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Emma of Normandy: not just a two-time queen consort of England
Emma of Normandy was queen consort to two of England’s best known pre-Conquest kings, Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great. But she was also a savvy political player who came into her own as queen mother, writes Dr Cat Jarman
Emma of Normandy is best-known as being queen consort to two kings – Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great – and the mother of two more, Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor. She was the daughter of Richard I (the Fearless) of Normandy and the Danish-descended Gunnor. She is also a pivotal character in King and Conqueror, the BBC's Norman Conquest drama, which paints Emma as a dominating force over her son King Edward – which leads to a very ahistorical demise – and in Netflix's Vikings: Valhalla, where she is portrayed as a politically-savvy queen wielding quiet power in the English court, often working to subvert the machinations of the ever-grasping Earl Godwin. Who was Emma of Normandy? Emma was one of nine children and most likely born in the AD 980s. A daughter of the Norman dukes, she was the great-granddaughter of the Viking warrior Rollo, the founder of Normandy who hailed from either Norway or Denmark. This made her of Scandinavian ancestry on both sides of the family. She was also the great-aunt of William the Conqueror. In the words of Godfrey, prior of Winchester’s cathedral monastery, writing in the 11th century: “She had kings as sons and kings as husbands; she shone forth in the glory of her progeny of kings; she excelled in virtue even the ranks of her glorious ancestors.” Emma of Normandy's first marriage: Æthelred the Unready In 1002, probably aged in her late teens or early 20s, Emma was sent to England to marry King Æthelred, as his second wife. The marriage was clearly a strategic one, aiming to strengthen an alliance between England and Normandy in light of harrowing attacks on both English and Norman shores by Scandinavian raiders. Æthelred had apparently accused Emma’s brother, Duke Richard II, of harbouring the Vikings and enabling their attacks, and the marriage was designed to ensure his allegiance. Read more | Aethelflaed: who was the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings? Their union was an unusual one, as although several English princesses had been married off to French and German rulers historically, no English king had married a foreign wife for almost 150 years. Upon her arrival in England, Emma was given the name ‘Ælfgifu’. The marriage resulted in three children: two sons, Edward (later known as Edward the Confessor) and Alfred, and a daughter, Godgifu. Few sources say much about Emma’s political activity in these years, and it seems her role was mainly one of being a wife and a mother: the most common description of her at the time was as the conlaterana regis: “she who is at the King’s side”. This first decade of her career was the one in which she was the least powerful, and one source, William of Malmesbury, suggests that she and her husband were never on good terms. The England that Emma found herself at the beginning of the 11th century was one marked by ongoing trouble and threats of Scandinavian attacks. In 1013, this came to a head when the Dane Swein Forkbeard successfully invaded England. Emma and her children were sent into exile in Normandy, later followed by her husband. Swein’s rule of England was to be short as he died the following year, and a messy two years of political disputes ensued even after Æthelred was restored to the throne. Emma of Normandy's second marriage: Cnut the Great In 1016, Æthelred died. More turbulence was to follow, and later that year England fell to Swein Forkbeard’s son, the Danish King Cnut. The following year, he is reported to have asked for Emma to be fetched to be his wife. Emma became queen of England, once again, but this time also of Denmark and Norway. As with her first marriage, this was a strategic one as it cemented Cnut’s role as king of England. Taking the widow of one of his predecessors as his own wife no doubt helped mark his superiority. At the same time, the union might be seen as symbolising friendship and alliance. While it is unclear what Emma herself really thought of it at the beginning, she later stressed that not only did the marriage bring peace but it was an equal union that she entered into with her own consent. Read more | Cnut’s invasion of England: setting the scene for the Norman conquest Her ancestry may well have affected her feelings. After all, her mother was the daughter of recent Danish settlers in Normandy, and northern origins were a key part of Norman self-identity. Emma likely spoke Danish from childhood and apart from her family connections, she was clearly important to Cnut – not least because of her knowledge of English politics. It seems likely that the partnership between the two grew over time, helped by the fact that they were more or less of the same age. In a document from the New Minster in Winchester, illustrating the monastery’s loyal benefactors, the two are depicted either side of an altar as a double act. This depiction – one of several – emphasises Emma’s political importance. Their marriage lasted until Cnut’s death in 1035. Emma of Normandy's children As well as the two sons and one daughter Emma had with Æthelred, she went on to have two more children with Cnut: Harthacnut and Gunnhild. Cnut also had two sons by his first wife, Ælfgifu (confusingly, the same name that was given to Emma), Swein and Harold Harefoot. At the time of Cnut’s death, Swein had been sent to rule in Norway along with his mother, while Harthacnut was ruling in Denmark. That left Harold as the only of Cnut’s sons still in England. Emma remained at Winchester, where Cnut’s military household was based, and was left in charge of the Royal Treasury and in a position of power. Read more | Norman women: the power behind the thrones Harthacnut was the legitimate heir and should have ascended the English throne, but he could not return from Denmark to claim the crown so Harold ruled in his stead as either regent or co-ruler. Competition for the throne was to continue. Emma’s sons with Æthelred – Edward and Alfred – had been in exile in Normandy and returned to England in 1036. Alfred was soon killed, after being captured and blinded under suspicious circumstances, and Edward may have briefly joined his mother in Winchester before returning again to Normandy. Eventually, Harold was recognised as sole king in 1037. Emma was exiled to Flanders, where she stayed with a distant relative, Count Baldwin and his wife Adela. But her ambitions for herself and her sons remained. Read more | Are women at the heart of the action in the Norman Conquest? Emma of Normandy as England’s queen mother Emma’s career in England can be divided into three distinct parts: the first two relating to her marriages, and the third to this period after Cnut’s death. Now, Emma worked to manoeuvre her sons into kingship, taking an active part in the political sphere as queen mother. When Harold died in 1040, Emma returned from Flanders and Harthacnut finally took the throne. The role as queen mother was clearly an important one, and she was recognised as an authority: she is listed as mater regis in witness lists during these years. Emma may have learnt about queenship from her mother, Gunnor, who was later hailed as the matriarch of the Norman aristocracy, dubbed the ‘mother of the dynasty’ in the 12th century. Harthacnut ruled for only two years, with Emma by his side, until his death in 1042. He was succeeded by his half-brother Edward. But the new king appears to have turned against his mother, arriving in Winchester a few months after his coronation and taking away her treasures of silver and gold, as well as most of the land she owned. Emma was allowed to stay in Winchester and eventually regained her position at court, though without her former status. The precise reasons for this are unclear: Emma was later accused of having been too harsh on Edward; of offering aid to Magnus of Norway for an invasion of England; and even of having had an affair with Ælfwine, the bishop of Winchester. It seems none were true. Edward most likely wanted to reduce her political involvement back to a simple status as the widow of the former kings, leaving him to rule independently. As far as we know, she lived the rest of her life in Winchester. What was Emma of Normandy’s legacy? Our actual information about Emma’s life is sparse, Much of what we know comes from the Encomium Emmae reginae, the Praise of Queen Emma. This narrative was written down in 1041/2 by a monk from St Bertin, in what is now France, and was commissioned by Emma herself. The Encomium, however, is not a straightforward biography, but an account – modified in several later versions – of the role she played in English politics during the reign of Cnut and his successors. A famous illustration shows her seated on a throne, a kneeling character handing the book to her, with her sons Harthacnut and Edward watching from the wings. The Encomium conjures the position she was in at the height of her power, aimed at her sons and written to influence the future. Despite her remarkable political career, her best known legacy is no doubt her Norman link to William the Conqueror, enabling the events of 1066 to run their course. In the words of 12th-century historian Henry of Huntingdon, describing her marriage: “From this union… the Normans were justified according to the law of peoples, in both claiming and gaining possession of England.” How and when did Emma of Normandy die? Emma died of an unknown cause on 6 March 1052. She was buried next to Cnut and Harthacnut in Winchester Cathedral. In 2019, a team from the University of Bristol announced that among the 1,300 bones mixed up in six mortuary chests from Winchester Cathedral were the remains of a woman who matched both the date and age of death of Emma. There are no records of other women of similar status buried there at the time and DNA work is in progress in an attempt to identify the remains more definitively. 1066: The battle for England Member exclusive | The year 1066 is the most famous in English history, but there's a lot more to the story than one bloody battle at Hastings. In this four-part series, medievalist Marc Morris talks David Musgrove through the full story of the Norman Conquest. Watch all episodes now Dr Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, broadcaster and author of River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads (HarperCollins, 2021) King and Conqueror is streaming on BBC iPlayer now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
The St Brice’s Day Massacre: what really happened?
