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Geoffrey of Monmouth: the lost voice of ancient Britain
For centuries, Geoffrey of Monmouth's medieval history of the British Isles has been cast as a work of pure make-believe. Yet, says Miles Russell, look beyond the tales of wizards and giants and what you have is a priceless insight into what life was really like for the inhabitants of Celtic Britain
“Favourable winds brought the Trojan Brutus to the promised isle, which at that time was called Albion. It had no inhabitants save for a few giants. This pleasant land led Brutus and his companions to settle there and, after driving off to mountain caves any giants they encountered, they divided it up and portioned it out. Brutus named the island Britain after himself and called his followers Britons” - So the 12th-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth described how Britain first came to be discovered, named and settled. Compiled in around 1136, Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) is an epic, which chronicles the rulers of Britain from earliest times until the seventh century AD. Containing characters such as Cole (the merry old soul), Lear and Cymbeline (both later immortalised by Shakespeare), as well as Arthur, Merlin and Mordred, the Historia was a medieval bestseller, and its influence upon European culture cannot be overstated. Who was Geoffrey of Monmouth? We know next to nothing about Geoffrey but it would appear that he was either born or spent a significant amount of time in Monmouthshire, at the borderlands between what is now England and Wales, in the early years of the 12th century. He was certainly familiar with the geography of the area – the Roman fortress town of Caerleon, near Monmouth, appears many times in the Historia Regum Britanniae. Geoffrey spent most of his working life in Oxford, his name appearing on a number of charters there between 1129 and 1151, where he is referred to as magister or teacher. Geoffrey apparently conceived the Historia at the request of Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, in order to provide the British with their own heroic mythology: a national epic to rival any produced by the Saxons or Normans. It is thanks to his Historia that Geoffrey is widely remembered as the man who, more than any other, created and popularised the myth of King Arthur. The Historia features, for the first time, the whole life of Arthur, from his conception at Tintagel in Cornwall, his battles across Britain and Europe with his sword Caliburn (Excalibur), his love for Ganhumara (Guinevere), his colleagues Gawain and Merlin, the treachery of Mordred and the final battle after which, mortally wounded, Arthur is carried to the Isle of Avalon. Geoffrey’s work clearly contains numerous fictional stories – and so it’s hardly surprising that, within a few years of the Historia being published, serious doubt was being cast on the authenticity of his research. In 1190 William of Newburgh declared that “it is quite clear that everything this man wrote… was made up”, while 800 years later, Geoffrey Ashe insisted that “Monmouth is an entertaining and memorable companion, so long as one never believes anything he says”. Geoffrey himself claimed that the inspiration for his work was an ancient book “in the British tongue”. Yet the fact that this source remains utterly elusive to us today has added weight to the conviction that it was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. King Arthur: 6 things you need to know about the warrior king and his legend However, I think this view does Geoffrey a disservice. In fact, having examined the Historia in great detail over recent months, I’m convinced that there is sufficient evidence within its pages to suggest that it was no work of make-believe. On the contrary, I believe that it was compiled from a variety of genuine sources – most of them hailing from what is now the south-east of England – dating back at least to the first century BC. For me, the key to unlocking Geoffrey’s text lies in the story of Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain, the first ‘event’ in the book that can be independently verified from other historical sources. Caesar stepped ashore on these islands on two separate occasions – in 55 and 54 BC – and recorded his exploits in a series of campaign diaries, known collectively as the Gallic Wars. In Caesar’s own account of his second invasion, there are three main protagonists: the hero (himself); the villain, a British king called Cassivellaunus whom Caesar defeats; and the ally, a young British aristocrat called Mandubracius. In the Historia, however, Geoffrey duplicates the events of 54 BC, and sets them down as if they are two discrete military operations. In the first, the aggressor, Ilkassar (Caesar), is defeated by the heroic Briton Cassibellaun (Cassivellaunus) at the “Battle of Dorobellum” and driven back into the sea. In the second version, a few pages later, Cassibellaun, now the bad guy, is waging an unprovoked war upon his rival, Androgeus (Mandubracius), when he hears that Ilkassar has landed upon the south coast. At the battle of Durobernia, Ilkassar prevails, thanks to the timely intervention of Androgeus on the Roman side. Fearing the power of Androgeus, Ilkassar makes peace and departs. The Celts: were they friends or foes of the Romans? It is clear that in describing this particular invasion, Geoffrey was using two versions of the same event, written from two very different perspectives. The first, with Cassivellaunus as the hero, appears to have been generated by supporters of the British king; the second is written from the perspective of Cassivellaunus’s rival, Mandubracius. It may therefore be wrong to search for a single primary source for Geoffrey’s account – after all, as he says in his foreword, in his day the lives of these early kings were “celebrated by many people by heart, as if they had been written”. As one might expect for a pre-Roman heroic society, these tales had survived to Geoffrey’s time not because they had been transcribed but because they had been transmitted from generation to generation by word of mouth. Listen | Miles Russell offers a bold view on the historical King Arthur based on his reinterpretation of medieval sources How reliable is Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia? Once you accept that the Historia does not represent a single epic but a mass of unrelated stories woven together to form a grand narrative, it’s easier to tease out individual tales. And these tales can radically reconfigure our understanding of the British past, producing new ways of seeing how the Britons dealt with the arrival of Rome, and what happened following the collapse of Roman authority in the fifth century AD. The Historia matters because it is something that was set down by the ancient Britons themselves: it is their ‘lost voice’. This is, perhaps, best summed up by the description of the celebrations following the expulsion of Julius Caesar from Britain. The Britons, we are told, “summoned all the nobility” to Colchester “in order to perform solemn sacrifices to the gods”, slaughtering “40,000 cows and 100,000 sheep and also fowls of every single kind without number, besides 30,000 wild beasts of several kinds” before “they feasted themselves… and spent the rest of the day and night in various plays and sports”. This is no work of pure fiction but the remembrance of a real event from a period of the past we still mistakenly call prehistory. 8 insights that the Historia can give us into ancient Britain Ancient Britons gloried in their Trojan ‘past’ Perhaps the most incredible claim contained within the pages of the Historia is that the British monarchy was descended from Trojan nobility. As far-fetched as this may seem, a chance comment by John Creighton in his book Coins and Power in Late Iron Age Britain (published in 2000) suggests that Geoffrey didn’t merely pluck this ‘fact’ from the ether. Creighton noted that it “exemplifies precisely the genre of foundation myth that would have been created within the political context of Britain” in the early first century AD. In other words, British dynasts of late Iron Age Britain may have wanted to fabricate a semi-mythical lineage that closely linked them to the Romans, who themselves claimed descent from the Trojan refugee Aeneas. (The Britons were also, remember, keen to adopt Roman symbols and titles on their coins.) This is something that Geoffrey has Julius Caesar himself articulate when, just prior to the invasion of Britain, he observes that “we Romans and the Britons share a common ancestry”. Young British aristocrats were educated in Rome Geoffrey says that many British kings travelled to, and grew up in, Rome. On the face of it, this seems preposterous, but the system of bringing up the children of allied kings in the imperial capital was an old and established one. Such children may have gone to Rome partly in order to ensure the loyalty of their parents, but also to be educated the Roman way and benefit from imperial patronage – a system of networking that proved vital to those determined to make it big. Having the offspring of barbarian aristocrats growing up under close supervision in Rome is something that emperors such as Augustus positively encouraged, and it is difficult to see why the Britons would have been treated differently. A number of British kings are known to have been at court during the reigns of both Augustus and Claudius, while images reproduced on early British coins slavishly imitated Roman designs, confirming a strong Mediterranean influence. Tenvantius fathered the ‘Great King of the Britons’ One of the many British kings that Geoffrey describes in the Historia is Tenvantius, Duke of Cornwall, a warlike man who, we’re told, “governed his realm diligently”, insisting on “the full rigour of the law”. Unfortunately, Tenvantius is conspicuous by his absence from the Roman sources – yet that doesn’t mean he’s a figment of Geoffrey’s imagination. As Geoffrey tells us, after Tenvantius’s death the crown passed to his son Cymbeline (or Cunobelinos), who is recorded on coins and in contemporary historical accounts, as ‘Great King of the Britons’. Interestingly, on Cymbeline’s coin series – minted from native power centres at both Colchester and St Albans – the monarch declares that his father had been ‘Tasciovanus’. It is clear from these coins, and those minted by Tasciovanus himself, that Tenvantius/Tasciovanus was very real – his name, like that of Cymbeline/Cunobelinos, being irrevocably garbled over time. Britons helped quell Boudica’s rebellion That the Historia was compiled from sources produced within the pro-Roman tribal kingdoms of south-eastern Britain is confirmed by the fact that those who fought against Rome, such as Caratacus or Boudica, barely merit a mention. And when they do, it’s hardly in glowing terms – Geoffrey casts the Boudican revolt of AD 60–61 as a wholly negative event. Boudica herself appears as ‘Soderick’, while her tribe, the Iceni, are called ‘Scythians’. Geoffrey also gets his geography mixed up, moving the revolt from Norfolk to southern Scotland. Crucially, when the Iceni/Scythians start razing the region, it is not the Romans who march to attack them but the British king ‘Marius’, who “won several engagements and killed Soderick”. In the Roman account there is no room for native allies. Yet the fact that the southern British kingdoms thrived in the revolt’s aftermath suggests that the Romans received significant support from indigenous groups. What if… Boudica had defeated the Romans? There was method to the geographical madness Geoffrey’s detractors have long used his appreciation of geography – or lack of it – as a stick with which to beat him. Not only, they point out, did he mistakenly claim that Boudica went on the rampage across southern Scotland, he also moved various towns, cities and battlefields from their rightful historical settings of Kent, Hertfordshire and Essex a hundred miles or so west to Wales and Cornwall. Yet I believe that, far from simply sticking a pin in a map, Geoffrey genuinely based the settings of his history on Roman sources – it’s just that, on a number of notable occasions, he misinterpreted these sources. Take the titles the ‘Duke of Cornwall’ and the ‘Duke of London’, both of which repeatedly crop up in the Historia. It seems that Geoffrey mistook ‘Catuvellauni’ for ‘Kerniw’ – or Cornwall – when in fact Catuvellauni was the name of a British tribe based around St Albans. Likewise, he took Trinovantes to mean ‘New Troy’ or ‘London’, when it referred to another British tribe, this one established around Colchester. By AD 1136, both tribal names had lost any meaning and so Geoffrey equated them with geographical terms that made sense to his audience. British grandees built big in southern England According to Geoffrey, mid-first-century AD Britain was ruled by King Coilus, who “had been brought up from his infancy in Rome”. By paying what was required to the Roman government, Coilus “enjoyed his kingdom in peace and no king ever showed greater respect to his nobility… binding them to him through his continual bounty and munificence”. There can be little doubt that of all the areas of early Roman Britain, the most bountiful and munificent was along the coast of central southern England. Here, the remains of at least eight palaces, of which Fishbourne is the most famous, have been found. That extravagant new residences were being erected by native aristocrats such as Togidubnus, Catuarus and Lucullus is beyond doubt – the last of these could plausibly have been Geoffrey’s peace-loving ‘Coilus’. The Romans may have added their own touches to Stonehenge One of the most curious incidents in the Historia relates to Stonehenge which, we are told, was set up by the post-Roman King ‘Aurelius Ambrosius’ to commemorate those treacherously slaughtered by the Saxons. The stones in question were, on advice from the wizard Merlin, taken from a mountain in Ireland and transported to Salisbury Plain. This story may read like it’s straight out of a fairy tale, yet it could be doing Geoffrey a disservice to dismiss it as a mere flight of fancy. For a start, we know that the bluestones at Stonehenge did indeed originate from a source in the west – albeit Pembrokeshire in Wales rather than Ireland. What’s more, recent excavations at the monument hint at significant late or post Roman activity. Many of the bluestones that we see at Stonehenge today may actually have been reshaped, reset or otherwise significantly modified in the fourth or early fifth century AD, during the time that the historical Ambrosius Aurelianus is thought to have ruled. A native elite ran south-east Roman Britain The Historia presents an alternative late Iron Age Britain in which there is no military occupation by a foreign power. Rather than being part of a Roman province, Geoffrey describes Britain as a friendly, tribute-paying dependency whose monarchs retained a degree of autonomy beyond Rome’s invasion of AD 43. At first glance, this may appear to be a hopelessly rose-tinted interpretation of the facts. But is it? After all, having invaded south-east England – the area from which most of Geoffrey’s sources hailed – the Roman army swiftly moved on to fight the recalcitrant tribes to the north and west. And, instead of leaving garrisons, they delegated day-to-day governance of the area to the native elite. Everything you wanted to know about Roman Britain, but were afraid to ask So, as far as the south-eastern corner of the island was concerned, Geoffrey was right: the transition from Britain to Roman Britain would have appeared relatively seamless. Miles Russell is a senior lecturer in archaeology at Bournemouth University. He is co-author of UnRoman Britain: Exposing the Myth of Britannia (The History Press, 2011) This article was first published in the December 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine
Ivar the Boneless, Ragnvald of Ed and 6 more Vikings you should know about
From famed warriors to ruthless female settlers, Gareth Williams from the British Museum rounds up eight top Vikings...
