The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

by Lars Brownworth

  Since Alfred lacked a fleet, there was little he could do but watch the campaign unfold. Guthrum had maneuvered his forces brilliantly, but just as he was on the verge of victory, the weather stole his triumph. As the Viking longships were rounding some headlands they were wrecked by a severe storm, along with nearly four thousand men. The would-be conqueror was now trapped at Exeter, massively outnumbered, and deep in enemy territory. Guthrum sued for peace, and Alfred, realizing how close he had come to defeat, was magnanimous. The Vikings, properly chastened, were allowed to cross the Thames with what was left of their army.

  Once again, Alfred had miscalculated his enemy’s weakness. The Vikings had consistently shown a remarkable ability to replenish their forces in a short amount of time. Within five months, Guthrum had brought his army back up to fighting strength and had launched his final invasion.

  All of the favorite Viking tactics were on display. Not only did Guthrum attack Alfred’s stronghold of Chippenham during the winter, but he waited until Twelfth Night – a time when most of Alfred’s army would be either home celebrating Christmas with their families, or deep into their wine. The lightning blow caught the king completely by surprise. He had dismissed the field army for the holiday, and was protected only by his personal guard. They were quickly overpowered, and Alfred himself barely escaped. He fled to Athelney, a wooded island in the marshes of Somerset, with the few of his bodyguard who had survived.

  Guthrum had shattered the power of Wessex, bringing almost all of England under Viking domination in the process. It would take some time to mop up the last resistance, but even as the Vikings took command of Chippenham, reinforcements arrived. They were commanded by Ubba Ragnarson, younger brother of Ivar the Boneless and Halfdan. He brought with him the Raven banner, a fearful totem that the Vikings believed carried the favor of Odin. Supposedly woven in a single day by the daughters of Ragnar Lothbrok, it was a triangular canvas with the image of a raven sewn on it. If its wings were seen flapping, victory would soon follow.

  Of course, Wessex had not admitted defeat, and it still had a surviving king, but that was a mere technicality. Under the twin hammers of Guthrum and a Lothbrok son, it would crumble soon enough.

  Chapter 7

  The Last King of England

  “When ill seed has been sown, so an ill crop will spring from it.” -

  Njáls Saga

  In the early months of 878, Alfred must have cut a sorry figure for a king. Driven into exile in his own kingdom, abandoned by most of his subjects, and constantly on the run, there must have seemed little hope of ever regaining his throne. There are a number of charming stories that originate from this period, the most famous of which involves him taking refuge with a peasant couple. The wife assigned him the task of watching some cakes by the fire, but the distracted king, weighed down with his troubles, let them burn. Having failed to recognize her sovereign in his ragged and dirty clothes, the wife berated him for neglecting his duty. The husband, who immediately recognized Alfred, begged the king’s forgiveness, but Alfred good-naturedly admitted that she was right. In another tale, Alfred snuck into Guthrum’s camp disguised as a traveling minstrel. As he entertained them, he overheard their plans, enabling him to win a victory the following day.

  While these stories are almost certainly invented, they do manage to capture Alfred’s character. He had an ability to inspire and connect with his subjects that his brothers and father did not. He was also starting to form a strategy to defeat the Vikings.

  His experience in battle had taught him to avoid a head-on collision with a Viking army. Their usual tactic was to seize a fortified position or a high point and mass their infantry into a shield wall. They would then provoke the English into attacking. This could usually be repelled – the Vikings who invaded Wessex were veterans – and as the English fell back in disarray, the Vikings would storm forward and sweep the Saxons off the battlefield.

  This strategy had won almost all of England for the Vikings, and seemed unassailable. During his time of exile, however, Alfred had realized the flaw in the Viking armor. Despite having great ability to replenish their forces, they were still vastly outnumbered by the English. The only way they could overpower a kingdom was to destroy its army, and until they did so they would be vulnerable. All Alfred had to do was to wear them down with skirmishes and not offer a conclusive battle. For the next three months he waged a stubborn guerrilla war from his swamp, always one step ahead of the pursuing Danes, and by Easter of 878, he was ready to go on the offensive.

  He had prepared the ground well. Without an enemy to strike, the Vikings had been forced to spread out their forces to control Wessex. Alfred’s raids had slowly chipped away at their strength and provided a rallying point for English resistance. The greatest blow to Viking morale, however, had been an unexpected bit of luck that had nothing to do with Alfred. After his success in capturing Chippenham, Guthrum had sent Ubba on a raid in Devonshire, and the latter had stumbled into an English army commanded by a local noble. In the ensuing struggle, Ubba was cut down and the Raven banner was captured. When Alfred left his marsh, the English were energized and waiting for their call to arms.

  The king mustered the forces of three shires, and when he was confident that they were ready, he marched north to Edington. His army was probably around four thousand strong, slightly smaller than the Viking force commanded by Guthrum.

  This was the battle that both sides had wanted, and it was clear before it began that it would be the decisive conflict of the war. Both armies formed a shield wall and advanced. This was a brutal contest of sheer muscle and will, each side shoving forward, trying to hack and smash their way through the opposing line. The fighting was bloody and exhausting, and neither side could gain an advantage. Finally, after many hours of hard fighting, the Viking line broke.

