Viking Britain- an Exploration

by Thomas Williams

  When Svein moved south the collapse came quickly, Oxford and Winchester surrendering without a fight. London held firm, its townspeople holding out ‘with full battle because King Æthelred was inside’. But it was not enough to avert the disaster hanging over the English king. Briefly thwarted, Svein travelled west, to Bath, where the western nobility submitted to him. This was enough for the remaining English resistance. The Londoners laid down their weapons, pledging themselves to their new lord (because if they did not, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle explains, ‘they dreaded that he [Svein] would do them in’).2 Exhausted by a quarter-century of war, England capitulated with a whimper and ‘the whole nation had him as full king’.

  Æthelred, with his wife Emma and his sons Edward and Alfred, fled across the Channel to his wife’s brother, Duke Richard of Normandy (the beginning of an Anglo-Norman dalliance that would have cataclysmic consequences further down the line). For the first time since the Anglo-Saxons had begun to record their own history, no scion of the house of Wessex – indeed, no ruler of any English royal dynasty – wielded power anywhere in Britain.

  The invasions of Britain that came from Denmark and Norway in the eleventh century were important – sometimes shattering – events, but they were not the opportunistic raids of stateless warlords. Instead they were campaigns of conquest, led by powerful Christian kings at the head of well-equipped armies, raised and mobilized at the behest of rulers who were vastly more powerful than the Viking warlords of old. As the High Middle Ages began to dawn in Europe, a unified sense of Christian community and an increasingly homogeneous cultural identity – defined by Roman Christianity, Cistercian monasticism, Latin literacy and Frankish mounted warfare – was beginning to spread from its heartlands in France and Germany to every corner of Europe: from the Irish Sea to the Elbe, and from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Kings, supported by a powerful military aristocracy and an all-pervasive Church, were becoming ever more powerful, their administrations more sophisticated and better funded. In the new world that was slowly crystallizing there was diminishing space in which the freebooting marauder could operate. For true Vikings of the old school, the late tenth and early eleventh centuries would be a final flourish: their way of life was dying out.

  The northern world had also been changing rapidly, the circumstances in Scandinavia that had given rise to the Viking Age gradually evolving out of existence. Where once Scandinavian society had been dominated by local chieftains and tribal identities, the tenth century increasingly saw assertive dynasties and individuals establishing themselves as the ultimate source of secular power in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In every case the transformation of Scandinavian society had been a long, slow and tumultuous process, one with its roots in the ninth century (if not earlier). Indeed, the disgruntlement and political upheaval the ambitions of kings generated is considered one of the catalysts for the multifarious seaborne phenomena that defined the Viking Age, a spur to the independent and the dispossessed to seek new lands and livings elsewhere.3 But, by the late tenth century, a measure of enhanced political stability had been, or was close to being, achieved across Scandinavia – in Denmark under the Jelling dynasty from c. 940, in Norway and Sweden towards the end of the century, and in further-flung outposts of the diaspora as well.4 The development of these kingdoms was not a linear one, and the shape of the future nations was by no means preordained (though geography played a decisive role), but the trajectory was inexorably towards political consolidation. This did not mean that the temptation for individuals to take to the seas in search of plunder and fame was snuffed out – far from it – but a new path had been set.

  The earliest, and most dramatic, evidence of this process can be found in Denmark. Denmark was precocious among its Scandinavian peers – a result of its comparatively close relationship with continental (Frankish) European culture, religion and politics. Its kings were relatively swift to experiment with Christianity and coinage, and keen to adopt the ceremonial trappings of Roman-style kingship. Although we know little of the internal affairs of Denmark during the tenth century, the reigns of King Gorm the Old and particularly his son, Harald, seem to have been pivotal. When Gorm died he was buried in a wooden chamber constructed beneath a vast mound at Jelling (Jutland, Denmark), part of a remarkable ceremonial and religious complex that grew up around the burial in the decades after his death.5 The most celebrated part of this landscape is Gorm’s runestone. Erected, ostensibly, to celebrate Gorm’s life – an act of filial piety on the part of Harald, his son and successor – it is, in fact, rather more eloquent on the subject of Harald’s own hubris.

