A furore normannorum, libera nos, domine.
“From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord.”
—English prayer
One of the most colorful of the Viking chieftains who rampaged across northern Europe in the Middle Ages, Inwaer Ragnarsson (c. 795–c. 873), also known as Ivarr the Boneless, was a leader of the Danish invasion of England in the ninth century. Behind their legendary berserker warriors, the Vikings briefly won control of large swaths of England before they were repulsed.
Ivarr was one of the three sons of Ragnar, a Danish king who had successfully raided Paris in 845. According to the Norse sagas, an Anglo-Saxon warlord in England captured Ragnar and executed him by tossing him into a pit of poisonous snakes. Understandably upset, Ivarr and his brothers launched the invasion to avenge their father’s death. Unlike previous Viking raids on England, this time the brothers sought to subjugate the island, rather than simply pillaging and then returning home.
The invasion force—labeled the Great Heathen Army by the terrified Anglo-Saxons—crossed the North Sea in 865, landed on the eastern coast of England, and sacked the city of York. They killed or captured a number of local kings, including the leader who had killed Ragnar; Ivarr personally executed his father’s killer in 867, supposedly by cutting open his back and plucking out his ribs one at a time.
The source of Ivarr’s nickname is unclear. It may be a sly sexual reference to his possible impotence, or he may have suffered from a genetic disease that causes brittle bones. (If so, it would be especially ironic, since Ivarr’s family claimed to be descended from the god Odin.)
Ivarr died at some point in the 870s, and the Viking invasion was successfully stopped by King Alfred the Great (849–899). Danish dominance over parts of England, however, lasted for the next two centuries.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- The werewolf legend is thought to derive from the berserkers, the crazed Norse warriors who sometimes went into battle wearing only wolf skins.
- One of Ivarr’s grandsons, Sigtryggr, reconquered Dublin for the Vikings in 917.
- Modern DNA testing has established that more residents of Derbyshire, a part of northern England that was conquered by the Danes in the 800s, have Scandinavian ancestry than do residents of the rest of England.
