Aelfred's Britain

by Adams, Max;

  Recent analysis by Paul Cavill and others13 has opened up the possibility that another key name in the sources, Dinges mere, may derive from ‘the marsh by the Thing’; and a convenient ‘Thing’ name survives in Thingwall just a few miles west of Bromborough, close to the Dee estuary. The Wirral, then, has odds in its favour; even so, the niggling worry over a possible River Humber landing, and the lack of a sound candidate for the northern Wendun variant of the battle site, incline one to caution. A third suggested location, the hillfort of Burnswark near Ecclefechan on the north side of the Solway Firth, has not received widespread support; nor has the vote cast by philologist Andrew Breeze for Lanchester in County Durham, the site of a Roman fort lying by Dere Street close to the River Browney.14

  In the light of what we know about other Viking Age conflicts in Britain, and of the evidence in William of Malmesbury’s poem for an extensive period of raiding, it is possible that the surviving accounts are a conflation of a running campaign beginning in the east and ending in a rout in the west, with a designated fleet rendezvous on the Wirral. So Wendun (on the Went) and Brunanburh (on the Wirral) might not be mutually exclusive sites. Military historian Ryan Lavelle has pointed out that the apparent loss of the battle site to cultural memory is significant and may be a function of the physical loss of the battlefield to Norse rule within a very few years.15

  What of the warrior-poet Egil Skallagrímsson? In Egil’s Saga he was the Icelandic-born son of Skalla Grímr, a refugee from a feud with the great Norwegian king Haraldr Hárfagri. Egil was famously ugly,§ but a brilliant and precocious poet and notoriously eager to engage in combat on the slightest provocation: a perfect Norse anti-hero. He had an older brother, Ðórólfr:# handsome, brave and adventurous, and a friend of Eiríkr blóðøx, ‘Blood-axe’, King Harald’s son, having given him a fine, beautifully painted longship. He enjoyed a career of raiding and trading in the old Viking tradition and when Eiríkr became king of Hordaland and Fjordane, on Norway’s island-rich and fjord-riven west coast, Ðórólfr joined his retinue as a loyal follower. One summer Egil asked if he could join Ðórólfr on one of his ventures, but his brother declined: the young man was too hot-headed, too prone to causing trouble. That night, during a storm, Egil boarded his brother’s ship at its moorings and cut it loose so that it drifted away and was lost. After a frank exchange of views Ðórólfr gave in and took Egil with him.

  That winter Egil fell ill and found himself stranded on an island called Atloy, the guest of a wealthy hold named Bárðr. Bárðr’s lord, none other than Eiríkr, arrived for a midwinter feast with his queen, Gunnhildr. Egil took great offence at a perceived insult by his host, drank himself into a furious rage and murdered Bárðr, precipitating his desperate flight and exile and a long-running blood feud with Eiríkr, which sets the scene for a series of epic and bloodthirsty adventures in the Baltic and in Britain. In one set-piece yarn, Egil’s bragging chat-up line to the eligible daughter of a Danish jarl, is suitably masculine, if poetic:

  I have wielded a blood-stained sword

  And howling spear; the bird

  Of carrion followed me

  When the Vikings pressed forth;

  In fury we fought battles

  Fire swept through men’s homes,

  We made bloody bodies

  Slump by the city gates.16

  In the year of Brunanburh the two brothers found themselves in Britain and volunteered, as mercenaries of great renown, to fight for Æðelstan. The Saga’s historicity is not to be trusted: the author’s knowledge of the British politics (let alone the geography) of a long-gone age, outlined in chapters 50 to 52 of the Saga, is ill-informed and not generally credible.

  The Saga now introduces us to a number of quasi-historical characters. It tells how Æðelstan, in the face of possible Norse aggression, had appointed two jarls, Álfgeirr and Goðrekr, as regents in Northumbria. This is not inherently implausible, but the story is uncorroborated in any Insular source and no coins bear these names. The Hringr and Aðils who ‘ruled Britain’ at the time and who, in the Saga account, fight against Aðelstan, might be the Welsh kings Hywel and Idwal.