Ivar the Boneless Ivar (or Ivarr) spans the gap between history and legend. He was a famous warrior and one of the leaders of the ‘Great Heathen Army’ that landed in East Anglia in 865, and that went on to conquer the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia. Ivarr also went on to lead a raid on Dumbarton on the Clyde, and in Ireland. Later saga tradition makes Ivarr one of the sons of Ragnar Hairy-breeches (or Lothbrok). According to this account, Ivarr and his brothers invaded Northumbria to take a bloody revenge on its king, Ælle, for the killing of their father. Although the Great Army continued to campaign in England, Ivarr is not mentioned in English sources after 870 and probably spent the remainder of his career around the Irish Sea. His death is recorded in Irish annals in 873. He was remembered as the founding father of the royal dynasty of the Viking kingdom of Dublin, and his descendants at various points also ruled in other parts of Ireland, Northumbria and the Isle of Man. Vikings Season 6 is streaming now on Amazon Prime: catch up on what’s happened so far, plus 8 historical questions from the finale answered The reason for Ivarr’s curious nickname is unknown. One suggestion is simply that he was particularly flexible, giving the illusion of bonelessness, while others have preferred to see it as a metaphor for impotence. Another interpretation is that Ivarr suffered from ‘brittle bone disease’, which seems less plausible given his reputation as a warrior. However, the nickname beinlausi could also be translated as ‘legless’, which might indicate lameness, the loss of a leg in battle, or simple drunkenness. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/G15N5M-fbd0020.jpg" width="1573" height="2400" alt="Illuminated manuscript from the ‘Life of Edmund’, unknown artist, c1130, depicting AD 865 when Ivarr Ragnarsson (nicknamed ‘the Boneless’) with his brothers invaded Northumbria. (Photo Researchers/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Illuminated manuscript from the ‘Life of Edmund’, unknown artist, c1130, depicting AD 865 when Ivarr Ragnarsson (nicknamed ‘the Boneless’) with his brothers invaded Northumbria. (Photo Researchers/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Aud the Deep-minded Aud the Deep-Minded (alternatively known as the Deep-Wealthy) was the daughter of Ketil Flatnose, a Norwegian chieftain. For much of her life Aud is best known in the traditional female roles of wife and mother. She married Olaf the White, king of Dublin in the mid-ninth century, and following his death moved to Scotland with her son, Thorstein the Red. Thorstein became a great warrior and established himself as king of a large part of northern and western Scotland, before being killed in battle. A brief history of the Vikings It was at this point, late in life, that Aud decided to uproot herself and make a new life in Iceland, taking her grandchildren with her. She saw little chance of maintaining or recovering her importance in Scotland, but the settlement of Iceland in the 870s offered new opportunities. Aud had a ship built and sailed first to Orkney, where she married off one of her granddaughters, and then on to Iceland, where she laid claim to a large area in the west. Aud was accompanied by friends and family, as well as Scottish and Irish slaves. She gave this last group their freedom, granting each man a small piece of land within her larger claim, thereby encouraging loyalty from their descendants to hers. Aud was remembered as one of the great founding settlers of Iceland. Her large number of grandchildren meant that many of the greatest families in medieval Iceland looked back to her as an ancestor. Although her wealth may partly have been acquired through her father, husband and son, Aud’s success in Iceland is a reminder of how powerful a strong woman could be in Viking society. Listen | Johanna Katrin Fridriksdottir explores what everyday life was like for women in Norse society, the opportunities available to them and the challenges they faced Eirik Bloodaxe Eirik Bloodaxe has an archetypal Viking nickname and was renowned as a fierce warrior. From his early teens onwards he was involved in raiding around the British Isles and in the Baltic, and at different points in his career he was king in both western Norway and in Northumbria, where he still has a legacy in York’s Viking-based tourist industry. Despite all this, Eirik is a less impressive figure than first appearances suggest. Despite his success in battle, his nickname came from his involvement in the killing of several of his brothers. Eirik and his wife, Gunnhild (according to different accounts either a Danish princess or a witch from northern Norway), were between them responsible for the deaths of five brothers. Their growing unpopularity in Norway meant that when another brother, Håkon the Good, challenged Eirik for the kingship of Norway he was unable to muster support and fled without a fight. Although Eirik was strong and brave and willing to give even his enemies a fair hearing if left to his own devices, he was said to have been completely under the thumb of his dominating wife and “too easily persuaded”. He comes across more like the cartoon character Hagar the Horrible than as a real Viking hero. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/20Image20of20Eric20Bloodaxe20projected20on20to20Cliffords20Tower20and20viking20re-enactors20at20the20Jorvik20Viking20festival20York202006-8fcece7.jpg" width="800" height="530" alt="Image of Eirik Bloodaxe (aka Eric Bloodaxe) projected on to Clifford’s Tower at the Jorvik Viking Festival York 2006. In front of the tower stands a group Viking re-enactors. (Tony Wright/earthscapes/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Image of Eirik Bloodaxe (aka Eric Bloodaxe) projected on to Clifford’s Tower at the Jorvik Viking Festival York 2006. In front of the tower stands a group Viking re-enactors. (Tony Wright/earthscapes/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Einar Buttered-Bread Einar Buttered-Bread was the grandson of Thorfinn Skullsplitter, the earl of Orkney, and Groa, a granddaughter of Aud the Deep-Minded. According to the Orkneyinga saga, Einar became caught up in a web of treachery and rivalry over the Orkney earldom, in which Ragnhild, daughter of Eirik Bloodaxe, played a central part. Ragnhild was married first to Thorfinn’s son and heir Arnfinn but had him killed at Murkle in Caithness and married his brother Havard Harvest-Happy, who became earl in his place. Ragnhild then conspired with Einar Buttered-Bread – he was to kill his uncle Havard, her husband, and replace him. Einar Buttered-Bread killed Havard in a battle near Stenness on mainland Orkney. But that was not the end of the story. Einar Buttered-Bread was then killed by another cousin, Einar Hard-mouth, apparently also at Ragnhild’s instigation. Einar Hard-mouth was then killed by Ljot (another brother of Arnfinn and Havard), who then married Ragnhild and became earl. Nothing more is known of Einar Buttered-Bread and he earns his place on this list primarily for his intriguing nickname. Whereas it is easy to imagine how his grandfather Thorfinn Skullsplitter gained his name, we don’t know why Einar was called Buttered-Bread, and we probably never will. Ragnvald of Ed Ragnvald is known only from a rune-stone that he commissioned in memory of his mother at Ed near Stockholm, probably in the early 11th century. The runic inscription reads simply “Ragnvald had the runes cut in memory of Fastvi, his mother, Onäm’s daughter. She died in Ed. God help her soul. Ragnvald let the runes be cut, who was in Greek-land, and leader of the host”. Despite being such a short inscription, this provides a variety of information about Ragnvald. Despite being a successful warrior he was a respectful son who went to the trouble of having a stone carved in memory of his mother. Like many Vikings in the 11th century, the invocation to God suggests that Ragnvald (if not necessarily his mother) was Christian. Ragnvald may have become Christian as a result of his experiences in ‘Greek-land’. This refers not just to Greece but to the whole of the Byzantine Empire, which had its capital at modern Istanbul, known to the Vikings as Miklagard (‘the great city’). Ragnvald travelled all the way to Turkey, a reminder that the Vikings travelled east as well as west, and from his description probably served as an officer in the Varangian Guard. This was a unit in the Byzantine army, often used as the palace guard, and composed primarily of Viking warriors. The existence of such a unit shows the reputation of Viking warriors as far away as the eastern Mediterranean. Bjarni Herjolfsson Bjarni Herjolfsson was the captain of the first ship of Europeans known to have discovered North America. Credit is more often given – especially in America – to Leif Erikson, known as Leif the Lucky. Leif was the son of Eirik the Red, who led the settlement of Greenland and himself led an attempt in around AD 1000 to settle in ‘Vinland’, somewhere on the east coast of Canada. However, according to the Saga of the Greenlanders Eirik travelled in the ship formerly owned by Bjarni, and made use of Bjarni’s description of the lands that he had already seen. Who discovered America? It wasn't Christopher Columbus... Bjarni had discovered America by mistake in 986. An Icelandic trader, he had been in Norway when his father decided to join Eirik the Red’s settlement of Greenland. Attempting to join his father he was blown off course in a storm and passed Greenland to the south, discovering Vinland (vine land), Markland (forest land) and Helluland (a land of flat stones). These are normally identified as Newfoundland, Labrador and Baffin Island. Some scholars prefer to place Vinland further south and west, although a Viking settlement was discovered on the northern tip of Newfoundland. Bjarni had only come to America in error and, realising his mistake, we are told that he decided not to land, but instead navigated his way up the coast and back to Greenland – a much greater achievement than his accidental discovery, especially since he hadn’t been there before. However inadvertent his discovery was, such achievements deserve better recognition. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/MGN20169941-29d95ee.jpg" width="600" height="900" alt="The beginning of ‘The Saga of the Greenlanders’, from 'Flateyjarbok' ('The Book of Flatey’). Icelandic School, (14th century). (Arni Magnusson Institute, Reykjavik, Iceland/Bridgeman Images)" title="The beginning of ‘The Saga of the Greenlanders’, from 'Flateyjarbok' ('The Book of Flatey’). Icelandic School, (14th century). (Arni Magnusson Institute, Reykjavik, Iceland/Bridgeman Images)" /> Freydis Eiriksdottir Freydis was the sister of Leif Erikson and daughter of Eirik the Red, the first settler of Greenland. Her brother Leif attempted the first-known European settlement in North America, and a settlement of Viking-type longhouses at l’Anse aux Meadows at the northern tip of Newfoundland may well be the houses that Leif built. Leif himself chose not to stay in ‘Vinland’, but offered the use of his houses to various members of his extended family, although he insisted that the houses remained his property. Freydis was involved in two attempts to settle Vinland, and in the process proved herself as tough and ruthless as any Viking warrior. On one trip her party established contact with the native people and initially traded peacefully. However, when the party was subsequently attacked by some of the natives, the men were inclined to flee. Freydis, however, although heavily pregnant, picked up a sword and beat it against her bare breast, as the result of which the attackers fled in fright. On the other expedition Freydis travelled in partnership with a group led by two Icelandic brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi. Having first smuggled a larger number of men on board her ship than agreed, she incited her husband to kill Helgi and Finnbogi and all their men. When they refused to kill the women Freydis did it herself, forbidding on pain of death everyone in her group to reveal this on their return to Greenland. Cnut the Great Cnut is the ultimate Viking success story. He was the younger son of Svein Forkbeard, king of the Danes, who conquered England in 1013 but died almost immediately. Cnut’s brother Harald inherited the Danish kingdom, so Cnut was left, probably still in his teens, to try to restore his father’s authority in England, which had reverted to the Anglo-Saxon