Viking Britain- an Exploration

by Thomas Williams

  The Vikings withdrew to their foothold in Reading, and began to prepare for the inevitable West Saxon counter-offensive. They constructed a rampart to join the two rivers, creating a fortress assailable only from the west, and waited for the Anglo-Saxon army to arrive.4

  The West Saxon king, Æthelred, and his brother, Alfred, had already had experience of facing a dug-in Viking army when they had failed to dislodge the force that had captured Nottingham in 868. This time, however, they were defending their own kingdom. Arriving at Reading, they once again decided to pursue the direct approach, ‘hacking and cutting down all the Vikings whom they had found outside’ until they reached the gates of the stronghold. The assault on Wessex might have turned out rather differently if the Vikings had trusted to their ramparts, sitting it out until the West Saxons had been forced – as at Nottingham – to cut some sort of deal. However, for whatever reason, the Vikings chose not to wait it out. Perhaps they did not have sufficient supplies to endure a siege (Æthelwulf’s victory at Englefield may have undermined efforts to acquire adequate provisions) or perhaps the fortifications – which must have been constructed at speed – were insufficient to inspire any feelings of security. Whatever the reason, the Vikings, trapped and with no means of retreat, decided to go on the offensive: ‘like wolves they burst out of all the gates and joined battle with all their might’.5 Fighting was fierce, and ‘a great slaughter was made on both sides’,6 but in the end, ‘alas, the Christians eventually turned their backs, and the Vikings won the victory’.7

  The battle at Reading, from a West Saxon perspective, was a fiasco. Ealdorman Æthelwulf, the hero of Englefield, died in the fighting, and the royal house had been defeated and humiliated. There were, however, three feeble rays of light that broke through the dark cloud that was now hanging over Wessex – though it is doubtful whether anyone could perceive them at the time. Firstly, the king and his brother had survived the debacle. Had they not, it is likely that the kingdom would have collapsed as quickly as East Anglia and Northumbria had. Secondly, Æthelwulf had proven that the Vikings of the micel here could be beaten, a reminder that West Saxon armies – as recently as the 850s – had punished Viking intruders in the past. Finally, the micel here was no longer quite so micel as it had been.

  The juggernaut that had rolled over Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia with such contemptuous ease in the 860s was now, almost certainly, beginning to fragment. It is likely that sizeable contingents remained in Northumbria and East Anglia to retain their grip over the local populations, even as their more entrepreneurial comrades turned west – after all, supply lines needed to be established and maintained, ships guarded and provisions gathered, new recruits absorbed, equipment repaired, camps and fortifications constructed. Although the written sources reveal very little of these processes, archaeology is beginning to provide enormous quantities of new data regarding the way in which these armies operated in England; nevertheless, we are still largely in the dark about the personnel and make-up of the army that invaded Wessex. It appears, however, that of the sons of Ragnar Loðbrók only Halfdan accompanied the army that advanced from Reading. He was one of two ‘kings’, along with another chieftain named Bacsecg, whom the English sources refer to by name.

  None of this would have provided much comfort to King Æthelred as he led his beaten and demoralized army away from the confluence of the Kennet and the Thames. They travelled along the river, the Viking army in close pursuit, into the marshlands that sprawled along the river banks. The Anglo-Norman poet-chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar, writing in Norman French in the 1130s, provides considerable – if slightly confusing – detail about the direction of the West Saxon army’s flight. According to Geoffrey, they went (somewhat counter-intuitively) east – away from the West Saxon heartlands. ‘Æthelred and Alfred were driven back to Whistley [Wiscelet],’ Gaimar explains, ‘a ford in the direction of Windsor [Windesoures] across an expanse of water in a marsh. This is where one of the Danish armies turned back to, but they were not aware of the ford over the river here. The ford to which the Danes withdrew was Twyford [Thuiforde], as it has always been called, and this is how the English escaped, but not without suffering many casualties and mortalities.’8

  It was deep winter. Forced to take the most difficult way, armoured men would have struggled through the sucking mud of frigid swollen bogs, their shields and weapons discarded as freezing mist and brackish water saturated woollen clothes and leather shoes. The weakest would have come quickly to grief – those who dropped behind, wounded or exhausted, left to drown in the mud or be speared like eels, wriggling in the shallows. For the battered survivors, although the northward crossing of the river would have meant a brief respite from the threat of imminent death, there would have been little opportunity to catch their breath. Only four days after the flight from Reading, Alfred and Æthelred would be forced to fight the Viking army again, at a place called Ashdown (Æscesdun).

