How England’s first king used an unexpected weapon to defeat the Vikings

By the early 10th century, the concept of a unified England was still an unfinished project.

Despite Alfred the Great’s victories against the Vikings – and the consolidating achievements of his children Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd – the power of the Norse raiders hadn’t simply disappeared.

The Vikings had adapted to this new political landscape and embedded themselves within it, remaining the greatest threat to any ruler hoping to govern a unified English kingdom.

Æthelstan was forced to grip this problem when he became king of the Anglo-Saxons in AD 924. As Professor David Woodman explains, speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, it wasn’t until AD 927 that he was able to make moves against the Vikings that proved decisive, using an unexpected weapon to his advantage.

England before Æthelstan

The huge Viking invasions of the late ninth century had left much of eastern and northern England under Norse control. Later writers would call this region the Danelaw, but at the time it was simply a patchwork of settlements, armies and allegiances tied into a wider Viking world across the sea.

Æthelstan’s grandfather, Alfred the Great, had stopped the Vikings from conquering the Anglo-Saxons completely. But he wasn’t able to restore the land to how it had been before the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in AD 865.

Instead, in the decades that followed, Anglo-Saxon rulers learned to exist uneasily alongside Viking power, albeit with frequent bouts of violence and through tribute.

Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd expanded English control, but by the time of Æthelstan’s reign, Anglo-Saxon authority still depended on vigilance against the Vikings. When he took the throne, his lands were surrounded by rivals: Norse settlers in the north, the kings of the Scots, and a constellation of Welsh rulers to the west. Any one of them might ally with future Viking attackers if the balance of advantage shifted, and no place demonstrated that danger more clearly than York.

How Æthelstan responded to Viking pressure

For decades, Scandinavian rulers had controlled York while forging alliances with neighbouring Anglo-Saxon and Scottish kings.

That is why events moved so quickly when the Viking ruler of York, Sihtric died in AD 927.

“Æthelstan marches quickly north and takes over in York,” says Woodman. “Contemporary narrative accounts don’t give much detail about how he did that, but we have detail from William of Malmesbury, who’s writing in the 12th century.

“He talks about the fact that Æthelstan had to raze the Viking fortress at York to the ground. He had to burn it in order to take control there.”

York had been the political and symbolic heart of Scandinavian power in Britain, linked into networks that stretched west toward the Irish Sea and east toward the wider Viking world.

Seizing it bolstered Æthelstan’s position. But it also created new risks.

Once York was taken, the question was no longer whether Æthelstan ruled a united England. For all intents and purposes, he did. But would his neighbours accept this new reality?

“Quickly afterwards, he moves on to Eamont Bridge,” says Woodman. “And we have this remarkable occasion on which Æthelstan receives the submission of various kings.”

The meeting at Eamont Bridge

At Eamont Bridge, in what is now Cumbria, in the north west of England, Æthelstan summoned rulers who, until recently, had been his potential enemies.

“King Constantine of the Scots, two Welsh kings, and the king of Strathclyde and Cumbria submit to Æthelstan at Eamont Bridge,” Woodman explains. “And they all seem to recognise his authority at this juncture.

“Eamont Bridge is a really interesting place for Æthelstan to have selected,” he adds. “It’s at the very limits of his territory, so he’s right at the boundary of his extended kingdom at this moment.”

There were also practical advantages to his choice of location.

“Logistically speaking, it’s very interesting, in the sense that we have Roman roads converging in the area, from Scotland, Wales and York.”

It was undoubtedly an easy place – relatively – for these disparate kings to converge. But it held another allure: it was a place of ancient monuments.

“There’s a Roman fort there, there’s Mayburgh henge and there’s King Arthur’s Round Table henge,” says Woodfood. “There’s a sort of landscape of authority, a landscape of kingly power here that Æthelstan is using and harnessing to his own benefit.”

‘Devil money’ and the fear of Viking alliances

The agreements made there were recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and one phrase in particular stands out to Woodman.

“It says that they all agreed with Æthelstan that they would stop idolatry,” says Woodman.

“The Old English word used is diobolgeldæ, which is a compound made up of ‘devil’ and ‘money’. It literally means ‘devil money’.”

That phrase points to how Viking power was conceptualised in Æthelstan’s England. Paganism, violence and silver were closely linked in Anglo-Saxon thinking. Viking leaders were known for using silver acquired through raiding, tribute and trade, to secure loyalty and bind together shifting coalitions of allies.

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From an English Christian perspective, this made Viking wealth deeply suspect. Silver used to purchase military support or political allegiance was portrayed as morally corrupting: wealth tainted by paganism and bloodshed, deployed to undermine Christian kingship from within.

By weaponising these payments and describing them as ‘devil money’, Æthelstan and his supporters were attempting to delegitimise a key Viking strategy and cut off its effectiveness.

“It raises an interesting possibility that, actually, part of the agreement at Eamont Bridge was that none of these kings would side with the Vikings against Æthelstan, who were thought of as a kind of plague sent by the devil,” says Woodman.

Why AD 927 mattered

For Æthelstan, taking York had created new opportunities and new risks. If his various regional rivals accepted Viking money and support, his newly expanded kingdom could be destabilised in an instant.

“And I think that would have been a big fear of his,” Woodman concludes.

But instead, by forcing neighbouring kings to renounce those connections, Æthelstan was isolating Viking power not only militarily, but diplomatically and economically, while strengthening his own hand.

From AD 927 onwards, Æthelstan would transform from a powerful ruler into a recognised overlord of England. In the years ahead, Viking coalitions would still rise against him – not least in the decisive battle of Brunanburh in AD 937, where they were roundly defeated. But they would do so without the same web of British allies.

Æthelstan had successfully turned one of the Vikings’ most potent weapons – silver – against them, transforming it into ‘devil money’ that no Christian ruler could accept.

David Woodman was speaking to Dr David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.