king Ethelred II. By 1016 Cnut had conquered England in his own right, cementing his position by marriage to Ethelred’s widow. Cnut’s success in England came through victory in battle, but within a couple of years he had also become king of Denmark, apparently peacefully. Your guide to King Cnut: the fierce Danish warrior who ruled England For the first time, the whole of Denmark and England were under the rule of one king, and in 1028 Cnut also conquered Norway, establishing the largest North Sea empire seen before or since, although it fragmented again following his death in 1035. Cnut also took the opportunity to borrow ideas from his English kingdom to apply in Denmark. While Cnut took – and held – England through good old-fashioned Viking warfare, Denmark now benefited from regular trade and from an influx of ideas as well as material wealth. Everything you need to know about the Anglo-Saxons 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Anglo-Saxons The dark side of the Anglo-Saxons 10 ways the Anglo-Saxons changed the course of British history Viking apocalypse: the invasion that spelled doom for the Anglo-Saxons The Anglo-Saxons’ last stand The English exiles who fled from William the Conqueror Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: 10 things we learned Under Cnut towns became more important both as economic and administrative centres, coinage was developed on a large scale, and the influence of the Christian Church became firmly established. Cnut even went on a peaceful pilgrimage to Rome to meet the Pope. In some ways Cnut can be better understood as an Anglo-Saxon king than a Viking. However, his great success illustrates one of the strengths of the Vikings generally, which was their ability to adapt to a variety of cultures and circumstances across the Viking world. So, the very fact that many of Cnut’s achievements seem rather un-Viking makes him in some ways the quintessential Viking. Gareth Williams is a historian specialising in the Anglo-Saxon and Viking period and a curator at the British Museum, a role he has held since 1996, with responsibility for British and European coinage. This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2016
9 surprising facts about William the Conqueror and the Norman conquest
The first Norman king of England, William the Conqueror changed the course of England's history when he invaded in 1066. Here, historian Marc Morris shares 9 lesser-known facts about William the Conqueror and the Norman conquest
Every major church in England was rebuilt as a result of the Norman conquest The Anglo-Saxons were not famed for building in stone, and during the first half of the 11th century had not embraced the new architectural style, now known as ‘Romanesque’, that had become fashionable on the continent. Before 1066, the only major Romanesque church in England was Edward the Confessor’s new abbey at Westminster, still not quite finished at the time of the king’s death on 5 January that year. Normandy, by contrast, had experienced a church-building boom during the rule of William the Conqueror, with dozens of new abbeys founded and ancient cathedrals rebuilt. After the Conquest, this revolution was extended to England, beginning with the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral from 1070. England had 15 cathedrals in the 11th-century. By the time of William’s death in 1087 nine of them had been rebuilt, and by the time of the death of his son Henry I, in 1135, so too had the remaining six. The same was true of every major abbey. It was the single greatest revolution in the history of English ecclesiastical architecture. Listen | Marc Morris tells the story of William the Conqueror's dramatic victory and explores its profound legacy The Norman conquest introduced castles to Britain Castles were a French invention – the earliest examples were built around the turn of the first millennium along the Loire valley. There were plenty in Normandy before 1066, but only a tiny handful in England, built in the previous generation by French friends of the English king, Edward the Confessor. The Norman conquest changed all that. “They built castles far and wide, oppressing the unhappy people”, wept the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1066. By the time of William’s death in 1087, around 500 castles had been built across England and Wales. Most were constructed from earth and timber, but work had also begun on great stone towers in London, Colchester and Chepstow. 9 of Britain’s best castles Secrets of Britain’s castles 8 must-visit castles with Tudor connections The battle of Hastings was fought at Battle, near Hastings This may perhaps seem unsurprising, but it is worth emphatically re-stating, given the various alternatives that have attracted media attention in recent years. It is generally very difficult to pinpoint the location of medieval battles with any accuracy. People often suppose that archaeology can solve the problem, but this is seldom the case. Metal rusts and wood rots, and battlefields were picked clean of valuables by scavengers and bodies were carted away to be buried in grave pits. The battle of Falkirk, fought between Edward I and William Wallace in 1298, was one of the largest engagements in medieval Britain, with almost 30,000 men on the English side alone, but not so much as a single arrowhead has ever been unearthed. Happily, however, the case for Battle is well grounded, because William built an abbey to mark the site, which still stands today. The tradition that states he did this was not, as conspiracy theorists assert, invented by the monks of Battle in the late 12th century, but stretches right back to the time of the Conqueror himself. In its obituary of William, the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says: “on the very spot where God granted him the victory, he caused a great abbey to be built”. Bayeux Tapestry facts: what is it, why was it made and what story does it tell? More than 100,000 people died as a result of the Norman conquest The size of the armies on both sides at Hastings is unknown, but neither is likely to have exceeded 10,000 men. Many were killed during the battle, but thousands more would die in the years that followed, as English resistance led to Norman repression. In the winter of 1069–70, after a combined English rebellion and Danish invasion, William laid waste to England north of the Humber, destroying crops and livestock so that the region could not support human life. Famine followed, and, according to a later chronicler, 100,000 people perished as a result. Modern analysis of the data in Domesday Book suggests that a drop in population of this magnitude did indeed occur. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/GettyImages-173306995-4fc3b7f.jpg" width="1664" height="1045" alt="The Death of Harold at the Battle of Hastings, 1066. Detail from the Bayeux Tapestry/ Tapisserie de Bayeux: La telle du conquest (a 0.5-by-68.38-metre (1.6 by 224.3 ft) long embroidered cloth depicting the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England as well as the events of the invasion itself, annotated in Latin. It is exhibited in a special museum in Bayeux, Normandy called Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux.) (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images) *** Local Caption ***" title="The Death of Harold at the Battle of Hastings, 1066" /> The Normans introduced chivalry to Britain Savage in their warfare, William and the Normans were more civilised in their politics. Before 1066, the English political elite had routinely resorted to murdering their political rivals, as they would do again in the later Middle Ages. But for more than two centuries after the Conquest, chivalry prevailed, and political killing became taboo. “No man dared slay another, no matter what wrong he had done him”, said the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in its summary of the plus points of William’s reign. Waltheof of Northumbria, beheaded in 1076, was the only earl to be executed after the Norman takeover. The next execution of an earl in England occurred in 1306, some 230 years later. William banned the English slave trade In pre-Conquest England, at least 10 per cent of the population – and perhaps as much as 30 per cent – were slaves. Slaves were treated as human chattels, and could be sold, beaten and branded as their masters saw fit. It was a sin to kill a slave, but not a crime. The Norman Conquest hastened the demise of this system. William banned the slave trade and in some cases freed slaves, to the extent that by the end of his reign their number had fallen by 25 per cent. By the early 12th century, slavery in England was no more. “After England had began to have Norman lords”, wrote Lawrence of Durham in the 1130s, “the English no longer suffered from outsiders that which they had suffered at their own hands; in this respect they found foreigners treated them better than they had themselves”. Both William and his queen, Matilda, were of normal height It is still common to hear it said that William was unusually tall, and his wife, Matilda, was exceptionally short. There is no evidence to support either assertion, and plenty to contradict it. Contemporaries described William as being strong, certainly, but described his height only as “proper”. In Matilda’s case, they noted only that she was beautiful, and said nothing at all about her stature. Matilda: William the Conqueror’s queen Norman women: the power behind the thrones In search of the Normans: who were they? William and Matilda were both buried in Caen, he in the abbey of St Etienne that he had founded in 1063, she in the nunnery of Holy Trinity, founded in 1059. Their tombs were destroyed in the 16th century, so only fragments of their skeletons survive – in William’s case a single bone. In 1959 these remains were examined by French archaeologists and it was widely reported that Matilda had been a diminutive 127cm (4’2”), William a strapping 178cm (5’10”). Widely, but not accurately. The experts in 1959 had actually concluded that Matilda was 152cm (5’) tall, making her just 5cm shorter than the average medieval adult female – a height, as the royal gynaecologist Sir Jack Dewhurst observed, far more compatible with her nine successful pregnancies. William’s single surviving thighbone, meanwhile, was re-examined in 1983 and the estimate of his height reduced to 173cm, just 2cm greater than that of the average medieval adult male. William’s reign began and ended with inglorious scenes The high point of William’s career was his coronation as king of England at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, but things did not go according to plan. The ceremony took place in an atmosphere of high tension, the Normans surrounded by thousands of disgruntled Englishmen from nearby London. When the congregation shouted their assent to William’s rule, the Normans on guard outside the church mistook the noise for treachery and began setting fire to the surrounding buildings, at which those inside ran out to protect their property or join in the looting. Similar embarrassing scenes attended William’s death in 1087. He died at the priory of St Gervais near Rouen, and as soon as he was dead his attendants looted his belongings and left his body almost naked. Eventually his body was taken by boat for burial in Caen, but as he was being led through the town a fire broke out, leading to scenes of chaos. His funeral ceremony in St Stephen’s Abbey was interrupted by an irate heckler, who complained that the church had been built on his father’s property without compensation. Finally, William’s body proved to be too fat to fit into his stone sarcophagus, and when the monks tried to force the issue his swollen bowels burst, filling the abbey with such a stench that everyone apart from the officiating clergy fled. Marc Morris is a historian who specialises in the Middle Ages. His publications include William I: England’s Conqueror (Penguin Books, 2016); King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta (Penguin Books, 2016) and The Norman Conquest (Windmill Books, 2013). You can follow him on Twitter @Longshanks1307. To listen to our podcast interview with Marc on the story and legacy of the Norman Conquest, click here. This article was first published by History Extra in 2016
She wielded more influence than any Anglo-Saxon woman before her and, in doing so, redefined the role of 'king's wife'. But did Ælfthryth cement her power through a brutal murder? Levi Roach investigates...
