Northmen, The Viking Saga 793-1241 AD

Chapter 9: Maldon, London and Stamford Bridge. England’s second Viking Age 978–1085

For England’s King Edgar ‘the Peaceful’ (r. 957 – 975) the year 973 was one of stage-managed triumphalism. Edgar was the first English king for over 150 years who did not have to face a Viking invasion: not a single Viking raid was recorded during his reign. Free from external threats, Edgar could concentrate on building the authority of his government and with restoring the damage done by the Vikings to the English church. Edgar also had wider ambitions. England was the largest, richest and most powerful kingdom in Britain and Edgar fancied himself not just as king of the English but as an emperor of the whole island. His first triumphal act of 973 was to hold a coronation ceremony, though Edgar had already been king for fifteen years and his coronation was a celebration rather than the prelude to his reign. By choosing the old Roman city of Bath for his coronation, Edgar was quite deliberately trading on its imperial associations to add lustre to his own kingship. These imperial pretensions were displayed even more clearly later in the year when he held court at Chester, a former Roman legionary fortress. There, in a magnificent piece of theatre, Edgar was rowed on the River Dee by six or eight British kings (the chronicles differ on just how many) including Kenneth II of Scotland, a Viking king called Maccus from the Isle of Man or the Hebrides, Malcolm of Strathclyde, and three or five Welsh kings, while Edgar held the tiller. The symbolism was obvious: Edgar’s was the hand that guided all of Britain.

Edgar’s triumphalism proved premature. After his death in 975, aged only thirty-two, there was not a single uncontested succession to the English throne until after the Norman Conquest. Edgar was survived by two sons, the eldest Edward by a concubine, the younger Æthelred by his wife Ælfthryth. Edward was about thirteen years old, Æthelred about seven. Edward would normally have inherited the throne unopposed but because he was illegitimate, an influential faction favoured Æthelred. Edward’s supporters were stronger, but he reigned for only three years before he was murdered while he was visiting Æthelred at Corfe in Dorset. Æthelred (r. 978 – 1016) now became king, but the suspicion that he had instigated his brother’s murder hung over him for the remainder of his life, undermining his subjects’ trust in him and making it difficult for him ever to assert his authority effectively. Edward, in life a violent and intemperate young man, came to be regarded as a martyr by his supporters. This was a lot to live down, but Æthelred did not help himself either by his unwillingness to listen to his advisors, for which he posthumously earned the nickname ‘the Unready’, from Old English unræd, meaning ‘ill-advised’ rather than unprepared. It was also a disadvantage that in an age when kings were expected to lead armies in battle, Æthelred lacked any military abilities whatsoever. Æthelred was, however, an able administrator and it is possible that, given peace, he might have become a successful ruler.

Unfortunately for Æthelred, and England, the Vikings were adept at detecting political weakness and a new wave of attacks was not long in coming. Less than two years into his reign, in 980, Vikings sacked the port of Southampton, killing many of the townsfolk and taking most of the survivors captive. In the same year, the always-vulnerable Isle of Thanet in Kent was raided and a fleet from the Hebrides or Orkney raided Cheshire. England’s quarter-century of peace was over. The raids seem to have begun on a relatively small scale – seven ships raided Southampton and three are recorded attacking Dorset in 982 – but they soon escalated. In 991, Olaf Tryggvason, an ambitious sea-king with a claim to the Norwegian throne, landed at Folkestone with a fleet of ninety-three ships. After ravaging the town and its hinterland, Olaf moved on to Sandwich and crossed the Thames estuary to Ipswich before advancing to Maldon in Essex. Here Olaf made camp on Northey Island in the estuary of the River Blackwater. Byrhtnoth, the ealdorman of Essex, took up position on the mainland opposite the island with his household warriors and the local levies. Olaf offered to withdraw and sail home if he was paid tribute. Byrhtnoth refused, saying that he would pay the Vikings only with spear points and sword blades.

The battle that followed is the subject of one of the finest Old English poems, known as ‘The Battle of Maldon’, a moving expression of the heroic values shared by both English and Viking warriors. A causeway joined Northey Island to the mainland, but it could only be crossed at low tide. As the tide ebbed, the Vikings tried to cross the causeway to attack the English, but they were easily held off by just three English warriors. The Vikings taunted the English that they lacked the courage to fight them on equal terms on level ground. At this point, Byrhtnoth made the fateful decision to pull his forces back and allow the Vikings to cross the causeway and form a shield wall on the mainland. The size of the two armies is unknown but, given the size of Olaf’s fleet, it is not unrealistic to assume that he commanded 3,000 to 4,000 men. There is no evidence at all for the size of Byrhtnoth’s army, but one late source, the twelfth century Book of Ely, says that he was outnumbered by the Vikings. The battle soon began to go against the English. Many (probably all) of the levies were untried in battle and did not even know how to hold their shields and spears properly in the shield wall. When Byrhtnoth, fighting in the front rank, was fatally wounded, some of the English warriors began to lose their nerve. According to the poem the first to flee was Godric, who stole Byrhtnoth’s horse – though he had ridden to battle, the ealdorman was fighting on foot as was usual for English warriors – and galloped off the battlefield, followed by his brothers. Others, recognising Byrhtnoth’s horse, thought he was abandoning them and fled too. Only Byrhtnoth’s household warriors stood their ground, fighting on around his fallen body. In the poem, the warriors encouraged one another in the hopeless fight. ‘Let us call to mind,’ one says, ‘those declarations we often uttered over mead, when from our seat we heroes would put up pledges about tough fighting: now it can be proved who is brave.’ They died to a man.

