Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (11 page)

This disaster changed the military balance. Alfred spent months outside the walls of Exeter but it was now he who had the initiative. When the Danes finally gave in, Alfred did not need to pay them to leave the kingdom: they gave hostages again and in August 877 withdrew to Gloucester in southern Mercia. They now called on Ceolwulf to divide the kingdom with them. Ceolwulf was allowed to keep the western half of Mercia, while the Danes took the east. Anund and Oscetel were probably among those who took lands there as they are not heard of again. Danish settlement was densest around the towns known as the Five Boroughs: Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester and Stamford. It is unlikely that the Danish settlement resulted in large-scale displacement of the Anglo-Saxon peasantry. The ranks of the Mercian nobility and freeman classes would have been thinned by the wars and the Danes simply took over their lands: the local peasants just got new landlords. Many monastic communities had been destroyed so their lands were also available for sharing out among the conquerors. Guthrum did not take lands: he still had his eyes on Wessex.

Alfred takes refuge at Athelney

In the Middle Ages, campaigning usually ceased during the winter months. Seas were rough, roads became impassable with mud or snow and there was no grazing for horses so, as the nights lengthened, Vikings and their opponents alike headed for winter quarters. But as Alfred settled down to celebrate Christmas at Chippenham, Guthrum was preparing to attack. Shortly after Twelfth Night (5 January) in 878 Guthrum left Gloucester and made a surprise attack on Chippenham. Alfred only narrowly evaded capture and, with his family and retainers, fled south-west to take refuge in the great wetlands of the Somerset Levels. Now largely drained for agriculture, in Alfred’s day the Levels were an area of twisting river channels, reedy fens, willow woodland, shallow lakes, and peat moors interrupted by low ridges and islands of dry land. When Alfred fled there in mid-winter, the Levels would have been completely flooded, but in summer they dried out enough for parts to be used as rough grazing. It was from this practice that the county of Somerset got its name, from
Sumersaete
, the ‘summer country’. Alfred hunted in the area and knew it intimately but it was effectively impenetrable for outsiders, so for the time being he was safe. Guthrum’s failure to capture Alfred was a serious setback. Guthrum lacked the forces to occupy all of Wessex so his best chance to control it was by persuading Alfred to rule as his puppet or, if he refused, kill him and appoint someone who would. This approach had been successful in Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, it likely would have worked in Wessex too.

Alfred’s flight into the wetlands became the stuff of legend. A story first told in the eleventh century,
Life
of
St
Neot,
tells how Alfred took refuge in the house of a peasant woman. The woman prepared some cakes and set them by the fire to bake. Telling the king to watch the cakes, she went out to collect firewood. However, the careworn king nodded off and the woman returned to find the cakes had burned. She angrily scolded the king, telling him that he was happy enough to eat them but was too lazy to help her cook them. Alfred took his scolding with the grace and humility expected of a pious king. Another story of Alfred’s time in the wetlands is that St Cuthbert appeared to Alfred in a vision promising help against the Vikings who had chased him out of his home at Lindisfarne. This was a politically convenient vision if ever there was one: if Northumbria’s patron saint had transferred his support to the Wessex dynasty, was this vision not a sign that he wanted the Northumbrians to do the same? A third tale tells how Alfred disguised himself as a minstrel so he could infiltrate Guthrum’s camp and learn all of his plans. All these stories emphasise not just Alfred’s moral qualities but also the desperate circumstances to which he is supposed to have been reduced. Yet, as subsequent events showed, he still retained the loyalty of his subjects and had substantial resources at his disposal.

Around Easter, Alfred established a fortress on the Isle of Athelney, a small island – barely half a mile long – in the southern reaches of the Levels. Athelney’s name is derived from Old English (the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons)
Æthelinga íeg
, meaning the ‘island of princes’, so it was probably part of a royal estate. Alfred really had no need to lodge with peasants and ruin their cooking. Only after the most severe flooding, as in the very wet winter of 2013 – 14, does Athelney ever resemble an island today, but before modern draining of the Levels it was a natural fortress.

