Danish England?

My last thread for the day, what if the Danes had won at the Battle of Edington, will the Danes last long? Will there still be a Norman Invasion?
 
The Normans will still invade and England will be plunged into a dark period of war and foreign occupation by both Normans & Danes.
 
Um, is a 9th century battle going to avoid having interesting butterflies on all of this?

Definitely not. The impression given by the Wiki article is that it was do or die on the part of Alfred the Great; a defeat probably means the end of his reign and the Danish conquest of Wessex. That doesn't mean the Danes will immediately overrun all of England; the Saxons are still numerous and capable of roughly handling an unprepared invader, as at Cynwit in Devon in the same year (878 AD). But by 1066 the Danes will probably control most of England, with only Devon, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland not under their rule.

IOTL William's claim on the English throne stemmed in part from Harold Godwinson's promise to him and in part from his ancestry; both would be butterflied away by a Danish conquest. Indeed, probably neither would exist. A Danish England is going to be a far different place than a Norman one; its focus is going to be toward Scandinavia, not France.

The most interesting possibility lies in what happens when the Norse bring back news of a land to the west of Iceland. The English Danes are ideally positioned to make use of that knowledge; we might see their colonies springing up in the New World three hundred years before Columbus.
 
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