Northmen in Great Britain

The Northmen invasion.

Towards the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th century, a new invasion got underway.

From beyond the seas, the island was exposed once more to wave after wave of invaders.

These groups were called Northmen, Norsemen, Vikings, Danes and Normans.

The word "Viking" - pirate - was coined by their victimes and refers equally to both Norwegians and Danes.

On this occasion, "barbarian" groups from Norway, Sweden and Denmark crossed the North Sea to land on the east coast of Britain.

They terrified the Anglo-Saxons as much as the latter themselves had terrified the Britons centuries before.

But actually they were far from being total "barbarians," and by the 840s they had been heavily involved in trade for some generations.

It was indeed this trade which opened up regular contact with the nation to the west and the south.

Populations grew, and it became hard to find a reasonable living at home.

Many adventurers must have heard stories of the fertile lands with monasteries full of plunder, and it is surprising rather than otherwise that the early raids were not followed up more quickly.

The nature of their society glorified fighting.

They were pagan and believed that the gods rewarded fighters above all, and that bloodshed and death in battle were the paths to wealth and happiness.

As a people they were endowed with a stupendous energy which made them fearless seafarers searching for trade and plunder across vast oceans.

Their leaders were either kings or "jarls" whose key role was to see that their followers were handsomely rewarded with booty.

At first, small raiding parties crossed to steal food and valuables from villages in the east of England, returning home to Scandanavia once their boats were full.

Later, larger raiding parties settled in eastern England.

The Northmen also landed on the north coast of Scotland, on the islands off the Scottish coast and on the north and west coasts of Ireland.

These were mainly Norwegian.

These Northmen raiding parties completely destroyed all remnants of the Celtic Church.

Some Northmen ventured down as far as the coastsof Spain and Italy.

Actually, their dramatic expansion is a European phenomenon of which the raids of England, Scotland and Ireland were only a part.

They are even believed to have reached America.

The Northmen who raided and sttled in England were called Danes.

In 787 A.D., the Danes visited England for the first time.

This date is known thanks to records kept at the time in what is known to day as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which rtraces how these raids accelerated during the second half of the eighth century.

From 850 A.D. the Danes moved further inland along the River Thames.

The Danes attacked Mercia, and then they set their sights on the Saxon kingdoms south of the River Thames.

In 851 A.D. they moved south in an attempt to attack Winchester, capital of Wessex.

The Danish army was stopped on Stane Street, the former Roman Road, at Acleah (Ockley) by the West Saxon army led by King Æthelwulf who was accompanied by his son Æthelbald.

The Saxon army defeated the Danes at the Battle of Acleah with great bloodshed.

A year later, King Æthelwulf went with his youngest son Ælfred to visit the Pope in Rome.

Returning through France, Æthelwulf married Judith, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the Frankish king, Charles.

Æthelbald then usurped his father's kingship, becoming the King of Wessex, while Æthelwulf and the young Queen Judith were relegated to the kingship of Kent.

[See Royal Saxon Line]

In 854 A.D., the Danes first settled in the Isle of Sheppey off the north coast of Kent where they spent the winter.

Their royal dynasty had fallen during that year, leaving a power vacuum, with no strong king who could unite the warriors and prevent them from dispersing on foreign exploits.

In 866 A.D. the "Grand Army" of the Danes under the leadership of Guthrum landed on the coast of East Anglia.

The "Grand Army" plundered the north and east of England.

There was great discord amongst the people themselves; they had overthrown their king, Osbrint, and had taken an unnatural king, Aelle.

The kings were both killed and the survivors made peace with the force.

In 870 A.D., the Danes captured Edmund, King of East Anglia.

The Danes tried to make Edmund renounce Christianity.

Edmund refused and his captors killed him.

They also destroyed all the churches they came across.

Edmund became a Christian martyr and was made a saint.

The present-day town, Bury St. Edmunds, is named after him.

In 871 A.D., the Danes invaded Wessex, the most westerly, the largest and the most powerful of the Saxon kingdoms.

At the time, Ethelred was King of Wessex.

Ethelred fought the Danes in defence of Wessex and was killed in battle.

Ethelred's brother, Ælfred, succeeded him to the kingship.

Ælfred was to become the greatest king in Anglo-Saxon history.

He was born at Wantage in Berkshire, in 849 A.D.

Ælfred was a favourite child and although "ignorant of letters" until later in his life, he was brought up both listening to and learning the poems loved by the Anglo-Saxons, poems which recited the brave deeds of warrior princes of the kind he would have aspired to become.