David Musgrove talks to Dr Ben Savill about the violence of 13 November 1002, when Danes in England were attacked, known as the St Brice's Day Massacre
The 11th century of English history features more than its fair share of bloodshed in battles, but right at the start of the new millennium, before 1066, one event that has always seemed to especially stand out for the brutality of its violence: the St Brice’s Day Massacre of 13 November 1002. “It continues to exercise a curious allure over successive generations of undergraduate essay-writers and their lecturers, whose own occasionally lurid interest follows a historiographical tradition going back almost a millennium, beginning with the Norman observers who sought to depict the event as one of the great, gory English national sins justifying the conquest of 1066.” That’s a quote from Dr Benjamin Savill, of Trinity College, Dublin, in his article Remembering St Brictius: Conspiracy, Violence and Liturgical Time in the Danish Massacre of 1002, published in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History - and it hints at a much broader story. What was the St Brice's Day Massacre? The massacre is a striking incident, but one for which we have only limited evidence (in common with most of the events of the period). There is a reference to it in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which notes that “in this year the king ordered to be slain all the Danish men who were in England”, and a further more detailed comment in a diploma of King Æthelred the Unready (the reigning monarch at the time) for the monastery of St Frideswide, Oxford, of 1004. That diploma describes how the Danes in that city sought sanctuary in a church, which was set upon and burnt down by “all the people in pursuit”. Archaeological evidence has recently supplemented those sources, with discovery and excavation of mass graves in Oxford and Dorset. Both excavations, but particularly the Oxford one, have been linked to the events of November 1002 as possible mass execution sites. How many were killed in the St Brice's Day Massacre? With that limited dataset, the question of how widespread the violence was, and whether it deserves to be called a massacre at all, has been subject to considerable academic debate. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Dr Savill gave his take on the matter: “It depends on what you're reading. If you're looking at the later sources coming from the Normans and Anglo-Normans, it was depicted as hyper-bloody, with babies being snatched and thrown out of windows and stuff like that, and it was happening all across the nation. Our only really concrete evidence for it is what we see in Oxford. But the point to make is the fact that this gets its own big entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is pretty laconic most of the time, signifies that this was a serious event. Read more about how Viking raiders and marauders become lords and kings “In the Chronicle,” says Dr Savill, “they phrase it as something that applies to the kingdom at large. The thinking across the last few decades is that perhaps we’re not looking at total genocide, but that small groups of settlers within towns, people who were with the Danish army – mercenaries or former mercenaries – were killed on that day. You get into slightly dodgy territory by down-talking massacres, but what’s important is that this clearly played a significant role in public memory. Whatever size it was, it was perceived as significant and that's the key point.” Why did the St Brice's Day Massacre happen? To grasp why the Danes living in England at the start of the 11th century were singled out for such treatment, you have to understand the context of the reign of King Æthelred II. Famous for his posthumously applied and pejorative moniker of ‘the Unready’, he has been the subject of some revision in recent years and with a corrective challenge to the view that he uniquely laid the foundations for the fall of the Anglo-Saxons. Scholars have recently emphasised how the state was well-managed and centralised in his reign, and that he himself was calculating, rather than incompetent. Æthelred had a long reign, from 978–1016, and one punctuated by serious incursions from Viking raiders. Æthelred’s response to the arrival of Viking forces in great numbers in the 990s was to pay them off, and to employ them as mercenaries. As a consequence in 1002, there was a truce, but also considerable concern about a court conspiracy, with the Danes there implicated in a plot to overthrow the king. Academics have argued that, rather than an unregulated bout of mob violence, the events of 13 November 1002 were a planned response to this conspiracy plot, possibly drawn up by reform-minded churchmen among Æthelred’s counsellors. According to Dr Savill, a second and more interesting strand to the revision of Æthelred (for this, he recommends Prof Levi Roach’s recent biography Æthelred The Unready) has been to “emphasise the degree to which the idea of religion and reform really comes into play from the 990s. Æthelred is what we might call a penitential king, who publicly admits and arguably does penance for his own personal sins. This was linked to the creation of the idea of the English as God's people, a theocratic kingdom that would look good in God's eyes”. That’s important in the context of Dr Savill’s interpretation, which is that not only was the massacre a planned act, but that it was planned specifically to take place on the feast day of St Brice. Brice, or Brictius, was a fifth-century bishop of Tours in what’s now northern France. As a saint he cuts a curious figure because in life, he was unpopular as bishop, faced a conspiracy from his own subjects, did penance, and then returned triumphantly. There were parallels therefore to King Æthelred, and Brice perhaps offered a suitable saintly figure who might intercede and help drive out the Danes. Read more: 5 forgotten Viking battles that shaped Britain's destiny How the St Brice's Day Massacre became one of the king's biggest mistakes If we accept that the 13 November violence was planned as a response to the presumed conspiracy, and that also Æthelred and his advisors were committed to penitence and religious reform, then in Dr Savill’s view, the link to St Brice is a way to control the narrative, an attempt to ensure that the violence was read not as a massacre, but as an act of legitimate state justice. “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle specifically says that this was done on the day of the mass of St Brictius because there was a conspiracy to overthrow the king in his kingdom. And I think given how absolutely committed Æthelred and his advisers were to religious practice, to reform, to the cult of saints, by the first decade of the 11th century, that it is not a coincidence that they chose this particular day to frame this very problematic political action that they're undertaking.” If that was their aim, Æthelred and his advisors failed. Events got out of hand and out of their control, as exemplified by the burning of the church in Oxford. Thus the 13 November 1002 has come down to us as a massacre, and a scar on public memory, rather than the act of saint-sanctioned legitimacy that Dr Savill suggests was the aim. And that's not all. In the aftermath of the killings, the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard launched a series of attacks that might have been retaliatory. These incursions destabilised the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and laid the foundation for the subsequent interludes of Danish rule (by Forkbeard, Cnut the Great, Harold I, and Harthacnut) that would occur throughout the 11th century. If those Viking retaliations really were a direct response to the murder of Danes in England at Æthelred's decree, the Anglo-Saxon king's command could be described as one of the worst mistakes in English history. Dr Ben Savill was talking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast
Reading the runes: uncovering the everyday lives of the Vikings
Eleanor Barraclough reads the runes to find out more about day-to-day life during the age of the Vikings
Mysterious characters inscribed on stone, wood and bone have revealed little-known details of everyday Viking life. This Long Read, written by historian Eleanor Barraclough, deciphers the runes to recount tales of love, lust, travel and tragedy from a millennium ago. HistoryExtra Long Reads brings you the best articles from BBC History Magazine, direct to your ears. Today’s feature originally appeared in the October 2024 issue, and has been voiced in partnership with the RNIB.