The poet who composed ‘The Battle of Maldon’ criticised Byrhtnoth for allowing the Vikings to cross the causeway, ascribing it to his ofermode, the kind of pride that got Satan expelled from Heaven. This almost certainly does not do justice to Byrhtnoth. Byrhtnoth must have recognised that, although his presence with an army certainly prevented the Vikings ravaging the countryside around Maldon, their ships gave them the tactical initiative: they could simply sail off and plunder an undefended settlement. By deliberately bringing on a battle, Byrhtnoth gambled on being able to destroy the Viking army and so save the whole country from a ravaging. In accepting Byrhtnoth’s challenge, Olaf made similar calculations. If he succeeded in destroying the English army, he would be free to plunder wherever he liked.

The consequences for England of Byrhtnoth’s defeat were very serious. Olaf demanded that Æthelred pay 10,000 pounds (4536 kg) of silver as tribute in return for peace. Archbishop Sigeric advised Æthelred to pay up and on this occasion, at least, he listened to a counsellor. The tribute, called gafol but more commonly known as Danegeld, was raised by introducing a general tax and by sales of land and privileges. This payment did get rid of Olaf but only served to advertise England’s weakness and attract other raiders. Vikings returned to the Thames estuary the next year. Æthelred ordered the fleet to gather at London to cut off the Viking fleet from the sea. Æthelred put Ælfric, the ealdorman of Hampshire, in command but instead Ælfric warned the Vikings of the impending attack and then joined forces with them. This set the pattern for the remainder of Æthelred’s reign: English efforts to fight the Vikings would be continuously undermined by disloyalty.

In 994, Viking raids on England became more intense. Olaf Tryggvason returned in alliance with Svein Forkbeard, the king of Denmark. The two were unlikely allies as Olaf’s ambitions posed a direct threat to the Danish domination of Norway established by Svein’s father Harald Bluetooth in 970. On 20 September, Olaf and Svein sailed up the Thames with ninety-four ships and attacked London, apparently thinking that they would capture the prosperous town easily. However, the townsfolk fought back ferociously and drove the Vikings off with heavy losses. Svein and Olaf moved on and ravaged Essex, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire before Æthelred resorted to the familiar expedient of buying them off, this time for 16,000 pounds (7,257 kg) of silver. Olaf spent the winter in England and was feted by King Æthelred, who stood as his godfather when he was baptised by the bishop of Winchester at Andover. Olaf swore, too, that he would never return to England again in hostility, a promise he kept. In 995 he returned to Norway and was accepted as king. Svein, who was already a Christian, also returned home and was too busy for the next five years trying to dislodge Olaf from Norway to raid England. The absence of these two dominant figures left the field open for lesser chiefs to lead raids on their own account and to form the kind of coalitions that had proved so successful for the Vikings in the ninth century. The English suffered defeat after defeat, but they did keep fighting. On 23 May 1001, the Vikings defeated the levies of Hampshire at Æthelingadene. For once, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives casualty figures that have the ring of precision about them. English casualties were eighty-one killed, including five members of the nobility. The chronicle says that the Danes had many more killed, but it was still the English who gave up the battle first. The English were failing not for lack of courage but for lack of co-ordination. Æthelred provided little overall direction for the war effort and seems to have left every shire to fend for itself. In an age when warriors expected their leaders to fight in the front ranks, the king’s reluctance to take the field in person was utterly demoralising. For Æthelred’s opponents, England’s defeats had nothing to do with a failure of leadership, however, they were manifestations of God’s anger over Edward’s murder.

Some of the raids against England were launched from bases in Normandy. It is not certain that this was with the agreement of Duke Richard the Good, but he did have a Danish mother and had other ties with the Vikings (see ch. 4). Æthelred sent a fleet on an abortive mission to attack these bases in c. 1001 – 2. Æthelred then tried instead to use diplomacy to deny the Vikings bases in Normandy. In 1002 this resulted in a diplomatic marriage between Æthelred and Duke Richard’s sister Emma. Emma had two sons by Æthelred, Edward (later to become known as ‘the Confessor’) and Alfred. It does not appear that Æthelred received any immediate benefits from this relationship and it further destabilised his government by threatening the position of his sons by his first marriage. In the long term, however, the creation of a dynastic link between England and Normandy had far-reaching consequences for both.

In 1000, Svein Forkbeard triumphed over Olaf Tryggvason and re-established Danish domination over Norway. Victory had come at a price and Svein needed to refill his coffers so, in 1003, he returned to England. Svein’s government was rudimentary and he did not have either the right or the administrative expertise to levy general taxation on his subjects. Instead, Svein became a parasite on Æthelred’s own efficient administration by launching systematic plundering and tribute-gathering raids against England. Once terms had been agreed, Æthelred’s tax collectors gathered the tribute and delivered it to Svein. Svein’s armies differed from the Viking armies that had plundered in England previously. Viking hosts of the ninth century were loose coalitions of warbands, often with joint leadership, whose warriors fought for an agreed share of the plunder: they were partners in the enterprise, albeit junior ones. Svein was the sole commander of his army and his warriors fought for pay: they were employees. The number of ships in Svein’s fleets seems small in comparison to the big raiding fleets of the ninth century, putting a mere ninety-four ships to sea in 994, but they would have included several drakkars, a new type of very large longship with crews of sixty to eighty oarsmen and the capacity to carry up to 500 warriors on a short voyage. Drakkars were so expensive to build that they were the preserve of kings and jarls, and they were often fitted out with lavish decorations to further enhance their owners’ status. Another difference from the ninth century was that the Danes, most of them at least, were now Christian, their conversion having begun in earnest some thirty years earlier.

