Gone Medieval - The Danelaw

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

The Danelaw was the part of England where large numbers of Scandinavians settled between the 9th and 11th centuries, and where Danish rather than English law was followed. Its set of legal terms and d...efinitions was created in the treaties between Alfred the Great and the Danish warlord, Guthrum.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman talks to Jake Stattel, a PhD candidate in Medieval History at Cambridge, whose research is teasing out new evidence about the political and social shifts in early Medieval Britain.This episode was mixed and edited by Annie Coloe and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here > If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:01 From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries
Starting point is 00:00:27 with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr Kat Jarman. What we refer to as a Dane law is the part of England where large numbers of Scandinavians settle between the 9th and the 11th centuries. We have historical sources that tell us that this was a region where Danish as opposed to English law was followed. But what do we really know about those legal differences. And can we tease out new evidence
Starting point is 00:01:09 from 1,000-year-old law codes? Well, today's guest is doing precisely that. I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast, Jake Stattle, who is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. Jake has just published an article about legal culture in the Dane Law.
Starting point is 00:01:26 We're going to talk about his discoveries and ongoing work with us today. So Jake, welcome to Gone Medieval today and thanks so much for joining us. Hi Kat, great to be here. I'm a big fan of the show. Fantastic. And I'm really pleased to have you here to talk about this, because I heard about the research site you're working on a couple of years ago, actually. And I know you've just had an article published on this as well.
Starting point is 00:01:48 So congratulations on that. Thank you. And it's great because this is a sort of work in progress, isn't it? So it's really interesting to hear it as it's sort of happening. And I'm going to go into a bit more details. I'm asking more about your specific research in that paper you've published quite soon. but I thought we could just go a bit back to the basics, first of all, and talk about this whole idea of the Dane Law,
Starting point is 00:02:09 because it's a word we hear quite a lot, and a lot of people use it, but not always correctly. So I wonder if I could just ask you, first of all, to explain what's meant by the Dane Law, and how do people use that word? Sure, it is a bit tricky, and people often mean different things, but I think most generally, when we see it written and talked about, we're using it as a geographical designation for these areas of England that were conquered and settled by the Vikings, who are called Danes in our sources, but who as we know are probably Scandinavians of all different sorts.
Starting point is 00:02:46 This is generally northern and eastern England, but this is a really large area of kind of these former Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of East Anglia, quite a lot of Northumbria, and then most of the eastern part of Mercia. So this is a really large and diverse area, even kind of making up about 15 of the 30-odd historic counties of England. So really large area, quite a large population. And we think that this origin probably lies of calling it the Dane Law. And the Vikings being here lies with the famous Great Heathen Army of the 860s, which was conquering these areas. But for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 876, we have this famous entry that the Vikings were sharing out the land in Northumbria. So that's beginning to imply that they were
Starting point is 00:03:36 distributing land between themselves and beginning to settle permanently in that area. And so these areas come to be called the Dane Law about 100 years later. So for understanding the Dane Law, I guess some of this chronology is important. And so, you know, we know about these famous conquests in the eight 60s and the eight 70s, but there's also this important treaty in the 880s called the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum. So this happened sometime after kind of this famous Viking attack on Wessex, in which Alfred the Great is then hiding out in the Marshes of Somerset, and then he returns and has this great victory at the Battle of Ethndon.
Starting point is 00:04:17 But after that, we're kind of told in our sources that this Viking leader, called a king at some point, is converting to Christianity, and then he's also making peace with Alfred. and it's in this treaty, which survives to us that we're seeing on these boundaries laid down. And this is starting to imply to us for the first time that there's kind of a defined territory of the English under Alfred and the territory of there being called the Danes under Guthrum, who's now ruling the former kingdom of East Anglia. But of course, the Dane law is much larger than just East Anglia.
Starting point is 00:04:52 And so there's all these other regions, which are also not united and are not under Guthrum as well. And we don't know much about that, but it seems like they're mostly functioning independently. So that's one important thing to clarify that when we say the Dane Law, we don't mean one big kingdom, some big political unit. If anything, these are kind of loosely aligned local areas of different Scandinavian groups that have settled there. And maybe even one way to think of it is different war bands, maybe led by different leaders who at some points are called kings are settling different local regions and even
Starting point is 00:05:26 specific towns. And then later on in the sources we kind of see these towns being called boroughs and that there's armies associated with each of these. So for example, there's these famous five borough region of Eastern Mercia and those are the cities of Darby, Lester, Lincoln, Nottingham, and Stanford. And we're told that each of those kind of has its own army of Vikings who are independently negotiating with the Anglo-Saxons and things like that. This treaty between Alfred and Gooseyrum is really interesting, isn't it? Because it actually is always quite unique really in that it talks about a geographical area. And that's sort of the starting point, isn't it, to sort of for us to, well, at least how we use it, we're trying to understand the sort of separation.
