The Vikings raided, pirated, traded and settled in places throughout Europe and beyond. They have an important part to play in the history of England too – but who were these people, and how did they first come to our shores?
We asked a historian called Thomas Williams to help us dive into the story of these adventuring seafarers, to find out how they changed life in England.
What was England like before the arrival of the Vikings?
When the Vikings first arrived here at the end of the eighth century from Scandinavia, the country of England did not exist! Instead, there were kingdoms of varying sizes, known as the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. These were home to different groups of people, and each had its own king. The largest kingdoms were Wessex (in what is now the south west of England), Mercia (in the Midlands), Northumbria (in the north) and East Anglia, which included today’s counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. You can see these marked on the map.
Today the Vikings are best known for raiding their Christian neighbours. However, when these raids began, the Anglo-Saxon people already had peaceful links with the Scandinavian countries where the Vikings came from. A Northumbrian cleric called Alcuin even said that the monks at Lindisfarne Priory had similar styles of beards and hair to the Vikings!
When did the raids start?
The first big Viking attack on what is now England was the raid on Lindisfarne Priory in Northumbria in 793. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of history written by the Anglo-Saxons, tells the story in lots of dramatic detail. It starts with ‘whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons’, and finishes with the Vikings ‘destroying God’s church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter’. This was a terrible event that not only affected the people of Northumbria, but also sent shockwaves through Europe – how could a holy place be so ferociously attacked?
The Vikings’ aim was to steal valuable objects made from silver and gold and also people, who were sold into slavery in Europe and Asia. Raids like this continued to happen at places on the coast of England for many years after Lindisfarne. But things would get worse for the Anglo-Saxons. Larger fleets of Viking ships started to appear and force fights with royal Anglo-Saxon armies. In 838, a Viking fleet joined up with the Cornish people (a separate nation at that time) to fight against Ecgberht, king of Wessex. The Vikings were defeated, but it was a sign of things to come.
So, what did happen next?
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us how in 865, a ‘great heathen horde’ of Vikings landed in East Anglia. By 871, the Vikings had defeated the armies of Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia, killing their kings or forcing them to flee. There is archaeological evidence of the Vikings’ enormous camps in Lincolnshire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire, which tells us just how large this army was.
The only Anglo-Saxon kingdom which wasn’t defeated was Wessex. Led by their king, Alfred, the West Saxons defeated the Viking leader Guthrum at Edington in Wiltshire in 878.
Alfred later negotiated a peace settlement with the Vikings, which gave them control of all the land in England north and east of an imaginary line running from east London to Chester. This became known as the Danelaw (the place ruled over by the ‘Danes’). The south and west of England was now all under King Alfred’s control.
What was life like under the Vikings?
In the places where the Vikings took over, there were some big changes. Today's place names in northern and eastern England still show the influence of the Vikings’ language, Old Norse. For example, Grimsby in Lincolnshire means 'Grimr's farm'. It comes from the Old Norse word 'by' which means farm, and the name of a Viking called Grimr who owned it.
There are lots of words used in the north today which come from Old Norse too. ‘Dale’ (valley), ‘beck’ (stream) and ‘fell’ (mountain) all have Viking origins. Some words we all use in English also come from the Vikings, such as window, husband, egg and skull.
Viking settlers also changed how people lived in the north. Small towns grew larger and became important places for trade and the manufacture of goods to sell. Archaeological evidence found at York shows that it was a large town, with lots of people living closely together. There were craftspeople making beautiful items and imported goods being traded by people with connections to Europe and beyond.
When was England created?
After King Alfred died in 899, his son Edward, his daughter-in-law Athelflaed and his grandson Athelstan conquered all of the lands that had been settled by the Vikings, but they did not want to go back to the old system of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Instead, these lands became a new country, controlled by a single family. ‘Engalond’ (as it would become known) was a kingdom for all of the English and Athelstan was its first king.
However, this was not the end of the Viking era in England. From the 990s, fleets of Viking warships started to reappear in English waters, and they repeatedly attacked and invaded, demanding huge amounts of money from local people. In 1013, a Danish king called Svein Forkbeard conquered all of England, but he died shortly afterwards, and another war began. Three years later, Svein’s son Cnut reconquered England, and became king in 1016. He later added Denmark, Norway and southern Sweden to his empire.
A Viking king of England?
Cnut and his two sons, Harald and Harthacnut, each ruled as king of England in the years between 1016 and 1042. Danish noblemen were given important and powerful positions, Norwegian saints were celebrated in London’s churches and Scandinavian artistic styles were used in stone carving and metalwork. Even after the West Saxon king Edward the Confessor came to the throne after Harthacnut died, the culture in England stayed very Scandinavian, and never went back to how things had been before the Vikings arrived.
The Vikings started to change too. They embraced the medieval Christian religion, and there were very few new attacks from Scandinavia. The last serious Viking invasion was led by a Norwegian king called Harald Hardrada in 1066, but he was defeated by the English King Harold at the battle of Stamford Bridge just two weeks before the famous Battle of Hastings.
So, what is the Vikings’ legacy in England?
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Viking influences in England finally started to fade, though this happened much more slowly in the north compared with the south. However, even though the Viking age had ended, the Vikings were not forgotten. ‘Danes’ became the villains of medieval stories, and Old Norse words continued to be used. The descendants of the Vikings stayed in England too, continuing to live in communities all over the country, though mostly in places in the north and east that were once part of the Danelaw ruled over by Scandinavian settlers.
But the biggest legacy that the Vikings left behind was so huge that it is often not noticed at all: they started the chain of events that led to the creation of England itself.