Alfred the great

In 871, the fourth and youngest son of Aethelwulf, Alfred, had become King of Wessex, a much-assailed and reduced kingdom. He bribed the Norsemen to stop their further advance westward; instead they swept north. By 876, they returned. Under Alfred, the West Saxons put up a fierce resistance but they were gradually driven back until, at the lowest point of his fortunes, Alfred took refuge at Athelney in the Somerset marshes in the spring of 878. From here he rallied his forces to defeat the Danish leader, Guthrum, at the battle of Edington in May of that year. This was followed up by Guthrum's surrender and promise to adopt Christianity, set out in the Treaty of Wedmore.

Only one English king has ever been dubbed 'the Great'. Though he never ruled more than Wessex, Kent and part of Mercia, Alfred earned this description not only through his prowess and steadfastness as a military leader but also by his statesmanship, scholarship and care for his nation. Unlike previous kings such as Offa, he was a man of culture who thought deeply about moral issues.

The national tradition of England stems from his success, for otherwise, whatever country ultimately emerged from Viking conquest, it would have had another name and perhaps its destiny set on other paths. His arrest of the Norsemen's progress made it possible for his successors to regain for the Anglo-Saxons what had been lost to the invaders. Although it is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the history of national events founded by Alfred himself, that says so, there is no reason to doubt its comment that: 'all the English people submitted to Alfred except those who were under the power of the Danes.' To those who feared conquest, and to those already conquered, the King of Wessex offered the only real hope.

While he had peace, Alfred prepared for war, renewing his army and creating a fleet to guard the coasts, and building fortifications round his main towns. War duly recurred in 886 and 892, with new Danish invasions, and the Danish kingdoms of eastern England coming to their support. Between 892 and 896, there was again open warfare as a further effort was made to make England a wholly Viking country; it was a bitter campaign and in the end the raiders turned away to find easier pickings in northern Europe. England was left a divided country.

North of a line from London to Chester were kingdoms of the Norsemen, East Anglia, the land of the 'Five Boroughs' of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Stamford, ruled by independent earls, and the kingdom of Jorvik – more than half of the country in overall extent. This was the Danelaw, a great swathe of the country where the Norse imprint would remain for centuries to come, long after the establishment of a unified state. Place names, local dialect words, even regional accents, reveal the long period of occupation and colonization and the slow commingling of the Norse and Anglo-Saxon populations.

Alfred's successors

The frontier was not a natural one and was inevitably transgressed. The Anglo-Saxons did not remain united. When Alfred's son, Edward, succeeded him in 899, a disaffected cousin joined the Danes and invaded Wessex, causing three years of warfare. Inheritance was always likely to cause trouble in cases like this, where the grown sons of Alfred's elder brother had at least as much claim to the kingship as the son of Alfred. The right of a king's eldest son to inherit was still far from being accepted practice. Western Mercia had been under a sub-king, whose widow was Edward's sister, Aethelflaed, ‘Lady of Mercia’; and brother and sister operated a co-ordinated policy, responding to incursions from the Danelaw by attacking and annexing territory. The last Danish King of East Anglia was killed in battle in 921. By Edward's death in 924, the realm he had inherited had been greatly enlarged to encompass all thе country south of the Humber. His son, Athelstan, first secured York as a sub-kingdom and then took it over. This was empire-building on a scale not seen before. The princes and chiefs of Wales also acknowledged his power by the payment of a large annual tribute. Cornwall, whose British population was again restive under English rule, was invaded and forcibly pacified. For the first time since Britannia was a single Roman province, one man could claim to be master of all England, and Athelstan s prestige was such that his numerous sisters were sought as brides by great European potentates, even Emperor Otto I. It was in support of one of his European alliances that Athelstan sent the first English force to intervene in continental power politics, in 939. Within Great Britain, Athelstan had made the Kings of Strathclyde and of the Scots acknowledge his supremacy in 927. Ten years later, they combined with Irish Vikings to attack him. But at the unidentified site of Brunanburh, Athelstan soundly defeated them. His assemblage of kingdoms and statelets barely lasted for his lifetime, however. By 939 the Vikings under Olaf Guthfrithson had retaken York and in the following year re-established a Viking kingdom around it. Though Athelstan's successors, Edmund and Eadred, fought to regain the English hold, a further Viking revival took place in 947 under Erik Bloodaxe, expelled as the King of Norway, but accepted as king at York. It was not a straightforward business. The Dublin and York Viking kingdoms fought one another, and there was much changing of sides.