Athelney’s potential was first recognised in prehistoric times when each end of the island was fortified with a bank and ditch. These ready-made defences, which could easily have been refurbished, must have been part of the island’s attractions for Alfred. Archaeological evidence of ironworking on the island in Anglo-Saxon times suggests that the king may have used it as a secure centre for weapons production. A causeway linked the western end of the island to dry land at the
burh
(‘fortified town’) of East Lyng to the west. Anyone hoping to attack Athelney from this direction would have to take East Lyng first. Just a mile north-east of Athelney is the strikingly abrupt hill of Burrow Mump. Though only 79 feet (24 m) high it has a commanding view over the surrounding Levels. A medieval church and a Norman motte have obliterated any evidence of earlier structures that may have been on its summit, but Alfred would surely have built a watchtower here to cover the northern approaches to Athelney.

Alfred ensured that his subjects knew that they had not been abandoned, as the Mercians had been, by launching raids out of the fens to harass the Danes. Athelney’s position near the southern edge of the Levels not only put the wetlands between Alfred and the Danes, it also gave him good communications with Devon, Dorsetshire and Hampshire, which remained unoccupied. Ubba led a strong raid into north Devon, perhaps with the intention of outflanking Alfred, but he was defeated and killed with 800 – 1,200 of his men by a smaller West Saxon force under Odda the ealdorman of Devon at Countisbury Hill. Ubba had forced the West Saxons to take refuge in a hastily constructed fort on the hill. The West Saxons lacked food and water so, rather than attack the strong position, Ubba decided to wait and let hunger and thirst force their surrender. The West Saxons weren’t ready to give in, however, and they launched a surprise dawn attack and massacred the drowsy Danes. Only a handful of the Vikings managed to escape back to their ships.

The turning point

While this was happening, Alfred’s agents were travelling the countryside secretly preparing to raise a new army against the Danes. In early May, Alfred left Athelney and rode to Egbert’s Stone near Selwood in Wiltshire where he met with the levies of Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire, who gave him a rapturous reception. Knowing that news of the gathering would soon reach the Danes, Alfred moved fast. Camping only one night at the stone, the next day he marched his army to ‘Island Wood’, which was probably near Warminster, around 10 miles to the north-west. The next morning, Alfred broke camp and advanced another 8 miles to Edington, where he met the Danes in battle:

‘Fighting fiercely with a compact shield wall against the entire Danish army, [Alfred] persevered resolutely for a long time; at length he gained the victory through God’s will. He destroyed the Danes with great slaughter, and pursued those who fled as far as the stronghold, hacking them down’. (Bishop Asser,
Life
of
King
Alfred
, trans. Simon Keynes.)

The unnamed stronghold is usually reckoned to have been Chippenham, but that is over 12 miles from Edington, a very long way for a hot pursuit after what was clearly a hard-fought battle. It may be more likely that the Danes actually took refuge in Bratton Camp, an Iron Age hillfort only 2 miles from Edington. After a two-week siege, Guthrum capitulated, agreeing to leave the kingdom, hand over hostages and accept baptism.

Three weeks later Guthrum and thirty of his leading men were baptised at Aller, not far from Athelney. Alfred personally raised Guthrum from the font and adopted him as a godson. Guthrum and his men wore the white robes of baptism for eight days, their heads bound by white cloths where they had been anointed with holy oil. After their heads were ceremonially unbound at the royal manor at nearby Wedmore, twelve days of festivities followed at which Alfred gave Guthrum and his men ‘many excellent treasures’. In the autumn, Guthrum kept his word and withdrew to Cirencester in Mercia for the winter and then, in 879, to East Anglia, which he ruled as king until his death in 890. It is impossible to be sure how sincere Guthrum’s conversion was but, at least outwardly, he ruled as a Christian king, issuing coinage under his baptismal name Æthelstan. Alfred would later commemorate his triumph over Guthrum by founding an abbey at Athelney, but it never prospered. When the abbey was dissolved in 1539 it was completely dismantled for building stone, fetching just £80. Only a modest stone monument to Alfred (with no public access) marks Athelney as a place of significance to the history of the Viking Age.

How many Vikings?