Svein’s appetite for tribute may have been sharpened by one of the most curious episodes of Æthelred’s reign. England was severely raided in 1002, and the Vikings were paid off with 24,000 pounds (10,866 kg) of silver. Then, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle puts it, ‘the king ordered to be slain all the Danish men who were in England – this was done on St Brice’s Day [13 November] – because the king had been informed that they would treacherously deprive him, and then all his councillors, of life, and possess his kingdom afterwards.’ The order cannot have been directed against the people of the Danelaw, if only because it would have been completely impractical to carry out a genocide on that scale in a single day. The probable target was the Danish mercenaries in royal service whose loyalty was suspect. One such was Pallig, who had collaborated with Viking raiders in Devon the previous year. Pallig was a man of high rank, married to King Svein’s sister Gunhilde, who was also killed in the massacre. The twelfth-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon wrote that as a child he had talked to old men who remembered the massacre. They told him that Æthelred had sent letters to every town with orders that the Danes were to be attacked on the same day and at the same hour to achieve complete surprise. How promptly the king’s orders were carried out is unknown. One town where they were acted on was Oxford. Æthelred referred to the massacre in a charter of 1004 in which he explained that the church of St Frideswide needed to be rebuilt because the local Danes:

‘striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken down the doors and bolts, and resolved to make a refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burned, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and books.’

Æthelred described the massacre as ‘a most just extermination’. Excavations at St John’s College in Oxford in 2008 uncovered a mass grave containing the skeletons of between thirty-four and thirty-eight well-built young men, all bearing the marks of violent death. Many of the wounds were to their backs, showing that they had been killed while fleeing. Several of the bodies were charred, indicating that they had been burned before burial. The bones have been radiocarbon-dated to between 960 and 1020, and chemical analysis of collagen in the bones and tooth enamel shows that these men grew up in countries colder than Britain. Though certainty is not possible, this is compelling evidence that these men were Danish victims of the St Brice’s Day massacre.

In 2009, evidence of another massacre from this period was discovered during road building on Ridgeway Hill, overlooking the port of Weymouth in Dorset. This mass burial, in an abandoned Roman quarry, contained the skeletons of fifty-four young men, all of whom had been decapitated in an unusual way, using a sword blow to the front of the neck, rather than the more usual strike from the back. The skulls were piled separately from the skeletons and only fifty-one were found: it is likely that the missing skulls were displayed on stakes. Execution with a sword was usually a privilege reserved for people of high status, so the victims were not likely to have been ordinary criminals, who would have been hanged. Chemical analysis of the bones and teeth shows that these men, like those in the Oxford mass burial, grew up in cold climates and are likely to have been Vikings: one of them came from north of the Arctic Circle. Another of the victims had incisions filed into his front teeth, a painful procedure, and it is thought that these incisions would have been filled with pigment to give their owner a fierce appearance. Svein Forkbeard’s father Harald Bluetooth may have acquired his nickname after enduring a similar procedure. The method used to kill these men was described in the thirteenth-century Saga of the Jomsvikings, about a semi-legendary band of elite Vikings said to have been founded by Harald. A Jomsviking who was about to be executed was asked what he thought about dying. ‘He said:

“I think well of death, as do all of us. But I am not minded to be slaughtered like a sheep, and would rather face the blow. You hew into my face and watch closely if I flinch.” ...They did what he asked for and let him face the blow. [The executioner] stepped in front of him and hewed into his face; and he did not flinch a whit except that his eyes closed when death came upon him.’ (trans Lee M. Hollander, University of Texas Press, 1955.)

The bones have been radiocarbon-dated to 980 – 1030 but, as is the case with the Oxford burial, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty that the Ridgeway Hill grave contains victims of the St Brice’s Day Massacre. It is perhaps more likely that they were Vikings captured during an unsuccessful raid. The English may, therefore, have enjoyed more successes against the Vikings than the relentlessly negative narrator of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was willing to admit.

Svein apparently faced little resistance to his campaign in 1003. An army gathered to confront him in Wiltshire but at the last moment its commander, the unreliable ealdorman Ælfric, feigned illness and no battle took place. Svein returned in 1004 and raided in East Anglia, sacking the important town of Norwich. The ealdorman Ulfcytel, who was probably of Danish ancestry, tried to buy Svein off, but he soon broke the truce. Ulfcytel raised what forces he could and fought back: both sides suffered heavy casualties but once again the Danes prevailed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle blames the defeat on the failure of the East Angles to give Ulfcytel the support he needed. Famine forced Svein to withdraw from England in 1005, but he was back the next summer, overrunning the south of England before withdrawing to the Isle of Wight for the winter. Æthelred asked for a truce, negotiations followed and in 1007 Svein received an enormous gafol of 36,000 pounds (16,329 kg) of silver. This was enough to satisfy Svein and he returned home to Denmark. Æthelred used the respite to build more ships and manufacture more armour. There is also archaeological evidence that town defences were strengthened around this time, often with new stone walls replacing earth and timber ramparts.

