Note 1 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

I owe to my friend Mr Hubert Hall the suggestion that the great battle described by the Pseudo-Ingulf as taking place between the English and the Danes in 870—and all accepted as sober fact by Turner in his History of the Anglo-Saxons—may be a concoction based on the facts of the battle of Hastings. This is also the theory Mr Freeman advanced as to Snorro's story of the battle of Stamford Bridge. The coincidence is very striking. In both narratives the defending force is formed with 'the dense shield-wall';1 in both it breaks at length that formation; in both it is, consequently, overwhelmed; and in both cases the attacking force consists of horsemen and archers. But the most curious coincidence is found in the principal weapon of the defending force. In Snorro's narrative, as Mr Freeman renders it, 'a dense wood of spears bristles in front of the circle to receive the charge of the English horsemen';2 in the Pseudo-Ingulf the defending force 'contra violentiam equitum densissimam aciem lancearum prætendebant'.3 Such a defence savours of the days when the knight, fighting on foot with his lance,4 had replaced the housecarl with his battle-axe: it was not that of Harold's host, but one which we meet with in the twelfth century.