Starting point is 00:06:10 It's the fact that we've got a document that says here's the boundary. But I mean, is that boundary something that seems to continue? Is it a sort of boundary that we would think of it today as an actual border? We really don't know. And kind of exactly where that boundary is, is also very debated. So, and if anyone wants to look it up in this document in the treaty, it's really just one clause, it's really just one sentence kind of laying out this boundary. And it's very vague. So it seems to be kind of coming into the Thames and that it mentions going north up the river Lee. And then there's all much debate about what it means when it's talking about then the Roman roads. If it means it's stopping at where it meets this Roman road that runs diagonally
Starting point is 00:06:55 across England or if it's actually following along it. And then of course we don't really know how much that represents kind of a division on the ground. And of course, this is all a bit in flux because not that long after we see the Dane Law being gradually conquered by the Kings of Wessex, specifically by Alfred's two children, by his son, Edward and his daughter, Athelflade, are then kind of encroaching across this boundary and more fully bringing it into the kingdom of Wessex for the first time as well. So once we get to that point, it becomes very unclear of what does this boundary mean. And so that's part of what my work is looking at some of the law that we can try to understand in the Dane law and maybe conceptualize that there were different jurisdiction and things changed
Starting point is 00:07:42 when you crossed across this boundary. But we really don't know much about it on the ground. And the term, I mean, you touched upon this a little bit, is this sort of idea of a Dane law, the way we use that term itself. That doesn't actually kind of coming to use in a 9th century. I mean, that's not mentioned in that treaty. It's later, isn't it, that that actually comes in? It is tricky. We don't actually see it until after the year 1000, the term of the millennium,
Starting point is 00:08:07 in a law code for King Ethelred, written by Archbishop, Wolfstand II of York, who's kind of one of these major writers of the later Anglo-Saxon period. It is a bit anachronistic for us to then apply it to the 9th and the 10th century. So that's something we always have to think about and be careful. So it's not actually used until kind of this in the 11th century. And at least Wolfstan is setting up kind of this clear binary between areas that are under the law of the English, Anglo-Laga, and areas that are under Dana Laga. So from this point on, we then continue to see it in English royal legislation as a legal difference is for these two areas. Even after the Norman, we see it written that way.
Starting point is 00:08:49 But yes, we don't see any of that earlier on. So what they really would have called it at the time is a bit unclear. But I think we can also guess that this was an idea or a term that was around at some point before Wolfstand. I don't know how likely it is that he invented it out of nothing. And also this word, Lagu itself, which enters Old English kind of in the middle of the 10th century, is from Old Norse, came through the Dane Law from the Scandinavians there. And of course, that's the word that we still use today in English for law comes directly from Old Norse. So it's also something to think about that in Scandinavia, they have this practice of using the word law in a territorial sense, where they refer to an area by the law that governs it. So in Norway, there's the region of the Gullifing log, you know, means the area that followed the law set at the Gula thing.
Starting point is 00:09:40 So we think that that's the same sort of thing that's going on here in the Dane law with Dana Laga. So the idea itself of calling at a territory by its law is itself, is. Scandinavian thing. So we think that this is an idea that probably existed and then Wolfstand is writing it down. Exactly when that happened, of course, we can never really know. Okay, so that's that's really interesting. I love that sort of concept of the law as a geographical area, but I think we can't avoid also talking a little bit more about terminology in terms of the other part of that word, namely that Danes and who we're actually talking about here. And obviously this is a really tricky one and as well, and who are these people? Are they Danes? Are they Vikings? Are they Scandinavians?
