Slitherine

philqw78 wrote:And yet the Saxons were forced to pay the Danes/Vikings over 70 tons of silver to stop them terrorising the monks between 990 and 1016, after which England was ruled by Danes until the Norman conquest.

Phil ,
That period, formerly known as the dark ages, has been theorised to death by the accodemics and writers. There's realy no written record beyond the anglo-saxon chronicle. So its a bit like ramesees the great, who tends to tell you about his victories, and rarely if at all says he lost a battle.
So my theory is prehaps the viking terror raids were hard to pin down, and paying to have reserves of well armed troops was too much of a drain. It seems that the anglo saxons learned something from history, as it was the same for romans who tried stop their ancestors in the fourth century from raiding england's coast.
S

Also, I think that the "Viking" list is very generic. I dont see that you can really eqate a confederation of Viking raiders on the one hand, with the Royal Danish army of King Cnut! Not sure how you get around this with the present list, except to modify the list for a specific campaign.

Likewise, the Anglo Danish list allows you to take all the "bells and whistles", and doesn't necessarily reflect the limited resources of regional "militia".