The Norse Sagas start in legend and end in history, with diversions into tales of adventure and chivalry throughout. But the Saga of Ragnar Loðbrók neatly straddles the transition from the purely legendary to the definitely historical: it begins by anchoring the future wife of Ragnar in the greatest of Germanic/Norse legend cycles, the story of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer and Brynhild (ignoring the difficulty of Sigurd and Brynhild belonging to a time four centuries earlier), and ends with the sons of Ragnar, men such as Ivar the Boneless and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, who are undoubtedly historical characters.
Whether Ragnar himself was a historical character remains an open question. While a group of Viking war chiefs were known as sons of Loðbrók, this could refer to a tribal founder rather than their actual paternal father. But if Ragnar was real, then he probably first appears in the historical record in 845, when a Viking chieftain named ‘Reginheri’ in Frankish sources led 120 longships up the River Seine to attack Paris. According to the French chroniclers, this Ragnar succumbed to the plague that devastated the Vikings besieging Paris.
But ‘Ragnar’ would prove as difficult to kill as a Hollywood villain. He pops up again in the following decades, raiding Scotland and the Isles, settling in Dublin, attacking Anglesey and, finally, dying in a snake-filled pit in York, England. Totting it all up, Ragnar appears to have died at least five times during his career.
So the suspicion must be that a series of different Viking chieftains who shared similar names had their stories conflated into one semi-legendary character: Ragnar Loðbrók. Once this process began, the gravitational pull of a good hero with name recognition would ensure that other tales would be ascribed to him, in the same way that Arthur, at most a war leader of the Britons against the invading Anglo-Saxons, became the exemplar of medieval chivalry and the ideal of kingship for the very people who had defeated his forebears.
With the modern lionization of Vikings, it was only a matter of time before Ragnar Loðbrók would be reimagined for the screen. Vikings makes for great television but, even more than the sagas, it conflates different times and characters, making the historical Rollo, the first ruler of Normandy, Ragnar’s brother and contemporary when in reality Ragnar came two generations before Rollo. But such tale making is in keeping with the writers of the sagas: they would have enjoyed Vikings as much as we do.
It was a brilliant stroke, an attack, through the dark and chill of a winter’s night, that won a kingdom. Guthrum led his Viking war band south, riding hard from his base in Gloucester, heading for the royal estate at Chippenham. They were going to kill a king.
Traitors At Home
Riding fast, the Viking war band made its way through the winter locked countryside. Although they rode through Wiltshire, land owing fealty to Alfred, king of Wessex, no hands or swords were raised against them. Their lord, Guthrum, had made his preparations well. In the months before their winter ride, Guthrum had made surreptitious contact with the ealdorman of Wiltshire, one Wulfhere. Like many of the great men of Wessex, Wulfhere had lost faith in his young king, Alfred. The agents Wulfhere had received from Guthrum during the autumn of 877 had whispered promises to him, promises of preferment, possibly even of a throne. For the Great Heathen Army that had conquered the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain over the last 12 years had in Mercia and Northumbria installed client kings rather than ruling directly. For Wulfhere, maybe the prospect of a throne, even one held at the behest of Guthrum, might have seemed more attractive than more years bolstering Alfred’s uncertain regime. Whatever the blandishments or threats uttered by Guthrum’s agents, they worked. On that night in early January, the men that Wulfhere had set on the border between Anglo-Saxon Wessex and Danish-controlled Mercia stood aside as the king of the Danes rode past them.
To Catch a King
For Guthrum, this was the final push towards making himself the pre-eminent king in Britain. Already king of East Anglia, and with a puppet installed on the throne of Mercia beholden to his support, only the kingdom of the West Saxons held out against him. This winter attack was Guthrum’s third attempt to crack the Wessex nut and, as with his other attacks, he carried it out with his customary secrecy and speed. The aim was nothing less than to kill the king, celebrating the last days of the long Christmas feast at his royal estate in Chippenham. After a week or more of feasting, Guthrum hoped to find Alfred and his retainers bloated with food and sodden with drink: ready pickled for the killing.
But word reached Alfred just in time. Perhaps one of Wulfhere’s men, gagging at the silence enjoined on him by his ealdorman, rode south ahead of the Danes, bringing warning to Alfred and his family. As the realisation sank in, Alfred was faced with a sudden, life-or-death choice. Stay, and make a stand with the men of his household, or run. Part of Guthrum’s appeal to the disaffected magnates of Wessex was that their young king was unable to protect them. By running, Alfred would be making that claim real: he was unable even to protect his own family. But staying meant a fight against unequal odds with Guthrum’s picked assassination squad.
King on the Run
Alfred ran. With his family and the men of his household he fled, heading west, towards the marshes of Somerset. Arriving at the all but deserted hall, Guthrum pulled the news of the direction of the king’s flight from a left behind servant. And, hearing the news that Alfred had fled to the west, Guthrum smiled. He had planned for this. If the young king escaped the net in Chippenham, Guthrum had cast another to catch Alfred as he tried to escape. Another Viking army, led by Ubba, the last survivor of the sons of the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok, was even now sailing down the Bristol Channel to make landfall in north Devon. Alfred was about to be caught between two armies. The hard Wessex nut was shortly to be cracked.
But this was when Guthrum’s carefully worked out strategy started to unravel. Despite Ubba’s fearsome reputation and the fact that he was carrying the fabled raven banner of the sons of Lothbrok, the army he led was defeated and Ubba himself was killed by a surprise attack from the army of Odda, the loyalist ealdorman of Devon. As for Guthrum, finding himself now tied down having to defend fixed positions as Alfred launched a guerrilla war against him from his stronghold in the Somerset levels, the Viking leader suddenly realised the difficulty of fighting a war against an enemy that could choose where and when to fight. Alfred was starting to out Viking the Viking.
