England (Northumbria)

England — and Northumbria above all — is the rich, contested southern land that draws the Norsemen again and again across the corpus: to raid, to rule, to die. It is where Ragnar Lodbrok's last reckless raid ends in shipwreck and the serpent-pit of King Ella, summoning the Great Heathen Army of his avenging sons; where Eiríkr Bloodaxe rules as a viking king at York and Egil ransoms his head with a poem; where Olaf and St Olaf campaign in their youth, and where Harald Hardrada makes the last great viking gamble and falls at Stamford Bridge in 1066. England is the saga world's image of the wealthy neighbour to the south — older, richer, and deadlier than the colonies, the land the Northmen could never resist and could never quite hold, the stage of viking triumph and viking doom, where more than one great career reached for the prize and ended instead in an English grave.