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Aspatria, Plumbland, and Bromfield. (See Early
Sculptured Crosses of the Diocese of Carlisle, by
Calverley and Collingwood.)
It was amongst the Norse settlers of the tenth and
eleventh centuries in northern England that, according
to Prof. Sophus Bugge, the "Helgakviða" was
composed. The group of poems resembling this,
"the finest heroic poems in the whole range of
Northern Song," are attributed by Vigfússon and
York Powell (Corpus Poet. Bor., Introd.) to some
nameless but inspired singer on some shore of the
Irish Sea or in the Hebrides. It was certainly in
the land of the Cumbri, whether north or south of
Solway, that a literary movement almost as important
as that which created the Edda took place ; the
creation of not only the folk-tales of Havelock and
Horn, but also of those Arthurian tales which contain
so many motives of the Viking Age, and confuse the
ancient Celtic mythology with waifs and strays from
ninth and tenth century history and from the folklore
of the Norse, placing Arthur’s court at "merry
Carlisle," then the ruined city of the Romans and
Angles, the adventures of Merlin in the Wood of
Caledon after the famous battle of Arthuret in Cumberland,
Gawain at Tarn Wadling in Inglewood, Blaise
in Northumberland, Lancelot at Bamborough, and
Urien of Reged in the region of the Roman Wall.
All this seems to be a secondary result of the impulse
to thought and action given by this great but forgotten
settlement of the Norse in Cumberland and the
districts round about it.
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