The Viking Blitzkrieg E-Book

Martyn Whittock

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

If the Viking Wars had not taken place, would there have been a united England in the tenth century? Martyn Whittock believes not, arguing that without them there would have been no rise of the Godwin family and their conflict with Edward the Confessor, no Norman connection, no Norman Conquest and no Domesday Book. All of these features of English history were the products, or by-products, of these conflicts and the threat of Scandinavian attack. The wars and responses to them accelerated economic growth; stimulated state formation and an assertive sense of an English national identity; created a hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian culture that spread beyond the so-called Danelaw; and caused an upheaval in the ruling elite. By looking at the entire period of the wars and by taking a holistic view of their political, economic, social and cultural effects, their many-layered impact can at last be properly assessed.

Leseprobe

In memory of Jeffrey Martin Whittock (1927–2013), much-loved and respected father and papa.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A number of people provided valuable advice which assisted in the preparation of this book; without them, of course, carrying any responsibility for the interpretations offered by the book. We are particularly indebted to our agent Robert Dudley who, as always, offered guidance and support, as did Simon Hamlet and Mark Beynon at The History Press. In addition, Bradford-on-Avon library, and the Wiltshire and the Somerset Library services, provided access to resources through the inter-library loans service. For their help and for this service we are very grateful. Through Hannah’s undergraduate BA studies and then MPhil studies in the department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC) at Cambridge University (2008–12), the invaluable input of many brilliant academics has shaped our understanding of this exciting and complex period of history, and its challenging sources of evidence. The resulting familiarity with Old English, Old Norse and Insular Latin has greatly assisted in critical reflection on the written sources.

As always, the support and interest provided by close family and friends cannot be measured but is much appreciated. And they have been patient as meal-time conversations have given way to discussions of the achievements of Alfred and Athelstan, the impact of Eric Bloodaxe and the agendas of the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1

The Gathering Clouds

2

Storm from the North, 789–866

3

The ‘First Blitzkrieg’: Why were the Vikings so Successful?

4

The Shadow of the ‘Blood-eagle’

5

Alfred’s Victory

6

War Correspondence or Propaganda?

7

How Great was Alfred ‘the Great’?

8

The Impact on England of the First Phase of Viking Settlement

9

Band of Brothers – and a Sister

10

Emperor of Britain

11

The Road to a United Kingdom of England

12

Return of the Vikings

13

How ‘Unready’ was Æthelred?

14

‘One Nation … Divisible’?

15

Cnut: Viking Emperor of the North

16

The Road to Hastings

17

The End of the Viking Wars

18

On Reflection

Bibliography

About the Authors

Plates

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

This book explores the impact of the Viking Wars on England between the first recorded attack in AD 789 and the last major Scandinavian interventions in the late eleventh century, with a few stray events occurring even later than this. It is the argument of this study that these events constituted some of the most formative influences on the making of England. Time and again, major features of Late Anglo-Saxon England – and the Early Middle Ages generally – can be traced directly, or indirectly, to the ‘blitzkrieg’ of attacks, resistance, conquest and settlement that characterised these wars. The effects of these events range from the creation of one unified English state to the compilation of Domesday Book; from the establishment of a unified national taxation system to the Norman Conquest – and many more.

In order to investigate this claim, we have aimed to provide readers with an overview of the key events of these wars, including insights from the latest archaeological finds and from close analysis of the written sources. Where controversies exist, and there are many, we have identified the issues and suggested the solution that seems best to fit the available evidence. This involves a process of detective work using a wide variety of fascinating clues. And, wherever possible, we have striven to put the people into the history by exploring individual experiences and outlooks.

It is worth drawing readers’ attention to the fact that we have used the term ‘Viking’ as a group-name to describe the Scandinavian adventurers who descended on England in this period. This is because the term is so familiar in the popular consciousness that it serves as a useful label, even if its use has been reduced in some academic circles. That it remains a very useful shorthand label is seen in the use of the term in recent academic papers and books.1 Where ‘Vikings’ were clearly from a particular area of Scandinavia – Danes, Norwegians and, occasionally, Swedes – we have indicated this, but have retained the group-name as a useful and convenient way to describe those involved in these extraordinary events. However, it should be borne in mind that the term ‘Viking’, when it was originally used, was employed to describe the warrior adventurers, rather than the humbler farmer-settlers, craftspeople and merchants who followed in their wake, and that many other terms were used in the original sources.

The issue of language

The sources explored in this investigation are largely written in Old English, Old Norse and Latin. In order to engage with these we have used accessible modern translations and the system of references will allow readers to understand these references in context, should they wish to take their studies further. Whenever we have referred to an event or phenomena in the original language, this has been made more accessible by using only a short phrase, accompanied by its translation, so that its meaning is obvious. Occasionally we have then continued to use a phrase in the original language because it has become embedded in modern scholarship. An example would be our references to the micel hæðen here (the great heathen army) which devastated England in the 860s and 870s. These examples, however, are few in number, and all other descriptions/phrases are in modern English. Where words in the original language reveal more than their modern English translations would suggest, we have drawn attention to the original word/phrase and explained why it is important and what it reveals. For example, the Anglo-Scandinavian word lið (seaborne military) was used in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to describe both the forces of the Anglo-Saxon Harold Godwinson’s sons and those of Svein Estrithson of Denmark after 1066. It seems that it was hard to tell who was the ‘Viking’ and who was the Anglo-Saxon at this point in time, and the reason for this is explored. In another example, the modern word ‘army’ does not always represent one single word used in the original source. As a consequence, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the Viking forces are usually described as a ‘here’, whereas Anglo-Saxon forces are usually described using the terms ‘fyrd’, or occasionally ‘folc’. In translation into modern English, this difference can get submerged under the general term ‘army’, but the difference was important and revealing; and we explore its importance to our understanding of the events described.

