The battle of Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history

What led to the battle of Brunanburh?

Ever since he’d been crowned king of the Anglo-Saxons in AD 925, Æthelstan had been steadily extending his authority. After his grandfather, Alfred the Great, had halted the Danish conquest of England, his father, Edward the Elder, recaptured the East Midlands and East Anglia from the Danes in AD 917. Building on these solid foundations, Athelstan pushed north. Two years after becoming king, he took over the last remaining Viking kingdom at York, extending his rule up to the Scottish border. In AD 934, he invaded Scotland, possibly because its king, Constantine, had broken a peace treaty.

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After gathering his forces at Winchester, he marched north, picking up reinforcements on the way and paying a visit to the shrine of St Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street, in modern-day County Durham. Supported by a fleet that sailed up the east coast, Athelstan led his Anglo-Saxon warriors deep into Scotland, burning and ravaging as far as the great fortress of Dunnottar, south of Aberdeen.

Nobody dared take on the powerful southern army in battle, and the northern rulers soon gave in. Constantine surrendered to Æthelstan and his neighbour Owain, King of Strathclyde, followed suit. Both were forced to accept the overlordship of Æthelstan, now at the peak of his powers.

Realising that their only hope of countering the powerful English king was by setting aside their differences, Æthelstan’s enemies forged a coalition against him, with Constantine and Owen joining forces with Olaf, the Viking King of Dublin. In AD 937, they moved into Northumbria, where there were large numbers of Danish settlers and few of the aristocracy felt much loyalty to Æthelstan. It’s not clear how or where they combined their armies, but it is said that 615 ships carried the Dublin Vikings to England. The one source that does give any details says that the Vikings sailed their longships up the Humber.

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By autumn, the invaders had established themselves in York and were ravaging Æthelstan’s kingdom to the south. How would Æthelstan respond? According to a contemporary chronicle (which is now lost, but was quoted in the 12th century by the writer William of Malmesbury), he did nothing, spending “idle hours” while the invaders laid waste his lands.

In fact, Æthelstan was busy raising troops. A 10th-century army took time to assemble, and Æthelstan wasn’t going to make the same mistake that Harold Godwinson would in 1066 by hurrying into battle before he had gathered all his forces. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle emphasises the part played by the West Saxons and Mercians in the ensuing clash of arms, but it seems that Æthelstan’s army wasn’t exclusively English. The king had brought in some extra muscle in the form of a force of Viking warriors under the leadership of two hard-bitten Icelandic adventurers: Egill and Thorolf Skallagrímsson.

Egill’s colourful (and violent) life was the subject of a long saga, probably written by Snorri Sturluson, the famous 13th-century Icelandic poet, chieftain and historian. It’s a thoroughly entertaining read, offering a valuable insight into the Viking mindset, but it’s so full of literary invention that its value as a history is thought to be limited.

Dawn attack

According to Egill’s saga, Æthelstan bought some of the time he needed to raise his army by challenging his enemies to fight him on a “hazelled field”, a specially chosen battlefield marked out by hazel branches, where the fighting would take place by mutual agreement at a set time. By tradition, once you had been challenged in this way, it was considered dishonourable to refuse or continue to ravage an enemy’s lands.

Finally, towards the end of the year, Æthelstan moved north, and the two armies clashed at a place called Brunanburh. There’s a lot of debate over where this actually was, with Yorkshire, the Wirral, Galloway and Northamptonshire just some of the suggested sites. Egill’s saga describes the battlefield as an open heath bordered by dense woodland on one side and a river on the other, with Æthelstan and his brother Edmund’s forces drawn up where the gap between the two was narrowest.

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The main battle began with a dawn attack by the English, but the first casualties had already been suffered when an Anglo-Saxon bishop arrived with his men the night before, pitched his tents too near the enemy, and fell victim to a surprise attack. The initial fighting bore little relation to the confused free-for-all often depicted in today’s films. Both sides would have drawn up in closely packed ranks, presenting a solid wall of shields to their enemies. It’s sometimes suggested that the shields overlapped for extra protection, but this would have been impossible in the hurly-burly of battle as well as making it extremely difficult to use a weapon effectively.

The lines of both armies would have bristled with spears, the commonest weapon of the period, leading at least one poet to describe an army as a “war-hedge”. Swords are frequently mentioned in contemporary poems and accounts, but they were expensive and usually only carried by the richer members of an army. Some warriors carried two-handed axes, which could shatter a wooden shield or cleave a man’s head in two.

Accounts say the fighting at Brunanburh lasted all day... a contemporary poem concluded 'never was there more slaughter on this island, never yet as many people killed before this'

Unless one army attempted a surprise attack, a battle would normally begin with the two armies drawing up opposite each other, shooting bows and hurling insults – and spears – before one side (or both) felt confident enough to move forward. This might be a slow and steady advance, but an army could give up the security of a shield wall in favour of the impetus provided by a mad rush. Sometimes, warriors would deploy in a wedge formation, commonly called a ‘swine array’, and try to punch their way through an enemy shield wall.

Axemen needed room to swing their deadly weapons, so it was almost impossible for them to fight in tightly packed ranks. They may have dashed forward to take on individual opponents, or used their axes to splinter the wooden shields of their enemies. If both lines held firm, the fighting would degenerate into a bitter battle of attrition. This was close-quarter combat at its most terrible, where you looked into the eyes of your enemy and could smell his breath and taste his blood.

Accounts say the fighting at Brunanburh lasted all day. According to the Annals of Ulster, the battle was “immense, lamentable and horrible, desperately fought” while a contemporary poem concluded “never was there more slaughter on this island, never yet as many people killed before this… since from the east Angles and Saxons came up over the broad sea”.

Eventually, the English gained the upper hand and the invaders broke and fled. Athelstan and his army pursued them until nightfall, “hew[ing] the fugitive grievously from behind with swords sharp from the grinding”. Olaf made for the safety of his ships and sailed back to Dublin with what was left of his army, Constantine escaped to Scotland and abdicated a few years later, while Owen was probably killed in the battle. Athelstan and Edmund headed south in triumph.

But the English paid a heavy price for their victory: two of Athelstan’s cousins had been slain, along with two bishops, Thorolf Skallagrímsson, and “a multitude” of lesser men. The invaders’ losses were even higher. Five minor kings, seven Viking earls and one of Constantine’s sons were killed together with thousands of their followers.

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Brunanburh is the final battle in Seven Kings Must Die, the finale film to The Last Kingdom. Check out more of our related content:

• Seven Kings Must Die: how close to real history is it?
• Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings?
• Seven Kings Must Die spoiler-free preview
• The Last Kingdom: what's the real history and how historically accurate is it?
• The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero
• Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale
• If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater?
• Who was Edward the Elder?
• Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history
• Michael Wood on the astonishing Æthelstan

This article was first published in the September 2017 issue of BBC History Revealed