In the countryside of England’s East Midlands, less than a mile from the house where I spent my childhood, there is a small, wooded area named Hunsbury Hill. The actual hill, as I remember it, is a slight thing among the trees: its top flattened off and surrounded by a circular ditch eight or ten feet deep. Back in those days when kids were let loose to find their own fun, it was a popular play spot for us urchins from the nearby public housing estate.

Local people never said “Hunsbury Hill.” They called the place “Danes’ Camp” because Viking invaders—“Danes”—had used it as a base in their razzia through Eastern England around A.D. 900, the one that Alfred the Great and his children finally suppressed. The strategic geographical feature has a much older history: it was used as a hill fort by the Celts in the centuries B.C. It was those “Danes” that had stuck in people’s minds, though. Country folk have long memories, but with limits.

The Vikings were young men seeking plunder and women. They came armed into a settled population of Saxons that were likewise armed and under the leadership of brilliant and energetic monarchs.

The seaborne invaders of England today—36,816 in 2024, up from 29,437 the year before, according to the United Nations—are likewise young men seeking plunder and women, but this time unarmed. However, the English people they are settling amongst are also unarmed and are under the leadership of flaccid clerks who regard their ancestors with shame.