A group of Scandinavian combatants known as the Great Heathen Army or the Viking Great Army arrived in England in 865 AD. The Vikings had been conducting raids on wealthy locations, such as religious institutions, since the late eighth century. East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex were the four kingdoms that the Great Heathen Army sought to subjugate and inhabit. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is where the name Great Heathen Army originated. Three of the five sons of semi-legendary Ragnar Lodbrok—Halfdan Ragnarsson, Ivar the Boneless and Ubba—led the expedition. This was an invasion and annexation effort against the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms spread over fourteen years. Although it was said to be one of the largest forces of its sort, the sources that have survived do not provide a precise estimate of its size. The motive for this invasion is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, possibly because Viking incursions were rather prevalent at the time. On the other hand, The Tale of Ragnars Sons claims that Ragnar Lodbrok, a renowned Viking monarch of Sweden and Denmark, was killed, and that this was the reason for the invasion of England by the Great Heathen Army. According to the Viking saga, Ragnar invaded Northumbria while King Ælla was in power. The Northumbrians captured Ragnar after the Vikings were subdued. Ragnar was then put to death by being dropped into a pit filled with poisonous snakes by Ælla. When sons of Ragnar learned of the passing of their fathers, they made the decision to avenge his death. The invaders first touched down in East Anglia, where the king, in exchange for peace, gave them horses for their campaign. They stayed at Thetford for in the winter of 865-866 A.D. before moving up north to seize York in November 866 A.D. As the Anglo-Saxon merchantile port of Eoforwic, York was reborn from its foundation as the Roman legionary fortification of Eboracum. The army entered Mercia in great force in 867 A.D. and spent the winter in Nottingham. The Viking army returned to York for the winter of 868–869 A.D. after reaching an agreement with the Mercians. The Great Army reappeared in East Anglia in 869 A.D, capturing it and assassinating its monarch. The soldiers relocated to Thetford for the winter. The Vikings then relocated to Wessex in 871 A.D., where Alfred the Great offered to pay them to depart. In 871 or 872 A.D., the army then advanced to London to spend the winter. The army first travelled to York during the following fighting season, where it received fresh troop-support. After fighting in northeastern Mercia, this troop spent the winter at Torksey, a town on the Trent not far from the Humber. Much of Mercia appears to have been tamed during the subsequent fighting season. Coelwulf who took over after Burgred, the king of Mercia, escaped to another country. The army appears to have split up after spending the next winter at Repton on the middle Trent. While one party appears to have turned to conquer Wessex, the other appears to have gone back to Northumbria, where they had previously settled. Only the kingdom of Wessex remained unconquered at this point. Following the victory of Alfred the Great against the Vikings at the Battle of Edington in May 878, a settlement was signed that allowed the Vikings to continue dominating much of northern and eastern England.
[Information and Image Credit : Great_Heathen_Army , Wikiepdia] [Image : A map showing the paths travelled from 865 to 878 a.d. by the Great Heathen Army] [Image Availed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported; Wikipedia-Image-Author : Hel-hama ; (Please Relate to Individual Image URLs for More Usage Property)] [License-Link : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en ]
[Source-Image-URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:England_Great_Army_map.svg ]
Old World
_vector.svg.png)
.jpg)
