In 865 AD a huge Viking army appeared out of the mists of the North Sea from Scandinavia and landed on the East Anglian coast. Their objective was nothing less than the total conquest of Anglo-Saxon England and the whole of the British Isles. Numbering some 10,000 to 15,000 men the "Great Heathen Army" was the largest invasion force since Roman Legions had landed on the shores of Britannia back in 43 AD. During a 14 year reign of terror they left a brutal trail of destruction in their wake. At its head the army was led by the vengeful sons of the Viking adventurer, Ragnar Lodbrok "Hairy...

The Normans, Normanni (Latin) Les Normands (French) came from an area in North-Western France named after them. Normandy "land of the North-men" was created by Viking raiders in the early 10th century. Within 150 years of establishing themselves, The Dukes of Normandy had created one to the most feared and organised Principalities in Medieval Europe. As the 12th century approached, the Viking age was coming to an end. The hour of the Normans had arrived; their first expansion took them to the foot of Southern Italy and Sicily. The exploits of the sons of Tancred de Hauteville would become...

The Viking age exploded like a thunderbolt out of the blue onto the international stage during the latter part of the 8th century. By the middle of the next century, the piratical raids for booty and plunder gave way to outright conquest and colonisation. In the West, the British Isles bore the brunt of this aggression in the form of the campaigns of the "Great Heathen Army" which not only dismantled the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England, but also the Pictish and Briton dominions of modern day Scotland and the Celtic Principalities of Ireland. On the continent of mainland Europe Viking armies...