We have used the title of medieval written sources in their original language although, on the first occasion of use, we have also given their titles in translation in order to explain the meaning. An example would be the Encomium Emmae Reginae (In Praise of Queen Emma) which, after the first use, is thereafter simply referred to as the Encomium Emmae or the Encomium. This is because it has become customary to use its original title, rather than the title in translation. Another example is the Vita Ædwardi Regis (Life of King Edward). In a similar way, where Old Norse sources are usually now referred to by their Old Norse name, we have continued to do so. Examples would be: Heimskringla (Circle of the World), the great history of Norwegian Viking kings; Eiríksmál (Erik’s Story), the anonymous elegy for King Eric Bloodaxe; Orkneyinga Saga (Saga of the Orcadians), the history of the Earls of Orkney; Knútsdrápa (The drápa – a long series of poetic stanzas – of Cnut). This is common usage and the convoluted direct translation of the last example explains why the original Old Norse name is usually used. It also means that, should readers come across these sources in other studies, they will recognise them from these frequently used titles. Other sources, though, are commonly referred to just in their translated form and we have continued that in this study. Examples would be Simeon of Durham’s History of the Church of Durham and the anonymous History of St Cuthbert.

The Old English and Old Norse languages used letters that are no longer found in modern English. The most commonly used ones were: Æ or lower case æ (ash), Ð or lower case ð (eth) and Þ or lower case þ (thorn). The last two are approximated to the ‘th’ sound in modern English. The one we have employed when referring to personal names is Æ or æ because it was so commonly used and does not have a direct parallel in modern English. For this reason, we refer to Æthelred and Æthelflæd, not Ethelred and Ethelfled. However, where a name has become more familiar in a modernised form, we have used the modern appearance; so we refer to Alfred not Ælfred, and Athelstan not Æthelstan. We have only used Ð or ð and Þ or þ on the very few occasions when a word or phrase quoted in the original language uses them. An example would be micel hæðen here (the great heathen army).

The nature of the evidence and the dating of events

The most frequently used source of written information is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was first compiled in Old English, in Wessex, in the 880s. In this study, after its first use in each chapter, it is usually just referred to as the Chronicle. Once one allows for its largely West Saxon agenda – except when it clearly incorporates other materials with their own specific agendas – it provides a crucial insight into events, even though seen from a particular angle, with attendant assumptions and values. The most authoritative and easily accessible modern translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is that by D. Whitelock2 and is found in her invaluable collection of documents, which also includes many other sources quoted in this study. Since, in this collection of documents, her translation of the Chronicle only extends to 1042, it is necessary with regard to later annals to use the translation of D. Whitelock, D.C. Douglas and S.I. Tucker, which gives the full run of annals to 1154.3 Another accessible translation of the Chronicle is that by G.N. Garmonsway,4 although the way in which he lays out the different manuscripts of the Chronicle may appear a little confusing to the uninitiated reader. It is fair to say that the different manuscripts of the Chronicle can almost be studied as different documents in their own right, rather than as aspects of one document, since the motivations and methods used in each continuation from the ‘common stock’ reveals much about the context in which each subsequent manuscript was copied, continued and adapted.5 This is why, at critical points, we refer to distinct manuscripts of the Chronicle as part of our disentangling of its motivations, sources and agendas.

Within the Chronicle there are often dislocations in dating, which mean that the dates given for events can vary in different secondary sources which refer to the same entries. In this exploration we have followed the – corrected – dates given in bold in Whitelock. The dating of events to particular years in the Chronicle is made more complex by the fact that there was no consistent contemporary practice of deciding when a given year actually started. Some ninth-century annals were clearly working from a start-date at Christmas, others from a year-start on 24 September. A reversion to Christmas can be seen in the tenth-century annals, although some events were still dated using the 24 September system, particularly with regard to the dating of the deaths of a number of kings. In the eleventh century, another method was also sometimes used, which dated the start of the year from the Annunciation, on 25 March. Following the ‘corrected’ dates in Whitelock provides consistency in the various dates used in this examination of the Viking Wars.

The Chronicle is not our only English version of events. The contemporary ninth-century Life of King Alfred by the Welsh bishop, Asser, gives us a pro-Alfred view of events from the circle of the West Saxon court. The anonymous History of St Cuthbert, compiled at Chester-le-Street in the mid-tenth century, contains some authentic information amongst its legendary accounts and was later used by Simeon of Durham when writing his History of the Church of Durham. Other valuable insights can be gleaned from later chroniclers who clearly preserved earlier traditions and material in their accounts. These range from the late-tenth-century Æthelweard’s Chronicle, to post-Conquest sources such as the twelfth-century Annals of St Neots, the Chronicon ex Chronicis (Chronicle of other Chronicles) of John of Worcester (and once attributed to Florence of Worcester), Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum (History of the English), Simeon of Durham’s History of the Church of Durham, and William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the Kings of the English). Unlike the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, these other sources were written in Latin. Although most were compiled much later than the events they described, these writers often had access to sources of information now lost to us. In particular, we are especially indebted to William of Malmesbury for much of our knowledge regarding King Athelstan. Without the work of this twelfth-century monastic historian we would know very little about this major player in the tenth-century phase of the Viking Wars. However, despite writing two centuries after Athelstan, William clearly had access to much earlier evidence, including traditions preserved at Malmesbury (Athelstan’s burial place). Even a thirteenth-century writer, such as Roger of Wendover, in his Flores Historiarum (Flowers of the Histories), can reveal a northern take on earlier events through his use of materials which themselves preserved much earlier traditions.

Other writers had a specific motivation, such as the author of the Encomium Emmae Reginae (InPraise of Queen Emma) in the 1040s, or the earlier celebration of the life of Eric Bloodaxe, the Eiríksmál (Erik’s story), or the eleventh-century poetry on the subject of the deeds of Cnut the Great, the Knútsdrápa. These, though clearly written to promote the fame of a particular person, still give us an insight into general events, even if these were viewed from a peculiar slant and reveal a distinct agenda.

