Invader
In the autumn of AD 865, with his brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson (Halfdene) and Ubbe Ragnarsson (Hubba), Ivar led the Great Heathen Army in the invasion of the East Anglian region of England. An accommodation was quickly reached with the East Anglians. The following year, Ivar led his forces north on horseback and easily captured York (which the Danes called Jorvik) from the Northumbrians who were at that time engaged in a civil war.
Ivar and the Danes succeeded in holding York against a vain attempt to relieve the city in AD 867.
Ivar is also attributed with the slaying of St. Edmund of East Anglia in AD 869. The story is first known from Abbo of Fleury's Latin Passion of King Edmund and Ælfric's Old English adaptation thereof. By their accounts, when Edmund refused to become the vassal of a pagan, he was killed in much the same way as Saint Sebastian was martyred. Ivar had Edmund bound to a tree, whereupon Vikings shot arrows into him until he died. According to later accounts, Edmund was shot in the nave of a church.
Sometime after 869 Ivar left command of the Great Heathen Army and of the Danes in England to his brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ubbe. He appears to have emigrated to Dublin (or, according to some, returned to resume a previous lordship).
Read more about this topic: Ivar The Boneless
Famous quotes containing the word invader:
“In 1862 the congregation of the church forwarded the church bell to General Beauregard to be melted into cannon, “hoping that its gentle tones, that have so often called us to the House of God, may be transmuted into war’s resounding rhyme to repel the ruthless invader from the beautiful land God, in his goodness, has given us.””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)