The background
865, the North Sea:
Ivar the Boneless gazed with greedy contemplation at the shores which were fast approaching. He could see a few dark-clad figures huddled on the beach. More sheep for the slaughter! More gold vessels for plunder and easy victories. He crowed aloud to his thegns. "Let their God of peace save them!" A deep-throated roar of derision filled the air.
Clouds gathered and the North Sea grew rough. It would be a close-run race to reach the shore, but the long-ships were sturdy. Ivar called upon Odin and dedicated the lives of the local monks to his sacrifice. They would dangle from their own coppices of oak and elm. The warriors began to chant as they rowed.
The figures on the shore ran in panic except for one tall and ascetic monk, Brother Ethelred, who cried aloud "St Aidan, St Cuthbert and Blessed Hilda, intercede with the Lord of Peace for our lives. Deliver us from the fury of the Northmen."
The long-ships drew closer and the brother prepared himself for death, suppressing his disappointment and doubts. Then the long-ships surged forward at great speed. The impact of the shoals dismasted them and broke many an oar. Frantically, the warriors lightened the ships, but the storm grew in its intensity. Even as the great waves lifted the long-ships over the shoals, they crashed over them in primordial violence, smashing them to matchwood. Ivar and his thegns sank, their lungs bursting.
Thus drowned the Great Heathen Army. The few, bedraggled and dispirited survivors could not rally in force and were cut down or surrendered. One Norwegian warrior, Olaf, a survivor of Ivar’s long-ship, was converted to Christianity, became a monk, and later canonised for his missionary efforts in Scandinavia. He was known as the Apostle of the Norse.
865, Eoforwic:
The bells of St Peter's great church rang out for the Mass of Thanksgiving pealing joyously over the thatched roofs of Eoforwic. Ælla and Osberht knelt side by side before the Archbishop and put aside their differences with each other and the Holy Mother Church. The Great Deliverance had sobered many a man and recalled them to their duty. They swore amity and unity.
Ælla would take the title prince and become heir to his brother as king of Northumbria. In 876, Osberht abdicated and entered a monastery to atone for his earlier sins of violence. The practice became widespread among Anglian royal families.
911, Normandy:
Rollo the Fierce looked upon the ruin of his army at the hands of the French nobles. He shook his head and wondered if a curse had descended on his countrymen. The men of the South had grown teeth. Perhaps there was something to their God, after all. The army retreated and took to its ships. It sailed north never to return. The Viking Age had come to an end.
Author’s Premise: The Viking Age comes to an end prematurely in two major military failures, the Danish Invasion of 865 and the Northmen’s Invasion of Normandy in the tenth century. Although violence still racks Europe, its geopolitical development changes significantly. Anglia remains detached from the continent. In the wake of Br Ethelred’s seeming miracle of the Great Deliverance, the power and prestige of the church becomes enormously strong. The church enforces peace first in Anglia then between all the states of the British Isles. The occasional attempts at war lead to excommunication and deposition. Centralisation of states fails to occur because the power of the earls and the church frustrates it and there is no external stimulus to galvanise it. The constant wars caused by the shifting balance of powers on the continent turns its orientation inwards and leaves the British Isles isolated, somewhat more backward economically, but secure. The Age of Discovery is far more limited than in OTL. Though the Americas are rediscovered by Europe in the sixteenth century, there is very little colonisation and mostly trading posts. Plague and the Reformation remained fixed points though most colonisation and the Middle Eastern crusades are butterflied away. There is a lesser Renaissance in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries.