[8][9] The army, led by Ivar the Boneless and his brother Halfdan Ragnarsson, made its way north to Northumbria where the Anglo-Saxons were embroiled in a civil war.

[9][10] After Ivar the Boneless had annexed York, the two Anglo-Saxon leaders settled their differences, they joined forces and attempted to retake the city.

King Osbryht and Alla, having united their forces and formed an army, came to the city of York; on their approach the multitude of the shipmen immediately took flight.

[16][17][18] According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Halfdene apportioned the lands of North-humbria: and they thenceforth continued ploughing and tilling them.Halfdan's reign did not last long, as he was killed, trying to assert his claim to the Kingdom of Dublin, in 877.

[20][21][22] Siefredus of Northumbria replaced Guthred as ruler of Jórvík and although not a great deal is known about him there has been some information provided by coin evidence.

[24][25] The writing of the medieval chronicler Æthelweard has led some historians to suggest that Siefriedus may be the same person, as Sichfrith, who had previously been raiding the coast of Wessex.

[26] When these events so happened, Sigferth the pirate arrived from the land of the Northumbrians with a large fleet, ravaged twice and afterwards sailed back to his own homeland.A further hypothesis, proposed by the historian Alfred P. Smyth, is that Siefriedus is the same as the jarl Sichfrith who lay claim to the Kingdom of Dublin in that same year.

[28][26] According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: ... he stole away by night, and sought the army in North-humbria; and they received him for their king, and became obedient to him.Æthelwold did not stay in York long; in 903 he began a campaign to regain the crown of Wessex.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes how he raised a fleet and landed first in Essex, then went on to East Anglia where he persuaded their king Eohric to help him in his campaign.

It seems that the people of York were unhappy with Ragnall as they promised obedience to Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians in early 918, but the negotiations were ended prematurely by her death in June of that year.

[43] During his reign, Æthelstan integrated Northumbria into England and the design of the coinage was changed to conform with the standard English system.

In 941 Olaf Guthfrithson invaded Mercia and East Anglia The Archbishops of York and Canterbury mediated and Edmund I, Æthelstan's successor, surrendered much of the south-east Midlands and Lincolnshire.

[56][57] Edmund was replaced by Eadred who immediately turned his attention to Northumbria, where according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he "subdued all Northumberland under his power" and obtained oaths of obedience from the Scots.

Æthelred replaced him as ruler and in 1002 he was told that the Danish men in his territory "would faithlessly take his life, and then all his councillors, and possess his kingdom afterwards".

Shortly after William of Normandy landed at Pevensey on 28 September and on 13 October Harold of England fought his last battle on the Sussex coast at Hastings.

During the winter of 1069, in an action known as the Harrying of the North, he laid waste to Yorkshire and eventually replaced its nobility with his own trusted men.

With 25 of William the Conquerors magnates holding 90% of the county's manors, the days when English kings appointed Scandinavian Earls of Northumbria were at an end.

However raiding did continue and the last recorded one was in 1152, when Eystein II of Norway taking advantage of the confusion caused by the English civil war looted places on the east coast of Britain, including Yorkshire.

The minting of coinage in York was controlled by the Northumbrian monarch and the archbishop.The coins produced under command of the king seems to have stopped around 850 and Archbishop Wulfhere around 855.

York was part of the wider Scandinavian trading system with one route leading to Norway by way of Shetland and another to Sweden, then via the Dnieper and Volga rivers to Byzantium and the Muslim world.

Also, there was amber from the Baltic for the production of jewellery, and soapstone probably from Norway or Shetland, used to make large cooking pots.

The arrival of the pagan Vikings seems to have had little effect on the Christian religion, with the incoming Scandinavians converting to Christianity within a few decades of their arrival and largely adopting local burial customs, however there are stone crosses and grave markers, that introduced Scandinavian motifs to the designs and instituted new forms, notably the so-called Hogback gravestone.

[91][92][93] Hogbacks were introduced in 10th century, they are a house-shaped stone with a bowed roof ridge and often with bombé long sides, many were accompanied by standing crosses.

They were created during the Scandinavian period but continued until 1974, when they were abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, although the East Riding of Yorkshire was revived as a unitary authority in 1996.

The term is of Scandinavian origin and meant the taking of weapons; it later signified the clash of arms by which the people assembled in a local court expressed assent.

The reason for this is their proximity to barbaric tribes and their distance from the kings of the land who, whether English as once or Norman as now, are known to stay more often in the south than the north.

A contemporary local literary tradition plus the large amount of non-Norman population, indicated by the charters of the time, was the basis of the distinct modern Yorkshire dialect.

For example, in York, the Old Norse placename Konungsgurtha (Kings Court), recorded in the late fourteenth century was possibly the royal residence.

It is in the area immediately outside the site of the porta principalis sinistra, the east gatehouse of the Roman encampment, perpetuated today as King's Square, which nucleates the Ainsty.

New streets, lined by regular building fronts for timber houses were added to an enlarging city between 900 and 935, dates arrived at by tree-ring chronology carried out on remaining posts preserved in anaerobic clay subsoil.