Aelfred's Britain

by Adams, Max;

  That the policy of aligning the Welsh kingdoms with the West Saxons (a continuation of the strategy encouraged by Bishop Asser during his time at the court of King Ælfred) was unpopular among some of Hywel’s constituents is evident from the Armes Prydein Fawr. That Hywel was regarded by the poet as the principal Welsh appeaser is suggested by the invocation of St David (Dewi Sant) himself, and the same evidence may point to Dyfed as the origin and affiliation of the poet. The prayers of David and the other saints of Britain would ensure that the foreigners were put to flight.

  More practical assistance was to be found in two legendary resistance leaders. Cadwaladr was a Venedotian king of the late seventh century, the son of the Cadwallon slain by King Oswald in 634 in a battle, described by Bede, near Corbridge on the banks of the River Tyne. He could be relied on to avenge the enemies of his father. Cynan was, in legend, associated with the founding of the Breton kingdom, an event lost deep in the mists of the fifth century before even St David had taken up episcopal residence in Dyfed:

  A candle in the darkness walks with us.

  Cynan is at the head of the troop in every attack,

  The English sing a song of woe before the Britons.

  Cadwaladr is a spear at the side of his men.33

  Hywel, his cousin Idwal and the other native kings in attendance on Æðelstan in the mid-930s must balance domestic pressures with realpolitik. The high king, too, must be careful not to overplay his hand.

  If Æðelstan was nervous at the prospect of a great alliance against him in 935–936, his response was to look to the North and to reinforce alliances overseas. At some point in 935 Constantín was allowed to return home: a charter issued close to Christmas at Dorchester in Dorset records the names of only four subreguli, and the king of Alba is not among them.34 Æðelstan’s own whereabouts during the following year cannot be tracked by his charters: only one survives from 936 and it was not drawn up by the informative scribe ‘Æðelstan A’. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is silent, too. Only one source, and that a Frankish Historia compiled at the end of the century, offers a clue.

  Flodoard of Rheims records an embassy sent in 936 by Hugh, duke of Francia, requesting the return from exile at Æðelstan’s court of Louis d’Outremer (‘from over the sea’). Louis was the son of Charles the Simple and Æðelstan’s sister Eadgifu, whose marriage had been engineered by Eadweard in 919. Charles was deposed in 923 and Louis, with his mother, spent the next thirteen years among the Angelcynn with his uncle; he was one of a number of exotic foster sons at the West Saxon court. Later in the same century the annalist Richer of Rheims elaborated on Flodoard’s brief narrative, describing the embassy’s departure from Boulogne and arrival at the city of York, where it was known that Æðelstan’s household, including Louis, was resident.35

  If Æðelstan can be placed at York in 936, one might reasonably ask whether it was his only visit and if it may have a greater significance than mere progress through his expanded kingdom. Before the drowning of the pretender Eadwine in 933 and the northern campaign of 934 the king seems to have confined the bulk of his annual itinerary to Wessex. But William of Malmesbury suggested that after the death of Sigtryggr in 927 and the expulsion of Guðrøðr, Æðelstan razed the city’s Danish defences. He can reasonably be supposed to have visited the city in 934 on his way north to Chester le Street and beyond; and his gift to Archbishop Wulfstan of the Amounderness estate suggests that he sought closer co-operation with the Northumbrian élite. He cannot have been unaware of the city’s Roman past, as the site of the Emperor Constantine’s acclamation in 306. Parts of the ancient fortress must still have been visible and contemporary York was, as its archaeology has shown, a thriving production centre with a well-established mint. The River Ouse connected the city directly with the Humber and North Sea, and its Continental and Scandinavian connections are proven by the raw materials and artefacts that filled the rubbish pits and workshops of its crowded tenements.