Written sources from the Viking side are generally more problematic. Many of our most engaging Old Norse accounts are very late indeed and date from thirteenth-century Iceland.6 Whilst these were clearly based on ancient traditions, they also wove the legendary into the historic narrative and were part of a revival of interest in the ‘Viking past’. As such, they need to be used with great caution when attempting to reconstruct the actual events of the Viking Wars. Nevertheless, at the very least, they reveal how these earlier events were later remembered, interpreted and celebrated. Amongst these accounts are Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (Circle of the world), Jómsvíkinga saga (Saga of the – legendary – Jómsvíkings), Orkneyinga Saga (Saga of the Orcadians) and Egil’s Saga (Egils Saga Skalla-Grímsson). The stories they contain about kings as famous as Eric Bloodaxe of York and Harald Hardrada of Norway are as dramatic as they are problematic, though some may preserve the authentic ‘voice’ of the eleventh century. One such is Liðsmannaflokkr (the flokkr – poem without a refrain – of the men of the fleet), a poem that purports to date from Cnut’s reign and perhaps was composed by members of his household troop, although any attribution is uncertain. Here we may actually hear something of the victory song of Cnut’s army which conquered England in 1016.

Other literary and linguistic insights can be gleaned from the study of royal charters, the titles and symbols on coins, and from place names. This last body of evidence is as complicated as it is abundant, but reveals a great deal about the dramatic changes which occurred in eastern and northern England in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Archaeology is continually adding to our picture of life and developments. Urban archaeology is revealing the origins of towns fortified under Alfred the Great and Edward the Elder. Continued excavations in York have added to the amazing insights provided by the earlier Coppergate excavations; an engaging and thought-provoking way to experience this York-based evidence is provided by the Jorvik Viking Centre, York.7 The archaeology of rural sites and of scarce Viking-period pagan burials raises questions about how great was the change that was actually brought about by Scandinavian settlers to Christian Anglo-Saxon England. On the other hand, the huge increase in small finds (cheap copper-alloy brooches) due to the growth of metal detecting has caused us to re-evaluate the scale of the Viking settlement of Lincolnshire, which now looks to have been substantial. Recent finds are giving us a much more detailed view of the wealth and complexity of the societies being forged by the Viking newcomers in the tenth century. These include the Cumwhitton burials (discovered in 2004), with their links to Viking Ireland; the ‘Huxley Hoard’ of silver arm rings (also discovered in 2004), which show a thriving economy using fixed weights of silver in transactions; and the ‘Vale of York Hoard’ or ‘Harrogate Hoard’ (discovered in 2007), the most important Viking find for 150 years, which contained artefacts linking the hoard to Afghanistan, the Carolingian Empire (in modern France and western Germany), Ireland, the Middle East, Russia and Scandinavia. A further two significant hoards were discovered in 2011: a coin in the ‘Silverdale Hoard’ revealed the name of an otherwise unknown Viking king in northern England; while the ‘Furness Hoard’ bears mute testimony to the revival of Viking power in the kingdom of York in the middle of the tenth century, before it was eclipsed by the death of Eric Bloodaxe in 954. As a consequence of these new discoveries, we are gaining a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the impact of the ‘Viking Blitzkrieg’ on England.

It is the combining and evaluating of such varied forms of evidence that makes the study of the Viking Wars so intriguing, informative and rewarding. Together, the evidence indicates that these events had a huge impact on England and that this impact still affects the culture, place names and outlook of twenty-first-century England. And, in a modern time of cultural change and the re-evaluation of notions of national identity, this period of history has a great deal to teach us about the way in which a multi-cultural society – in a period of massive change – could still forge a coherent and recognisable identity and a sense of national unity around negotiated shared values.

Notes

1 For example in: Haslam, J., ‘King Alfred, Mercia and London, 874–86: A reassessment’, in Hamerow, H. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 17 (Oxford University School of Archaeology: Oxford, 2011), pp.124–50; Ferguson R., The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings (Viking Penguin: London, 2009); Brink, S. and Price, N. (eds), The Viking World (Routledge: Abingdon, 2008); Forte, A., Oram, R. and Pedersen, F. (eds), Viking Empires (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2005); and the BBC2 series ‘Vikings’, broadcast in autumn 2012.

2 Found in Whitelock, D. (ed.), English Historical Documents, vol. I, c.500– 1042 (Eyre Methuen: London, 1979).

3 Whitelock, D., Douglas, D.C. and Tucker, S.I. (transl. and eds), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Eyre and Spottiswoode: London, 1961).

4 Garmonsway, G.N. (ed. and transl.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd: London, 1972).

5 A detailed examination of issues relating to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle can be found in: Jorgensen, A. (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Language, Literature, History (Brepols: Turnhout, 2010). Regarding how to understand and approach the different manuscripts, especially helpful is the chapter: Jorgensen, A., ‘Introduction: Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, pp.1–28 and especially Table 1, pp.6–7.

6 The problematic nature of Norse sagas as evidence for the actual events of the Viking Wars is well made by: Stephenson, I.P., ‘Lies, Damn Lies and Sagas’, Viking Warfare (Amberley: Stroud, 2012), pp.19–24.

7www.jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk.

1

THE GATHERING CLOUDS

The Viking Wars are more than just a feature of the second half of that period of time we call ‘Anglo-Saxon England’ for they radically altered England. Indeed, it can be argued that, unintentionally, they helped to create a united ‘England’ from a patchwork of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which characterised the ninth century. In the severity of their impact these wars fell like an early medieval blitzkrieg on the kingdoms of western Europe. Furthermore, the Viking Wars gave rise to some of the great myths of English national history: Alfred and the burnt cakes; Eric Bloodaxe, king of York; Æthelred ‘the Unready’; the Massacre of St Brice’s Day and the skins of Danes nailed to church doors; and Cnut and the waves on the seashore. Each of these myths reveals the ways that these traumatic events have been interpreted. As if this was not enough, the great national account, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was created in the 880s as a direct consequence of the Viking invasions. It was written following what might be termed the West Saxons’ ‘Finest Hour’, when they had survived the ninth-century Viking assault and were creating an epic story of the rise of their people to the position of the sole surviving Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The Viking Wars made ‘England’ and did so as much in people’s heads as in their institutions and archaeology.

For twenty-first-century readers these wars strike familiar chords: there are debates about the ‘clash of civilizations’; we see the stresses and strains inherent in the formation of a multi-cultural society; national identities are questioned, forged and challenged; religion, economics and power-politics intersect, interact and, at times, explode; immigrants and native inhabitants both clash and cooperate; and propaganda is created and re-created in a battle for hearts and minds.