  The detail of Egil’s Saga that deals with Æðelstan cannot be taken at face value; but the idea that Icelandic warriors in permanent exile should seek mercenary employment with a foreign king, bringing with them a substantial war band of hardened veterans, is perfectly realistic. So, too, is the Saga’s aside that, because of the king’s well-known piety, Ðórólfr, Egil and their war band must agree to make the sign of the cross at their oath-swearing: a spiritual compromise well suited to the age.

  In the defence of the North against Óláfr, Goðrekr was supposedly killed and Álfgeirr fled. Now Æðelstan sent an embassy to Óláfr proposing battle at a place called Vínheiðr, a name which has struck a chord with historians for its apparent similarity to the Wendun of the Historia Regum, although others have seen it as a misplaced reference to an earlier battle in which the two brothers fought, at Dvina in Russia.17 We cannot know; but the idea that battles should be fought on agreed territory on an appointed day has much to recommend it: if nothing else, it solves the problem of how opposing armies encountered one another with such regularity.

  49. THOR AND HYMIR fish for the Midgard serpent: a relief carving in the church of St Mary, Gosforth, Cumbria.

  The colourful account of the battle in Egil’s Saga, lasting several chapters, involves much preliminary bartering, accusations of deceit and false witness, surprise assaults and fluctuating fortunes over successive days. Egil and his brother, appointed leaders of the Northumbrian army in place of the disgraced Álfgeirr, distinguished themselves, but Ðórólfr fell during an onslaught by the Welsh king Aðils.

  At a great victory feast Æðelstan honoured Egil with a fine arm-ring, which drew from the grieving poet a line:

  The god of the armour hangs

  A jangling snare upon my clutch,

  The gibbet of hunting birds, the stamping ground of hawks.

  I raise the ring, the clasp that is worn

  On the shield-splitting arm,

  Onto my rod of the battle-storm,

  In praise of the feeder of ravens.18

  The historical and political significance of the battle has often been exaggerated. Its immediate outcome, the expulsion of the beaten Óláfr, gave only temporary relief from the ambitions of the grandsons of Ívarr. The status quo of Æðelstan’s imperium was maintained. Constantín had repudiated his tributary status and now stood in direct opposition to Wessex, but was in no position to mount another military campaign. Northumbria and Danish Mercia remained, for the time being, within the king’s tributary portfolio. Even if Æðelstan had been defeated, it is unlikely that the Wessex–Mercia alliance would have collapsed. The participation in battle of the king’s young half-brother Eadmund is a sure sign of his status as heir presumptive.

  The Brunanburh/Wendun campaign nevertheless offers some useful insights for understanding Æðelstan’s military position. Overlordship and military command, the loyalty of subject kings and allies, were matters of expediency. If we are to believe the silence of the Chronicle the Welsh kings, obliged by their status as subreguli to fight in the wars of their overlord, instead failed to heed his call. We might just allow that they were deployed defensively at Rhuddlan and on Anglesey. But, whenever kings were challenged, uncertainty offered opportunities to throw off the yoke of submission. If they joined the other side they must expect swift retribution.

  If we believe the much later evidence of Egil’s Saga, Æðelstan treated his Northumbrian military commanders (Álfgeirr and Goðrekr) likewise as subreguli: that is, they fought on his behalf in command of their own forces. The same applied to the jarls of Danish Mercia who would have been obliged to fight alongside the king as their personal lord at the head of their war bands; but the warriors of those war bands fought for the jarls as their personal lords.

  The king of Wessex did not possess a national militia or fyrð, nor the mean
s to raise one. The obligation to fight in his army under the reforms initiated by Ælfred was tied directly to the ‘common burdens’ imposed on booked land and on burhs in Wessex and West Mercia. By the early tenth century forces were raised under shire levy systems by ealdormen tied to the king and their shires by bonds of mutual obligation and kin affiliation. Outside those core kingdoms he must rely on more independent-minded subject commanders. A key theme of the later tenth century is the attempt by successive rulers to extend formal military service to the towns and shires of the East Midlands and East Anglia.