  If Hugh’s embassy of 936 can credibly be placed at York, it may not have been the only grand arrival. William of Malmesbury, in accounting for the enthusiasm with which foreign rulers tried to ‘purchase his friendship either by affinity or by presents’, records a gift sent to Æðelstan by Haraldr Hárfagri, king of Norway:

  A ship with a golden beak and a purple sail, furnished within with a compacted fence of gilded shields. The names of the persons sent with it were Helgrim and Offird: who, being received with princely magnificence in the city of York, were amply compensated by rich presents, for the labour of their journey.36

  Haraldr was certainly dead before 936, but these two independent traditions linking embassies with York suggest the court’s presence there on more than one occasion spanning, perhaps, a decade. Much later Norse sagas, recounting these legendary times, accorded to Harald’s son Hákon góði (‘the Good’), the epithet Aðalesteins fóstri: Æðelstan’s foster-son.37 Like Louis, he was said to have been raised as a Christian at the West Saxon court and later returned to Norway to claim the kingship. His arrival at court might be linked with the gift of the gold-prowed ship. A third exile, Alain Barbetorte (‘Crooked beard’) of Brittany, had been brought up at the West Saxon court from infancy, according to the Chronicle of Nantes. Now, in 936, perhaps timed to coincide with the return of Louis, Alain crossed from Britain to Brittany with a few ships full of fellow Breton exiles and with Æðelstan’s support, to ‘cast out the Norsemen’.38 If foreign embassies could be confident of his presence there it seems reasonable to suggest that Æðelstan’s visit to York in 936 was planned and prolonged. A sustained residency would allow for administrative and legal business to be conducted; for incipient West Saxon networks of Northern patronage to be extended; for a review of coinage and trading regulations and to hear petitions from both Danish and native interests concerning land disputes, marriage negotiations, the granting of small estates and visits to appropriate shrines and churches. It was an opportunity, too, to collect tribute—not, perhaps, the immense booty rendered by the kings of the Welsh, but a substantial quantity, sufficient to keep the court in splendid luxury for a few months.

  Some members of the Scandinavian élite, perhaps descendants of the warlords of the mycel here, might have resented the imposition enough to want keep their portable wealth discreetly out of sight. Three hoards dating from the years immediately after the death of Sigtryggr in 927 have been recovered from York’s hinterland. The traditional interpretation of such caches of wealth is that they belonged to those fleeing pursuit, or to victims of battle. In recent years it has been argued that some might have constituted the equivalent of savings accounts. It is also worth contemplating the idea that some were hidden to avoid the Early Medieval tax man, the king’s treasurer—with a modest remnant, displayed at home, given up to ensure compliance with the gross impositions of annual tribute. In 1807 a hoard of at least 270 coins, arm rings and silver ingots was found encased in a leaden box, turned up by the plough.≈≈ Its location, at Lobster House close to what is now the A64 road between York and Malton, some 8 miles (13 km) north-east of York, and the presence of freshly minted coins of Rögnvaldr and Sigtryggr but nothing later, suggests a date not long after the latter’s death, during Æðelstan’s supremacy; and a context of discontent with, or apprehension about, the new régime.

  In 2007 two metal detectorists located a hoard, also contained in a lead chest, near Harrogate, 20 miles (32 km) west of York. A stunning silver cup decorated with vine motifs and running beasts, of ninth-century Continental manufacture, contained more than 600 coins, silver and gold arm rings, silver ingots and hacksilver. The coin collection includes parcels∂∂ from the reigns of Ælfred (51) and Eadweard (402): booty from an old raid, perhaps; a substantial group minted under Sigtryggr in the so-called Sword St Peter series; one of St Martin type minted at Lincoln, five Danelaw imitations, a score of Arab dirhams, four Frankish coins and more than 100 of Æðelstan, mostly minted at York. One of these carried the distinctive REX TOTIUS BRITANNIAE
inscription.39 Two more recent coin finds known demurely as the ‘near York’ hoards and retrieved during 2012, have yielded compatible, if more modest collections dated to the late 920s or early 930s.40

  Either substantial numbers of Scandinavian lords were on the run during Æðelstan’s reign or, more likely, economic uncertainty was prompting wealthy men to exercise discretion over their wealth. We might, equally, argue that the ancien régime of the Scandinavian lords of York had operated a laissez-faire policy with regard to taxation from their former comrades.