In 1009 the new fleet, the largest ever raised in England, was mustered at Sandwich in Kent in readiness for further Danish attacks. Æthelred himself took command. Danish fleets did not usually attempt to sail to England directly across the North Sea, preferring to hug the coasts of Denmark, Germany and Frisia until they reached the mouth of the Rhine and made the short crossing to Kent. Sandwich was, therefore, the ideal place to station the fleet if it was to have any chance of intercepting a Danish fleet before it even landed. However, at the muster a dispute broke out between two leading nobles, Brihtric and Wulfnoth Cild. Accused by Brihtric of unspecified offences, Wulfnoth seized twenty ships and set off on a plundering expedition along the south coast. Brihtric set off in pursuit with another eighty ships, but these were caught in a storm and wrecked. When news of the disaster reached Sandwich, the king fled and the remainder of the fleet broke up in confusion. ‘And the toil of all the nation thus lightly came to naught,’ lamented the chronicler. Then, at the beginning of August, a large Danish fleet landed at Sandwich completely unopposed: it was soon reinforced by a second Danish force. The leader of this new Danish army was Thorkell the Tall. The son of a Danish jarl, Thorkell had been a commander in Svein’s army but was now acting on his own behalf. Thorkell may simply have been out to enrich himself, but it is equally possible that he intended to use success as a Viking leader as a springboard to seize power at home, as Olaf Tryggvason had done.

The arrival of Thorkell’s army marked the beginning of the end for Æthelred’s regime. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells it, the story has a clear villain: Eadric Streona, the ealdorman of Mercia. Eadric found royal favour by acting as Æthelred’s hit-man, murdering Ælfhelm, the ealdorman of Northumbria, who had backed the wrong side in a power struggle at court. Eadric’s reward was to be appointed to govern Mercia, one of the most senior offices in the land. Eadric went on to earn an unenviable reputation for base treachery. Eadric was first singled out for criticism in the Chronicle’s entry for 1011. The English army, led by Æthelred in person, had succeeded in cutting the Danes off from their ships and the men were eager to attack, but Eadric somehow persuaded Æthelred against it and the Danes escaped. Thorkell spent the next two years criss-crossing Wessex and East Anglia, plundering and burning. English resistance became increasingly disorganised. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle paints a picture of complete chaos:

‘When [the Danes] were in the east, the English army was kept in the west, and when they were in the south, our army was in the north. Then all the councillors were summoned to the king, and it was then to be decided how this country was to be defended. But even if anything was then decided, it did not last even a month. Finally there was no leader who would collect an army, but each fled as best he could, and in the end no shire would even help the next’.

In September 1011, Thorkell laid siege to Canterbury. The city fell three weeks later: a traitor opened the gates. Thorkell took a good haul of valuable captives, including Ælfheah, the archbishop of Canterbury. Æthelred finally called for a truce over the winter and at Easter Thorkell was paid gafol of 48,000 pounds (21,772 kg). England’s defences might have been collapsing but its bureaucracy was still functioning efficiently and Æthelred’s tax collectors had no difficulty raising even this enormous amount of money from his long-suffering subjects. The payment did not save Ælfheah. The Danes wanted another 3,000 pounds (1,361 kg) ransom for his release, but the archbishop refused to allow anyone to pay it, apparently so as to spare the peasantry further burdens. On the Saturday after Easter (19 April 1012), Ælfheah’s captors got good and drunk and gave vent to their frustration with their unco-operative prisoner. They battered the archbishop with bones and ox heads and then one of the Danes killed him with an axe blow to the head. Thorkell seems to have tried to save the hostage, promising his men silver and gold if they would spare him, but to no avail. Even in such violent times, the murder of an archbishop was a shocking event. The next day, Ælfheah’s body was taken to London for burial in St Paul’s cathedral: he was immediately recognised as a martyr. Once the gafol was paid and shared out, the Danish army split up. Most headed home with their loot, but Thorkell entered Æthelred’s service with forty-five ships, promising to defend his kingdom in return for which he and his men would be fed and clothed. To cover the costs Æthelred introduced an annual land tax called the heregeld (‘army-tax’). Like many taxes introduced as a temporary expedient, the heregeld became permanent and was not officially abolished until 1052. Thorkell’s decision is sometimes presented as being motivated by remorse for Ælfheah’s murder, but putting his army up for hire was probably a commercial decision: in 1014 Æthelred paid him 12,000 pounds (5,443 kg) of silver raised by the heregeld.

Back in Denmark, King Svein must have watched Thorkell’s growing wealth and influence with suspicion. What might he do if he returned to Denmark with a ship full of treasure and a loyal army at his back? It was scarcely credible that he would just retire quietly to his family estates. Svein must also have been well-acquainted with the chaotic condition of England’s defences and, as there was no shortage of experienced warriors now that most of Thorkell’s army had come home, he decided that the time was right for him to launch a new invasion on his own account. This time, however, he was planning to conquer England.

In the high summer of 1013, Svein’s fleet landed at Sandwich and then followed the coast north, round East Anglia and into the Humber estuary, then up the River Trent to Gainsborough, where he made his headquarters. There the Northumbrians and the Danish settlers of the Danelaw submitted to him and gave hostages. Svein left the hostages and the fleet in the care of his son Cnut at Gainsborough, took horses and set off south plundering and burning as he went. Town after town submitted. Only at London did Svein meet resistance.