A whole range of myths, stereotypes and assumptions cloud our view of these events. However, the latest archaeological finds and new explorations of the written records are challenging many of these views, giving us a clearer picture of the events and impact of the Viking Wars.

The Viking Wars lasted from the late eighth until the late eleventh centuries. In this series of wars there were a number of discernible phases: from c. 790 until 866, raids escalated in their frequency and ferocity; from 866 until 896, these raids gave way to a conquest and settlement which involved the overthrow of every Anglo-Saxon kingdom except Wessex; in the first half of the tenth century that surviving kingdom launched a counter-offensive against the newly established Viking elites in England; in the mid-tenth century, invasions of Dublin Norse and other ambitious Viking leaders once more challenged Anglo-Saxon rule; from c. 980 until 1016, a wave of attacks comparable with the first phase of Viking activity eventually led to the Viking conquest of England; from 1016 until 1042 England was inextricable drawn into the rule and complications of an Anglo-Danish empire; following the Norman Conquest of 1066, Scandinavian rulers once again fished in the troubled waters of English politics and added their own unique contribution to the cocktail of rebellions and bloody reprisals that marked the two decades following the Battle of Hastings; in the 1090s the last – failed – Viking interventions brought this astonishing period of history to a close.

But who were these Vikings? And where did they come from? Even more importantly, why did they explode on to the scene in the late eighth century? In short, what caused ‘the First Blitzkrieg’?

A ‘9/11 moment’?

Every educated Anglo-Saxon – whether monk, nun or noble – would probably have later been able to recall where they were when they first heard the news that the monastery of Lindisfarne (Northumberland) had been sacked, in 793. Situated at the end of a causeway, off the coast of the northern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, Lindisfarne was a spiritual, cultural and intellectual powerhouse. Not for nothing is it still known as Holy Island. In 635 the Irish-born monk, Aidan, had been invited by King Oswald of Northumbria to set up a base for preaching and teaching the Christian message in the north. Arriving from the equally famous monastery of Iona, the place Aidan eventually chose as his base was this tidal island close to the royal fortress, which was situated on the nearby Rock of Bamburgh. This placed it close to a centre of political power, where the great decisions of the north were being made; while still being sited far enough into the sea to make it an island at high tide and so a place of solitude and reflection. It would soon become famous for its saintly monk, Cuthbert, who became abbot of the monastery, a bishop and the patron saint of Northumbria. It was also at this monastery that the literary and artistic treasure of the Lindisfarne Gospels was created in the early eighth century. Anyone who has seen its beautifully illuminated pages, glowing in the subdued twenty-first-century lighting of London’s British Library, cannot fail but be impressed by both its stunning beauty and by the skill and religious devotion it embodies. As a book to glorify God and spread the Christian message, it sums up all that Lindisfarne was established to achieve.

Then, in 793, the place was trashed. It is often risky to draw parallels between events occurring in different periods of history. Values, ideas and outlooks do not always travel as easily as we sometimes make them do. But 793 was surely an Anglo-Saxon ‘9/11 moment’. It struck at national security and cultural values in an iconic place and in a brutal and bloody manner. If anything represented a ‘clash of civilizations’ then surely it was the sack of Lindisfarne.

For those Anglo-Saxons who heard of it, the destruction of Lindisfarne was an offence against God, learning and the sense that the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were safe from external threats. That the ancestors of the shocked and appalled listeners to the breaking news of 793 had done much the same things to Romano-British citizens in the fifth century was an irony lost on most who heard it. At that previous time the Anglo-Saxon raiders had themselves been pagans, like those pirates who now devastated Lindisfarne. However, Anglo-Saxon England had moved on since then and devastation at the hands of pagans was totally unexpected. Similarly, the fact that Anglo-Saxon warbands in the eighth century were not above sacking monasteries loyal to rival neighbouring kingdoms within England did not diminish the shock of this attack from the sea by ‘outsiders’.

Far away, in Aachen (modern-day Germany), at the court of the Frankish ruler Charlemagne, the Northumbrian churchman, scholar and educationalist, Alcuin, provides us with the only significant contemporary account of the attack (since the equally famous account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was not penned until the 880s). Head-hunted by the ruler of the superpower of his day, in order to revolutionise educational standards in the Frankish royal court, Alcuin eloquently recorded his shock at the events that had unfolded off the Northumbrian coast in a letter he wrote, in 793, to Æthelred, king of Northumbria:

It is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such a terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.1

Contemporary Christians saw in this event the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecy of Jeremiah chapter 1, verse 14: ‘The LORD said to me, “From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land”’.2 This may have inspired Alcuin’s reminder – in the same letter – of a bloody rain which had fallen from a clear sky on the north side of the church at York. To Alcuin this suggested that ‘from the north there will come upon our nation retribution of blood’.3 Alcuin went on to attempt to explain why such a disaster had occurred. He identified sins as varied as hair fashion which imitated that of the northern pagans, luxurious clothing and the impoverishment of the common people as a result of the wealth enjoyed by their leaders. Curiously, a fragment of an early eleventh-century letter, written following another phase of Viking incursions, also complains about Anglo-Saxons who ‘dress in Danish fashion with bared necks and blinded eyes’.4 This seems to be another reference to unacceptable Viking-inspired hairstyles.

In a second letter, also written in 793, but this time to Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne, Alcuin wrestled with the same dilemma of explaining why ‘St Cuthbert, with so great a number of saints, defends not his own?’5 Again, Alcuin concluded that ‘it has not happened by chance, but is a sign that it was well merited by someone’.6 He strongly advised the bishop to consider what sins in himself and in his community might have caused this judgement to fall, and to see they were remedied swiftly. Otherwise there was a real danger that what had occurred was the start of more tribulation to follow. In the meantime, Alcuin promised to try to use his influence with the Frankish ruler, Charlemagne, to see if anything could be done to secure the release of the monks enslaved by the Vikings.

