The Pagan Lord

Historical Note

AD 910. This year Frithestan took to the bishopric of Wintanceaster; and the same year King Edward sent an army both from Wessex and Mercia, which very much harassed the northern army by their attacks on men and property of every kind. They slew many of the Danes, and remained in the country five weeks. This year the Angles and the Danes fought at Teotanheale; and the Angles had the victory.

That was one of the entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 910. Another recorded Æthelred’s death, prematurely, though some historians believe Æthelred was wounded so gravely at Teotanheale that the injury brought on his death in 911.

Teotanheale is now Tettenhall, a pleasant suburb of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. Readers familiar with the area might protest that the River Tame does not run near Tettenhall, but there is evidence that it did in the tenth century AD, long before it was diked, channelled and diverted to its present course.

We know there was a battle at Tettenhall in AD 910, and we know that it was fought by a combined army of Wessex and Mercia that decisively defeated the marauding Danes. The two Danish leaders were killed. Their names were Eowils and Healfdan, but rather than introduce two new names to the story and promptly kill them, I decided to use Cnut and Sigurd, who feature in some of the earlier novels about Uhtred’s adventures. We know very little, indeed next to nothing, of what happened at Tettenhall. There was a battle and the Danes lost, but why or how is a mystery. So the battle is not fiction, though my version is entirely invented. I doubt that the Danes precipitated the search for Saint Oswald’s bones, though that too happened when Æthelred of Mercia sent an expedition into southern Northumbria to retrieve the bones. Oswald was a Northumbrian saint, and one theory holds that Æthelred was attempting to solicit the support of those Saxons living under Danish rule in Northumbria. The bones were discovered and taken back to Mercia where they were interred at Gloucester, all but for the skull, which remained in Durham (four other churches in Europe claim to possess the skull, but Durham seems the likeliest candidate), and the one arm that was at Bamburgh (Bebbanburg), though, centuries later, that was stolen by monks from Peterborough.

The first Latin quote in Chapter Eleven, moribus et forma conciliandus amor, which is incised on the Roman bowl that Uhtred reduces to hacksilver, is from Ovid; ‘pleasant looks and good manners assist love’, which is probably true, but was undoubtedly rare in Saxon Britain. The second quote, on the bridge at Tameworþig, is quoted from the magnificent Roman bridge at Alcántara in Spain: pontem perpetui mansurum in saecula, which means ‘I have built a bridge which will last for ever.’ The Saxons lived in the shadow of Roman Britain, surrounded by the ruins of their great monuments, using their roads, and doubtless wondering why such magnificence had decayed to oblivion.

The battle at Tettenhall has long been forgotten, yet it was an important event in the slow process that created England. In the ninth century it seemed as if Saxon culture was doomed and that the Danes would occupy all of southern Britain. There would probably have been no England, but a country called Daneland instead. Yet Alfred of Wessex stemmed the Danish advance and fought back to secure his country. His essential weapon was the burh, the series of fortified towns that sheltered the population and frustrated the Danes, who had no taste for sieges. Wessex then becomes the springboard for the campaigns that will reconquer the north and create a unified country of the English-speaking tribes: England. By the time of Alfred’s death in AD 899, the north, all but for impregnable Bebbanburg, is under Danish rule, while the centre of the country is split between Danes and Saxons. Yet slowly, inexorably, West Saxon armies advance northwards. That process was far from over in 910, but by winning the decisive victory at Tettenhall, the West Saxons drive the Danes out of the Midlands. New burhs in the conquered territory will consolidate the gains. Yet the Danes are far from beaten. They will invade again, and their hold on the north is still powerful, but from this point on they are mostly on the defensive. Edward, Alfred’s son, and Æthelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, are the driving forces behind this process, yet neither will live to see the final victory, which results, at last, in a country called England. That victory will be won by Æthelstan, Edward’s son, and Uhtred will be there to witness it.

But that is another story.