What was the medieval English tax raised to pay Viking raiders?

Danegeld was the medieval English tax raised to pay Viking raiders or buy them off.

The levy emerged in late Anglo-Saxon England, when rulers sometimes chose payment instead of continued fighting against Scandinavian armies. The money was collected from landholders, making it closely connected with assessments of land and wealth. The best-known early example followed payments made by King Æthelred the Unready in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.

Danegeld did not always mean a simple ransom paid directly to an army. It could also become a regular royal revenue source, especially after the Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror and later monarchs continued related land assessments, even when the original Viking threat had disappeared.

Danegeld is often confused with scutage, another medieval English payment. Scutage was money paid instead of military service by knights or their landholders; Danegeld specifically originated in payments associated with Danish or Viking attacks.