Ragnar Lodbrok
The ‘great fleet’ that arrived in 865 included among its leaders several sons of the celebrated Danish king Ragnar Lodbrok (‘Hairy-breeches’), who was regarded in the North as the very epitome of a true Viking. The sons in question were Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan, and Ubbi or Hubba, and Ragnar’s saga would have it that their attack was launched purely to avenge the alleged death in the 850s of their father at the hands of King Aella of Northumbria, who was supposed to have had him cast into a snake-pit after capturing him in battle.


Despite the fact that Aella had come to power only in 866 and Ragnar had in reality probably been killed by a Norse king in Ireland, it is undeniable that, after they had spent a year looting and gathering reinforcements in East Anglia, Ragnar’s sons attacked and took York at the end of 867; and the next year captured and ritually executed Aella, subsequently overrunning much of Northumbria and eastern Mercia (868).


Erik Bloodaxe
The dubious distinction of being the last Viking king of York undoubtedly belongs to a son of King Harald Fairhair of Norway, the celebrated Erik Bloodaxe, who has been described as ‘the most famous Viking of them all’. He reigned in Northumbria twice, in 947–48 and 952–54. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states simply that in 954 ‘the Northumbrians drove Erik out’ and that King Eadred of England thereby succeeded to the kingdom; but later Icelandic sagas, deriving their information from a lost 10th-century Northumbrian chronicle, give a fuller account. According to them, Erik was confronted at a place called Stainmore by ‘King Olaf, a tributary king of King Edmund [sic]’:


‘[King Olaf ] had gathered an innumerable mass of people, with whom he marched against King Erik. A dreadful battle ensued, in which many Englishmen fell; but for each one that fell there came three in his place from the country round about, and when evening came on the loss of men turned against the Northmen and many were killed. Towards the end of the day, King Erik and five kings with him fell. Three of them were Guttorm, Ivar and Harek [the last-named being one of his sons]; the others being Sigurd and Ragnvald [the latter one of his brothers] and with them died the two sons of Turf-Einar [the earl of Orkney], Arnkel and Erlend.’


A much later English chronicle, probably working from the same lost account, would have it that Erik was in fact defeated and killed by a certain Maccus (Magnus), son of Olaf, rather than by Olaf himself, and it is likely – since his army comprised Englishmen – that the sagas’ ‘Olaf ’ is in fact an error for Oswulf, who was the Saxon earl of Bamburgh.


The Varangian Guard
Real Vikings, referred to by the Rus, Arabs and Byzantines alike as ‘Varangians’, nevertheless continued to feature in Russian history, sizeable bands of them being hired as mercenaries by successive Kievan and Novgorodian princes – a practice that continued well into the 11th century, the last reference to Viking mercenaries in Russia dating to 1043. Many such Vikings, after a spell in Russia, went on to Constantinople and joined the Byzantine army, in which 700 of them are recorded as early as 911. Thereafter, references to Vikings in Byzantine employ are frequent: seven ships crewed by 415 Vikings from Russia accompanied a Byzantine expedition to Italy in 935; six ships and 629 men sailed on a similar expedition to Crete in 949; Rus or Viking troops are recorded fighting the Arabs in 955 and taking part in a campaign in Sicily in 968. Twenty years later, in 988, Vladimir of Kiev (r. 978–1015) sent as many as 6,000 Vikings to the assistance of Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025), and it was from among these that the celebrated Varangian Guard was subsequently established.

Even Harald Hardrada, future king of Norway, became an officer in the Guard.


Cnut the Great
The warlike activities of the Vikings were newsworthy, from early raids on monasteries that were considered untouchable, to the conquest of major kingdoms in England in the 9th century and settlement by force in many parts of Britain, Ireland and Continental Europe, and eventually the creation of a short-lived North Sea empire (1028–35) under Cnut the Great, which included the whole of England, Denmark and Norway. Encouraged by the lure of such massive sums of money, Danish Vikings raided England almost every year between 997 and 1014; and the country’s ill-led military establishment weakened and collapsed beneath the systematic onslaught that was masterminded by Svein Forkbeard, king of Denmark (c.984–1014). 

Eventually, in 1013, the people of Northumbria and East Anglia acknowledged Svein as their sovereign, thereby establishing a line of Viking kings of England which comprised Svein (r. 1013–14); his son Cnut (r. 1016–35), and the latter’s own sons Harald Harefoot (r. 1035–40) and Harthacnut (r. 1040–42). Though this line died out with Harthacnut, its claim to the English throne was later revived by the Norwegian king Harald Sigurdsson, who had inherited it from his nephew Magnus the Good, king of Denmark and Norway (r. 1042–47). This period of Danish rule in probably helped to diminish any clear distinction between Anglo-Saxon and Danish traditions, which already overlapped.


Harald Sigurdsson
Harald Sigurdsson, posthumously nicknamed Hardradi or Hardrada (‘the Ruthless’), had led a chequered and varied career typical of many Viking chieftains. The son of a petty Norwegian king ruling the Ringerike district, he had fought in support of his half-brother King Olaf Haraldsson (Saint Olaf) at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030, where the latter was killed. He thereafter fled east to the court of King Jaroslav of Russia. After staying there for several years, during which time he fought against the Poles, he set off to Constantinople ‘with a large following’ and was enrolled into the celebrated Varangian Guard. He fought against the Arabs in Anatolia and Sicily under Georgios Maniakes, and under other Byzantine generals in southern Italy and Bulgaria, before being imprisoned in Constantinople for apparent misappropriation of imperial booty taken in the course of these expeditions. He appears to have escaped during a popular rising against the Emperor Michael Calaphates in 1042, and thereafter returned to Scandinavia via Russia. Reaching Denmark, he assisted Svein Ulfsson in his struggle against Harald’s nephew, King Magnus, for the succession to the Danish throne. However, he went over to Magnus in 1045 in exchange for a half-share in the kingdom of Norway, succeeding to the other half on Magnus’ death in 1047.

He was 51 years old when, in 1066, Tostig, the exiled earl of Northumbria and brother of King Harold Godwinson of England, arrived in Norway in search of military support to regain his lost earldom. Hardrada had had designs on the English throne since at least the 1050s, and needed little encouragement from Tostig.

The saga says Hardrada at Stamford Bridge:

‘fell into such a battle-fury that he rushed ahead of his men, fighting two-handed so that neither helmets nor mail corselets could withstand him, and all those who stood in his path gave way. It looked then as if the English were on the point of breaking in flight … But now King Harald was struck in the throat by an arrow, and that was his death-wound. He fell, as did all those who had advanced with him, except for those who retreated with the king’s banner.’

You can read more in Vikings: Culture of Discovery and Plunder