WHENBY, to the north of Sherriff Hutton, on the very edge of Ryedale, has one of the region’s most curious names. Its typically Scandinavian “by” ending – “by”

means settlement – shows that the Vikings named the village.

So far, so easy. But when we get to the first part of the name confusion sets in. For “when” means, in the old Viking language of the North, women, giving us the Settlement of Women.

However, it must be said that there are no records of Viking women living apart from their men anywhere in the Viking world. So what was the Women’s Settlement?

Was it a hamlet where all the men had gone away on a disastrous raid from which they never returned and subsequently the women had taken charge? Was it a group of Viking Amazons? Or was it just an exception that proved the rule?

In fact, the answer is likely to be rather more prosaic than any of these. Women had an unusual amount of authority in Viking society. They could divorce and own property at a time when this was not normal in the rest of Europe. Indeed, at this date, only in Ireland did women have comparable rights.

It is probable, then, that the territory on which Whenby was built had passed into the hands of women by inherirate tance – and that it would have been a woman’s settlement in the sense that women owned the land thereabouts. If you had been a peasant on the land at Whenby then you would have made sure to doff your cap when the lady of the house walked by ...