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318 were the centres of Norse activity at this time, but there seems to have been no unity of action among their forces. In 866 Olaf and Auðgísl made a successful expedition to Pictland, and again in 870-1 Olaf and Ívarr made a raid on Scotland. Olaf now returned to Norway to assist his father Goffraidh (O.N. Guðfriðr) and possibly to take part with him in the great fight at Hafrsfjord against Harold Fairhair. We hear nothing more of Olaf, and two years later Ívarr, "king of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain," ended his life.

There now appear on the scene Viking leaders of a different family, which seems to have over-shadowed that of Olaf. They were the sons of one Raghnall, who had been expelled from his sovereignty in Norway. Raghnall had remained in the Orkneys, but his elder sons came to the British Isles, "being desirous of attacking the Franks and Saxons." Not content with this they pushed on from Ireland across the Cantabrian sea until they reached Spain. After a successful campaign against the Moors in Africa they returned to Ireland and settled in Dublin. So runs the story in the Fragments of Irish Annals edited by Dugald MacFirbis, and there can be little doubt of its substratum of truth or of the identification of this Raghnall and his sons with the well-known figures of Ragnarr Loðbrók and his sons. In 877 Raghnall's son Albdann (O.N. Halfdanr) was killed on Strangford Lough, while fighting against the Norse champion Baraidh (O.N. Barðr) who was attached to the house of Olaf.

At this point the Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gall notes a period of rest for the men of Erin, lasting some forty years and ending in 916. This statement is substantially true. We do not hear of any large fleets coming to Ireland, and during these years Viking activity seems chiefly to have centred in Britain. Trouble was only renewed when the success of the campaigns of Edward the Elder in England once more drove the Vikings westward.

We have traced the history of the Vikings in England down to the first settlement in 851 and 855. During the years which followed there were raids on the south made by Vikings from Frankish territory, but the great development took place in 866, when a large Danish army took up its quarters in East Anglia, whence they advanced to York in 867. Northumbria was weakened by dissension and the Danes captured York without much trouble. This city was henceforward the stronghold of Scandinavian power in Northern England, and the Saxon Eoforwíc soon became the Norse Jórvík or York. The Danes set up a puppet king Ecgberht in Northumbria north of the Tyne and reduced Mercia to submission. Thence they marched into East Anglia as far as Thetford, and engaged the forces of Edmund, King of East Anglia, defeating and slaying him, but whether in actual battle or, as popular tradition would have it, in later martyrdom is uncertain. The death of St Edmund soon became an event of European fame, and no event in the Danish