The Coming of the Vikings

The Scourge of God – Ecgberht vs. the Vikings – Aethelbald the Usurper – Aethelwulf Takes the Throne – the Battle of Aclea – Aethelred Leads Wessex – Ivar the Boneless – The Battle of York & The Fall of Northumbria – The Battle of the Trent – The Making of St. Sebastian & The Fall of East Anglia – Guthrum Takes the Reins – The Battle of Reading – The Battle of Ashdown – The Battle of Merton – A Shameful Peace

The Northmen—a.k.a. the Vikings—were a violent people from the regions around Scandinavia, but they weren’t one tribe but many: the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes. From the middle of the 8^th century to the early 10^th century, their raids and migrations throughout western and eastern Europe altered Europe’s landscape. Their migrations were prompted by a lack of resources at home, as Scandinavia’s sparse farmland couldn’t support their growing populations. Some Northmen had left Scandinavia in the 4^th century and joined the Germanic invasions of Rome’s dwindling imperial frontier, but the 9^th and 10^th centuries saw a dramatic resurgence of migration. Contemporary sources called these peoples “Vikings,” “Northmen,” or “Creek-Men,” and the East Slavs called them “Verangians.” In Britain they would come to be known, more poignantly, as “The Scourge of God.”

The Norse were a violent people oriented towards war. Because they had no stable Scandinavian kingdoms, their various tribes were regularly at war with one another. Because of their fighting prowess many would come to serve as mercenaries for the Byzantine Empire, and the best would be employed as body-guards by the Byzantine emperors (these select few were known as Verangian Guards).

The Norse way of life was thoroughly Germanic: they cherished heroic deeds and relished armed struggle; they were violent and made revenge a virtue; they worshipped a number of Germanic gods such as Odin and Thor (whom the Anglo-Saxons, prior to their conversion to Christianity, worshipped). The late historian John Green, writing of the Norse obsession with war, notes that “[a] passion of delight rings through [their] war-saga and song; there are times when the northern poetry is drunk with blood, when it reels with excitement at the crash of sword-edge through helmet and bone, at the warrior’s shout, at the gathering heaps of dead.” So renown was Norse violence that the Christian Anglo-Saxons often prayed, “God, deliver us from the wrath of the Northmen.”

A Norse sailing vessel at sea

As much as they were warriors, the Norse were also sailors—and when it came to sailing and navigation, they were outdone by none. They explored and settled much of Iceland and Greenland as well as some parts of North America, encamping briefly on the coast of Newfoundland in present-day Canada (what they called “Vin-Land”). Though many Europeans at this time believed the world was flat (commonplace knowledge of the earth’s spherical shape had been lost in the “dark ages” after Rome’s collapse), the Norse knew better. They built boats that held between fifty and one hundred men, in addition to horses and provisions. Men manned the oars and worked together to steer and row the long-ships. The shallow keel of Norse boats and the long timber that extended the length of the ship enabled them to steer upriver during raids. A large square sail propelled the ship in winds, and when the wind was unfavorable oarsmen took control of the ships.

Norse Migrations in the British Isles

The Norse migrated to both the east and west. In the east the Norse engaged in both trade and raiding. Around AD 830 Northmen from Scandinavia, known as the Rus, were invited to intervene in wars among the East Slavs. They staked out their own claims in Novgorod and Kiev, eventually establishing a principality composed largely of East Slavs. Thus the seeds of Russia (whose name is derived from the Viking Rus) were planted. The internal river systems of central Europe provided the east Northmen a conduit to Constantinople and the Black Sea; some Northmen came to trade with Byzantium and Persia, and others hired themselves out to the Byzantine emperors. In the west the Norse appeared first as merchants and pirates, and then later as conquerors and colonists. The Danes began raiding England in 787; by 866 a Danish army landed in eastern England and established a permanent settlement; and in Ireland and Scotland, Norwegians both invaded and settled (Dublin was a Norwegian settlement). The Norse also harried the west coast of Europe around AD 800, eventually penetrating deep into Frankia. Norse raiding parties ventured as far south as the Iberian Peninsula and into the Mediterranean Sea and up the Rhone Valley. In AD 911 the Viking Rollo secured from Charles the Simple, the King of France, the territory near the mouth of the Seine River, which became known as Normandy (from the name Northmen).

