If you’re a geography nerd, familiar with New York City, or (like me) both, then you’ve definitely heard of NYC’s “Five Boroughs”. These are the city’s main administrative divisions, and each one also functions as a county of the state of New York. You’ve got:

• Manhattan (New York County)
• Brooklyn (Kings County)
• Queens (Queens County)
• The Bronx (Bronx County)
• Staten Island (Richmond County)

Roughly, this list is in order by how frequently Manhattan dwellers think about each borough.

But New York is not the only York that’s associated with the concept of five boroughs. The original York, in England, spent a couple of centuries under the control of Scandinavian rulers, in the aftermath of Viking attacks on England. York (also known by its Norse name “Jórvík”) was the center of this post-Viking kingdom. The five boroughs in question were five major towns in an area called the “Danelaw”: vassal states of York which extended considerably farther south than the main kingdom. Specifically, the boroughs were

• Derby
• Leicester
• Lincoln
• Nottingham
• Stamford

York’s boroughs and New York’s boroughs have had rather different histories. New York’s boroughs were acquired in 1898 after the growing city absorbed the previously independent towns and cities neighboring it. By contrast, York’s boroughs were conquered for the York kings by the Great Heathen Army of Ivar the Boneless.¹ It’s not one hundred percent clear exactly how Ivar gained the epithet “the boneless”. Leading theories are that he had a skeletal disorder, or perhaps impotence, or that it was a translation error by a scribe. Still, he’s a historical character at least on par with any New York City mayor.

That said, there are some other intriguing parallels between the two cities, beyond just the shared name. For example, both Scandinavian York and New York city also have a legendary origin story based on property fraud. For New York, this would be the story whereby all of Manhattan was “bought” by the Dutch from the local Lenape natives for the equivalent 24 dollars. This is an exaggeration of the history: the one reference to this transaction (from the Dutch side) claims the payment was 60 guilders, or a bit over $1000 in today’s money, and the Lenape seem to have understood the agreement to be more of a temporary lease than a permanent sale, and the transfer of goods to be only part of the full agreement.²

In original York’s case, we can turn to the Norse saga of Ivar the Boneless himself. The saga claims that Ivar was fighting an Anglo-Saxon king, Ælla of Northumbria, and found his attacks effectively countered. Ivar offered to make peace with Ælla in return for only as much land as he could cover with an ox’s hide. He then proceeded to cut the hide into tiny strips, which he used to surround the entire fortress of York.

Again, this parallel seems to be a coincidence. Stories of this sort aren’t unique to cities with York in their name. Students of American colonial history might recognize a parallel with Pennsylvania’s “walking purchase”, where the Lenape were again the victims: this time, William Penn’s descendants claimed to have a treaty entitling them to land “as far as a man could walk in a day and a half” and then hired professional runners. A similar ox hide trick is also attributed to Queen Dido of Carthage.

New Yorkers today seem to pay even less attention to modern York than they do to Staten Island; even though York today is a city of over 100,000 people in Northern England, New York is a city of over 8 million, across all of its five boroughs. But at least York can say its five boroughs were first.

Coming soon: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme