Thorstein of the Mere is a fictional tale of how Coniston Water got its old name. It blends bloody history and ghostly legend in a compelling picture of life in Dark Age Lakeland. Inspired by Collingwood’s novel, I walk from Beacon Tarn to the Giant’s Grave in the footsteps of Celts and Vikings.
Legends of The Northmen
The son of a giant, and a shapeshifter with the ability to change sex, Loki was a companion to Odin and Thor, but his penchant for playing tricks would prove his downfall. When he tricked the blind god, Höd into killing Balder, the most loved of all the gods, his punishment was severe.
Loki was bound to a rock with the entrails of his son. Above, hung a great serpent that would drip venom on him. To spare his torment, Loki’s wife would catch the venom in a bowl, but when the bowl was full, she would have to leave his side to empty it. While she was gone, the venom would splash onto Loki’s face. His spasms of pain were the cause of the earthquakes.
The story is a central tenet of Norse mythology, but intriguingly, it is depicted alongside Christian scenes of the crucifixion on a tall sandstone cross in the churchyard at Gosforth, near Wastwater. The Gosforth cross is intriguing testimony to the blending of Celtic Christian and pagan Viking cultures in 10th century Cumbria.
The reasons for the Viking invasion are themselves misted in legend. They concern the mythical Danish king, Ragnar Lodbrok, who distinguished himself through many raids on the east coast. Ragnar’s sons, Bjorn Ironside, Ubba, Sigmund Snake-in-the-Eye, Halfdan, and Ivar the Boneless gained such fame as warriors that their father felt compelled to outdo them. Ragnar bragged he would conquer Britain with just two boats, but his efforts were thwarted by Ella, King of Northumbria, who executed Ragnar by throwing him into a snake pit. To avenge their father’s death, Ivar, Halfdan, and Ubba raised a large army and set sail.
On arrival in Britain, Ivar declined to fight and headed for Northumbria to make peace with Ella. In return, he asked for as much land as he could cover with a bull hide. The king agreed, but Ivar was cunning. He stretched the hide as thinly as it would go then cut it into fine strips. Sewn together, they created a cord large enough to encircle York, which duly became his Viking capital, Jorvik. Ivar then sent for his brothers and their armies. They defeated Ella and executed him by carving the blood eagle into his back (a gruesome torture, which we can only hope existed solely in the imaginations of the saga writers).
But Ivar the Boneless and Halfdan step out of the pages of mythology and on to the pages of history when they arrive in Britain. In 865 AD, they really did lead the Great Pagan Army that proceeded to conquer the kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria. Viking ambitions to conquer Wessex were finally thwarted by Alfred The Great in 878 at the battle of Edington. A settlement was reached in which the east of England—East Anglia, East Mercia (East Midlands) and Northumbria (which included Yorkshire)—would be under Danish rule, while Wessex, and West Mercia would remain Anglo-Saxon.
But Cumbria was not part of England. It was part of Strathclyde, an independent Celtic kingdom which stretched up above the Solway to where Glasgow now stands. It had largely resisted incursions by the Saxons, the Scoti, and the Danes. The Vikings that settled along its coastal plain were not Danes but Norwegians, arriving by way of the Orkneys, Dublin, and the Isle of Man. While undoubtedly fearsome warriors, they do not seem to have shared the desire to subjugate and rule. They were farmers and frontiersmen seeking new lands, or perhaps, their independence from a recently unified Norway. They helped shape the Cumbrian landscape by clearing forests for pasture; they may even have introduced the Herdwick sheep. In such turbulent times, their desire to self-govern was similar to that of the indigenous Celts, and they learned to live alongside each other, if not in perfect harmony, at least in a loose tactical coalition of common interest.
A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
Such is the world that provides the setting for W. G. Collingwood’s 1895 novel, Thorstein of the Mere. The eponymous mere is Coniston Water, and the novel is Collingwood’s imagined tale of how the lake got its original name, Thurston Water. Its subtitle, A Saga Of The Northmen In Lakeland, is a mission statement. Collingwood was a scholar of the Norse sagas, and an archaeologist who excavated several Lakeland sites. His novel is an attempt to credibly portray what life must have been like in Cumbria in the 10th Century, both for the Vikings and the Celts. The principal characters are imagined, but the story is woven around four historical events—the treaty in Bakewell (920), the Treaty of Dacre (927), the battle of Brunanburh (937), and the battle for Cumbria (945)—that helped shape Anglo-Saxon England and Brittonic Cumbria.