Alcuin’s letters are not our only record of the disaster which hit Lindisfarne. A later source – a manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (manuscript E) which included northern events to augment its southern focus – took up the theme dramatically:

In this year dire portents appeared over Northumbria and sorely frightened the people. They consisted of immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine immediately followed those signs, and a little after that in the same year, on 8 June, the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church in Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter.7

The Viking Wars had started with a vengeance. The opening strike of what can only be described as ‘the First Blitzkrieg’ had fallen on Anglo-Saxon England. Some other manuscripts of the Chronicle date the attack as occurring in January, but manuscript E was well informed about northern events and a summer attack is more credible than one in the depth of winter.

Not surprisingly, many histories of the Vikings in England start with this raid on Lindisfarne. They use this to illustrate the utter devastation caused by these first Viking attacks. This is not surprising, but it does not actually take account of some crucial evidence. A closer examination of the traditional account is more revealing and challenges some of these commonly held assumptions.

On closer examination

The evidence regarding the first Viking attack is less straightforward than it first appears. The Viking Wars are full of historical surprises which test the critical skills of the historian. For a start, Alcuin’s second outraged letter was written to the bishop and community of monks on Lindisfarne, so monastic life had clearly survived the assault of 793. A later, mid-tenth-century source (the History of St Cuthbert) indicates that it was not until 830–45 that the relics of St Cuthbert were translated from Lindisfarne to Norham-on-Tweed. This seems to have been accompanied by a dismantling of much of the church building on Lindisfarne itself. However, this occurred two generations after the raid of 793 and, whilst it may have been prompted by escalating Viking activity in the ninth century, may equally have been due to the monastic community gaining estates inland.8 By 875 the community had returned to Lindisfarne as, in this year, it relocated yet again. This is a point often overlooked in modern accounts of the raid of 793.

Similarly, the famous gravestone from Lindisfarne, which is often interpreted as showing seven weapon-waving Viking marauders advancing from left-to-right across the stone slab, probably dates from the ninth century.9 Obviously, a Christian religious community continued to bury its dead there until the site finally became too dangerous a generation or two later. And the menacing warriors could just as easily represent warfare in general, in a scene from events leading up to the Day of Judgement, for there is nothing specifically Viking about them. This is particularly important as most references to this gravestone assume beyond doubt that it commemorates the famous Viking attack. This may be an assumption too far. Recently, analysis of Viking raids in Ireland, for example, show that, of the 113 attacks on monasteries between 795 and 820, only twenty-six were carried out by Vikings. The rest were either carried out by Irish kings on Irish monasteries or were even the work of monks from rival religious communities.10 We should not expect anything different for Anglo-Saxon England. As early as the late seventh century, Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury (Wiltshire), had been forced to negotiate a special arrangement with the kings of Mercia and Wessex to prevent them targeting his monastery, since it was sited in a border zone between the two rival Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.11 In 684 Ecgfrith of Northumbria launched an attack on Ireland which was accompanied by the destruction of Irish churches. There was, therefore, nothing specifically Viking about the tendency to loot vulnerable religious communities which were situated in enemy kingdoms. This is a point often ignored when assessing the impact of the early Viking raids.

A more fundamental problem lies in the fact that the attack on Lindisfarne was not actually the first recorded Viking raid on England. Although written in a later source of evidence, the first appearance of the Vikings dates not from 793 and not from the North Sea coast, but from 789 and from Dorset. It is not surprising, though, that this earlier event was eclipsed by the later attack on Lindisfarne. It seems that only one man died in the first attack and, rather more fundamentally, no one had written a national treasure like the Lindisfarne Gospels on the beach at Portland. But it was to Portland, in Dorset, that the dubious honour goes of being the first English victim of the Viking Wars. The account of that earlier event, however, is rather short of the ‘shock and awe’ that we associate with the raids from Scandinavia, although it is very revealing if one reads between the lines.

The record is found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was compiled in Old English, in Wessex, from a range of earlier material about a century after the event in Dorset (probably in the 880s). The simplest and oldest surviving version of the attack is found in manuscript A, also called the Parker Chronicle, which is now found in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, at the University of Cambridge. Written in Winchester in the late ninth or very early tenth century, this manuscript of the Chronicle does not even mention the more famous attack on Lindisfarne. The annal in question (wrongly dated in the original to 787) reads:

… and in his days [this refers to Brihtric, king of Wessex] there came for the first time three ships of Northmen and then the reeve [the king’s local representative] rode to them and wished to force them to the king’s residence, for he did not know what they were; and they slew him. Those were the first ships of Danish men which came to the land of the English.12

This is all rather vague and leaves us guessing exactly where this occurred, although at least we know the origin of the raiders: Denmark. Rather more information is provided by a later manuscript of the Chronicle. Manuscript E, the Laud or Peterborough Chronicle, was written in East Anglia, beginning in 1121 and continuing until 1154, probably to replace an earlier version destroyed in a fire in 1116. The version used in making the replacement copy seems to have taken some additional information from a northern source and identifies the raiders as ‘from Hörthaland’ (in Norway), although it then, confusingly, continues with the same information that the raiders were Danes. Clearly, there was some confusion in the geography here.

In these rather garbled accounts we have the evidence of the first Vikings in England. Other, later, records join up a few more of the dots to give us a more rounded picture. In Æthelweard’s Chronicle, written in Latin for a wealthy West Country aristocrat sometime in the late tenth century, we are told that the murdered royal official was named Beaduheard and that he had come down to the coast from the nearby town of Dorchester (Dorset). This town was a villa regalis, a royal estate centre. Æthelweard’s Chronicle adds that the reeve thought that the new arrivals were traders. To this the Latin Annals of St Neots – confusingly compiled at Bury St Edmunds (Suffolk) in the early twelfth century – adds that the violence erupted at Portland.

So, the picture finally emerges. A ship docked at Portland, in Dorset. Its crew were from Norway, but since every Viking later got lumped together under the catch-all title of ‘Danes’, this ethnic label became attached to the record, despite more accurate intelligence that later became available from a northern source. The local royal official rode down from nearby Dorchester to establish their tax status. This involved them accompanying him back to his base at Dorchester in order to check out their credentials. He clearly thought they were merchants and this was standard practice for anyone seeking to enter an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the eighth century. The later, ninth-century laws of King Alfred specifically state that, with regard to traders: ‘they are to bring before the king’s reeve in a public meeting the men whom they take up into the country with them, and it is to be established how many of them there are to be’.13 This allowed the local royal agent time to check how many people were entering his local area and on what business. It upheld the security of the kingdom by keeping track of travellers and was all very tidy and tax efficient. But on this occasion things turned nasty – they killed him.

