in the time of Sweyn and Cnut, historical references to Obodrites in the service of Cnut in England, and the similarity of certain place-names in some parts of England colonized by Danes to others on the Continent of known Wendish or Slavonic origin. Obodriti is a Slavic name, and, according to Schafarik, the Slavic ethnologist, the name may be compared with Bodrica in the government of Witepsk, Bodrok, and the provincial name Bodrog in Southern Hungary, and others of a similar kind. In the Danish settled districts of England we find the Anglo-Saxon names Bodeskesham, Cambridgeshire; Bodesham, now Bosham, Sussex; Boddingc-weg, Dorset;[1] the Domesday names Bodebi, Lincolnshire; Bodetone and Bodele, Yorkshire; Bodehā, Herefordshire; Bodeslege, Somerset; Bodeshā, Kent; and others,[2] which may have been named after people of this tribe.
The map of Europe at the present day exhibits evidence of the ancient migration of the Slavs. The Slavs in the country from Trient to Venice were known as Wendi, and hence the name Venice or the Wendian territory.[3] Bohemia and Poland after the seventh century became organized States of Slavs on the upper parts of the Elbe and the Vistula. The Slavonic tribes on the frontier or march-land of Moravia formed the kingdom of Moravia in the ninth century. Other scattered tribes of Slavs formed the kingdom of Bulgaria about the end of the seventh century; and westward of these, other tribes organized themselves into the kingdoms of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Servia.[4] In the North the ancient Slav tribes of Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, and those located on the banks of the Elbe, comprising the Polabians, the Obodrites, the Wiltzi, those known at one time as Rugini, the Lutitzes, and the Northern Sorabians or Serbs, became gradually absorbed among the Germans,
