Richard Jones, David N. Parsons and Paul Cullen Þorps and the Open Fields A new hypothesis from England þorp'er og markfællesskaberne I en tværfaglig undersøgelse baseret på bebyggelseshistorie, jordbundsgeografi, stednavne og arkæologi er den engelske bebyggelsesnavnetype þorp blevet systematisk undersøgt for hele England og sammenlignet med andre engelske navnetyper, først og fremmest þrop og ‐by ̄ , men også med formodet ældre navnetyper som fx ‐hām og ‐tūn. Undersøgelsen viser dels, at både þorp og þrop til trods for en generelt sekundær fremtræden i forhold til øvrige navnetyper kan findes på mere ageregnede jorder end eksempelvis by ̄ , hvilket bryder med ældre engel- ske observationer og teser. Dertil kommer, at bebyggelser med navneformerne þorp og þrop generelt fremtræder ret ens trods deres markante placeringsmæssige fordeling henholdsvis nord og syd for Danelagens grænse. Den primære forskel imellem dem er forleddet, der hos þrop ofte er et adjektiv, der sætter þrop’en i forhold til en ældre, primær be- byggelse (fx East Throp, Upthrop, o.lign.), mens der meget ofte kan findes personnavneforled i þorp’erne i Danelagen. På baggrund af de gjorte observationer opstiller forfatterne en ny hypotese, der knytter þrop og þorp sammen med udviklingen og udbredelsen af Open Field-bruget i England. One Name-Group or Two? Þorps – in some areas þrops – are a familiar part of the named landscape of much of Eng- land (Fig. 1). They have generally been treated as two related but distinct name-groups: the English þrops, which belong to an early phase of Anglo-Saxon nomenclature, and the Danish þorps, which follow in the wake of the Scandi- navian settlements of the ninth and tenth centu- ries. Yet although the elements apparently be- long to different periods and languages, it seems that the settlements bearing the names share key features. There is general agreement that the þorps of the Danelaw were originally diminutive in size and dependent on a larger settlement nearby: A. H. Smith defined the term as ‘a secondary settlement, a dependent out- lying farmstead or hamlet’, observing that this is closely equivalent to the sense of þorp in early Denmark (Smith 1956, II: 205–209). Later commentators have been happy broadly to agree. And scholars have also recognised that there were good reasons to interpret the þrop- names outside the Danelaw in much the same way: Smith glossed this element as ‘a hamlet, an outlying farm’, and indicated in his discus- sion that there were clear signs of dependency here as well (ibid.: 214–215). That Old English þrop and Old Danish þorp should be used in the same way is not a problem, of course: the words are cognate (and in parts of England they may always have been identical in form, for the metathesis þorp > þrop need not have taken place in all English dia- lects). However, the traditional account does embody some assumptions that might be ques- tioned.