"socmen," a class of free peasants, are most numerous in the Five Boroughs and East Anglia and are only found sporadically in other places.
Our legal system shews again and again the influence of Scandinavian law and custom. The word "law" itself is a Scandinavian term in contrast to the English "doom." We have already mentioned the Lawmen: still more interesting are the "Twelve senior thanes" of Aethelred's laws for the Five Boroughs enacted at Wantage in 997. They have to come forward in the court of every wapentake and to swear that they will not accuse any innocent man or conceal any guilty one. The exact force of this enactment has been a matter of dispute, but there can be little doubt that (in the words of Vinogradoff) such a custom "prepared the way for the indictment jury of the twelfth century." In criminal law the Danes introduced a new conception of crime. The idea of honour in the relationship of members of a military society to one another led to the appearance of a group of crimes whose perpetrators are branded as nithings, men unworthy of comradeship with others and, more especially, with their fellow warriors. In the general life of the nation the Danes placed an effective check on learning and literature except during the heroic activities of Alfred the Great, but on the other hand we probably owe to them an extensive development of town-life and of trade and the revival of English naval power. Disastrous as were the Danish wars, there can be little doubt that the Danish settlements were for the ultimate good of the nation.
In the Frankish Empire the only permanent settlement was in Normandy. Scandinavian influence was strong in Frisia and the lower basin of the Rhine (Dorestad was the centre of their commercial activity), but there is no question of influence on law, social organisation or government. In Normandy on the other hand we have a powerful and almost independent State with a full Viking organisation. The history of the Normans does not belong to this chapter. Suffice it to say here that perhaps more than any other of the Vikings they shewed themselves readily able to assimilate themselves to their surroundings, and they were soon Gallicised; nevertheless law and custom, dialect and place-names, still shew their presence clearly.
Of Scandinavian influence in Eastern Europe little can be said owing to our lack of knowledge. Attempts have been made to distinguish Scandinavian elements in the old Russian law and language but without any very definite results, and we must confine ourselves to the points mentioned earlier.
Nothing has been said of Iceland, which was one great field of Scandinavian activity in the ninth and tenth centuries. It was discovered in the middle of the ninth century and soon settled, first by some Norsemen who left their native land under stress of the same conditions as drove others to find fresh homes for themselves in the British Isles and else-
