Jórvík: Encyclopedia II - Jórvík - History

Jórvík - History

York had been founded as the Roman legionary fortress of Eboracum and revived as the Anglo-Saxon trading port of Eoforwic. It was first captured in November 866 by a large army of Swedish Vikings, called the "Great Heathen Army" by Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, which had landed in East Anglia and made their way north, aided by a supply of horses with which King Edmund of East Anglia bought them off and by civil in-fighting between royal candidates in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria. Declaring a truce, the rivals for the throne of Northumbria joined forces but failed to retake the city in March 867, and with their deaths the kingdom Deira came under Swedish control, and the Northumbrian royal court fled north to refuge in Bernicia. A Viking attempt against Mercia the same season failed and in 869 their efforts against Wessex were fruitless in the face of opposition from Kings Ethelred and Alfred the Great.

Jórvík became the capital of a flourishing small kingdom when the Danish warlord, Guthrum, headed for East Anglia, while Prince Halfdan Wide-Embrace of Sjaelland and Uppsala took the York throne in AD 876. The kingdom covered the three Ridings of Yorkshire and extending into Westmorland and Lancashire, often employing Anglian local kinglets.

Jorvik was founded by Halfdan Ragnarsson as a Swedish institution but was passed onto the Norwegians, their nearest kin. It was an impracticable application of Swedish resources from Gamla Uppsala to Jorvik, especially when the Russian market at Novgorod and Kiev was making the Swedes very wealthy in Fornsigtuna. Danish rulers were in the Danelaw(South of the Humber and Mersey), which consisted of the East Anglian Kingdom and Five Boroughs/Jarldoms(based upon the Kingdom of Lindsey). King Canute the Great would later "reinstall" a Norwegian dynasty of jarls in Northumbria(Eric of Hlathir), with a Danish dynasty of jarls in East Anglia (Thorkel). Northern England would continue to be a source of intrigue for the Norwegians until Harald III of Norway's death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

The area of the palace built by the Viking rulers was known as the Konungsgårthr and is today known as King's Square, which nucleates the Ainsty. New streets, lined by regular building fronts for timber houses were added to an enlarging city between AD 900 and 935, dates arrived at by tree-ring chronology carried out on remaining posts preserved in anaerobic clay subsoil. The Viking kingdom was absorbed into England in 954, without cramping its economic success: by ca 1000, the urban boom brought Viking Jórvík to a population total second only to that of London within the British Isles. William the Conqueror brought the independence of Jórvík to an end and established garrisoned castles in the city.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki