In Search of the Dark Ages

by Michael Wood

  In the north the burning of Ripon had the same effect that the shelling of Reims had in 1914. The northerners were outraged, the English were embarrassed. One southern version claims the Danes were responsible, but the York source of the ‘D’ version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle shows what really happened. Indeed there is nothing improbable in the idea that Eadred burned the place down deliberately, for this ancient centre of learning may have been a focus for Northumbrian separatist feeling. Archaeologists have uncovered some traces of the pre-948 settlement here. Like all small towns, and most cities, it was completely rural in character, wooden houses and barns clustered around the church and protected by a dry ditch 18 feet wide with a wooden palisade and gates. The population was tiny, probably only two or three hundred, swelled by travelling stonemasons and sculptors who worked on the church and by seasonal shepherds and farmers who worked the summer months in Wensleydale: transhumance remained the way of life in many of the dales for centuries. The church itself had been built by St Wilfrid in the seventh century, in the style of an Italian basilica with long arched side aisles, and its crypt can still be seen, the relic niches empty now, the only part which survived the destruction of 948 and the rebuilding later in the century. An insight into Scandinavian patronage of St Wilfrid’s Church was provided in 1975 when a hole was driven through the crypt revealing pieces of tenth-century cross shafts which may be from the wreckage of the 948 destruction. The heads were carved by English masons on Scandinavian themes including the legend of Sigurd and Fafnir. In Viking Yorkshire the greater glory of God came from diverse sources!

  Archbishop Oda of Canterbury was with the English army at Ripon and took the opportunity to ‘kidnap’ what he thought were the bones of St Wilfrid and remove them to Kent. This was ostensibly to protect them from the ‘innumerable upheavals of the English kingdom’, as Oda said. But is it not just as reasonable to think that in abducting the remains of the Northumbrian saint, Oda was depriving Wulfstan’s party of a focus for both their political feeling and their prayers for celestial aid from the ‘heavenly battalions’ in whose ranks Wilfrid now stood? His action certainly appears to back up the claim that the church was deliberately destroyed.

  THE BATTLE AT CASTLEFORD

  With the ashes settled at Ripon, and the harvest burned away, Eadred rode south, away from the columns of smoke and the streams of refugees. Fearful of ambushes he spread the army out, setting a rearguard to cover his retreat. At Castleford, on the Aire, the main ford of the Roman road out of Northumbria, the Northumbrian army from York cut off the rearguard and annihilated it. They had lain in wait at the narrow approach to the crossing where the most damage could be easily inflicted, and, says the northern annalist, ‘they made great slaughter there’. In a much later source, the notebook of John of Wallingford, we find this additional note: ‘the author of this ambush is said to have been Eric the son of Harald.’

  Eric had confirmed his reputation as a cunning and victorious general. It was the first time the West Saxons had been defeated in a stand-up fight since 902. Survivors who escaped the debacle struggled across the river and somewhere between Castleford and the Northumbrian frontier caught up with Eadred and the main army. He took the news badly. ‘The king became so enraged that he wished to march back into the land and destroy it utterly.’ When the Northumbrian witan understood this; they backed down. They hastily met and deserted Eric. Ambassadors were despatched to Eadred bearing gifts, and ‘by their entreaties and many rich presents, and by their entire and final submission they mitigated his anger (John of Wallingford). The deaths of a large number of the southern nobility who were in the rearguard had to be compensated too, and the Northumbrians agreed to hand over a great sum of money, presumably calculated on the wergelds of the dead men, that is, their rating in the tariff for injuries which existed in Old English law. The year 948 ended with Eadred again acknowledged as king in Northumbria, and Eric and his followers setting sail for exile none knew where, the second time in his life he had faced exile. Many kings had done the same, of course – the Northumbrian Edwin, Aethelbald of Mercia, Egbert of Wessex – and it had not been an impediment to their future greatness. The Northumbrian submission was not ‘final’, and nor was Eric’s exile.

  EXILE AND THE SLAVE TRADE: ‘A PIRATE VOYAGE TO SPAIN’

  We cannot recover Eric’s lost years between 948 and 952, for no primary sources survive which throw any light on them. The sagas record plundering expeditions in Scotland, the Hebrides, Wales and Ireland at this time, and there was a tradition that Eric was king for a while in the Sudreys, a favourite stopping-off place for disappointed Viking freebooters. But in the synoptic histories of Norway written in the late twelfth century an unexpected twist emerges. Here we find garbled accounts of a pirate expedition by Eric to Spain, which was then under Arab control. The Spanish Arabs engaged in a very lucrative slave trade with the Dublin Norse at a slightly later time. Could it be then that Eric followed the Viking route to Cordoba and North Africa to sell British and Anglo-Saxon slaves in exchange for silver, with which to pay his followers? If this is so, it adds a dramatic new dimension to his story.

  Apart from war, slavery was the best business in the Dark Ages. Even the Church was economically dependent on slaves, though naturally churchmen spoke out against the seizing of Christians and their sale abroad. From the mid ninth century thousands were taken captive from Ireland in particular. The Vikings planned their descents with cunning cruelty, often raiding on major Church festivals when they knew towns would be thronging with pilgrims. Armagh, for example, was raided at Christmas 926 and at St Martin’s Eve 933. The Irish annals of the ninth century present a grim catalogue of misery which goes through Eric’s day: ‘three thousand or more captured with great booty and cows, horses, gold and silver’ (around Kells, 951).

  The Irish Viking towns were clearing houses, exchange ports for this trade. At first glance if you landed at the quay of Viking Dublin in 950 you might see little difference from the Viking quarter of York, the familiar streets of laid split timbers, the dirty industrial quarter, the narrow planked houses jammed close together. But Dublin was quite different in character from the settled city life of York. The Dublin Norse colonists lived on the edge of Irish society, never occupying the land to any great extent; they were fewer and wealthier than in Britain, entrepreneurs, ‘nabobs rather than settlers’ they have been called, men with a diplomatic and exploitive relation with the interior. By the late tenth century in Dublin they were minting large coinages modelled exactly on those of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and the widespread trade in England implied by this was probably slaves, young Britons and Anglo-Saxons shipped to Dublin, Wexford and Waterford and then sold to Spain, North Africa, or down the Russian river route to eastern Islam.

  Only aristocrats stood a chance of being ransomed. Most people who were abducted never saw their home villages again. Indeed for many it was their last sight of the British Isles. An Arab traveller of Eric’s time who came to Spain remarked on the great numbers of European slaves in harems and in the militia. The palace of the Emir of Cordoba in particular had many white girls, though chiefly Frankish and Italian. Of these unfortunate people the Vikings were undoubtedly a major source of supply: they had the easiest access to Christian captives and they had no scruples about enslaving them. The Arabs in Spain saw the long-184 term potential of this trade, and as early as the 840s sent a diplomatic mission to Scandinavia to put it on an organised basis. Most British slaves though seem to have ended up on the Russian river route to eastern Islam. The Laxdael Saga mentions an Icelandic chief who visited a slave mart off the coast of Sweden, again in Eric’s day. There he purchased an expensive, aristocratic Irish girl from Gilli ‘the Russian’ who was said to be ‘the richest man in the league of merchants’, and who did his buying and selling in a plush tent ‘wearing velvet clothes with a Russian hat on his head’. Gilli obviously got his nickname from his trading in Russia: his name is Norse-Irish.

  The extent o
f this commerce, and the speed with which it spread are astonishing. We find Swedish dealers on the Caspian in 922 and by the 940s they had penetrated to Bukhara, Merv and Samarkand. No wonder that as early as the 920s a wealthy York Viking should carry in his purse coins only recently minted in central Asia! The numbers involved are also eye opening. From eastern Europe where Otto of Germany was ruthlessly extending his reich, thousands of captives came west from the defeated Slav tribes (the word ‘Slav’ is derived from ‘slave’), to be ‘processed’ by rich Jewish and Syrian merchants in Verdun, many made into eunuchs for the Spanish market. A frightened pilgrim in the late ninth century in Taranto saw nine thousand Italian captives being loaded onto ships, making up just one consignment to Egypt.

  With so many people available as victims of war, famine and natural disaster, and with so much profit to be made, the story of Eric’s journey to Spain makes sense and enables us to fill partially in the lost years. In York itself he can have heard details of the sea journey to the Mediterranean, for the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok had made an expedition to Spain and North Africa in 859–861, before they established themselves in York. There they had carried off a great host of ‘blue men’ from Mauretania, and brought back to Ireland and York geographical information on the situation of Morocco and the Balearic Isles. If anywhere, old salts on the Foss quay in York would remember stories of the tides in the Bay of Biscay, the dangerous northern coasts of Spain, and the watering places in North Africa. They would tell, too, of the treasures the sons of Lothbrok brought back with them: gold and silver, jewels, decorated Arab saddles, woven cloths, beautiful satins and silks ‘variegated, scarlet and green’, gold embroidered gloves, ‘a head band studded with gold’.

  So at some point around 950 we can imagine Eric’s longships edging up the Guadalquivir, or standing off the coast of Tangier. And perhaps the much-travelled Eric saw the voyage as the tenth-century author of the Viking proverbs of the Hávamál: ‘Only the man who makes far journeys and has travelled extensively, who knows the kind of mind any man has, can truly be self-possessed.’ Like his slaving, his proverbs show the Viking’s mind to be pragmatic, not romantic.

  Eric may have gathered news of events in York during these years, from a passing merchant ship off Ireland or Brittany. In 949 Anlaf Sihtricson had come back there from Dublin, and King Eadred, while anxious to keep Eric out, may have been less worried about Anlaf. The Norseman’s reign of three years (until 952) can only be explained by his having cooperated with the southern English king, and acknowledged his overlordship. It may be that the Northumbrians paid tribute again, and in return were allowed to mint English-type coins.

  ERIC’S RETURN: ARCHBISHOP WULFSTAN ARRESTED

  In 952 the storm broke. In this year, says Chronicle ‘E’, ‘the Northumbrians drove out Anlaf and received Eric, Harold’s son’. There was evidently exasperation in Winchester. Court rumour was that Archbishop Wulfstan was once more at the root of things. When the archbishop next came south he was immediately placed under house arrest, ‘because accusations had often been made to the king against him,’ says the chronicler; ‘He was said to have connived at the shifts of allegiance by his compatriots,’ adds William of Malmesbury. Eadred and his advisers had had enough. They decided to imprison Wulfstan ‘in close custody’ in the fort of ludanbyrig. The place of his confinement has not been certainly identified, but was doubtless the site known to Bede as Ythancaestir, the former Roman Saxon Shore fort of Othona, now Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex. It is a desolate spot, suitable for such a prisoner, a marshy promontory by the sea, with 14-feet-thick Roman walls, inside which were the seventh-century monastery of St Cedd and the chapel of St Peter which still stands intact on the site. Perhaps Eadred’s advisers hoped that the troublesome priest would catch marsh fever or pneumonia and solve a thorny problem! For the whole period of Eric’s second reign in York Wulfstan kicked his heels in this remote part of East Anglia.

  With Eric back in the king’s garth in York, Eadred was at first unwilling or unable to do anything himself. But perhaps his diplomats were at work in North Britain, spending English silver to procure Eric’s downfall. This is conjecture, but at the end of the year a great battle rocked the world of north Britain. An alliance of English (probably the North Saxons from Bamburgh), Scots and Cumbrians was defeated with great loss by the Norse. The event is only known in Irish sources. The Scottish king, Indulf, had been on the throne a matter of weeks. Some important realignment was taking place in relations between the kings of the north. It is hard not to associate these events in northern England with Eric, especially in view of the alliance which eventually brought him down. At any rate the battle of 952 must have consolidated Eric’s position in Northumbria, and his second and last reign in York lasted the best part of three years from 952 to 954. The tradition of the Norse synoptic histories was that he reigned alone for two years and for the third jointly with his brother. Their rule marks the end of the Scandinavian heroic age in Northumbria.

  ‘THE LAST KING OF THE NORTHUMBRIAN RACE’

  This last period of Northumbrian greatness was looked on nostalgically by the later Northumbrian annalists in their backward-looking summaries and genealogies, and the eleventh-187 century conclusion, the History of the Earls. That something different happened at the time is suggested first by the coinage. The coins Eric issued now were quite distinct from the standard English types of his first rule. The silver penny minted by Ingelgar in York evoked the conquest of York of 919 by resuscitating the old obverse design of a sword, with the inscription Eric Rex. Some scholars have seen this revival as a bid for Norse-Irish support in York (that is, followers of the deposed King Anlaf Sihtricson whose kinsman from Dublin had ruled in York intermittently since 919). It was also a gesture of defiance, a restoration of the old order.

  Eric acted as an old-fashioned king of the Northumbrians in other ways too. Just as Athelstan, Edmund and Eadred had done, he made a journey to Chester-le-Street to visit the shrine of St Cuthbert and make his personal pact with the saint. In the Liber Vitae of the community his name is still to be seen among the kings and hundreds of obscure Christians who entered into confraternity with the saint in the Viking era. It conjures up an image of Eric, secure after the victory of 952, coming to the shrine, at the instigation of his advisers, to ingratiate himself with the traditionalist Bernician aristocracy. Here perhaps he opened the coffin of the saint and added an arm ring and a Kufic silk to those which Athelstan and Edmund wrapped around the body, and which are still to be seen in a fragmentary state in Durham Cathedral Library. And here too, perhaps, he was accompanied by the ‘High-Reeve of Bamburgh’, earl of Bernicia, Oswulf, son of Ealdred Ealdulfing, and chief man in the Saxon lands north of the Tees, the head of a family which ruled in these parts from at least the ninth century until after the Norman Conquest. The Ealdulfings made alliances with anyone who held power in the north, Scots or Vikings; they had been defeated in 952, and may have then acknowledged Eric’s overlordship north of the Humber. But when Eric came out into the sunlight after keeping his vigil with the saint, he may not have suspected that Oswulf was again plotting his overthrow. If anything our northern annalist implies that Eric trusted him.

  With so many opposed interests at stake in the north, why did the Church of York stand by the Norse-Irish kings and Eric Bloodaxe so long? It is too much of a coincidence that Wulfstan was imprisoned in East Anglia for the whole of Eric’s second reign: the archbishop must have been his supporter, as he had been in 947. Wulfstan was a Northumbrian Angle to the core. His eventual burial at Oundle where St Wilfrid died suggests he was a Wilfrid man, and indeed like Wilfrid he lived like a great secular lord, leading the Northumbrian witan, riding with the army into the Five Boroughs in 940 and securing their surrender, expelling Anlaf Sihtricson, dealing with Eadred at Tanshelf as a king does on the borders of his kingdom, and eventually being imprisoned, like Wilfrid in exile. Wulfstan was part of a society which cared for show and power, and he dominated Northumbria
n politics from 931 until the fall of Eric, running the diocese of York like an ecclesiastical empire This was the tradition of being a bishop in Northumbria, and it is no wonder that the later Anglo-Saxon bishops of York were all drawn from south of the Humber. He spoke for the power of the Northumbrian church and kingship, crowning Norse kings ‘with the approval of the bishop and the whole army, Angles and Danes’; the same expression we find in the Five Boroughs, reflecting the custom and nomenclature of a Viking republic. But Wulfstan made it something more.

  Enough fragments of the northern annals survive to show that the monk who wrote his chronicle in tenth-century Northumbria (and it is a fair assumption that he wrote in Wulfstan’s church) saw the wars of the 940s in the context of the ancient wars with the South Angles fought by the bretwaldas Edwin, Oswald and Oswy. For him and the men who supported Eric, men like Earl Orm, these wars were fought for the lordship of the lands north of the Humber. Only this can explain Wulfstan’s extraordinary career in which he led the witan of the Northumbrians in matters of allegiance. The Humber was the greatest cultural and political divide in early English history, and the reality of this in the tenth century explains the tenacity with which the Northumbrians clung to their concept of their history and kingship, and the way in which the Viking kings were readily adopted to preserve this, and came as Eric did to be seen as fitting upholders of the old order. In the fragments of these northern annals we detect vestiges of an attitude which seems to regard Wulfstan as representing the interests of the Church and the landowning class, Anglian, Danish and Norse, against the West-Saxon kings. Their interests and those of Eric Bloodaxe were clearly not incompatible. To read between the lines of Wulfstan’s ‘political’ career is to suspect that the point of view of the head of the Church of York was that of a northern English aristocrat who saw Norse condottieri like Eric, and not the hated Suthangli, as best representing the aspirations of his class, his region and his Church.