People had English names and Scandinavian grandparents, or Scandinavian names and English mothers, or names that worked in both languages because they were common to both.

The Humber region, Barton-upon-Humber included, was specifically and deeply shaped by this reality.

The region had been at the heart of the Danelaw.

Its place names, many ending in “-by” (the Scandinavian word for settlement: Derby, Grimsby, Whitby), its family names, its local customs and practices all bore the evidence of Scandinavian influence.

A man buried in Barton in 1079 with apple wood staffs in the Scandinavian tradition and continental European DNA was not an exotic or unusual presence.

He was a person whose life and origins reflected the reality of the world he lived in: a world where the North Sea connected rather than divided, where Scandinavian and English identities overlapped rather than opposing, and where the Norman overlay of 1066 was a new complication in an already complex cultural landscape.