The Vikings seize York
The Vikings originally left Scandinavia due to overcrowding, but later on perceived the English to be weak. Viking chieftains thought they had as much right to rule as the Anglo-Saxons and the Viking presence in Yorkshire reached a crucial stage when a heathen force that had been bought-off in the south made its way north.
It arrived in York on 1 November AD 866 and captured the city in March of the following year. A Northumbrian relief army was no match for the Vikings, who were now permanently settled in the country as the new masters.
They built a large community within the old Roman walls of York and would eventually occupy the surrounding countryside and farm the land.
The Danes, Northmen, or Vikings were never at peace and depended wholly on war and plunder, visiting every part of the island with fire and sword. The nightmare facing the country was summed up by one author when he wrote,
The miseries and horrors, which the English or Saxons brought upon the British, these the Danes now brought in threefold upon the English. The same terrible sights that had burst upon the panic-stricken eyes of the British, three hundred years before, now amazed the English.The same line of blazing homesteads and corn-ricks against the midnight sky, the same slaughter of priests, women and infants.”
https://www.historyhit.com/what-was-the-danelaw-and-how-long-did-it-last/
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