The Vikings in Britain
Vikings gave Britain its word 'law', a Dublin-style parliament on the Isle of Man, and a whole English region where they ran things for decades.
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Quick Facts
- What happened
- Norse raiders, then settlers, from Scandinavia attacked and then colonised large parts of Britain and Ireland between the 8th and 11th centuries
- First famous raid
- Lindisfarne, Northumberland, in 793
- Great Heathen Army
- Landed in East Anglia in 865 and went on to conquer Northumbria, East Anglia and much of Mercia
- The Danelaw
- The part of England where Danish law and custom held sway, centred on York, Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham and Derby
- Key English opponent
- Alfred the Great of Wessex, who defeated Guthrum at Edington in 878
- Viking king of England
- Cnut, who took the throne in 1016 and ruled England, Denmark and Norway
- Northern Britain
- Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides and Caithness were Norse-ruled for centuries
- End of the era
- Harald Hardrada was defeated at Stamford Bridge in 1066
The raid that shocked Christendom
On 8 June 793, raiders from across the North Sea stormed the island monastery of Lindisfarne off the Northumberland coast. They killed monks, seized treasures and left a mark on Europe's imagination that has never quite faded. The scholar Alcuin, writing from afar, was horrified. Nobody had thought such a voyage possible. Over the following decades, raids hit Iona, Jarrow and monasteries around the Irish Sea, since they were rich, coastal and poorly defended. The word 'Viking' comes from the raiding, not the people. Most Scandinavians stayed home and farmed.
The army that came to stay
In 865 something changed. A large force, which the English called the Great Heathen Army, landed in East Anglia. This was not a smash-and-grab party but a campaign of conquest. In a few years it took York, killed King Edmund of East Anglia and shattered the kingdom of Northumbria. Mercia was shaken. By the 870s, only Wessex still stood. Then came Alfred. After hiding in the Somerset marshes, he rallied his forces and beat Guthrum at Edington in 878. Guthrum accepted baptism and a treaty carved England in two. The Danish-ruled region became known as the Danelaw. The tale of Alfred burning the cakes is a later legend. His real achievement was building fortified towns called burhs and a navy, and he laid the groundwork for a united England.
Why a Yorkshire town sounds Danish
Scandinavians did settle in numbers, and the map proves it. Place names ending in -by (Grimsby, Whitby, Derby) and -thorpe mean farm or village. Names ending in -thwaite mean a clearing. Everyday English carries Norse too. Egg, knife, window, sky, skirt, husband and law all arrived from Old Norse. Even 'they' and 'them' are Norse borrowings. In York, called Jorvik, excavations at Coppergate in the 1970s and 80s uncovered wooden houses, workshops and the everyday leftovers of a bustling trading town. The Jorvik Viking Centre was built around that dig.
Far north, far west
In Orkney, Shetland and the Hebrides, Norse rule lasted for centuries. Orkney was ruled by Norse earls, and the Orkneyinga Saga tells their story. Shetland and Orkney only passed to Scotland in the 1460s, as part of a royal marriage settlement. On the Isle of Man, the Norse ran an assembly known as the Thing, and Tynwald Day is still celebrated each July, making it one of the world's oldest continuous parliaments. Vikings also founded Dublin and other Irish towns, and Norse-Gaelic culture shaped western Scotland. In Wales the raids were smaller, but the names Anglesey, Swansea and Skomer are Norse in origin.
Myths: horns, helmets and hairy brutes
There is no evidence that Viking warriors wore horned helmets. That image comes from nineteenth-century costume design, especially for Wagner's operas. They were not simply savages either. They were traders, craftsmen and farmers. Silver flowed along their networks from the Islamic world to the Irish Sea, and the Vale of York hoard, Cuerdale hoard in Lancashire and others show how much wealth moved around. The raiding was real and frightening. Christian chroniclers wrote the story, and monasteries had good reason to record their sufferings. But Vikings also formed alliances, intermarried and converted to Christianity.
A Viking on the English throne
Raids resumed in the 980s, and the English king Æthelred paid huge sums of silver, the Danegeld, to buy peace. It did not work. In 1016, Cnut won the crown, and he ruled England well for nearly twenty years, issuing laws, supporting the Church and building a North Sea empire. The end of the Viking age is often marked at 1066, when Harald Hardrada of Norway landed in Yorkshire and was defeated by Harold Godwinson at Stamford Bridge. Weeks later, William of Normandy won at Hastings. The Normans themselves were descended from Vikings who had settled in northern France. Today you can see the legacy at Lindisfarne, Jorvik in York, the Jarlshof site in Shetland, Maeshowe in Orkney, where Vikings left runic graffiti, and the Viking hoards in the British Museum and National Museum of Scotland.
Notable people
- Alfred the Great
- Guthrum
- Ivar the Boneless
- Cnut the Great
- Harald Hardrada
- Harold Godwinson
- Æthelred the Unready
- Alcuin of York
- Eric Bloodaxe
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