Last time, in Blood of the Vikings,
I found new evidence for hit-and-run raids by Vikings from Norway.
Tonight my journey follows the first invasion of England by Danish Vikings.
The first Viking warrior to be excavated in modern times.
How did he get such brutal wounds?
Are these broaches evidence of the Vikings' trading, or settling down?
And can genetics help us track Viking immigrants in Dark Age Britain?
They were described as a great raiding army.
Bigger than any Viking force that had been seen before.
By 865 they'd laid waste of much of Europe.
Hungry for new targets they set a course across the channel...
to Britain.
English monks reported that it was somewhere here,
along the coast of East Anglia,
that the Vikings first came to Britain as a full-scale army.
It marked the beginning of a century of fighting,
not just for the lands of England,
but for the very souls of its people.
Historical records are sketchy.
We don't know what triggered the invasion.
But it's likely the force numbered several thousand,
gathered from a ragbag of pirate groups
and led by Danish chieftains like Guthrum, Halfdan
and the ferocious Ivar the Boneless.
Once ashore, the took horses and headed inland.
The area that is now England
was populated by a mixture of indigenous Britons and invading Angles and Saxons.
There were four separate kingdoms.
Wessex was under Saxon rule.
While Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia
were controlled by Angles.
Divided, they were vulnerable to the Vikings' tactics of surprise.
Vikings! Vikings!
"866.
"Here, the raiding army went from East Anglia,
"over the mouth of the Humber to York city.
"An immense slaughter was made of the Northumbrians."
The Vikings' trail of destruction is easy to follow
from grim accounts in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
"869. Here, the raiding army took winter quarters at Thetford.
"And the Danish killed the king.
"870. Here to Reading in Wessex,
"a great slaughter was made.
"There were many thousands killed
"and fighting went on till night."
These writings paint a vivid picture of the impact of the Viking army on England.
But were events really this dramatic?
And did Viking warriors eventually become Viking settlers?
I hope to find new evidence
by following in the tracks of the Great Army.
"873. In this year the army went from Lindsey to Repton
"and took up winter quarters there.
"And they conquered all that land."
My journey brings me to a village in the Midlands.
Repton, in the 9th century was home to the main royal monastery of Mercia.
So capturing it was an important victory for the Vikings.
But for once, we have more than just the monks' words.
What's really exciting to me is that this is the only place in the whole of England
where archaeological discoveries bring us face to face
with this terrifying Viking army.
The first clear evidence appeared at the ancient parish church of Saint Wystan's.
In the 1970's and 80's, an excavation was mounted here by Oxford archaeologists
Pr. Martin Biddle and his Danish-born wife, Birthe Kjølby-Biddle.
It was this place, with its stone buildings and its wealth.
Its people who could be ransomed, its books which could be ransomed,
that attracted the Vikings in the autumn of 873.
When they came, this place was the most important place in Mercia.
And they caused mayhem.
They damaged the church, so that it had to be rebuilt afterwards,
they turned it into a fortress,
they buried their people outside it and inside it.
This is a pivotal site in the history of England.
But there's one thing that is certain,
it would be best not to be here in 873.
The Biddles started by investigating the history of the church.
But before long, strong evidence emerged in Repton
for the presence of Vikings.
We might have a ditch in here.
So, we're trying to find the edges of the ditch.
The ditch was part of a massive D-shaped enclosure
that ran between the church and river Trent.
A classically Viking defensive structure
where the church is part of the fortress.
Then pagan burials began to appear
right next to the church.
And when we were digging here,
gradually we came down to the layers
where we found a little stone-mound here
***
Excavated that, and below that we found two graves,
and one of them was lying just there.
We were excavating it and it seemed special
maybe because of the stones above it.
A very experienced volunteer was digging the head-end of it,
and she said, "I found something strange."
And I said, "What is it Joan?"
"Well, it's shaped like an anchor."
"Oh, my god. It's a Thor's hammer."
And Thor's hammer is the mark of the pagan god Thor
and pagan Vikings, men especially,
would have buried their dead as a sign of his power,
like we could have buried with the cross.
I was actually digging the foot-end
and I said, "It's very strange. He's got three legs!"
And I said, "We've got a sword. We've got a Viking sword!"