How much have you learned about the Vikings so far? Test your knowledge of your learnings in week two with our HistoryExtra quiz
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Viking raiders, with Professor Ryan Lavelle
In the first mini-lecture of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course, Professor Ryan Lavelle introduces us to the Viking age, and explores the Vikings' reputation as fearsome raiders
In the first mini-lecture of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course, Professor Ryan Lavelle introduces us to the Viking Age, and explores the Vikings' reputation as fearsome raiders View Green Video on the source website More content from week one of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course: 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 The great Viking terror: how Norse warriors conquered the Anglo-Saxons – read time 12 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
Alternate history: what if Alfred the Great lost to the Vikings at the battle of Edington?
Professor Ryan Lavelle and Nige Tassell consider the future shape and make-up of England had the revered king of Wessex lost a crucial battle to the Vikings in AD 878
King Alfred was far from successful in his early battles against the Danes. Shortly after succeeding his brother Æthelred as ruler of Wessex in AD 871, he was forced to make a fragile peace by paying the invaders to leave the kingdom, only to suffer further incursions over the next few years. But by AD 878 and the battle of Edington, Alfred was sufficiently powerful to be able to force the Danes, led by the future king of East Anglia, Guthrum, into a modest retreat across the border into neighbouring Mercia. In the process, Alfred regained the stronghold of Chippenham, and a subsequent programme of fortress building managed to keep future Danish aggression at bay. These were tactics that would come to influence later Saxon leaders, including his children Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd, ‘Lady of the Mercians’. Read more | Alfred the Great and Edington: how the King of Wessex became great Whether a different Wessex king could have achieved this success is up for scrutiny. Ryan Lavelle – professor of early medieval history at the University of Winchester and the author of Alfred’s Wars: Sources and Interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Warfare in the Viking Age (Boydell, 2010) – suggests that “perhaps Alfred had more drive than other rulers at this point in his life, but we don’t know if another ruler in the same position would have done better.” “Perhaps he had skills as a negotiator. The peace in AD 871 was bought with money, and knowing when to purchase peace and how it could be negotiated was an important thing. Any ruler could buy peace if they had the wealth, but I suppose the thing here might be that Alfred knew it was a good time to do so in AD 871 and to regroup.” In context: the aftermath of Edington Seven years into his rule as king of Wessex, during which he suffered frequent Viking incursions, Alfred’s troops met the forces of the Danish leader Guthrum at the battle of Edington. His victory was highly significant, not least because Wessex was the only Saxon kingdom that hadn’t succumbed to Viking control. Furthermore, not only did it mark the beginning of Wessex’s heavy fortification, protecting Alfred’s subjects from future invasions, but it also fostered peaceful relations due to Alfred’s insistence that Guthrum’s Christian baptism be a key clause of the post-battle Treaty of Wedmore. Overall Scandinavian control of each and every Saxon kingdom had been averted. That regrouping, during which time Alfred probably recruited more warriors, laid the foundations of the victory at Edington. Were he not so organised, Guthrum’s westward expansion may have met little resistance. Had the Danes taken control of all of Wessex, would there have been much opposition from the West Saxons or other Anglo-Saxons? Might they have organised to repel these interlopers? “Some sort of national uprising would have been unlikely,” explains Professor Lavelle. “The English after 1066 didn’t manage this when there had been decades of nominally national rule, so I don’t think we can expect groups of people who weren’t bound in any political fashion to have managed it in the circumstances of Alfred having been hammered at the battle of Edington.” Watch: Michael Wood on Alfred the Great's remarkable grandson, Æthelstan View Green Video on the source website Religious coexistence? By the same token, a unified ‘Daneland’, whereby the regions under Danish control forged a federation or even a single state, was unlikely. “Although the Viking ‘Great Army’ is given a sense of unity by the West Saxons’ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it was a diverse bunch with different leaders and different interests, so the possibility exists that the ‘heptarchy’ of pre-Viking England could have continued for much longer, with a patchwork of territories.” “Different Viking leaders might have disposed of the puppet leaders they’d installed, but I don’t think they would have done it with the greater aim of creating some kind of ‘Daneland’. However, this possibility would have been in the minds of the West Saxons and the Mercians in AD 878.” Read more | Christians and pagans in Norse society: the real religious rifts between Vikings Even if a post-Edington control of Wessex by the Danes was unlikely to lead to the unification of various kingdoms, Viking culture would nonetheless have come to bear on the West Saxons. One clear cultural difference concerns religion, with the Scandinavians’ paganism seemingly at odds with the Christianity of the natives. Certainly the outlawing of the latter belief would have profoundly altered the course of English history. But Professor Lavelle sees less conflict here than might be imagined. “Vikings very quickly adopted Christianity in the places in which they settled. It suited Danish rulers to cooperate with existing networks of Christian authority, and while some of the Vikings may have been explicit in their hostility to Christianity, the variety of gods worshipped by Scandinavian pagans at this time would have meant that there was room for Christ among those gods. Also, I suspect that the networks of trade on which many Vikings relied would have meant that absolute hostility to Christianity was off the cards.” More from our alternate history series What if... the Vikings had never left their homelands? What if... Queen Victoria had been assassinated? What if... the Ottomans had won at Lepanto? What if... Empress Matilda had defeated King Stephen? What if... the Spanish Armada had succeeded? What if... Magna Carta hadn’t been written? What if... Alexander the Great had lived longer? Other Viking cultural influences might have included how life subsequently looked. For instance, Professor Lavelle imagines “the building of Viking great halls in the downlands of the English countryside”. Indeed, with Alfred’s programme of fortress construction only taking effect post-Edington, “perhaps the shape of English towns would have looked different as a result”. That said, the core purpose of human interaction and society would have survived, even between Dane and Saxon. “The needs of towns as places for people to gather, to exchange news, to trade and sometimes to worship would have been the same, and to be part of a network linked to the sea was also important during the early medieval period. We can surely expect the Vikings to have shared the same interests.” Read more |Viking gods, goddesses & tricksters: 12 figures from Norse mythology Ryan Lavelle is the historical advisor for 878 AD, a visitor attraction in Winchester inspired by the story of King Alfred’s victory at Edington This article was first published in the December 2022 edition of BBC History Revealed
Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians: the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings
She is a medieval marvel, but – as the daughter of Alfred the Great, and ultimately succeeded by her nephew Æthelstan – Æthelflæd has been overshadowed by the men in her life. Janina Ramirez reveals how the wife, mother, diplomat – and, above all, warrior-queen – left an indelible mark on Anglo-Saxon England in the 10th century
Listen to a version of this article: There are only a handful of warrior women from the past who have captured imaginations for centuries. The most famous are Boudicca, her chariot complete with spiked wheels, and the armoured teenager, Joan of Arc. These were the exceptions – women in a man’s world who men followed into battle. But there is one warrior woman who is less celebrated. Eleven centuries ago, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, died and was buried in Gloucester. She was exceptional for many reasons. She is one of the few known women who not only held a role within the household as mother and lady – and within the court, as daughter and wife to kings – but also wielded power on the battlefield. