Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - III. The Norse Settlements - 3. Cumberland and Westmorland
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(whom Symeon calls Nichil) with Idwal of Wales is
not convincing, and the fact that eight years previously
Westmorland was harried by Thord of York suggests
that the Viking colony had been growing too important.
The tradition of a king at the port of Ravenglass,
Aveling—perhaps a corruption of Abloic, the Welsh
equivalent of Olaf (whence Haveloc)—is too shadowy
to build upon. We can only say that the monuments
and place-names of Cumberland point to
an early and powerful colony of Norse in touch with
Ireland and the Isles, and that towards the end of the
tenth century, as the Gosforth and other crosses show,
no other part of the Viking world could surpass this
district in literary and artistic culture. Situated on
the shore of the Irish Sea, which was a Viking lake,
and on the main road from the English east to the
Celtic west, the neighbourhood of Gosforth was
indeed geographically the focus of all the influences
which fostered the birth of the Edda poems. Wherever
they were composed, it was here that they were illustrated
almost at the moment of their production. In
the Isle of Man—within view of the West Cumberland
shore—we find also Edda subjects in sculpture, but of
somewhat later date and in less fulness. Heysham,
Halton, and Penrith show some examples of the same
art, but the centre of this Edda-illustrating region and
the richest in remains is Gosforth with its crosses and
hogbacks, and the contemporary relics at the neighbouring
sites of Waberthwaite, Muncaster, Beckermet
Haile, St. Bees, Workington, Brigham, Great Clifton,
Bridekirk, Dearham, Gilcrux, Isel, Cross-Canonby,
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