Scandinavian-Britain

220 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINAspatria, Plumbland, and Bromfield. (See EarlySculptured Crosses of the Diocese of Carlisle^ byCalverley and Collingwood.)It was amongst the Norse settlers of the tenth andeleventh centuries in northern England that, accordingto Prof. Sophus Bugge, the " HelgakvrSa " wascomposed. The group of poems resembling this,"the finest heroic poems in the whole range ofNorthern Song," are attributed by Vigfiisson andYork Powell (Corpus Poet. Bor., Introd.) to somenameless but inspired singer on some shore of theIrish Sea or in the Hebrides. It was certainly inthe land of the Cumbri, whether north or south ofSolway, that a literary movement almost as importantas that which created the Edda took place ;thecreation of not only the folk-tales of Havelock andHorn, but also of those Arthurian tales which containso many motives of the Viking Age, and confuse theancient Celtic mythology with waifs and strays fromninth and tenth century history and from the folkloreof the Norse, placing Arthur's court at "merryCarlisle," then the ruined city of the Romans andAngles,Caledon after the famous battlethe adventures of Merlin in the Wood ofof Arthuret in Cumberland,Gawain at Tarn Wadling in Inglewood, Blaisein Northumberland, Lancelot at Bamborough, andUrien of Reged in the regionof the Roman Wall.All this seems to be a secondary result of the impulseto thought and action given by this great but forgottensettlement of the Norse in Cumberland and thedistrictsround about it.