In Search of the Dark Ages

by Michael Wood

  The annals and history are very different in origin. The material in the annals dates from long before the 1100s. The last entry, dated 954, is followed by the family trees of the South Welsh kings of the tenth century, so it is likely that our text is at one or more removes from a document compiled soon after 954. The content of the annals, however, goes back to the mid fifth century. There are two famous entries, one relating Arthur’s death:

  (490–516). Battle of Badon in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and nights and the Britons were victorious.

  (c.511–537). The fight at Camlann in which Arthur and Medraut were killed.

  However, these annals were only kept as a contemporary record from round the year 800, and the spelling of the names in the earlier sections indicates that they were originally written only in the eighth or ninth century. This warns the historian that the annals may be unreliable as evidence for reconstructing fifth-century history; they are not a contemporary record. The monk who wrote the Badon annal did not receive the news from a messenger hotfoot from Arthur’s campaign HQ: it is a later scholar’s reconstruction, and that means we have no way of knowing what was originally written down here. Moreover, most of the entries in this section of the annals are short and laconic in the extreme, which suggests that there is a prima facie case for viewing as late additions the apparently mythic details of the ‘three days and nights’ and the reference to the cross. The eminent Arthurian scholar, Thomas Jones, considered that originally the annal read simply: ‘Battle of Badon in which the Britons were victorious.’ We will discuss the significance of the annal referring to the death of Arthur later.

  NENNIUS: ‘I MADE A HEAP OF ALL I COULD FIND’

  We can see why the legendary details should have been added to the account of Badon, some time after 800, by turning to Nennius’ History of the Britons. This contains the most famous piece of Arthuriana of all, but as a source the history is even less reliable than the Annals of Wales. Written around 830, that is over 300 years after Arthur’s supposed death, the history survives in manuscripts written in the tenth century and later. By the ninth century Arthur had become a folk hero, and Nennius credits him with many miraculous deeds. There is no evidence that Nennius had a reliable source for the events of the fifth century. For instance he gives us the famous list of the twelve battles of Arthur, a list of strange and obscure names and, at first sight, curiously circumstantial detail.

  Then Arthur fought against them (that is, the Anglo-Saxons) in those days with the kings of the Britons, but he himself was the leader of battles. The first battle was at the mouth of the river Glein. The second, third, fourth and fifth on another river called Dubglas in the district of Linnuis. The sixth battle on the river Bassas. The seventh battle was in the Caledonian forest, that is, Cat Coit Celidon. The eighth battle was in Fort Guinnion in which Arthur carried the image of St Mary, forever virgin, on his shoulders and that day the pagans were turned to flight and a great slaughter was made on them through the virtue of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the virtue his mother St Mary the Virgin. The ninth battle took place in the City of the Legion. The tenth battle he fought on the shore of the river which is called Tribruit. The eleventh battle took place on the mountain called Agned. The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill, in which nine hundred and sixty men fell in one day from one attack by Arthur, and no one killed (or overthrew) them but himself alone. And in all the battles he was the victor.

  The list has been understood by some as a straight record of fifth-century wars. On inspection this proves not to be the case. It is generally agreed that the list has been taken from a Welsh battle poem of a kind fairly common in early Welsh literature. These poems have a tendency to ascribe to their heroes battles which they never fought in order to enhance their glory, and most scholars agree that even if Arthur did exist, he cannot have fought in all the battles that Nennius refers to. In two of them he certainly did not, and as we have seen there is no good evidence that he fought at Badon Hill.

  Another objection is that although Gildas wrote in living memory of the battle, and although he mentions Ambrosius as the leader of the British resistance, he does not mention Arthur, or any leader, at Badon. Most suspicious of all are Nennius’ romantic details, the figure of 960 men (probably a Welsh poetic construction, ‘three three-hundreds and three score’) and the assertion that ‘no one killed them but he alone’. This is not an account which can be squared either with history or with common sense, and it seems most likely that Nennius gave the glory of Badon to Arthur because the leader at that battle was unknown. But if the Annals of Wales and the History of the Britons cannot be accepted as primary sources for the fifth century, do they offer us any clues as to where the story originated? For instance, where do the names in the battle list come from?