  If Æðelstan was now recognized as overlord in Northumbria, who governed the old kingdom day to day? The native dynasty of Bernicia survived the upheavals of the second quarter of the tenth century to emerge as the high reeves, later earls, of Bamburgh. The Deiran dynasty of York, whose scions had become puppet rulers, it seems, of successive Scandinavian kings, cannot be traced after their shadowy appearance in the pages of the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto. There has been considerable speculation that several successive archbishops either held the reins of power or governed southern Northumbria on behalf of Scandinavian lords. One of these, Wulfhere, had been expelled briefly for some act of complicity or betrayal in 872, but his longevity (he died in office in 896) suggests canny political instincts. Of the two subsequent archbishops, Æðelbald, whose archiepiscopal reign is dated tentatively 896–916, witnessed a single charter of King Ælfred, but is not recorded at Eadweard’s court; and Hroðweard (c. 916–931) appears as a witness on several of Æðelstan’s charters between 928 and 931. The latter must have been a relatively familiar member of the royal court.

  Wulfstan (931–956) is a much more rounded historical figure. He was prominently present at the king’s assemblies and councils, witnessing all known royal charters between 931 and 935 and was the beneficiary of the Amounderness grant of 934. Like his predecessors, his chief motivation seems to have lain in maintaining the interests of the cathedral church at York. Scholars do not entirely agree whether he or any of his predecessors minted their own coins there, but the suspicion is that Wulfstan was closely involved with both coinage and trade in the city. David Rollason allows that he may have played some sort of gubernatorial role in southern Northumbria during the second part of Æðelstan’s reign. Like most members of the Northumbrian élite, Wulfstan showed no signs of any special loyalty to the West Saxon dynasty; nor did he or his predecessors show any obvious antipathy to Scandinavian rule, pagan or otherwise: political pragmatism seems to have been the prevailing philosophy. That York retained its archbishops through two centuries of upheaval speaks for itself.

  Æðelstan may have employed a form of direct rule, bringing an army north every year or every other year, but otherwise allowing existing institutions to exercise their customary powers. It seems likely that the Scandinavian regimes had exercised a lighter, less interventionist hand than the highly developed state institutions of the South. The arrival of Æðelstan and his centralizing legal and fiscal policies must have come as a profound shock to the locals, native and incomer alike.

  David Rollason argues that some sort of royal palace existed in York; and the presence of an archiepiscopal residence close to or within the city is highly probable.41 It is perfectly likely, though, that like their contemporaries to the north, south and west, the kings and regents of southern Northumbria progressed through royal estates in the traditional heartlands of East and West Yorkshire, and as far north as the lands of the Cuthbert community. Archaeology has yet to pin them down: Yorkshire’s Yeaverings and Cheddarsππ have not revealed themselves. In the absence of better evidence, we must suppose that Æðelstan’s rule over Northumbria was quite different from that in Wessex and Mercia. Authority seems likely to have devolved, when there was no direct Scandinavian rule, onto more local lords, with the archbishop pre-eminent. West Saxon kings’ access to local and regional patronage, such an important tool of governance, was as yet limited. One is reminded forcibly of the problems which occupying powers have had in more recent centuries, lacking local intelligence and unaware of subtle, deadly undercurrents that constantly threaten to undermine the bare stick of martial law.∆∆

  Northumbria’s distinctive political history is matched by a cultural diversity unfamiliar in Wessex and West Mercia. Elmet, a Brittonic-speaking kingdom with its own independent dynasty, existed in what is now West Yorkshire into the seventh century, and the names of settlements on its eastern edge survive, improbably, into the present day with Barwick-in-Elmet and Sherburn-in-Elmet. A hybrid Anglo-British culture in Bernicia was heavily influenced at the same period by an influx of Irish intellectual and artistic talent, so that even before the arrival of the Scandinavian armies of the 860s the north-east was a melting pot. Frisian merchants are attested in York in the eighth century; one of York’s own, the scholar Alcuin, was an intimate of Charlemagne and it would be surprising if merchants from the Baltic lands were not also familiar with the famous trading settlement.

