Wenceslas, a prince of the Premsylid family, is murdered on his way into church - and becomes Bohemia's patron saint

An althing of chieftains establishes the commonwealth of Iceland, which will survive for more than three centuries

Leon forms a loose alliance with its southern neighbour, Castile, to become the most powerful unit in northern Spain

Medieval Europe's first institute of higher education is established, with the founding of the medical school at Salerno

So many Slavs are captured and sold, in the movement eastwards of the Germans, that their name becomes the European word for a slave

The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy

Harald Bluetooth is baptized a Christian and unites the whole of Denmark as a single kingdom.

The imperial coronation of Otto I by Pope John XII in St Peter's puts in place the formal role of a Holy Roman emperor

The Poles are first recorded as a tribal group when a German knight comes into contact with them in the region round Gniezno

Mieszko, pagan chieftain of the Poles, marries a Christian Czech princess and brings all his people into the Roman Catholic fold

The Hungarian king Gezá and his family are baptized as Roman Catholics, beginning a long link between Hungary and Rome

Brian Boru becomes king of Munster and leader of the Irish campaign against the Vikings

Leopold, of the Babenberg family, becomes margrave of Austria and founds a dynasty which lasts for three centuries

Hugh Capet, a Frankish noble elected king of west Francia, establishes the royal dynasty of France.

Hugh Capet is the first in an unbroken line of twelve generations on the throne of France

Vladimir, the prince of Kiev, decides that Greek Orthodoxy is the most suitable religion for the Russian people

New waves of Danes, raiding into the English territory of Danelaw, are bought off by Ethelred with Danegeld

Iceland's parliament, the althing, passes a resolution that everyone on the island is to be baptized

The first illustrated manual of surgery is written by Abul Kasim, an Arab physician in Cordoba

Pope Sylvester II, according to tradition, sends a sacred crown for the coronation of Hungary's first king, St Stephen

Brian Boru, aged 73, achieves a major victory over the Vikings at Clontarf but is killed in his tent after the battle

Canute, joint king of Denmark, is accepted also as king of England after subduing the country and marrying Ethelred's widow

Count Radbot builds himself a 'hawk's castle' or Habichstburg, near Zurich, from which the Habsburg dynasty takes its name

Conrad II is elected as the German king, begining the dynasty variously known as Franconian or Salian

Yaroslav builds up his Russian kingdom and turns his capital, Kiev, into a spectacular Christian city