We may, however, venture to set down the greater part of Scandinavian names of places in England as Danish. The terminations in _thwaite_ and _thorpe_, indeed, are to be met with in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, as well as in the Saxon and Frisian districts of North Germany; yet as the corresponding English names are for the most part composed of pure Scandinavian or Danish words, and as they seldom appear either in the tracts conquered by the Norwegians in Scotland and Ireland, or in the southern and south-western, originally Anglo-Saxon, districts of England, but keep strictly within the same boundaries as the rest of the Danish names of places, and particularly of those in _by_ (Danish for town or village), these are valid reasons for regarding them in general as Danish. The names of places in England ending in _by_ are only to be found in the districts selected by the Danes for conquest or colonization. With the exception of a single Kirby, or Kirkby, in Kent, not far from London, they are nowhere to be found to the south of Watlinga-stræt (for Tenby, formerly Tenbigh, in Pembrokeshire, is from a different derivation); whilst towards the north, they cease in the most north-eastern county of England, the present Northumberland; in the south-westernmost part of Scotland (Locherby in Dumfries, Sorby in Wigtonshire); and in the Isle of Man (Sulby, Jurby, Dalby). If we except Duncansby in Caithness, and Oreby in the Isle of Lewis, as well as some few villages in Orkney and the Shetland Isles, they do not appear among the many pure Norwegian names of places in the north and west of Scotland, and in Ireland; which, as will be explained in its proper place, have generally quite a different character from the Scandinavian (chiefly Danish) names of places in England. It can hardly be said that this was solely owing to the natural character of the country in England being more favourable for the building of villages than in those districts in Scotland and Ireland which were occupied by the Northmen: first, because the Norwegians seem to have dwelt closely together in many places there, doubtless in order to resist the attacks of the natives; secondly, because the land there, though often separated by nature into many districts, as for instance in Caithness and the Orkneys, by no means prevented them from assembling together in villages; and lastly, because _by_ originally denoted only a single estate or farm. In Norway, the Faroe Isles, and Iceland, many names of places are to be found, which indicate the existence both of single farm-houses and collections of them, or villages; but they have this peculiarity, that they generally end in _bœr_ or _bö_, far more rarely in _býr_ or _by_; whilst, on the contrary, this last form is essentially Danish. Names of places ending in _by_ are spread over the peninsula of Jutland quite down to Danevirke and the Eyder; are found in great numbers in the southern boundary of South Jutland, or Sleswick; as well