And I ran off to find Martin and tell him all about it.
And there it was.
Mysteriously, a boar's tusk had been placed between the man's legs.
And at the top of his femur
was what looked like a particularly nasty wound.
It's the first Viking warrior grave in England
to be excavated using modern archaeological techniques.
He was buried with a companion.
And nearby a third skeleton was found buried with a Viking gold ring.
But if these were members of the Great Army,
where are the others?
The Biddles turned their attention to the vicarage garden.
So there was this mound in the garden,
and the vicar said to us,
"Look, we might have to sell off the vicarage garden."
Never happened, fortunately.
"Please, come have a look at this mound first. Tell us what it is."
So that's how we started here in 1980.
So when you came here there was still a mound, was there?
There was indeed, yes.
The Biddles' research uncovered a strange report of an excavation
way back in 1,686.
One Thomas Walker told a story of how he dug up an enigmatic mound
and discovered a stone-coffin containing 'a humane body nine-foot long,
'surrounded by a hundred other bodies'.
Was this the same mound as the one at the bottom of the vicar's garden?
Martin and Birthe wanted to know.
Now, what on earth is it?
The worst possible,
is that it is the Victorian garden feature when the house was built.
Next possibility - medieval mill-mound.
Next possibility - Viking burial mound.
So, we don't know and we have to find out.
Gradually, as the first layers were removed,
evidence of a pagan burial mound was revealed.
But what they eventually found
was beyond all their expectations.
They unearthed the bones of 250 people lying in an ancient charnel house
which had later been covered by a pagan mound.
80% of the bodies were male.
And even though many of the were particularly tall,
there was no sign of the giant mentioned in 1,686.
But among the bones were clues that pointed to the Great Army.
So we had this extraordinary mass of completely disordered human bones,
but we also got four and a half silver pennies.
Absolutely datable to 873-4 exactly when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
says the Vikings wintered here.
The evidence from the coins
points to the use of the mound at the time of the Great Army.
But what about the missing giant?
By coincidence, one of the army's original leaders, Ivar the Boneless,
known for his immense physical stature, is thought to have died in 873.
One might discuss whether it's Ivar or not,
but this is a very coherent suggestion that it is,
it has to be an absolutely major leader.
We know it's 873-4, so it's one of this very, very rare occasions
when archaeology actually does confront a historic event.
We have the historic event in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles,
we've got these things happening here, we now can flesh out that enormously,
we've got this great person buried, it might be Ivar.
The big problem is, who are these people buried around the central burial?
Are they English? Are they Mercians?
Or are they Scandinavians?
We may not have found the Vikings' leader,
but we do have the warrior with his Thor's hammer and sword.
His skull has been sent to medical artist,
Dr Caroline Wilkinson, at Manchester University.
She used the anatomy of the skull to put a face to it.
Initially this technique was developed as a forensic tool
for the identification of unidentified bodies.
As you can see here the muscles of the face
have been built onto the skull one by one.
So we start with the larger muscles that you use for eating and talking
and opening and closing your eyes,
and then we end up with these finer muscles that you use
for facial expression.
So at the finished-muscle stage you can see here
you can already see the shape and proportions of the face
and the overall shape.
So you can already get some idea of what this person's going to look like.
By coincidence, while Caroline was working on the skull,
a pathologist colleague passing by noticed something unusual about it.
Prompted by his comments,
the Biddles invited him to take a fresh look at the whole skeleton.
The probable cause of death is two superimposed penetrating wounds here.
Two separate wounds delivered one after the other.
The width of the wound is too narrow for an Anglo-Saxon sword.
The only thing that really fits the bill is a two-edge, long, thin spear.
But there are other wounds, for example, the arm here
has been struck by some very sharp object
which has cut right through and into the bones of the lower arm.
- So that is a slicing wound? - It is a wound that has come
straight down the arm; effectively it's had a chunk of his arm cut out.
But is that the sort of injury you could sustain if you were fighting?
- A glancing sword blow, like that? - Yes.
But that wouldn't kill him immediately.
Then, in the spine, there is an area here,
in the lower thoracic spine
where there's very clear evidence
of a cut like this across the body of the vertebrae.
But is that inside?
