or rowed when the river got too narrow for sailing. They often used river systems to invade new
places and Nottingham, despite being so far from the sea, was no exception. A
with the river Trent snaking away into the distance.
A string
of
Viking settlements line the Trent, still recognisable today by their part
Norse, part Saxon names like Thurgaton and Gonalston. Fiskerton is the Old Norse word
fiskari meaning a
fisherman, together with
tun, Old English for a farmstead and nearby
Rolleston means
Rollo’s farm/place/town. There are actually two places called Rolleston by
the Trent, one near Newark and one near Burton in Staffordshire which both spawned separate Rolleston families. Viking
archaeological remains have been
found all along the Trent. High status
burial mounds at Repton, overwintering
camp
sites at Torksey, with weapons, tools, farming gear and objects of everyday
settled life. Even the
tell-tale clay gaming pieces they played with, a distinctly
Viking discovery.
 |
| Rivers were used to raid new places |
The sight of a
Viking raiding party sailing up the Trent would
have terrified our Saxon forbears. They first arrived in Nottingham in the late
summer of 868, sailing up the Humber estuary and into the Trent, but this was
no small raiding party. This was the large Viking army dubbed
The Great Heathen
Army by the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, over 1000 men aiming to occupy and conquer the
entire country. The
river Trent was an extremely significant artery
into the
heart of the kingdom of Mercia and they would use Nottingham as their base to
take it on.
The army was led by the marvellously monikered
Ivar The Boneless
and his brother
Halfdan Ragnarsson, sons of the legendary (and therefore perhaps not entirely real)
Ragnar Lothbrok, all well-known
characters to fans of the Amazon TV series "The Vikings". Their TV exploits may
have been legendary but the sons were real people and really came and took over
Nottingham. On the day of their arrival, Nottingham was still ruled by the Snotingas
tribe of the famous Saxon chieftain Snot. As every local knows, the town was then called
Snottingham, literally, "the homestead of Snot's people" (
Inga = the
people of;
Ham = homestead). Although it may equally be derived from the word
snottenga
meaning cave.
 |
| Arrival in Britain |
The town was located on the high ground of the Lace Market using
the
70’ high sandstone cliffs of Narrow Marsh as a natural defence. But it was
little use, the Snotingas were defeated. King Burgred of Mercia belatedly came to Snot's aid and paid off Ivar, who retreated with his Viking army back to York. But the Danes soon returned keeping Nottingham, Derby,
Leicester, Lincoln and Stamford, known as
the Five Boroughs, in exchange for
leaving the rest of Mercia alone. The Danish Vikings eventually established Nottingham as one of the 5 key towns of
the Danelaw, the huge area of eastern Britain they would rule for around the next 70 years. They turned Nottingham into a
fortified settlement or
burgh under the Danelaw. The town was surrounded by a ditch and an earth rampart with a wooden palisade or fence on top.
 |
| The Danelaw |
These immigrant Vikings were looking for land rather than
treasure and over the next few years waves after wave of new settlers arrived from
Denmark. They integrated well into Anglo-Saxon life and today the East Midlands
is the still the most Scandinavian part of the UK with 10.3% of us having Scandinavian
ancestry according to a study of DNA by AncestryDNA.
Around 940, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Edmund of the Saxons retook Nottingham and the Five Boroughs from the Vikings and
built the first bridge across the Trent. By the end of the Saxon period, Nottingham was a small town of strategic importance, with a
mixed race of Saxons and Danish Viking settlers living a predominantly peaceful farming life. It even housed a royal mint, and it would grow rapidly over the next few centuries. It was not without some strife though. In
1013 the Vikings are back in Nottingham launching another full-scale invasion under Sven Forkbeard flying their iconic raven flag. They sail up the Trent again to quickly gain a foothold and go on to conquer the whole country. Sven’s son Cnut marries the Saxon princess Ælfgifu to seal a peace deal. He is the famous
King Canute who ruled the country until just before the Norman Conquest in 1066.