The Londoners had already seen off Olaf Tryggvason and several attacks by Thorkell’s army. Now with Æthelred and Thorkell inside the city walls, Svein’s army also failed to break through. London was not yet England’s capital – Winchester in Hampshire was the Wessex dynasty’s main political centre – but it was by now its largest and most prosperous city. Though the Vikings sacked London a number of times in the ninth century, they indirectly helped set the city on the road to national pre-eminence. After he seized control of London in 886, Alfred the Great rebuilt the old Roman walls and installed a garrison. New streets and wharves were built and the trading community at Lundenwic (at Aldwych) was relocated within the protection of the walls. Around 915 another fortified settlement was founded on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark. It was probably around this time that London Bridge was built, not just to link both sides of the river but also to control shipping and prevent hostile fleets sailing up the river. In this way London became critical to the defence of the kingdom against the Vikings.

Repulsed from London, Svein headed west to Bath, where the nobles of Wessex submitted to him. London, now the only place that still had not recognised Svein as king, bowed to the inevitable, submitted and gave hostages. Svein returned to Gainsborough and demanded that the English pay and feed his army. Æthelred took refuge with Thorkell and his army at Greenwich on the Thames. He then went to the Isle of Wight, where he spent Christmas before going into exile with his brother-in-law Duke Richard in Normandy. Svein did not enjoy his victory for long. He fell ill and died at Gainsborough at Candlemas, 3 February 1014. The Danish army elected Cnut as king, but the English recalled Æthelred from exile with a message saying ‘that no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would govern them more justly than before’.

Come Easter, Cnut was still at Gainsborough. The people of Lindsey, a Danish-settled district of Lincolnshire, agreed to supply Cnut with horses and join him on campaign. However, Æthelred behaved with uncharacteristic decisiveness and marched north before Cnut was ready. Cnut took to his ships and abandoned the people of Lindsey to savage retaliation. Cnut sailed south to Sandwich, where the hostages who had been given to his father were put ashore, but only after their hands, ears and noses were cut off. Returning to Denmark, Cnut found that his brother Harald had been made king. Harald refused Cnut’s request to divide Denmark with him but did agree to help him conquer England.

Æthelred soon showed that he would not govern his people any more justly than before. At the assembly at Oxford in 1015, ealdorman Eadric murdered two thegns from the Five Boroughs, Sigeferth and Morcar, so that the king could seize their property. Before that happened, Æthelred’s eldest son, the atheling (crown prince) Edmund Ironside, rebelled, married Sigeferth’s widow and seized the properties for himself. Edmund’s motive was probably to forestall a claim on the throne by his younger half-brother Edward. While this dispute was going on, Cnut arrived back at Sandwich with a very large fleet. Writing very shortly after Cnut’s invasion, the German chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg (d. 1018) gives the strength of the fleet as 340 ships, each with eighty men, which adds up to a force of 27,200 men. Viking armies of this size are not credibly attested elsewhere but, while Thietmar’s numbers are almost certainly exaggerated, it is likely that Cnut’s army was impressively large by the standards of the day. This time Cnut had some heavyweight allies, jarl Erik of Lade (Hlaðir) (d. c. 1023), the most powerful magnate in Norway, and Thorkell the Tall, both of whom could raise large armies in their own right. Thorkell had decided that it was time to patch things up with Cnut and had travelled to Denmark during the winter to offer to serve him with his army. With the fate of a kingdom at stake, Cnut’s army attracted warriors from all over Scandinavia, not just Denmark.

Æthelred chose this moment of crisis to fall sick and utterly failed to offer his divided kingdom any inspiring leadership. Edmund raised forces in the north and Eadric raised an army in the south. The two agreed to collaborate, but they did not trust each other and separated without engaging the Danes. Eadric then changed sides, going over to Cnut and taking a unit of Danish mercenaries with him. Edmund’s efforts to organise an effective defence against Cnut came to naught because no one was willing to take the field unless the king himself would lead them. Æthelred, now becoming increasingly frail, refused to leave the safety of London.

Æthelred finally died on 23 April 1016 and was buried in St Paul’s. Such magnates as were present in London, together with the people of the city, chose Edmund as their new king. Edmund had the appetite for war that his father had so conspicuously lacked and he inspired the English to renew their resistance to the Danes. Two weeks after Æthelred died, Cnut’s fleet sailed up the Thames to Greenwich. Edmund hurriedly left to raise forces in Wessex while the Londoners prepared to resist the Danes once again. The widowed queen Emma remained in London with her sons throughout the siege, encouraging the defenders. The Danes could not get past London Bridge so they dug a canal around Southwark and dragged their ships to the west side of the bridge, then surrounded the city with a ditch to prevent anyone getting in and out, but the townsfolk continued to resist fiercely. Edmund’s presence in Wessex forced Cnut to go after him, leaving only a small force to maintain the siege of London. Edmund and Cnut pursued each other across the breadth of southern England, fighting two bloody battles, at Penselwood and Sherston before midsummer. Though inconclusive, they allowed Edmund to relieve the siege of London, but the Danes escaped in their ships. Edmund won a battle at Brentford but not decisively enough to prevent the Danes making another assault on London from both the river and from land. Once again, London put up a stout defence and the Danes withdrew, setting off on a march that took them in a great loop through southern Mercia, south into Wessex and east to Kent. Edmund caught up with them again at Otford, where he inflicted another reverse on the invaders. Edmund was beginning to look as if he might succeed in defeating Cnut. Ealdorman Eadric predictably offered to change sides again and Edmund took him back into favour. ‘No greater folly was ever agreed to than that was,’ said the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, plainly believing that it was safer to have Eadric as an enemy than a friend. Later chroniclers, such as Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, claim that Eadric changed sides with Cnut’s agreement so that he would have the opportunity to betray Edmund.