That is inside. That's done from the body cavity.
So this man must have been, at least partly, eviscerated.
Had his guts taken out.
That was an injury that was brought about after death.
- This is deliberate mutilation? - Yes.
And what about this wound on the thigh?
Yes, that's certainly a wound and it extends actually
just onto the edge of the pubic bone.
You can see the continuity of the blow.
Oh, I see. So it's not just in there.
In the process, he would have probably lost his left testicle and most of his penis.
The blow would have come from just about where I'm standing,
and it would be something like a blow like that! Right down!
With a long handle, iron-axe. We looked together at the shape of that cut,
a V-shaped cut, and we are all of the opinion, I think,
a *** axe-blade is the more likely implement.
And you remember, Julian, it was just in that position,
lying across the bottom of the graveyard,
that we found the tusk of a wild boar and we always had the suspicion,
without, of course, the medical knowledge to be certain,
that that might have been a substitute for his missing parts.
So, literally, he would be complete on going to Valhalla.
There is also evidence of hacking at the feet.
We've placed the bones of the feet here
in no particular arrangement because they are so cut about.
Surely, whoever did this, must have really hated this person
to treat him in this way.
This treatment reflects,
not only what the Anglo-Saxon population feels about the Vikings,
but also what the Vikings did to the local population.
- So this is revenge, basically. - This is revenge.
Here is a vivid picture of a violent death.
A gruesome expression of the hatred of the time.
But this man, who was so brutally butchered,
and who was lay to rest with his companions
at the shadow of the church that they'd desecrated,
is not the only evidence from Repton for the Viking dead.
Just two miles away, in the hills near the village,
around 60 other mounds have been found,
which point to more pagan Viking burials.
Over the years the occasional artifact has been uncovered here,
like this sword with human bone burnt onto it.
Prompted by the discoveries in Repton,
archaeologists have decided to find out what else might be here.
The excavation is being run by a man who I met before
in a confusion over a hotel booking at an archaeological conference.
- Hello, Julian. - Hello, Julian.
It's my namesake, Dr. Julian D. Richards.
Yes, in fact there are two mounds here.
This large one that we've nearly completely excavated
and then a smaller mound to the south of it.*
Unlike the Biddles mound at the church,
these are not yielding complete skeletons.
Instead, there's evidence of a very different burial rite.
There's lines of charcoal isn't there?
That's right. It's just coming up where we're trowing here.
You can see it's starting to show through.
The charcoal suggests that the bodies were cremated before burial.
A practice common amongst pagan Vikings at the time.
Some important clues to who these people were have survived the burning.
Like this Viking ringpin
that would once have fastened a Viking's cloak.
But it doesn't necessarily mean that these people were part of the Great Army.
If these really are the burial mounds of part of the Viking army,
then why is it that on top of this hill they're cremating their dead
and then raising a mound over the funeral pyre,
whereas down in the valley they're burying their dead
in the grounds of a Christian church?
I think it would be just too big a coincidence
to have these very significant, very unusual, Viking sites
within just a few kilometers of another and not to be associated.
So we have one group of Vikings choosing to bury their dead at Repton
another group choosing to go back to a very pagan cremation,
animal sacrifice burial rite on the hilltop overlooking it.
I think this relates to divisions within the Viking camp.
Although there's no direct evidence to back up Julian's theory
if, as he believes, they represent two rival factions of Vikings,
it could help to explain what the monks reported next.
874. The Viking army left Repton and split up into two bands.
One band, under Halfdan, set up for the province of the Northumbrians.
875. Halfdan shared the whole province between himself and his men
and together with his army cultivated the land.
This marks the beginning of a whole new phase of the Viking age in England.
It's the first time that the Chronicles make any reference
to the Vikings settling down and farming.
In the spring of 874, while Halfdan's band were heading to Northumbria,
the other group lead by Guthrum headed south.
Their mission, to smash the Wessex Saxons.
They must have fancied their chances against the Saxons' young king.
His name was Alfred.
For four years, the Viking army battled its way through Wessex.
The Saxons were on the run.
To win power, the Vikings needed Alfred dead or alive.
But Alfred evaded capture.
He ran away and lived deep in the Somerset Marshes.