  The main source for the battle – and for Alfred’s career in general – is the Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum (the ‘Life of Alfred king of the Anglo-Saxons’), written by Asser, bishop of Sherborne, a Welsh monk, originally from the community of St David’s in Dyfed (Wales), who was invited to join the learned circle that surrounded King Alfred in the 880s. The life was written in 893, and shares much of its detail with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the earliest version of which (the A recension, or ‘Winchester Chronicle’) was also written in the 890s in the court of King Alfred. They were, therefore, products of the same time and place and written under the patronage of the same individual: Alfred (King Alfred, as he was by the time they were written). We should then expect them to have been based on first-hand knowledge when dealing with events from Alfred’s life, to be accurate and specific when making reference to named places, to share the same West Saxon biases and positive attitude towards their patron, and to agree on most fundamental details. In general these expectations are met. Both sources identify the location of the battle as a place called Ashdown. The fighting took place ‘on Æscesdune’ according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser gives the same English name, adding helpfully, ‘quod Latine “mons fraxini” interpretatur’ (‘which in Latin means “hill of the ash-tree”’). The good bishop was in this, as in much else, exceptionally well informed.9

  His description of the conflict itself is remarkable – the fullest contemporary description of an early medieval battle before 1066:

  the Vikings, splitting up into two divisions, organized shield-walls of equal size (for they then had two kings and a large number of earls), assigning the core of the army to the two kings and the rest to all the earls. When the Christians saw this, they too split up the army into two divisions in exactly the same way, and established shield-walls no less keenly. But as I have heard from truthful authorities who saw it, Alfred and his men reached the battlefield sooner and in better order: for his brother, King Æthelred, was still in his tent at prayer, hearing Mass and declaring firmly that he would not leave that place alive before the priest had finished Mass, and that he would not forsake divine service for that of men; and he did what he said. The faith of the Christian king counted for much with the Lord, as shall be shown more clearly in what follows.

  But Alfred could only wait so long, and eventually – while Æthelred ‘was lingering still longer in prayer’ – Alfred was forced to take matters into his own hands: ‘acting courageously, like a wild boar, supported by divine counsel and strengthened by divine help, when he had closed up the shield-wall in proper order, he moved his army without delay against the enemy.’

  The fighting took place around a ‘small and solitary thorn-tree’ (which Asser noted, ‘I have seen for myself with my own eyes’):

  the opposing armies clashed violently, with loud shouting from all, one side acting wrongfully and the other side set to fight for life, loved ones and country. When both sides had been fighting to and fro, resolutely and exceedingly ferociously, for quite a long time, the Vikin
gs (by divine judgement) were unable to withstand the Christian onslaught any longer; and when a great part of their forces had fallen, they took to ignominious flight. One of the two Viking kings and five earls were cut down in that place, and many thousands on the Viking side were slain there too – or rather, over the whole broad expanse of Ashdown, scattered everywhere, far and wide: so King Bacsecg was killed, and Earl Sidroc the Old, Earl Sidroc the Younger, Earl Osbern, Earl Fræna and Earl Harold; and the entire Viking army was put to flight, right on until nightfall and into the following day, until such time as they reached the stronghold from which they had come. The Christians followed them till nightfall, cutting them down on all sides.10

  These were the first links to be forged in the armour of Alfred’s formidable later reputation, and they were cunningly wrought. But despite the length and apparent detail of the account, Asser’s narrative differs markedly from other key sources in one critical area – the role of the king.

