In the year 937, the storm clouds of war were gathering over Britain. A decade earlier,

King Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, and the first ruler to use the title

King of the English, had completed the unification of England, and afterwards had looked

outwards to subjugate the other kingdoms

of Britain. In 927, he conquered York, the capital of the last Anglo-Scanadian kingdom of Northumbria,

and in doing so, he unified the modern borders of England for the first time ever.

He fully subjugated Kent, Sussex, Essex, East Anglia, and most importantly, Mercia.

He marched his armies into Cornwall to subdue the Britons there, and even forced

the five kingdoms of Wales, always previously wild and unconquerable into submission, forcing

them to accept his overlordship.

In 934, he sailed a large force by sea as well as by land up across the Scottish border

to do battle with Constantine II of Scotland, receiving his submission soon afterwards.

Athelstan was the first English king to rule over a centralised, unified state, encompassing the entirety

of the modern-day nation we know today. He commanded a huge army, and one which for the first time

was drawn from all the corners of the realm. Kentishmen, Mercians, East Anglians, Britons,

Northumbrians, and Danes all marched in his ranks, and of course

the men of Wessex, ever present in the heart of his forces. By 937, a reckoning was on the way.

Olaf Guthrusson, the Gaelic Scandinavian son of acclaimant to the Northumbrian throne,

and a powerful warlord in his own right,

had spent the last few years gradually uniting all of the Danes and Norsemen of Ireland under his banner,

along with men from the Isle of Man and all over the Scottish Isles.

In doing so, Olaf had forged one of the largest Viking fleets ever assembled.

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