Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/154

140 as Helsington, near Kendal, and others may possibly refer to settlements of them.

It is in that part of Scandinavia which was the old country of the Helsings that commemorative stone monuments abounded when O. Magnus wrote his history of the Goths and Swedes. He says that ‘these pillars are found among the Heslengi in greater quantity than elsewhere in the North,’ and that ‘obelisks of high stones are seen nowhere more frequently than in the public highways among the Ostrogoths, the Vestrogoths, and the Sweons or Swedes.’ Some of the runic inscriptions on the stone monuments still existing in Sweden in which England is mentioned are of great interest. They tell us of men ‘who died in England,’ of a worthy young man ‘who went to England,’ and of others who set out for the same country, that being all, apparently, that was known of them after they left their native districts. In one case we read of a memorial set up by his children to an English settler: ‘To their father, Feiri, who resided westward in England.’ In another, to one who had died in England, and ‘Urai his brother set up this stone to his memory.’ The inscriptions mentioned prove that Swedes must certainly be included among English colonists and among the forefathers of the Old English race. Such Anglo-Saxon names as Suanescamp, Kent; Swanesig, Berks; Swanetun, Norfolk; Swonleah, Hants; and Swonleah, Oxfordshire, are probably traces of them. In searching for traces of Swedes in England we must look for them in proximity to Goths, Norse, or Danes, with whom they probably migrated, and look for traces of their names under the names Svear, Sweon, Swein, and perhaps Swirl. The latter name appears in the Orkney and Shetland dialect to be a corruption of