  Reading Asser’s account, one would be forgiven for thinking that Æthelred did not show up for the fight at all, spending the whole battle mumbling his paternosters in pious ineffectitude. And yet the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is clear: ‘Æthelred fought against the kings’ force, and there the king Bagsecg was killed.’ Later historians of the twelfth century supplied even more detail. William of Malmesbury (d. 1143) gives the firm impression that it was Æthelred’s late intervention that saved the day for the West Saxons. By downplaying Æthelred’s military role, Asser was deliberately emphasizing Alfred’s exceptional martial skill, fortitude and porcine courage at Æthelred’s expense; he had, however, managed to do so while still emphasizing the former king’s laudable piety – this, Asser asserts, was also key to victory (‘it counted for much with the Lord’), by ensuring that Alfred was able to act with holy sanction, direction and support – a conduit for the stern judgement of the Lord on a pagan people. Getting this balance right was difficult, and politically sensitive.

  By the time Asser was writing his account, in the 890s, Alfred had become king of Wessex. He had succeeded after Æthelred’s death in 871, a few months after the battle of Ashdown. Alfred, like his brother, derived his claim on the West Saxon throne from his father – King Æthelwulf – reinforced by the important role he had played as right-hand man to his brother, King Æthelred. Alfred, therefore, had an interest in upholding the legitimacy of the West Saxon dynasty and the previous incumbents of its throne. So Asser was careful to stress King Æthelred’s efficacious religiosity and the divine aura this conferred on the West Saxon crown. The ‘solitary thorn-tree’ around which the battle was fought was also probably intended to make the same point. Trees symbolized the cross in Anglo-Saxon thought, and the thorn tree – in providing the material from which Christ’s mocking ‘crown of thorns’ was made – had particular significance; whether or not there really was such a tree at Ashdown, Asser’s reference to it was clearly intended to double down on the idea that the appropriate divine powers had been invested in the battle.

  Bothering God, however, was only part of the job description for an early medieval king, albeit an important part. Kings also needed, perhaps more than anything else, to be effective war-leaders: virile protectors of their lands, treasures and people. The subtext of Asser’s narrative, therefore, carried a subtle but clear message: Æthelred may have had the ear of the Lord, but Alfred was his strong right arm; and that, ultimately, was what counted.

  No one knows for certain where the battle of Ashdown was fought. It is known roughly where – somewhere on the high chalk uplands of the Berkshire downs – but the specific place is supposedly lost.11

  Until the early twentieth century, it was generally believed that the battle was fought near a village called Ashbury, now in Oxfordshire but formerly in Berkshire (prior to the 1974 county boundary changes). An earthwork near the village was already known as ‘Alfred’s Castle’ in 1738, and the association could conceivably be older.12 The connection between this part of the downs and Alfred’s battles against the Vikings was fixed in the imagination by a belief that the White Horse of Uffington, the massive equine figure carved into the chalk roughly 2 miles to the east of Ashbury, probably Iron Age, was originally fashioned as an Anglo-Saxon monument to victory.13 Despite being utterly fallacious, this notion was popularized by Thomas Hughes in his wildly successful novel of 1857, Tom Brown’s School Days. Hughes imagined that after his victory ‘the pious king [Alfred, Æthelred having been quietly ejected from the story], that there might never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the countryside, carved out on the northern side of the chalk hill, under the camp, where it is almost precipitous, the great Saxon white horse which he who will may see from the railway, and which gives its name to the vale over which it has looked these thousand years and more’.14

  You can still see the White Horse from the railway today, galloping along the southern rim of the vale that takes its name. Those who have frequently ‘travelled down the Great Western Railway as far as Swindon’ (as I have done and Thomas Hughes evidently also did) will, if they ‘did so with their eyes open, have been aware, soon after leaving the Didcot station, of a fine range of chalk hills running parallel with the railway on the left-hand side as you go down and distant some two or three miles, more or less, from the line’.15 The White Horse has galloped across those chalk hills since long before any Viking or Anglo-Saxon pondered its perplexing outline against the upland grasses.

