A History of the Vikings
Chapter 8
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comfortable interlude of peace. It marks, indeed, the opening of a new epoch in viking history, an awakening for the English of a rude and bloody kind.
The fight took place close to the island of Northey (1) in the estuary of the Blackwater about (1) 3/4 miles below Maldon. Olaf and his vikings were encamped on the island which was connected to the south bank of the river by a causeway that was submerged at high tide. Brihtnoth led his men at once to this causeway and drew up his force in battle-array on the river-bank opposite the vikings who were ranged on the island-side of the narrow stream. The proceedings opened with an offer on the part of the vikings that was shouted across the river:
'Send quickly rings for your safety: it is better for you to buy off with tribute this storm of spears, than that we should share the bitter war: . . . we will with gold set up a truce. . . . We will go abroad with the tribute, and sail the sea, and be at peace with you.' (2)
It was the old cry of the robber-vikings, 'Buy us off'; but this time the offer of peace was unceremoniously rejected.
'Brihtnoth spoke and grasped his shield, brandished the slender spear, and, wrathful and unwavering, gave him answer: "Hearest thou, rover, what this people saith? They will give you in tribute spears, and deadly darts, and old swords; they will give you the war-harness that avails you naught in the battle. Seafolk's envoy, take back this word, tell thy people a crueller story: that here stands an earl not mean, with his company, who will defend this land, Æthelred's home, my prince's folk and field: the heathen shall fall in the war. Too shameful it seems to me that ye should go abroad with our tribute, unfought with, now that ye have come thus far into our land: not so lightly shall ye come by the treasure: point and edge shall first make atonement, grim warplay, before we pay tribute."'
But it seems that while these high-spirited preliminaries were in progress the tide had been creeping-up, and presently the causeway was submerged by the inflowing waters. The combatants were therefore left facing one another over a stream that they could not cross, and, except for a few arrow-shots, it was plain that there could be no fighting until the ebb. When at long last the tide did fall, the impatient vikings tried to cross the causeway, but Brihtnoth posted three stout-hearted English heroes at its
1. The real site of the Battle of Maldon was first established by F. D. Laborde , Eng. Hist. Review, XL (1925), p. 161.
2. From the translation by the late Professor W. P. Ker.
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head, and these, like Horatius and his two comrades, held the bridge. The Norwegians saw very quickly that they could not cross the river by fighting their way over the causeway, and accordingly they begged the English leader to retire with his army while they led their companies over and could post themselves ready for battle on his side of the water. The English earl, of his over-boldness, agreed to this plan, and so it came about that the vikings were allowed to cross the stream in safety while Brihtnoth drew up his men anew on some rising ground to the rear. Then, at last, the armies faced each other without any intervening barrier and now a fierce battle began. The fighting from the first went against the English; Brihtnoth was slain, some of the English fled, and then the remnant, after a last glorious stand, was annihilated. It was over a hundred years since England had suffered so crushing and so significant a reverse.
Æthelred, whose miserable sobriquet was to be 'the Redeless', the king who was lacking in counsel, did not hasten to avenge the death of these loyal men of Essex. Instead it was resolved, on the advice of Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury, to make peace with the viking leaders, and by a bribe of 10,000 pounds of silver to obtain from them a promise that they would not molest the southern English again and that they would help to ward off any other viking attacks that occurred while they and their fleet remained in Essex. But this was not the whole of the shameful bargain, (1) for in addition to the very heavy tribute (danegeld) thus offered, Æthelred further promised to supply rations for the pirate force while the vikings stayed in England. Thus was danger temporarily averted by a cowardly and ill-omened pact. It was not, of course, the first occasion whereupon English money had been paid to the Northmen, but it was the first bribe of the sort that openly revealed the English king as a weakling and his English subjects as no longer a hardy and implacable foe.
Olaf Tryggvason and the viking chiefs who had made this treaty no doubt took themselves off in due course with their own personal followings and their share of this huge tribute, but a part of the viking host nevertheless stayed on in East Anglia, and Æthelred very soon realized that something other than a
1. I take the treaty between Æthelred, on the one hand, and Olaf, Justin, and Guthmund, on the other hand (for the text see A. J. Robertson, Laws of Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, Cambridge, 1925, p. 56) as applying to this 991 peace. The difficulty, of course, is that the treaty text speaks of a bribe of 22,000 pounds of gold and silver.
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bribe was needed to rid himself of them; accordingly, in 992 he collected all his serviceable ships in London and ordered an attack on the viking fleet. But a treacherous alderman gave the enemy warning of the impending attack, and when the vikings and the English did at length engage in a naval battle Æthelred's fleet was beaten. Yet the threat against the security of the enemy base was successful, for the vikings sailed away northwards after this fight, and in the next year, 993, they left southern England in peace. Instead they stormed Bamborough, taking a great booty in that town, and afterwards they ravaged at their will throughout Northumbria and Lindsey. A big army was collected to drive them out, but the courage of the northern English was now failing like that of the southerners, for on approaching the enemy the leaders of this levy took to flight and the army dissolved without offering any resistance to the marauders.
In 994 the Norwegian Olaf, who had been plundering in Anglesey, was joined by Svein (p. 117 ), King of Denmark, and with a fleet of ninety-four ships they sailed together to attack London. There was a fierce battle outside the town, which the vikings tried to fire, but the Londoners defended themselves with valour and drove the Northmen off with heavy loss. After this reverse, they gave up the attempt to take the town, and went off to plunder along the coasts of Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire. Emboldened by the feebleness of the opposition they encountered, they then obtained horses for themselves and began to make inland raids. Æthelred and the Wessex army proved themselves incapable of defending the country, and at last the king and his witan were reduced by these terrible weeks of panic and chaos to offer tribute and rations to the vikings if they would cease from their plundering. The price paid on this occasion was 16,000 pounds. When this bargain was struck, Olaf was then brought in honour to Andover and there baptized with Æthelred himself as sponsor. Once more he promised not to attack England again, and this time he kept his word, for in the following summer he sailed away to make himself king of Norway.
Svein also left England, though he continued his viking cruise and plundered in Wales and in Man before he returned to his own kingdom. But when he was back in Denmark he did not forget the now feeble realm that he had robbed so successfully, and after he had secured his own power he proceeded to organize a series of raids against England that proved to be a prelude to the outright conquest of the country. In 997 Wales and Cornwall were harried,
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the minster at Tavistock was burnt, and the towns of Lydford and Watchet plundered; in 998 it was the turn of Dorset, and now the vikings established a base in the Isle of Wight which they provisioned by raids upon Hampshire and Sussex. In 999 it was Kent that suffered, and this is the pitiful description in the Saxon Chronicle of the events of that year.
'The Danes came round into the Thames, and up along the Medway to Rochester. And the Kentish force came against them, and they fought sharply. But, alas, that they all too quickly gave way and fled, because they had not the support that they should have had. And the Danes held the field; and then took horses and rode whithersoever they would, and ruined almost all West Kent. Then the king with his witan decreed that they should be met both by a navy and a land-force. But when the ships were ready there was delay from day to day, and the wretched crews in the ships were harassed; and ever, as things ought to have been more forward, they were from one hour to another more behindhand. And ever they let the host of their foes increase; and ever the English withdrew from the sea, and the Danes followed them up. And then, in the end, neither the navy nor the land-force came to anything, save toil of the people, and waste of money, and encouragement of the enemy.' (1)
In the year 1000 Svein's vikings attacked not England, but Normandy, and during their absence Æthelred, at last determined to take some measures for the protection of his miserable country, made an expedition to the north in order to subdue the vikings settled in Cumberland and in Anglesey. But in 1001 Svein returned with his Danes and once more southern England was in peril. There was a big battle at Alton in which the Hampshire men were beaten after both sides had suffered heavy losses, and from Alton the Danes went to Devon where they were joined by a small army under Pallig, (2) Svein's brother-in-law, who had previously sold his services to Æthelred and now most treacherously broke faith with his English master. In Devon the Danes burned Teignton and many other towns, and at Pinhoe they routed the levies of Devon and Somerset. Pinhoe and Clyst they burnt, and then they returned to Hampshire, where they sacked Bishop's Waltham, and to the Isle of Wight.
This triumphant march of the enemy across south-western England and the unchallenged security of the base in Wight were
1. Trans. from R. W. Chambers, England before the Norman Conquest, London, 1926.
2. Who has been identified by Steenstrup with Palnatoki, the Jomsborg viking who settled in Wales.
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sufficient to reveal the formidable strength of the Danish army and to drive the English king to the desperate panic measures that had already half ruined his country. He made a third offer of a big money payment in return for peace, and for the price of 24,000 pounds a truce with the Danes was bought. Then he committed the further folly of himself breaking this truce, for hearing, so it is said, of a Danish plot against his life he utterly lost his head and gave orders for the massacre of all the Danes in the south of England, that is those who had been bribed into entering his service and those, if any, who had become peaceable settlers in the land. On St. Brice's Day of 1002 this abominable deed was duly carried out, and among the victims was Gunnhild, who was Pallig's wife and Svein's sister.
