Tag: Vikings and Norse

• Roundhead or Cavalier, Leave or Remain?

  

  Seats on the Danelaw side of Alfred and Guthrum’s line voted Leave by 6.9 points more. Compared like with like, the gap is -0.2. Counties whose members sided with the King: a small, fragile link the other way.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Brexit, Britain, Early medieval, Early modern, elections, England, history, Persistence test, Present day, Vikings and Norse, Wales, war

• Avon means river: the oldest words in the British landscape

  

  England’s towns have English names, but 37 of its 60 biggest rivers kept names older than English. I mapped every named river and stream in the UK by the words in their names, from the ancient Avons and Esks to the Viking beck line.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Britain, Celtic, Early medieval, landscape, language and dialect, Languages, OpenStreetMap, place names, Rivers, UK, Vikings and Norse

• -ton, -by, llan- and bally-: what your town’s name is made of

  

  I tagged 105,532 place names in Britain and Ireland by the English, Norse, Latin, Welsh and Gaelic words inside them, and checked Irish spellings against their official Irish forms. Kil- is a wood far more often than you might think.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Anglo-Saxons, Britain, Celtic, cities, Early medieval, Ireland, language and dialect, Languages, medieval, place names, UK, Vikings and Norse

• Silver and Names

  

  The Vikings left two traces in Britain: buried silver and place names ending in -by, -thorpe and -thwaite. I put every listed Viking hoard on the map of Norse names. Mostly they agree, but Lincolnshire, with 294 Norse names, has no listed hoard at all.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  archaeology, Britain, Coins and hoards, Early medieval, England, medieval, Northern England, Ordnance Survey, place names, Vikings and Norse

• Dale, Down, Fell and Beck

  

  Brook in the south, beck in the north, burn in the Borders. I mapped every named stream, valley and hill in Britain to find where the lines fall, how sharp they are, and whether they follow the Vikings.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  Britain, Dialect, Early medieval, Hills and mountains, landscape, language and dialect, Northern England, Ordnance Survey, place names, Rivers, UK, Vikings and Norse