FORNǪLD · Track 10

The Great Heathen Army

Old Icelandic

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865 þúsund skip synir Ragnars fremstir Austur Anglía sá seglin og gaf okkur hesta Þeir héldu að friður væri hægt að kaupa Við tókum hestana og riðum norður Jórvík féll í nóvember áður en múrarnir vissu Kingdoms fall one by one heyrið dyninn we have come We are the Great Heathen Army a thousand ships strong Sons of Ragnar lead us our vengeance is long Northumbria has fallen East Anglia bleeds The North remembers Ragnar and England pays his deeds We are the Great Heathen Army a thousand ships strong Sons of Ragnar lead us our vengeance is long Northumbria has fallen East Anglia bleeds The North remembers Ragnar and England pays his deeds Ella greiddi blóðskuldina örninn á baki hans Eadmund konungr neitaði örvarnar svöruðu Mersía bað um frið gull fyllti skipin Fjórtán vetur af eldi og England breyttist að eilífu Kingdoms fall one by one heyrið dyninn we have come We are the Great Heathen Army a thousand ships strong Sons of Ragnar lead us our vengeance is long Northumbria has fallen East Anglia bleeds The North remembers Ragnar and England pays his deeds We are the Great Heathen Army a thousand ships strong Sons of Ragnar lead us our vengeance is long Northumbria has fallen East Anglia bleeds The North remembers Ragnar and England pays his deeds Ívarr hinn beinlausi the mind Hálfdan the hammer Ubbi the storm Synir Ragnars sons of the dead king og faðir þeirra hlær í höll Óðins The Great Heathen Army England man okkur enn England remembers

865 a thousand ships sons of Ragnar foremost East Anglia saw the sails and gave us horses they thought peace could be bought we took the horses and rode north Jorvik fell in November before the walls knew Kingdoms fall one by one hear the thunder we have come We are the Great Heathen Army a thousand ships strong Sons of Ragnar lead us our vengeance is long Northumbria has fallen East Anglia bleeds The North remembers Ragnar and England pays his deeds We are the Great Heathen Army a thousand ships strong Sons of Ragnar lead us our vengeance is long Northumbria has fallen East Anglia bleeds The North remembers Ragnar and England pays his deeds Ella paid the blood debt the eagle on his back King Eadmund refused the arrows answered Mercia asked for peace gold filled the ships Fourteen winters of fire and England changed forever Kingdoms fall one by one hear the thunder we have come We are the Great Heathen Army a thousand ships strong Sons of Ragnar lead us our vengeance is long Northumbria has fallen East Anglia bleeds The North remembers Ragnar and England pays his deeds We are the Great Heathen Army a thousand ships strong Sons of Ragnar lead us our vengeance is long Northumbria has fallen East Anglia bleeds The North remembers Ragnar and England pays his deeds Ívarr the Boneless the mind Hálfdan the hammer Ubbi the storm Sons of Ragnar sons of the dead king and their father laughs in Odin's hall The Great Heathen Army England still remembers us England remembers

Story Behind The Song

In 865, a large Norse force landed in East Anglia, which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle called the mycel hæþen here, the Great Heathen Army. The sons of Ragnar Loðbrók, including Ívarr the Boneless, Hálfdan Ragnarsson, and Ubba, are named in Norse sources as its leaders. East Anglia provided horses, possibly as tribute, possibly to encourage the Danes to move on. They moved north. York fell in 866. The two rival Northumbrian kings joined forces against the Danes and were defeated trying to retake the city. The army then turned south and east. King Edmund of East Anglia refused to either share his kingdom or renounce Christianity. He was captured and killed. Later accounts say he was tied to a tree, shot with arrows, and beheaded. He was venerated as a martyr: St. Edmund. Mercia paid tribute in exchange for peace. Over roughly fourteen years of campaigns, the army established what became the Danelaw across a large portion of eastern and northern England. Norse settlement altered the language, law, and place-names of those regions permanently. The Scandinavian influence on English is still audible in place names across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and East Anglia. The Norse sources connect the invasion to vengeance for Ragnar Loðbrók's death at the hands of King Ælla of Northumbria. Whether that was the true motivation or a later narrative added to explain the scale of the invasion, it became the story that held the album together.

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