and snaffle of the warrior’s horse. Other
Viking swords have been found at Workington and
Witherslack, the former likewise bent up and broken
in its sheath. But down the Eden from Ormside,
at Kirkoswald, a trefoil fibula (British Museum), bearing
ornament resembling that of a bead of Danish
make in the Copenhagen Museum, was found along
with coins dating 769-854, or twenty years before
Halfdan attacked Carlisle. This seems to mean that
Danish Vikings were in the Eden Valley before the
date at which chroniclers record their presence. As
examples of metal-work coming into Cumbria from
the opposite direction, brought in by Norse from the
west, may be mentioned the Brayton fibula, perhaps
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