Æthelstan's empire, seemingly made safe by the victory of Brunanburh, collapsed in little more than a year from his death when Amlaíb returned from Ireland and seized Northumbria and the Mercian Danelaw.

The later ( and smaller ) earldom came about when the southern part of Northumbria ( ex-Deira ) was lost to the Danelaw.

The northern part ( ex-Bernicia ) at first retained its status as a kingdom but when it become subordinate to the Danish kingdom it had its powers curtailed to that of an earldom, and retained that status when England was reunited by the Wessex-led reconquest of the Danelaw.

Edward the Elder had conquered the Danelaw, with the assistance of Æthelflæd and her husband, but when he died the Norse king Sihtric still controlled the Viking Kingdom of York, which extended into southern Northumbria.

Æthelstan's empire, seemingly made safe by the victory of Brunanburh, collapsed when Olaf, who had retreated to Ireland, returned and seized Northumbria and the Mercian Danelaw.

After the Viking invasions, the settled Norse population of the Danelaw adopted the form, and a number of crosses combine Christian imagery with pagan Norse myths, which the Church seems to have tolerated, and adopted at least as metaphors for the period when conversion was bedding down.

Long Buckby has a history going back approximately 1, 200 years to the Vikings when all of northern, central and eastern England came under Danelaw.

Edward retaliated by ravaging the southern Danelaw, but when he withdrew the men of Kent refused to obey the order to retreat.

In other words, Alfred succeeded to Ceolwulf ’ s kingdom, consisting of western Mercia ; and Guthrum incorporated the eastern part of Mercia into an enlarged kingdom of East Anglia ( henceforward known as the Danelaw ).

Sometime between 878 and 886, the territory was formally ceded by Wessex to the Danelaw kingdom of East Anglia, under the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum.

* 871 – Alfred the Great leads a West Saxon army to repel an invasion by Danelaw Vikings.

Alfred re-established Anglo-Saxon rule over the western half of Mercia, and the Danelaw was established which separated Mercia into halves, the eastern half remaining under the control of the Danes.

* Between May 6 and May 12 – Battle of Ethandun ( probably either at Edington, Somerset, or Edington, Wiltshire ): Alfred the Great of Wessex defeats the Danes of the Danelaw under Guthrum.

These wars were a prelude to the long struggle of the Saxons of Alfred the Great against the Danes a generation later, which also included the leader named Guthrum, all of whom founded the Danelaw.

Danelaw is also used to describe the set of legal terms and definitions created in the treaties between the English king, Alfred the Great, and the Danish warlord, Guthrum, written following Guthrum's defeat at the Battle of Edington in 878.

The Danelaw represented a consolidation of power for Alfred ; the subsequent conversion of Guthrum to Christianity underlines the ideological significance of this shift in the balance of power.

This led to the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, which established the boundaries of the Danelaw and allowed for Danish self-rule in the region.

Although it's unknown how Guthrum consolidated his rule as king over the other Danish chieftains of the Danelaw ( Danish ruled territory of England ), what is known is that by 874 he was able to wage a war against Wessex and its King, Alfred.

King Alfred the Great of England built a fleet and was able to stay the Viking incursions, establishing the boundaries of Danelaw in a 884 treaty.

Later that year Alfred decisively defeated the Danes at the Battle of Ethandun, whose forces then surrendered to Alfred at Chippenham ( ushering in the establishment of the Danelaw ).

From about 889 the Kettering area, along with much of Northamptonshire ( and at one point almost all of England except for Athelney marsh in Somerset ), was conquered by the Danes and became part of the Danelaw, with the ancient trackway of Watling Street serving as the border, until being recaptured by the English under the Wessex king Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, in 917.

As Alfred conquered the southern Danelaw, it was useful to place the ruler of the divided Kingdom of Mercia in control of its former eastern region.

In the 9th century, it formed a part of the Danelaw boundary and reputedly, King Alfred stranded an invading Viking fleet here in 895 AD.

Suppressing internal opposition to his rule, Alfred contained the invaders within a region known as the Danelaw and confirmed the kings of Wessex as the rulers of the Anelcynn, all of the English.

King Alfred ( r. 871-899 ) held the Vikings back to a line running diagonally across the middle of England, above which they settled in the Danelaw, and were gradually integrated into what was now a unified Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

There followed a peace treaty between Alfred and Guthrum, which had a variety of provisions, including defining the boundaries of the area to be ruled by the Danes ( which became known as the Danelaw ) and those of Wessex.

After the invasion of the so-called Great Heathen Army of Norse vikings in Northumbria, Danelaw was established and the Kingdom of Jórvík was founded in the Yorkshire area.

The " common law " was the law that emerged as " common " throughout the realm ( as distinct from the various legal codes that preceded it, such as Mercian law, the Danelaw and the law of Wessex ) as the king's judges followed each other's decisions to create a unified common law throughout England.

It was during the Viking invasions of the Anglo-Saxon period that Old English was influenced by contact with Norse, a group of North Germanic dialects spoken by the Vikings, who came to control a large region in the North of England known as the Danelaw.

Northumbria was within the Danelaw and therefore experienced greater influence from Norse than did the Southern dialects.

But before the Law of the Normans was the Law of the Danes, The Danelaw had a similar boundary to that of Mercia but had a population of Free Peasantry which were known to have resisted the Norman occupation.

Thynghowe, an important Danelaw meeting place where people came to resolve disputes and settle issues, was lost to history until its rediscovery in 2005-06 by local history enthusiasts amidst the old oaks of an area known as the Birklands.

The main early source of religious influence was England due to interactions between Scandinavians and Saxons in the Danelaw, and Irish missionary monks.

Æthelstan was educated at the Mercian court of his aunt, Æthelflæd, and her husband, Æthelred, Ealdorman of Mercia, and probably gained his military training in the Mercian campaigns to conquer the Danelaw.

The origins of the Danelaw arose from the Viking expansion of the 9th century, although the term was not used to describe a geographic area until the 11th century.

The Danelaw appeared in legislation as late as the early twelfth century with the Leges Henrici Primi, being referred to as one of the laws together with those of Wessex and Mercia into which England was divided.

The area occupied by the Danelaw was roughly the area to the north of a line drawn between London and Chester, excluding the portion of Northumbria to the east of the Pennines.

The Danelaw was an important factor in the establishment of a civilian peace in the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon and Viking communities.

Many of the legalistic concepts were compatible ; for example the Viking wapentake, the standard for land division in the Danelaw, was effectively interchangeable with the hundred.

Thynghowe was an important Danelaw meeting place, today located in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire.

In 942 Edmund struck back with a recapture of Mercia and the Five Boroughs of Danelaw, which so impressed contemporaries that a poem was written in honour of the achievement and included in the Chronicle.

Guthrum ( died c. 890 ), christened Æthelstan, was King of the Danish Vikings in the Danelaw.