authorities in the aristocratic organisation of the Five Boroughs and other parts of the Danelaw. They were usually twelve in number, and their presence may be definitely traced in Cambridge, Stamford, Lincoln, York and Chester. The office would seem as a rule to have been hereditary,
The influence of the Vikings varied from country to country, not only according to the political and social condition of the lands in which they settled, but also to some extent according to the nation from which they came. In Ireland the settlements were chiefly Norse, though there is some evidence for the presence of Danes in Cork and Limerick. Here their influence was concentrated in certain important towns on the coast (Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, and the two already mentioned) and the districts immediately surrounding them. Scandinavian influence on Irish place-names is confined almost entirely to these localities and to the harbours and islands which must from time to time have given shelter to their fleets. Intermarriage between the Irish and the Norse settlers began at a very early date, and interesting evidence of it is found in the large numbers of Irish names in the genealogies of the chief Icelandic families preserved in Landnamabók. Such intermarriage was frequent, but the strength of the clan system would seem to have enabled the races to continue distinct. Norse words are very rare in Irish, and even when the old Norse kingdoms were shorn of their glory and reduced to dependence, the "Ostmen," as they were called, remained an entirely distinct element in the community, and frequent mention is made of them in the records of the great towns. They still survived at the time of the English conquest, and often both claimed and received privileges entirely different from those accorded to the natives or to the English settlers. In Ireland as in other countries there is no doubt that the Vikings did much harm to religion and to learning, but at the same time they strengthened town-life and developed trade. For many years the trade of Ireland was largely in Scandinavian hands.
Norse influence in Scotland was great, but varied much from place to place. The Orkneys and Shetlands are thoroughly Norse. They formed part of the Norwegian kingdom till 1468, and Norse speech lingered on until the close of the eighteenth century. Place-names are almost entirely of Norse origin and the dialect is full of Norse words. In the system of landholding the udallers are an interesting survival of the old Norse freeholders, whose óðal was held on precisely the same free tenure as the Scotch udal. The Hebrides were also largely influenced by the Vikings, and it was not till 1266 that Magnus Hákonson renounced all claims of Norway to the islands and to Man. Place-nomenclature both in the names of the islands themselves and of their physical features shews a strong Norse element, and there are many Norse words in the Gaelic of the islands and of the mainland. These words have undergone such extensive changes and corruption in a language so different from their original source that their recognition is a difficult
