Tag: Danelaw

Christine and I have been talking about the current popularity of what’s been called Nordic or Scandi-Noir, the detective story thrillers that are the high spot of our Saturday nights’ TV schedules – otherwise utterly devoid of viewing interest – in which gritty, unconventional cops track down bio or eco-terrorist serial killers in Sweden or Denmark and sometimes both countries at the same time. Wallender may have blazed the trail but The Killing and most recently The Bridge are sublime.

So unlike the native offerings that talk the story half to death (if you think I’m exaggerating compare the scripts of Casualty with ER), The Bridge is fast moving, intelligent and utterly compelling. Before you ask “But where’s he going with this? What’s this got to do with the Medieval Section?” isn’t the solution to the question as to why we should find Nordic or Scandi-Noir so fascinating that, in this part of the world at least, you could argue that we are genetically predisposed to be receptive to the whole Scandi-Noir approach – the long winters, the washed-out colours from the low levels of light at northerly latitudes, the dour characters, the long saga of well, Saga – because of our Viking heritage?

The Danelaw was the name given to those parts of England settled by the Scandinavians. The Norse may have started off as raiders but they came to see the British Isles as a place for colonisation rather than simply as a source of plunder. A large army came to East Yorkshire and captured York in 1867. At the time this was one of the two major cities of Anglo-Saxon England. The evidence is all around us: the place names for starters but also genetically. It would be interesting to compare the popularity of The Bridge in different parts of the UK…

For some of the most colourful lecture notes ever seen about research on the Viking genetic heritage in the North West see Prof Steve Harding’s ‘Genetic Legacy of the Vikings’.