It's around this time that the small settlement of Watnall, then called Watenot, first appears. It’s name probably means "Wata’s hill or spur of land" but its first named owners are the distinctly Viking-sounding Grunchel, Suivart (or Sigurd) and Grimkell. They were probably Danish settlers. They are recorded just before the Norman Conquest as paying the Dane-geld or land tax on their small holdings so Watnall certainly came under Viking rule at that time.
 |
| The Blood Eagle |
The
Norse Sagas tell a different tale though (although one that is probably dramatically embellished) that the real reason Ivar the Boneless and his 3 brothers, Halfdan, Bjorn Ironside and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye came over, was to avenge their father Ragna Lothbrok's murder by the Northumbrian king Ælla. The sagas stories say that Ragna had been
thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes and left to die. The brothers captured the unpolular Ælla with the help of the local chieftans and supposedly made him pay in the most brutal way imaginable. The Vikings called it the
Blood Eagle. One interpretation of the sparsely-worded poetry of the sagas is that they ripped open Ælla’s ribcage from behind and pulled his lungs out into
the shape of wings. Then, to make it as painful as possible, they sprinkled salt into his bloody wounds.
On a lighter note, Sigurd marries Ælla's daughter. Their grandson is called Gorm who is described as big and strong but not as wise as his ancestors! Ee'd a bin raight at home in Notts, wunt ee?! A bit of leftover local Norse dialect for you there.
 |
| Vikings sail up the Seine to Rouen & Paris |
The
Staffordshire settlement of Rolleston is the source of
the Watnall Hall Rolleston family, albeit via a rather circuitous Viking route. Their
ancestors came over from
Normandy in France with
William the Conqueror, who
were themselves
descendants, by several generations,
of raiding Danish Vikings.
Those Vikings had used the same technique of sailing up the river Seine to Rouen
and using that as a base to take over Normandy from the incumbent French king, Charles the Simple. Their leader, another Rollo, was a direct ancestor of William the Conqueror. After
the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the Staffordshire manor of
Rolleston
was confiscated by William and given to one of his loyal lords and the family
became known as “de Rolleston” or “of Rolleston”.
Over the years that became plain Rolleston and
the family’s rollercoaster fortunes moved them first to Lea in Derbyshire and
finally to Watnall. Quite a journey…
To read what happened next, more Tales from Watnall Hall are
available at watnallhall.blogspot.com
Sources - Ken Rolston's family research; Notts History nottshistory.org.uk; Jarman: Britain’s Viking Graveyard. (2019). Britain’s Viking Graveyard. Channel 4, 21 April 2019; Biddle, M. and Kjølbye-Biddle, B. (2001). Repton and the ‘great heathen army’, 873–4. In Graham-Campbell, J., Hall, R., Jesch, J. and Parsons, D, (Eds). Vikings and the Danelaw. Oxford: Oxbow Books; AncestryDNA https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/international/press-releases/DNA-of-the-nation-revealedand-were-not-as-British-as-we-think;East Midlands Vikings https://emidsvikings.ac.uk; "The Viking Great Army in 9th Century Derbyshire: The Significance of the River Trent and Site Intervisibility" by Ben Hume https://www.theposthole.org/read/article/505; Council House murals restoration 2018 https://www.nottinghampost.com/whats-on/shopping/next-time-you-visit-nottingham-2158709
Picture credits - Raphael Achache/Left Lion; Abbo of Fleury. "MS M.736 fol. 9v. Illustration of Abbo of Fleury, Passio Edmundi, chapter 5 (Danes under Hinguar and Hubba land in Britain)." Digital image. The Morgan Library and Museum. 1130. Accessed April 17, 2021. https://www.themorgan.org/collection/Life-and-Miracles-of-St-Edmund/18;Unknown Artist. "Viking Ships besieging Paris." Digital image. Wikimedia. 1800s. Accessed April 17, 2021. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Viking_Siege_of_Paris.jpg; Seeger, Al. "Viking Warrior Sword." Digital image. Pixabay. November 20, 2015. Accessed April 17, 2021. https://pixabay.com/photos/viking-warrior-sword-helmet-1114631/
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