The Beginning of Scandinavian Settlement in England: The Viking ‘Great Army’ and Early Settlers, c. 865–900 by Shane McLeod (review)

Based on his doctoral thesis, Shane McLeod has produced a finely nuanced analysis of the earliest stages of Scandinavian conquest and settlement in England, from approximately 865 to 900. He differentiates between the more commonly used evidence for subsequent generations of Scandinavian settlement in the tenth century and evidence available for the first generation of settlers, associated with the ‘great army’, who (in McLeod’s well-argued view) included others, both domestic and civilian.

McLeod’s thesis critiques the limits of available evidence – annalistic/historical, literary, archaeological – and draws upon migration theory to argue in favour of the early stages of conquest and settlement being undertaken not solely by warriors and settlers coming from the Scandinavian lands of Denmark and Norway. A sound case is developed that the great army and associated settlers included those with prior migration experience, in particular coming from lands that had already been settled by Scandinavians in both Ireland and Francia. McLeod also makes the case that right from the very early stages the invasion and settlement of England involved not just young adult fighting men, but included women and children in greater numbers than scholars have hitherto believed. It also stands to reason that the migrations would have also included administrators, given the nature of the settlement and establishment of Scandinavian rule.

McLeod maps out the underlying principles in migration theory, and identifies in particular five of nine principles that can be applied specifically to the evidence for Scandinavian migration to England. The five principles, for which evidence exists in relation to migration of Scandinavians to England, are: migration through the use of advance ‘scouts’ for setting up migration ‘chains’; the tendency for a migratory flow to continue over a period; migrants being a select group of people from the population of origin; migrants being more likely to have experience of previous migration; and migrants often returning to their place of origin. Having mapped out the evidence for supporting his application of migration theory, McLeod then traces the likely origins of the settlers. He uses annalistic and archaeological evidence to argue for the presence of a significant proportion of Scandinavians from both Ireland and the Frisian coastal areas of Francia in the great army, and thus forming the basis of the early stages of migration to England. In comparison, the evidence for great army members coming directly from the Scandinavian homelands in the early phases of Scandinavian settlement in England is shown to be limited.

McLeod also looks at a number of other aspects of the migrations, as a means for describing a more complete picture of the people and the circumstances that led to their migration. He discusses the likely motivations behind the migrations, and makes a good argument for the immigrants’ desire for economic and social advancement as an important motivating factor. He argues that this is especially the case in the desire for wealth through land ownership, which was of high cultural value and for which opportunities were limited in both Ireland and Francia.

McLeod considers the use of client kings as one example of a number of political and economic innovations that came about during the early phases of Scandinavian migration to England. Inter alia, he argues that the use of a written treaty between Guthrum and Alfred through which boundaries were agreed and administrative units established was another such innovation, possibly reflecting a continental experience of treaties, resulting in the creation of buffer zones on the margins of Scandinavian rule in England. He also makes the case for Scandinavian innovation in the acculturation of administrative and economic conditions (in particular in Mercia and East Anglia) to existing Anglo-Saxon activities. He argues that the use of...