by Ed West
Emma came from a long line of unconventional marriages, as Normans had not entirely rid themselves of the old Viking custom of polygamy. Rollo’s son William, before being murdered by the Count of Flanders, had had both a wife and a mistress, but like his father had only produced children with the latter. (His former wife Luitgarde did have three children with her second husband, the wonderfully named Theobald the Trickster.)
The same pattern occurred with Emma’s father, Duke Richard the Fearless. Emma’s mother Gunnor apparently met Richard when he spotted her sister out on a hunting expedition; the sister wasn’t interested so sent Gunnor to his bed when he turned up at her home. It all ended happily, more or less, despite the fact that Richard was already married to a French princess.
Gunnor, like any good Norman woman, was devout and donated land to the local monastery at Mont Saint-Michel;5 a friendly monk called Dudo said she was ‘well versed in the talents of feminine artistry’, whatever that meant. Another, called Warner, celebrated her in a poem which also includes a degenerate Irish priest called Moriuht, who despite sexual escapades with nuns, widows and even boys comes to court seeking the help of Countess Gunnor.6 In the poem Moriuht is dressed in rather unappealing fashion: ‘in front of his buttocks he wore a black covering of a goat … and his genitals were visible in their entirety and the black hairs of his arse and groin. In addition, his anus … constantly gaped so openly whenever he bent his head and looked down on the ground, that a cat could enter into it and rest (there) for an entire year’. The countess, despite his appearance, agrees to his pleading and helps Moriuht rescue his wife.
Emma ended up as the wife of two kings of England, the mother of another two, and the step-mother of two more, but her marriage to Ethelred would be one of the more disastrous foreign policy mistakes in English history.
The young Norman princess arrived in England in the spring of 1002 during a period of intense Viking activity. She was in her early teens, her husband was twenty years older, and had at least ten children already, some of whom were fully grown men. The two families distrusted each other, Emma was unpopular for being French, and it was made worse when a French follower of hers betrayed the city of Exeter to the Vikings; why he did this, or whether Emma was at all to blame, we can never know, but it set things off to a bad start.
Although the Normans were themselves a bit rough around the edges, Emma may have got some idea of the violent nature of English politics when just before her wedding the ealdorman of Essex made a deal to pay off some Vikings but got into an argument with the king’s high-reeve about it and killed him in a rage. The Essex man was banished from the kingdom.
She and her husband came to utterly despise each other, and Ethelred ‘was so offensive even to his own wife that he would hardly deign to let her sleep with him, but brought the royal majesty into disrepute by tumbling with concubines’.7
Sweyn Forkbeard
That same year, and after a decade of inaction, Ethelred lost his patience and on November 13 ordered the murder of Danish settlers in England, a notorious event known as the ‘St Brice’s Day Massacre’. He was recorded as saying: ‘A decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like weeds amongst the wheat, were to be a destroyed by a most just extermination’.
Although the order was probably just for men to be killed, and maybe only Danish mercenaries who had previously worked for Ethelred, some reports claim that women and children were also murdered, and in the worst incident the Danes in Oxford were apparently all burned to death inside the church of St Frideswide where they’d sought refuge. Local legend says that captured Danes were skinned alive and that the doors of churches were made with their skins, after they had been flayed to death, although tests on eleventh-century church doors showed them to be made from regular cattle skin, so that was probably just a story people told children to scare them. However in 2011 under St John’s College in Oxford the remains of thirty-nine males were discovered, most likely Danes hacked to death, and forensics showed that the victims had been running away from their attackers when they were cut down.8 However appalling the massacre was, it was also foolish, as it provoked a response from a very violent Viking called Sweyn Forkbeard, who was also king of Denmark.
Sweyn had become ruler after overthrowing his own father, Harald Bluetooth, in the 980s. The country had only recently been united, by Sweyn’s grandfather Gorm the Old, described by German chronicler Adam of Bremen as a ‘savage worm’ who tortured Christian missionaries to death. Gorm was a firm character, by all accounts, but a loving husband; he built a series of stones with runic inscriptions for his wife when she died, called the Jelling Stones, still in existence. (All the worst figures from this period tended to be faithful, loving husbands.)
Gorm’s son Harald, whose nickname probably reflects his terrible dentistry, made his father turn in his grave by becoming a Christian—quite literally.9 Bluetooth joined the faith in AD 960 for a typically Viking reason, after a priest called Poppo held a red-hot poker in his hands without burning himself. Poppo had courageously (or stupidly) told the Vikings that they were worshipping demons, and was challenged to carry the incredibly hot iron a number of paces before dropping it. Afterwards he apparently had clean wounds. After decades in which Christian missionaries had made no headway in Scandinavia by making theological arguments about love and peace, this impressed the king no end. Harald was so keen on the new religion he actually converted his father to Christianity, even though Old Gorm was technically dead, and had him reburied in a new church he had built.
Sweyn had raided England previously, and had already conquered Norway in a battle in which Olaf Tryggvason was killed, drowning in his armor after jumping out of the Long Serpent. (Sweyn and his Norwegian allies had turned up to the battle with 130 ships, Olaf with just 11, and this brought an end to his campaign of rather aggressive Christian evangelism.) Now Sweyn’s sister Gunnhild was among those killed on St Brice’s Day, or so he claimed, and he used this as a pretext to start raiding—although, to be fair, it’s not like he needed one. Gunnhild was by some accounts the wife of Pallig, a Viking who had worked for Ethelred but double-crossed him; before being murdered Gunnhild had had to watch her husband Pallig being executed too.
The man responsible for her death was a Mercian nobleman called Eadric ‘Streona’, his nickname meaning ‘the grabber’, a particularly seedy character who turns up in various accounts stabbing someone in the back, both metaphorically and literally. He’s such an archetypal, irredeemable baddie it’s hard to believe everything that was written about him; barely a year seemed to go by without Eadric murdering or blinding someone.
But Streona was just the most extreme example of the terrible, bloody courtiers who surrounded the king, both malignant and incompetent, and Ethelred’s judgment only got worse as he got older. In 1005 two of his advisers died, which further damaged the king’s ability to run the country; another was brought down because of ‘unjust judgements and arrogant deeds’ while a nobleman called Aeflhelm was killed and his two sons blinded by Eadric Streona after Eadric had offered him hospitality, about the worst crime that could be committed at the time. Eadric was also married to Ethelred’s daughter, which complicated things.
The Vikings did leave England alone in 1005, but only because there was a massive famine. The following year Sweyn Forkbeard was back and again in 1007, and this led to another huge bribe and peace for two years. The attack in 1006 is noteworthy only in that the Danish army ravaged the south of England, and attacked a meeting place of the Wiltshire militia with the slightly amusing name of Cuckamsley Knob.
It didn’t help that the English court seemed to be almost comically divided between different factions from the old kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, which led in 1005–1006 to a court coup, led by the Mercian Streona. The year 1007 was especially humiliating, with Ethelred paying out £30,000 in Danegeld while Sweyn swann
ed around the south of England, parading outside the capital Winchester in full view of its terrified inhabitants, while Ethelred hid in faraway Shropshire.
Under reforms initiated by King Ethelred every 310 hides of land had to provide enough money to construct a warship, and every eight hides was to provide armor for a single soldier. By 1009 Ethelred had raised enough for eighty ships, the largest navy ever seen in England, a spectacular feat that went amiss when the entire armada mutinied. The English navy ended up fighting itself off the Hampshire coast, destroying a third of their own fleet even before the Vikings arrived; not textbook leadership by any means. It was caused by a dispute over who was in charge: Streona’s brother Brihtric, leader of the Mercian faction at court, accused Wulfnoth, head of the West Saxon clique, of piracy. Wulfnoth ‘seduced the crews of twenty ships from their allegiance’ and then went off and conducted raids against the south coast. Brihtric and his Mercians chased them but were mostly destroyed in a storm.
