The Unsettling Way Ivar The Boneless Became The Most Feared Viking Of All Time

Ivar’s physical state might have been weak, but his mastery of military tactics saw him wreak havoc in the Anglo-Saxon world of 9th-century Britain. And if we can believe the legends recorded in various Icelandic sagas, he was an exceptionally successful leader.

Previously these Icelandic sagas chronicling the legends of the Vikings had been unwritten traditions which had been passed on orally from generation to generation. Or at least that’s what some historians believe: there is still controversy about how exactly the stories were created.

Ragnar’s third wife was called Aslaug and it was she who gave birth to Ivar. One tale has it that her son’s physical disability was the result of a curse. It’s said that when Aslaug married Ragnar, she asked that the marriage should not be consummated until three days after the ceremony. She was a seer and foresaw a terrible curse, but also how to counteract it.

Ragnar was a Danish King who at one point had fought against Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor and the most powerful man in Europe. Ragnar had five sons with Aslaug and it’s hard to imagine a more colorful and probably terrifying bunch. Their names alone hint at a world of heroic deeds and mayhem.

One of the sagas described Ivar as having “only cartilage where bone should have been, but otherwise, he grew tall and handsome and in wisdom, he was the best of their children.” This description of Ivar’s condition is puzzling.

So the sagas claim either that he had no legs or that there were no bones in the limbs. One modern theory is that Ivar may have suffered from the condition known as brittle bone disease. That’s a far cry from being limbless, but it may be a plausible explanation.

Some of Ivar’s most extraordinary feats in battle came when he fought against Eystein, the King of Sweden. This Eystein was a formidable opponent, for he had a secret weapon: a magic cow called Sibilja. But this enchanted animal was not enough to frighten Ivar, not by a long chalk.

But, the tale goes, this wound wasn’t enough to subdue Sibilja. She now went into a frenzy of rage and began to run amok. So Ivar’s men bodily threw him at the animal. He landed on top of her, finishing the cow off.

Ivar may have first attacked Britain in the year 855. But before we get into the details of Ivar’s military career, it’s worth taking a look at the story of Viking raids on Britain. These had started some years before Ivar first set foot on Anglo-Saxon lands.

Wherever their name came from, the first recorded Viking raid on the shores of Britain came as early as 789. That was when three Viking ships appeared on the coast of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex in the south-west of England.

Another early but much more violent Viking raid on Britain came in 793. That was when a thuggish band landed on the island of Lindisfarne, which lies off the east coast of England, not far south of today’s Scottish border.

Many of the Lindisfarne monks were slaughtered in the attack and some were dragged off in chains. A 12th-century chronicle, History of Kings, records that the Vikings “trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars, and seized all the treasures of the holy church.”

In the decades after the notorious and bloody attack on Lindisfarne, the Vikings continued to raid the coastal settlements of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. They especially favored attacks on monasteries, as they often housed gold and silver items such as crucifixes and chalices.

By some accounts Ivar the Boneless made his first raid on the British coast in 855, little more than 60 years after the brutal Lindisfarne attack. He led a band of his men to the Isle of Sheppey, which sits at the mouth of the River Thames, about 40 miles east of London.

But Ivar the Boneless is best known for his invasion of Anglo-Saxon Britain in 865. In fact the Dane had a very clear reason for this attack. The sagas tell us that Ivar’s father, Ragnar Lothbrok, had been raiding in the Kingdom of Northumbria in the 9th century.

Aella apparently took a dim view of Ragnar’s incursion into his kingdom. He managed to capture the Viking leader and had him put to death. According to legend he killed the Viking by throwing him into a pit that was teeming with deadly venomous snakes.

But this cool façade was deceptive: in truth, Ivar was determined to avenge his father’s death. Along with his raging brothers, Ivar assembled a large raiding party which was to become known as the Great Heathen Army.

So Ivar’s Great Heathen Army, probably several thousand strong, landed in Britain in the fall of 865. Their landing spot was the Kingdom of East Anglia, which occupied a large chunk of south-east England. The revenge attack on Aelle’s Northumbria was still very much on the agenda, but first the Vikings subdued the East Anglians.

So Ivar and his Viking horde now made their way northwards to Northumbria. Aelle got wind of the fact that there was an angry band of Danes headed by Ivar coming his way. So he formed an alliance with the very man whose throne he’d usurped, Osbert.