It was useless now to hope for the peace so expensively bought earlier in this same year, useless, in fact, to expect anything but the immediate return of the furious Danish king. And back he came, merciless and implacable, and in England he remained for the years 1003 and 1004. Exeter fell to him in Devon, and in Wiltshire he took Salisbury; Norwich and Thetford were sacked and burnt in East Anglia, though in this last district the Anglo-Dane Ulfkytel made a braver show of defending the southern Danelaw than the King of England had done in Wessex. In 1005 there was a famine and while it lasted Svein and his army returned to Denmark, but in 1006 he sailed back and ravaged Kent with the utmost ferocity. Next he moved to his quarters in Wight and at mid-winter made a great demonstration march across Wessex, lighting war-beacons as he went. He sacked Reading and Wallingford, and because it had been said that if he reached Cuckamsley Hill he would never return to the sea, to Cuckamsley Hill he marched 'and there abode as a daring boast'. On the way home there was a battle with a local force somewhere in the Kennet valley that Svein won, and by the end of the year the English were so completely demoralized that they were willing to purchase peace no matter what sacrifices the levying of the immense tribute required might cost them. Thirty-six thousand pounds were paid over to Svein in 1007.
Æthelred had once again a short respite, so he emerged from his hiding in Shropshire and commanded that there should be a great national shipbuilding campaign. In 1009 the large fleet that thus came into being was concentrated at Sandwich, and it seemed that at last England had a defence that might prevail against her enemies. 'But', says the Chronicle, 'we had not
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the good fortune nor the worthiness that the ship-force could be of any use to this land.' For there was quarrelling among its leaders, some of the boats were sunk in the fighting that followed, others were lost in a storm, and the rest of the fleet was shamelessly abandoned by the naval commanders. 'And then afterwards', the Chronicle continues, 'the people who were in the ships brought them to London, and they let the whole nation's toil thus lightly pass away.'
Svein was now occupied by the government of his own country, but he did not relax his grip on the luckless realm of England, and shortly after this suicidal break-up of the fleet his lieutenant, Thorkel the Tall, a viking jarl from Jomsborg (p. 184), landed with a great army at Sandwich, the very port where the fleet had been collected. With Thorkel and his Jomsborg Danes there also landed-a young Norwegian prince, a future king of Norway, who was known in his lifetime as Olaf the Stout but who is now famous to history as the great St. Olaf, and he and his Norwegian adventurers were for many years embroiled in the fighting in England. (1) Immediately after the arrival of Thorkel's army, the men of east Kent bought their freedom for 3,000 pounds, but when the vikings had established themselves in the Isle of Wight, Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire were ravaged mercilessly from the island-base. Æthelred made some show of opposition, but treachery and mutiny dissipated the force he collected, and the Danes found themselves free to plunder as far afield as Kent. Finally they took up winter quarters on the Thames, pillaging Essex and the home counties in their search for provisions; but when they attacked London, as they did again and again, they there met with a stubborn resistance and each time were beaten off with heavy losses. Yet they did at length succeed in breaking past the bridge that barred the river against them at London, (2) and
1. Olaf had been plundering in Frisia and came to England after the battle of 'Kinnlimaside' on the coast of Holland; it is possible that he did not join Thorkel until the time of the attacks on London (infra).
2. The well-known account of the attack on London in the Heimskringla (St. Olaf's Saga, XI, XII) refers to these battles, but Norse tradition is obviously at variance with the English historical record. It is clear, however, that the key to the town was a castle (evidently on or near the site of the Tower of London) and a fort (probably originally built by Alfred) called the Sudrvirki (Southwark), and that a bridge, connecting these two defensive positions, was itself fortified so that it effectively blocked the progress of enemy boats up-river. Olaf's famous feat was the breaking-down of the bridge, and this he accomplished by roofing-over his ships, so that the rowers were protected from the missiles hurled down upon them, and thus sailing right up under the bridge he then passed hawsers round the supporting piles and, having done this, rowed hard downstream, the current and the muscles of his oarsmen being sufficient, so says the account, to loosen the piles and bring the bridge toppling down. The Heimskringla narrative then goes on to say that Southwark was afterwards taken by storm and that the fortress on the north bank surrendered. The Heimskringla version, however, is wholly untrustworthy in that it presents Olaf as fighting for Æthelred against the Danes who, according to this story, were in possession of London, and it puts the date of the battle as being after the death of Svein in 1014. Although it is true that Olaf was in Æthelred's service when the English king was called back from his exile in 1014, there is no record in the English sources of an attack on London such as is described in the Norse saga. It may, indeed, be taken as certain that the Chronicle, so pathetically verbose in these years, would not fail to signalize with proper rejoicings a recapture of London from the Danes by Æthelred.
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