Starting point is 00:10:26 And in terms of your work then and how you're looking at it, what are your thoughts about that? Yeah, of course, it's another really tricky issue that we face. For one, we have to look at what our sources at the time are saying, so these are old English sources and largely the English Saxon Chronicle. They're always saying Danes to apply to every kind of Scandinavian raider that shows up or even Scandinavians at home. And then they're also saying pagan or heathens, depending on what the sources are. So I think we know that these are generally kind of Scandinavian peoples. They're not necessarily just those from modern day Denmark. So I tend to veer towards using the term Scandinavian when we're talking about these people and where they come from. And then when
Starting point is 00:11:10 we're talking about them settling in England and then kind of mixing with the groups that are already there, and once time goes on, I think it's... it's pretty appropriate to call them Anglo-Scanonavians. So I tend to use that sometimes. And of course, this is also the same issue of who do we call Vikings or not. I tend to be kind of very cautious with that, and I tend to only use the term Viking for people who are being described, you know, kind of as pirates and as raid groups and armies.
Starting point is 00:11:37 But I think it's important to think about that in England, that's not the only Scandinavians that are there. And I think increasingly with the archaeological evidence and kind of recent discoveries, We think that there were quite a lot of Scandinavians that came to England in the years after kind of those initial Viking conquests. And certainly they weren't all warriors. And we've been learning quite a lot that there was quite a lot of Scandinavian women that came over. And Jane Kershaw's work in particular has helped to show that.
Starting point is 00:12:04 So, of course, we have to be very careful about all these words. Some people like to use Norse as well, which I think is helpful because these are Norse, old Norse speakers. But that's also confusing because some people use Norse to refer to just Norwegians. and we also don't think that's the case. So I think using ideas of Scandinavian, kind of in a general sense, is where I tend to go. Yeah, and I think it is because we don't actually know,
Starting point is 00:12:27 and presumably also these people who wrote those sorts down in their 9th or 10th century or whatever it was, they didn't necessarily know either. It was probably not necessarily that clear. The countries that way, the modern countries don't develop into much later, and they would have had all sorts of other regional identities. Exactly. Yeah, no, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:12:45 I think that's probably the, the best way of thinking about it. But I think when we think about that as well, so we've talked about the fact that we've got this geographical area, lots of Scandinavian settlers, but really this day in law being geographical territory that sort of has a legal situation for the people living there, presumably that would also encompass other people who weren't Scandinavians. Would they also be following possibly the same rules if they were living in those areas? Is that sort of what that concept means? Well, of course, we're not really sure. I think we do get the sense that in these areas, particularly kind of after they're conquered by these
Starting point is 00:13:22 Viking armies, that it is kind of these Viking warrior elites are coming in and becoming the dominant kind of highest tier of society. So in a sense, it does make sense that they are then bringing their law and they're applying it to everyone. You know, even if the majority of the population is not Scandinavian, maybe now they're under Scandinavian laws in local areas, because that's who's in charge. And at the same time, when we see this actually kind of cited in the English legislation in the 11th century, it's usually kind of worded in a way in English law, you know, in areas under English law and in the Dane law.
Starting point is 00:14:01 So it seems to kind of apply it as a blanket sort of legal difference in this entire area. So presumably that's applying to everyone there. But of course, we don't really know. And we don't know if, well, something I'm trying to explore is if your rights as a Englishman were different than your rights as someone in the Dane Law. And if it mattered ethnically in that way. But of course, as we mentioned, with the difficulty of the terminology, the ethnicity is very complicated and fluid at this point.
Starting point is 00:14:29 And once we get into the 10th century, and mostly where I work is in the later 10th century, in this law code in 997, at that point, I think it would be very unclear of who's a Viking and who's an Englishman living in Yorkshire, because these groups had likely become so mixed. So it is a bit unclear, but it seems like they're all following some alternative type of law
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Starting point is 00:15:56 I think it's a worthwhile thing to do. And the thing that really makes it worthwhile is the fact that you could make it go on forever. So subscribe to Patented from History Hit on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to catch new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. Well, that's so interesting. So they clearly are real differences at this point in time versus what you should have rid of us, Danish and English legal culture. And I mean, you've already pointed out
Starting point is 00:16:36 that the sources are quite limited. But what do we really know? How much do we know about that? And what are the surviving sources that you can look at in your work for this? Yeah, well, we know very, very little. And that's sort of how my work began to kind of investigate this more.
Starting point is 00:16:51 And yes, the trouble is we have very few sources of actual kind of law from this time and say, you know, in the 10th century. And of course, it would be amazing if we had sources from the period kind of before the day in law was conquered by the English. But of course, we know these Scandinavian groups at the time. We're not really writing things down all that often, and we're not writing in manuscripts in ways that were preserved, as are the English.
