“to be run” is correct; “run” is the past participle and takes any auxiliary verbs that are going; “ran” is the past historic (passé simple, but in English everyone uses and understands it. Then again, we have far fewer verb forms).
/grammar help
England was already completely feudal before the Conquest.
Such a free society, they didn’t even have a word for slave…oh, wait, they did.
Hey thanks, I have a few recurring blindspots in English, and run/ran is on top of that list (got the same problem with the past participle vs past simple of become/became).
A Hundred Quatloos on the Teutonic Warrior!
Haha. In all seriousness, though, northern England was a thriving center; southern England was the backwater. This, of course, was one of the reasons the Vikings hit the place so hard, and wound up destroying more or less all the towns and monasteries. In fact, northern England was probably one of the wealthiest places in Europe post-Rome, until that.
Fortunately, the name York was established later on. It was called North Umbria before that, and I think we can all agree that’s a very badass name. York was the sire of an old Roman center, but became established as part of the more modern Kingdom of England only around 1500, after a royal decree of 1484 (yes, I had to look the dates up).
Northumbria was the kingdom of which York was the capital, but the city was never called Northumbria. The Romans called it Eboracum, the Saxons, Eoforwic, and the Vikings, Jorvik. Jorvik is the name that got turned into York.
Ah, I ued a vague “it” there. Sorry if I confused anyone. I meant to say “it” as the region of Northumbria predated the name “York.”
The historical implications . . . “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fan, I smell the blood of a Northumbrian!” “There’ll always be a Northumbria.” . . . “In plain Northumbrian, . . .” “A Northumbrian, an Alban and an Eiran walk into a bar . . .” No. Sorry. Badass as it be, it just doesn’t work.
Not too be a pedant, but it’s Northumbria, one word.
York under Scandiwegians was called Jórvík, which is an even badass-er name.
(And Eoforwic before that, but that just sounds like a speech impediment.)
Heh. What a droll juxtaposition of erudition and the vernacular! You be pimpin’ in style.
I recall one of my HS English books was The Medieval Myths, by Norman Lorre Goodrich, and one of the stories was “Peredur son of York,” which confused me a bit when I later did a term paper on Arthurian legends and encountered the same? a substantially similar? story in The Mabinogion – a collection of Welsh legends – called “Peredur Son of Efrawg.” I guess that’s just the Welsh for “York,” derived from the Roman/Latin name, Eboracum, and probably pronounced efff[bilabial fricative]rrr[rolled][glottal g, also rolled][clearing of phlegm from larynx]. The story is similar to Chretien de Troyes’ Perceval except that there is no Grail in it. Nobody’s sure if Peredur was based on Perceval or vice-versa or they drew on a common source or what. And of course a lot of medieval Grail literature, plus Wagner’s Parsifal, was based on or inspired by Perceval.
But I was never clear on the connection of any of the above to York or Northumbria. (Never heard of any other connection of that region to the Grail legends.) Does anybody know?
No worries. “Became” is the past simple, “become” is the past participle. Once upon a time you could have said “I am become” (as in the Oppenheimer quote) along with “I am come” and so on, just as some French verbs take être, but it’s a terribly archaic construction now.
/grammar
Without the invasion, we would be missing two of our best historical records -The Domesday book and the Bayeux tapestry. I guess eventually equivalent records would be produced, but without the necessity of getting a handle on a newly conquered country, they may have been a long time coming. So our viewpoint on that time would be considerably more vague.
“Theodoric of Jorvik, Medieval Barber/Judge . . .” It works! 
Is our picture of contemporary France vague for that reason?
I concede the point there.
As seen by the Great Schism a Church could be independent of Rome.
I meant free in comparison to Continental Europe.
Well, how? I mean, would England’s Witenagemot or whatever survive and grow in power, while the rest of Europe (including Scandinavia) evolved into feudal monarchy with few or no democratic elements (as noted by Kobal2 in post #24 and Tamerlane in post #30)? Why?
I guess that’s a “no.”
I always thought red hair in England came from transplanted Irish.
I’m no historian/geneticist but the invading Norman army was probably not even Norman in its majority. And seeing as the Normans themselves were bastards, I dont see how a such a thing could have happened (and I dont know how much invading peope vs local people you need to change the features of a pop).