Scandinavian-Britain

178 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINmost of the greater landholders outlasted the calamitiesof nearly twenty years, perhaps taking refuge inScotland and returning to make their peace. Thecommon people, though agriculture was destroyed,still were not entirely without resources ;there musthave been sheep, bees, hens, fish, swine and woodleft means of life not then taxable, and thereforenot mentioned in Domesday. At the same time, thedistress and depopulation, however we minimise it,and widespread.Whence, then, was Yorkshire repeopled? To awas terriblegreat extent it must have 'been by immigration fromCumbria and Westmorland. All over the west ofYorkshire are place-names containing " thwaite," andin situations suggesting more recent settlement thansurrounding hamlets or villages these seem to;representthe additional land taken up by the new-comers,who betray their presence by these " thwaites " andother Norse "test-words," among which may bereckoned ergh and airy, -bergh (commonin Westmorland,but only occasional in Yorkshire), and possiblyforce and gill. The close resemblance of Clevelandcharacteristics, as described by Canon Atkinson in hisForty Years in a Moorland Parish, to those of theLake District suggests a common origin, reaching backrather to the eleventh and the twelfth centuries thanto the days of Halfdan. The East Riding (as Beverleywas a sanctuary) perhaps retained much of itspopulation though the farms were destroyed ;but thecoast, and especially Holderness, had only too frequentexperiences of the kind, and with Lindsey must havesuffered enormously.