By the time the Varangians and Normans were establishing themselves,
A Viking. Reproduced by permission of the New York Public Library Picture Collection.
Under the leadership of King Alfred, natives of Britain united in an attempt to defend themselves against attacks by Vikings.
Reproduced by permission of the Library of Congress.
The Vikings as a group were dying out. By about 1000, they had accepted Christianity and become relatively civilized, meaning that they no longer had the same lust for raiding. In place of the old Scandinavian tribal lands, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden emerged as kingdoms, possessing formal governments with capitals and laws.
One last hurrah for the Norsemen came in the early 1000s, when the Danes briefly conquered England. At their high point under King Canute (ruled 1016-35), they controlled England, Denmark, and Norway, but there is a legend about Canute that says something about these last Norsemen's attempts at conquest. Supposedly Canute ordered the tide not to wash in on the shoreline; of course it did anyway, thus proving that there are limits even to a king's power. As it turned out, his empire was shortlived, and the last Danes were pushed out of England by William of Normandy—himself a descendant of Vikings—in 1070.
World History