But this alliance of Aella and Osbert did the pair little good. In 866 Ivar and his warriors took the city of York, the Northumbrian capital. Although Osbert and Aella escaped after the capture of the city, they were later killed in a second battle with the Vikings.

But Ivar had a cunning trick up his sleeve. He asked Aella if he could take as much land as an ox hide would cover. On the face of it this was surprisingly modest, even pointless, request. After all, what was the use of the few square feet of land the skin of an ox would cover?

This clever chicanery allowed Ivar to completely surround the fortified city of York and claim it as his own. Now in control of York and having bamboozled Aella, Ivar was able to finally avenge his father.

With Aella tortured to death, Ivar’s revenge was complete. Plus of course he was now in control of the large kingdom of Northumbria, a fact that he confirmed by installing his own man, Egbert, as its King. It’s worth pointing out that Ivar and his Great Heathen Army had taken a different path than other Vikings who’d come before him.

But Ivar wanted to conquer and keep territory. So now with Northumbria and its capital York firmly in his grip, he turned his attention to other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that might be ripe for conquest. He next marched on Mercia, the kingdom that stretched from the English Midlands southwards.

Burgred responded to the loss of Nottingham by forming an alliance with King Aethelred, who ruled the neighboring territory of Wessex, south-west of Mercia. Aethelred’s brother Alfred was also part of this new alliance. Later, he would become King with the title of Alfred the Great.

Ivar and his men now spent about a year back in York before setting out again to try their hands at taking more Anglo-Saxon territory. In 869 they marched back across Mercia to attack the Kingdom of East Anglia in the south-east of England. East Anglia, you’ll remember, had been their landing point back in 865.

It seems that Ivar and the Great Heathen Army crushed what resistance there was in East Anglia with little difficulty. Even so it appears that they were in no mood to offer mercy to King Edmund of East Anglia. Instead, according to legend, they tried to force him to renounce his Christianity.

At this point, the story of Ivar varies widely depending on which source you choose to believe. One version has it that Ivar remained as a local ruler based in York until his peaceful death. He remained without an heir because of his medical condition. 

By this account, Ivar and Olaf marched on the Strathclyde capital of Dumbarton in 870. It’s worth noting that according to some, the two Danes were actually brothers. Once the pair had reached Strathclyde they were faced with an apparently impregnable stronghold.

Ivar and Olaf laid siege to the fortified rock for four months. But eventually, having withstood severe shortages of food, the defenders were forced to surrender when their well ran dry. The Vikings overwhelmed the fortress and took the inhabitants of the castle prisoner.

According to the BBC, Ivar died less than a year after he’d taken the Dumbarton fortress. He was probably killed by the Pictish King Constantine I. But there’s an alternative version of what happened to Ivar after his success in Strathclyde.

The Historyhit website records, “By 871 he was known as Ivar ‘King of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain’”. But there’s actually some doubt as to whether the man identified as Olaf’s ally in Dublin and Ireland actually was Ivar the Boneless.

As Historyhit points out, despite those strongly contrasting verdicts, they could be descriptions of the same man, one written by allies and the other by enemies. In any case this man in Ireland is said to have died in 873.

The next puzzle about Ivar the Boneless related to his burial place. Legend has it that Ivar insisted that he should be buried somewhere that would repel any would-be invaders of Ireland. Indeed it’s true that there was no invasion of Ireland for two centuries after Ivar’s death.

But wait! There’s an entirely different story about Ivar’s possible burial. It’s said that in 1686 a farm worker called Thomas Walker found a possible Viking burial mound with many sets of remains in it.

The archaeologists unearthed evidence of a 9th-century Viking camp, and that tallies with a record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It states that the Great Heathen Army — led of course by Ivar — set up winter camp at Repton in 873-874.

After all the centuries that have passed it’s not really possible to positively identify one of the Vikings buried at Repton as Ivar the Boneless. But according to the Historyhit website, The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok claims that Ivar was actually buried in England.

In fact historians are still debating whether Ivar the Boneless really existed, or whether he is in fact a mythical figure. The World History Encyclopedia tackles this question head on. As it points out, there’s a wide time-gap between the writing of the Icelandic sagas which describe Ivar and the 9th century when he’s said to have lived.

But, the World History Encyclopedia goes on to say, there are other factors which lend credence to at least some of the stories about Ivar. For example we can be confident that King Aelle of Northumbria, the man whom Ivar killed in revenge for his father Ragnar’s death, definitely did exist.