Devoutly loyal to the Church, he was sent to Rome when he was only four years old, where he was received with great honour by Pope Leo IV.

The Danes attacked Wessex in 876 A.D., and again in 878 A.D.

On each occasion, Ælfred was forced to withdraw.

The Danes set up a large encampment at Chippenham.

The position seemed hopeless, but Ælfred bided his time in his fortress and gathered troops.

The large army he assembled drove the Danes out of Wessex.

Ælfred defeated the Danes at the Battle of Ethandun.

Following the battle, the Danes and Ælfred drew up the Treaty of Wedmore.

According to the terms of the Treaty of Wedmore, the Danes promised to leave Wessex and to settle in parts of England to the north and east of Watling Street, the old Roman road.

The region to which the Danes agreed to limit their expansion was known as the "Danelaw."

In the Danelaw, the Danish soldiers quickly established a society of their own.

Yorkshire, Loncolnshire, Leicestershire and, to a lesser extent, East Anglia, are full of place names ending in -by, -thorp, and other Scandanavian suffixes.

This impact is startling: it shows both that the army was very large and that it distributed itself widely over the countryside.

Once the Danelaw had been established, Guthrum, their king, was baptised a Christian and the rest of the Danes in England followed his example.

The Danes, though, retained their own system of manorial organisation, land measurement, law and social differentiation.

King Ælfred consolidated his army and a powerful fleet of ships with which to repulse attacks by any other groups of Northmen.

The warships he ordered to construct were nearly twice as long as those of the Danes, and swifter and steadier and higher.

For this reason, King Ælfred of Wessex is often referred to as the "Father of the English Navy."

Even more important was the building of a network of defended enclosures - "burhs" - in which men could seek safety along with their goods and cattle.

We can trace many of them in place names that end with "-borough."

Ælfred, a fervently Christian king, also rebuilt monasteries, abbeys and churches in the south of England and welcomed scholars and learned men from all parts of the continent so that Wessex became a focus of international cultural activities.

He was a man of extraordinary vision.

He inherited the traditions of the Anglo-Saxon Christian civilisation from the great age of the 7th century and relaunched them as the foundations of what, in the following century, was to be the Kingdom of England.

Ælfred realised that to create a realm which was stable and peaceful and civilised depended first on having good laws, which should apply to all the English, even those who were subjects of the Danes.

He studied the laws made by the great Anglo-Saxon kings, including Offa of Mercia, and issued his own.

Uniquely, too, Ælfred believed that such a society needed not only good government, but learning of a kind which would not only be for clerics but for lay people as well.

He himself was taught to read Latin late in life and he set up a school at his court for young nobles to learn to be literate so that they could play their role in the running of the state.

This was a great innovation.

The need arose from the terrible devastation wrought on the country by the Danes when all the libraries and places of learning were destroyed.

Little is known about his last years, but they were no doubt spent in consolidating what he had begum impressing on his son Edward, that is, the need to continue to build on the foundations laid down by his father and to reconquer the land that was now called the "Danelaw."

In 899 A.D., Ælfred died.

Ælfred is the only Englsh monarch to have been given the title "the Great."

He began to be accorded this title seven hundred years later.

No-one at the time regarded him as being any better than any of the other outstanding Saxon kings.

The Northmen also invaded France.

In 911 A.D., Charles the Simple, King of France, gave the Northmen the province of Normandy to settle in.

The Northmen leader, Rollo, became the 1st. Duke of Normandy.

In this way, Normandy became the equivalent of the Danelaw in England.

The difference was that Alfred was more powerful than Guthrum and gave the Danelaw to the Danes after defeating them in battle whereas Charles the Simple was weaker than Rollo and gave the Northmen Normandy so as not to lose more territory.

The Northmen who settled in France came to be called Normans.

The Normans became Christians.

They learned French and adopted the French life-style.

In effect, the Normans became Frenchmen, but were fiercer, stronger and sterner than people in other parts of France.

In England, Alfred's son, Edward the Elder, and his grandson, Athelstan, conquered the Danelaw.

The campaigns of Edward's reign were mainly directed by the king himself in partnership with his sister Aethelflaed.

Aethelflaed, "The Lady of the Mercians."

Year by year they edged further into the Danelaw territory, each time securing another area by building a "burh."

In 917 A.D., the city of Colchester fell, signalling the passing into Edward's hands of the whole of East Anglia and the eastern midlands.

Edward wisely accepted the Danes as his subjects, letting them live under him according to his own system of law.

The next turning point came after the deaths of both his sister and brother-in-law when he was formally elected King of Mercia.

By 920 A.D., he had reconquered England as far back as the Peak District.