  Ashbury’s fall from favour as the location of the battle of Ashdown is largely attributable to the work of the renowned place-name scholar Margaret Gelling and her demonstration that Æscesdun (Ashdown) could not convincingly be associated with any single place. She drew attention to the indisputable fact that, from at least the tenth century, the term ‘Ashdown’ was used to refer to the whole of the Berkshire downs.16 This is highly unusual: as Gelling admitted, no other tree-hill compound place-name is used to describe such a wide area. Nonetheless, the evidence that the term was used in this way is entirely sound. However, it seems to me likely, in the context of descriptions of the battle of Ashdown, that Asser and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle intended the place-name to have a specific geographical meaning.

  One reason for this is that in no other instance does Asser or the anonymous Anglo-Saxon chronicler fail to identify with precision the location of a battle fought by Alfred. Moreover, on each occasion they associate Alfred’s battles with royal estate-centres. There are many reasons why this might be so: for example, royal halls may well have served as muster-points and supply depots for West Saxon armies, and the practical exigencies of campaigning meant that battles were often fought at or close by them.17 But Alfred’s interest in promoting flattering accounts of his reign, alongside his promotion of literacy (it was, after all, no good commissioning biographies and chronicles if nobody could read), is suggestive of the king’s concern with shaping his own legacy – a desire to propagate his legend through the work of Asser and the chronicler. It may be that, faced with a largely illiterate populace, Alfred’s circle set about deliberately linking the king’s most memorable achievements with well-known places – particularly those which already had royal associations. In that way, Alfred’s legend could be insinuated into the very fabric of his kingdom, the list of place-names a mnemonic tally of his martial exploits, stitched into the landscape.

  It should follow that if a specific place known as Æscesdun, particularly one known to have been in royal hands around the time of the battle, could be located within four days’ march from Reading, it would have a sound prima facie claim to being close to the site of the famous battle. Judged against these criteria, Ashbury – the traditional location of the battle – has a compelling claim.

  The village is referred to in a charter of 840 which describes the grant of land at Ashdown (Asshedoune) from King Æthelwulf (Alfred’s and Æthelred’s father) to a man named Duda. The charter is headed with the place-name ‘Aysheburi’ (Ashbury), implying that Ashbury was known to be the cen
tre of an estate in which land at Ashdown was located.18 Over a hundred years later, in 947, the West Saxon crown was again giving away land at Ashdown (Aysshedun); in this charter, land was given by King Eadred to a chap called Edric which this time included a manor ‘quod nunc vocatur Aysshebury’ (‘which is now called Ashbury’). This charter also contains an Old English boundary clause, which described the perimeter of the parish of Ashbury, or at least its western half.19 Taken together, these two documents tell us that, when used in a legal sense, the term Ashdown was understood to refer to a specific area of the Berkshire countryside surrounding the manor of Ashbury (which later gave its name to the modern parish); and that Ashbury was an estate in West Saxon royal ownership by 840, and remained so until 947 when the manor was transferred to a nobleman called Edric. Given their knowledge of West Saxon toponomy, tendency towards specificity, and interest in crafting Alfred’s legend in explicable, geographical terms, it seems more than likely that, when Alfred’s writers used the term Ashdown, it was Ashbury in particular that they meant.

  Early medieval battle-sites frequently have a number of other characteristics in common. Established meeting places are one, and Ashbury is close to the meeting place of the defunct Hildeslaw hundred.20 Proximity to major roads is another, and many battles were fought along the Wessex Ridgeway that passes to the south-east of the village.21 But the most evocative feature of the places where men came to fight and die in early medieval Britain, in Wessex at any rate, was the presence of prehistoric monuments. Alfred’s Castle, the Bronze Age univallate hill-fort that lies to the north-west of the Ridgeway, has been mentioned already. But there are other, older monuments in this landscape, and one in particular – brooding on the high chalk – that would have worked a dark spell on the West Saxon imagination.