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/1120TLK4_208ep_2019sc_22sc_20Adrienn20Szabo_201408201920108-fdc5d06.jpg" width="1024" height="694" alt="Millie Brady as Aethelflaed in series four of 'The Last Kingdom'. (Image by Carnival/adrienn szabo/Netflix)" title="Millie Brady as Aethelflaed in series four of 'The Last Kingdom'. (Image by Carnival/adrienn szabo/Netflix)" /> What’s more, she is the only queen in English history to have passed her reign directly to her daughter. She is a medieval marvel, but she has been overshadowed by the men who surrounded her in life – her father, Alfred the Great; her husband, Æthelred of Mercia (a kingdom in what is now central England); and her ultimate successor, her nephew, Æthelstan, ‘the king of the whole of Britain’. Yet Michael Wood has argued that “without her England might never have happened”. In the 12th century, the historian Henry of Huntingdon declared Æthelflæd to be “so powerful that in praise and exaltation of her wonderful gifts, some call her not only lady, but even king”. He praised her as “worthy of a man’s name” and “more illustrious than Caesar”. So why do we not know more about the Lady of the Mercians, and is it finally her time to shine? The Last Kingdom: everything you need to know Find out how and where to watch season 5 of The Last Kingdom, catch-up on seasons 1–4, and explore the real history that underpins the fictional adventures of Uhtred, son of Uhtred | Read more Æthelflæd's early life It is difficult to know when Æthelflæd was born. Her parents were married in AD 868 and she is thought to have been their first-born child. The time at which she came screaming into the world was one of turmoil. Just three years earlier, a Great Viking Army had launched a massive assault on East Anglia. Then, over more than a decade, a coalition of Norse warriors took land in all the major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms – except Wessex, which had so far managed to defy them. The Vikings' purpose was to conquer the kingdoms completely, yet the battle of Edington in 878 stemmed the tide and a tentative alliance was drawn up, splitting the country in two between English-ruled territory and lands administered by the Danes (the Danelaw). It was on to this tumultuous stage that Æthelflæd stepped. There is little information on her childhood, and she first appears in the historical record as a fully grown adult. By this time she is married to Æthelred of Mercia. She is mentioned in Alfred’s will, where he leaves her an estate plus 100 pounds, while her husband is bequeathed a precious sword. Read more | Æthelwold: Alfred the Great's rebel nephew Æthelflæd and Æthelred As a wife, however, Æthelflæd’s story is all too familiar in terms of royal dynastic marriages. Daughter of the king of Wessex and his wife (a Mercian noble, possibly royal, woman), Æthelflæd was a precious commodity. Her marriage to the much older Æthelred, who had served Alfred as a loyal lieutenant, bound together the English-speaking kingdoms of Wessex and the newly reclaimed Mercia. Theirs was an entirely political union, designed to strengthen the two kingdoms against Danish and Norwegian incursions in the north. She could have faded from the records at this point, content to support her husband within the court and bear him many offspring. Yet Æthelflæd wasn’t about to be overshadowed by her husband. Instead, records report that she was signing diplomatic documents and presiding over provincial courts in place of Æthelred. As he became increasingly ill she assumed more of his responsibilities, including arranging diplomatic agreements and refurbishing many of the towns. Concerned by the relocation of Viking settlers from the Irish coast to the northwest, Æthelflæd made two plans: on the one hand, she offered land for the Vikings to settle in the Wirral, and on the other instructed that the ancient Roman city of Chester be refortified in case they decided to press southwards into Mercia. Her caution was rewarded when in that same year, 907, the Wirral Vikings attacked Chester but failed to breach its walls. Æthelflæd’s reputation as a canny ruler extended, not only through the English-speaking world, but over the waters, reaching the ears of her Viking foes. She was developing a name as a keen diplomat, an engaged ruler and a military strategist. While Æthelred’s health deteriorated, Æthelflæd took more responsibility for the military activities of Mercia. She understood the importance of aligning herself with other powerful rulers and supported her brother, Edward the Elder, in his reconquest of Mercian territories in the Danelaw. Æthelflæd becomes the Lady of the Mercians When Æthelred died in 911, his wife was declared ‘Lady of the Mercians’ and took over control of the kingdom. In Wessex, the role of royal women was one of subservience: Æthelflæd’s mother had only ever held the title of ‘wife of the king’ and signed no charters with her husband. Æthelflæd took advantage of a tradition that granted women in Mercia greater rights. Read more | 20 inspirational quotes from women through history To secure power in Anglo-Saxon England, you first needed the support of ‘ealdormen’ (high-ranking royal officials). It is telling that, rather than hand the kingdom to a male heir or succumb to Wessex, the ealdormen of Mercia chose Æthelflæd as their leader. Their choice was wise, since she secured some of the greatest victories in battle of the early 10th century. In 917 her troops reconquered the Viking city of Derby, a critical victory as this had been one of the ‘Five Boroughs of the Danelaw’. The next year she secured Leicester, and from there made her way towards the prestigious Viking-held city of York. As the Danes were ready to offer her their submission, she died (possibly of dysentery) on 12 June 918 and was taken to be buried with her husband at St Oswald’s Priory in Gloucester. Securing the fealty of the Danes of York would have been Æthelflæd’s ultimate achievement. Instead, it was the battle of Tettenhall (in modern-day Wolverhampton) eight years earlier in 910 that secured her image as victorious warrior queen. Back then, in retaliation for Æthelflæd and Edward’s successful campaigns in the Danelaw, Viking troops had laid waste to large parts of Mercia, carrying off plunder and destroying the land. A joint Anglo-Saxon army headed them off at Tettenhall and massacred them there. Three Viking kings were reported to have been killed, and as a result, the image of Æthelflæd, warrior queen, bearing three royal swords was born. Read more | Why is Edward of Wessex called Edward the Elder? As well as being a formidable warrior, Æthelflæd was also a shrewd ruler who set about extending the work of her father, Alfred, by strengthening his fortifications at Tamworth, Stafford and Warwick. Many of these cities owe their existence to her efforts. Like her father, she believed that the recently rejuvenated Anglo-Saxon kingdoms depended on the church and its divine favour to secure their reputation as worthy opponents to the Danish pagans. She invested in church buildings throughout Mercia, particularly in Gloucester, which she transformed from a derelict backwater to a vibrant town. She brought extra prestige to her newly founded church there by securing a most precious relic: the body of the kingly Saint Oswald. His relics had languished in Viking-held Bardney in Lincolnshire, but Æthelflæd managed to return them to Mercia. Their arrival was accompanied by lavish ceremonies, and the Mercian Register credits Æthelflæd with returning this holy royal saint to English-held land. Was Æthelflæd a good ruler? There is a wealth of evidence to support the contention that Mercia was a force to be reckoned with in the Anglo-Saxon period. Although difficult to date precisely, the Staffordshire Hoard (which in 2009 became the largest cache of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered) is testament to Mercian hegemony in the eighth century. The power of bishoprics, like that at Lichfield, is attested to in the remarkable Gospel Book that survives from there and in the carved angel discovered in 2003: just a fragment of what would have been a lush and vibrant environment. While other kingdoms were ravaged by Viking incursions in the ninth century, parts of Mercia, like Worcester, remained strong and affluent. Æthelflæd, like her father, sought to strengthen the prestige of her kingdom by investing extensively in urban renewal, education (through the monasteries) and in the arts. She was also aware that her legacy would be protected by those who came after her. She ensured her daughter, Ælfwynn, would succeed her, but also fostered her brother’s son, who would become the great unifier of England, King Æthelstan. Æthelflæd was not content to be simply a bearer of heirs. She gave her husband one daughter, but William of Malmesbury suggests she shied away from “marital obligations” because of the risks she knew it posed her life. He records that she declined to have sex after bearing a daughter because it was “unbecoming of the daughter of a king to give way to a delight which, after a time, produced such painful consequences”. Read more | If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? Æthelflæd's legacy Why do we not know more about Æthelflæd? For a start, it could be that her own brother had her largely written out of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle so as not to promote separatism between Wessex and Mercia. However, she maintained a celebrated reputation – particularly, and surprisingly, under the Normans – with chroniclers going out of their way to laud her military achievements. Yet, in the end, it was Boudicca who would come to captivate as ‘warrior woman’ under Elizabeth I, possibly because of their legendary shared red hair. Æthelflæd’s name languished over the following centuries, but was revived in 1913 with a statue in Tamworth erected to commemorate her achievements. Even so, she would constantly pale next to the name of her father, Alfred the Great, who English historians continued to celebrate as scourge of the Danes and saviour of England. Æthelflæd is as important now as she was more than a millennium ago. She is a rallying point to all those searching for strong female role models. She was a product of her age, constrained by her time, yet she achieved so much. It is now that she should be remembered as mother, diplomat, warrior and queen. Now she should be celebrated in the words of William of Malmesbury, as a “woman of enlarged soul”. Dr Janina Ramirez cultural historian, broadcaster and author, and president of Gloucester History Festival This article was first published in the June 2018 edition of BBC History Magazine
