Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/308



T is to Scandinavia and Denmark mainly that we must look for any gleams of light in reference to the successive settlements of tribal people in Lincolnshire.

This county was the country of the Old English tribes known as the Lindisware, or the Southumbrians, the Gainas and the Gyrwii, or Marshmen. There appears to have been much that was similar in the settlement of Norfolk and Lincolnshire. There is a similarity in their coast, with the same sand-dunes and gently-sloping reaches. As we stand on the cliff at Hunstanton on a clear day we see as far as the eye can reach the low sand-hills stretching away towards the east, and across the Wash on the Lincolnshire coast We see them lying before us for many miles towards the north-east. These coasts must have appeared to the ancient Angles and Danes very homelike, and similar to those they had left behind them in parts of Denmark. The country was open to them by the wide estuary of the Humber on the north, giving access to the valley of the Trent, and by the Wash, past Boston and Lynn, to the great fens. The physical features of the coast must have been attractive to a people who had been accustomed to similar surroundings in their old homes, and who would be able to make settlements with environments resembling those of the Danish lands they had left. Fen, heath, and forest made up a large 294