Where he disguised himself as a peasant.
Our most famous legend of Alfred comes from this time.
He'd been given shelter in a swineherd's hut.
The swineherd's wife left him watching some cakes baking on the fire
but, perhaps lost in thought of his threatened kingdom,
Alfred let them burn.
Unaware that she was talking to King Alfred
the woman gave him a good scolding.
The king was at his lowest ebb.
We'll never know how Alfred managed to recover from these depths
to raise an army and face the Vikings head to head.
But we do know that the decisive battle was Edington.
I'm met on Salisbury plain, the likely battle site,
by my guide, a local military expert.
Alfred would be keeping to the low ground
and not trying to expose himself too much.
But Guthrum would have been sticking on the high ground
to be able to observe his movement.
And then, of course, Alfred would have to break cover
and form into battle to meet him.
And then they would have formed, somewhere on one of these ridges up here,
a line of breast shields interlocked.
And they would have come against each other
shouting ruderies, banging their shields with their swords.
And then there would have been an absolute hand-to-hand clash.
Brutal, rough, vicious fighting.
So this really was the showdown, was it?
Absolutely. It was totally the showdown
and the advantage, of course, Alfred had was that he probably had more troops.
At length, he gained the victory through God's will.
He destroyed the Vikings with great slaughter
and pursued them hacking them down.
It's largely because of his great victory against the Vikings
that Alfred is known as 'the Great'.
But it's also for the way that he improved
the organisation and learning within his kingdom.
Our son's school in the heart of Wessex
is just one that's named in his honour.
Simon, what would have happened if Alfred had lost?
Yes, I can barely bear to think of what the consequence would have been.
But certainly it would have involved
a much larger spread of the Vikings into Wessex
and the consequences for the English would have been quite different.
Pr. Simon Keynes has translated the peace treaty
that was drawn up after that decisive battle.
This is the earliest surviving manuscript of the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum.
This is a very important moment in Anglo-Saxon political history.
The treaty shows that Alfred's victory was not as complete as it's often described.
Far from being able to banish the Vikings back to Denmark,
Alfred found it necessary to do a deal with them
and carve England in two.
The text goes straight on to describe this:
"'Ærest ymb ure landgemæra:' First concerning our boundaries,
and then it goes, "up the Thames
"and then up the Lea and along the Lea unto its source".
The boundary between Alfred's land and the Vikings'
ran from east of London to near Chester.
Alfred's compromise with the Vikings ensured a period of stability
and, importantly, time to build up his defences.
So although he accepted Viking rule in the north,
he still managed to enlarge his own territory to include part of Mercia.
Guthrum became king of East Anglia
but he was forced to accept Christianity.
When Alfred signed the treaty he was acknowledging for the first time
that the Vikings were here to stay.
The area north of the boundary that he'd agreed with Guthrum
was to become known as the 'Danelaw'.
But, just how Viking was it?
A big problem is that the historical record for Northern England
now comes to a halt.
The Vikings destroyed monasteries and with them, their written records.
It was complete media blackout.
But one important piece of evidence that has survived is place names.
To start with, there are over 850 place names in England that end in 'by'.
That's the old Danish name ending for 'farmstead' or 'village'.
Places like Selby and Derby, for example.
Add to this those place names that have got other Scandinavian endings
like 'thwaite' and 'thorpe'.
And those that combine a Viking name with a Saxon ending
like 'Grimston' for example.
And you end up with over 3,000
Scandinavian-influenced place names in England.
When the 'by' place names are plotted on a map of England
they fit in almost perfectly with the area of the Danelaw.
This is strong evidence that the Vikings had a big impact
in northern and eastern England.
And if these places really are where the Vikings settled,
then I should be able to find archaeological evidence to back this up.
But until recently,
no clear signs of a Viking settlement had ever been discovered.
It's something that's puzzled historians for decades.
But new evidence is starting to emerge,
and it comes, not from archaeologists, but from amateur enthusiasts.
It's difficult to describe an emotion.
It's just a buzz to think that I've got something that
was lost all those years ago. It's just a buzz.
So when I pick an object up I really get a sense of connexion
to the person that owned it and lost it.
The best thing I have found recently it was a Viking harness pendant
with two stylized serpents swallowing their own tails.
