Northumbrian

The Northumbrians are the English north of the Humber, heirs of the Angles who founded Bernicia and Deira and united them into Northumbria in the seventh century. Northumbria was a centre of Anglo-Saxon Christianity, the world of Bede and Lindisfarne. The Viking raid of 793 opened the Danish conquest; from 867 the Danelaw and Norse York gave the region a Scandinavian layer, visible in place names and dialect.

William the Conqueror's Harrying of the North devastated the region. Durham became a county palatine ruled by its prince-bishop, while Northumberland became a frontier against Scotland.

From the fourteenth to the early seventeenth century its people lived in the raiding society of the border reivers under March law; the Union of the Crowns in 1603 broke that world. The coalfield later turned Newcastle into an industrial city and gave the dialect forms such as Geordie.