Great Heathen Army

In 865 a large Scandinavian force, drawn mostly from Denmark, landed in England with the aim not of raiding but of conquering the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. English chroniclers called it the "great heathen army". Over the next thirteen years it overran three of those kingdoms, and only Wessex, under Alfred the Great, held out. The settlement that followed created the Danelaw and shaped the later map of England.

Scandinavian attacks on England had begun in the late eighth century, most famously on the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793, and continued on and off through the following decades. Many of the leaders who came together in 865 had been active in Francia, where Viking fleets had exploited civil wars and wealthy river towns. When the West Frankish king began fortifying towns and rivers in the 860s, England became the more tempting target.

Later sagas say the army was led by sons of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok, including Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan and Ubba, and that they came to avenge their father's killing by King Ælla of Northumbria. Historians treat that story with caution. The army's size is also uncertain: some scholars have argued for no more than about a thousand men, while others suggest a force in the low thousands.

After wintering in East Anglia, where the local king supplied horses in return for peace, the army moved north and took York in November 866. Northumbria was left under a compliant ruler. In 867 the Vikings seized Nottingham in Mercia; a joint Mercian and West Saxon force besieged them without result, and the Mercians paid them to withdraw. In 869 the army returned to East Anglia and, from its winter base at Thetford, defeated and killed King Edmund, later venerated as Edmund the Martyr.

Reinforced in 871 by a second fleet, the army turned on Wessex. The West Saxons won at Ashdown, where the Viking leader Bagsecg was killed, but the fighting was inconclusive and Alfred, who became king that year, bought a pause. The army wintered in London, then at Torksey, and in 873 at Repton. In 874 it drove King Burgred of Mercia into exile and installed Ceolwulf in his place.

The force then split. Halfdan led one part north, campaigned against the Picts and Strathclyde Britons, and by 876 was dividing Northumbrian land among his followers, who began to farm it. Another part, under Guthrum, struck at Wessex from Cambridge and Wareham.

In 878 Alfred defeated Guthrum at the Battle of Edington. Guthrum accepted baptism and withdrew, and a later treaty between the two men fixed a boundary between their territories. Guthrum ruled East Anglia until his death in 890. The lands under Scandinavian control across northern and eastern England became known as the Danelaw. Alfred responded with a network of fortified burhs, a reorganised army and new warships, and a later Viking army that attacked Wessex in the 890s achieved little before breaking up in 896.

At Repton in Derbyshire, excavations found a mass grave holding the remains of at least 249 people, most of them adult men. Radiocarbon results announced in 2018 placed them in the late ninth century, consistent with the army's winter there. A cremation cemetery at nearby Heath Wood is probably also linked to the army. The campaign is one of the defining episodes of the Viking Age.

Our 800 and 900 maps show the separate Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, with the Danes across the North Sea in Denmark. The 1000 map shows a single Kingdom of England.