When Alfred the Great died, he was succeeded by his son, Edward the Elder, who succeeded in driving the Danes out of East Anglia and Mercia until only Northumbria remained under the Danelaw. In 920, Edward summoned the other British kings and chieftains, including Ragnald—the Viking king—and Owain—the Celtic king of Strathclyde—to a meeting in Bakewell, where he persuaded them to accept his overlordship in return for peace and the retention of their kingdoms.
Thorstein is a young boy at this time, growing up at Greenodd, by the mouth of the River Crake. The South Lakes is home to several Norwegian settlements, centred on Ulfar’s Town (Ulverston). Ulfar is a friend and neighbour of Thorstein’s father, Swein, and his town acts as a meeting place for the Thing—an assembly where the local Northmen agree common laws and discuss trade and harvests. Further north is another Norwegian settlement under the control of their kinsman, Ketel. Ulfar, Swein, and Ketel, are summoned to Bakewell alongside Owain. Swein has no argument with the Saxon king but becomes enraged by the presence of Ragnald the Dane, an old enemy. Edward’s diplomacy prevails, however, and he persuades Swein to agree, if not to Edward’s overlordship, then at least to peace.
Thorstein’s early years are relatively idyllic, growing up in a fine Viking timber house, learning to till the land and look after sheep and cattle, playing in the river and dreaming of setting sail and claiming new lands. Then in 927, one of the Celtic fell-folk, a red-headed giant of a man, appears from the forest to deliver a burnt arrow. It is a summons. Swein had heard from chapmen (itinerant tinkers) that Edward and Ragnald had both died and been succeeded by their sons, Athelstan and Sigtrygg. Sigtrygg had tried to extend the boundaries of the Danelaw, but Athelstan had been quick to push him back. But now it seems that Sigtrygg too has died and Athelstan has conquered York to proclaim himself King of all England. For fear the Saxon king’s ambitions will not stop there, King Constantine of Scotland and Owain are mobilising against him. The Lakeland Northmen are urged to join them. The giant will return in several days to lead them over the mountains to join the host.
~
W. G. Collingwood
At the Ruskin Museum in Coniston three of Collingwood’s watercolours hang alongside Ruskin’s own. Collingwood was Ruskin’s assistant—his aide du camp as Ruskin called him—and founder of the museum. Some think that Collingwood would have achieved more had he stepped from Ruskin’s shadow, but these paintings are not overshadowed. One of the Coniston Coppermines Valley, brooding clouds swirling around the Bell, holds my attention longer than anything else in the room. Collingwood was highly attuned to the Lakeland landscape, and his vivid descriptions in the novel are as evocative as his paintings.
~
The Giant’s Demand
The Celtic giant leads the Northmen over the wild moorland of Blawith Common, to Hawkshead and the banks of Windermere, where they find the ruins of Galava, the Roman city of Ambleside—its former magnificence is evident even though its buildings are crumbling. From there, they follow the old Roman road past Rydal and Grasmere to Thirlmere, then east from Blencathra to Dacre near Eamont where their massed forces gather. But they are no match for Athelstan’s Saxon army, which is already encamped, and to avoid a bloodbath, they accept Athelstan’s overlordship and pledge that none shall attack their neighbours.
On their return to Greenodd, Swein asks his Irish wife, Unna to converse with the Celt and ask what gift they can give him as a reward for guiding them through the mountains. His reply shocks them. As political insurance, he wants to foster one of their children. Swein refuses, but over the coming months, children of thralls (servants) and shepherds go missing and are found dead in the woods, and the Northmen remain on high alert.
The worry of the fell-folk slowly subsides, but the peace with Athelstan is fragile, not least because the Danish King Guthferth Ivarson of Dublin (who was not part of the treaty) uses Cumbria as a through route to mount raids on York. Aware of how cut-off they from their kinsmen further north, the various Norwegian communities agree to congregate at an annual Althing. As a venue, they choose Legburthwaite at the head of St John’s in the Vale—the spot where they parted after the Treaty of Dacre.
Thorstein Finds the Mere
Meanwhile, Thorstein has grown into a strong and curious thirteen-year-old, thirsty for adventure. He and his brothers know “by hearsay of wide lakes among the fells, lying all alone for the first adventurer to take and hold”, and Thorstein imagines that if he could only track the Crake, he might discover “the great water”. Swein has warned his children to always keep in sight of home, “but he might as well have warned the smoke not to go out of the chimney”. Thorstein persuades his elder brother, Hundi, to go with him, and the two boys set off up the valley of the Crake. There are none of gentle pastures that grace its banks today. The shores are thick with forest, and their journey becomes a demanding ghyll scramble. By the time they reach the spot where Lowick bridge now stands, Hundi has had enough and turns back, but Thorstein battles on alone, climbing Lowick force and navigating the swamp beyond until, “when the wood thinned, and the waterway broadened, and the world grew brighter, and lo, beyond, a great gleam of blue, and a blaze of golden sky”.