What the killing on Portland beach reveals about the Vikings

What is interesting about the violence at Portland is, in fact, what did not happen. There is no record of mass slaughter; no account of pillaging; no burning or looting; and, as far as we can tell, only one man died (although Æthelweard’s Chronicle says a few men were killed alongside the reeve). There was presumably an altercation over procedure, accompanied by resentment at the unwanted orders being issued by a royal administrator, then a quick resort to violence and away. Clearly, Viking ‘raids’ were not always what we might imagine. Trade and opportunism, rather than massacre, was often on the agenda. This is rather closer to the image of traders and settlers that we find in many modern histories of the Vikings, and that we can see embodied in the animatronics who speak in Old Norse at the Jorvik Viking Centre in York. Furthermore, Alcuin’s letters to King Æthelred and Bishop Higbald suggest that there were existing social and economic connections between the suffering communities and Scandinavia. If there were not, then how were the Northumbrians aware of the Viking hairstyles of which Alcuin disapproved and how else might it be possible for the Franks to negotiate the return of the enslaved monks? These little pieces of evidence are easily missed when reading his letters, but they are certainly there and they are significant. Clearly, the Vikings had not appeared from nowhere; they must already have been familiar coastal traders by the late eighth century.

Nevertheless, this aspect of Viking realities should not erase the more brutal image. There is plenty of evidence in support of that too and we will explore it later. But the account probably gives us a realistic insight into these first tentative incursions. Young Scandinavian men in these situations might drift from trade to violence depending on the circumstances. These were violent opportunists, not men setting out to level kingdoms. That would come, but the escalation to that phase would have its own reasons and its own dynamics. At first, things were less clear-cut, and, even later, the image of the Viking trader and the Viking raider could blur, depending on the make-up of the group involved and the strength of the opposition.

On the other hand, a royal official died. The quick resort to violence and the refusal to accept local authority would also be a characteristic of the Vikings. So, we should not go too far in a rehabilitation of those groups about to descend on England. As an historian commented, on a violently named tenth-century Viking king of York: ‘He wasn’t called Eric Bloodaxe because he was good with the children.’14

What is a Viking?

‘Danes’, ‘Northmen’, ‘heathen’, ‘pagans’ and ‘Vikings’ were all terms used to describe the Scandinavian raiders and eventual settlers by those experiencing their attacks. In Anglo-Saxon sources, the labels ‘Danes’, ‘Northmen’ and ‘pagans’ or ‘heathens’ were the terms most often used. As we have seen, with regard to the incident at Portland, this did not always convey much geographical accuracy. When we read ‘Danes’ in the accounts of raids we cannot be certain that those involved actually originated in Denmark. Despite this, other evidence does suggest that, for most Anglo-Saxons, it was in fact Danish Vikings that they faced most of the time.

What is more surprising is that we hardly ever come across the term ‘Viking’ being used in any accounts from outside of Scandinavia. This was true for almost all those who encountered Scandinavian raiders. The Franks called them ‘Nordmanni’ (northmen) and an area eventually ceded to them in the tenth century would become Normandy as a result. Slavs knew them from their perceived ruddy complexions as the ‘Rus’ (red) and a similar word, ‘Rhos’, was used by the Byzantines, in modern Greece and Turkey, who employed them as mercenaries and met Scandinavian traders who had ventured down the rivers leading into the Black Sea and from there had travelled into the eastern Mediterranean. This word would eventually survive in the national name of Russia, since a Viking state centred on Kiev was at the core of the early Russian nation. Amongst the Byzantines they were also known as ‘Varangians’ (those who swear loyalty) and the Varangian Guard served the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople. In Ireland they were the ‘Lochlannach’ (northmen); with the Norwegians differentiated as ‘Finn-gaill’ (white foreigners) and the Danes were the ‘Dubh-gaill’ (black foreigners). Islamic sources knew them as ‘al-madjus’ (heathens). No one called them Vikings.

So where does the word ‘Viking’ come from? There is no certain answer, but there are a number of possible derivations. The Old Icelandic word ‘vík’ (bay or creek) may have developed into a term used to describe seamen hiding in, or sailing from, these coastal inlets. Since an area of southern Norway was called Vik, it may alternatively be that this became attached to those sailing from this area and, eventually, gained a wider application. We have seen that the first raiders along the English coast were apparently Norwegians. On the other hand, the Old Icelandic verb for ‘moving, turning aside’ is ‘víkja’ and may have come to describe seafarers far from home. Old Norse Scandinavian written sources (and these came very late to Scandinavia) describe a pirate raider as a ‘víkingr’ and a raiding expedition as a ‘víking’. It has recently been memorably stated that ‘the word “Viking” is something you did rather than what you were.’ 15 And for many this would have been a part-time occupation.16 In these Old Norse sources the negative connotations of pirates were probably not in the thoughts of the writers, and a more adventurous sense of freebooters was probably what they had in mind. In its Old English form ‘wicing’ or ‘wicingas’ does not appear as a label for Scandinavian pirates until the tenth century and, surprisingly, it is only used five times in the annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. However, it does appear in some east-coast place names where it may have been derived from a personal name. As a result, we have Wickenby (Lincolnshire) meaning ‘Viking’s by’ (village), Wiganthorpe (Yorkshire) meaning ‘Viking’s thorp’ (dependent farm) and Wigston (Leicestershire) meaning ‘Viking’s tun’ (village).17

After sparing use in Old English, the word had no Middle English form and it did not become the standard term for Scandinavian invaders in Britain until the nineteenth century. In fact, it is not known in its modern spelling ‘Viking’ (as opposed to the Old Norse vikingr) before 1840. Since then the term has really taken off and has become applied not only to those involved in raiding expeditions but to Scandinavians generally during the ‘Viking Age’. As a result, it is the term used in this book. But it comes with the warning that few Anglo-Saxons living through the ‘Viking Wars’ would have recognised it and most Scandinavian merchants and settlers would not have thought that it applied to them.

