Ivar Ragnarsson (Old Norse: Ívarr; died possibly 873), nicknamed the Boneless (hinn beinlausi), was a Swedish Viking leader and by reputation also a berserker. He was a son of the powerful Ragnar Lodbrok, and he ruled an area probably comprising parts of modern-day Denmark and Sweden.
'Benløs' betyder omkringfarende og hentyder vistnok til, at han sejlede rundt om Europa bl.a. via de russiske floder. Ivar var konge i Dublin fra 871 til sin død i 873. Han led muligvis druknedøden.
Invader
In the autumn of 865, with his brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson (Halfdene) and Ubbe Ragnarsson (Hubba), Ivar led the Great Heathen Army in the invasion of the East Anglian region of England. An accommodation was quickly reached with the East Anglians. The following year, Ivar led his forces north on horseback and easily captured York (which the Danes called Jórvík) from the Northumbrians, who were engaged in a civil war at that time. Ivar and the Danes succeeded in holding York against a vain attempt to relieve the city in 867.
Ivar is attributed with the slaying of St. Edmund of East Anglia in 869. The story is first known from the Latin Passion of King Edmund written by Abbo of Fleury and its Old English adaptation by Ælfric of Eynsham. In their accounts, Edmund refused to become the vassal of a pagan and was killed in much the same way as Saint Sebastian was martyred. Ivar (called Hinguar in Ælfric's text) had Edmund bound to a tree, whereupon Vikings shot arrows into him until he died. According to later accounts, Edmund was shot in the nave of a church.
Sometime after 869 Ivar left command of the Great Heathen Army and of the Danes in England to his brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ubbe. He appears to have emigrated to Dublin (or, according to some, returned to resume a previous lordship).
Uí Ímair
See also: List of monarchs of Northumbria
Ivar is widely believed to be identical to Ímar, apparent ancestor and founder of the Uí Ímair, or House of Ivar, a dynasty which at various times from the mid-9th through the 10th century ruled Northumbria from the capital of York, and dominated the Irish Sea region from the Kingdom of Dublin.
Their apparent descendants, the House of Godred Crovan, ruled as Kings of Mann and the Isles from the 11th well into the 13th century, although they were vassals of the Kings of Norway for most of this time.
Death
Ivar disappears from the historic record sometime after 870. His ultimate fate is uncertain. The Anglo-Saxon chronicler Æthelweard records his death as 870. The Annals of Ulster describe the death of Ímar in 873:
Ímar, king of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain, ended his life.
The death of Ímar is also recorded in the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland under the year 873:
The king of Lochlainn, i.e. Gothfraid, died of a sudden hideous disease. Thus it pleased God.
The identification of the king of Lochlainn as Gothfraid (i.e. Ímar's father) was added by a copyist in the 17th century. In the original 11th-century manuscript the subject of the entry was simply called righ Lochlann ('the king of Lochlainn'), which more than likely referred to Ímar, whose death is not otherwise noted in the Fragmentary Annals. The cause of death – a sudden and horrible disease – is not mentioned in any other source, but it raises the interesting possibility that the true provenance of Ivar's Old Norse sobriquet lay in the crippling effects of an unidentified disease that struck him down at the end of his life; though 'sudden and horrible' death by any number of diseases was a common cause of mortality in the 9th century.
In 1686, a farm labourer called Thomas Walker discovered a Scandinavian burial mound at Repton in Derbyshire close to a battle site where the Viking 'Great Army' dispossessed the Mercian king Burgred of his kingdom. The number of partial skeletons surrounding the body, two hundred warriors and fifty women, would signify an extremely high status of the man buried there, and it has been suggested that such a burial mound would be expected to be the last resting-place for a Viking of Ivar's reputation.
Scandinavian sources
According to the saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, Ivar Boneless was the eldest son of Ragnar and Aslaug. It is said he was fair, big, strong, and one of the wisest men who has ever lived. He was consequently the advisor of his brothers Björn Ironside, Ubbe, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, and Hvitserk.
The story has it that when king Ælla of Northumbria had murdered their father, by throwing him into a snake-pit, Ivar's brothers tried to avenge their father but were beaten. Ivar then went to king Ælla and sought reconciliation. He only asked for as much land as he could cover with an ox's hide and swore never to wage war against Ælla. Then Ivar cut the ox's hide into so fine strands that he could envelope a large fortress (in an older saga it was York and according to a younger saga it was London) which he could take as his own. (Compare the similar legendary ploy of Dido.)
As Ivar was the most generous of men, he attracted a great many warriors, whom he subsequently kept from Ælla when he was attacked again by Ivar's brothers. Ælla was captured, and when the brothers were to decide how to give Ælla his just punishment, Ivar suggested that they carve the 'blood eagle' on his back. According to popular belief, this meant that Ælla's back was cut open, the ribs pulled from his spine, and his lungs pulled out to form 'wings'.
In Ragnar Lodbrok's saga, there is an interesting prequel to the Battle of Hastings: it is told that before Ivar died in England, he ordered that his body was to be buried in a mound on the English Shore, saying that so long as his bones guarded that section of the coast, no enemy could invade there successfully. This prophecy held true, says the saga, until 'when Vilhjalm bastard (William the Conqueror) came ashore[,] he went [to the burial site] and broke Ivar's mound and saw that [Ivar's] body had not decayed. Then [Vilhjalm] had a large pyre made [upon which Ivar's body was] burned... Thereupon, [Vilhjalm proceeded with the landing invasion and achieved] the victory.'