When Edward the Elder dies in 924 A.D., he bequeathed to his eldest, Athelstan, a mighty achievement.

In 924 A.D., Athelstan became king of the whole of England, reigning until 940 A.D..

Athelstan was to be like his father, a victorious leader in the field of battle.

But he was also going to take his place as one of the great kings then ruling in northern Europe, one whose court was famous for its splendour.

His greatest legacy was the establishment of the notion of a single king ruling both north and south.

His death was followed by a period of twenty years, during which three kings reigned and a Norse kingdom based on York kept reasserting itself.

Athelstan's brothers, Edward and Eadred, followed him as king in succession, and both of them were successful in driving the Norsemen our of York.

On Eadred's death, Edmund the Elder's son, Eadwig, was elected king.

So deficient was he in the qualities needed to rule that both Mercia and Northumbria defected and chose his younger brother, Edgar.

If eadwig had not dies shortly shortly after, there would have been a revolution.

But his death made way for another great king, Edgar.

Edgar was only sixteen when he succeeded.

He died at the age of thirty-two, leaving behind him a legend of having been instrumental in giving England a golden age of peace.

Edgar's eldest son, Edward, was only fifteen at his accession.

He was a violent man and was murdered three years later in a plot which involved his stepmother, brother and his servants.

Ethelred, his brother, succeeded him to the throne.

Late in the 10th century, Ethelred the Unready became King of England.

Ethelread's famous nickname - "the Unready" - has lost its original meaning which involved a pun - "Ethelred Unraed," meaning 'noble-counsel' > 'no counsel' > 'evil counsel' > 'treacherous counsel'

The Danish invasions commenced once more.

They were spurred on by the fact that the country was again worth plundering and. moreover, an easy prey.

Sweyn, King of Denmark, invaded England. (Shakespeare's Macbeth)

Ethelred was caught unprepared.

Ethelred was forced to pay the Danes in order to keep them away.

The money paid by the English to the Danes, which was collected in the form of taxes, was called the Danegeld (Dane gold).

The Danes returned again and again for more money.

On 13th. November 1002, St. Brice's Day, Ethelred ordered the massacre of all the Danes living in England.

This was a foolish act because most Danes settled in Britain were well integrated, peaceloving citizens and ready to defend England from outside forces.

But the King believed them to be abetters of the noblemen when they were not.

The massacre made Sweyn extremely angry, especially since his sister had been killed in the massacre.

Sweyn decided to punish Ethelred by conquering England.

It took Sweyn ten years to conquer England, from 1003 to 1013.

In 1011 A.D., the Danes besieged Canterbury.

They captured Alphège, Archbishop of Canterbury, and held him to ransom.

Alphège refused to ask the people of Kent to raise money for his ransom.

Alphège was taken to Greenwich where a great banquet was being held by the Danes.

Alphège was pelted with bones until he died.

AlphŠge was later declared a martyr and made a saint.

In 1013 A.D., Ethelred escaped to Normandy.

Sweyn became King of England.

In 1014 A.D., Sweyn died and Ethelred returned to England.

In 1016 A.D., Ethelred died.

The struggle for power was carried on by their two sons, Ethelred's son, Edmund Ironside, and Sweyn's son, Canute (Cnut).

Several battles were fought and England became partitioned.

Edmund Ironside died soon afterwards and Canute became king of all England.

Canute was already King of Denmark.

He also conquered Norway.

He ruled over Iceland, the Orkneys, and he had control over the King of Scotland.

In effect, Canute ruled over a great northern empire.

He became a Christian.

He built a monastery at Bury St. Edmunds in memory of Edmund of East Anglia who had been murdered by the Danes of Guthrum's Grand Army.

Under Canute's orders, the body of AlphŠge, which had been hastily buried at Greenwich, was disinterred and reburied at Canterbury.

King Canute treated the Danes and the English alike.

Both Danes and English served in Canute's army.

The Danegeld continued to be collected, the money being used to pay the soldiers who made up the king's bodyguard, the "housecarles".

Like the Romans and Alfred before him, King Canute also kept a large fleet of ships in the North Sea and the English Channel to protect the coasts from pirates and invaders.

King Canute divided England into four parts.

He placed an "Earl", the forerunner of today's "Lord", in charge of each region.

During Canute's reign, generalised peace allowed trade to develop and flourished throughout his territories.

In 1035 A.D., King Canute dies.

His two sons succeeded him to the English throne, but they were unsuccessful and had short reigns.

In 1042 A.D., Edward the Confessor, an English king, came to the throne.

In this way, the line of Danish kings came to an end.