  The tenth-century Anglo-Saxon state, professionalized by Ælfred and buttressed by the military and administrative vision of his heirs, was sufficiently robust to be able to survive the death of the king. Æðelstan died, aged forty-three, at Gloucester in 939, two years after Brunanburh, and was buried in his favoured monastery, Malmesbury, in the Wiltshire Cotswolds: in Wessex, but close to the Mercian border. He was immediately succeeded by his half-brother and protégé Eadmund, aged eighteen, who had fought by his side. Æðelstan’s disinclination to marry and produce his own heir obviated the risk of rival claimants. Eadmund’s accession seems to have been unopposed.

  In his last two years Æðelstan’s only recorded political intervention was the dispatch of a fleet in aid of his nephew, King Louis of West Francia, whose installation he had helped engineer in 936 but whose uneasy relationship with Hugh, count of Paris and duke of the Franks, had turned to open conflict. The overseas foray did not go according to plan: Flodoard of Rheims recorded in his Annal of that year that Æðelstan’s fleet ‘plundered the coast of Flanders... without accomplishing anything of their original mission’.19

  Less securely dated, but more significant, is a series of reforms reflecting Æðelstan’s ongoing concern with law and order in his expanded kingdom. In the Grately Code of about 930, in among provisions for theft (a seeming preoccupation of the king) and coinage, is notice of a new approach to what one might call collective judicial responsibility and executive action. In response to those who would ‘not do justice nor pay the fine for disobedience’, the leading men were to ‘ride thither, all who belong to the borough, and take all that he owns, and put him under surety’.20 Those who embarked on such expeditions, the posse comitatus of later English law, were to split the proceeds equally with the king.

  50. ANLAF CVNVNC (Anlaf, King): the raven penny of Óláfr Guðrøðsson, king of York.

  Later in his reign Æðelstan enacted, or supported the enactment of, a remarkable institution called the Friðgegyldum—literally ‘peace-guild’, recorded in The ordinance of the bishops and reeves of the civitas of London.21 The context is an existing provision that thieves under twelve years of age (amended later in the same code, under the merciful advice of Bishop Theodred, to fifteen) and those who steal property worth less than 12 pence, were to be spared death. Guilty felons killed by ‘the Fellowship’ were to have their property divided into three, with the felon’s wife (if innocent) receiving a third share with the king (or bishop or lord, in the case of bookland) and the guild. The subscription fee for members was to be 4 pence every year. The executive arm of the Fellowship was to consist of ten men together under a chief. Ten of these chief men were to act under the authority of a hundred-man; between them the eleven must keep accounts of moneys collected and disbursed on behalf of the guild, and enforce attendance and subscription. And:

  Each man of those that heard the summons was to be helpful to the rest both in following the trail and riding with them, as long as the trail could be seen; and after the trail had been lost, a man was to be procured [from two tithings] where the population was large, from one tithing where it was more sparse.22

  The guild was not merely a primitive institution for policing. The hundred-men were to assemble once a month and ‘have leisure... and take note how our agreement is being observed, and then 12 men shall dine together and shall supply themselves as they think fitting, and distribute all the leavings for God’s sake’.23 This was a club, joined by an urban élite drawn from a cross-section of noble and probably mercantile interests and used to ensure that those interests were protected for mutual benefit.

  It is not clear whether the Friðgegyldum ordinance applied only to the shires of Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Surrey and to the burh of London, or was intended to act as a model for the whole of the kingdom. The impetus for the formation of the guild was burghal and its composition allowed for membership among both nobles and ceorls: the alliterative phrase ge eorlisce ge ceorlisce (‘both nobles and ceorls’) in the prologue strikes a poetic and ceremonial tone confirmed by a reference to XII hynde and twyhynde men.∫

  Given the unresolved question of when and how the Mercian and northern shires were created, it is not yet possible to integrate the London Ordinance with wider ‘national’ provisions for law and order; but it seems likely that shire towns, such as the Five Boroughs, Gloucester, Worcester, Northampton and Cambridge, may have adopted a similar Friðgegyldum system. The frequent mention of reeves in the Ordinance anticipates the key judicial and executive roles that they would later play in devolving the king’s law to the regions. The office of the portgerefa had increased significantly in importance since the original development of the trading settlements of the eighth century and their successors, the burhs.