Running out of ideas, in 1012 the king officially launched the heregeld, army tax, also called gafol (‘tribute’), or as it became popularly known, Danegeld, formalizing what had been practise since he’d paid off Olaf. Danegeld was Europe’s first nationwide, official tax since Roman times, and lasted until 1161, despite the fact that by then the Vikings had last appeared a century before. Much of it was used to pay one load of Danes money to fight off some other Danes, because no one could properly organize and lead an army.
The following year Sweyn launched a full-on invasion of England, according to one account fearing that Ethelred might attack Denmark, although what gave him the idea the English king could successfully pull this off is anyone’s guess. He sailed up the Humber, while another terrifying Norseman, Thorkell the Tall, arrived in the southeast and sacked Canterbury. Thorkell was one of a new breed of Jomsvikings, or ‘super-vikings’, who were a sort of order of knights that predated Crusades-era groups such as the Knights Templar, but with probably less emphasis on chivalry and saving fair maidens and more on violence.
As Thorkell’s men were plundering and burning their way through the south of England the king issued an edict ordering three days of prayer. Only bread, herbs and water were to be eaten, and everybody had to walk barefoot to church ‘without gold or ornaments’. The edict, issued in every church, ended with ‘God help us, Amen’—which rather sounds about as reassuring as a pilot telling everyone not to panic.10 Meanwhile Bishop Wulfstan introduced Sunday trading laws banning shops from opening in the hope it might persuade the Almighty to get onside.
In Canterbury, Thorkell and his gang of super-vikings kidnapped the archbishop, the unfortunate Aelfeah. After several months of imprisonment some drunken members of the gang pelted him to death with cattle bones, and Thorkell, who had agreed to baptism that very morning, was so disgusted by this behavior that he switched sides. (Ethelred also gave him a huge pile of cash, which might have encouraged his conscience to make the right choice.)
Meanwhile the heavily Danish northern and eastern parts of England had submitted to Sweyn. He took his army on to Oxford, Winchester and Bath, and within a year all of the country accepted him as king. Ethelred had lost so much support that the nation was prepared to give the Danes a shot at running the place. The main selling point of having a Viking running the country is that at least they’re good at stopping other Vikings coming here.
Among the first to submit to Sweyn was Uhtred the Bold, ealdorman of Northumbria11 and Ethelred’s own son-in-law (he was married to the king’s daughter, yet another Elfgifu). Meanwhile the daughter of Aelfhem, a nobleman who had been murdered by Eadric Streona, was married to Sweyn’s son Cnut, or Canute—just to confuse things she was called Elfgifu as well. Ethelred’s policy of murdering court rivals was showing itself to be surprisingly divisive.
Cementing his historical reputation as a cowardly, weasel-like figure, Ethelred fled the country for Normandy and it was left to his son Edmund ‘Ironside’, to lead the fight against the Danes. Edmund, made of stronger stuff than his father, showed enough mettle to make Sweyn leave the country with a number of hostages. Five weeks later Sweyn dropped dead, described by Anglo-Saxon Chronicles as a ‘happy event’.12 Now Viking leaders in Gainsborough pledged their allegiance to Canute, who was just eighteen years old,13 but the ruling clique further south now sent for Ethelred in Normandy, and the king returned and marched on Canute’s force in Lincolnshire.
Even now the noblemen were reluctant to take Ethelred back. The old king formally agreed to a list of conditions, in which he promised to rule the country better, the first known contract between king and subjects in English history. The 1014 agreement with Ethelred included the declaration by the nobility that ‘no lord was dearer to them than their rightful lord, if only he would govern his kingdom more justly than he had done in the past’, which showed they weren’t entirely confident in his abilities.
Ethelred still had to contend with Danes occupying London Bridge, but one of his new allies, a young Norwegian called Olaf the Fat, had an idea. It might seem strange that Vikings were defending London, but the second round of Norse invasions are more complicated because a lot of Scandinavians were now fighting on the side of the English. The most fierce resistance to Sweyn’s invasion came from Danes in East Anglia, led by Ulfkell Snilling, an Anglo-Danish leader in Norwich who was so powerful the region was sometimes referred to as ‘Ulfkell’s Land’. Olaf was the great-great-grandson of Harold Finehair, and he would incongruously became a saint later after a lifetime of violence. At the time, though, he was barely eighteen and unusually strong. As the Norse chronicle Heimskringla records, the Danes had at this point a fortress at Suthvirki—Southwark—and held the bridge, with Olaf’s men north of the river in London itself but besieged by more Danes. With it looking like the Danes on both sides would link up with those on the bridge, Olaf volunteered to lead a river assault on the bridge, using longboats covered with wicker and green planks that were resistant to fire.
