Northumbria

The northern kingdom that produced the finest learning in western Europe and then fell apart. Northumbria was formed by the union of Bernicia and Deira in the early seventh century, and at its height ran from the Humber to the Forth, holding territory in what is now southern Scotland. Edwin, Oswald and Oswiu made it the dominant English power for much of that century, and Oswiu's decision at the Synod of Whitby in 664 to follow Roman rather than Irish practice on the dating of Easter aligned the English church with the continent. What followed is the kingdom's real claim. Monasteries at Lindisfarne, Wearmouth and Jarrow produced the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Codex Amiatinus, and Bede, working at Jarrow, wrote the Ecclesiastical History that is the foundation of English historical writing and popularised dating years from the incarnation. Alcuin, trained at York, went on to run Charlemagne's palace school. Political decline set in after defeat by the Picts at Nechtansmere in 685, and the eighth century was a sequence of depositions and murders. The Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793 is conventionally the start of the Viking Age; the Great Heathen Army took York in 866 and destroyed the kingdom. A Scandinavian kingdom of York followed. The northern remnant survived as the earldom of Bamburgh. York and Bamburgh were its chief royal seats. The Ruthwell Cross carries lines of the Dream of the Rood in runes. Bede's history was completed in 731. Cuthbert's body was carried around the north for a century before reaching Durham.

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