  As with all medieval battles, once the shield wall collapsed, the end came quickly. The Vikings abandoned their positions and fled, taking refuge in their base at Chippenham. The Saxon army followed close behind, and Alfred settled in for a siege of his former residence.

  The loss was particularly devastating to the Vikings because Guthrum had probably expected an easy victory. He had anticipated facing the demoralized, half-beaten army that had fled some four months before, and wouldn’t have risked a pitched battle. The defeat at Edington, however, was decisive on another level; not because of the loss of men – Guthrum could always find more – but because of the realization that Alfred was not going away.

  There were some veterans in the Viking army that had arrived with Ivar the Boneless a dozen years before. They, like most of the Vikings, had come not just for plunder, but for land. Wessex might eventually fall to them, but it would take years of bloody struggle, with every inch contested. There were easier pickings across the Chanel and to the north. Wessex may simply not have been worth it.

  If he needed convincing, it took only three weeks for Guthrum’s army to persuade him to come to an agreement with Alfred. The terms were generous, and reflected a desire by both parties to ensure a lasting peace. Alfred agreed to pay Danegeld, and to respect the Viking conquest of the other three English kingdoms. Guthrum, for his part had to withdraw from Saxon land, accept Christianity, and acknowledge that Wessex was an independent kingdom.

  Several weeks later, Guthrum and thirty of his most distinguished men arrived at Alfred’s marshy stronghold in Athelney, and was baptized. Alfred stood in as his godfather, and christened him Athelstan in memory of his eldest brother. The newly minted Christian monarch then agreed to a permanent division of territory.66 Wessex and the western portion of Mercia would belong to Alfred, while eastern Mercia and East Anglia would belong to the Vikings. Wessex would be governed by English law and custom, while the Vikings would abide by Danish custom.

  Guthrum’s portion, known thereafter as the Danelaw, maintained its identity until the end of the twelfth century. What was left of the great heathen army – somewhat less heathen by this point �
� settled in Mercia or left to raid the continent. Guthrum appears to have lived out the remaining years of his life in peace, dying in East Anglia in 890.

  The victory over his great antagonist would have been enough for most men, but Alfred was playing a long game, and knew that peace with one Viking commander – no matter how important – did not mean the end of Viking raids. He had to place the kingdom on a firmer foundation to enable it to fend off the next attack when it inevitably came. Wessex must be turned into a fortress that could withstand another great heathen army.

  The Viking’s mobility had been the key to their success, so Alfred took it away. Towns, bridges, and roads were fortified, and strongholds were built throughout Wessex to deny roving bands any sanctuary. Within fifteen years, the kingdom was bristling with fortresses allowing the English to strike at any future raid from numerous points. Next, Alfred reorganized the army, training a professional, permanent force supported by taxes, to replace the unreliable peasant levies. He even attempted to challenge the Viking monopoly of sea power by beginning work on a fleet, although the results proved disappointing.67

  To stabilize things internally, he also reformed the currency. At his coronation, English coins had had very little silver in them and were nearly worthless. Somehow he was able to increase the silver content, whether by using treasure confiscated from the Vikings, opening some old Roman mines, or discovering some buried loot. He never explained how, and historians have been wondering about it ever since.

  Within a decade, Alfred was secure enough to start expanding his territory. He drove the Vikings out of London and signed a final treaty with Guthrum renegotiating his exact border with the Danelaw. It wasn’t just the reorganization that had strengthened Alfred’s army. The king had realized that a literate force – or at least an officer corps who could read – would give him an advantage. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, so it was vital that he could communicate exact and detailed plans to his underlings. With that in mind he issued a command that all commanders should ‘be able to read and write or else surrender their offices of worldly power.’

  This directive was profoundly shocking to a warrior culture that was almost completely illiterate, and Alfred had to modify it so that his sheriffs could appoint a literate deputy to read for them.68 But he remained adamant that schooling should increase in Wessex. Although he had received no education, he was very conscious of what he’d missed and understood that exposing himself to minds more vast and subtle than his own was an enriching experience.

  With that in mind, he composed a list of books that every educated man should know and – at least according to legend – personally translated some of them from Latin into the vernacular. A particular favorite was Boethius’ The Consolation Of Philosophy, from which he chose his own epitaph: “I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and to leave after my life, to the men who should come after me, the memory of me in good works.”

  The revival of learning that Alfred championed was accompanied by a spiritual revival, since churches and monasteries were the vehicle of education. Religious foundations were rebuilt and re-endowed, and monks began copying manuscripts again. The law code was rewritten, and trade began slowly to pick up.

  Unfortunatey, all of this made Wessex a target for more raids, and in 892 Alfred’s reforms were tested by another invasion. The Viking army, led yet again by a son of Ragnar Lothbrok, arrived in two waves and struck from different directions. They had brought their women and children with them, obviously expecting to settle permanently in Wessex. Neither group, however, had much success in establishing themselves. After several months Alfred confronted the smaller of the two groups and managed to buy them off, while his son Edward ran down the larger one near Essex. Two years later, the Danes tried again, but this time were spotted by Alfred’s coastal guard sailing down the Thames. His army was able to blockade them and burn the ships while they were beached.

