The Scandinavian kingdom centred on York that ruled southern Northumbria from the 870s to 954, under Danish kings who struck coins for St Peter and then the Norse-Irish Uí Ímair of Dublin, until Eadred of England drove out Eric Bloodaxe.
The Kingdom of York was the Scandinavian realm that ruled the southern half of the old kingdom of Northumbria, roughly Yorkshire and the land north to the Tees, from the settlement of the Great Heathen Army in the 870s until 954. Its capital was the Roman and Anglian city of York, which the Norse called Jórvík, and which under their rule grew into one of the largest and richest towns in Britain.
Its history falls into two phases: a Danish kingdom of the late ninth and early tenth centuries, whose kings quickly became Christian and struck coins in the name of York's own saint, and a Norse-Irish kingdom from 919, when kings of the Uí Ímair dynasty ruled York and Dublin together. The West Saxon kings annexed it, lost it and retook it several times before Eadred of England ended it for good.
York fell to the Great Heathen Army on 1 November 866, while the Northumbrians were divided between two rival kings, Osberht and Ælla. The next spring the two kings attacked the city together and were both killed, and the Danes set up a Northumbrian client king to govern for them. In 875–876 Halfdan, one of the army's leaders, took the north for himself, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that he shared out the land of the Northumbrians among his men, who began to plough and support themselves.
The settlers did not sweep away Northumbrian institutions. The archbishops of York survived, and Christian Scandinavians were soon among their flock: the Danish king Guthfrith, who ruled from the 880s, was raised to the kingship with the support of the community of St Cuthbert and was buried in York Minster in 895. The archbishops became the most durable power in the kingdom, dealing with Danish, Norse and English kings in turn.
The Danish kings of York struck a large coinage that advertised their Christian kingship. Around 895–905 pennies were minted in the names of Siefred and Cnut, some bearing liturgical phrases such as DOMINUS DEUS REX, and from about 905 the kingdom issued coins in the name of St Peter, the patron of York's cathedral, to which the moneyers added a sword in the 920s.
Excavations at Coppergate between 1976 and 1981 revealed the town those coins circulated in: rows of timber houses and workshops on long narrow plots running down to the river Foss, where craftsmen worked bone, antler, leather and textiles, amber from the Baltic and jet from Whitby, and where the finds included a silk cap made from cloth imported from Byzantium or the Islamic world. York was the northern hub of a trading network joined by sea to Dublin, Scandinavia and the Continent.
In 919 Ragnall, a grandson of Ívarr and one of the Uí Ímair kings driven out of Dublin, seized York, and for thirty-five years the kingdom was bound to the Irish Sea world. His kinsman Sihtric Cáech ruled York and in 926 married a sister of Æthelstan, but when Sihtric died the next year Æthelstan annexed the kingdom and drove out Sihtric's kinsman Guthfrith. The Norse attempt to recover it, with the kings of the Scots and Strathclyde as allies, ended at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937.
The kingdom revived as soon as Æthelstan died. Olaf Guthfrithson crossed from Dublin in 939, took York and the Five Boroughs, and forced Edmund I of England to concede the east midlands; after Olaf died in 941 his cousin Olaf Sihtricson and Ragnall Guthfrithson competed for York until Edmund expelled both in 944. Eric Bloodaxe, whom Norse tradition identifies with a son of Harald Fairhair, ruled York in 947–948 and again from 952. When the Northumbrians abandoned him in 954 he was driven out and killed at Stainmore, and Eadred of England took the kingdom, which English kings thereafter governed through earls.
Halfdan (c. 875–877), leader of the Great Heathen Army, who shared out Northumbria among his men. Guthfrith (c. 883–895), the Christian Danish king buried in York Minster. Siefred and Cnut (c. 895–905), known chiefly from their coins. Ragnall (919–921), the first Uí Ímair king of York. Sihtric Cáech (921–927), who allied with Æthelstan by marriage. Olaf Guthfrithson (939–941), who restored the kingdom after Brunanburh. Olaf Sihtricson (941–944 and 949–952), later king of Dublin. Eric Bloodaxe (947–948 and 952–954), the last king of York.
The kingdom left York a Scandinavian city in speech and street names long after 954. Its streets are still 'gates', from Old Norse gata, as in Coppergate, Micklegate and Stonegate, and Yorkshire was divided into three ridings, from the Norse word for a third. The earls who governed for the English kings, among them the Dane Siward in the eleventh century, ruled a population in which Scandinavian families were prominent, and in 1066 Harald Hardrada aimed his invasion at York, defeating its earls at the Battle of Fulford before his own death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.
The Coppergate excavations made Viking York one of the best-known Viking-Age towns in Europe, and the Jorvik Viking Centre, built on the excavation site, opened in 1984. The kingdom's kings, several of whom survive only as names on coins and in a handful of annals, have been reconstructed largely from that coinage.