King Alfred, in his ‘Orosius,’ says that Wendland was also called Syssele, and in the old name Syselond in the Norfolk Hundred of Launditch we probably have a trace of it. This hundred, named Lauuendic in Domesday Book, may be compared in name with Lauenberg, a province and city on the Elbe, in part of the Wendish area of North-East Germany. The river Wensum flowed on the east of the hundred of Launditch, and among the Anglo-Saxon place-names on its banks are Wenlinga, Lawingham, Leccesham, Goduic, and Elmenham.
It is not suggested that settlements of Wends in the eastern counties, or, indeed, in any part of England, were relatively numerous, but the collective evidence concerning such settlers appears to be great.
Owing to the later Danish settlement, Lincolnshire and Norfolk have an abundance of names of Danish origin. These counties and the East Riding are marked by the -bys and -thorpes, which will be considered under Lincolnshire. The country of the Danes was small, and the parts of England they colonized were large. It is certain, therefore, that they must have had allies who came in with them. There are historical references to their alliances or political connections with Swedes, Esthonians, Livonians, Kurlanders, and Wends.[1] Some of these probably settled in England. In the country to which the Wash is the entrance from the sea there are old place-names still surviving which appear to point to the Wilte, one of the Wendish tribes. In Lincolnshire we find Wilinghā, Wilsthorp, Wilgesbi; in Cambridgeshire, Wandlebury; in Northamptonshire, Wilaveston, Wendlingborough, now Wellingborough; and in Huntingdonshire, Wansford and Wintringham. Frisians are denoted by many such names as Friston in Lincolnshire, Hunston or Hunstanton in Norfolk, while Swaffham in Cambridgeshire and in Norfolk may reasonably be connected with settlers who bore names derived from the Swæfas or
- ↑ Saxo Grammaticus.
