England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

, a toft village is a

settlement Settlement may refer to: *Human settlement, a community where people live *Settlement (structural), the distortion or disruption of parts of a building * Closing (real estate), the final step in executing a real estate transaction *Settlement (fin ...

comprising small and relatively closely packed farms (tofts) with the surrounding land owned and farmed by those who live in the village's buildings. Late

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

''toft'', with

Old English declension The grammar of Old English is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more inflected. As an old Germanic language, Old English has a morphological system that is similar to that of the Proto-Germanic reconstruct ...

(plural) ''toftas'' > tofts. ''Toft'' as a

placename Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

element is usually dated to the

Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Germ ...

by place-name historians. Placenames ending in ''-toft'' are usually of

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

derivation, ''topt'' meaning "site of a house".''English Etymology'', T. F. Hoad, Oxford University Press 1993. Examples are Langtoft,

Habertoft __NOTOC__ Orby is a village and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England.OS Explorer map: Skegness, Alford & Spilsby: (1:25 000): It is situated approximately east from the town of Spilsby, and west from the seasi ...

Huttoft Huttoft is a village in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England, about east of the market town of Alford, on the A52 road between Ingoldmells and Sutton-on-Sea. John Betjeman, later England's Poet Laureate, visited Huttoft in the ...

Knaptoft Knaptoft is a deserted medieval village and civil parish in the Harborough district of Leicestershire and lies approximately south of the city of Leicester, England. According to the University of Nottingham English Place-names project, the se ...

, Lowestoft,

Newtoft Toft Newton is a civil parish in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It consists of the small villages of Toft next Newton and Newton by Toft, and the hamlet (place), hamlet of Newtoft. It is west from Market Rasen. According ...

Scraptoft Scraptoft is a village in Leicestershire, England. It has a population of about 1,500, measured at the 2011 census as 1,804. It lies north of the A47 road east of Leicester, and runs directly into the built up area of Thurnby and Bushby to ...

Sibbertoft Sibbertoft is a village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire in England. At the time of the 2001 census, the parish's population (including Sulby) was 343 people, increasing to 462 at the 2011 Census. The village's name means 'curtilage o ...

Stowlangtoft Stowlangtoft is a village and civil parish in the Mid Suffolk district of Suffolk in eastern England two miles south-east from Ixworth. Located around five miles north-east of Bury St Edmunds, in 2005 its population was 270. Name The village, or ...

Wibtoft Wibtoft is a small village and civil parish in north-eastern Warwickshire, England. The village was originally within the civil parish of Claybrooke Magna in Leicestershire and is mostly an agricultural community. According to the 2001 Census, ...

Yelvertoft Yelvertoft is a village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire unitary authority in the county of Northamptonshire, England. At the time of the 2001 census, the parish's population was 821 people, reducing to 764 at the 2011 Census. Yelve ...

and various places simply called Toft in the former

Danelaw The Danelaw (, also known as the Danelagh; ang, Dena lagu; da, Danelagen) was the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danelaw contrasts with the West Saxon law and the Mercian ...

. This typical Old Norse element allows estimation of the extension of Scandinavian settlements in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

such as in

Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein (; da, Slesvig-Holsten; nds, Sleswig-Holsteen; frr, Slaswik-Holstiinj) is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Sc ...

(''-toft'' : Langstoft, Havetoft, Koltoft, Goltoft, Kaltoft...),

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

(''-tot'' : Lanquetot, Colletot, Caltot, Hottot, Hotot...), etc.

References

Rural geography Human habitats {{Geo-term-stub