The End of the Viking Era
Go back to The Vikings. See also Vikings in Nottinghamshire.
Anglo-Saxons and Vikings make peace.
In 878 the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred of Wessex defeated the Vikings in battle at Edington in Wiltshire. Alfred and the Viking leader Guthrum knew that neither side could win and so an agreement was made which led to 50 years of peace.
Wessex and West Mercia
The south and south west of England remained Anglo-Saxon under the rule of the king of Wessex. They followed the laws and customs of the English.
The Danelaw
The north and north east of England became known as The Danelaw ruled by Viking lords and following Viking laws and customs. Nottinghamshire, including Langar and Barnstone, was part of Viking territory of the Danelaw.
The Anglo-Saxons fight back.
King Alfred wanted to see all of England united under the crown of Wessex.
However, he died in 899 and it was left to his son and his daughter to make his dreams come true.
Alfred's son, King Edward the Elder of Wessex and Alfred's daughter, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, set about conquering The Danelaw.
And they succeeded.
By 917 all the Viking armies south of the River Humber had given up the fight.
The last to surrender was Nottingham which Edward captured in 918. He ordered the fort to be manned by both English and Danes.
The last words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 918: "And all the people who had settled in Mercia, both Danish and English, submitted to Edward".
The End of the Danelaw
In 954 the last Viking leader, Eric Bloodaxe, King of Northumbria, was betrayed by rival Vikings and killed at the Battle of Stainmore in the mountains of Cumbria. Northumbria became part of the Kingdom of England under the Anglo-Saxon King Eadred, grandson of Alfred the Great.
The Danelaw finally came to an end.
- but it was not quite the end of the Vikings.
All of England was now ruled by the kings of Wessex, now kings of all England. And the descendants of the Viking settlers accepted this.
However, Viking raids from the North continued. The English paid large sums of money for them to go away. This, of course, encouraged the Vikings to come back for more.
There were repeated attacks by Viking armies on East Anglia and the south of England between 980 and 1016. In that year Canute, King of Denmark defeated the Anglo-Saxon army of Edmund Ironside and made himself king of England. His son Hardicanute succeeded him, but on his death in 1042, his Anglo-Saxon half-brother Edward (the Confessor) became king.
And that was the end of the Vikings in England . . .
. . . or was it? Read on.
Here's a strange thing . . .
Not only did the Vikings raid England and settle here,
they did the same in France.
The area they settled became known as Normandy, the name deriving from 'Northmen', in other words Vikings.
In September 1066 the Anglo-Saxon King Harold II raced north to defeat the Viking King of Norway near York.
At the moment of his victory, he received news that the Duke of Normandy, a descendant of Vikings, had invaded England.
,
Harold raced south and, three weeks later, when he and his exhausted troops arrived at Hastings, he went into battle a second time - this time unsuccessfully.
And so Duke William of Normandy, the great-great-great-grandson of Rollo the Viking
who first captured the region from the French, became King William I of England.
Want to know more? Click here to find out about the Normans.