This article was first published in the May 2017 edition of BBC History Magazine If asked to name a medieval queen of England, most would probably fasten upon Eleanor of Aquitaine, the influential wife of Henry II, made famous by Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter. A few Plantagenet and Tudor enthusiasts might think of Elizabeth Woodville, the capable consort of Edward IV and grandmother to Henry VIII. One or two of the more adventurous might even fix upon Emma of Normandy, the indomitable wife of King Cnut in the early 11th century. Many would struggle to think of any at all. But very few indeed would name Ælfthryth, the third wife of King Edgar (reigned 959–75) and mother of Æthelred ‘the Unready’ (r978–1013 and 1014–16). This is understandable. Beyond her outlandish name (sometimes modernised as Elfrida), Ælfthryth faces a number of difficulties. For a start, our sources for her life are much scarcer than they are for her more famous successors. To this may be added the lower public profile of Anglo-Saxon history. All too often we think of the Middle Ages as starting in 1066. Before this lurks the mysterious ‘Dark Ages’: a period filled with fascinating, semi-mythical figures such as Arthur and Merlin, but little in the way of real historical evidence. Still, it is a pity that she is not better known, for if any medieval English queen deserves to be a household name, it is Ælfthryth. And for all the importance of an Eleanor or an Elizabeth, it is Ælfthryth who has the honour of being the ‘first queen of England’. Ælfthryth’s reign came at a decisive time in English history. The second half of the ninth century had seen the Vikings subdue the north and east of England. Only the kingdom of Wessex, south of the Thames, survived – and this only thanks to the dogged efforts of Alfred the Great (r871–99). Under Alfred’s successors, the English went on the offensive, and by his grandson Æthelstan’s time (r924–39) most of what is now England had been brought under their control. Later kings had to fight hard to maintain these gains, but in the end they succeeded. Ælfthryth herself was born in the early to mid-940s to a prominent family in the South West. Upon coming of age, she was married to Æthelwold, the ealdorman of East Anglia (a royal officer, the equivalent of the later ‘earl’). Æthelwold’s family was one of the most powerful in England (his father had borne the nickname ‘half-king’, on account of his quasi-regal standing) and in this capacity he was responsible for almost a quarter of the realm. However, Æthelwold soon died under circumstances that are unclear. But rather than a setback, this proved the making of the young Ælfthryth. Rival spouses In 964 Ælfthryth, still only in her late teens or early twenties, went on to marry King Edgar, who had himself succeeded to the throne five years earlier. Like Ælfthryth, Edgar had been married before. In fact, he had two prior spouses, one of whom was still alive. Not surprisingly, there were questions as to whether this was a true marriage ‘till death do us part’: an indissoluble union in the language of the church. Such concerns were soon put to rest, however. On the occasion of the marriage itself, Edgar granted land to his new wife – a particular honour accorded to neither of his previous consorts. In fact, this seems to have been a different kind of union from the outset. Unlike her predecessors, Ælfthryth regularly appeared in government records. And, far from being there for purely decorative purposes, she seems to have influenced and guided royal policy. Before this, royal wives had been minor players. They appear only rarely in the documentary record, and when they do, they invariably bear the title ‘king’s wife’ or ‘king’s consort’ rather than ‘queen’. Such terms emphasise the dependency of these women on their husband; queen was not yet an office in its own right. But this too was now to change. From the start, Ælfthryth is styled ‘queen’. The reason for this change lies in another break with tradition: Ælfthryth was also the first consort of England to be crowned and consecrated. The tradition of royal consecration had developed on the continent in the early Middle Ages. At its heart lay the ritual anointing of the monarch with holy oil and investment with symbols of office (above all, the crown – hence the modern term ‘coronation’). The ceremony enacted and symbolised the transition from heir apparent to king, and was thought to endow the monarch with divine favour. It made him king ‘by the grace of God’. Royal consecration had become common in England in the ninth century, but it was reserved for ruling monarchs, invariably men. That Ælfthryth should be formally anointed like her husband marks an important point of departure. It indicates that, in both practical and symbolic terms, queenship was starting to become an office. Ælfthryth’s influence would not be owed entirely to her husband, but also to ‘divine grace’. The partnership between Ælfthryth and Edgar is visible throughout the remaining years of his reign. In the year of their marriage, they began to reform the bishopric of Winchester. This was a process that involved removing the existing clergy, who were accused of lax standards, and replacing them with monks. In future years, the two worked closely to foster similar reforms elsewhere. And when, in 973, Edgar decided to undergo a spectacular second coronation at Bath, Ælfthryth was right there by his side. A succession struggle In early July 975, at the height of his powers, Edgar died at the age of no more than 32. This had not been foreseen, and a succession struggle soon erupted. This pitted Ælfthryth and Edgar’s son, Æthelred, against Edgar’s eldest son, Edward (Æthelred’s half-brother). Most surprising is that there was a dispute at all. Though succession rules had yet to be formalised, it was generally anticipated that the eldest son would succeed (at least in the absence of a royal brother). That some were willing to back the much younger son Æthelred, who may only have been six at the time, requires some explanation. It’s likely that the imposing figure of Ælfthryth lay behind their decision. As queen, she had enjoyed great power and influence and was understandably hesitant to let go of this. Edward’s succession posed a real threat to her. If Edward proved long-lived, there was every chance that Æthelred might be cut out of the succession. Yet Ælfthryth was not just power-hungry. As a consecrated queen, she may have felt that she was more legitimate than Edgar’s previous wives: his only true consort. And if this were so, then Æthelred was his only true offspring. It was this that seems to have been the real point of contention: was Edward a throne-worthy heir, or an illegitimate bastard? Some were clearly convinced of the latter, but in the end age trumped legitimacy and Edward was consecrated king in his father’s stead. Edward’s succession was a major blow to Ælfthryth, and such wounds were not easily healed. Barely had Edward taken control of the realm, when he was killed at Corfe in Dorset by supporters of Æthelred and Ælfthryth. He had been travelling to visit the two at the time, and it is hardly surprising that suspicion has often fallen upon them. However, contemporary sources, of which there is little shortage, do not implicate them. We are probably dealing with a situation rather like that of Henry II and Thomas Becket two centuries later: one of zealous supporters seeking to do their masters a favour, and going beyond their orders. Whatever the precise circumstances, this act landed Æthelred on the throne that his mother had worked so hard to secure for him. However, he was still a child (no older than 12, and perhaps only eight or nine) so there could be no question of him ruling on his own. Instead, an informal regency was established with Ælfthryth and her supporters at its head. For the next six years, it was they who would rule with quiet efficiency. Only when the queen regent’s chief allies, Ælfhere of Mercia and Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, died in quick succession in 983 and 984, did Æthelred finally take control of affairs. Initially, he distanced himself from the politics of his regents, and for the next eight or nine years Ælfthryth disappears from the record entirely. She was clearly removed from court, and her policies with her. Crisis of confidence These years saw something of a youthful rebellion from the teenage Æthelred, who took the opportunity to promote new favourites and attack religious houses associated with his earlier regents. Yet it was also at this juncture that the Vikings began to plague his coasts. In 991 they defeated a major English force at Maldon in Essex. Æthelred suddenly suffered a crisis of confidence. As was common in the Middle Ages, the king interpreted this as a sign of divine displeasure, and set about mending his errant ways – starting with restoring his mother to favour. He welcomed Ælfthryth back at court and reversed previous policies. Æthelred also charged his mother with the important task of raising his children (her own grandchildren, the heirs to the throne). Reconciliation seems to have been complete. When Ælfthryth died on 17 November 1001, the king was deeply moved. She was buried at Wherwell, the nunnery she had founded in Hampshire. Soon after Æthelred issued an extraordinary document in favour of this centre. Like most royal enactments, the resulting text opens with a meditation on God’s will. Yet unlike other documents of the era, this quotes the biblical dictum: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” then cites the fifth commandment: “Honour thy father and thy mother”. Ælfthryth’s legacy lived on in the queens who followed her. Æthelred’s second wife, Emma of Normandy, cut quite the figure in future years, as did Edith, the wife of Edward the Confessor (and the sister of Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England). The office of queen had been born, and had a long and bright history before it. Levi Roach is a lecturer in history at the University of Exeter and author of Æthelred the Unready (Yale University Press, 2016). Ælfthryth’s inspiration Two women who set the template for the queen’s achievements In the years before Ælfthryth, the status of royal women varied significantly. The dynasty that united England in the early 10th century was that of Wessex (south of the Thames), and prevailing attitudes were drawn from there. At the time of Alfred the Great, the king’s Welsh biographer, Bishop Asser, criticised the “strange” West Saxon tradition of denying royal consorts the title of queen – a custom that reportedly went back to the king Beorhtric in the early ninth century (r786–802), whose wife accidentally poisoned him! This is the stuff of legend, but whatever the real grounds, West Saxon royal women – aside from Judith, crowned queen of the West Saxons in 856 – did not have a high profile. Elsewhere, matters were different. In the Midlands kingdom of Mercia, royal wives traditionally held a more active role. It is here that the most famous female figure of the 10th century is to be found: Æthelflæd, ‘lady of the Mercians’. Æthelflæd was the eldest daughter of Alfred the Great. She married the Mercian nobleman Æthelred, who oversaw the region on Alfred’s behalf. When her husband died in 911, she took power, working with her brother, King Edward the Elder (r899–924), to conquer much of the east Midlands and East Anglia. Her political links to Wessex doubtless helped her position, but her achievement is no less impressive for this. She may have offered a model for Ælfthryth, whose first husband hailed from East Anglia. Another likely inspiration was Eadgifu, wife of Edward the Elder. Little is known about Eadgifu during her husband’s reign, but when her sons Edmund (r939–46) and Eadred (r946–55) ruled, she seems to have been the power behind the throne.
The 1016 Danish Conquest that led to the battle of Hastings
The tumultuous events of 1066 are among the best known in history. But, argues author Justin Hill, 1066 would never have happened without the Danish Conquest of 1016. Here, writing for HistoryExtra, Hill investigates…
Everyone’s heard of 1066: Harold of England (allegedly) got an arrow in the eye and William the Conqueror became king of England. England was dragged out of the northern, Germanic world, into the orbit of France and a different culture of arts and architecture and social organisation. It was the last time, so folklore goes, that England was invaded. But what most people haven’t heard about is the other time England was conquered and had a foreign king sit on the throne. It is that conquest, the Danish Conquest of 1016, that brought about the end of Anglo-Saxon England and, more importantly, put into motion the events of 1066. Setting the scene Let us go back to the world that brought about the Danish Conquest – the end of the reign of that other well-remembered figure, Æthelred the Unready. Æthelred’s name was the compound of ‘Æthel’ and ‘raed’, which meant ‘noble-counsel’. His nickname was ‘Un-read’, meaning ‘bad council’ and was a polite way of describing how inept he was. Æthelred was the son of Edgar the Peaceable and his second wife, a Game of Thrones’ Cersei Lannister of the Anglo-Saxon period: beautiful, ruthless and prepared to risk all for her child. Ælfthryth was the result of a marriage between the ealdorman of Devon and her mother, a member of the Wessex royal family. The Wessex kings had long built up both patronage and familial links throughout their old heartland of Wessex through long friendships and marriages like this. A story, written by William of Malmesbury, said that when King Edgar was looking for a wife he sent someone from his court, a man named Æthelwald, to see if Ælfthryth was as beautiful as she was rumoured to be. But Æthelwald was so struck by the beauty of this young girl that he lied to the king and ended up marrying her himself. But rumours could not be silenced, and when King Edgar decided to see the girl for himself, Æthelwald, in panic, insisted that his wife try to appear as unattractive as possible. But Ælfthryth did the opposite and turned herself out in all her finery. King Edgar was smitten; Æthelwald was killed hunting, and with his death Ælfthryth’s route to the queen was open. Æthelred was the product of that union. Edgar died in 975 leaving two sons: Edward (born from a previous marriage) and the minor Æthelred. Edward was clearly the best choice and ruled for nearly three years, until a fateful day at Corfe Castle when, while visiting his young brother, he was dragged from his horse and murdered by retainers of the queen. Æthelred would reign for the next 38 years, and so started one of the longest – and most disastrous – reigns of medieval England. The poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’ talks of the battle in 991, when Ealdorman Bryhtnoth, a leading figure in the Æthelred court, was killed in battle against a Viking army. The poem speaks eloquently of the military ethos that Bryhtnoth’s retainer Brythwold felt, declaring that he would die at his lord’s side rather than run from the battle. But many other men, who would be faced with the same choice, would find their resolution less ironclad. Money matters Following the battle of Maldon in AD 991 [in which Earl Byrhtnoth and his thegns led the English against a Viking invasion, ending in an Anglo-Saxon defeat], Æthelred’s court turned to a policy that had worked before, paying the Vikings to leave in the form of Danegeld, which was paid in silver coin and bullion. That first Danegeld was 10,000 pounds of silver. By 1002 the sum was 24,000 pounds, but while Viking sea-kinds swore oaths not to return to England, many of their followers did not feel similarly bound, and instead clustered around the country like wolves around a wounded beast. The attacks on England came almost yearly, with Viking armies living parasitically in England for most of the next 10 years, and the sums of silver paid to them began to spiral out of control. By 1009, 48,000 pounds of silver was paid to Thorkell the Tall to leave England. Normandy had been a haven for the Viking fleets, which would take their slaves and silver across the Channel to sell it off. In an effort to close off the seaports, Æthelred married Emma, daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy, as his second wife. It was the son of this union, Edward the Confessor, who would end up as king of England in 1042. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/BEFXEA-1975414.jpg" width="800" height="530" alt="BEFXEA Great Britain England Essex Maldon Byrhtnoth monument statue England Maldon Essex historical place Battle of Maldon AD991. Image shot 2009. Exact date unknown." title="Great Britain England Essex Maldon Byrhtnoth monument statue England Maldon Essex historical place Battle of Maldon AD991. Image shot 2009. Exact date unknown." /> Statue to Byrhtnoth, leader at the battle of Maldon in AD 991. (Les polders/Alamy Stock Photo)The thousands of pounds of silver paid to the Vikings were also having a profound effect on the places where the Vikings were coming from; giving young Viking aspirants so much wealth that they could return home and, through gift-giving and patronage, make themselves kings. Both Olaf Tryggvason and Saint Olaf were young sea kings who benefited from the events of this period. But the wealth and power that such amounts of silver gave chieftains threatened established kings. At the same time the kings of Denmark were building an aggressive, powerful and Christian new state, and the ambitious Swein Forkbeard, who like Philip II of Macedon had fashioned his fledgling country into an aggressive and powerful military power, seems to have decided that if others could shear the fat English sheep, then he could do one better, and take over the whole flock. So, in 1013 Swein Forkbeard sailed into the Humber, the old heart of the Danelaw, and declared himself king. Æthelred was unable to respond, and the country, it seemed, was finished with the House of Wessex. Archbishop Wulfstan’s 11th-century work ‘Sermon of the Wolf’ lists the social ills that he saw throughout Anglo-Saxon England: theft, slavery, perjury, fornication, murder, worshipping false gods and other misdeeds. The fabric of English society had been stretched to the point of tearing and now the country seemed barely able to resist. While the fighting had taken a toll on the traditional aristocracy, continual taxes had a much more profound affect. Anglo-Saxon taxes were levied on manorial estates. If you were unable to pay the taxes for your land then your land was forfeit: if someone else paid the tax for you then the land became theirs. The repeated imposition of these taxes and new ones (such as the 1008 taxes used to build a fleet of ships), combined with Viking raiding and pillaging across large swathes of the country, saw the heartlands of Wessex power reduced to penury. The social breakdown of this period cannot be exaggerated. It went on for so long that faith in the House of Wessex began to erode. Nothing, it seemed, would solve the problem. Changing tides But chance gave Æthelred a second shot. On the day after Candlemas, 3 February 1014, Swein Forkbeard died and his second son, Cnut, returned to Denmark rather than fight. Æthelred had fled to the Duchy of Normandy, where his wife, Emma, was from, and he was brought back to England “saying that he would be their faithful lord – would better each of those things that they disliked – and that each of the things should be forgiven which had been either done or said against him; provided they all unanimously, without treachery, turned to him”. But just as Philip II of Macedon had been followed by a keener and more ambitious son, so it was with Swein, whose son, Cnut, returned two years later determined to finish the war his father had started. The Wessex heartlands gave up on Æthelred in 1015. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes, laconically, “The West-Saxons also submitted, and gave hostages, and horsed the army”. Æthelred died on St George’s Day 1016, too late, it seemed, to do anything but allow Cnut to take all of England. But Æthelred’s eldest living son, Edmund Ironside, had not got the memo, and set about raising forces to throw the Danes out. He fought six battles that summer and seemed set to stage a great revival, until he was betrayed in battle by Eadric, the Ealdorman of Mercia. Edmund and Cnut agreed to split the country into two, but Edmund died shortly after, either from wounds from battle or assassination. It is Edmund Ironside who is really the last Anglo-Saxon king because what followed after was an Anglo-Danish state in which Earl Godwin, father of Harold Godwinson, rose to power. Godwin was probably the son of a minor but successful thane in Sussex named Wulfnoth Cild. Sussex was outside the traditional Wessex heartland, and his rise to power seems to have put out of joint the noses of older and more prestigious houses – scandalous stories arose of his humble background. Godwin was a skilled politician with a keen nose for the direction of the wind. You can trace this in the names of his children: his first sons were all named after Danish kings – Swein, Harold, Tostig, Gyrth; but after Cnut’s death he switched to Anglo-Saxon names, Leofwine and Wulfnoth. But despite the names the facts remained: Godwin had married a member of the Danish royal circle and his children were half Danish. Like their cousin, Beorn Estridson, they were part of an international aristocracy that looked across the North Sea and saw it as part of their own world. Fractures The fracture of 1016 ran through the next 50 years of English history. When Edward the Confessor was king he seemed an unhappy prisoner of his earls, unable to impose his royal will without their support. When the showdown came between him and Earl Godwin, the only remaining heir of the House of Wessex had to rely not on his family’s heartland, but on the earls of Mercia and Northumbria. The deep connections between king and country that allowed Æthelred to stagger on for so long had gone. The political climate of England had changed. Power was now vested more in the earls than the throne. So while the struggles with the Danes brought Queen Emma to the court and a Norman bloodline that would be used as a screen of legitimacy by William the Conqueror, it was really 1016 that set the stage for 1066. Wessex, which had been old when Alfred took the throne, had over the centuries shown itself to be the most resilient of fighters. It had an uncanny ability to be knocked down and to stand back up again, and with Edmund Ironside’s brilliant campaign of 1016 it showed a last, final, brilliant display of resilience. But with Edmund’s death, pugnacious Wessex was gone. What rose from the ashes was an Anglo-Danish state with new men in charge who did not have long lines of lineage and links with the Wessex royal family. Despite the wealth and the power, there was a fragility to the England of 1066, which was apparent in the months after Hastings, when England was riven by conflict. Harold Godwinson might have been a member of the Danish royal family, but he was not of royal English blood, and even though he left grown sons, it seems that they could not command the same bloody-minded resolve from the men of England that Edmund Ironside had. Rather than dubbing him the last Anglo-Saxon King, Harold Godwinson should be thought of as the last Anglo-Danish king. Justin Hill is the author of Viking Fire (Little, Brown 2016), which tells the true story of Harald Hardrada, the last Viking. Hill is also the author of Shieldwall (2011) about the Danish Conquest in 1016, a Sunday Times Book of the Year This article was first published on HistoryExtra in 2016
1066 – how the Viking diversion cost Harold his throne
One of the most famous battles in English history was fought at Hastings in 1066. But two other battles were also fought in England in that year, and they probably cost King Harold Godwinson his crown. In each of these the opponent was King Harald of Norway, known as Hardrada or ‘hard ruler’, and for his involvement we can blame King Cnut. Here, author Teresa Cole investigates...
Cnut’s father, Swein Forkbeard, defeated Athelred, the famously Unready father of Edward the Confessor, to take the English throne, though he died soon after. Cnut in his turn took the crown from Edward’s half-brother, Edmund Ironside, becoming king of England in 1017. He reigned for nearly 20 years, during which time he was also king of Denmark and later king of Norway. Unlike William the Conqueror, however, having obtained the throne of England he adopted English laws and customs and promoted Englishmen to positions of power, one such being the Sussex thegn who became Earl Godwin of Wessex. It is a measure of how entwined English and Danish affairs became, that Godwin married Gytha, the sister-in-law of Cnut’s own sister, Estrith, and their children, including Harold Godwinson and Tostig, had a mixture of both English and Danish names. A family affair It was Cnut’s early death, and the similarly early deaths of his three sons, that led to the break-up of his empire. While Edward the Confessor came unchallenged to the English throne, Cnut’s nephew, Sweyn Estrithsson, who claimed Denmark, had no such easy ride. He was immediately attacked by Magnus of Norway, who declared that Cnut’s son, Harthacnut, had promised both Denmark and England to him. Harald Hardrada Into this mixture came Harald Hardrada, one of the greatest Viking warriors of the age. Half-brother of Olaf II (aka St Olaf), the Norwegian king defeated by Cnut, he had left his homeland as a child and become immensely rich and battle-hardened fighting for the Byzantine emperor in Africa and the Middle East. Now returning home he met Sweyn, temporarily exiled in Sweden, and agreed to support him. He was soon enticed away, though, by Magnus, who was his nephew. According to King Harald’s Saga, our most detailed source of information about him, Hardrada agreed with Magnus that each would give the other half of all his possessions, and (as per the typical Norse agreement) the survivor would take all. Together they drove Sweyn from Denmark, but the death of Magnus soon after let Sweyn back in again. Hardrada, however, took up the fight once more, and they continued until 1064, when it was finally agreed that Hardrada would have Norway and Sweyn, Denmark. This meant that, when Edward the Confessor died in January 1066 both Sweyn and Harald Hardrada could have made out a claim for the English crown – Sweyn as a successor to Cnut’s dynasty, and Hardrada as a result of the pact between Magnus and Harthacnut and his own pact with Magnus. Instead it was Harold who was to become king. Harold went on to alienate Tostig, who had been Earl of Northumbria until the previous autumn when he was first expelled by its citizens and then exiled by Edward the Confessor. Tostig sought help for an invasion of England from, among others, William of Normandy (interested, but with his own plans), and Sweyn Estrithsson (no stomach for more fighting and contented with what he had), before enlisting Harald Hardrada to his cause. He promised Hardrada that half of England would rise to support him as king, since the new King Harold was so unpopular – a claim that proved far wide of the truth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/GettyImages-79754295-38dbcd6.jpg" width="2150" height="700" alt="Tostig Godwinson, brother of King Harold II of England, tries to persuade King Sweyn II of Denmark and King Harald Hardrada of Norway (1015 - 1066) to assist him in invading England, 1066. Both Tostig and Harald were killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. Engraving by L. Gruner after D. Maclise RA. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Tale Of Tostig" /> Tostig Godwinson tries to persuade King Sweyn II of Denmark and King Harald Hardrada of Norway to assist him in invading England, 1066. Engraving by L Gruner after D Maclise RA. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Into battle A summer of preparation provided Hardrada and Tostig with some 300 shiploads of fighting men, around 12,000 in all, who in September 1066 followed the traditional Viking invasion route along the coast of Northumbria and up the rivers Humber and Ouse towards York. The ships were beached at Riccall, some 10 miles south of York, and the army proceeded towards that city to be met at Fulford, just outside, by an English army. Led by earls Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria, both young men and inexperienced in warfare, this was no match for the invaders. On a battlefield between a river and a marsh (still visible but about to disappear under houses) they were totally routed. Edwin and Morcar escaped though probably wounded. Many more did not, forced into the river to drown, or trapped on the marshy ground where corpses were “so thickly strewn… they paved a way across the fen”. York was forced to surrender, and to promise hostages, as well as men and provisions to support Hardrada – these to be brought a few days later to a little place on the crossing of the river Derwent at Stamford Bridge. At the time, an English army consisted of two main elements. Housecarls were professional, well-trained, well-equipped elite fighters maintained by the king and also by the major earls. The bulk of the forces, however, were made up of the select fyrd, a militia provided from each town and village to serve for a two-month period and organised on a shire basis. They were equipped and paid by the area they represented and were generally well trained, providing a force of many thousands which could be called out when needed, usually on a rota basis, or in whichever area was threatened. King Harold Godwinson had spent the summer months guarding the south coast against the expected invasion from Normandy, using mainly the southern select fyrd for this. No sooner had he stood down these men, thinking the invasion season past, than news was brought of Hardrada in the north. As he raced northwards to face this new foe, it was therefore the select fyrd from the Midlands and East Anglia that was now summoned to form the bulk of a new army. Silver penny of Harold II (Harold Godwinson), minted in 1066, showing the obverse side. (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images) Hardrada had returned to his ships at Riccall, and on 25 September set out from there with around two-thirds of his men to march across country the 10 miles to Stamford Bridge. It was a hot day, only five days after the victory at Fulford, and he clearly had no suspicion that the English king was anywhere near, so they left most of their armour behind. In fact King Harold had arrived at York the night before, and now, gathering his forces, set out to confront the invaders at the meeting place. Taken completely by surprise, Hardrada immediately despatched a swift rider to Riccall for reinforcements, before forming a defensive shield wall ring on high ground above the river. In the fighting that followed the shield wall was broken. Hardrada himself, charged into the thickest of the action, swinging his great battle-axe and almost driving the English back, before a well-aimed arrow struck him in the throat and ended the life of the mighty warrior. The battle might have ended there if Tostig had accepted an invitation to surrender. Instead he took up Hardrada’s banner and fought on through the heat of the afternoon until he too was slain. At that point Eystein Orri arrived with the reinforcements from Riccall, smashing into the weary English army in what became known as ‘Orri’s Storm’. Losses were heavy on both sides, but by evening it was clear Harold had won a great victory, almost annihilating the prime forces of Norway. Of the 300 ships that had arrived at Riccall, only 24 were needed to take the survivors home after Hardrada’s son had sued for peace. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/GettyImages-5124560228129-0bfe742.jpg" width="2050" height="700" alt="25th September 1066, King Harold II (c.1020 - 1066), the Saxon king of Britain beholds the body of his rebellious brother Tostig, whom he has just defeated at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, Yorkshire. Next to Tostig lies his ally, King Harold III (1015 - 1066) or Hardrade of Norway. By D. Maclise. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Death Of Tostig" /> The death of Tostig at the battle of Stamford Bridge, September 1066. By D Maclise. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) But Harold, too, had endured losses. His elite housecarls, fighting in the forefront of battle, had suffered many dead or injured. So, too, had those of Mercia and Northumbria, cut down in two battles fought within five days. The select fyrd of the Midlands and north had also taken a severe battering, while that of the south had spent most of the summer guarding the coast. It is academic, of course, to speculate what kind of army might have been put into the field against William the Bastard had the Norman invasion been postponed to the following spring. As it was, less than a week after Stamford Bridge, news was brought to Harold at York that William had landed at Pevensey. Once again the select fyrd was summoned to duty. Once again the weary housecarls marched south with the king. Through the long day at Hastings they stood firm against the best that William could throw at them. Only at the very end was their resolve defeated and their cause lost. In the final analysis it was surely the losses in the north that tipped the balance, shortening their battle line, and thinning their elite forces. It was indisputably Hardrada and his Viking invaders, though soundly beaten by him, that in the end cost Harold his crown and his life. Teresa Cole is author of The Norman Conquest: William the Conqueror's Subjugation of England (Amberley Publishing, 2016). To listen to our podcast on the story and legacy of the Norman Conquest, click here.
