Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/138

124 kingdom whose capital was Lund in Skane, in the south-east of what is now Sweden, and it must have been from that country that many of those settlers came who have left their traces in some old Danish place-names that still cling to their English homes, such as the Domesday Scen and Scan names, which are only found in England in the Danish settled districts. Others, such as the old places named Lund in Lincolnshire and the East Riding, are apparently derived from their former homes in Skane. As already stated, Dan and Angul are mentioned by Saxo, the twelfth-century Danish historian, as the mythological ancestors of the Danes, and of these he tells us that Angul gave his name to the Anglians. In this tradition we may see the probability of some very close connection in their origin between the Anglian and Danish races. Although Zealand had become the centre of the Danish monarchy when Saxo wrote in the twelfth century, yet Skane still formed an important part of it, and the Skanians are very frequently mentioned by him. In the twelfth century there were no doubt many more historical runic inscriptions existing within the limits of the ancient Danish kingdom than the few hundreds which still remain, for the Danes were certainly acquainted with runes.

Denmark was long divided into three States or kingdoms. and we find three principal monuments connected with the election custom of their Kings—viz., at Lund in Skane, Lethra in Zealand, and Viburg in Jutland. It has been said that the Anglo-Saxon settlers were people of various tribes speaking a common language. This was no doubt the case to a very large extent, but as Skandians are proved to have been among the Jutish and Anglian settlers by the evidence of runic inscriptions, and as the names for many objects, persons, and tribes in the Old Norrena or Dönsk tongue are different from