The Sandals were in Sandal-Side when the white-handed, waxen-faced Edward was building Westminster Abbey, and William the Norman was laying plans for the crown of England.

Probably they came with those Norsemen who a century earlier made the Isle of Man their headquarters, and from it, landing on the opposite coast of Cumberland, settled themselves among valleys and lakes and mountains of primeval beauty, which must have strongly reminded them of their native land.
For the prevailing names of this district are all of the Norwegian type, especially such abounding suffixes and prefixes as _seat_ from "set," a dwelling; _dale_ from "dal," a valley; _fell_ from "fjeld," a mountain; _garth_ from "gard," an enclosure; and _thwaite_, from "thveit," a clearing.

It is certain, also, that, in spite of much Anglo-Saxon admixture, the salt blood of the roving Viking is still in the Cumberland dalesman.

Centuries of bucolic isolation have not obliterated it.

Every now and then the sea calls some farmer or shepherd, and the restless drop in his veins gives him no peace till he has found his way over the hills and fells to the port of Whitehaven, and gone back to the cradling bosom that rocked his ancestors.
But in the main, this lovely spot was a northern Lotus-land to the Viking.