In the autumn, Cnut’s army went into Essex. Edmund gathered his forces and clashed with Cnut at Ashingdon on the morning of 18 October. As soon as the battle started Eadric began to spread alarm and defeatism and took flight with the Mercian levies. With Edmund in command, Eadric’s betrayal was not enough to precipitate a general rout. The rest of the English stood their ground and fought until long after dark, suffering very heavy casualties, including the stalwart ealdorman Ulfcytel of East Anglia. Under cover of darkness, Edmund was able to disengage in reasonably good order and he retreated to Alney in Gloucestershire. Here Eadric presented himself again, urging Edmund to reach a negotiated settlement with Cnut. After such a punishing campaign, Edmund probably had little choice but to agree. By the Treaty of Alney, Cnut and Edmund divided England between them. Edmund kept Wessex, Cnut was granted everything north of the Thames. Only now did the Londoners finally submit to Cnut and paid him unspecified tribute for peace. Cnut moved his fleet to London and took up winter quarters there with his army.

On 30 November 1016, a matter of weeks after agreeing to the division of the kingdom, Edmund Ironside died. No contemporary source says what caused Edmund’s death but later chroniclers, all too plausibly, blamed Eadric. Eadric is alleged to have concealed an assassin – in one version, his own son – in the pit of the king’s privy. When Edmund went to empty his bowels, the assassin struck, stabbing him from below. After Edmund’s death Cnut, by agreement, became king of all of England. There was no opposition; English resistance was broken and leaderless. Significantly, Cnut chose London for his coronation, rather than Winchester or any other place associated with the Wessex dynasty. The surviving English claimants to the throne, King Edmund’s brother Eadwig and Emma’s two young sons by Æthelred, Edward the Confessor and Alfred, went into exile in Normandy. Emma probably went with them. Eadric advised Cnut to kill Edmund’s infant sons, Edward the Exile and Edmund, but he sent them into exile in Sweden and from there they went to Kiev and, eventually to Hungary. Several high ranking English nobles were executed as were some of Cnut’s own commanders. Cnut divided England into four. Keeping Wessex for himself, he left Eadric with Mercia, and rewarded Thorkell the Tall with East Anglia and jarl Erik with Northumbria.

By the end of 1017, Cnut felt secure on his throne and he decided that he no longer needed the dubious benefit of Eadric’s support. At Christmas that year Cnut summoned Eadric to London. Eadric expected to be further rewarded for helping Cnut win the throne but the king upbraided him for his treachery and ordered jarl Erik to cut his head off, ‘so that soldiers may learn from this example to be faithful, not faithless, to their kings’. Cnut could now pay off his army. To do this he levied an exceptionally heavy tribute on the English of 82,500 pounds (37,421 kg), to be paid at Easter 1018. London’s share of the tribute was 10,500 pounds (4,763 kg), a sign of just how important and wealthy the city was becoming. Many of Cnut’s commanders were rewarded with lands and titles, establishing a new Anglo-Danish aristocracy, but there was no large scale Danish settlement as there had been in the ninth century. Cnut’s warriors were mercenaries serving for pay and now that the campaign was over most went home. Cnut retained forty ships’ crews as his housecarls (huskarlar), his household warriors. They were paid by continuing to levy Æthelred’s heregeld. Despite a heavy burden of taxation, Cnut’s rule was not unpopular in England. He made few changes to the traditional institutions of the country and the English welcomed the peace and security he brought after so many years of violence and instability.

After his coronation, Cnut began to negotiate an alliance with Richard of Normandy, which resulted in his marriage to Queen Emma in 1018. Cnut’s main motive for the marriage was to prevent Æthelred’s sons seeking Norman support against him, but he may also have seen her experience as queen of England as an advantage. During his campaigns in England, Cnut had already acquired an English consort in the shape of Ælfgifu of Northampton, with whom he already had two sons, Svein Alfivason and Harold Harefoot. Although he put Ælfgifu aside so that he could marry Emma, Cnut continued to show her favour and she continued to be influential throughout his reign. Later in 1018, Cnut’s brother Harald died and the following year he sailed to Denmark to claim the throne. Cnut always recognised that England was the most valuable of his kingdoms and he soon returned, leaving Denmark to be ruled by a regent.

Cnut pursued a far more active foreign policy than any ruler of England had done previously. In 1026 and 1028, Cnut returned to Scandinavia to restore Danish control of Norway, which had been lost to Olaf Haraldsson (St Olaf) after Svein Forkbeard’s death. By 1030, the Swedish king and the earls of Orkney recognised Cnut as overlord making him, at least nominally, the ruler of almost the whole Scandinavian world. Little is known about Cnut’s relations with Wales and Ireland: it is possible that he allied with the Dublin Vikings to pillage Wales in 1030. Lothian was lost to the Scots following the Northumbrian defeat at the Battle of Carham in 1016. A peace of sorts was patched up through the diplomacy of Queen Emma and Duke Richard, but it did not last. Cnut invaded Scotland in 1031, and though he did not recover Lothian he accepted the submission of three Scottish rulers named in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as King Malcolm II, Maelbeth (probably Macbeth, then the mormaer of Moray), and the unidentified Iehmarc, who was probably a Gaelic-Norse ruler from the Hebrides.

Cnut was arguably the greatest of all the Viking kings but, though he won power as a Viking, he ruled as a Christian European king. In England he assiduously performed those duties most expected of a Christian king, making laws and supporting the church through donations and privileges. In 1027, Cnut made a pilgrimage to Rome to attend the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II. As well as demonstrating his piety, this helped establish Cnut as a figure of European stature. Cnut cultivated friendly relations with Conrad, whose empire bordered Denmark in the south. The two rulers eventually arranged a diplomatic marriage: Cnut’s daughter Gunnhild married Conrad’s son, the future Emperor Henry III. As part of the agreement, Conrad recognised the River Eider as Denmark’s southern border.

Impressive though it was, Cnut’s empire lacked any institutional unity and it did not survive his death in 1035. Cnut’s intention was that Svein Alfivason, his elder son by Ælfigifu, would rule Norway. Around 1030, Cnut made Svein king of Norway with his mother as regent, but Ælfgifu quickly made herself unpopular by her efforts to centralise power. Around the time of Cnut’s death, the Norwegians rebelled and invited Magnus the Good (r. 1035 – 47), Olaf Haraldsson’s son, to become king. Svein fled with his mother to Denmark, where he died early in 1036. Cnut intended that Harthacnut, his son by Emma, would inherit both England and Denmark, but his accession was opposed in England and instead Harold Harefoot, Cnut’s second son by Ælfgifu, became king. Queen Emma was forced into exile in Flanders. Only after Harold died, at Oxford, in March 1040, was Harthacnut able to succeed to the English throne. Harthacnut was unmarried, childless and in poor health. While drinking heavily at a wedding feast in London, Harthacnut suffered a stroke and died on 8 June 1042. With him, Cnut’s dynasty came to an end. By an agreement reached in 1036, the Norwegian king Magnus the Good was accepted as king in Denmark, but the English chose the exiled Edward the Confessor (r. 1042 – 66), so restoring the Wessex dynasty.

Edward’s reign was peaceful but his marriage was childless and, as he grew older and his health began to fail, the problem of the succession became acute. This set the stage for the final acts of England’s Viking Age. By the time Edward died on 4 or 5 January 1066 at his new palace at Westminster – London had now become England’s most important political centre as well as its main commercial centre – three leading claimants to the throne had emerged: Harold Godwinson, the powerful Anglo-Danish earl of Wessex; William duke of Normandy; and Harald Hardrada (r. 1046 – 66), the king of Norway. There was also Edgar the Atheling, Edward the Exile’s son: as a member of the Wessex dynasty he had the strongest hereditary claim but he was only fourteen and lacked any influential supporters at court. Harold had no royal blood but he had for many years dominated the English court and he had a proven record as a soldier, having led several successful campaigns against the Welsh.

William’s candidature was based on his claim that King Edward had promised him the throne after his death. This is not impossible. Edward had formed a friendship with William when he was in exile in Normandy and he was known for his pro-Norman sympathies. However, the English did not share their king’s tastes. Edward had invited a number of Norman nobles to settle in England, but their high-handed arrogance had soon made them unpopular. Harald Hardrada had inherited his claim from his predecessor Magnus the Good (who had inherited his claim through his agreement with Harthacnut). In a career that had taken him across most of the Viking world, Harald had more than earned his reputation for being the greatest warrior of his day, but, like William, he had no supporters in England.

Harold Godwinson had the advantage over his rivals of being present while Edward lay on his deathbed. With no factions at court pushing for William, Edgar or Harald, Edward had little choice when he nominated Harold as his successor a few hours before he died. Harold may have been the king the English wanted but they were under no illusions that this settled the matter. A comet that appeared on 24 April was not seen as a good omen. Both Harald and William began to gather forces to invade England and make good their claims on the throne. Both men had earned formidable military reputations: Harald was described as ‘the thunderbolt of the north’ by Adam of Bremen, because of his prowess in war, while William was already being called ‘the Conqueror’ for his many victories. Harold mobilised his forces in late spring and waited, not knowing who would strike first. Unexpectedly, the first invasion came from Harold’s younger brother Tostig, who had been exiled to Flanders in 1065 for misgoverning his earldom of Northumbria. With an army and sixty ships provided by Count Baldwin of Flanders, Tostig raided along the south coast from the Isle of Wight to Kent before sailing north to Northumbria, where he was defeated by local forces. Fleeing to Scotland, Tostig transferred his allegiance to Harald Hardrada.

The winds through the summer of 1066 blew persistently from the north. These held William’s fleet in port but carried Harald’s fleet of 300 ships south from Nidaros (now Trondheim) to Shetland and Orkney and along the British coast to Tynemouth, where it was joined by Tostig’s Flemish fleet. Tostig’s presence added some much-needed credibility to Harald’s claim to the throne. From Tynemouth, Harald continued south into the Humber, finally landing on 16 September at Ricall on the River Ouse, 9 miles south of York. Leaving his teenage son Olaf and jarl Paul of Orkney to guard the ships, Harald set off for York on 20 September but was confronted at the village of Fulford Gate by an English army under earls Edwin and Morcar. Harald defeated them, inflicting heavy casualties on the English. Why the earls chose to fight when they could have awaited reinforcements behind the walls of York remains a mystery. York surrendered immediately and agreed to give hostages, and provide supplies and men to support Harald’s bid for the throne. While he awaited the promised support, Harald withdrew to Stamford Bridge, on the River Derwent about 7 miles east of York.

