ABSTRACT
As the fate of some ecclesiastical lands, described at the end of the last chapter, shows, Vikings offered opportunities as well as a threat to kings. Some fell. Others, as Alfred, profited both from the Vikings’ elimination of their rivals and from proclaiming themselves victors over ferocious pagans, defenders of Christians and the faith, favoured by God. It is a measure of the West Saxon kings’ grasp of this opportunity that their ninth- and tenth-century acquisition of Scandinavian-held territories, namely Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria, has often been referred to as a reconquest, from Scandinavians. Since the original ninth-century rulers of these territories had been independent kings, and their people no more desirous than those of Cornwall to be subject to Wessex, the West Saxon take-over was in fact a second conquest.
