York and Northumbria
Eric Bloodaxe, the exiled son of Harold Fairhair, had already won a great reputation as a sea-rover when he descended upon Northumbria. The magnates at York at once 'broke both pledge and also oaths' to acclaim him, and Eadred invaded Yorkshire with a considerable force. After some skirmishing the nerves of Eric's supporters apparently failed and he was abandoned by the Northumbrians. After his expulsion there follow some exceptionally obscure years including, in 948 or 949, the return of Olaf Sihtricson from Dublin to York. About 952 Eric Bloodaxe returned and ruled for another two years in defiance of both the Dublin Norsemen and King Eadred. He was expelled in 954 and his subsequent murder on Stainmore brings to an end the history of the Norse kingdom of York. The court society surrounding Eric Bloodaxe in 10th-century viking York has been celebrated in one of the more authentic portions of Icelandic saga-literature. The 13th century Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson is based upon poems of Egil, an Icelander who visited York probably about 948, and composed a poem about the circumstances of his visit, at Eric's court. The saga wrongly places this occasion in Athelstan's reign instead of Eadred's. In another poem, composed at a later date in Iceland, the marshy character of York and its countryside is vividly described in the phrase 'York town, the dank demesne'.
The other side of viking life is also revealed in this poem. Egil rides south, accompanied by one of Eric's courtiers to renew a former acquaintance with Athelstan. Having arrived, the two 'parted with the greatest loving kindness. Arinbiorn [the courtier] fared home to York, to Eric the king. But Egil's companions and his shipmates had there [i.e. in York] good peace and sold their wares under Arinbiorn's safe keeping. But when the winter wore, they flitted themselves south to England and fared to find Egil.' Such a passage confirms what we know from so many sources: that alongside the melodramatic entrances and exits of viking adventurers there passed also the viking in his role of trader. Egil's merchant-companions stand within half a century of a writer who will comment on the phenomenal growth and wealth of Anglo-Scandinavian York. This process must indeed have advanced steadily throughout the unsettled years of the Danish and Norse kings. It is reflected not only in the sagas but in the Norse coinage with its almost reassuring suggestion of economic continuity. The achievement of the viking age takes a very different form from that of its predecessor. The glory of Anglian York had lain in ecclesiastical learning and art, a sphere in which the new Scandinavian settlers had little fresh contribution to make. They initiated an intenser phase of economic enterprise which gave York a place on an even larger map than that of Alcuin's world and contributed more than the Church of York to the development of a genuine urban community. The names of the city streets today are a reminder of how pervasive their culture was. With the Scandinavian conquest the lay community made its peculiar contribution to the life of the city. Ruler and priest now found in the trader an equal partner. York stood complete in its triple role of court, minster, and market, the role it was to play throughout the centuries of its greatness.