Vikings: Valhalla – the real history behind Netflix’s successor to Vikings
Vikings: Valhalla is available to stream on Netflix, bringing a new generation of Viking schemers and dreamers to the screen, from explorers Leif Erikson and Freydís Eiríksdóttir to warrior Harald Sigurdsson and empire-builder King Cnut. Here’s what’s what to expect from the show, plus the real history that underpins the story…
If Netflix’s new historical drama Vikings: Valhalla looks and feels familiar, that’s because it is. It’s the successor to the History Channel’s hugely popular Vikings, the six-season epic that told the story of the semi-mythical Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons. Read on for the real history of Vikings: Valhalla – from the true stories of the historical characters depicted on screen to the liberties taken by the show in the name of creative licence… Vikings: Valhalla plot – what should we expect? ** This section contains no major spoilers for Vikings: Valhalla season 1** Vikings: Valhalla is set approximately a hundred years after the final season of Vikings concludes bringing us a new generation of Norse warriors and rulers, dreamers and schemers. At the centre of the action are three historical figures for whom we have records in varying degrees: Nordic prince Harald Sigurdsson (played by Leo Suter), whom we know better today as Harald Hardrada; legendary explorer Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett), and his sister Freydís Eiríksdóttir (Frida Gustavsson). But while the show feels and looks familiar, the Viking world we see this time around is not the same. If Vikings showed us the glory days of Norse expansion from Scandinavia, the raid on Lindisfarne and the Great Heathen Army, Vikings: Valhalla brings with it a sense of lingering finality. Read more | Viking gods, goddesses & tricksters: 12 figures from Norse mythology This is the Viking Age at the beginning of the end, where the Viking world is riven by religious tension within – pitting Christian Vikings against ‘pagan’ Vikings – as well as more traditional enemies without. The lynchpin moment that kicks off the plot is the St Brice’s Day Massacre of 1002, in which king Æthelred II of England orders the extermination of all Vikings in his realm, many of whom live within the Danelaw [a region under Danish law in Anglo-Saxon England]. It’s in the aftermath of this slaughter that Harald, Leif and Freydís are brought together, bound up in a quest for revenge that introduces us to new pantheon of historical characters, including warrior king Edmund Ironside, politically savvy queen Emma of Normandy, Danish empire builder Cnut the Great and his father, the no-nonsense Sweyn Forkbeard. Vikings: Valhalla release date and where to watch Vikings: Valhalla arrives on Netflix on 25 February 2022 in US and the UK, with all 8 episodes released at the same time. Vikings: Valhalla trailers Two trailers for Vikings: Valhalla have been released – watch them both below: View oEmbed on the source website View oEmbed on the source website The real history of Vikings: Valhalla ** This section contains major spoilers for Vikings: Valhalla season 1** The St Brice’s Day Massacre was a real event Kicking off the plot is the St Brice’s Day Massacre of 1002. In the show, we see Æthelred II summon his Viking bodyguards only to promptly have them killed, while the Danes in the settlement these warriors travelled from are slaughtered. In one particularly gruesome moment, we see some Danes who sought sanctuary in a church barricaded inside and then burned. The massacre was a real event, referenced in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which notes that “in this year the king ordered to be slain all the Danish men who were in England”. There’s also a specific reference to a church in Oxford being burnt down with people inside. But there’s a question as to “how widespread the violence was, and whether it deserves to be called a massacre at all”. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Dr Benjamin Savill offered this context: “It depends on what you’re reading. If you’re looking at the later sources coming from the Normans and Anglo-Normans, it was depicted as hyper-bloody, with babies being snatched and thrown out of windows and stuff like that, and it was happening all across the nation. “Our only really concrete evidence for it is what we see in Oxford. But the point to make is the fact that this gets its own big entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is pretty laconic most of the time, signifies that this was a serious event.” Listen | Benjamin Savill discusses the St Brice’s Day Massacre of 1002, in which Danes living in England were killed, apparently on royal orders Why did it happen though? One school of thought it that it has to do with a decade of earlier Viking incursions. "Æthelred’s response to the arrival of Viking forces in great numbers in the 990s was to pay them off, and to employ them as mercenaries,” writes Dr David Musgrove. “As a consequence in 1002, there was a truce, but also considerable concern about a court conspiracy, with the Danes there implicated in a plot to overthrow the king. “Academics have argued that, rather than an unregulated bout of mob violence, the events of 13 November 1002 were a planned response to this conspiracy plot, possibly drawn up by reform-minded churchmen among Æthelred’s counsellors.” Harald Sigurdsson wasn’t even born The future king of Norway is an anachronism in Vikings: Valhalla, impossibly depicted as raiding England one year after the 1002 St Brice’s Day Massacre. It’s impossible because Sigurdsson – who would become better known as Harald Hardrada – wasn’t actually born until 13 years later, in 1015. In real history, it would be another 15 years before Harald is first heard of. “Harald made his first mark in history as a 15-year-old warrior, when he fought alongside his elder half-brother King Olaf II (later Saint Olaf) against Danes loyal to Cnut the Great in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030,” writes Don Hollway. “The day ended with defeat, and for Olaf, death.” Harald’s own death would be years later. After Stiklestad he fled to the lands of the Kievan Rus, eventually became head of the Varangian Guard – the elite guard of Byzantine emperors – and later successfully claimed the crown of Norway. He finally met his end in England fighting against Harold Godwinson at the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. Leif Erikson was already in Vinland We know of Leif Erikson through two sagas: the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red, both of which recount Viking explorations west to Vinland, a land we believe to be North America – making them the first Europeans to set foot on what is now American soil, 500 years before Christopher Columbus. The trouble, in terms of Viking: Valhalla’s chronology, is that Leif, who is fresh out of Greenland as far as the show concerned, is thought to have reached Vinland two years before the St Brice’s Day Massacre. The real-life Leif “learns about this mysterious land from Bjarni Herjólfsson, and is so intrigued that he buys Bjarni’s knarr (a Viking ship) and determines to retrace his route,” writes Pat Kinsella. “According to this account, with a crew of 35 men, and armed only with a secondhand boat and a verbal description of the route to follow, Leif sets off on his 1,800-mile journey to a completely new world sometime in AD 1000.” He would return to Greenland laden with precious supplies, “full of tales about a western land of bounty and beauty”, and he even rescued some shipwrecked Norse sailors on the way home, earning the nickname ‘Leif the Lucky’. We don’t know much at all about Freydís Eiríksdóttir Along with her brother Leif, Freydís Eiríksdóttir finds herself in Norway in the aftermath of the St Brice’s Day Massacre in Vikings Valhalla. But while the plot contrives to take Leif to England, Freydís remains in Scandinavia, where she becomes embroiled in the violent religious struggles between pagan Vikings and those who have converted to Christianity. Those tensions were real, but Freydís’s story is a fabrication – or at the very least, one that is impossible to verify. She appears in two Icelandic sagas, once as saviour and once as villain – and despite that, she may not have even existed. “Some characters in the Icelandic sagas may have lived in reality, while others were undoubtedly created by skilled saga authors,” writes Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir. “Unfortunately, there is often no way of finding out, and that is the case for Freydís Eiríksdóttir. “Apart from these sagas, which are far removed in time and space from the people they feature, there is no other independent evidence to corroborate her existence. Saga authors may have put someone like Freydís into their story about Norse expeditions to add dramatic elements that they thought would improve it.” There were real religious rifts between Christian Vikings and pagan Vikings Religious tension is a major driver of Vikings: Valhalla, both within the army seeking vengeance on England and within Scandinavia itself – and this is inspired by very real conflicts between Vikings of different faiths. In the show this is predominantly represented through two characters: Olaf Sigurdsson (Harald’s real half-brother) and the entirely fictional Jarl Kåre. Olaf is ferociously pious, but slightly tempered by the more material concerns of power and plunder. Jarl Kåre is unfettered by such trivial matters. An unhinged zealot, he actively hunts and murders those who still worship the Norse gods. He is not alone; he has a huge following, and that eventually leads