Dear Mr. Cornwell,

I just want to start by saying how much my grandmother and I love “The Last Kingdom” series; I watched the entire television show with her (she became hooked with your stories the second she chanced upon me watching the show), and I then read all of the books up to “War of the Wolf”, which I intend to start soon! By far, my favorite book series of all time!

My question is, coming from a big-time history buff who loves English history and culture, how would you have described (in your works, or as a history lover) the gradual transition from Danish settlers to Englishmen following the conquest of the Danelaw? What happened to the descendants of the Norse settlers in England?

One of my favorite parts in the first book, “The Last Kingdom”, was your in-depth portion about how the Danes settled Northern England, such as by settling their ship crews in houses left vacant by slain Saxon thegns, establishing settlements like Syningthwaite, or Norse men marrying Saxon women and having bilingual children. There’s now a raging debate as to how many English people can claim Viking-era Norse DNA, how many Vikings even settled in England, or if England’s Danes were truly wiped out in the St. Brice’s Day Massacre or the Harrying of the North. If you had to explain how the Danes of England either disappeared from the country (less likely) or assimilated into English society (most likely) by 1066, how would you do so? Would they have intermarried so often with the Saxons that they assimilated into the Saxon world? Was England’s Danish population exterminated with 75% of Northern England during the Harrying of the North? Did the Danes, Saxons, and Normans simply merge into a new “English” culture in the centuries following the Norman conquest? Thanks for your insights and for your literary and historical genius!

Jacob Adelhoch