It sets out the boundaries between Alfred and Guthrum's territories as well as agreements on peaceful trade, and the weregild value of its people.
In 866, the Great Heathen Army landed in East Anglia with the intention of conquering all of the English kingdoms.
It initially overran the Kingdom of Wessex, but Danish King Guthrum was defeated by Alfred's army at the Battle of Edington in 878.
The treaty is one of the few existing documents[c] of Alfred's reign and survives in Old English in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Manuscript 383, and in a Latin compilation, known as Quadripartitus.
[2] The prologue to the treaty was a legitimisation of the territory that was held by both parties: Guthrum's landholdings in East Anglia and Alfred's in Mercia.