to war between Vikings within Norway itself. Though Kåre’s character is an invention, there are slender parallels to some of the more unsavoury aspects of Olaf from the sagas, writes Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir. “[The sagas] tell us that Olaf rode around parts of Norway with his entourage, inspecting whether people had converted – and he has their eyes gouged out if he found their Christianity deficient, inflicts other tortures, or sometimes executes them,” she says. “The trouble is, it is hard to attribute such actions directly to his faith and set it apart from his general ruthlessness and dogged determination to hang onto the throne in what was an extremely turbulent era.” Cnut was not the first Viking king of England In Vikings: Valhalla, Cnut’s army arrives in England to avenge the St Brice’s Day Massacre only to find Æthelred II dead and the young king Edmund on the throne. Cnut quickly bests Edmund and in doing so – so the show tells us – becomes the first Viking king of England, co-ruling with Edmund as puppet-king. There’s a lot to unpack here, not least because Cnut was not the first Viking king of England – that title belongs to his father. In real history, Æthelred II ruled from c978 to 1016 – except for a brief period in the winter 1013–14. For that one winter, England’s king was Sweyn Forkbeard. Sweyn’s raids on England began in the AD 990s, but 1013 was the year of his decisive strike. “King Æthelred escaped to the Isle of Wight where he spent Christmas, and then went into exile with his wife’s people in Normandy,” writes Sarah Foot. “But on 3 February 1014, Sweyn died, and the fleet elected Cnut as king. The English then thought better of their own king, their natural lord and begged him to return, ‘if he would govern them more justly than he did before’.” Sweyn Forkbeard should already be dead <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/02/VAL_107_Unit_00236RC-d4b0aad-e1645802379246.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Sweyn Forkbeard (Soren Pilmark) seated on a throne alongside Emma of Normandy (Laura Berlin)" title="Sweyn Forkbeard (Soren Pilmark) comes into the story in the second half of the season. Seated next to him is Emma of Normandy (Laura Berlin) (Photo by Bernard Walsh/Netflix)" /> When Cnut’s father, King Sweyn Forkbeard, turns up to rule England in Cnut’s stead midway through the season, it’s a surprise two times over. In the show canon, it’s because Sweyn seemingly appears from nowhere and is a more vicious character than his son. For fans of real history, it is because by this point Sweyn shouldn’t be alive. He dies in 1014, two years before Cnut wins the English throne in 1016. The real Edmund gave Cnut fierce resistance In Vikings: Valhalla, the freshly crowned Edmund is portrayed as almost incapable of ruling, a petulant and arrogant young man who quickly loses his kingdom to Cnut and then, once installed as a puppet co-ruler, is quietly murdered by his erstwhile advisor Earl Godwin. But the real Edmund posed a much fiercer resistance – even earning the same ‘Ironside’ sobriquet given to Ragnar Lothbrok’s son Björn. After Sweyn Forkbeard’s death in 1014, Cnut took up the fight against England, and it was Edmund Ironside who fought back: first as a prince, then as king of England following the death of Æthelred II in 1016. His character could not be more different. “Few Anglo-Saxon leaders who went to war with the Vikings in the early years of the 11th century emerged with their reputations enhanced,” writes Sarah Foot. “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.” The one element of Edmund’s arc in Vikings: Valhalla that holds true is that he died in potentially mysterious circumstances. “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,” writes Foot. “[Anglo-Norman chronicler Geoffrey] 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.” Valhalla was a place of aspiration to the Vikings According to Viking legend, Valhalla was not a place of eternal rest, but training for the end of the world. Valhalla was Odin’s hall, where slain warriors – if they were lucky enough to reach it – would spend what remained of eternity honing their skills (and drinking incalculable horns of mead) until the final battle, Ragnarök. “We have references talking about Valhalla as a place that Vikings are going to go to if they fight bravely and die, and it seems to be a sort of aspiration,” says Professor Carolyne Larrington. LISTEN: Vikings: Valhalla showrunner Jeb Stuart explains why he chose ‘Valhalla’ to encapsulate his entire series on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast Vikings: Valhalla is available to stream on Netflix. 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How Sweyn Forkbeard became the first Viking king of England
In 1013, Sweyn Forkbeard employed superior military strength and tactical ability to supplant the descendants of Alfred the Great. Sarah Foot traces his journey from foreign adventurer to first Viking king of England...
Who was Sweyn Forkbeard? Sweyn Forkbeard (also Swein or Svein) was the son of Harold Bluetooth, the first Christian king of Denmark, who had substantially enlarged the Danish kingdom and been accepted as overlord in Norway. Eager to wield power himself, Sweyn rebelled against his father in AD 987, and drove him into exile. Such was the stability of the realm that Harold had created that Sweyn was free to lead raids on England himself, without having to worry about his security at home. And his campaign enjoyed the support not only of his own retainers but also of other leading men from Denmark and elsewhere in Scandinavia, who hoped to profit from the treasures he would win. Famous Vikings | Ivar the Boneless, Aud the Deep-Minded and 6 more famous Vikings you should know about Sweyn’s nickname, Forkbeard, is first recorded in a chronicle from Roskilde, compiled about 1140. Most medieval accounts of his career followed the lead given by a German chronicler, Adam of Bremen, who denigrated Sweyn for failing to recognise the authority of the German emperor and not acknowledging the ecclesiastical authority of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen. A more positive picture is offered in a text in praise of Emma of Normandy, widow of Æthelred the Unready, who went on to marry Cnut, Sweyn’s son. There Sweyn is praised as a fortunate, generous and religious king. How did Sweyn Forkbeard become king of England? Around one thousand years ago, the king of Denmark (and lord also over Norway and Sweden) invaded England with a large fleet. After a brief campaign, he secured the submission of all the English people apart from the inhabitants of London. When, as a near-contemporary English chronicler reported, “all the nation regarded him as full king”, the citizens of London finally capitulated and submitted, giving the Dane hostages, “for fear that he would destroy them”. That king was Sweyn Forkbeard. His swift conquest sent the Anglo-Saxons’ native ruler, Æthelred (nicknamed ‘the Unready’) into exile in Normandy, leaving his English subjects to pay a large tribute and supply their conqueror and his army with provisions. The Great Heathen Army | It was unlike any previous Viking army – here's why How could a foreign adventurer have brought such an abrupt end to the rule of the descendants of Alfred the Great? How could he have reversed the victory Alfred had won over the ninth-century Vikings, and reduced England to a subject realm within a Scandinavian empire? The story of Sweyn’s conquest of England goes back to the AD 990s, to one of the most celebrated episodes in early English military history, reported laconically in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but commemorated in a famous Old English poem: The Battle of Maldon. In the summer of 991, a fleet of more than 90 Viking ships landed in Kent, sailed to Ipswich and, after sacking that town, came into the estuary of the Blackwater river in Essex. From Lindisfarne to 1066 | 8 Viking dates you need to know Facing them on the other shore stood the ranks of the English army led by the Ealdorman of Essex, Byrhtnoth. When a Danish messenger called across the water to urge the English to make peace and “buy off this onslaught of spears with tribute-money”, so that they need not “join battle so grievously”, Byrhtnoth stepped forward to speak in response: Sea raider, can you hear what this army is saying? They intend to give all of you spears as tribute, deadly points and tried swords, payment in war-gear, which will be of no benefit to you in battle. Messenger of the seamen, report back! Tell your people a much less pleasing tale that here stands with his company an earl of unstained reputation, who intends to defend this homeland, the kingdom of Æthelred, my lord’s people and his country. They shall fall the heathens in battle. (Battle of Maldon, lines 45–54) Determining that the “grim game of battle” would arbitrate between them before the English would pay tribute, Byrhtnoth ordered his men to pick up their shields and walk to stand on the edge of the river, where the flood tide flowed, separating the two forces. Only when the waters receded could the seaborne attackers try to take the causeway, which bold Englishmen defended resolutely, refusing to take flight from the ford. The perfidious Vikings (as the poem portrayed them) tricked their way into getting Byrhtnoth to yield some ground; he then paid the ultimate price for that act of pride, as the poet saw it, of conceding the Danes too much land. Byrhtnoth fell in the battle, with his last breath commending his soul to the Lord of hosts and of angels. Hateful visitors The Maldon poet contrasted the heroism and dedication of Byrhtnoth and those who fell with him – loyal followers of a devout lord – with the disloyal and ungrateful cowards who fled