  The crucifixion face of the Jelling runestone; Julius Magnus Petersen, 1869–71 (from Peder Goth Thorsen, De danske runemindesmærker, 1879, National Museum of Denmark)

  ‘King Haraldr’, the inscription runs, ‘bade that this monument be made in remembrance of Gormr his father and Thyrvé his mother. That’, the rune-carver elaborates, is the ‘Haraldr who won for himself the whole of Denmark and Norway and who made the Danes Christian’.

  Harald Bluetooth, as he came to be known, was staking out his claim not only as the great unifier, but also as the bringer of salvation to his people. To underline his triumphs, both spiritual and earthly, the runestone is decorated with an image of the crucified Christ – not the suffering god, christus patiens, broken and lifeless, but a Christ triumphant, christus triumphans, with eyes wide open and body unflinching: resolute, heroic, undefeated. This is Christ as the Anglo-Saxons had imagined him in the decades following their own conversion: ‘eager to mount the gallows, unafraid in the sight of many […] the great King, liege lord of the heavens’.6 A suitable deity for warrior kings to embrace.

  Harald’s reign in Denmark, and more generally the journey of Scandinavia towards the mainstream of European culture, is a fascinating subject which would require another book to do it proper justice. His most visible achievements included the construction of massive circular fortifications in Denmark at Fyrkat and Aggersborg (Jutland), Nonnebakken (Funen), Trelleborg (Zealand) and in what is now Sweden at Trelleborg (Skåne). Although the function is uncertain, the symmetrical planning and impressive defences point to a likely military or part-military rationale – at the very least, they speak of the impressive powers of organization and coercion that Harald wielded in the 980s. Similarly, the construction of a monumental timber bridge across the valley of the River Vejle saw the king preside over the expansion of infrastructure at a pitch of ambition and scale worthy of the Roman Empire; 820 yards of oak-timbered road constructed over the impassable marshlands of the river valley, broad enough at 16 feet in width for two horse-drawn vehicles to pass each other, supported on wooden piles up to 20 feet in length.

  Neither the ring-forts nor the bridge seem to have much outlasted Harald, but the elevated idea of royal power they represented was much longer lived. Harald’s rule demonstrated and ensured that Danish kings had the power, and now the precedent, to mobilize men and resources on an unprecedented scale. And, while the projects that they pursued were still largely driven by their own private ambitions, it was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish properly between personal and ‘national’ agenda: the interests of king and nation were becoming ever harder to disentangle.

  This is certainly true of Svein Forkbeard’s conquest of England in 1013. The question of what motivated the Danish king’s desire for dominion in England remains a live one, and no credible account survives to explain his actions. The Encomium Emmae Reginae (‘in praise of Queen Emma’) – a broadly contemporary history commissioned in the 1040s, blatantly biased in favour of the Danish royal family – provides one possible answer. The Encomium suggests that Svein’s invasion was prompted by Thorkell the Tall’s decision, in 1012, to enter King Æthelred’s service as a mercenary after several years of terrorizing the English kingdom (earlier in the same year, Thorkell had been in charge of a group who had murdered Ælfheah, the archbishop of Canterbury, at Greenwich – beating him to dea
th with an axe handle after pelting him with ‘bones and the heads of cattle’).7 This is possible – Thorkell was cutting an increasingly impressive figure in the early eleventh century, and Svein may well have seen him as a potential rival. But the Encomium is not a trustworthy source, and this part reads like a post hoc rationalization. Instead, Svein’s invasion was probably driven by opportunism. He was well aware of England’s impressive economic potential relative to his own kingdom. He had seen first hand the wealth that English kings were able to rustle up when they needed to – he himself had been a beneficiary. He also knew full well how militarily enfeebled England had become – he had wielded the axe himself on many an occasion. When the time came for Svein’s hostile takeover, the Danish king knew that he was pushing on an open door: behind it lay power and riches that dwarfed any returns that his own people could provide.

