204 Notes on the Evidence bearing
from Dornock near Annan. The present minister of Dornock
wrote to the editor of the 'Carlisle Journal' stating that a
similar tradition as to the stealing of the Dornoek bell exists
at that place. "During the last thirty-nine years," he says,
"I have often heard old people speak of it as having been
stolen by certain Englishmen, or as sometimes designated,
'Cumberland Scots.'"
The next invaders of the British Isles were the Scandina-
vians, a race, on the whole, tall and fair, with skulls gen-
erally of an oval shape. We have no record of any Swedish
settlement in our islands, but the Danes appear to have
settled largely in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Notting-
ham, and Leicester, while the Norwegians more or less
occupied the Orkney and Shetland Isles, the coast of Caithness
and Sutherland, and a considerable area of the western isles
of Scotland. They also made settlements in Cumberland,
Lancashire, and Pembrokeshire, and here and there on the
north-east coast of Ireland.23 The first landing of the Danes
in England is said, in the Saxon Chronicle, to have taken
place in the year 787. But their earlier expeditions were
made entirely for the sake of plunder, and it was not till the
year 866 that they invaded England with the view of con-
quering and colonizing a part of it. In 867 they conquered
Northumbria, in 870 East Anglia, and in 874 Mercia, while
in 871 they invaded Wessex. In consequence of the gallant
resistance of the great West-Saxon king, Alfred, their pro-
gress was somewhat checked, but a few years later we find
the Danes supreme in Wessex, and Alfred a fugitive. In
878, however, Alfred's victory at Edington was followed by
the peace of Wedmore, by which treaty Danish rule was re-
stricted to the country east of Watling Street, the Roman
road from London to Chester. The victories of the son and
grandson of Alfred, Edward, and Athelstan, had no perma-
nent result, for in 941 we find Watling Street again fixed as
the boundary of the West Saxon and Danish territory. In
1002 the massacre of the Danes of Wessex, by the order of
the imbecile Ethelred, occurred, resulting in the flight of
23 See map in Taylor's 'Words and Places.'