ABSTRACT
Accounts of Scandinavian activity in England have been dominated by debates surrounding the scale of settlement (e.g. Sawyer 1971) and the extent of assimilation of the colonists (e.g. Hadley 1997). Opinions concerning the scale of immigration have ranged from the view that movement was confined to a small group of elite land-takers to ideas of secondary mass migration in the wake of the raiding parties. Although interdisciplinary collaboration might appear to offer great potential for resolving these divergent perspectives, the problem has been that the different categories of evidence do not describe a coherent story (Trafford 2000). Partial documentary sources (see Dumville, ch. 26, above) inevitably focus on raiding activity and wars, while the proliferation of Scandinavian place names has been taken as evidence for large-scale rural colonisation (see Fellows-Jensen, ch. 28, below). Much has hung upon the level of interaction and integration within the area, which became known as the Danelaw (see Hadley, ch. 27.1, below). It has been difficult to observe Viking activity in material evidence and, as part of a general post-war reaction to migration theory, archaeologists have tended to subscribe to minimalist interpretations. In line with new approaches to other periods the debate has now shifted onto questions of ethnicity and has focused on the circumstances of the creation of a hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian cultural identity.
