The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great (8 page)

The tools of the trade, the weapons of the Viking warrior, played such a significant role that they were often prescribed by Danish law and were regularly inspected by legal officials to ensure that each and every free Viking male was prepared to play the important role of warrior. Each soldier was required to carry a sword or a battle-axe, a shield, and a spear. Swords tended to be the weapons of the wealthier Viking warriors. The sword blade was generally around two-and-a-half to three-feet long, double-edged, and constructed to be held in one hand. Since swords were already significantly more expensive than axes, they tended to be more ornate. The hilt of the sword was often elaborately decorated with costly metals, figures, and patterns. Some were marked with runic letters, engraved into the blade, which either named the blade or invoked magical powers to give the blade bloody success in battle.

The less wealthy of the Viking warriors, who could not afford a sword, settled for an axe. Most of these axes were everyday tools and were not reserved solely for battle. They were not double-edged, contrary to many modern depictions. They were single-edged blades, measuring anywhere from three to seventeen inches across the arc of the blade. The haft on which the axe head sat was anywhere from twenty to forty inches long. The shorter the handle, the easier the axe would have been to wield with one hand, leaving another hand free to hold a shield, and the easier to throw as well. Longer-handled axes required two hands for swinging, so the soldier lost the ability to use a shield but added great force and reach to the deadly chop.

The Viking shield was circular, two and a half to three feet in diameter. The bulk of the shield was constructed of wooden planks, less than half of an inch thick, butted together, bound together by metal bands, and covered in leather. At the center of the shield was a large hole in the wood, covered by a six-inch iron dome called the “shield boss.” Inside the boss a handle was mounted for gripping the shield. The protection offered by the wooden planks of the outer shield was not much use in close hand-to-hand fighting since a few blows of an enemy sword or axe would cut it to kindling. The usefulness of the shield was the protection it offered from the attack of arrows and spears fired as the opposing forces were still closing in on one another. Though the missiles pierced the wooden planks slightly, the shield offered adequate protection from the barrage.

The shield boss ensured that the point where the Viking gripped his shield was entirely protected, keeping his shield hand safe from harm. The shield boss also offered a second offensive weapon once the clash of close combat had begun. Though the wooden shield would be slowly chopped away in the hand-to-hand hacking, the large iron dome gripped in the fist of the shield hand became a deadly cudgel delivered in the form of a left hook.

Lastly, each man carried his spear. Though the modern audience tends to think of the spear as a clumsy accessory and not as crucial to the warrior’s arsenal as the sword or shield, this opinion was not shared by the ninth-century Viking. Once two forces had closed on each other, the spear was often the most effective tool for reaching past the enemies’ defenses and striking a lethal blow. The iron spearhead was anywhere from eight inches to two feet in length. It was crafted with a savage beauty, lethally barbed and inlayed with intricate designs in precious metals. The shaft of the spear, cut from the wood of the ash tree, could reach up to ten feet in length. The spears were carefully balanced so that they could be thrown with a deadly accuracy. In open battle, however, most spears were held, rather than thrown, and used for thrusting once the two armies clashed.

Armor, like the sword, was expensive and therefore available only to those who paid handsomely. It would be possible but rare to find a Viking in a mail “byrnie,” a large mail shirt. The Viking helmet with its iconic horns, ever-present in modern depictions of the Viking warrior, is almost entirely a fantasy. Occasionally a particularly wealthy Danish chieftain might be found in an iron helmet with an ornamented ridge arcing over the top of the skull, for added protection, and an extravagant faceguard, crafted more with an eye toward terrifying the enemy than actually protecting the face. But the horns are a myth and never appeared on the Viking helmet.

The Viking forces lined up on the winter-chilled slope of Ashdown and stood proudly waiting for the troops of Wessex to make their way up the hillside. The division of the Viking army into two units had been communicated to King Æthelred and his brother Alfred earlier in the morning, while they were still in their camps a short distance from the battle. The two decided on a course of action similar to the strategy of the Danish army. Æthelred would take half of the troops and face the two Viking kings—Bagsecg and Halfdan. It was only appropriate that the Wessex king face off against the Viking kings. Alfred would take the second half of the Wessex army and take his stand against the Viking earls and their warriors. This battle plan having been fixed, the two brothers said their good-byes to one another and returned to their troops to face their fortunes in war.

As he returned to his men, Alfred was faced with a difficult task. He was barely twenty-two years old and had only experienced his first combat four days earlier, an experience that had not gone well for him or his troops. He was neither a king nor a seasoned warrior. He had little to commend himself to the men of Wessex who were now expected to follow him up the soon-to-be-bloodied slope of Ashdown. Lacking age, experience, and the crown, Alfred had no room for indecision, bumbling, or cowardice. His demeanor had to be resolute, sharp, and bold.

