Back to the Mainly The Vikings calendar
In 845AD it is thought that some Vikings stayed for the English winter, thereby missing the winter skiing season back home.
It must have been a good idea as in 848AD the Vikings began a major invasion of England and this continued for many years.
There were still those four main kingdoms in England. These were Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia and Wessex.
In 866AD two nobles were fighting for the Northumbrian throne.
These two, Osberht and Ælle, were having a major battle outside York when a Viking army arrived. Two against one seems unfair but when the two were fighting each
other it was a lot easier for the one and so the Viking army defeated both men and killed them. Then they killed many people both inside and outside the city walls
of York, changed its name to Jorvik and it became the Viking capital of England. Northumbria gone.
In 870AD a huge Viking force landed in East Anglia and met up with the Viking army that had captured Jorvik. They then moved further into East Anglia,
where the king of the East Angles, Edmund, was killed in the fighting. He was beheaded and his head thrown away to prevent a proper burial. Much later, his head
was finally reunited with the body, and both were buried in the royal residence. This was in the town we now call, for obvious reasons, Bury St Edmunds. East
Anglia gone.
In the winter of 873-874 AD, Vikings occupied the royal monastery of Repton, on the river Trent. Their army then moved south from Repton into Mercia
where they were met by King Burhred, who was driven overseas and died in Rome. Mercia gone.
That just left one kingdom unconquered, the kingdom of Wessex which if you remember had been ruled by King Egbert way back in 829AD. It was now ruled
by his grandson who was called Æthelred. Æthelred was being supported by his younger brother, Alfred. The Vikings were led by a determined king called Guthrum. By
the way Æthelred and Ethelred were exactly the same, just one written in Old Norse and one in Anglo-Saxon English.
A series of bloody clashes between the armies of the Vikings and the kingdom of Wessex, under Æthelred and his brother Alfred, took place at Reading,
Ashdown, Basing and elsewhere. None of these battles were decisive but soon Æthelred had been killed and Alfred became King of Wessex
Forward to 878AD