I remember very clearly the first Viking object I ever found.
It was just in the middle of a ploughed field,
it was a lovely trefoil strap distributor,
and as soon as I unearthed it I knew what it was
and I just sat there, gave out a yell,
and sat there cheering in the middle of the muddy ploughed field.
To actually hold of a Viking artifact would mean
that I'm taking myself back in history, back in time...
to when the Vikings probably first came here.
They may be plundering a village.
They may be having a fight
and they've lost whatever it is that I've found.
And a very interesting Viking buckle, just complete with its iron tongue,
that is a very unique one.
As an archaeologist, I've got very mixed feelings about metal detecting.
I've seen the damage that it can do to ancient sites,
and personally, I feel that the only people that should dig up artifacts
are those who are going to make sure that they end up in a museum.
But having said this, I can't deny that objects of Viking date
excavated, recorded properly, reported to museums
have made an enormous difference
to our understanding of this period.
A new scheme designed to encourage metal detectorists to declare their finds
has yielded hundreds of Viking artifacts from the Danelaw.
Dr Kevin Leahey from North-Lincolnshire Museum,
believes that they have a very important story to tell.
Until recently, until these detector finds started to come out,
it could be seriously argued that all we saw in 877
was a change in leadership.
That the leaders of the Great Army came in and took over,
they just sacked the bosses and took over
the running of Lincolnshire themselves and there was no folk movement.
Now we're getting good evidence for a movement of people.
And this pattern of Viking finds corresponds fairly well
with the distribution of Danish place names,
all the "by's" and "thorpe's" that we've got in Lincolnshire.
It's the everyday objects that are getting Kevin excited.
Small metal fittings, broaches, things like that
that were worn by Danish women,
and we are sure they were worn by Danish peasant women
because they're such poor quality they wouldn't be acceptable
to an Anglo-Saxon woman.
No Dane is going to come over here
and give a little broach like this to his English girlfriend
and expect her to be impressed.
The woman who wore this little broach was making a statement, you know,
about her Danish ancestry, about her cultural links.
This sort of poor quality metalwork doesn't really travel between cultures.
Are these objects changing our whole picture of Viking settlement, then?
It was a real folk movement.
But not just a wholesale uprooting of people leaving Denmark absolutely empty.
We now have a picture of Danish Viking invaders
bringing their women with them,
perhaps settling down.
But where are their houses and their farms?
A couple of years ago
detectorists searching a remote area of north Yorkshire
turned up a small cluster of unusual Scandinavian-style objects.
A geophysical survey of the area
revealed what looked like the outline of buildings.
Their investigation was another task for Dr Julian D. Richards.
And we moved northwards,
we moved and put a trench in the direction over here where we're going.
- ... on the crest of the ridge? - On the crest of the hill. That's right.
And here we found what we think is an Anglo-Scandinavian farmstead,
a Viking settlement.
It had a massive entrance way looking to the south,
looking down this valley over there.
And this had a huge ditch with a bank behind it,
probably a palisade on top of that, probably a wooden gate house as well.
Surely this wouldn't have been the only farmstead in the area, would it?
No, I think there would have been lots of
Anglo-Scandinavian settlement around here,
probably one every mile for that matter.
So, how many of these do we know about, then?
We don't know about any others, this is unique.
And the Vikings do seem to be invisible.
At last, some evidence for a Viking village.
But perhaps they preferred to live in towns.
My next stop is York, which according to the history books,
was a major power-base for the kings of the Danelaw.
And the city is full of Viking names -
roads ending in 'gate',
the Scandinavian word 'gata', meaning 'street'.
In the 70's, on Copper Gate,
archaeologists raced against time to dig for clues of Viking-age York
before they disappeared under a new shopping centre.
We thought that there would be Viking remains of some sort
but the finds we've made exceeded our wildest expectations.
This fantastic building standing 6-feet high
and 30,500 good objects we've got,
way beyond our best hopes.
York provides a picture of a wealthy trading centre.
There were exotic items like amber from the Baltic,
and silk from the Mediterranean.
There were dies for minting coins,
scales, and an enormous amount of metalwork.
York became a Viking boom town.