As mentioned above, England got her first taste of the Northmen in AD 787. The tradition in the royal West Saxon house, written two centuries after the events, tells us that in 787 “there was a Danish fleet, not very alarming, consisting of three long ships, [that] came to the ears of the king’s reeve, who was then in the [town] which is called Dorchester, he mounted his horse and with a few men hastened to the port, thinking they were merchants rather than enemies, and addressing them with authority ordered them to be carried to the king’s [town], and by them he and those who were with him were there slain… [Six] years later, in 793, their pirateboats were ravaging the coast of Northumbria, plundering the monastery of Lindisfarne and murdering its monks and in 794 they entered the Wear to pillage and burn the houses of Wearmouth and Jarrow.” The murder of the Northumbrian reeve, the sacrilege of Lindisfarne, and the burning of Wearmouth and Jarrow heralded a new age in Anglo-Saxon England. The first half of Anglo-Saxon England is marked by rivalries between the major kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, but the second half is marked by the English-wide struggle against the Norse invaders. John Green notes, “The descent of the three strange ships did, in fact, herald a new conquest of Britain. It was but the beginning of a strife which was to last unbroken till the final triumph of the Norman conqueror.”

Vikings at task

News of ecclesiastical wealth in England fired the passions of the Northmen as news of Aztec gold stirred the Conquistadores 600 years later. The Norse hit hard and fast, focusing on churches, monasteries, and abbeys, because that was where the Church hoarded its gold. In AD 832, four years after all of England submitted to King Ecgberht of Wessex, these hit-and-run raids gave way to an organized invasion of Ireland. Though Wessex didn’t suffer those inroads, the Norse presence in Ireland prompted the unhappy Welsh of Cornwall to rise against Ecgberht. They allied with the Northmen against Wessex, intent on securing their independence, but Ecgberht defeated their combined forces and Cornwall was reincorporated into Wessex. Though he was victorious, Ecgberht had a foretaste of what was to come. He’d just unified England, bringing all the other kingdoms and principalities under his way, but his ambitions to consolidate that power were checked by the Norse. Ecgberht’s focus—and that of his successors—had to be on self-defense against the attackers. Nevertheless the Norse incursions prompted a stronger union between the Church and the English people; as John Green notes,

[The] inroads of the Vikings supplied a yet stronger ground of union between the Church and [Ecgberht’s Wessex]. Each suddenly found itself confronted by a common enemy. The foe that threatened ruin to the political organization of England threatened ruin to its religious organization as well. In the attack of the northern peoples, heathendom seemed to fling itself in a last desperate rally on the Christian world. Thor and Odin were arrayed against Christ. Abbey and minster were the special objects of the pirates’ plunder. Priests were slain at the altar, and nuns driven, scared, from their quiet cells. Library and scriptorium, costly manuscript and delicate carving, blazed in the same pitiless fire. It was not the mere kingdom of Ecgberht, it was religion and learning and art whose very existence was at stake. It was a common danger, therefore, that drew Church and State together into a union closer than had been seen before.      (John Green, The Conquest of England)

Ecgberht died and his son Aethelwulf succeeded him as King of Wessex. Aethelwulf faced increasing Norse raids and incursions. Battles were won and lost and noblemen slain. Wessex was given breathing space when the Viking Thorgil, who had made a name for himself in his conquest of Ireland, was slain in an Irish uprising. The Norse hold on Ireland was rendered tenuous, and another group of Northmen set their sights on what Thorgil and his followers had lost. The two groups of Northmen battled it out in Ireland and Aethelwulf bolstered his forces. AD 838 saw an increase in Viking activity on the east coast, and a party of Vikings sacked Canterbury and raided London. Aethelwulf moved his forces across their path and defeated them at the Battle of Aclea sometime around 850. The Welsh, emboldened by the Vikings, rebelled; the West Welsh rose against their Wessex overlords, and the North Welsh against their Mercian masters. A joint Mercian and Wessex force pinned and defeated the North Welsh leader at Anglesey, bringing those Britons back into submission. Aethelwulf wanted to forge an alliance with Frankia, whose kings were facing off against the Northmen as well, and in 856 he married Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald, sealing an alliance between the two kingdoms. The West Saxon nobles, likely fearing that he would sire a son with his Frankish wife and introduce a new class of rulers into England, nominated Aethelwulf’s eldest son, Aethelbald, to replace him as king. When Aethelwulf returned to Wessex, he learned of the coup but, given his old age, decided not to engulf all of Wessex in a family feud turned civil war. He and Aethelbald decided to split the kingdom, and for a time Aethelbald ruled Wessex proper while Aethelwulf ruled in East Anglia.

pillaging and plunder!

