IN 1976, in a provocative and influential article, Niels Lund asserted that in the competitive political environment of the late 950s Edgar was made king of the Mercians and Northumbrians by important northern laymen, who in 957 withdrew their allegiance from his brother, King Eadwig. These magnates, he argued, saw an opportunity to use Edgar's need for their support to further their own, separatist, purposes in those parts of England later called the Danelaw. In particular, Lund claimed that the magnates of these regions were motivated by the desire to resist the penetration of royal interference into their domain. In support of this argument he cited the surviving laws referred to as IV Edgar, dated by Dorothy Whitelock to 962–3, in which the king sanctioned the legal autonomy of the region:

Lund concluded that Edgar's actions represented a setback to the unification of England: by holding back from imposing royal rights and encroaching on customary law, this concession to Scandinavian ways of doing things was virtually equivalent to granting domestic self-government to the Danelaw.