Viking Revival - England

England

English authors from the 16th century had been aware of the Viking impact on the countryside, though the numerous placenames of Danes Camp is better explicated as a modification of dene, or hollow. Following the 17th-century first flowering of Anglo-Saxon studies, there was a similar wave of enthusiasm for Northern culture in Britain, identifying as Viking remains Iron Age hill forts and even Stonehenge and exemplified by the antiquarian interests of George Hickes, who published a Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus in 1703–05. In the 1780s, Denmark offered to cede Iceland to Britain in exchange for Crab Island (now Vieques, Puerto Rico), and in the 1860s Iceland was considered as a compensation for British support of Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein conflicts. During this time, British interest and enthusiasm for Iceland and Nordic culture grew dramatically, expressed in original English poems extolling Viking virtues, such as Thomas Warton's "Runic Odes" of 1748:

Yes — 'tis decreed my Sword no more

Shall smoke and blush with hostile gore

To my great Father's Feasts I go,

Where luscious Wines for ever flow.

Which from the hollow Sculls we drain

Of Kings in furious Combat slain.