Starting point is 00:17:17 So what I think the best source that we do have is this law code, we think, is from 997, and this is a royal law code of King Aethelred the Second, who's unfairly often called Atherred the Unready. So this is his third law code called the wantage code, because we think it was written in wantage in Oxfordshire in Wessex. The reason that this has kind of jumped out to me is because it has quite a lot of differences from what we would expect of Anglo-Saxon law at this time. Because by the 10th century, we have quite a lot of legislation and charters and lots of other things for Saxon England. And the wantage code is different in a lot of ways. and in a lot of these details, it approaches legal problems in a new way.
Starting point is 00:18:02 As well as, kind of early on in this code, it mentions that it's establishing rules for the five boroughs. So it seems like this law is being written by the King of Wessex, but specifically for the area of the Dane law, which is now within his kingdom, but seems to be being legislated for separately. And that's especially because in the same year, Ethelred writes another code called the Woodstock Code, which explicitly says that it's for English areas. So our implication is that the Wantage Code is for the non-English law areas. And here, law is working a little bit differently.
Starting point is 00:18:37 So talk me through some of the points that you've looked at, though, because they're very, very interesting. Some of the sort of big differences that you've written about in your paper, they've got to do things like peace breaching, and that sort of thing, haven't they? What's that all about? So that's one of the first things that comes up in the Wantage Code, And at first glance, it looks kind of quite like what we would expect in Anglo-Saxon law,
Starting point is 00:19:01 because this is very common. And this is establishing legal protection for an area and punishing people that break it. And so that's called mooned or from Old Norse and later Pax. And so this all means peace. And so this is what, you know, in the presence of a king, it would, you know, your peace established to protect people. And then we also see this at assemblies and even people's houses had peace protection. But when we look at kind of the details of how this is described in the Wantage Code, at first, the amounts of the fines that would punish people for breaking this piece are very, very large. And they're about 10 or more times the amount of the fine being charged in the West Saxon areas.
Starting point is 00:19:43 And then there's also this strange mention of an Ayala Hus, an alehouse, that's being given special peace protection. And this is also a word that we don't see in any other old. as far as I can tell, and seems a bit strange. And it seems to be being protected in the same way that they're protecting kind of assemblies and courts. So we're not quite sure what's going on there. So is that like an alehouse, like a tavern or a pub or something like that? Is that the meaning of it? Well, that's the interesting thing is because we don't think we have taverns or pubs at this period, because it's so early.
Starting point is 00:20:17 So I think what we can kind of guess is that an alehouse would be the private kind of hall of someone, probably someone of some means. And sort of kind of one of my theories that I've developed is that maybe this word alehouse was being used to refer to assemblies where legal matters were handled to some degree, but at a quite local degree, even smaller than kind of the set English infrastructure that already existed in the shires and the hundreds. That maybe the alehouse was a level below that and maybe they called it that because it was the group of men in an area who then would come together in an alehouse and talk about these things. And maybe that has something to do with these being Viking settlers and former members of Viking armies that maybe had something to do with that a certain war band or even a certain ship's crew kind of settled in an area in a quite localized fashion. And then now they're meeting together.