The origins, destinations and motives of the early Viking raiders

Most of those involved in attacking and settling in England – and Britain generally – came from what we now know as Denmark and Norway. Norwegians (often simply described as the Norse) targeted Shetland, Orkney, northern Scotland, the Western Isles and Ireland. They would eventually establish a Viking kingdom based on Dublin and from there would ‘fish’ in the troubled waters of northern English politics. The Danes raided the coasts of eastern and southern England, and the coast of France, and were those who would have the greatest impact on Anglo-Saxon consciousness; hence the tendency to describe all raiders as ‘Danes’. Swedish adventurers tended to sail eastward into the Baltic and down the river systems of what would become Russia. Only from the late tenth and early eleventh century do we learn of Swedish Vikings joining the fleets sailing for England. The homelands of these Vikings were not developed nations, but this was changing as the Viking Wars started and is significant, as we shall shortly see.

Denmark dominated trade routes from the North Sea to the Baltic and so had the potential to develop into a formidable threat to its southern neighbours. It also controlled regions in southern Sweden. Denmark became increasingly centralised by the eighth century and was strong enough to threaten the coast of the Frankish empire by the ninth century. It then fragmented in the late ninth and early tenth centuries between dynasties competing for control of the kingdom, before being reunited again.

Norway on the other hand was, prior to the late ninth century, divided and dominated by Denmark. The richest area was Vestfold, with its trading centre of Kaupang. In the late ninth century it became increasingly united under a ruler named Harald Finehair, but was still dominated by Denmark.

Regarding Sweden, Denmark ruled much of the south, while the rest of the country lacked political cohesion. In the ninth century, petty kings are mentioned in the written sources which were compiled outside Sweden. There appear to have been two main political units: the Svear (with a centre at Uppsala) and the Götar (centred on the plains of Östergötland and Västergötland, near Lake Vättern).18

It was a combination of changes occurring within Scandinavia, coinciding with events outside of the region, which appear to have triggered the start of raids and later settlement. In the eighth century increased population in Norway may have sparked competition for resources. Even more important may have been the growing power of Norwegian chieftains, who extended their authority and control of land at the expense of lesser nobles. Frustrated at home, these warriors looked elsewhere for a means of gaining wealth and prestige. This may have been why it was Norwegians who appeared off Portland in 789. Increased political unity in the ninth century may have provided another spur to unsuccessful competitors to leave Norway and seek opportunities elsewhere. Within Denmark there were internal and external triggers. Externally the southern Danish frontier was threatened by the expansion of the Christian Frankish empire. This seems to have prompted moves towards greater Danish political unity as a defence against Frankish attack. This led to internal push factors by driving some dissidents abroad who had lost out in this process and, on top of this, the Danish elites who triumphed in this power struggle appear to have decided to finance their new political power from raiding expeditions abroad. In addition, the emerging Danish rulers rewarded their supporters with grants of land, creating an elite land-hunger as there was not enough land to go round. The answer to this land-hunger lay in conquests abroad.

A recent analysis of factors has concluded that the roots of the Viking Age expansion are long: mercenary participation in Roman wars encouraged the development of military hierarchies as these warriors returned home; an almost constant state of war within Scandinavia encouraged the development of centralised government and naval transportation; increasingly centralised power in southern Scandinavia brought stability and encouraged international trade by the seventh century; the Danish elites in this area then turned to external trading and raiding in order to generate further wealth and this was assisted by the development of ocean-going ships.19

This Danish expansion may have had another feature which gave it a particularly striking character. The Frankish empire was expansionist in both its political and its religious policy, and the threat of a Christian superpower on the border appears to have prompted aggressive defensive reactions from the still-pagan communities in Denmark. We are used to explaining the attacks on western European monasteries as being motivated by the desire to seize portable wealth from undefended communities. However, the first century of raids may have had an extra ideological motive; it was an attack on the very ideology of the Franks and their Christian neighbours. This remains a very controversial modern theory, but may suggest that the many accounts of looted monasteries may not simply be due to monks doing the record-keeping. There may, in fact, have really been a religious conflict going on: a ‘clash of civilizations’ may really have occurred with treasure houses of Christian sacred art and literature looted or burnt. However, the situation was complex and at least one modern study has suggested that the dearth of surviving documentary sources from East Anglia, for example, is due less to Viking destruction than to poor curation of records in a diocese which underwent significant organisational changes in the period up to 1095.20

One other ingredient was also added to this volatile and violent cocktail of factors. Danish attacks on Francia and England coincided with disruptions in the flow of silver from the Middle Eastern Islamic Caliphate to Scandinavia. This escalated further when the Caliphate lost control of the silver mines in what is now Tajikistan. The drying up of supplies of Arab silver had far-reaching consequences as Scandinavian economies faltered due to the decline in trade. And the lack of silver struck at the heart of the gift-giving which reinforced the relationships between nobles and their followers, since it was more difficult for silver-poor Scandinavian elites to purchase luxury goods from western Europe. Raiding offered an alternative method of obtaining these valuables and slaves.21 Consequently, storm clouds from the north were gathering over the communities of Anglo-Saxon England and its neighbours, and in the late eighth century the storm began to break.

Notes

1 Whitelock, D. (ed.), English Historical Documents, vol. I, c.500– 1042 (Eyre Methuen: London, 1979), p.842.

2 Jeremiah, chapter 1, verse 14, New International Version of the Bible (Hodder and Stoughton: London, 1979).

3 Whitelock, D., English Historical Documents, p.843.

4 Whitelock, D., ibid., p.896.

5 Whitelock, D., ibid., p.845.

6 Whitelock, D., ibid., p.845.

7 Whitelock, D., ibid., p.181.

8 Aird, W.M., St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071 –1153 (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 1998), pp.24–5.