  There is an underlying tension here between the king’s law and powerful local interests, hinted at in clause 8.2 of the London Ordinance:

  If it happens that any group of kinsmen—whether nobles or commoner within or beyond the borders of our district—become so strong and powerful as to prevent us from exercising our legal rights, and stand up in defence of a thief, we shall ride out against them in full force.24

  Were these the same extended families who had stood in Ælfred’s way, who had been so obstructive during the defensive programmes of the 880s and 890s? And if such powerful kindreds existed in Wessex and Mercia, how much more troublesome might they be in East Anglia, in Danish Mercia and beyond? How far were they able to resist the ever-widening powers of the Anglo-Saxon state?

  *

  The Chronicle is coy about the events of the year after Æðelstan’s death. Even so, it is absolutely clear that his imperium died with him. Later chroniclers’ works preserving lost material with a more northern perspective (albeit much embellished and usable only with caution), show that the political vacuum was filled quickly. The Historia Regum, compiled in Durham in the twelfth century, and the Flores Historiarum compiled by Roger of Wendover in the thirteenth century, both record that in 940 Óláfr Guðrøðsson, miraculously recovered from the apparent disaster of 937, ‘came to York’. His invasion fleet must, as in 937, have navigated the waters of the Irish Sea and Solway Firth or Mersey, or taken the much longer route via the east coast and along the Humber: we cannot say.

  Either in the same year or, more likely, in 941 when the Chronicle records that ‘the Northumbrians were false to their pledges and chose Anlaf (Óláfr) as their king’,25 a Norse army came south and besieged the burh at Northampton. Failing to take it, they swept north-west and ravaged the area around Tamworth, on the border of West Mercia, with ‘great slaughter on both sides’.26 Óláfr then turned his attention to Leicester, but by the time his army arrived there Eadmund had responded, and met him with a force sufficiently threatening that there was a stand-off.

  Both Roger of Wendover and the Historia Regum record that a peace treaty was signed under the advice and auspices of the two archbishops, acting presumably as proxies or brokers on behalf of the Northern and Southern kingdoms. Under the terms of the agreement, Óláfr was to rule all the lands north and east of Watling Street while Eadmund retained all those to the south and west. The ancient division along the watershed line of central England, defined in the Treaty of Ælfred and Guðrum of about 879, was re-invented for a new generation of antagonists. The treaty was sealed, if we accept the testimony of Roger of Wendover, by Óláf’s marriage: not to a daughter of the king, w
ho was only twenty, but to Aldgyð, daughter of a dux with the distinctly Danish name of Orm, or Urm.Ω The same chronicler adds that Urm had given the Norse invader aid and counsel, with which he had obtained his victory.

  There is much food for thought here. The Chronicle’s misplaced entry (under 943) for the events at Leicester tells us that Archbishop Wulfstan was among those besieged there with Óláfr, and that the pair escaped by night. If that was the case, then it was a smart piece of diplomacy for the two archbishops to broker a peaceful end to the conflict and seal it with a Christian marriage and royal baptism.≈ The northern primate seems, then, to have thrown in his lot with the Norse leader, although it is also possible that the archbishop, who had so recently received Amounderness in anticipation of his loyalty to Wessex, might have been held as a hostage. These are murky waters.

  Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this series of events is the identity of the new archbishop of Canterbury, enthroned in that same year. Oda (died 958) was the son of Danish parents; his father was said to have arrived with the mycel here in 865 and his family’s estates were located in East Anglia.27

  No less intriguing is the dux or jarl called Urm. One might speculate that he was the Danish leader who ruled the burh of Leicester and its regio—what would become the shire of the same name. His daughter Aldgyð’s English-sounding name suggests that he had married a native. He appears several times as a witness to royal charters: first at Lifton in Devon in 931∂ and then periodically all the way through to 958/9 under a succession of West Saxon kings: a career of more than twenty years at court. If he is the embodiment of Richard Hall’s ‘innate affinities with ambiguity’, it seems to have done him no harm. One can easily imagine Urm as the head of the sort of powerful local kindred about whom Æðelstan’s lawyers were so wary and against whom the Friðgegyldum was designed to be able to act. His military muscle and key position in Danish Mercian society ensured that all parties must court his goodwill.