  THE MEN OF THE NORTH

  Whoever fought these battles, their names and the other early poetic references to Arthur (c. 900) surprisingly do not take us to the southwest or to Wales, but to Cumbria, southern Scotland, and the ancient kingdom of Rheged around the Solway. It would be fruitless even to attempt to identify most of the battle names, but one, Cat Coit Celidon, the battle of the Caledonian forest, is unequivocally northern and is usually taken to refer to the wooded country north of Carlisle. This could suggest that the poet’s milieu, and the background to the Arthur story might have been in this area. Other names bear this out. For instance the battleground named as Mount Agned in the British Museum manuscript has a second name, Bregomion or Breguoin, in a Vatican version which philologists have identified with Bremenium, the Roman fort at High Rochester in the Cheviots. A battle was indeed fought there (as we know from other sources) by Urien of Rheged in the later sixth century. The site is on the Roman road called Dere Street which runs south from Edinburgh, an ideal place for a clash between the warring tribes of southern Scotland, on the borders of the British tribes of the Votadini and of Rheged. Its gates still standing today to the height of a man, its artillery platforms overgrown, this windswept fort was abandoned by the Romans in the later fourth century. Urien’s battle there was known in northern poetry in the Dark Ages, but it was not fought by Arthur. It happened fifty years after his time when the Anglo-Saxons were penetrating the Cheviots. In the last quarter of the fifth century, the period which we associate with Arthur, they were not in this region.

  ‘The first battle was at the mouth of the river Glein.’ There is a river Glen in Northumberland, and here an Anglo-Saxon royal hall has been discovered with its associated buildings, including a fort-like enclosure taken over from the British predecessors on the site. Could this famous place, later chief residence of the Northumbrian royal family, have been Nennius’ Glein? It is not impossible that an early battle was fought here at a major Celtic site conquered by the Anglo-Saxons. But, again, a late fifth-century battle with the Anglo-Saxons is out of the question. They were not here until the mid sixth century.

  Other speculations can be made about northern battles in the list, but cannot be proved. In the end, as with all the fictions in Nennius’ list, a case can be made to support almost any identification, but all evaporate on close inspection. All we can say is that they are not the battles of a fifth-century leader fighting the Anglo-Saxons. A gloomy conclusion, perhaps, but there does seem a case for thinking that the battles which form the background to the Arthur story were part of the internecine warfare of the northern British border tribes.

  What, then, lies at the root of the stories? Could there even have been an early leader in the north-west whose local fame spread wide? If there were indeed battles in this region which were transformed into the list of battles by a later poet, in what social and political context did they take place?

  The main town of the border region in Roman times was Carlisle, and local redevelopment is now giving archaeologists the chance to explore a five-acre site within the old city. A late developer among Roman towns, Carlisle was probably raised to the s
tatus of one of Britain’s five provincial capitals in 369, and in the nineteenth century plentiful evidence was recovered to indicate that it had a rich urban life in the late Roman period. Columns, sculpture, coins, stone buildings and temples, and numerous inscriptions can be seen in Carlisle Museum. Its walls enclosed 70 acres, and urban life continued well after 400. After the Romans left Britain, Roman buildings were substantially rebuilt in timber, roads were maintained, and the aqueduct remained in use as late as 685. In the twelfth century William of Malmesbury mentioned an arched building which was still standing in his day and which had on it an inscription to Mars and Victory. Some answers to the problem of continuity between late Roman Britain and early Anglo-Saxon England may turn up here during the next few years. Already there are tantalising clues. The Life of St Cuthbert by Bede describes a settled Christian community there in the seventh century with a convent as well as a diocesan church. Had they been there before the advent of the Anglo-Saxons? A church which might have been built before the fifth century is the now demolished early church of St Alban, the British protomartyr. The Anglo-Saxon church of St Cuthbert (eighth–tenth century) was built into an existing Roman building. In 685 the citizens had enough respect for the Roman past to conduct the Anglo-Saxon monk Cuthbert ‘round the city walls to see a remarkable Roman fountain that was built into them’.

