ABSTRACT
Eiríkr lost his rule of York to the Hiberno-Norse kings of Dublin. His chief enemies from there were Óláfr (OE Anlaf ) Cuaran and his son Magnús (OE Maccus). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 954 says simply that the Northumbrians drove ‘Eric’ out of York; in the twelfth century, Symeon of Durham says that ‘Eiricus’ was expelled and killed by Maccus Anlaf ’s son; and Roger of Wendover adds that he was slain by Earl ‘Maccus’ in a lonely place called ‘Stainmore’ (Swanton 1996: 94-5). Perhaps through a misreading of Stain in Stainmore, in Ágrip ‘extracts’, a brief Norwegian history written in c. 1190, Eiríkr is said to have died í Spaníalandi í útlegu ‘in Spain in outlawry’ (ch. 7). The Norwegian history Fagrskinna (c. 1220) has a longer account, but makes Eiríkr king of Northumbria. In this version, Eiríkr is killed on a grand raid into southern England at the head of fi ve kings, by Óláfr, a tributary king of King Edmund (ch. 8). This is broadly in keeping with the English accounts of how Eiríkr died. The battle at Stainmore on the Yorkshire-Westmorland border, in which Óláfr Cuaran and Magnús Óláfsson killed Eiríkr in 954, is likely to have been an ambush if Eiríkr was truly í útlegu ‘in outlawry’.