After he had returned to his men, he wasted little time before informing them of the task at hand. He charged them to acquit themselves like men, to be worthy of the king they served, to remember their God, and to trust in God’s strength and mercy. Then he ordered them to take up their weapons, form their ranks, and be quick about it all. This done, he led his soldiers, marching silently, fighting back the uneasiness in the stomach and the trembling in the hand, through the frosted woods that cluttered the base of Ashdown. After a short march, they spilled out of the woods and onto the rising slope of the battleground, into the full view of the Viking throng.

Upon seeing the arrival of the men of Wessex, the Vikings erupted into a barrage of derisive howls and jeers. The Viking taunt was a studied and oft-practiced literary genre among the Danish warriors. The subject matter of this mockery moved from general observations about the cowardice of the opponent and how his corpse would soon be fed to birds, to more personal speculations about the various womenfolk waiting behind in the Wessex villages, and usually culminated in the accusation that the men of Wessex actually lacked any natural affections for women in the first place. Though it may have been easy for Alfred to ignore the content of the Danish insults, what could not be ignored was that the Viking warriors, who swarmed the crest of the hill above, were utterly unafraid of the battle to come. In fact, they hungered for it with a bemusing confidence.

But far more dismaying to Alfred than the taunting force on the hillside ahead was the absence on either flank of his brother and the second half of the Wessex army. The plan had been for both Alfred and Æthelred to immediately muster their forces and march to face the Danes. But Æthelred was nowhere in sight. Alfred would later learn that after the two had made their battle plans and separated, Æthelred had returned to his tent and summoned his priest in order that he might hear mass before facing the morning’s combat. The king was late for battle because, as the historian would later explain, he was lingering long in his prayers.

Whether Æthelred had expected Alfred to take longer to muster his troops or whether he had been overwhelmed by the moment, is unrecorded. It would be understandable if Æthelred had felt a little more fear than Alfred at the prospect of charging into this particular battle. Considering the fates of the previous Anglo-Saxon kings who had lost to the invading Northmen, there was a uniquely gory risk that the king took in picking up his sword for this fight.

The Wessex army appeared to the Vikings to be much smaller than expected and were also transparently bewildered and unprepared for combat. The Viking commanders saw a welcome opportunity and commanded their men to attack. Alfred stood with only half of the Wessex army, looking confusedly about him, unsure whether he should wait for his brother to appear or quickly withdraw his men. Next the confusion turned to desperation when he saw the Viking men above, stretched out in battle array and beginning to advance. Unprepared and halved in strength, how could his men face the descending swarm?

But it was clear that withdrawing his men was no longer an option. If he pulled his men from the battlefield, the Vikings would hotly pursue. Then the men of Wessex would be chased through the forests like hunted rabbits and their corpses strewn all along the Berkshire Downs. Alfred had run from the Viking army only four days before. As terrifying as the battle line before him may have been, he knew that he preferred to face the crashing wave of Vikings head-on, rather than to be hunted and cut down from behind.

Alfred gave the command to form the shieldwall.

Even as early as the time of Alfred, the shieldwall was already considered an ancient tactic, hearkening all the way back to the ancient Greek hoplites of the seventh century BC. It consisted simply of a line of men standing shoulder to shoulder with their shields overlapping one another, forming a continuous wall of protection. This line of shields was supported by a depth of approximately ten ranks of additional soldiers positioned behind the front line, leaning into the front rank to allow them to hold their ground and stay locked together (not unlike a rugby scrum). This tight formation had the potential to be virtually impenetrable, provided that the courage and endurance of the soldiers held. Having formed the shieldwall, the Wessex army was prepared to face the oncoming crush of the Viking horde. Alfred joined the shieldwall, standing shoulder to shoulder with his men. The notion of being led into battle by a man who wasn’t willing to personally lead the charge would have been unthinkable to the men of Wessex.

As the two armies closed on each other, the various taunts and jeers of the Viking throng began to coalesce into a steady guttural rumble that rolled down the hillside. The deep rumble grew ever louder until that moment—after a seemingly interminable approach—when the first spear tip drove hard into the defiant shieldwall and the valley shook with the crack of the collision. Every nervous stomach, every quivering hand, every dry tongue, all foreboding fears and presentiments, were instantly transformed into resolution and determination; and the shieldwall erupted with a deafening war cry.

Much to the surprise of the Viking army, the Wessex shield-wall not only held after the first impact, but it began to push the Viking force backward almost immediately after that initial impact. The sensation for Alfred’s men was probably similar to the feeling a boy has in his first athletic competition, when he suddenly realizes he is equal to his opponent who had seemed so invincible when considered from a distance. Emboldened by the initial success of the shieldwall, the Anglo-Saxons began to slash and hack their way forward, pushing hard against the Viking host, driving them back up the hillside.