  Alfred died in October of 899, aged fifty – a ripe old age for the time – having accomplished the impossible. He had checked the irresistible Viking tide and prevented England from becoming a Viking colony. By simply surviving, he had taken a huge step toward the creation of a single English state. Thanks to the Vikings, he was the only remaining native king, a fact which ensured that the eventual unification of the country would occur under the crown of Wessex. Along the way he had revived literacy, reorganized the economy, and created a stable base for the future kingdom. Without him, Anglo-Saxon civilization may very well have been extinguished.

  The achievement has led to an unparalleled reputation which remains intact today. Alfred was hailed as the ‘Solomon of England’, Alfred the ‘Wise’, and most commonly, Alfred the ‘Great’. We need not necessarily agree with the historian Edward Freeman who, in a gush of patriotism, called Alfred ‘the most perfect character in history’, but he certainly earned his epithet of ‘Great’. The inscription under his statue at his birthplace of Wantage, in the modern British county of Berkshire, erected in 1877 by Victorian admirers, provides a fitting epitaph:

  “Alfred found learning dead, and he restored it. Education neglected, and he revived it. The laws powerless, and he gave them force. The Church debased, and he raised it. The land ravaged by a fearful enemy, from which he delivered it. Alfred’s name will live as long as mankind shall respect the past.”

  Chapter 8

  A Viking Kingdom in the Irish Sea

  “The overpraised are the worst deceivers.”

  - The Saga of Grettir the Strong

  Perhaps the greatest tribute to Alfred’s success was that the Danelaw never became a kingdom of its own. At the time of his death it accounted for roughly half the land area of the modern kingdom of England. Its main city was York, a city which owes its location and much of its existence to the Vikings. In AD 71, the Ninth Legion of the Roman army had built a wooden fort at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss which they named Eboracum.69 The Anglo-Saxons, however, had moved the settlement inland and renamed it Eoforwīc, or ‘wild boar town’. It remained a smaller royal center until the Viking conquest, when its new masters moved it back to the bank of the rivers, transforming it into a major port city. Their name of Jorvīc or York stuck, and by the eleventh century it had grown to around ten thousand people, representing perhaps a sixth of the existing population of the Danelaw.

  Under the Vikings, York flourished. It was at the western end of the great northern trade arc that they had been developing, and was a major center for the export of food and metals to markets from Ireland to Russia. In the other direction came aromatics, glassware, silks, and silver, along with other refined products from eastern markets.

  The lure of English wealth glittering just over the Irish Sea was irresistible to the Vikings of Ireland, and they kept returning to it, like moths to a flame. But the repeated attempts to seize its riches – especially the great invasion of England – nearly proved the undoing of Viking settlements in Ireland. The Gaelic Vikings had been facing a serious manpower shortage since 870 when the discovery of Iceland had diverted immigrants to the north, and they could ill afford to lose men in fruitless adventures in England. The drain of available forces left them exposed, and in 902 a High King had managed to drive them out of Dublin itself. The Irish victory proved fleeting, however. In 914 a grandson of Ivar the Boneless named Sitric One-Eyed, sailed into Dublin’s harbor and crushed the High King’s army. With that triumph, the Irish fell back, allowing the Vikings to reoccupy their old settlements.

  Sitric One-Eyed, who was pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness, made the strategic decision not to spend his efforts conquering Ireland.70 Instead he wanted to capture the lucrative northern trading routes, by linking Dublin with York. His ambition was to rule a kingdom made up of bits of the coasts of Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. This dream was born of a typically Viking outlook. They saw the world in terms of the sea, not land masses, and it made perfect sense to connect the major crossing points. Dublin was cut o
ff from the interior of Ireland by bogs and forests, while northern Britain was divided by the Pennine mountains. By sea, however, which the Vikings could cross easily and quickly, these areas could be knit together into a single kingdom straddling the Irish Sea.

  The only serious resistance he faced was from the Irish. In 918 a coalition of petty kings tried to drive him out of Dublin, but were heavily beaten. The next year they tried again with even worse results. In what was probably the most catastrophic defeat ever inflicted on the Irish by the Vikings, Sitric One-Eyed crushed the army, killing several kings.

  The victory ensured that Dublin would remain Viking, and reinforced the dominant Viking position in Ireland. With his flank secured, Sitric One-Eyed left Dublin in the hands of his cousin, and sailed across the Irish Sea to claim York as well. The family of Ivar the Boneless had always thought of York as their patrimony, and the feeling seems to have been reciprocated. He was accepted as king, and spent the next six years methodically expanding the size and influence of Viking Northumbria.

  By 926 it looked as if Sitric’s dream had become a reality. Dublin and York were the twin centers of an unlikely realm spanning the Irish Sea. He had even made enough of a nuisance of himself that the English king, Athelstan, had bought him off by giving him a royal bride – the king’s own sister. The following year, however, Sitric One-Eyed died, and his Hiberno-English realm collapsed.