  However, he did not have long to enjoy his new kingdom. Five weeks after becoming king of England, in early February 1014, Svein Forkbeard dropped dead. The cause of death remains a mystery, but by the twelfth century Anglo-Norman writers had hit upon a picturesque legend to account for what – at the time – must have seemed miraculous. As the chronicle of John of Worcester tells it, King Svein was busy carousing with his retinue of Danish warriors when he caught sight of a menacing armed figure approaching – a figure that no one but the king could see. ‘When he [Svein] had seen him,’ John explains, ‘he was terrified and began to shout very noisily, saying “Help, fellow-warriors, help! St Edmund is coming to kill me!” And while he was saying this he was run through fiercely by the saint with a spear, and fell from the stallion on which he sat, and, tormented with great pain until twilight, he ended his life with a wretched death on 3 February.’8 St Edmund, the East Anglian king martyred by Ivar and Ubbe in 870 (and memorialized in the East Anglian coinage of the early 900s), had appeared like Banquo to wreak his belated revenge.

  This, I suppose, was reckoned to be a sort of poetic justice after more than two centuries of Viking harassment. If it is truly what contemporaries believed, however, the comfort it offered was short lived. Æthelred was restored to the throne, it being generally decided by the English magnates that ‘no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord’, but not before they had extracted a promise from him to ‘govern more justly than he did before’.9 And maybe that would have been the end of it – the English lords even promising to forswear Danish kings once and for all – had it not been for the fact that Svein’s son, Cnut, was still in England. And he was showing scant sign of wanting to go home.

  Cnut’s campaign in England began in brutally defiant fashion. He sailed to Sandwich with the hostages provided to his father, put them ashore and had their hands and noses cut off. From that point onward, matters proceeded much as they had in the past. Æthelred once again stumped up tribute (£21,000 according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), and once again it failed to deter the attacks. Cnut’s armies menaced the coast of England and raided into Wessex, while at the same time exploiting the political divisions that Æthelred’s calamitous reign had failed to heal. The situation was, once again, spiralling out of control. Only Æthelred’s death would halt the decay and, probably much to the relief of many, he finally died after a short illness on St George’s Day (23 April) 1016. As the CDE chronicler unnecessarily reminded his readers, the king ended his days ‘after great labour and tribulations in his life’.10 It was the end of a protracted (and briefly interrupted) reign of thirty-eight years. It had been an uncomfortable time for all of his English subjects: Britons, Anglo-Saxons and Danes alike.

  The man who replaced him, his son Edmund who according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle earned the sobriquet ‘Ironside’ for ‘his bravery’,11 was – from what little is known of him – a rather different proposition. Unlike his father, who hardly ever seems to have taken personal command of English armies, Edmund was a hands-on warlord. He immediately set about raising armies (as he had in fact tried to do, unsuccessfully, during his father’s decline) and led them into battle with tireless, relentless, resolve. The year 1016 proved to be a bruising year for everyone. Edmund beat Cnut at Penselwood (Somerset), and a clash at Sherston (Wiltshire) – though bitterly contested – ended inconclusively. Shortly afterwards, Edmund’s army drove the Danes away from London and defeated them again at Brentford (Middlesex) and Otford (Kent). It must have seemed that England finally had the champion it needed. But Edmund was to make a mistake in the aftermath of this last victory that would ultimately undo much of his good work. At a gathering at Aylesford (Kent) – perhaps in a fit of ofermod – he was reconciled with the Mercian ealdorman Eadric Streona – Eadric the Acquisitor.

  Eadric Streona is the principal villain of eleventh-century England. Crowning a multitude of other reported perfidies (which included murder, pillage, appropriation of church lands and property, treachery, oath-breaking and obstruction, as well as a good proportion of the unræd whispered into King Æthelred’s earhole), Eadric defected to Cnut’s army in 1015 – despite his earlier marriage to Æthelred’s daughter Edith. He apparently embraced Cnutism with a convert’s zeal: according to John of Worcester, during the battle of Sherston, Eadric:

  cut off the head of a certain man called Osmear, very like King Edmund in face and hair, and raising it aloft he shouted, saying that the English fought in vain: ‘You men of Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire, flee in haste, for you have lost your leader. Look, I hold here in my hands the head of your lord, King Edmund. Flee as fast you can.’