  In the 870s, according to the Chronicle, the lands of the Northumbrians were parcelled out among the followers of the Host, and the place names of Yorkshire and Durham reflect the widespread presence of Danish individuals in positions of ownership. That there are Normanbys as well as Danbys suggests that the Northumbrian connection with Norse Dublin fostered landowners from across the Irish Sea during the tenth century. Other, more obscure immigrations are suggested by settlements associated with people from the Færoes (Ferrensby). Native Irish, too, lent their ethnic badges to villages (two Yorkshire Irtons and one Irby) as did men, perhaps moneyers or specialist craftsmen, with Germanic-sounding names like Arnold and Fulcard (Arnodestorp, Foggathorpe).42

  The patchwork cultural map of Northumbria south of the Tyne allows us to reconstruct a landscape of linguistic and ethnic diversity against a backdrop of mutual comprehensibility in language and many customs. To what extent that diversity led to integration, ethnic tension and spiritual conflict, or whether Northumbrian society maintained a perpetually evolving set of affinities with ambiguity, is hard to tell. We cannot say, for example, if the small silver crucifix buried with the Bossall/Flaxton hoard identifies its owner as a Christian, a pagan with a taste for apocalyptic imagery, or merely a collector of scrap metal.

  A large body of evidence, in the form of stone sculpture that seems to flirt with both Christian and pagan imagery, takes the acculturation debate on to a more complex and subtle level. In the parish church of St Nicholas at North Grimston (a hybrid Scandinavian/Anglian name if ever there was one) on the western edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, a marvellous font, perhaps of the eleventh century, is carved with a continuous frieze depicting a very graphic crucifixion, the last supper and a bishop or saint. On one of the walls outside is carved the distinctly vernacular, ambivalent figure of a sheela na gig.*** In the parish church at Middleton, on the north edge of the Vale of Pickering, a wheel-headed relief-carved cross also bears the image of a warrior with spear, axe, shield, sword and fighting knife. Similar figures appear on crosses, or fragments thereof, at Sockburn in County Durham and in St Cuthbert’s at Chester le Street (see p. 419).

  There is nothing inherently jarring in the portrayal of a warrior on a cross: church patronage by retired or veteran soldiers is a common enough trope in medieval and later iconography. The appearance of strange beasts on the same monuments, and of many others (both crosses and the distinctly Anglo-Scandinavian memorial known as the hogback tomb) on which more equivocal messages seem to be displayed, offers a complex set of messages to decode.

  In the parish church of Gosforth, on the Cumbrian coast, where a celebrated high cross of the Viking Age still stands in the churchyard, lie several hogback tombs. One carries a frieze of warriors along its side. Set into a corner in the wall of the north aisle is a relief carving that has been widely interpreted as a story from the Norse sagas (see p. 393). Thor, in one of his many trials of strength, disguises himself as a young boy and is taken fishing by the sceptical giant Hymir. The giant will not share his bait, so Th
or slaughters one of the giant’s own oxen, cuts off its head and lashes it to a strong line. Such is their mutual determination to show prowess at the oars that they end up far out at sea, beyond the giant’s fishing grounds and in the perilous waters where Jörmungandr, the Midgard serpent, lurks. Undaunted, Thor casts his monstrous line and, sure enough, hooks the infernal beast. Faced with such a foe, Thor raises his hammer, Mjolnir, to strike the beast down but the giant cuts the line and the monster returns to the deep.43 The Gosforth carving captures the moment of greatest drama, like a cartoon panel from a storyboard.

  Thor, like the other gods of the Northern pantheon, was familiar to both native and incomer; his deeds were part of the repertoire of stories told to young children and against which warriors of the Viking Age pitted their own reputations. Might one put a Christian spin on the Thor sculpture: a portrayal of hubris, perhaps, or the evangelical tale of the fishers of men? Do we need to? The sponsor of a programme of church building might decorate his monument how he or she pleased, challenging the priest to perform the theological feat that would convert a pagan tale to something more palatable and instructive. Other Anglo-Norse narratives, of the thumb-sucking Sigurd, of Wayland the Smith and of bloody sacrifices that might be crucifixion scenes or Oðin hanging from Yggdrasil, the world tree, offered similar opportunities for contemporaries, and for the historian, to chew on. That these stories and symbols were carved in stone and meant to last tells us that the incomers had decided to stay, and to throw in their lot with the curious theologies of the Christian natives.