Harold, who had been warned of Harald’s approach as soon as his fleet had appeared off the English coast, was already marching north with his army. On 24 September Harold reached Tadcaster just 10 miles south-west of York. The next day, he marched his army straight through York and on to Stamford Bridge where he caught Harald’s army completely by surprise. The weather was warm for the time of year and the Norwegians, including King Harald, had left their armour with the ships at Riccall, 13 miles away. The English slaughtered the Norwegians on the west side of the river but a single brave Norwegian axeman made a stand on the bridge, killing everyone who approached and buying time for the rest of the army on the east bank to form a shield wall. The English crossed only after a warrior climbed under the bridge and speared the axeman from below. The battle raged for hours but their lack of armour put the Norwegians at a fatal disadvantage and their shield wall gradually began to give way. King Harald was killed by an arrow in the throat and Tostig also became a casualty. Late in the day reinforcements arrived from the Norwegian ships and briefly halted the English advance. They had run all the way to Stamford Bridge in full armour and were so exhausted that their stand was short-lived. The Norwegians fled back towards Ricall with the English in hot pursuit: many of the Norwegians drowned trying to cross the river. The English paid a high price for their victory but Harald’s army was all but annihilated. When, after the battle, King Harold allowed Olaf and jarl Paul to leave with the survivors, they needed only twenty of the 300 ships that had transported their late comrades. The scale of Harald’s defeat was such that it took Norway a generation to recover.

A few days later the winds finally changed to the south and on 28 September, William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey. Harold hurried south to defeat and death at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October. With Harold dead English resistance quickly crumbled and on Christmas Day 1066, William was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey. The Norman conquest had much more far-reaching consequences than the Danish conquest fifty years earlier. William and many of his followers may have been of Viking descent, but by 1066, Normandy was linguistically and culturally a French principality. The conquest decisively drew England out of its north European orbit and turned it into a political and cultural satellite of France. It would be the end of the fourteenth century before England again had a king whose first language was English. The native English aristocracy who survived the battles of 1066 were within a few years either executed or exiled, and almost every English landowner was dispossessed. The English peasantry were forced into serfdom. The conquerors expropriated the wealth of the English on such a vast scale that even today, 950 years later, people in England with surnames of Norman-French origin are, on average, 20 per cent richer than the national average.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge is widely seen as marking the end of England’s Viking Age, but the Vikings were not quite finished with England. William was quite the most brutal man ever to rule England and the atrocities he meted out to the defeated English were such that, even in an age inured to violence, they shocked Europe. Two years after William’s accession fierce but unco-ordinated English rebellions erupted across the country and these brought the Danes back to England. After his death at Stamford Bridge, Harald Hardrada’s claim to the English throne had passed to the Danish king Svein Estrithsson (r. 1046 – 74/6), and it was to him that the English rebels turned for support, offering to accept him as king. In 1069, Svein sent his son Cnut to England with a fleet of 240 ships. Cnut landed at Dover in September and then sailed north, meeting with little success until he reached the Humber in October where he joined up with a large English rebel force. The Danes and the English marched on York and wiped out the Norman garrison there. William acted quickly and recaptured York in December. A campaign of savage retaliation, known as the ‘Harrying of North’, followed. William’s forces spread out across the countryside, burning and killing people and livestock, reducing the survivors to beggary. The Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, lists hundreds of villages across the north as still being waste and uninhabited, and worth only a fraction of their value twenty years earlier. William’s brutality served the double purpose of punishing the rebels and depriving the Danes of supplies. William literally made a desert of the north and called it peace.

In the spring of 1070, King Svein joined his son on the Humber and in June sailed to the Wash to join the English rebels under Hereward the Wake in sacking Peterborough. However, Svein was reluctant to face the Normans in open battle. When a force of just 160 Normans arrived at Ely, the Danes took to their ships. With English resistance collapsing, Svein reached an agreement with William and went home with his plunder. Five years later, Cnut returned to England with 200 ships at the invitation of two rebellious Norman earls. By the time he arrived, the rebellion was over and, apart from sacking York, he achieved nothing. In 1080, Cnut became king of Denmark (r. 1080 – 86) and revived his claim to the English throne. In 1085 he allied with Count Baldwin of Flanders, one of William’s French rivals, and raised a large invasion fleet. William prepared for the invasion by bringing over troops from Normandy, taxing the English, and by laying waste England’s coastal districts so that the Danes would find nothing with which to supply their army. ‘And people had much oppression that year,’ lamented the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: being protected by William was probably considerably worse than being raided by Vikings. The English suffered for nothing: the threat of a German invasion of Denmark prevented Cnut’s fleet from sailing and at the end of the summer it dispersed. Cnut planned to try again but he was murdered in Odense in July 1086 and his successor Olaf had other priorities. With Cnut’s death, England’s Viking Age truly came to an end. True, England continued to suffer Viking raids from Orkney and Norway until the middle of the twelfth century and as late as the 1150s the Norwegian king Eystein II took advantage of a civil war to plunder England’s east coast. However, these were mere pinpricks and the country never again faced the threat of a serious Viking invasion.