Aethelwulf died shortly after the bloodless rending of the kingdom, and Aethelbald ruled a united Wessex for only two more years before following his father to the grave. Aethelbald’s brother took the throne in 860, and Wessex suffered a handful of Viking incursions before he died. The throne then passed to the next surviving son of Aethelwulf, Aethelred, in 866—and it was during Aethelred’s reign that the Vikings stepped up their attacks. Ireland had been plundered dry and Frankia had been ravaged, but except for a few raids here-and-there, England had been left unmolested. The English of Wessex’s island-wide domain had yet to feel the full force of the Northmen, but that changed under the reign of Aethelred. The Northmen fell on Britain not as raiders but as invaders. The Jutland Norse had focused on Frankia; the Norwegians had focused on Ireland; but the Danes put their sights on England. John Green observes, “The petty squadrons which had till now harassed the coast of Britain made way for hosts larger than had fallen on any country in the west; while raids and foray were replaced by the regular campaigns of armies who marched to conquer, and whose aim was to settle on the land they had won.”

The first Dane to attempt the conquering of England would be Ivar the Boneless, supposed son of the infamous Ragnar Lothbruk of Viking lore. In AD 866 Ivar invaded East Anglia before marching up into Northumbria and sacking the town of York. The northern kingdom was steeped in anarchy as the two main houses (Bernicia and Deira) vied for the throne. The two kings joined forces (a true rarity) and marched to relieve York. The Danes retreated into the town’s defenses, the Northumbrians broke into the city, and there the English were slaughtered. The kings of both Bernicia and Deira were slain. Northumbria became a tributary kingdom of the Danes and was thus wrenched from King Aethelred’s control. The Danes put an end to the religious and scholastic life of Northumbria by torching monasteries and abbeys. Ivar now threatened Mercia, and Mercia called on their West Saxon overlords for help. Aethelred threw his armies at the Danes, but the Danes entrenched themselves behind earthworks on the River Trent, near Nottingham, and repelled the Saxons and Mercians. The Danes held out but suffered greatly, so they struck a truce and retired to York to re-gather their strength. In 869 Ivar and his brother Ubba turned on East Anglia, sacking town after town in an attempt to draw the East Anglian forces against them. Their ruse worked: King Eadmund of East Anglia led his troops against the Danish entrenchments, but the East Anglians couldn’t break through and they were whittled down to scraps. Eadmund was captured, bound to a tree, and shot to death with arrows (he was hailed as a martyr and eventually passed into English legend as St. Sebastian). The Danes thus took East Anglia, and with kingdom added to their string of conquests, they turned their eyes upon Mercia. The Mercians cowed before the Danes, fearing they would suffer the same fate as their neighbors, and they made payments for peace and acknowledged Danish supremacy. Thus the Danes had conquered Northumbria and East Anglia by force, and Mercia by diplomacy; King Aethelred in Wessex was left on his own.

West Saxons vs. the Danes

The conquest of Wessex was put in the hands of a Viking named Guthrum. Aethelred’s younger brother Alfred would be tasked with leading Wessex’s forces against him. Guthrum plowed into Wessex and encamped at Reading. Aethelred’s forces attacked them there, but the Battle of Reading was a defeat for the West Saxons. The Danes gave chase, but Aethelred was able to muster enough reinforcements to turn and attack Guthrum face-to-face in the shield wall. Alfred led his forces against Guthrum, expecting Aethelred’s help, but Aethelred refused to join the battle until he’d finished mass; thus Alfred had no choice but to keep Guthrum’s forces at bay, and he led wave after wave against the Danish shield wall. Aethelred eventually joined the attack, and he and his brother pushed the Danes back. The fighting was fiercest around a thorn tree, where Wessex nobles and Danish jarls slugged it out. The Danes, overwhelmed, retreated to their entrenchments at Reading, so that the West Saxons carried the day in the Battle of Ashdown. Now the West Saxons gave chase, but they couldn’t break through the Danish entrenchments at Reading. The West Saxon militia began to trickle away, Guthrum received reinforcements, and so he sallied forth and attacked Aethelred’s weakened force. The West Saxons lost the ensuing Battle of Merton, and Aethelred suffered a mortal injury. He died shortly after Easter in 871, and his brother Alfred took the throne.

Hearing of Aethelred’s death and hoping to capitalize on the resultant political instability, Guthrum marched into Wessex. Alfred had to hurry from his brother’s funeral to meet the invaders. He harried the invaders but couldn’t repel them, and he was forced to strike a truce. He was ashamed of it, and he made vows of alms to holy sites in Rome and to far-off India and prayed for deliverance from his enemies. The Danes thought Alfred was a pushover, not made of the same mettle as his older brother, but they couldn’t have been more wrong.