But none of this evidence tells us just how many Vikings settled.
So, can genetics answer this question?
The BBC has joined forces with University College London
to collect DNA samples from volunteers
across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
In a pioneering survey, they'll be searching for signs
of Viking genetic inheritance in the male Y chromosome.
The DNA from Britain and Ireland will be compared to other samples
taken in the Viking Scandinavian homelands
and in northern Europe.
And you don't have to look far to find people
with theories about their Viking ancestry.
The name 'Rimmer' is derived from 'riemer' which is Norse for a leather worker.
And curiously enough I trained as a saddler,
and my dad was a leather worker as well.
DNA can be extracted from cells scraped from the inside of the cheek.
But in England the scientists have teemed up with the national blood service
to increase the numbers of volunteers giving samples.
The team will try and find out if the Vikings settled in large numbers
and where.
It's something that's never been achieved before.
Just from the place name,
you of course don't know what happened in terms of the people.
You can imagine an elite group coming into an area
declaring the name of the place whatever they wanted it to be.
It doesn't mean that they brought an awful lot of people with them.
And I think, fundamentally, that's why archaeologists and historians
have been fighting so long about this questions.
Because it really just is hard to know what went on in terms of the people
from the little bit of cultural information that remains.
But, in principle, we can get at that question directly using genetics.
So it really does simply open up a new perspective
into what is an old and very difficult debate to resolve.
But Goldstein's team have had a setback.
While there are clear genetic patterns which distinguish the Norwegian Vikings
from other groups in Northern Europe,
it's not been possible to distinguish Danish Vikings quite so uniquely.
Three centuries before the Vikings arrived
Britain was invaded by two other groups of Europeans -
the Angles and the Saxons.
Both came from virtually next-door
to what would become the Danish Viking homeland.
And it's proving tricky to separate
these three groups of invaders genetically.
But at least they seem to have a different genetic signature
from the indigenous population -
the native Britons.
Although we haven't been able so far
to distinguish the Danish and Anglo-Saxon contributions
we have been able to learn something
about the genetic history of England anyway,
because what we can do is just lump together the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons
and consider those as invaders in England.
And then we can ask the question,
what proportion of England comes from that invading population,
and what proportion is indigenous?
So if we lump together all the invaders -
the Vikings, the Angles and the Saxons -
what do we find?
Then we can see immediate patterns in England
and, in particular, when we look in the general area of the Danelaw,
there's greater contributions from these invading populations
in comparison with areas farther south.
So we can see some very clear patterns in England
that tell us something about its genetic history that wasn't known before.
So, this is all new stuff, then?
This is all new. This is very interesting
that we've got this pattern straight away.
So the people who lived in the north and east of England
have more Viking and Anglo-Saxon in their blood
than those who lived in the south and west.
It's extraordinary that the genetic trace of these invaders
is still observable today,
over 1,500 years after the first of them landed.
Although the Danish Vikings had made themselves at home in the Danelaw,
the peace between Viking and Saxon was uneasy.
Sporadic fighting with Wessex resumed.
And 20 years after the signing of the peace treaty,
the Saxons were threatening to overrun the Danelaw.
But then something to re-ignite the power struggle.
In 902, the Viking kings of Dublin were suddenly kicked out by the Irish.
They headed for England.
Once more the Vikings were a force to be reckoned with.
Only this time, they weren't Danes.
The heathens described in the Irish Annals
were of Norwegian origin.
The Norwegian Vikings had taken the sea road
around the northern and western isles of Scotland to Ireland.
Dublin was a major trading post and the centre of their power.
So, what happened when they got kicked out?
A clue was found on the route from Norwegian-Viking Dublin
to Danish-Viking York.
At Cuerdale.
It was here in 1840 that a group of workmen
were repairing the banks of the Ribble.
As they dug their spades crunched into something metallic.
They discovered an astonishing 8,500 pieces of silver
weighing nearly 40 kilos.
They'd stumbled across what is still to this day
the largest hoard of Viking treasure ever found.
It dates to the beginning of the 900's.
Exactly when the Vikings were being expelled from Dublin.
The leading authority in the Cuerdale hoard is Pr. James Graham-Campbell.