The great Viking terror: how Norse warriors conquered the Anglo-Saxons
Until AD 865, Viking raiders' modus operandi in the British Isles was simple – they came, they saw, they plundered, and then they sped away back over the sea. But that year something changed. Small bands of looters evolved into a massive armed force and, worse still for their terrified victims, they had every intention of staying put. Julian D Richards and Dawn Hadley describe what happened when the 'Viking Great Army' arrived on English shores
During the winter of AD 873–74, a Viking warrior met a gruesome death, probably in an attack on a Mercian royal shrine at Repton. He was a big man, almost 6 feet tall, and at least 35–45 years old. But in the shieldwall his head was vulnerable. He suffered a massive blow to the skull and, as he reeled from that, the point of a sword found the weak spot in his helmet – the eye slit in the visor, gouging out his eye, and penetrating the back of the eye socket, into his brain. While he lay on the ground, a second sword blow sliced into his upper thigh, between his legs, cutting into his femur and probably slicing away his genitals. After the battle, the slain Viking warrior’s comrades buried him next to the Mercian shrine in what is now the parish church of St Wystan, where he lay for over a thousand years – until excavated by archaeologists. The man in Grave 511 was buried with his head to the west, his hands together on his pelvis. He wore a necklace of two glass beads and an amulet in the shape of a Thor’s hammer. Around his waist was a belt, from which had probably been suspended a key and two knives – one of a folding-type, like a modern Swiss-army penknife. The other warriors had placed his sword back in its wooden fleece-lined scabbard, and laid it by his left side, where it had doubtless hung in life. They also carefully put the tusk of a wild boar between his thighs, to replace what he had lost in battle; he had died a warrior’s death, and was destined for the pleasures of Valhalla. More mysteriously, they rested the wing bone of a jackdaw lower down, between his legs. A younger man, perhaps the warrior’s shield-bearer, was buried adjacent to him in order to accompany him to the next world. Finally, the burial party built a stone cairn over the graves, incorporating fragments of an Anglo-Saxon cross that they had deliberately smashed. They also erected a wooden marker between the graves so that all would know who lay there. There the burials remained undisturbed, and perhaps still visible, for generations. Game-changing tactic Taken in isolation, these Viking graves tell us little about ninth-century England – they are merely the grisly results of one bloody incident in a period characterised by violence. Yet viewed alongside a succinct reference to the events that led to the Vikings’ deaths in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, they soon become something more powerful altogether – a rare insight into the arrival on these shores of a force that would change Anglo-Saxon England for ever, the Viking Great Army. “In this year,” the Chronicle declares, “the army went from Lindsey to Repton and took up winter quarters (wintersetl) there, and drove King Burgred across the sea… And they conquered all that land… And the same year they gave the kingdom of the Mercians to be held by Ceolwulf, a foolish king’s thegn; and he swore oaths to them and gave hostages.” The excerpt is full of references to this game-changing development. We know that King Burgred fled to Rome after his kingdom was attacked by marauding Vikings. And we believe that Ceolwulf was a puppet king, put on the Mercian throne by the Vikings for the very good reason that he would do what he was told. Yet it is the use of “army” and “winter quarters” that make this particular Viking attack stand out from all that had gone before. This was no small band of raiders launching a lightning strike on an unsuspecting population before disappearing with its loot back to Scandinavia. No, this was a mighty military force made up of hundreds, if not thousands, of warriors, and the fact that it decided to bed down on what is now the grounds and cloisters of Repton school, suggests that it was here to stay. Rival powers In the mid-ninth century, England was not a single kingdom. Instead it was made up of four rival powers: East Anglia, Wessex (in the south and west), Mercia (including London and the Midlands), and Northumbria, to the north. Anglo-Saxon England was mainly rural and its wealth was derived largely from the wool trade. There were a few trading sites, or wics, that we might call towns. These include Ipswich, Eoforwic (York), Hamwic (Southampton) and Aldwych (the Anglo-Saxon trading port of London, now the Strand). But the majority of the population lived in dispersed rural settlements, as part of large estates owned by the king or the church. Although capable of great works of manuscript and metalwork art, England was not industrialised. There were some imports, including German wine and lava millstones, but most everyday items were made locally. Most pottery, for example, comprised crude handmade and low-fired wares for local consumption. However, the Anglo-Saxon kings were Christians, and their rich monasteries – often placed in vulnerable coastal locations such as Lindisfarne, Monkwearmouth, and Jarrow – had been targeted by Viking raiding parties from the end of the eighth century. Initially these were hit-and-run affairs, focused on portable wealth – church silver and slaves – and the forces involved were fairly small. The Vikings hailed from across present-day Scandinavia, and their slender longships – swift and shallow – allowed them to cross the North Sea and sail upriver to attack the heartland of England. Occasionally the Vikings overwintered in England – on the Isle of Thanet in 850, and the Isle of Sheppey in 855. However, the so-called ‘Great Army’ that landed in East Anglia in 865 – the one that put Burgred to flight and over-wintered in Repton – was of a different magnitude, and had a different strategy. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that it had previously been campaigning in continental Europe but Charles the Bald, Holy Roman Emperor, strengthened Frankish defences and established a mobile cavalry force. The Viking leaders therefore appear to have decided that England, divided by internecine warfare, would provide easier pickings. They were right. Soon after landing in East Anglia, the Viking Great Army took horses and travelled north, seizing York in 866. Next it swept south to Nottingham in 867, before returning to York the year after. Over the following three years it would attack Thetford (869), Reading (870) and London (871). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says little of this period beyond recording where the army took wintersetl. Yet there can be little doubt that this was a crucial decade for English history. It witnessed the transformation of the Great Army from raiders to settlers, hastening the demise of the separate kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria. In 876, one Viking force “shared out the land of the Northumbrians, and they proceeded to plough and support themselves”. Hunger, cold and fear The remainder of the Great Army, led by Guthrum, continued its campaigns, dividing out Mercia, and seizing the West Saxon royal estate at Chippenham in 877. Then it was suddenly stopped in its tracks by King Alfred of Wessex. Alfred had initially retreated into the marshes of Somerset to avoid capture but it wasn’t long before he was launching a counterattack: constructing a fortress at Athelney, rallying the men of Wessex to arms, and in 878 defeating the Vikings at Edington in Wiltshire. Alfred’s biographer, Asser, records that: “After 14 days the Vikings, thoroughly terrified by hunger, cold and fear, and in the end by despair, sought peace.” As part of the ensuing negotiations Guthrum accepted Christianity, and “three weeks later Guthrum… with 30 of the best men from his army, came to King Alfred… and Alfred raised him from the holy font of baptism, receiving him as his adoptive son”. In 880 Guthrum’s army went to East Anglia “and settled there and shared out the land”. Soon after, Guthrum and Alfred formally divided out their areas of jurisdiction, and made arrangements for relations between their followers over legal disputes, trade and the movement of people. Guthrum minted coins in his realm, some of which were copies of those of King Alfred, while on others he used his baptismal English name of Æthelstan. These initiatives were part of the process by which Guthrum became a Christian king in England. Of the Great Army that precipitated these changes, we know little. Although we are given the names of the places where they over-wintered, the camps themselves remained elusive – until, that is, the archaeological work described in this article. On the European mainland, Viking armies are known to have based themselves on islands in major rivers. A late ninth-century account by Abbot Adrevaldus of Flavigny Abbey in France of a Viking army on an island in the Loire hints at the advantages that this conferred. The Vikings, we are told, “held crowds of prisoners in chains and… rested themselves after their toil so that they might be ready for warfare. From that place they undertook unexpected raids, sometimes in ships, sometimes on horseback, and they destroyed all the province.” Other sources suggest that the Vikings were trading as well as raiding. For example, the Annals of St Bertin record that in 873 a Viking army besieged by Frankish forces at Angers was permitted to hold a market on an island in the Loire before departing in February. That armies were associated with trading is reinforced by the entry in the Annals for 876, which describes the “traders and shield-sellers” that followed the army of Charles the Bald. We also know that Viking armies were accompanied by women. A late ninth-century account by Abbo, a monk of St-Germain-des-Prés, refers to the presence of women alongside the Viking force that besieged Paris in 885 and 886. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that a few years later a Viking army “placed their women in safety in East Anglia”. Nine-foot giant Archaeological investigation has revealed more still about the Viking Great Army. Excavations of a mound in the vicar’s garden at Repton revealed the disarticulated remains of at least 264 people, of whom 80 per cent were robust males. They had been placed within the stone foundations of a Mercian mortuary chapel, and covered with a stone cairn. The deposit had been disturbed in the 17th century, when most of the stone walls were robbed, and Thomas Walker, a labourer, described to Simon Degge of Derby how the bones had originally been laid out around a central stone coffin, in which the remains of a “nine-foot giant” had been discovered. Exaggeration aside, this has been suggested as the grave of another Viking leader, surrounded by the mass grave of bodies reinterred from the battlefield. It is also important to consider the landscape around the camp at Repton. Some 2.5 miles to the south-east, and overlying the flood plain of the Trent, archaeology has revealed the only known Viking cremation cemetery in the British Isles – in Heath Wood. Here, there are over 60 burial mounds in four groups, perhaps reflecting different warbands, and a different burial strategy. Excavation has revealed that some of the mounds were erected directly over cremation pyres. The hearths had been swept clean, but fragments of swords and shields remained, as well as the cremated bones of sacrificed horses and dogs, required for hunting in Valhalla. The graves contained women and children as well as men. But, unlike the warrior in Grave 511, who may have been hedging his bets by being buried adjacent to the location of saintly relics and holy pilgrimage, these Vikings seem to have had no such reservations about their faith. The kingdoms’ demise The term ‘Great Army’ suggests that the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were being assailed by one massive, unified force. However, documentary and archaeological evidence reveals that the army comprised multiple warbands drawn from different parts of Scandinavia. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s account of the Vikings’ battles with West Saxon forces in 871 records that the army was led by at least two kings – Halfdan and Bagsecg – and many jarls (chiefs), and it was reinforced later in this year by a “great summer army”. The contrasting burial strategies adopted at Repton and Heath Wood may reflect different factions within the Great Army, which divided into two after spending the winter at Repton. While Guthrum continued to battle against Alfred in Wessex, Halfdan took part of the army to Northumbria and proceeded to settle. This process is witnessed archaeologically by another excavation at Cottam, in East Yorkshire. Here, an Anglo-Saxon farmstead was abandoned before being replaced, in the late ninth century, by what we now describe as an Anglo-Scandinavian farmstead, its occupants adopting a new hybrid cultural identity revealed by, among other things, the style of their jewellery. This farmstead is just one example of the many ways in which the Viking Great Army transformed England. As well as changes in land ownership, its arrival precipitated the demise of the distinct English kingdoms and the emergence of Wessex, under Alfred, as a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It also witnessed the establishment and growth of towns, initially as defended burhs (fortified settlements) against the Vikings, many of which grew into major trading and manufacturing centres. In the wake of the Great Army, the Anglo-Saxons established a town at Torksey in modern-day Lincolnshire. Torksey was home to a mint and at least four churches, yet it would would earn its fame as the centre of a major pottery industry. This settlement near the banks of the Trent became one of the engine rooms of what has been described as England’s first industrial revolution. And, as the wheel-thrown and industrial-scale kiln technologies that were employed here were unknown in Anglo-Saxon England, they can only have been imported by continental potters travelling in the ‘baggage train’ of the Great Army. In other words, without the Great Army, that first industrial revolution may have looked very different indeed. After 865, England would never be the same. The Vikings were here to stay, and left their legacy on all aspects of English life. Julian D Richards is professor of archaeology at the University of York and author of The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2005). Dawn Hadley is professor of medieval archaeology at the University of Sheffield and is the author of Everyday Life in Viking-Age Towns (Oxbow, 2013). Together they are co-directing the Viking Torksey project. Overwhelming force The Viking Great Army’s winter camps were among the largest settlements in England, as Julian D Richards and Dawn Hadley discovered when they investigated a site at Torksey The theory that the Viking Great Army was small – its size exaggerated by Anglo-Saxon scribes for propaganda purposes – has been well and truly exploded by the discovery of a Norse winter camp at Torksey. Our investigations of the site nine miles north-west of Lincoln – occupied by the Viking army over the winter of AD 872–73 – have recovered a wealth of plunder. This includes 26 ingots of silver and gold, as well as 60 pieces of broken-up silver jewellery, known as hacksilver. The Torksey investigations also uncovered fragments of broken-up Anglo-Saxon jewellery, ready to be melted down for recasting. The Vikings were trading, as well as processing their plunder. The site contained more than 120 fragments of Arabic silver coins, or dirhams (the largest collection of its kind in the British Isles), which arrived here from the Middle East, via Scandinavia. There are over 350 weights, as well as Anglo-Saxon silver and copper coins. It is the English and Arabic coins that enable us to date the camp so precisely to 872–73. The Vikings, who did not use coinage in Scandinavia, operated a dual economy in England: sometimes they paid in money; at other times, by weight of silver. They were also forging coins on the camp, as well as making jewellery. Other objects found at Torksey include needles and tools – as the army repaired its ships, weapons and clothes – and gaming pieces. No doubt wives and mistresses inhabited the camp too. But it is the extent of the camp that makes the discoveries significant. The camp would have been an island, created by the river Trent to the west, and low-lying marshes to the east. It extended over 55 hectares (more than 75 football pitches), far larger than the enclosure at the Vikings’ winter camp at Repton. The force that over-wintered at Torksey in 872–73 numbered in the thousands, not hundreds, and was larger than the population of most Anglo-Saxon towns. This article was first published in the September 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine More content from week one of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course: Viking raiders, with Professor Ryan Lavelle – watch time 18 mins Fighting the Vikings – read time 13 mins History explorer: Alfred and the Vikings – read time 13 mins Your guide to the Viking raid of Lindisfarne – read time 3 mins Slaves in the Viking Age: how prevalent were enslaved people in Viking societies – read time 3 mins Why did the Vikings' violent raids begin? – read time 12 mins Viking ships: 5 lesser-known facts – read time 6 mins
Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers
The popular perception of Vikings is that of aggressive, pillaging, bloodthirsty male warriors. But, as historian Judith Jesch explains, the Viking Age was not just a masculine affair...