Determining the size of the Viking armies that came so close to conquering England has proved very difficult. Contemporary annalists, both in England and elsewhere in Europe, tended to describe the size of Viking armies in terms of the number of ships they arrived in, rather than numbers of warriors. Most sources agree that the numbers of ships involved increased sharply in the 840s, from fleets of three to about thirty-five ships before this date to ones of 100 – 350 after. Assuming these figures are accurate, they still raise obvious questions. How big were the ships? How many Vikings were there in each ship? Some Vikings did take their wives and children with them on campaign and they are known sometimes to have transported horses in their ships. This would have reduced the numbers of warriors carried in each ship. Two almost complete longships from this period were discovered in the nineteenth century in burial mounds at Oseberg and Gokstad in Norway. The older of the two is the Oseberg ship, which was built around 820 or perhaps earlier. This extremely ornate and elegant ship was 71 feet (21.6 m) long by 16.7 feet (5.1 m) broad and 5.25 feet (1.6 m) deep and had fifteen pairs of oars and, like all Viking ships, a single square sail. Sea trials with a replica have shown that the Oseberg ship was not very seaworthy so it is unlikely to have been a raiding ship. The Gokstad ship, built around 895 – 900, is a better candidate for a raiding ship, especially as the skeletal remains of the king or chieftain buried in it show clear signs that he was killed in battle. The ship was 76.5 feet (23.3 m) long by 17 feet (5.2 m) broad and 6.5 feet (2 m) deep and had sixteen pairs of oars. However, a rack along the gunwale carried sixty-four shields, suggesting that it carried a double crew. Unlike the Oseberg ship, the Gokstad ship was very seaworthy indeed: a replica has been sailed across the Atlantic. The oldest known Danish longship, from Ladby on Fyn, is roughly contemporary with the Gokstad ship. Like the Gokstad ship, the Ladby ship had sixteen pairs of oars and, at 68 feet (20.6 m) long, was nearly the same length. However, at only 9.5 feet (2.9 m) broad and 2.3 feet (0.7 m) deep, its hull was also much narrower and shallower than the Gokstad ship’s. Although it would have carried fewer men and been less seaworthy than the Gokstad ship, the Ladby ship would in many ways have been a better raiding vessel as it drew less water and would have been much faster under oars. If this ship was typical of those used by the Danes raiding England in Alfred’s time, we could conclude that a large Viking army must have numbered at least a few thousand (but probably not tens of thousands) of warriors. This seems all the more credible because we know from reliable literary and archaeological sources that Alfred’s Wessex could muster around 30,000 armed men.

A major Viking army of this period did not have a hierarchical structure with a single supreme commander. The basic Scandinavian military unit was the
lið
(or, in the late Viking Age, the
hirð
), a kings’ or chieftain’s personal retinue of warriors the size of which depended on the wealth and status of its leader. The warriors of a
lið
formed a sworn fellowship or
félag
, which was bonded together by oaths of mutual loyalty. Formal discipline in the ranks was unnecessary. Viking warriors regarded their honour and reputations as their most valuable possessions and had to be defended at all costs. Any warrior who abandoned his comrades in battle would lose his honour and become
niðing
, literally ‘nothing’, a non-person. Most Vikings would have preferred an honourable death to becoming
niðing
– at least this preserved a man’s posthumous reputation and protected his family’s honour. For a
víking
expedition, a chieftain could supplement his
lið
with men recruited from the local defence levies. With the promise of loot and land, there was probably no shortage of volunteers. Armies like that, which invaded England in 865, were essentially just groups of
liðr
which had come together for a common purpose. Decision-making was consensual with the greatest weight being accorded to the most successful war leaders and those with royal blood. When a campaign was over, armies simply broke up into their respective
liðr
to settle, return home or join another army somewhere else.

After Alfred’s victory at Edington, England enjoyed a respite from major Viking raiding. Most of those Vikings who were not busy settling moved across the Channel to Francia in search of easier pickings. Alfred used this period of relative peace to embark on a thorough reform of his kingdom’s defences. A problem with fighting the Vikings was that it took time to raise an army. Alfred set up a rota so that a third of his thegns (military aristocracy) and a half of the peasant levies were always in arms. The thegns were expected to supply their own horses, so they could form a rapid reaction force, and everyone had to bring sixty days’ supplies with them so that the army could stay in the field longer. Alfred built a fleet to take on the Vikings at sea: it immediately proved its worth in battles with small raiding forces around the coast. The most important element of Alfred’s reforms was his system of
burhs
, ‘fortified towns’, often built at strategic river crossings, which acted as refuges for country folk and secure operating bases for his army.