The single, largest component of the ornamented material in the hoard
is of what we call Hyberno-Viking* origin,
made by Viking craftsmen working in Ireland.
Most particularly, these very characteristic broad-band arm-rings
that have this very bold stamping.
Who were these people? Who were the people who buried it?
It's more than an ordinary merchant's hoard
or the pay of a Viking crew member.
I quite fancy the old theory that it was in some way
an army pay chest.
And that it was related with the attempts of the Vikings
who had been expelled from Viking Dublin to build up their resources.
That's the general context
in which one could envisage this sort of accumulation of silver
arriving in north-west England.
The Cuerdale hoard contained silver from as far away as the Hindu Kush.
But what caught my attention
was a beautifully preserved group of coins from Viking York.
If a lot of this material seems to have come from Ireland,
how do you explain the coins from Viking York?
I mean, was this the York Vikings giving a donation to these people
to help them in their efforts?
Well, it wouldn't surprise me that was the explanation
because so many of the York coins
have come freshly from the moneyers' workshops.
They can never have been in circulation.
This one here, for instance, you can see how fresh it is.
The Cuerdale hoard is more than simply an amazing find of Viking treasure.
It seems to be saying something to us about the politics of the time.
Vikings raising money for arms.
Norwegians and Danes forming an alliance.
Ominous for their enemies.
Apart from the hoard, archaeological records for the period are sparse.
But there is one piece of evidence
that's been staring us in the face for centuries.
The Norwegians who came via Ireland
have left their mark in stone across the northern Danelaw.
Ancient images that still speak to us of Viking power.
Hundreds of pieces have been identified across northern England.
Their study has been a life's work for Professor Richard Bailey.
These massive sculptures called 'hogbacks'
were set over Viking-period tombs.
There's about 120 of them in the north of England.
So rather than setting up a cross this is more like a gravestone.
That's right. Yes. And the shape is that of a Viking house actually.
That curved roof is exactly like we know Viking houses were in the period.
These are very expensive monuments.
We know they were produced between about 920 and 950.
That's a very high number of high-status here
who are commissioning stones which, in some sense, say,
"Look, we are very high status-Vikings, Scandinavians."
Many Viking sculptures seem to mix Christian symbolism
with rather war-like images.
What we've got here is a little warrior with his pointed helmet,
spear down one side, battle-axe over here,
up here a shield, a sword just here.
So, what sort of statement were the Vikings making
by putting up crosses like this?
This is a real statement of power and control.
This is me as a warrior. This is how I won the land.
I may have been a farmer as well
but how I and my family want to be remembered is as a warrior.
To me, the evidence of the sculptures and the Viking place names
suggests a formidable Viking elite controlling much of northern England.
This was something that the Saxons would not be prepared to tolerate.
Despite the arrival of the Norwegian Vikings,
by 937, Alfred's grandson, Æthelstan had united England.
But he hadn't reckoned on the Scots and the Irish
joining forces with the Vikings.
Their aim, to bring down Æthelstan.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports a huge battle between the Anglo-Saxons
and the united forces of the Vikings and their new allies.
It was at a place called Brunanburh.
No one's quite sure of the location of Brunanburh.
But some linguists have suggested
that this old English name evolved to become Bromborough
which happens to be the name of this small town here on the Wirral.
The description of the battle itself
is one of the most lurid and gripping stories of Dark-Age literature.
"Never yet in this island was there a greater slaughter of people
"felled by the sword edges.
"Here, King Æthelstan, leader of warriors,
"struck life-long glory in strife around 'Brunanburh',
"clove the shield-wall.
"They left behind to divide the corpses
"the horny-beaked black raven,
"greedy war hawk, and the wolf, grey beast of the forest.
"Then the North men, disgraced in spirit,
"departed in nailed boats over deep water to seek out Dublin."
Æthelstan had taken the victory.
The surviving Viking leaders, deserted by their allies,
could now only hope to regain their old powerbase in York.
After their crushing defeat at the Battle of Brunanburh,
the Vikings were on the retreat.
The last Viking king of York, Eric Bloodaxe, was killed in 954.
And his death marked the beginning of a period
in which England was united under the house of Wessex.
But the story was far from over.
The Vikings would be back...
with a vengeance.