83: Some other place-names of East Anglia, 8/12/2025
Written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost on www.bookofdunbarra.co.uk. No AI was used in this nor in any of my publications. This article was published on the 8th of December 2025. This article and its content are unrelated to and separate from all of my other publications, including those others in which I discuss language and place-names in East Anglia. This article was published in the UK and the author is from the UK and a UK-resident. This article contains in total 1159 words.
Note that my grandad’s family is connected to the part of Norfolk I discuss in this article, and I also dedicate this article to my grandad, but this article is not to be confused with another unrelated recent article I published on a different website which is dedicated to my grandad’s love of the Scottish islands, the aforementioned article being titled: A new disc. (December 2025) on Barra Gaelic, N. Rona, Gaelic, Shaetlan & connected topics. I also discuss different aspects to the "Finns" in both articles, but the information is separate and unrelated.
Norfolk in East Anglia is a county with a lack of large hills and higher hilly areas. Much of it is very flat, with some areas being saltmarsh, other areas being “broads” (marshy areas with open areas of water and reed beds), and other areas such as around Grimes Graves (a Neolithic flint mine), being flat, but largely dry, with most areas agricultural, but with some areas with more ancient-looking Scots pine forests, which seem to spread on for miles.
One of the coastal areas of Norfolk was once an island, known as the Isle of Flegg. This island has since become attached to the mainland, as the shallow areas of sea, like in many parts of East Anglia, were drained and turned into farmland. Nevertheless, as with other areas where shallow seas have become land, the land continues to behave, sometimes, as though it were still connected to the sea, and in many senses it still is. Even if the salt lakes and saltmarshes have become fields with freshwater creeks, the birdlife, atmosphere and mists continue to function as part of the coastal sphere of life and landscape.
The Isle of Flegg has an etymology which I had to research a little. Most sources imply the word is Danish, but specifically from my research it seems to be a Jutlandic word, flæg, which refers to a landscape dense in aquatic plants, such as the iris. This would seem to imply that the island itself was very wet and boggy, with perhaps only certain parts of it having been truly dry in the past few thousand years. The word flæg may I think be somehow cognate to the word ”flax” (as in the plant) in English.
This connection to Denmark is normally assumed to date from the Viking period, but realistically, these place-names, or rather certain elements of them, could perhaps be thousands of years older, owing to the contact and connections that have existed between East Anglia and Denmark since as long as humans have existed in Northwestern Europe. This is keeping in mind that the land between England and Denmark at this time would have had rivers, lakes and channels, but it would have been navigable, and of course Doggerland not far off the coast of Norfolk would have been a part of this landscape – the last part of it before The Storegga Slide tsunami, subsequent erosion and sea level changes inundated Doggerland. In the book, the Oera Linda book, a book describing an (in my opinion) biased and racist view of Frisian mythology which I disagree with, even though it does I think contain some historic facts which are not racist – in this book, it is essentially implied that the Frisian peoples’ original land was inundated by a giant tsunami event. Which is naturally curious given the real historical event of the Storegga Slide tsunami which would have been devastating for indigenous peoples around the North Sea. There is also the mysterious island of Frisland or Frischlant drawn as being near Greenland on some old maps, although I find it unlikely that Frisian people would originated near Greenland, and also Frisland on old maps somewhat resembles the appearance of Ireland on maps, so perhaps Frisland was not a true, real mysterious hidden land, like Hyperborea, Hy-Brasil, Utrøst or Avalon. But then again, maybe it was.
But around the Isle of Flegg, most elements are arguably more Danish-orientated than Frisian. Of course, their worlds were connected, especially when we speak of Danes in the ancient, pre-Viking sense, and also the Jutlandic language does have a fair bit of crossover with the Frisian languages. I have written in other publications though, detail about elements of language in Norfolk, the dialect and place-names, which are quite possibly representative of much more ancient language, what we might term pre-Indo-European. An example in terms of the dialect is that the Norfolk dialect contains grammatical structures and usage which do not make logical sense as having come from an Indo-European language.
One place-name I have mentioned elsewhere is Yarmouth, named after the River Yare. A related river name, the River Yar, is on the Isle of Wight. I want to discuss yet more on Isle of Wight place-names in the nearish future. The names Yar and Yare may be I think pre-Indo-European in origin, and if we think how the ancient landscape would have been one of flat lands, wetlands, lakes, rivers, and later on – tidal lagoons and fleets, “Yare” makes sense I think as being connected to Finnish järvi – “lake”, and to other root words I have identified. It is also interesting for instance that the “Finns” are mentioned in the Frisian Oera Linda book, as one of the peoples of this part of the world and of Friesland in ancient times. “Finn” was also the name of a Frisian king. The Frisian king, Finn, son of Folcwald, is even mentioned in the Old English (Ænglisc) poem Beowulf. There are also legends pertaining to Finns in Denmark and many other places, as I have discussed elsewhere. Perhaps-connected Finns were also present as far south as Småland in Southern Sweden, into historic times, and in the Shetland Islands, as I discussed new aspects of recently in my article published on a different website, titled: A new disc. (December 2025) on Barra Gaelic, N. Rona, Gaelic, Shaetlan & connected topics.
There are other very interesting place-names around the Isle of Flegg, for example, Ormesby, which is basically a marginally different version of what would in Danish be spelled as Ormsby, meaning “town of the serpent”. Were there serpents in Norfolk in the past? I would like to know more on the mythology behind this name.
I hope this article was an interesting read. It is also dedicated to my grandad who I hope will read it. Thankyou!