In AD 793, the island monastery of Lindisfarne suffered a devastating attack: the first recorded Viking raid on Britain. It would not be the last. Over the coming decades, countless coastal communities were struck by similar storms of slaughter and pillage: smash-and-grab assaults that saw the marauders’ longships disappearing back over the horizon as quickly as they had come (see CA 298). In 865, however, matters escalated dramatically. A remarkably laconic entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes that this year saw the landing of ‘a great heathen army’ in East Anglia. Today known as the Viking Great Army, this was an unprecedentedly large force made up of war bands from across Scandinavia who had come together for a common purpose: invasion. Unlike earlier Viking incursions, these warriors were not just seeking loot – they also wanted land.
Progress was horrifyingly swift. Within a year, York had fallen under Scandinavian control, and as the Army swept across England, kingdoms toppled in its wake. By 878, only Wessex remained unconquered – and although Alfred the Great’s victory at the Battle of Edington finally halted this seemingly unstoppable momentum, the terms of this hard-won peace saw swathes of northern and eastern England given over to Viking control, forming the Danelaw. As well as redrawing the political map, successive waves of settlement into this area gave rise to a distinctive Anglo-Scandinavian culture whose traces can still be seen today. Across the region, Norse influences echo in dialect words, in place names, and in the archaeological record.
This theme forms the focus of a major new exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, which traces the impact of the Viking Age across the north of England. Its displays bring together artefacts from the museum’s own collections with national and regional loans, many of which are on public display for the first time, and including famous finds and new discoveries. The museum is based in York, a key power centre for the Vikings. Then known as Jórvík, its well-preserved remains were famously uncovered during the Coppergate excavations of 1976-1981 (CA 58) and subsequent investigations within the city – but Viking North sets out to explore evidence of Scandinavian activity and influence beyond familiar urban environments, drawing on recent archaeological research.
Feats of engineering