Osberht was king of Northumbria in the middle of the 9th century. Sources on Northumbria

Northumbria

Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...

n history in this period are limited. Osberht's descent is not known and the dating of his reign is problematic.

Chronicles

Osberht became king after Æthelred

Æthelred II of Northumbria

Æthelred was king of Northumbria. He was the son of Eanred.Relatively little is known of his reign from the surviving documentary record. He appears to have been expelled in favour of Rædwulf, whose reign is confirmed by the evidence of coinage. However, Rædwulf was killed the same year, fighting...

 son of Eanred

Eanred of Northumbria

Eanred was king of Northumbria in the early ninth century.Very little is known for certain about Eanred. The only reference made by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to the Northumbrians in this period is the statement that in 829 Egbert of Wessex...

 was murdered. The date of Æthelred's death is not certain, but is generally placed in 848. However, Symeon of Durham

Symeon of Durham

Symeon of Durham was an English chronicler and a monk of Durham Priory. When William of Saint-Calais returned from his Norman exile in 1091, Symeon was probably in his company...

 writes that "Ethelred the son of Eanred reigned nine years. When he was slain Osbryht held the kingdom for thirteen years" and states that 854 was "the fifth year of the rule of Osbert, the successor of Ethelred, who had been put to death".

Little is known of Osberht's reign. Symeon states that "Osbert had dared with sacrilegious hand to wrest from that church Wercewurde and Tillemuthe" The Historia de Sancto Cuthberto dates the seizure of these lands to the year before Osberht's death. Osberht was replaced as king by Ælla. While Ælla is described in most sources as a tyrant, and not a rightful king, one source states that he was Osberht's brother.

The Great Heathen Army

Great Heathen Army

The Great Heathen Army, also known as the Great Army or the Great Danish Army, was a Viking army originating in Denmark which pillaged and conquered much of England in the late 9th century...

 marched on Northumbria in the late summer of 866, seizing York

York

York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

 on 21 November 866. Symeon of Durham, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

, Asser

Asser

Asser was a Welsh monk from St David's, Dyfed, who became Bishop of Sherborne in the 890s. About 885 he was asked by Alfred the Great to leave St David's and join the circle of learned men whom Alfred was recruiting for his court...

, and Æthelweard all recount substantially the same version of events in varying detail. Symeon's Historia Regum Anglorum gives this account of the battle on 21 March 867 where Osberht and Ælla met their deaths at the hands of the Vikings:

In those days, the nation of the Northumbrians had violently expelled from the kingdom the rightful king of their nation, Osbryht by name, and had placed at the head of the kingdom a certain tyrant, named Alla. When the pagans came upon the kingdom, the dissension was allayed by divine counsel and the aid of the nobles. King Osbryht and Alla, having united their forces and formed an army, came to the city of York; on their approach the multitude of the shipmen immediately took flight. The Christians, perceiving their flight and terror, found that they themselves were the stronger party. They fought upon each side with much ferocity, and both kings fell. The rest who escaped made peace with the Danes.

After this, the Vikings appointed one Ecgberht

Ecgberht II of Northumbria

Ecgberht was a king in Northumbria in the later Ninth century. Very little is known of his reign.Unlike his predecessor King Ricsige, who may have ruled most of the kingdom of Northumbria following the expulsion of the first King Ecgberht in 872, this Ecgberht ruled only the northern part of...

 to rule Northumbria.

Sagas

Ragnarssona þáttr

Ragnarssona þáttr

Ragnarssona þáttr, Þáttr af Ragnars sonum or the Tale of Ragnar's sons is a short story on Ragnar Lodbrok and his sons.-Ragnar Lodbrok:When Sigurd Ring dies, Ragnar succeeds him as the king of Sweden and Denmark...