Thorstein has discovered his mere and sleeps like a squirrel in the boughs of a great oak. In the morning, he sets off for Greenodd to fetch witnesses so he can claim the lake as his territory, but before he has gone far, he is hit on the head with a cudgel. When he comes round, he is being dragged through the wood by the red-headed giant, and his henchmen. The giant has his fosterling, and Thorstein is about to enter the world of the fell-folk.
Blawith Common – Home of the Celtic Fell-Folk
“BEYOND the heather was the giant’s home, on the fell between Blawith and Broughton. On one hand were the waste wet mosses of the moor, and on the other hand, far below, the great flats of Woodlands, surrounded by the tossing rocky range of Dunnerdale fells, from Brimfell on the right hand away down to Black Comb and the glittering sea.”
In describing this terrain, Collingwood the storyteller morphs briefly into Collingwood the archaeologist:
“Upon these moors, here and there you can find the walls of their buildings, and even in little corners what may be chambers, or store-houses, or fire-spots, or what not, curiously built of great stones: but all quite different from the farm buildings of our own people, and plainly the relics of an earlier race. Within these homesteads there are heaps that are round and hollow in the midst, with a gap for a doorway, and edged with stone within and without. Though the top of it is fallen in, one can see that such a ruin might have been a hut shaped like a beehive, and roofed over like those Pict-houses they tell of in other parts: high enough inside for a man to stand up in, and big enough for him to lie at length. When we dig into them, we find potsherds, and bones of their feasts, the charred stones and ashes of their fires, and now and then a scrap of iron or bronze, on the paving or along the skirting of the dry-stone wall. Also, hard by, one may light upon plenty of graves where the fell folk doubtless lie buried. Indeed, upon Blawith moor, under the Knott, there is a great barrow in which folk digging found burnt bones, and you can see the tall stone that stood at the head still standing there. They call this place the Giant’s Grave: and old neighbours tell that it is the burial place of the last of the giants who dwelt in that moorland village, and that he was shot with an arrow on that very fell side, and so was killed, and his race ended.”
~
Cudgel-wielding giants no longer stalk Blawith Common. Nor are you likely to meet armed Northmen coming from Ulfar’s Town, although you may encounter walkers making a similar trek along the Cumbria Way.
In the early half-light of an October morning, Beacon Tarn is all mine, its pewter waters, a tranquil pool of timeless memory, hemmed with soft banks of bracken, muted colour gradually returning with the daylight, twilight tones turning to autumnal tints of mulberry, russet, and mustard. Collingwood once taught his protégé, Arthur Ransome, that the unique spirit of a place has as much to do with layers of memory as with the rocks and trees, and this ancient landscape is steeped in the ambience of his novel.
I follow the Cumbria Way beneath Wool Knott as far as Tottlebank Heights then track right. When I reach the far end of Blawith Knott, the red sea of bracken parts to reveal an expanse of scrubby grass and scattered boulders, some natural erratics, but one, at least, is a solitary standing stone, marking the ancient grave of a giant. A little further on are the remains of a settlement, just as Collingwood describes.
As a Northman, Thorstein is appalled by the primitive crudity of their huts, their semi-wild cattle, and the meekness of their Christian religion, worshipped with simple wooden crosses. But the giant’s daughter takes a shine to him, and with time, a bond between them grows.
“The child who had nursed him gave him to understand that her name was Raineach, that is Fern: and indeed she was not unlike the bracken when it is red in autumn, and she was slender and strong and wild as its tall fronds that smother up the hollows among the boulders on the moors.”
From the summit of Blawith Knott, I look out across the wild expanse to the Coniston mountains, which emerge like shadows from chiffon veils of cloud—the charcoal forms of spectral fells. Beneath White Borran, two large ancient cairns lie shrouded in shoulder-high bracken, and sparse junipers stand like stunted sentinels. I climb to the rocky summit of Wool Knott, and gaze over Beacon Tarn, slate blue in breaking sun, to the fiery flanks of Beacon fell beyond. From the shore, I climb to the top of the Beacon, and suddenly below, there is the long slender body of Thorstein’s mere, cool and languid, under wooded slopes.
