Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793 - 1241
page 268:
'The Battle of Stamford Bridge is widely seen as marking the end of England's Viking Age, but the Vikings were not quite finished with England. William was quite the most brutal man ever to rule England and the atrocities he meted out to the defeated English were such that, even in an age inured to violence, they shocked Europe [emphasis added]. Two years after William's accession fierce but unco-ordinated English rebellions erupted across the country and these brought the Danes back to England. After his death at Stamford Bridge, Harald Hardrada's claim to the English throne had passed to the Danish king Svein Estrithsson (r. 1046-74/6), and it was to him that the English rebels turned for support, offering to accept him as king. In 1069, Svein sent his son Cnut to England with a fleet of 240 ships. Cnut landed at Dover in September and then sailed north, meeting with little success until he reached the Humber in October where he joined up with a large English rebel force. The Danes and the English marched on York and wiped out the Norman garrison there. William acted quickly and recaptured York in December. A campaign of savage retaliation, know as the 'Harrying of North,' followed. William's forces spread out across the countryside, burning and killing people and livestock, reducing the survivors to beggary. The Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, lists hundreds of villages across the north as still being waste and uninhabited, and worth only a fraction of their value twenty years earlier. William's brutality served the double purpose of punishing the rebels and depriving the Danes of supplies. William literally made a desert of the north and called it peace.'