  The town of Carlisle serves to remind us that the Roman Empire did not fall in one moment in history, and that a kind of Roman life may have lasted two centuries longer here than it did in, for example, Cirencester, or a century longer than at Wroxeter. In this border region British rulers in the Dark Ages claimed Roman descent through their genealogies. Perhaps they were Romano-British landed aristocrats, originally delegated power by the last official Roman governments, like some Third World rulers today who rise from obscurity and set up dynasties, monarchies, even ‘empires’ with the blessing of departing colonial powers. Could the background to the Arthur story – or at least, the milieu in which the story arose – be these petty chiefdoms, former town councillors of the north, who made their squalid timber Camelots in the temples and ruins of Roman Carlisle? One last piece of evidence may point that way.

  ‘THE LAST DIM WEIRD BATTLE OF THE WEST’

  I have left till the end the entry quoted earlier from the Annals of Wales, which refers to Arthur’s death in a battle not mentioned by Nennius. This is the most intriguing of all pieces of Arthuriana, and the most difficult to interpret.

  (c. 511). ‘The fight at Camlann in which Arthur and Medraut were killed.’ Here are the great figures of the story. Medraut-Mordred is traditionally the traitor, though in this brief statement we cannot tell whether he is Arthur’s friend or foe. Unlike the Badon annal the style is curt, more in line with the rest of the compilation. It uses a different word for ‘battle’, the Celtic gueith instead of the Latin bellum. We must remember that the language shows that it was written a good deal later than the fifth century: like the Badon annal this was not written down in its present form until 800–1100. Were the names added then? Or could the entry derive from an early record and therefore give us a definite testimony for Arthur’s existence?

  As it happens, one of the Roman forts on Hadrian’s Wall bore a name, Camboglanna, which philologists think could be represented in a late form in the annals’ Camlann. Until recently this fort was identified with that of Birdoswald which stands over a great sweep of the river Irthing east of Carlisle. Now, however, scholarly opinion tends to support a new identification with the fort at Castle steads which is close to Birdoswald, and which is also situated on a sharp curve of the Irthing, as is implied in the name Camboglanna, meaning ‘crooked glen’. The site is certainly an appropriate one for an epic finale. We should not dismiss the possibility that a battle at Camlann took place in the Dark Ages: it is mentioned in the annals and it became far better known than Badon. Indeed it became a byword for a tragic, irretrievable disaster. Could this be the one genuine Arthurian reference? The site of the ‘last dim weird battle of the west’, as Tennyson put it? Is it possible that Arthur existed as a chieftain and warleader in the Solway region, not fighting heroic warfare against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, but engaged in a desperate dogfight between rival British dynasties, battling it out in the sub-Roman twilight? The idea has a certain appeal. Arthur as a kind of anti-hero, an interpretation which suits later twentieth-century taste, and is as typical of our preoccupations as Tennyson’s were of his. Did the deaths of two obscure leaders of unknown tribes give birth to the whole story, give birth to one of the greatest figures in the literature of the world? The supernatural magus of folklore? It is possible. Yet, reluctantly we must conclude that there is no definite evidence that Arthur ever existed.

  Like Schliemann’s discoveries at Troy and Mycenae the modern search for King Arthur has stimulated exciting finds and theories which are changing our view of the end of the Roman world in Britain. But no more than with the siege of Troy is there convincing evidence that King Arthur’s wars actually took place.

  After the Fall of Rome Celtic Britain sank into its Dark Age. Then, faced with the rising aggressive power of the Anglo-Saxon imperialists – Offa, Alfred, Athelstan – the British needed a hero. It didn’t matter whether he had ever existed in the flesh; the hope of his return was enough. As Malory put it in Morte Darthur a thousand years on:

  Yet some men say King Arthur is not dead but had by the will of our Lord Jesus Christ into another place: and men say he shall come again and win the holy cross. I will not say it shall be so: but many men say that there is written on his tomb this verse: ‘Here lies Arthur: once and future king.’

