Northumbria, 500–1100
Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom

A study of the rise and fall of the large and powerful kingdom of Northumbria.

David Rollason (Author)

9780521041027, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 September 2007

368 pages, 37 b/w illus. 10 maps
24.8 x 17 x 2 cm, 0.588 kg

'… displays the clarity, coherence and matured thinking which are the best fruits of good teaching … For students this book will be immensely useful, and it contains arguments and judgments with which specialists will have to engage from now on.' History

This book deals with the rise and fall of the kingdom of Northumbria. It examines the mechanisms of ethnic, political, social and religious change which, beginning after the end of the Roman Empire, welded the large and disparate area between the Humber and the Firth of Forth into one of the most powerful kingdoms of early medieval England, and those which led to its disintegration and its replacement by political structures of northern England and southern Scotland. The story is set in a wider European context so that the history of Northumbria is seen as paradigmatic for an understanding of state formation and religious and cultural change in the early medieval world. Full attention is given to archaeological and art-historical material, and the extent to which narrative sources were shaped by sectional interests and created imagined visions of the past.

List of illustrations
List of figures
List of maps
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Northumbria: map for general reference
Part I. The Kingdom of Northumbria: 1. Kingdoms, peoples and nations: Northumbria in context
2. The kingdom of Northumbria: frontiers and heartlands
Part II. The Creation of Northumbria: 3. The Northumbrians: origins of a people
4. Culture and identity in pre-Viking Northumbria
5. The framework of power: government, aristocracy and the church
Part III. The Destruction of Northumbria: 6. The Northumbrian 'successor states' - (a) The fragmentation of Northumbria, 866/7–c. 1100
(b) The Viking kingdom of York: political transformation?
(c) The Viking kingdom of York: ethnic transformation?
(d) The Viking kingdom of York: cultural transformation?
(e) North of the river Tees: the 'liberty' of the community of St Cuthbert and the earls of Bamburgh
(f) Cumbria
7. The English and Scottish impact: partition and absorption of the Northumbrian 'sucessor states' - (a) The west Saxon kings and the kings of England
(b) The kings of Scots and the origins of the Scottish border
(c) The Norman kings of England
(d) The shadow of the past
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Archaeology by period / region [HDD], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], British & Irish history [HBJD1]