Lead up:

The Romans invaded in 43AD. The started in the south-east and worked their way north and east. They conquered the bits called England and Wales. They didn’t conquer Ireland or Scotland. In the 5th century AD they abandoned England and Wales. They left behind people who had spent several generations knowing Roman ways but who still had their own language and customs.

After the Romans left, England became complicated. Scotland was pretty much its own thing for a long time. Ireland did its own thing for along time (there was significant contact between the people of Ireland and Scotland). Wales returned to doing its own thing.

England became a collection of regional small kingdoms with complex relationships to each other and to Europe, especially as Christianity was now a thing. These English kingdoms are the Saxons.

At the same time, people from Denmark come over to settle. That’s the Angles. They made the north-east bit of England their own, and set up their own kingdoms. They created and maintained relationships with the Saxon kingdoms in the south. This happens in what some people would call the Dark Ages. There are also some little kingdoms in the south east, called the Jutes. They are also from Denmark.

Viking time!

So Wales, Scotland and Ireland are their own thing. Then there’s England, a collection of small kingdoms that mostly get on with each other, and now we call them Anglo-Saxons, and they are Christian. But here come the vikings! And boy, do they not want to live at home with mummy and daddy anymore. The north east coast, like the Angles before them, is their prime target. They start out by raiding, then realise that England has lot better farmland than Scandinavia, and then they start to settle.

They make the north east their own from the 8th century onwards. By the 9th century its called the Danelaw. Vikings in the Danelaw are (mostly) pagans. They have their own ruler. The rest of England is still a collection of small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The Anglo-Saxons and the Danes do not get on. They are not friends. The Danes decide that they can push south and take that land. An Anglo-Saxon king called Alfred the Great (9th century) unifies the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and takes a stand against the Danelaw and wins (and makes their king, Guthrum, convert to Christianity). There are treaties, and they sort of get along for a short while. But Guthrum's descendants keep trying to get more land south, and Alfred’s descendants keep pushing north to reclaim these lands, and eventually take it all back in the mid 10th century.

So now we have a largely unified England, under a single ruler. Because of the relationships between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes, and politics, some of the rulers are Danish, but most are Anglo-Saxon.

Wales is still doing its thing. Scotland and Ireland are still doing their thing, but there are viking settlements and conflicts too. That’s a whole other story.

Conquest time!

The last king of England is an Anglo-Saxon, Edward the Confessor. He died without an heir in 1066. He sort of promised the kingdom to an Anglo-Saxon nobleman called Harold Godwinson. He thinks he should be king. He also sort of promised to the Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard, and he thinks he should be king. And then there’s the king of Norway, Harald Hardrada, whose ancestors ruled the Danelaw and also later on the unified English kingdom. He thinks he should be king.

Harold Godwinson in England, and crowns himself king. Harald Hardrada invades in the north east, so Godwinson takes an army and wins, killing Hardrada. But then he gets the news that William has invaded in the, so he has to march his exhausted and injured citizen-soldiers all the way south to fight William. William wins. He is now king of England, and so he gets to be called William the Conqueror by history.

No more vikings in England. After Harald Hardrada, there was no effort expended in claiming territory in England. The King of Norway from 1067 for over thirty years was called Olaf the Peaceful, so it’s fair to say he wasn’t big on invading things.

Apologies if this feels super over-simplified.