Two examples spring forth in Anglo-Saxon England. The most famous is the Danelaw - the land granted by Alfred of Wessex to the Viking leader Guđrum in return for peace in *c.*886 after Alfred fortifies London. This grants the Danes control over, basically, everything North-East of the Thames and Watling Street. Essentially, this is East Anglia, Northumbria and about half of Mercia. In return, Wessex and the Mercian heartlands remain unmolested.

A previous treaty of a sort had granted roughly the same half of Mercia to the Vikings in 873 following the Battle of Repton. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - a West Saxon propaganda mouthpeice - describes how the land was given away by Ceolwulf II of Mercia, who is described as a "foolish king's thegn" and a puppet of the Vikings. This was long accepted by historians (thanks, Victorians!) but, as recent evidence shows, this is a great disservice to Ceolwulf II. Numismatic evidence suggests that Ceolwulf and Alfred were in fact close allies who co-operated for mutual defence against the Vikings and who ceded Mercian control of the East Midlands in order to consolidate the defences of the core Mercian heartlands and to bolster Mercian power in Wales to build forces for a future campaign. Those forces are then used by his successor, Æthelred, to great effect in fighting alongside Alfred's forces against the Vikings in the 890s. The fact that Æthelred was granting land supposedly within the Danelaw in the 890s suggests that the Mercians had no intention of permanently ceding the land.

This is the key difference in England. Although they grant control of the Danelaw to the Vikings, Alfred and Æthelred clearly have no intention of allowing them to keep it. The peace instead allows an exhausted Wessex and Mercia to consolidate their defences and rebuild their military power, and from the late 890s onwards, the English launch a series of offensive campaigns, primarily led by Alfred's children Edward and Æthelflæd, which re-establish control across the Midlands, East Anglia and (kind-of) Northumbria, and lays the foundation for the unification of England.