Reading, Berkshire from the "Readingas", an Anglo-Saxon tribe whose name means "Reada's People" in Old English, or less probably the Celtic "Rhydd-Inge", meaning "Ford over the River". In late 870, an army of Danes invaded the kingdom of Wessex and set up camp at Reading. On 4 January 871, in the first Battle of Reading, King Ethelred and his brother Alfred the Great attempted unsuccessfully to breach the Danes' defences. The battle is described in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", and that account provides the earliest known written record of the existence of Reading. The Danes remained in Reading until late in 871, when
History of England Britain was in 793 at Lindisfarne monastery as given by the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle". However, by then the Vikings were almost certainly well-established in Orkney and Shetland, and many other non-recorded raids probably occurred before this. Records do show the first Viking attack on Iona taking place in 794. The arrival of the Vikings (in particular the Danish Great Heathen Army) upset the political and social geography of Britain and Ireland. In 867 Northumbria fell to the Danes; East Anglia fell in 869. Though Wessex managed to contain the Vikings by defeating them at Ashdown in 871, a second invading army