Olaf attached cables around the wooden pilings of the bridge then secured the cables to his ships downriver, all the while being pelted with rocks and spears. The old wooden bridge collapsed and the Danes drowned, while the Norwegians and English were able to land on an undefended position on the south bank and take back Southwark.
There is still a St Olaf Stairs marking the spot where the enormously strong Viking tore down the bridge, and the battle is still recalled in playgrounds. The Saga of Olaf Haraldson, a Norwegian epic poem from the thirteenth century, includes a song with the lyrics, ‘London Bridge is broken down, Gold is won, and bright renown,’ and by the seventeenth century the current version, London Bridge is Falling Down, was heard sung in England.14 Olaf later became a saint, despite being ‘slightly addicted to concubines’ throughout his reign—but hey, nobody’s perfect!
Even with this victory, it was a deeply depressing time for the country. That same year, 1014, Bishop Wulfstan wrote his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ‘The Sermon of the Wolf to the English’, in which he blamed the sins of the people for their woes, among them ‘murderers and whores’ and ‘foul fornicating adulterers’.15 Wulfstan, an archbishop of York known as ‘Lupus’ (i.e. wolf) to distinguish him from an earlier namesake, was fond of quite fiery sermons. When the Vikings began turning up Wulfstan declared: ‘It is written and was long ago prophesised, “after a thousand years will Satan be unbound”. A thousand years and more is now gone since Christ was among men in a human family, and Satan’s bonds are now indeed slipped, and Antichrist’s time is now close at hand.’ Wulfstan must have been great fun to be around.
And despite the victory in London things soon went wrong. Ethelred’s eldest son Athelstan died in June 1014; then in September England suffered its worst flooding in living memory.
Ethelred organized a conference in which all would be forgiven if the English united to face the threat of renewed Viking attacks. However he and his clique just couldn’t help themselves and there were further vicious murders in 1015 when
the northern thegns Sigeferth and Morcar were killed through the treachery of Eadric and the king. Ethelred then seized their property and Sigeferth’s widow Ealdgyth was taken to the Abbey at Malmesbury. However Edmund Ironside rose in rebellion against his father, seized the north of England and married Ealdgyth.
Ethelred’s health was failing—it was quite a stressful job—and in April 1016 he died during another Danish attack on London, and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. He’s generally remembered as one of the worst kings to ever rule England, although his reign was also not without its artistic moments, with plenty of manuscripts dating from the period, among them a version of Beowulf and the Exeter Book, and a number of monasteries founded. Although most of this had nothing to do with the badly advised king.
The king did leave one important legacy; in 997, the Chronicle record, ‘Ethelred ordered the shire reeve and the twelve leading magnates in each locality to swear to accuse no innocent man, nor conceal any guilty one’. This was the earliest record of a ‘jury of presentment’, or as it later became known, a Grand Jury. This may have been an older custom in the east of England, possibly a Scandinavian tradition, but Ethelred made it formal, and the Grand Jury is still part of the legal system in the United States today, although it was dropped in England itself in 1933—so in the final scheme of things lawyers have made a lot more from him than the Vikings ever did.
CHAPTER FOUR
King Canute and the Waves
After Sweyn’s death, his then eighteen-year-old son Canute had landed in Sandwich to return his father’s hostages—minus their hands, ears and noses (although more sympathetic accounts say this is all black propaganda and he only slit their noses open). After this the young man was at a loose end: his elder brother Harald had been given Denmark and Canute spent two years wandering around the North Sea with ten thousand Danish soldiers in perhaps the largest, longest and bloodiest gap year in history.