In the long history of Scandinavia, the period that saw the greatest transformation was the Viking Age (AD 750–1100). This great movement of peoples from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, heading both east and west, and the social, religious, political and cultural changes that resulted from it, affected the lives and roles of women as well as the male warriors and traders whom we more usually associate with ‘Viking’ activities. Scandinavian society was hierarchical, with slaves at the bottom, a large class of the free in the middle, and a top level of wealthy local and regional leaders, some of whom eventually sowed the seeds of the medieval Scandinavian monarchies. The slaves and the free lived a predominantly rural and agricultural life, while the upper levels of the hierarchy derived their wealth from the control and export of natural resources. The desire to increase such wealth was a major motivating factor of the Viking Age expansion. One way to acquire wealth was to raid the richer countries to the south and west. The Scandinavians burst on the scene in the eighth century as feared warriors attacking parts of the British Isles and the European continent. Such raiding parties were mainly composed of men, but there is contemporary evidence from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that some warbands were accompanied by women and, inevitably, children, particularly if they had been away from Scandinavia for some time. The sources do not reveal whether these women had come from Scandinavia with the men or joined them along the way, but both are likely. Despite popular misconceptions, however, there is no convincing evidence that Viking women participated directly in fighting and raiding – indeed, the Chronicle describes women and children being put in a place of safety. The Viking mind, a product of a militarised culture, could certainly imagine women warriors, as evidenced by their art and mythology, but this was not an option for real women. Settlement In parts of Britain and Ireland and on the north-western coasts of the European continent, these raids were succeeded by settlement, as recorded in contemporary documents and shown by language, place-names and archaeology. An interesting question is whether these warriors-turned-settlers established families with Scandinavian wives or whether they integrated more quickly by taking local partners. There is strong evidence in many parts of Britain for whole communities speaking Scandinavian as the everyday language of the home, implying the presence of Scandinavian-speaking women. Metal-detectorist finds show that Scandinavian-style jewellery was imported into England in considerable numbers on the clothing of the female settlers themselves. In the north and west of Scotland, Scandinavian speech and culture persisted well into the Middle Ages, and genetic evidence suggests that Scandinavian families and communities emigrated to places such as Orkney and Shetland en masse. Not all of these settlers stayed in the British Isles, however. From both the Norwegian homeland and the British Isles, ambitious emigrants relocated to the previously uninhabited Faroe Islands and Iceland and, somewhat later, to Greenland and even North America. The Icelandic Book of Settlements, written in the 13th century, catalogues more than 400 Viking-Age settlers of Iceland. Thirteen of these were women, remembered as leading their households to a new life in a new land. One of them was Aud (also known as Unn), the deep-minded who, having lost her father, husband and son in the British Isles, took it on herself to have a ship built and move the rest of her household to Iceland, where the Book of the Icelanders lists her as one of the four most prominent Norwegian founders of Iceland. As a widow, Aud had complete control of the resources of her household and was wealthy enough to give both land and freedom to her slaves once they arrived in Iceland. Slavery Other women were, however, taken to Iceland as slaves. Studies of the genetic make-up of the modern Icelandic population have been taken to suggest that up to two-thirds of its female founding population had their origins in the British Isles, while only one third came from Norway (the situation is, however, the reverse for the male founding population). The Norwegian women were the wives of leading Norwegian chieftains who established large estates in Iceland, while the British women may have been taken there as slaves to work on these estates. But the situation was complex and it is likely that some of the British women were wives legally married to Scandinavian men who had spent a generation or two in Scotland or Ireland before moving on to Iceland. The written sources also show that some of the British slaves taken to Iceland were male, as in the case of Aud, discussed above. These pioneer women, both chieftains’ wives and slaves, endured the hardships of travel across the North Atlantic in an open boat along with their children and all their worldly goods, including their cows, sheep, horses and other animals. Women of all classes were essential to the setting up of new households in unknown and uninhabited territories, not only in Iceland but also in Greenland, where the Norse settlement lasted for around 500 years. Both the Icelandic sagas and archaeology show that women participated in the voyages from Greenland to some parts of North America (known to them as Vinland). An Icelandic woman named Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir is particularly remembered for having been to Vinland (where she gave birth to a son), but also for having in later life gone on pilgrimage to Rome and become a nun. A page from the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' in Anglo-Saxon or Old English, telling of King Aethelred I of Wessex and his brother, the future King Alfred the Great, and their battles with the Viking invaders at Reading and Ashdown in AD 871 (c1950). (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Mistress of the house These new settlements in the west were, like those of the homelands, rural and agricultural, and the roles of women were the traditional ones of running the household. Although free women did not by convention participate in public life, it is clear that the mistress of the household had absolute authority in the most important matters of daily life within its four walls, and also in many aspects of farm work. Runic inscriptions show that women were highly valued for this. On a commemorative stone from Hassmyra, in Sweden, the deceased Odindisa is praised in runic verse by her husband for her role as mistress of that farm. The rune stones of the Isle of Man include a particularly high proportion commemorating women. Those women who remained in Scandinavia also felt the effects of the Viking Age. The evidence of burials shows that women, at least those of the wealthier classes, were valued and respected. Much precious metalwork from the British Isles found its way into the graves of Norwegian women, usually presumed to be gifts from men who went west, but some were surely acquired abroad by the women themselves. At the top level of society, women’s graves were as rich as those of men – the grave goods of a wealthy woman buried with her servant at Oseberg in Norway included a large and beautiful ship, several horses and many other valuable objects. Such a woman clearly had power and influence to be remembered in this way. With the establishment of the monarchies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden towards the end of the Viking Age, it is clear that queens could have significant influence, such as Astrid, the widow of St Olaf, who ensured the succession of her stepson Magnus to the Norwegian throne in the year 1035. Urbanisation and Christianity Another of the major changes affecting Viking Age Scandinavia was that of urbanisation. While trade had long been an important aspect of Scandinavian wealth creation, the development of emporia – town-like centres – such as Hedeby in Denmark, Kaupang in Norway, Birka in Sweden, or trading centres at York and Dublin, provided a new way of life for many. The town-like centres plugged into wide-ranging international networks stretching both east and west. Towns brought many new opportunities for women as well as men in both craft and trade. The fairly standard layouts of the buildings in these towns show that the wealth-creating activities practised there were family affairs, involving the whole household, just as farming was in rural areas. In Russia, finds of scales and balances in Scandinavian female graves indicate that women took part in trading activities there. Along with urbanisation, another major change was the adoption of Christianity. The rune stones of Scandinavia date largely from the period of Christianisation and show that women adopted the new religion with enthusiasm. As family memorials, the inscriptions are still dominated by men, but with Christianity, more and more of them were dedicated to women. Those associated with women were also more likely to be overtly Christian, such as a stone in memory of a certain Ingirun who went from central Sweden on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Viking Age, then, was not just a masculine affair. Women played a full part in the voyages of raiding, trading and settlement, and the new settlements in the North Atlantic would not have survived very long had it not been for their contribution. This mobile and expansive age provided women with new opportunities, and sagas, rune stones and archaeology show that many of them were honoured and remembered accordingly. Judith Jesch is professor of Viking studies at the University of Nottingham. Her publications include The Viking Diaspora (Routledge, 2015). You can follow her on Twitter @JudithJesch. Discover more learning from week three of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course Video: Daily life, with Professor Ryan Lavelle – watching time 19 mins What was life like for Viking women? – reading time 7 mins Inside the Viking mind – reading time 10 mins Viking gods, goddesses & tricksters: 12 figures from Norse mythology – reading time 8 mins Podcast: What Norse poetry reveals about the Viking Age – listening time 48 mins How England rode the Viking storm – reading time 12 mins Viking ‘warrior women’ – reading time 3 mins
Edmund Ironside: Anglo-Saxon warrior king
One thousand years after he became king, Sarah Foot recounts the life of King Edmund II, a bold leader who took the fight to the Vikings in one of the most blood-soaked periods in English history...