  When the English perceived this they were appalled, more by the horror at the action than by any trust in the announcer.12

  If true (and it may well not be), this was pretty appalling stuff. Nevertheless, whatever his crimes, it seems that Edmund decided at Aylesford that it was better to keep Eadric close than leave him outside the tent. It was probably a sound policy – had Eadric been left in the cold he could well have rejoined Cnut or else followed an agenda all of his own; Edmund certainly didn’t need a powerful loose cannon threatening his supply chain and his home front. In hindsight, however, it is easy to agree with the E chronicler’s verdict that there ‘was not a more ill-advised decision [unræd geræd] than this was’,13 and ultimately Edmund probably wished that he had acted otherwise. When the decisive battle came – at a place called ‘Assandun’ (probably Ashingdon in Essex, but possibly Ashdon in the same county), ‘Ealdorman Eadric’, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wearily relates, ‘did as he had often done before, and was the first to start the flight with the Magonsæte [the people of western Mercia]; thus he betrayed his royal lord and all the English people.’14 The description of the battle provided in the Encomium is more vivid, if rather less reliable. The Encomiast has Eadric announce: ‘Let us flee, oh comrades, and snatch our lives from imminent death, or else we shall fall forthwith, for I know the hardihood of the Danes.’ The Encomiast also repeats the belief – apparently current at the time, and no less believable now – that ‘he did this not out of fear but in guile; and what many assert is that he had promised this secretly to the Danes in return for some favour’.15

  Despite its pro-Cnut bias, the Encomium gave a respectful account of King Edmund’s deeds. The words attributed to him are heroic (‘Oh Englishmen, to-day you will fight or surrender yourselves all together. Therefore, fight for your liberty and your country, men of understanding’) and his actions valiant (‘he advanced into the midst of the enemy, cutting down Danes on all sides, and by this example rendering his noble followers more inclined to fight’).16 The fighting, according to the Encomium, lasted from morning until after darkness fell. ‘And if the shining moon had not shown which was the enemy, every man would have cut down his comrade, thinking he was an adversary resisting him, and no man would have survived on either side, unless he had been saved by flight.’17 English history now hinged on the outcome of this one battle. A decisive victory for Edmund – particularly one that led to the death of Cnut – would have changed the course of history. But, in the end, ‘the Engl
ish, turning their backs, fled without delay on all sides, ever falling before their foes, and added glory to the honour of Knútr [Cnut] and to his victory’.18 The exhausted Danish warriors, ‘rejoicing in their triumph, passed the remainder of the night amongst the bodies of the dead’. When morning came, they stripped the vanquished of their arms and weapons, but left the bodies where they lay – a carrion feast for the ‘beasts and birds’.19

  Cnut’s own poets summed up this victory in a few concise words of praise, the conquest of a nation boiled down to a vision of dark wings fluttering over a field stained black with blood:

  ‘Mighty king, you performed a feat under shield at Assatún(ir); the blood-crane [raven] received dark carrion.’ Cnut had won back his father’s briefly held throne. The human cost – for the English and the Danes alike – had been terrible.

  Runestones stud the Scandinavian countryside, the vast majority in Sweden. Irregular grey monoliths, jutting from the grass like crooked teeth, many still stand in the open air, defying time and weather as the world changes round them. Cut with knotted serpents and angular runes, they frequently carry the sign of the cross, the unmistakable branding of the increasingly ubiquitous faith of the northern world. These are not the exotic remnants of a pagan age, but monuments of the new world that was forming in the early eleventh century, memorials to those who died in the age of Cnut. Of all the stones that are known today, a group of thirty are referred to as the ‘England runestones’, monuments whose inscriptions make explicit reference to the exploits of these late-period Vikings in England, giving names to the people who helped to shape eleventh-century Britain.20 Some refer to the payments received by individuals – a record of the wealth that was wrung from the English in those brutal years. Áli, for example, was evidently a forward planner: he ‘had his stone raised in memory of himself. He took Knútr’s payment in England. May God help his spirit.’21 Perhaps he invested some of his new-found silver in this shameless act of self-promotion.