Sulmonnesburg on the upper course of the Windrush in a charter of Offa dated 779.[1] The four Danish islands Sialand, Mön, Falster, and Laland, at one time are said to have formed a separate kingdom called Withesleth, over which the mythical Dan was the first King, who by tradition was one of the three sons of a King of Svethia or Sweden.[2] The inhabitants of these islands were probably all known by separate tribal names, derived from the names of the islands, and some of them may perhaps be traced in England.
If we had no records of settlements in the United States during the last three centuries, the names of some of the settlements alone would tell us of the countries and places from which some of the colonists probably came. Of such are the old names New Sweden and New Netherland, and the existing names New York, New Orleans, Montpelier, New London, Boston, New Hampshire, Andover, Gloucester, Hampton, Bristol, New Milford, Newcastle, Barnstaple, Norwich, Belfast, Plymouth, Beverley, Lancaster, and many others. Some of these names at least were given to the settlements by the earliest colonists to keep fresh in their memories the countries and places they had left. Similarly, nearly a thousand years earlier, some Scandinavian and other settlers in England from the Baltic coasts appear to have called some of their new homes Lund, Upsale, Rugenore, Gilling, Rye, Dover, Grinsted, Linby, Risberga, Eldsberga, Billing, and others, after places in Denmark or other countries on the Baltic they had left. Human nature in regard to the memory of the fatherland has been much the same in all ages of the world. In the history of our own race the descendants of the Old English have in this respect shown evidence of a sentiment common to themselves and their remote Scandinavian forefathers.
