Resistance was not only battle
The Danish armies of the 9th century are covered in the story of the Great Heathen Army. This article picks up the English response: what Wessex did to survive, what compromise looked like, and how England ended up ruled by Danish kings in the 11th century. The word “invasion” suits the early decades, but the longer story includes bargaining, intermarriage and shared government.
Alfred and the fight for Wessex
When Alfred became king of Wessex in 871, his kingdom was one of the last English realms still standing. He bought time at first, with payments and truces, and he struggled. Tradition places a low point in early 878, when a Danish force under Guthrum struck deep into Wessex and Alfred withdrew into the marshes of Somerset. The famous story of the burned cakes is a later legend and should not be taken as history.
Later in 878 Alfred gathered troops from nearby shires and defeated Guthrum at Edington. Guthrum accepted baptism, with Alfred as his sponsor, and withdrew from Wessex. That outcome shows the pattern in these wars: victory often meant forcing an opponent to the table rather than destroying him.
Rebuilding defenses
Alfred is also remembered for reforms, though historians debate how much was new. Sources describe:
- a network of fortified towns called burhs, designed so that most people lived within a short distance of a refuge;
- a reorganized army, with part of the force ready to serve while others stayed at home to farm;
- some ships built to confront raiders at sea, with mixed success;
- a push for learning and translation of Latin works into English, driven by his view that the kingdom needed educated churchmen.
The burhs were useful because Danish forces were good at moving fast and poor at storming defended places.
The treaty and the Danelaw
At some point after Edington, Alfred and Guthrum agreed a treaty that set a boundary between English and Danish control. It ran roughly along the Thames, up the River Lea, and on toward Watling Street, though the exact line is debated. It also set rules on compensation and dealings between the two peoples. The region under Scandinavian law and custom later came to be called the Danelaw, a term that is not a precise frontier but a broad cultural and legal area in the north and east.
Place names ending in -by and -thorpe, and a number of Scandinavian loanwords in English, show that settlers and local people lived side by side. The settlement of those regions is discussed further in the context of Viking settlement abroad.
The reconquest
Alfred’s son Edward the Elder and his daughter Æthelflæd, who ruled Mercia, pushed north in the early 10th century, building fortresses and taking Danish-held towns. Later kings, including Athelstan, extended royal authority further. The Scandinavian kingdom at York survived into the middle of the 10th century, and by the 950s the northern lands were under a single English crown. This was less a clean conquest than a slow shift of power.
The second wave and the Danish kings
Large-scale raiding returned in the late 10th century. King Æthelred II faced repeated attacks and paid sums known as Danegeld, a policy that bought short pauses but has long been criticized as encouraging more demands. In 1002 he ordered an attack on Danes living in England, an event that later tradition associates with St Brice’s Day, and the details and scale are uncertain.
Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark led campaigns that drove Æthelred abroad in 1013, and Sweyn’s son Cnut took the throne after years of fighting, becoming king in 1016. Cnut ruled with English law codes and English advisers, and he held England as part of a wider North Sea realm. His sons’ reigns were brief, and the English line under Edward the Confessor returned in 1042.
What changed
By the time of the Norman Conquest, England had already been shaped by Scandinavian influence in law, language and landholding. Several northern regions had distinct customs, and the crown had absorbed lessons about taxation and defense. The English did not simply win or lose; they adapted, and many Danish settlers became English.