Starting point is 00:21:17 And here we see pop up and it's called an alehouse. that's a lot. And it reminds me a little bit also of things like the feasts, the local feasts that you would have at different types of year in a community in Scandinavia. And they would, the drinking and beer and ale was as a key part of that, those meeting points. And I like this sort of idea that that connects to also where decisions are being made and assemblies and that sort of thing. But that's a really, really intriguing insight, isn't it, to something where you wouldn't expect that little cultural snippets
Starting point is 00:21:46 to pop up in a legal document. But actually, it's probably hiding there. So now I like that a lot. Yeah, you just reminded me that likewise in later Scandinavian laws, which are much, much later, but maybe preserve things from the Viking Age, they also, they do talk about alehouses and kind of special protections
Starting point is 00:22:04 for an ale house and that you get in more trouble than otherwise if you start a fight in an alehouse. And there's also an implication that there's some law is being done there. So I think there is some reason to think that this is a quite Scandinavian thing, that maybe somehow is being preserved here in England. Fantastic. A lot of
Starting point is 00:22:20 love that. And does it also talk about responsibilities and how much you are responsible for crimes that have been committed or things that have gone wrong? Is that also something that pops up in this one? I think so. And that is kind of another theory that I have with these peace breach sections, that there's some of this strange language around these payments. And I mentioned that these, the fines for breaching peace are very, very high. And then there's also mentioned that they're paid with hundreds of silver, but it's kind of unclear what they mean. by these hundreds. And so kind of one theory that's been made before and that I've been kind of looking at again is that the reason these fines are so high is because they were not meant to be paid by
Starting point is 00:23:01 an individual, the one person who committed the crime, they were meant to be paid communally by an entire group or maybe a territorial unit of which that individual was a member and then all of the people that live there would kind of be punished communally, which is something that we don't see anywhere in Anglo-Saxon England, but becomes quite common. after the Norman conquest. So that's why for legal historians, this has been kind of another little interesting area of is this an earlier precedent of something
Starting point is 00:23:29 that becomes common in England, but maybe was going on here among these Anglo-Sandinavians. And again, I wonder, is there any possible kind of Viking army context to that? Punishing a group for one person committing a crime because you want to kind of keep cohesion within a larger military unit, like we know Viking armies are, that they're these large collections of diverse, different Viking war bands, many of whom are coming from different
Starting point is 00:24:00 areas and who are, you know, each ship might represent different local areas and often people that are related to each other, but they have very little in common kind of with the larger group that come together and some recent Viking DNA studies have pushed us in that direction. That is a really good point, and I think also, especially if you look at this in the context of the 10th century, you have, this is a quite different stage from that 9th century you talked about earlier. This is a sort of slightly different pace, isn't it? In that you have, so on the one hand, you have all these settlers, but you also have quite a lot of forces.
Starting point is 00:24:32 You've got new ships coming across. There's a lot of attacks. And so you probably have a lot of new people coming in from all over the place. So that makes a lot of sense to be, I think, actually, in that whole concept. So yeah, I like that. So I like that a lot, which is good. Now, moving on to something else that you've, written about in your article, which I thought was a bit of an odd concept. I was hoping you could
Starting point is 00:24:52 explain. You talk about buying law as a concept that comes up in this code. What does that mean? Yeah, well, we don't know what it means, but that's kind of why it's so interesting. This is another thing that it appears twice here in the wantage code. It's this language to, you know, Bichke-Lage to literally to buy law, and that appears nowhere else in Anglo-Saxon England. and we don't really know quite what to make of that. I think it's interesting to connect it to also in the Wantage Code is a strange word that comes from Old Norse that this is the first time it appears anywhere
Starting point is 00:25:29 in Old English called Law Cop. And that literally means law purchase. So I think maybe these ideas are the same thing. And the context that it's used in the Wantage Code, it seems to be for an accused criminal in order to be able to defend themselves in court and kind of go through those processes, needs to buy law first
Starting point is 00:25:49 in order to kind of access that protection, which is very different than how the Anglo-Saxons understand legal defense, because they have this certain idea that any free English man is always able to kind of swear in his defense and is usually able to clear accusations if he's able to kind of swear
Starting point is 00:26:06 and have people take an oath with him. And that seems to not be the case in the Dane law. But also, I think this is really interesting because there seems to be echoes of this idea of, buying law in the Scandinavian laws that survive from much later. And we see in Denmark this language of to buy as well as the same term, log cop. And they seem to be referring to an outlaw buying back their rights after they've been outlawed from society. So I think maybe here in the Wantage Code,
Starting point is 00:26:35 we're seeing something to do with this concept of both that you can now be outside of the law when you commit crimes, which is a bit of a new idea, and there's a new term for that of Oot Law, which is our word for outlaw, is coming from Old Norse as well in this period. So at the same time, if you can be outside of the law, maybe to come back into the law, there's more of a process for that,
Starting point is 00:26:59 and there's something called buying law, or a law purchase in order to do that, which is just something quite unique that I think maybe is being preserved here. Well, that's very very fascinating. I like the sense of that. So going a bit out and beyond this, then and this particular law code.
Starting point is 00:27:15 I know that you're looking at these differences in legal culture more broadly in your ongoing work. But, I mean, one of the things I'm really interested in is what sort of longer term impact did all of this have on laws and legal culture in England overall? I mean, did it have these Scandinavian or Danish laws? Did they have a big impact in the longer term? Yeah. Well, so that's what my current PhD project is sort of evaluating of how much can we say that there was Scandinavian influence. And, you know, I don't really have any conclusions
Starting point is 00:27:47 there yet, but I think it is important to think about that usually when we talk about how does English law develop in the medieval period and how we get to kind of common law in the 12th century under Henry II, usually we talk about what were the Anglo-Saxon precedents from before the conquest, and then what were sort of Norman innovations that William the Conqueror brought. But I think that in general what my work wants to do is show. that we ought to at least consider that there could be some Scandinavian impact from the Vikings as well, which also makes sense that we had the Vikings ruling this very large area of England and ruling it independently for quite some time and that we know it kept the Scandinavian character
Starting point is 00:28:31 for quite some time and that they had their own law that was different enough to be called Dana Laga for many, many decades and even about 150 years. So there has to be some influence of that that I think is usually not factored in when we talk about English legal history, but where exactly we can see that becomes complicated. So, for example, kind of one of the most famous examples that's usually pointed to is the jury, and that in the wantage code, there's this strange provision that kind of stands out from anything else at the time, and it talks about 12 fains who seem to be accusing criminals and kind of sending them to be prosecuted. And of course, this seems very similar to when we see the jury of presentment developing in the 1160s under Henry II.
Starting point is 00:29:21 And where the jury in England begins as an accusing jury, and over time it becomes the trial jury that we still have in our common law countries today. So, of course, this is a very debated and contentious area of how, what are the Scandinavian possible Scandinavian influences on the jury, this kind of central piece of the common law. And I think in that example is one where we kind of just have to say we don't know because there's so much separation between these two different time periods and the development of what looks like a jury in these two time periods, you know, about 150 years, that we can't really make any strong conclusions. But we can point out that it looks quite similar. It seems to be serving a similar function. And maybe both of these developed in order to address similar problems. In that example, we kind of get the idea that you have these group of local men accusing criminals developing as a solution to have instead of the King's official coming in and doing that because that could be very unpopular. And also, the King's official just wouldn't know all the local information that these local groups would.
Starting point is 00:30:30 And maybe that was generally the situation that was happening in both of these different time periods. So that is one way to think about some of these connections is we kind of just have to. to look at them logically and think, is this really a Viking continuity going through for all these years with gaps in between, or is it people approaching a problem and solving it in a similar way? So the jury is the big example of that, but there's also a few more subtle areas where I think maybe there could be some Scandinavian influence that kind of slowly came into English law in the 10th and 11th centuries.
Starting point is 00:31:06 Now, I absolutely love that, and I can't wait to hear more about that. So is that sort of what your ongoing work is now then? Or what is your, what are you working on more specifically? Yes. Well, so kind of evaluating some of these questions. And I think this starts with the fact that at least superficially, when we look at how the law changes from Anglo-Saxon England before the conquest to then under the Normans and then under the Anjavans,
Starting point is 00:31:31 there's quite a few things that look a bit more like some of these things in the wantage code and in the Dane Law, such as the way that accusations are made, or the way that proof is balanced in court, or as we mentioned, holding people responsible for the actions of somebody else. Some of these areas seem a little bit more Scandinavian than before. So I'm interested in evaluating how much can we say that there was a Scandinavianization of English law in this period. And I'm not quite sure where that's going to lead, but I hope regardless I will make a little bit of progress and bring up some more questions.
Starting point is 00:32:06 That's fantastic, though. I'm sure you will. And actually, I like the fact that you're doing this now as well, that we're, as you were pointing out right at the start, we're getting much better understanding from other sources as well and everything from DNA to artifacts and archaeology of the actual extent of nature of the Scandinavian settlement. So I think that sort of work that you're doing is going to tie in really, really nicely with that bigger understanding of the overall impact, I think. So, yeah, I can't wait. We'll have to have you back in a few years time when you've got a bit further in it. All right. Sounds great. So brilliant. Jake, thank you so much for sharing all of that. Brilliant. So great to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. This was great. That brings us to the end of this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. Don't forget, you can subscribe to our newsletter, Medieval Mondays. Just look in the episode notes, and it'll tell you exactly how you can do that.
Starting point is 00:33:01 Do also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and leave us a review because it really helps other people find us. Thanks again so much for listening and I will be back again next Tuesday with another episode and my co-host Matt Lewis will be back again on Saturday. Have a great week.

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