Appendix Map
The Story of Old English
Appendix · Map
A sketch of Britain showing where the four dialects of Chapter 3 were spoken, the rough area of the Danelaw (Chapter 7), and the places the chapters name. I drew it myself as a schematic.
This is a simplification
The coastline is a rough outline, not drawn to scale, and the borders are straight lines. The dialect boundaries follow the descriptions in the chapters (the Humber and the Thames), not a surveyed map, and they changed over time. The Danelaw area is approximate; the Danelaw article marks its southern boundary as needing a citation. Place positions are approximate. Wales and Scotland are outlined but not part of the four dialect areas.
Key to the map
| Mark | What it shows | Where the chapters say it |
|---|---|---|
| Orange area | Northumbrian: north of the Humber | Chapter 3 |
| Blue area | Mercian: between the Humber and the Thames | Chapter 3 |
| Green area | West Saxon: south and south-west of the Thames | Chapter 3 |
| Purple area | Kentish: a small area south-east of the Thames | Chapter 3 |
| Yellow dashed line | The Danelaw, roughly Yorkshire, the central and eastern Midlands and the East, north of a London to Chester line | Chapter 7 |
Places on the map
| Place | Why it is here | Ch. |
|---|---|---|
| Jarrow | Bede's monastery (with Monkwearmouth, which I did not mark) | 5 |
| Whitby | Where Cædmon lived, in Bede's story | 5 |
| York | Taken by the Vikings in 866 to 867; the archbishopric Wulfstan held | 7, 8 |
| Worcester | Oswald's and Wulfstan's bishopric | 8 |
| Peterborough | The Chronicle manuscript that runs to 1154 | 6, 9 |
| London | Taken by Alfred in 886; London English is the base of the later standard | 6, 9 |
| Winchester | Old Minster, Æthelwold's see and the Chronicle's Version A | 6, 8 |
| Canterbury | Dunstan's archbishopric | 8 |
| Eynsham, Cerne | Ælfric's abbeys (Cerne from 987, Eynsham from 1005) | 8 |
| Exeter | Where the Exeter Book came to rest | 8 |
| Hastings | The battle of 14 October 1066 | 9 |
Note on sources
The map and its geography are mine, drawn from the dialect and Danelaw descriptions in Chapters 3 and 7 (Wikipedia's Old English, Mercian dialect, Northumbrian Old English, Kentish dialect (Old English) and Danelaw articles) and the places named in the chapters. Positions of towns are from my general knowledge of where they lie and are approximate; I checked them against no map. The chapters' sources do not give coordinates. East Anglia, Kent's exact extent and the northern limit of Northumbria (the Forth) are simplified.