~
The Battle for Cumbria
Thorstein spends three winters with the fell-folk. With time, they appear less uncouth, and he learns their prowess as hunters and fishermen. His bond with Raineach strengthens until the two are inseparable, and although he still dreams of absconding, he now imagines taking her with him. In the end, it is Raineach who instigates their escape.
It is 937, and the peace has broken, Constantine and Owain are again rising against Athelstan, and this time the Irish Danes have joined their alliance. The Lakeland Northmen will fight alongside them. Promising Thorstein the opportunity to see his father, the giant and a few of his men take the boy over the fells to Thirlmere, where they encamp with their kin in the Iron Age fort at Castle Crag on The Benn. Raineach follows against her father’s wishes.
The Battle of Brunanburh is an overwhelming victory for Athelstan. Owain is killed and his throne passes to his son, Domhnall. Swein dies too. The giant had meant to keep Thorstein as a ransom in case of trouble with the Northmen. Now with the boar dead, the piglet is a liability, and the giant means to kill him, but Raineach overhears and alerts Thorstein. The two make their break for freedom over the fells, arriving back at Greenodd in time for Swein’s wake.
What ensues is an engrossing tale of adventure, love, and betrayal. A twist sees Thorstein declared an outlaw and forced to take refuge on Peel Island in the middle of his mere. The real truth behind his transgression disseminates, however, and Hundi and his friends prevail on Thorstein to attend the Althing to clear his name.
Outside the sanctity of the Althing, Thorstein’s outlaw status means he is vulnerable to attack. As such, he takes a circuitous route by way of St Patrick’s Dale (Patterdale). Here, he meets two battle-bruised Celtic warriors. They inform him that Edmund has joined forces with Constantine’s successor, Malcolm, to invade Strathclyde. He has Domhnall’s army in retreat. Domhnall now plans to lure the Scots and Saxons into a narrow mountain pass, where his men can hide in the wooded slopes and ambush the advancing Saxons by rolling great boulders on them. Domhnall is heading for the Thirlmere, right where the Northmen are innocently gathering for their Althing. Thorstein must get to Legburthwaite early to warn them.
The battle for Cumbria in 945 is as shrouded in legend as the story of Ragnar Lodbrok. According to the myth, Domhnall (corrupted to Dunmail by the Anglo-Saxon tongue) is slain by the Saxons and buried at Dunmail Raise. To keep his crown from Saxon hands, a few of his elite bodyguards, seize the crown, climb the slope of Raise Beck, and fling it into Grisedale Tarn. Every year, Dunmail’s ghost army returns to retrieve the crown and bid Dunmail rise again.
Historians concede that a battle probably did take place. It is likely Edmund won and gifted the rule of Strathclyde to Malcolm, but it is also likely that Domhnall survived. Later, he may even have regained control of his kingdom.
In Collingwood’s version, Thorstein crosses Striding Edge and experiences a premonition of the coming bloodshed—a vision as ghostly as the legend that would grow up around it. Ultimately, however, events unfold in line with the historical narrative, albeit with a little poetic flourish—Domhnall casts his own crown into Grisedale Tarn as he melts into the mountain mist with Aluin, the woman who has been his undoing.
To learn Aluin’s story, and the fate of Thorstein and the Northmen, you will have to read the novel. Not only is it a fine, swashbuckling adventure, but as a credible imagining of life in Dark Age Cumbria, it is hard to beat.
I am not alone in that opinion. Arthur Ransome said this:
“For myself, the Lake Country and my own childhood would not have been what they were if I had not known Mr. W.J. Collingwood’s ‘Thorstein of the Mere’”.
Sources/Further Reading
A translation of The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok and his Sons:
http://www.germanicmythology.com/FORNALDARSAGAS/ThattrRagnarsSonar.html
In this fascinating edition of Countrystride, archeologist, Steve Dickinson talks about the Gosforth cross, the Vikings in Lakeland, and a possible lost kingdom:
https://www.countrystride.co.uk/single-post/countrystride-90-the-vikings-in-cumbria
A little more on the Battle of Brunanburh from Diane McIlmoyle. (Please note the Giant’s grave Diane mentions is not the same as the one in my article). Diane’s article also includes links at the end to further posts of hers on the Treaty of Eamont Bridge (Dacre) and Dunmail’s battle with Edmund and Malcolm:
The following books were also very helpful and well worth reading:
Schama, Simon. 2000: A History of Britain, at the edge of the world? London: BBC Worldwide.
Eastham, Paul. 2019: Huge and Mighty Forms, Why Cumbria Makes Remarkable People. Cockermouth: Fletcher Christian Books.
Carruthers, F. J. 1979: People called CUMBRI. London: Robert Hale.