9 Owen-Crocker, G.R., Dress in Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, revised edn, 2004), p.170.

10 Catling, C., ‘Raiders and traders’, Current Archaeology, 245 (August 2010), p.14.

11 Whittock, H., ‘The Avon valley as a frontier region from the fourth to the eleventh centuries,’ unpublished BA dissertation (University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, 2010). For further examination of the location of Malmesbury within a disputed frontier zone see: Whittock, H., ‘Why does the north-western boundary of Wiltshire ignore the river Avon?’, The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 105 (2012), pp.96–104.

12 Whitelock, D., English Historical Documents, p.180.

13 Whitelock, D., ibid., p.413.

14 Quoted in Brimberg, S., ‘In search of Vikings’, National Geographic (May 2000), pp.8–27.

15 Balbirnie, C., ‘The Vikings at home’, BBC History Magazine, vol. 13, no. 9 (September 2012), p.25.

16 For an overview of the use of the term ‘Viking’ and the names used by others to describe them, see: Arnold, M., The Vikings: Culture and Conquest (Hambledon Continuum: London, 2006), pp.7–8. See also: Somerville, A. and McDonald, R.A., The Viking Age: A Reader (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 2010), p.xiii

17 Ekwall, E., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1960).

18 For an accessible overview of Viking Age Scandinavia see: Haywood, J., The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings (Penguin: London, 1995), pp.28–33; Forte, A., Oram, R. and Pedersen, F., Viking Empires (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2005), pp.7–53.

19 Forte, A., Oram, R. and Pedersen, F., Viking Empires (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2005), pp.51–3.

20 Hoggett, R., The Archaeology of the East Anglian Conversion (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2010), pp.22–3.

21 For an expansion of this argument see: Randsborg, K., The Viking Age in Denmark: The Formation of a State (St Martin’s Press: London, 1980).

2

STORM FROM THE NORTH, 789–866

Between the years 789 and 866, Viking attacks on England escalated. In 794, only one year after the famous attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne, manuscript D of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records another raid against the North Sea coast of the kingdom of Northumbria. This time the ‘heathens ravaged in Northumbria and plundered Ecgfrith’s monastery at Donemuthan’.1 The location of this unfortunate community of monks is not entirely clear. The name means ‘mouth of the River Don’ and has not survived as a modern place name and, to add to the complexity, there appears to have been another northern monastery with a similar name – Donaemuthe – which is recorded in a letter written by the pope to a king of Northumbria in 757. Its location is also uncertain, although the details of the earlier letter suggests it was a different place to the monastery recorded as the subject of the raid of 794. However, in the early twelfth-century account of the Church in northern England (the History of the Church of Durham), written by Simeon of Durham, a tradition is recorded which locates the plundered community as being the monastery of Jarrow (Tyne and Wear).2 The case for Jarrow is strengthened by the reference to the plundered monastery in the Chronicle as being ‘Ecgfrith’s monastery’, since King Ecgfrith of Northumbria had granted land to the Church for the foundation of a monastery at Jarrow in 681. In which case, yet another famous northern monastery – the community where Bede, the famous Northumbrian historian had died in 735 – was being targeted.

This time, though, the attackers did not have things entirely their own way. Despite the description of ravaging and plundering, one of the Viking leaders was killed, storms destroyed some of the Viking ships and many of their crews were drowned. Those who survived to reach the shore were immediately killed by the Northumbrians.

Extreme violence, in an age of extreme violence

Shocking as the attacks on Portland, Lindisfarne (see Chapter 1) and Jarrow were, there was nothing as yet to suggest that a new era of seaborne devastation was starting. Only hindsight would suggest that, and the decade of the 790s was more noteworthy for home-grown atrocities. In 798, manuscript C of the Chronicle records that ‘Cenwulf, king of the Mercians, ravaged the people of Kent’ and also of Romney Marsh. The king of Kent, named Præn, was brought ‘in fetters into Mercia’3 and, according to manuscript F of the Chronicle, ‘had his eyes put out and his hands cut off’.4 The brutality of this event reminds us of the context in which the Viking attacks occurred. State-sanctioned acts of extreme violence against rivals, inter-kingdom raiding and general destruction were features of Anglo-Saxon England long before the Viking Wars occurred, and therefore the destruction of the raids needs to be seen against this background. Had there been no Viking assault, the people of England could still have found themselves enslaved and their resources destroyed, or looted, as a result of the military adventures of neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. This is not to claim that these were everyday events, but their occurrence is confirmed by a range of Anglo-Saxon sources and they clearly were not rare experiences. When, in 815, Egbert of Wessex ‘ravaged in Cornwall, from east to west’5 it would have been the crops and houses of ordinary farmers that were destroyed and, no doubt, people would have been killed and others raped by the West Saxon army. These victims, though, were British citizens of the still-independent Cornish (‘West Welsh’) kingdom of the far south-west, so no doubt were particularly vulnerable to being simply dismissed as collateral damage in a strike at the economic viability of the Cornish elites. However, the same strategies were also deployed against other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for warfare was hardwired into Anglo-Saxon society. As one recent study of the exercise of power in Anglo-Saxon England has noted: ‘Even before the Viking attacks of the ninth century, conflict between English kings and their foreign neighbours was common, if not yet on the scale of the 860s and 870s.’6

There is, though, an interesting link between the West Saxon attack on Cornwall in 815 and the escalating Viking raids since when, in 838, a Viking fleet landed in Cornwall the ‘West Welsh’ joined them in a coordinated attack on Egbert of Wessex. Clearly, one person’s ‘ravaging heathens’ could become another person’s ‘useful ally’ in retaliation against the aggressive West Saxons. And, of course, the Cornish were Christians, though of the Brittonic Church which elsewhere had been absorbed and disparaged by the dominant Anglo-Saxon Church. Clearly, the heathen nature of the Vikings was no barrier to the Cornish in establishing an alliance and, similarly, the Vikings were amenable to a tactical working relationship with the Christian Cornish in order to benefit from a combined assault on the far wealthier West Saxon kingdom. This complexity is important to note, as it is the first recorded example of many, and no doubt many more went unrecorded in the surviving documentary sources. The Viking Blitzkrieg would throw up a range of surprising alliances.

Escalating attacks from the 830s onwards