Few Anglo-Saxon leaders who went to war with the Vikings in the early years of the 11th century emerged with their reputations enhanced. King Edmund II, who ruled the English for seven tempestuous months in 1016, was one of those who did. Such was Edmund’s reputed martial prowess that chroniclers were still celebrating his exploits more than a century after his death. Writing in the 12th century, the Anglo-Norman poet Geoffrey Gaimar described Edmund as “bold as a leopard”. Another 12th-century chronicler lauded Edmund’s leadership skills. And so impressed were Edmund’s immediate successors by his valour on the battlefield that they gave him the epithet by which he has been best remembered ever since – ‘Ironside’. Yet, when Edmund was born in the late 10th century he was an unlikely candidate to earn himself an enduring reputation as a mighty warrior-king. In fact, he was an unlikely candidate to become a king at all. That’s because Edmund was born the third son of English king Æthelred (‘the Unready’) and his first wife, Ælfgifu. And so, while his two older siblings were being groomed for power, Edmund was free to lead what it seems was a rather colourful life – one that saw him clash with his father on a number of occasions. We’re told that King Æthelred intervened to prevent Edmund from appropriating an estate from the church at Sherborne in Dorset, even going as far as making the prince pay £20 for the privilege of having the use of the land for his lifetime. Worse still, when Edmund married the widow of one of his friends, he did so “against the king’s will”, as a near-contemporary chronicler put it. Threat to security These family disagreements were played out against a backdrop of the most violent and protracted warfare seen in early medieval England, as Danish armies, led first by King Swein and then his son Cnut, sought to conquer the realm. Not since the days of Alfred the Great had England’s peace and security been so threatened. But unlike Alfred, King Æthelred was woefully unable to mount an effective resistance to the Viking attacks. In fact, the English were so comprehensively out-fought and outmaneuvered by the Danes that, in 1013, they bowed to the seemingly inevitable and submitted to Swein as king. Æthelred was forced to take shelter with the family of his second wife, Emma of Normandy. We don’t know what part, if any, the young Edmund played in these military reversals. But we do know that his life was utterly transformed by the death of his eldest brother, Æthelstan in 1014. Æthelred’s second son, Ecgberht, was already dead (he witnessed no royal documents after 1005, presumably perishing in that year) and so, when Æthelstan succumbed to illness in June 1014, Edmund suddenly found himself the eldest of the king’s surviving sons. But that didn’t mean Edmund was universally accepted as Æthelred’s successor. The Life of Edward the Confessor (written 50 years later) claims that when Æthelred’s second wife, Emma, was pregnant with her first child, all Englishmen swore that if it were a boy, they would accept him as king. This had been a serious blow to Edmund and his eldest brother. Their response was to look to Northumbria and the five main Danish towns of the Midlands for support in securing the succession, allying themselves with two prominent thegns, Sigeferth and Morcar. Following Æthelstan’s death, Edmund was left to fight on alone – and soon found himself at loggerheads with his father’s chief adviser, Eadric Streona. When, in early 1015, Eadric had Sigeferth and Morcar “basely” killed – having enticed them into his chamber – Edmund defied his father and Eadric by marrying Sigeferth’s widow and acquiring all the former thegns’ estates in the Midlands. Now, with the people of the north submitting to him, Edmund had clearly set himself up as a rival to Æthelred’s regime. As Edmund and Æthelred continued to fall out, the Danish king Cnut invaded England with a large army. Eadric Streona led the forces of the ailing king while Edmund gathered his own army. The two English forces briefly came together but when Edmund realised that Eadric wanted to betray him, he withdrew. Eadric then decided to switch his allegiances. Taking 40 ships from the king’s fleet with him, he joined the Danish side. From then onwards, the Anglo-Saxon chronicler presented Edmund in a completely different light. Gone was the rebellious younger son unchecked by a weak father. Edmund suddenly became a military leader of great energy and effectiveness. He fought several engagements in 1016 – the first in the north Midlands, supported by Earl Uhtred of Northumbria – although without achieving victory. When Cnut occupied Yorkshire and had Uhtred executed, Edmund went south to London, where his father died on 23 April. He was soon forced to flee the city as the advancing Danes prepared to besiege it, but not before all the city’s inhabitants and such national counsellors as were present had chosen him as king. Gaimar reports that Edmund married the sister of a Welsh king (presumably his first wife had died) and that the Welsh fought with him. A German chronicler also included the Welsh among those fighting in England in 1016, and an Old Norse poem called Liðsmannaflokkr (‘Song of the Men of the Host’) mentioned Danish blows falling upon Welsh armour. Sensing victory During a series of clashes between English and Danes across southern England and the Midlands, Edmund appeared to seize the advantage. He drove his enemies into Kent and on into Essex, where he joined battle with Cnut at a hill called Ashingdon on 18 October. With Ealdorman Eadric once more changing sides and backing him again, Edmund may have sensed victory. But his luck was about to run out. Eadric’s men fled from the battlefield, all but condemning Edmund’s army to defeat. Gaimar reports that the Welsh dragged Edmund from the battlefield before he could be cut down. “All the nobility of England was there destroyed,” the Anglo-Saxon chronicler lamented. According to another Scandinavian poem, the Danes and English met in one further battle at ‘Danaskógar’ (perhaps the Forest of Dean), after which Edmund and Cnut made peace at Alney in Gloucestershire. They divided the country in two, with Cnut taking control of Mercia and the north (and receiving a significant monetary payment for his army) and Edmund ruling the land south of the Thames, the historic kingdom of Wessex. This arrangement was to be short-lived for, by the end of November, Edmund was dead. Contemporary English sources shed little light on how he died – though, in the 1070s, the chronicler Adam of Bremen claimed that he had been poisoned. Gaimar’s version of events is the most extraordinary. He claimed that someone had fired an arrow up into Edmund while he was sat on the privy, piercing his body as far as his lungs. Edmund was buried beside his grandfather, King Edgar, at Glastonbury Abbey in what is now Somerset. Cnut, who became undisputed king of England, later visited and left gifts at his tomb. Edmund Ironside’s brief reign left few records, but his family’s role in British history persisted long beyond his death. Edmund’s stepmother, Emma, married Cnut and may have influenced his decision to exile Edmund’s sons to Hungary, where the younger one died. Edward, the eldest son, was however invited back by the English in 1057 in the hope that he might succeed the childless Edward the Confessor. Edward the Exile died that same year, before having met the king, but his own son Edgar retained some political significance. As the only candidate for the throne in 1066 directly descended from an English king, Edgar participated in various rebellions against William the Conqueror after the Norman invasion, including the northern uprising of 1069–70. Although Edgar never gained power, his sister, Edmund’s granddaughter, Margaret, became queen of Scotland by marrying King Malcolm III. Defence of the realm Had Edmund lived, the course of English history might have been different. Refreshed and re-armed after the battle of Ashingdon, Edmund could have led an army successfully against the Danes in the north, driven Cnut back to his Scandinavian homeland and reunited England under West Saxon rule. His son and grandson could have followed him on the throne, displacing Edmund’s half-brother Edward from the succession and thus preventing the political crisis of 1066 that led to the Norman Conquest. But 1,000 years after his death, Edmund Ironside’s enduring legacy now rests only on the military prowess he demonstrated in his valiant defence of his realm. Sarah Foot is the regius professor of ecclesiastical history at Christ Church, University of Oxford. Her books include Æthelstan: The First King of England (Yale English Monarchs Series, Yale, 2011). This article was first published in the April 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine
A virtuous Viking: the medieval legend of Havelok the Dane
Many regions of England are fascinated by their Viking heritage, and that was as true in the medieval period as it is today. Here, Dr Eleanor Parker from the University of Oxford explores one particularly popular Viking legend…
Everyone knows the stereotypical image of a Viking: a daring, rapacious warrior who rejoices in fighting and killing, sailing the seas and pillaging monasteries with a certain ruthless glamour. Later medieval writers were familiar with this stereotype too, and many delighted in exaggerated, bloodthirsty tales of Vikings murdering nuns, impaling babies on spears, and carving eagles on the backs of their enemies. But that’s only one aspect of the legend of the Vikings, and some medieval texts tell very different stories about what the Vikings did in England. Medieval writers interested in England’s history – especially in the north and east of England – knew that Scandinavians had not just raided and plundered in the region, but also settled there. There are various legends exploring how and why this settlement came about, and the most famous involves Lincolnshire's very own Viking hero, Havelok the Dane. Stories about Havelok, a Danish prince who came to rule part or all of England, are first recorded in the 12th century, but may well be much older. The best-known version of the story is a Middle English romance, written probably at the end of the 13th century, known simply as Havelok. It’s a lively, fast-moving poem, frequently funny but with an underlying concern for important questions about what makes a good ruler and a just society. It's cheerfully violent but always scrupulously fair: kindness is rewarded, cruelty punished, and the rightful king restored to his proper place. The poem tells the twin stories of Havelok and his wife, the English princess Goldeboru. Set in a distant past, which is recognisably Anglo-Saxon England, the poem begins with the deaths of the fathers of Havelok and Goldeboru, kings of Denmark and England respectively. The young orphaned heirs are both deprived of their inheritance by wicked usurpers: the English villain has Goldeboru imprisoned, while the Danish villain murders Havelok’s little sisters and arranges for Havelok to be drowned by a man named Grim. Grim can’t bring himself to kill the child, so he smuggles Havelok out of Denmark and flees to England with his wife and family. Grim and his family, with the young royal exile, land on the coast of Lincolnshire, where Grim settles down to the life of a fisherman. He works hard and his business prospers, and the poem tells us that the place where they made their home came to be named after its founder: Grimsby. Havelok grows up to be incredibly tall and strong, but in other respects he is almost comically unlike the stereotype of a Viking: he is cheerful, patient, good-tempered, and gentle to women and children. When he reaches adulthood he decides he ought to earn his own living, and he sets off for Lincoln, where he finds a job as a kitchen-hand. Everyone is impressed by his great strength and his sheer niceness, and he comes to the attention of the treacherous regent of England, who decides to humiliate Goldeboru by forcing her to marry this unsophisticated kitchen boy. (He had promised the late king he would marry Goldeboru to ‘the highest man in England’, a condition the unusually tall Havelok technically fulfils.) Lincoln Castle. According to the chronicler Robert Mannyng, in the 14th century you could see the huge rock that Havelok, with his extraordinary strength, threw to win a stone-casting competition. (© Timbphotography | Dreamstime.com) Havelok is unwilling and Goldeboru is horrified, but they have no choice, so they marry and return to Grimsby. On their wedding night Goldeboru has an angelic vision that reveals to her that Havelok is actually a king's son, while Havelok dreams of his homeland: he imagines embracing Denmark in his arms, and bringing its people across the sea to England as a love-gift to his new wife. When they share their dreams with each other, Goldeboru urges Havelok to return to Denmark and win back his inheritance. He does so, then comes back to England to regain Goldeboru's kingdom too. The two of them rule England and Denmark together in a state of perfect peace and harmony for 60 years, and have 15 sons and daughters. Havelok is a kind of historical fantasy, but it’s firmly rooted in the English landscape and in plausible reality: Grimsby, for instance, probably was named for a Scandinavian settler, although perhaps not the saviour of an exiled Danish prince. The medieval poet knew that Danish settlement was part of the history of this region, and seems to have thought it something to be proud of. In this he was not alone. The foundation story was a lasting source of pride in Grimsby: the town's 13th-century seal depicts Grim brandishing a sword and shield, Havelok and Goldeboru on either side of him. Grimsby might not seem like a very glamorous location for a romance to take place – it's not exactly Camelot – but in the Havelok legend it has a founding father and an origin myth all of its own. Beyond Grimsby, too, the Havelok story seems to have been widely known in Lincolnshire: the chronicler Robert Mannyng tells us that in the 14th century you could go to Lincoln Castle and see the huge rock that Havelok, with his extraordinary strength, threw to win a stone-casting competition, as well as the chapel where Havelok and Goldeboru were married. The legend of Havelok offers a reimagining of English history that finds a balance between a proud regional identity and a sense of national unity. It’s a version of Anglo-Saxon history in which the Danes can be easily integrated into English society: the characters inhabit a North Sea world in which fishermen and merchants travel freely between England and Denmark, and Havelok and Grim’s children, Danish by birth, all marry into English families. It's as if the poet decided he was going to present an alternative version of the many stories of Viking violence; his Danish protagonists are industrious, honest and virtuous. At one point the English villain tries to paint Havelok as a rampaging Viking, claiming he is killing monks and burning churches, but in fact Havelok is notably pious and even founds a priory in Grimsby in memory of Grim. In this poem the Danish contribution to English history is presented in an entirely positive light – as something Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and England can and should be proud of. Dr Eleanor Parker is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Anglo-Norman England at the University of Oxford. She blogs about medieval England at www.aclerkofoxford.blogspot.co.uk. You can follow her on Twitter @ClerkofOxford.