Viking Invasions of England

According the the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

"In this year Ealdorman Ceorl with the contingent of the men of Devon fought against the heathen army at Wicganbeorg, and the English made a great slaughter there and had the victory. And for the first time, heathen men stayed through the winter on Thanet. And the same year 350 ships came into the mouth of the Thames and stormed Canterbury and London and put to flight Brihtwulf, king of the Mercians, with his army, and went south across the Thames into Surrey. And King, Æthelwulf and his son Æthelbald fought against them at Aclea with the army of the West Saxons, and there inflicted the greatest slaughter [on a heathen army] that we have ever heard of until this present day, and had the victory there."

"And the same year, King Athelstan and Ealdorman Ealhhere fought in ships and slew a great army at Sandwich in Kent, and captured nine ships and put the others to flight."

The kingdom of Northumbria was in the middle of a civil war with Ælla and Osberht both claiming the crown. The Vikings led by Ubba and Ivar were able to take the city with little trouble.

The Battle of York was fought between the Vikings of the Great Heathen Army and the Kingdom of Northumbria on the 21 March 867. In the spring of 867 Ælla and Osberht put aside their differences and united in an attempt to push the invaders out of Northumbria. The battle started well for the Northumbrian forces, who were able to break through the city's defences. It was at this point that the experience of the Viking warriors was able to show through, as the narrow streets nullified any advantage of numbers the Northumbrians may have had. The battle ended with a slaughter of the Northumbrian army, and the death of both Ælla and Osberht.

After ascending the throne, Alfred spent several years fighting Viking invasions.

The Viking king of Northumbria, Halfdan Ragnarrson – one of the leaders of the Viking Great Army (known to the Anglo-Saxons as the Great Heathen Army) – surrendered his lands to a second wave of Viking invaders in 876. In the next four years, Vikings gained further land in the kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia as well.

The Battle of Brunanburh was fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England, and an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin; Constantine II, King of Scotland, and Owain, King of Strathclyde. The battle is often cited as the point of origin for English nationalism: historians such as Michael Livingston argue that "the men who fought and died on that field forged a political map of the future that remains [in modernity], arguably making the Battle of Brunanburh one of the most significant battles in the long history not just of England, but of the whole of the British Isles."

The Northumbrians rejected Eadred as the king of the English and made the Norwegian Eric Bloodaxe (Eirik Haraldsson) their king. Eadred responded by invading and ravaging Northumbria. When the Saxons headed back south, Eric Bloodaxe's army caught up with some them at Castleford and made 'great slaughter. Eadred threatened to destroy Northumbria in revenge, so the Northumbrians turned their back on Eric and acknowledged Eadred as their king.

The English government decided that the only way of dealing with these attackers was to pay them protection money, and so in 991 they gave them £10,000. This fee did not prove to be enough, and over the next decade the English kingdom was forced to pay the Viking attackers increasingly large sums of money.

St. Brice's day massacre was the killing of Danes in the Kingdom of England on FrieventDate, the 13th of November 1002, ordered by King Æthelred the Unready. In response to the frequent Danish raids, King Æthelred ordered the execution of all Danes living in England.

King Æthelred sent his sons Edward and Alfred to Normandy, and himself retreated to the Isle of Wight, and then followed them into exile. On Christmas day 1013 Sweyn was declared King of England. Sweyn began to organise his vast new kingdom, but he died there on 3 February 1014, having ruled England for only five weeks. King Æthelred returned.

Cnut and his sons, Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut, ruled England over a combined 26-year period (1016–1042). After Harthacnut's death, the English throne reverted to the House of Wessex under Æthelred's younger son Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042–1066). As a Danish prince, Cnut won the throne of England in 1016 in the wake of centuries of Viking activity in northwestern Europe. His later accession to the Danish throne in 1018 brought the crowns of England and Denmark together. Cnut sought to keep this power-base by uniting Danes and English under cultural bonds of wealth and custom, as well as through sheer brutality. Cnut ruled England for nearly two decades. The protection he lent against Viking raiders—many of them under his command—restored the prosperity that had been increasingly impaired since the resumption of Viking attacks in the 980s. In turn the English helped him to establish control over the majority of Scandinavia, too