the battlefield on their lord’s death, instead of sacrificing their own lives to avenge him. Danes (“the hateful visitors”) appear as arrogant in their demand for tribute before a blow has been struck; they use guile to gain ground on the English side of the causeway. English valour and moral courage lie at the heart of the poet’s message, but the military prowess of the “fierce” Vikings is never concealed. Ragnar Lothbrok | The legend of the immortal Viking and his sons Although the poem did not name any of the hostile army, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle credited Olaf (Tryggvason) with leading the force that attacked England in 991, implying that he fought at Maldon. But an independent source mentions the involvement of an Essex nobleman in a “treacherous plan that Sweyn should be received in Essex when first he came there with a fleet”. This suggests that Sweyn, not Olaf, took the command. Newly established as king in Denmark, with the substantial power and resources of that realm behind him, Sweyn made a more plausible leader of this invading force than did the Norwegian adventurer Olaf. He would prove a formidable foe. “Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets” | 8 Viking myths busted After a period of relative peace, Vikings had begun again to attack English shores before Sweyn and Olaf arrived in 991. Sweyn’s personal involvement represented a new threat: Denmark’s ruler had his eye on the material resources of England, one of the richest kingdoms of its day. Scandinavian adventurers had sought new lands and opportunities in western Europe since the ninth century, but never before had the Danish king himself led their raids. Sweyn’s ability to spend so much time on overseas expeditions offers an insight into the security of his power at home. The plunder he gathered in England helped to bolster both his resources and his reputation, strengthening his position on both sides of the North Sea. Spreading misery Defeated at Maldon, the English paid tribute to the Danes. Further Danish victories followed in the next three years, with attacks on East Anglia, Lindsey, Northumbria, London, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire until the English again paid tribute. At this point, in 994, the English king Æthelred succeeded in separating Sweyn and Olaf by sponsoring Olaf at his confirmation and giving him royal gifts. In return, Olaf promised never to come back to England in hostility, but took his new wealth to Norway and seized the throne. This forced Sweyn back to Scandinavia to counter the threat to his own realm. While the Danish king sought to reassert control at home (defeating and killing his Norwegian rival in 999), Viking armies continued to harry England, levying large tributes and causing significant misery. Sweyn first reappears in the English chronicle record when leading the army in an attack on Exeter in 1003, but he may have returned to England as early as 1000. In 1004 he came with his fleet to Norwich, and burned the town down. Fierce fighting near Thetford brought Sweyn another victory and it seemed no man could defeat him. Then in 1005 a famine struck England, one so bad that the chronicler wrote that “no man ever remembered one so cruel”. Sweyn was forced to take his fleet back to Denmark. The Global Vikings | How the impact of the raiders and traders went far beyond Britain The chronicler, writing from London some time after the events, during the reign of Sweyn’s son Cnut, laid the blame for the recurrent English defeats firmly on the English leadership. To the chronicler’s mind, the incompetence, indecision and cowardice of those in power weakened the morale and determination of the rank-and-file troops, who often crumbled on the battlefield without offering real resistance. So weak were England’s defensive responses that the Danes went about as they pleased: “Nothing withstood them, and no naval force nor land force dared go against them, no matter how far inland they went” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). Even Æthelred’s drastic strategy of ordering the massacre of all Danish men in England on St Brice’s Day in 1002 did little to turn the tide of Danish victory, serving only to heighten the population’s fears. Listen | Dr Benjamin Savill outlines his new theory that the massacre may have been planned specifically for the feast day of the exiled St Brice on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast Although Sweyn stayed in Denmark after his return in the year of the great famine in England (1005), his absence brought no respite to the English. The arrival in 1009 of the “immense raiding army”, led by Thorkell the Tall, represented a turning point in Æthelred’s reign. Whether, as one source favourable to Sweyn maintained, Thorkell came as the agent of Sweyn or (as is more plausible) he led an independent band of warriors, drawn from across Scandinavia, Thorkell’s tactics and military prowess proved more than a match for English defences. Between 1009 and 1012, his army devastated great swathes of England. Who discovered America? | It wasn’t Christopher Columbus… As the chronicler wrote: “All these disasters befell us through bad policy, in that they were never offered tribute in time, nor fought against; but when they had done most to our injury, peace and truce were made with them. And for all this truce and tribute, they journeyed none the less in bands everywhere, and harried our wretched people and plundered and killed them.” From an English perspective, the nadir of Thorkell’s campaign came in 1012 following the fall of the city of Canterbury when, on 19 April, his army shamefully put to death Ælfheah, archbishop of Canterbury. In the aftermath of the archbishop’s martyrdom, Thorkell and 45 ships from his army changed sides to ally with Æthelred, promising to defend England. 1013: the year the Vikings conquered England In 1013, King Sweyn arrived with his fleet at Sandwich in Kent. He might (as one source maintained) have wanted to punish Thorkell for changing sides. But a close connection between Sweyn and Thorkell cannot be proven, and other considerations motivated the Danish king, including the desire to now conquer England. Days of destiny? | 5 forgotten Viking battles that shaped Britain From Sandwich, Sweyn sailed quickly round East Anglia, into the mouth of the Humber and along the Trent until he reached Gainsborough. Without a fight, Earl Uhtred and all the Northumbrians, the people of Lindsey and of the Five Boroughs and all the Danish settlers north of Watling Street submitted to him. This diplomatic victory gave Sweyn a power base from which to attack Thorkell and Æthelred in the south. Read more | The Real Uhtred of Bebbanburg Having provisioned his army, and equipped it with horses, Sweyn left his son Cnut in charge in Northumbria and crossed Watling Street. Then he allowed his army to do whatever damage it would, intending to subdue the English by fear. His strategy worked. The citizens of Oxford submitted to him and gave him hostages; so did the men of Winchester. Only London refused to yield, its citizens resisting because King Æthelred and Thorkell were inside its walls. So Sweyn turned away to Wallingford, crossed the Thames and went to Bath, where he stayed with his army. All the western ‘thegns’ (noblemen) came to submit to him and gave him hostages. Raiders to kings | How the Vikings turned from reavers to rulers Now, as the chronicler wrote, “all the nation regarded him as full king”. So it was that the men of London also submitted for fear of what he would do to them. And Sweyn demanded full payment and provisions for his army that winter. Yet, despite it all, the chronicler lamented, “his army ravaged as often as they pleased”. King Æthelred escaped to the Isle of Wight where he spent Christmas, and then went into exile with his wife’s people in Normandy. For one short winter, Sweyn, the king of Denmark and overlord of much of Scandinavia, added England to his empire. But on 3 February 1014, Sweyn died, and the fleet elected Cnut as king. The English then thought better of their own king, their natural lord and begged him to return, “if he would govern them more justly than he did before”. It would take two more years of heavy fighting, the death of Æthelred (in April 1016) and of his son Edmund Ironside at the end of November that same year, before Cnut would succeed to the whole kingdom of the English and so initiate a period of Danish rule. Setting the scene of the Norman Conquest? | Cnut's 1016 invasion of England explained Cnut’s ultimate victory owed much to the persistence and military prowess of his father, Sweyn. From the perspective of 1013, it was clear that Byrhtnoth and his companions at Maldon had fallen to the superior military and tactical strength of the most successful king of the Viking age. Sarah Foot is the regius professor of ecclesiastical history at Christ Church, Oxford. Her books include Æthelstan: The First King of England (Yale, 2011) This article was first published in the August 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine Explore more learning from week four of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course Viking kingdoms, with Professor Ryan Lavelle – watching time 19 mins The Danelaw: a Viking kingdom in England? – listening time 50 mins Vikings: A land without kings – reading time 7 mins Cnut: the great Dane – reading time 9 mins Global Vikings: how the impact of the raiders and traders went far beyond Britain – reading time 7 mins Vikings in Britain: how did raiders and marauders become lords and kings – reading time 15 mins Harald Hardrada: why there's more to the last great Viking than his death in 1066 – reading time 8 mins
The Danelaw: is the ‘realm’ of the Vikings in Anglo-Saxon-era England a place or an idea?