  The reader, however, might prefer to keep in mind the advice of John Ford’s newspaper editor in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: ‘When the legend becomes a fact, print the legend.’

  THREE

  THE SUTTON HOO MAN

  Upon the headland the Geats erected a broad high tumulus plainly visible to distant seamen … within the barrow they placed collars, brooches and all the trappings which they had plundered from the treasure hoard. They buried the gold and left that princely treasure to the keeping of the earth, where yet it remains. …

  Beowulf

  IN THE SUMMER of 1939 while German armies massed against Poland and the stormclouds of war darkened Europe, the greatest British archaeological discovery was made in an oval mound in a barrow cemetery on the edge of an escarpment overlooking the river Deben near the Suffolk coast. In the sandy soil the impression of a wooden ship ninety feet long was revealed, bearing the treasures and war gear of a noble warrior, probably a king of the Dark Ages. The richness and craftsmanship of the artefacts forced a revision of our view of the early Anglo-Saxons as a primitive culture. But the act of revision is fraught with difficulties. Central among them, strangely enough, is the fact that the experts cannot agree whether there was ever a body in the grave. If there was, who was he? If not, what is the significance of the apparently royal regalia, and why such a lavish cenotaph? To answer these questions we have to explore the historical and social background of the Sutton Hoo Man.

  In the last chapter we left the Anglo-Saxon invaders settling in East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Kent and the Thames valley, fighting at Badon and acknowledging a senior king among themselves, Aelle of Sussex. We did not ask questions about their social and political organisation; whether for instance the immigrants who came over the North Sea were close-knit tribes who already had a tradition of rulership under hereditary kings, or whether they were merely a ‘convenient stream of flotsam’ as one famous scholar put it; whether they were ruled by kings drawn from a nobility of blood or by warleaders who proved their fitness to rule by their prowess in battle. These are important considerations which affect our view of the origin of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and which we must briefly examine before we can turn to the Sutton Hoo Man himself.

  THE EAST ANGLES

  With Sutton Hoo we move from the confused events of the late fifth century to a perio
d where the modern historian has at least a framework to build on. Soon after the year 500 a number of small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had come into being in the south and east of Britain. Among these were the East Angles, and because the Sutton Hoo burial was found in East-Anglian territory, historians were quick to suggest that here was the grave of an early king of that region. The first question then is, what was the East-Anglian royal dynasty?

  In a manuscript in the British Museum, now catalogued as Cotton Vespasian B VI, the genealogies of the Anglo-Saxon royal families are preserved. They were written down in the Midlands around the year 800. The founder of the East-Anglian dynasty in Britain is called Wuffa, and his descendants were the Wuffingas (possibly ‘the Wolf-people’). As we shall see later in this chapter their ancestors probably came from Sweden. According to this source Wuffa and the men who gave their names to the other early royal families, the Oiscingas in Kent and the Iclingas in Mercia, lived in the sixth century. In fact Wuffa would have reigned around 575, which conforms with the thirteenth-century historian Roger of Wendover’s statement that Wuffa ruled 571–578. (In another work Wuffa’s father Wehha is said to have been the first of the East Angles who ruled in Britain, and this may be true, though Wuffa seems to have been viewed as the founder of the dynasty.) The West Saxons, too, traced their ancestry back to a king in the 500s. These facts are very significant. They suggest that although kings like Offa and Alfred the Great (see the next two chapters) claimed that their families had been royal even before they came to Britain, in fact the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, in areas which had settlements from the early 400s, were ruled by men whose real pedigrees probably do not go back that far at all. The earlier names given in the genealogies, such as Offa’s claim that Woden was an ancestor, the reference to Adam in Cerdic’s genealogy and Caesar in Wuffa’s are obviously symbolic rather than biological. So the seventh-century English kingdoms were ruled by the descendants of the illiterate condottieri who had seized their chances in the fifth and sixth centuries. It is, let us say, as if Major ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare had founded his own dynasty in the Congo in the early sixties.