 (The Tale of Ragnar's sons) adds a great deal of colour to accounts of the Viking conquest of York. This associates the semi-legendary king of Sweden Ragnar Lodbrok

Ragnar Lodbrok

Ragnar Lodbrok was a Norse legendary hero from the Viking Age who was thoroughly reshaped in Old Norse poetry and legendary sagas.-Life as recorded in the sagas:...

 and his sons, Hvitserk

Hvitserk

Hvitserk was one of the legendary sons of the 9th-century Norse king Ragnar Lodbrok and his wife Kraka, attested to by the Ragnarssona þáttr. Since he is not mentioned in any source that mentions Halfdan Ragnarsson, some scholars have suggested that they are the same individual.After having...

, Björn Ironside

Björn Ironside

Björn Ironside was a semi-legendary king of Sweden who would have lived sometime in the 9th century. Björn Ironside is said to have been the first ruler of a new dynasty...

, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, Ivar the Boneless

Ivar the Boneless

Ivar Ragnarsson nicknamed the Boneless , was a Viking leader and by reputation also a berserker. By the late 11th century he was known as a son of the powerful Ragnar Lodbrok, ruler of an area probably comprising parts of modern-day Denmark and Sweden.-Invader:In the autumn of AD 865, with his...

, and Ubbe. According to the stories, Ragnar was killed by Ælla, and the army which seized York in 866 was led by Ragnar's sons who avenged his death by subjecting Ælla to the blood eagle

Blood eagle

The Blood Eagle was a method of torture and execution that is sometimes mentioned in Norse saga literature. It was performed by cutting the ribs of the victim by the spine, breaking the ribs so they resembled blood-stained wings, and pulling the lungs out. Salt was sprinkled in the wounds...

.

Earlier English sources record that Ælla and Osberht died in battle, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle stating that "both the kings were slain on the spot" The main figure in the revenge tales in Ivar, who is sometimes associated with the Viking leader Ímar, brother of Amlaíb Conung

Amlaíb Conung

Amlaíb Conung was a Norse or Norse-Gael leader in Ireland and Scotland in the years after 850. Together with his brothers Ímar and Auisle he appears frequently in the Irish annals....

, found in the Irish annals

Irish annals

A number of Irish annals were compiled up to and shortly after the end of Gaelic Ireland in the 17th century.Annals were originally a means by which monks determined the yearly chronology of feast days...

. Dorothy Whitelock notes that "it is by no means certain that he should be identified with the son of Ragnar, for the name is not uncommon". The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not name the leaders in Northumbria, but it does state that "Hingwar and Hubba" slew King Edmund of East Anglia (Saint Edmund) some years later. Hubba is named as a leader of the army in Northumbria by Abbo of Fleury

Abbo of Fleury

Abbo of Fleury , also known as Abbon or Saint Abbo was a monk, and later abbot, of the Benedictine monastery of Fleury sur Loire near Orléans, France....

, and by the Historia Historia de Sancto Cuthberto. Symeon of Durham lists the leaders of the Viking army as "Halfdene, Inguar, Hubba, Beicsecg, Guthrun, Oscytell, Amund, Sidroc and another duke of the same name, Osbern, Frana, and Harold."

Norman historian Geoffrey Gaimar

Geoffrey Gaimar

Geoffrey Gaimar , was an Anglo-Norman chronicler. Gaimar's most significant contribution to medieval literature and history is as a translator from Old English to Anglo-Norman. His L'Estoire des Engles translates extensive portions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as using Latin and French...

 and Geoffrey of Wells

Geoffrey of Wells

Geoffrey of Wells was a mid-twelfth-century English hagiographer, doubtless formerly a canon of Wells Cathedral, whose De Infantia Sancti Edmundi , part of the burgeoning library of twelfth-century legendaries concerning Saint Edmund accounted the royal saint's childhood to have been full of...

 both associate an Englishman named "Bern" or "Buern" with bringing the Danes to England, in Gaimar's case to Northumbria, in Geoffrey of Wells' mid-twelfth-century hagiography of Saint Edmund

Saint Edmund

Saint Edmund may refer to:* Saint Edmund the Martyr , king of East Anglia who was venerated as a martyr saint soon after his death at the hands of Vikings* Saint Edmund Arrowsmith , Jesuit, one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales...

, to East Anglia. Gaimar's account has "Buern" seeking revenge for Osberht's rape of his wife.