The Danelaw is a term used to describe both a region under Danish law and a physical place – but which is most accurate? Dr Ben Raffield of the University of Uppsala unpicks the myths surrounding this Viking ‘realm’ in England…
Today, the ‘Danelaw’ is a term used to refer to the area controlled by the Vikings encompassing the north and east of England, between the ninth and 11th centuries, but this hasn’t always been the case. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Dr Ben Raffield explained what the Danelaw really was and what this meant for the Danes and Anglo-Saxons living on either side of its ‘boundary’. What do we mean by the term Danelaw? The modern understanding of this term is that it’s an area of eastern and northern England, including York, East Anglia and the Midlands, that was conquered and settled by Scandinavian groups during the late ninth century. It’s a term that has been used to define this area culturally since the 10th century, when the English king Edgar decreed that the Danes living in England could exercise their rights according to their own legal frameworks, unlike those living under English law. Listen | Dr Ben Raffield explains how in the ninth and tenth centuries, Scandinavian laws and customs prevailed across a swathe of what’s now northern and eastern England Later in the 11th century, this appears as the written term Dena lage, meaning “areas under Danish law”. But by the 12th century, it becomes an almost geopolitical term in that the Danelaw is perceived more generally as the northern and eastern part of England, which exists in contrast to Wessex and English Mercia in the south and west. Over the course of a couple of centuries, what was originally a descriptive term used to describe a cultural and legal differentiation in England morphs into one used to denote a geographical place. This makes it quite difficult to define what the Danelaw actually is. Perhaps instead we should say that it’s a concept that reflects different ideas held by different people at different times. How many people came to the Danelaw from Scandinavia? The scale of Scandinavian invasions and settlements has been much debated. In the latter part of the 20th century, it was suggested that the so-called Viking Great Army, which established the first settlements during the late ninth century, might have numbered a few hundred people. But more recently, this idea has changed radically. We now mostly agree that this group comprised at least a low thousand people, which was a sizeable force. Read more about how England rode the Viking storm There were also raiding fleets that continued to show up even in the 10th century, and they were clearly in dialogue with and living among already settled populations. In a recent study of the early settlement population, Jane Kershaw and Ellen Røyrvik have come up with a much more realistic estimate of 20,000 to 35,000 people arriving in core Danelaw counties – Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Suffolk and Norfolk – over the course of several generations. But areas outside of this region, such as Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, were also being settled, so we could probably add more to that estimate. Ultimately it is very hard to tell, but it was probably a much larger settlement than we might have previously estimated. Was there ever a formal border between the Danelaw and the early English kingdoms? There was never anything physical like Hadrian’s Wall or Offa’s Dyke, but in the period following the Great Army’s settlement in the 870s there was a treaty agreed between Alfred the Great and Guthrum (one of the leading commanders of the Great Army and later king of East Anglia), which contained a description of their territory perimeters. This boundary between them ran along the River Thames as far as the mouth of the River Lea, then up the Lea to its source, and from there along a straight line to Bedford and finally down the River Ouse to Watling Street. What this seems to suggest is that there was at least some attempt to establish a formal boundary between Guthrum’s kingdom and Alfred's. Alfred and the battle of Edington: how the King of Wessex became great I don't think this was necessarily a border, but more likely a frontier zone that people were free to move across. Decades after this treaty was agreed, Scandinavian elites were selling land in what is Bedfordshire back to the English kings, which implies that at some point was a movement of this boundary. It was certainly permeable and fluid. Could people move in and out of the Danelaw? As far as I can tell, there were no active attempts to stop people moving across between the Danelaw and the rest of Anglo-Saxon England. I presume people, at least regionally and locally, would have traded, so it’s likely there was at least some movement. Even during periods where there was outright conflict between Viking raiding groups and the English kingdoms, there was nothing to prevent individuals from engaging in trade and commerce. Vikings under the microscope: what can science tell us about Viking life? For example, in the 890s, we know that a Norwegian merchant named Ohthere visited the court of King Alfred and was able to hold an audience with him. There didn't seem to be any kind of notion that people of Scandinavian origin were hostile. Of course, at times, tension or violence would flare up between different polities, especially as the geopolitical map began to shift in the late ninth century and early 10th century. But for the average person, I don’t think much would have changed over time. What was life like for Danes and Anglo-Saxons in the Danelaw? It’s difficult to not generalise about the interaction between Scandinavian settlers and English populations. We know that the period when the Great Army was active in England, during the 860s and 870s, was a violent time. You might assume that Viking groups continued to exercise an element of coercive power as they were settling the landscape, but it’s important to remember that this process was taking place over generations. Even though they may have started with a sense of opposition to each other, these communities would have eventually come together and coalesced. Through artefacts from the time, we see the creation of a more hybridised material culture that incorporates both Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon influences. 5 key Viking discoveries in Britain – and what they reveal about how the Vikings really lived But, again, it’s important to stress that we have absolutely no idea how these processes played out. The limited information we get from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle doesn't tell us much about what's happening in eastern and northern England, and there are very few other sources we can rely on to get a picture of the region during that time. Did the Danelaw feel like a foreign place? One thing scholars have largely drawn attention to is the relatively quick process of acculturation, which is the idea that incoming settlers would have quickly adopted English traditions, belief systems and assimilated into the structures of society. But if you look past this then there are still going to be differences between these groups, such as language. Even though English and Norse dialects may have been mutually intelligible to some degree, these still would have been recognisably different languages with different dialects. You would probably notice that more than anything visual. Ivar the Boneless, Ragnvald of Ed and 6 more Vikings you should know about Should we still use the term Danelaw? I think it’s important highlight the ambiguities associated with this term. If nothing else, for the point of being able to write concisely, these terms are incredibly useful. When you say the word Danelaw you generally have an idea what this region was and what events took place within its boundaries, even if the various nuances of the term have been heavily glossed over and homogenised. It’s important to note that this term clearly did mean something to people in the medieval period. So even if it's a term that we use just to highlight legal and cultural differentiation in different parts of England, I think there’s good reasons to retain that use. Maybe we just have to be aware of these uncertainties and explain exactly what we mean when we when we use this term. Or, rather than thinking solely about the Danelaw, perhaps we need to think more about the many fluid and dynamic processes of social, political, and cultural change taking place at regional and local levels within communities. That's where we can start to understand what's happening during this period. Dr Ben Raffield is a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History.