The Final Battle
So it came as a considerable relief to Guthrum to learn, early in May of 878, that Alfred had emerged from the marshes and was assembling an army at Egbert’s Stone east of Selwood Forest. Guthrum had fortified Alfred’s base at Chippenham during the last few months as he had tried to bring Wessex definitively under his control. Now, with Alfred coming out into the open, the matter was there for the settling.
For Guthrum, the news must have brought more relief than trepidation. His men were professional soldiers and now, finally, they would have a chance to come to grips with the phantom that had plagued them these past months. Faced with his own strategic choice – whether to remain behind his defences at Chippenham or to march out to meet Alfred in battle – Guthrum did not hesitate. He marched. With the advantage of mobility – most of his forces had horses – he called in all the patrols that could reach him in time and set out, south from Chippenham. Alfred had come out of the marshes, but Guthrum would choose the ground of their final meeting.
Showdown
With his scouts reporting that Alfred was marching towards Chippenham, Guthrum reacted immediately. Leaving a small garrison in his base, Guthrum marched the Great Army south to intercept the army of Wessex. He took up position on Bratton Castle, an Iron-Age hillfort on the western edge of Salisbury Plain. The old hillfort, long abandoned but with its earth banks still impressive today, rose 740 feet (225 metres) above the farmlands running north towards Chippenham (the Westbury White Horse, a chalk figure cut into the grass, lies on the side of the hill, documented from 1742). From its vantage point, Guthrum could keep watch for miles around for Alfred’s army. Without a water source, it was no place for a main camp, but it was ideal for reconaissance, and provided the high ground should Alfred be willing to close on Guthrum.
As Alfred marched north his scouts brought back their reports: Guthrum had left Chippenham and taken up position on the fort of the old people. Soon, the king could see for himself the Great Heathen Army, their spear points glinting as they looked down from Bratton Castle. Although Alfred had attacked up hill at the Battle of Ashdown, here it was out of the question; the slopes were too steep. But rather than occupying the summit of a hill, Bratton Castle lies on a long ridge. Alfred could lead his men up on to the ridge and then advance on Guthrum. But, shading his eyes to take in the enemy position, Alfred must have grudgingly acknowledged Guthrum’s field skill: by positioning himself on the narrow ridge, the Viking leader had ensured that his shieldwall could not be outflanked. Thus, at one stroke, Guthrum had neutralised Alfred’s advantage in manpower. The Great Army had been whittled away in the previous months.
Choosing the Ground
However, with the narrow neck of land atop the ridge, and the careful use of the ditches marking out the hillfort, Guthrum could funnel Alfred’s shieldwall tight, so it could not come around to outflank him. As Alfred led his army on the long march up hill, the king would have been all too aware that the battle he was about to enter was going to be a brutal and bloody shoving match.
As the two kings dressed their lines, high above the Wiltshire Plain, they both knew this was the crucial battle. The battle-hardened warriors of the Great Heathen Army knew what they were about: they had had years of virtually unbroken conquest and, while their confidence may have been knocked by the unexpected defeat and death of Ubba, there was no reason for them to expect the fate weavers had started sewing a different pattern. The core of Alfred’s army was made up of his personal retainers, man for man, as good troops as the warriors of the Great Army. But the majority of Alfred’s army were not trained soldiers, but farmers and artisans, free men who owed service to their lord, and who fought for their families and their land. Such men marched to battle with whatever weapons they had to hand. Among these men there would be barely an item of armour, and precious few, if any, swords.
Preparing the battle space
The Northmen waited, in solid line, their painted shields interlocked, spears prickling out through the wall like a porcupine. As the army of Wessex approached, the commanders detailed to each flank pushing the men on the inside tighter to stop the shieldwall spreading, the men drummed on the rims of their shields. Boasts, insults, threats rang out as the lines closed and it became clear, to each man in the converging shieldwalls, whom he would face in the enemy line. This was war at its most up close and personal.
In these battles there was none of the clouds of gunpowder smoke that would obscure later battlefields – everything was stark in its clarity. But kings could not take advantage of this clarity by standing back and directing the battle; of necessity, their place was in the centre, in the front rank.
Size does matter
As the battle wore on, sheer fatigue started to play as much a part as battlefield losses. And this is likely where Alfred’s advantage in manpower started to pay off. The sources tell us the battle lasted a long time, long enough for the adrenaline rush of battle to begin to wear off, long enough for even the experienced warriors of the Great Heathen Army to begin to flag against weight of numbers and the sheer, dogged determination of Alfred and his men. Unlike so many other Anglo-Saxon armies before them, they did not break and they did not flee, but, with Alfred safe at the centre of the line and his banner flying, the men of Wessex began to break through the shieldwall of the Great Heathen Army.
When the end came, it was probably quick. The Great Heathen Army broke. The shieldwall cracked open, the exhausted, triumphant, blood driven men of Wessex burst through, cutting men down as they ran, bypassing those who retreated in good order, shields and spears presented outwards, as the lust for spoil and the wonder of still being alive drove them on.
Guthrum, with his ring-given men, the best and toughest of the Great Army, retreated to the tethered horses, and leaping upon them made their getaway. It had all come down to this one battle, the Battle of Edington, and Guthrum had lost.
King of East Anglia
After two weeks’ siege, Guthrum surrendered to Alfred. As Alfred’s God had proven his worth on the battlefield, Guthrum agreed to be baptised, with Alfred standing as godfather, a position that emphasised Alfred’s spiritual and temporal position over Guthrum. The Viking, now bearing the name Æthelstan, withdrew to East Anglia, settling down there reasonably peacefully: there was the odd bit of raiding – what was a Viking who did not go viking? – but no further serious attempt to conquer Wessex. The two kings, Æthelstan née Guthrum and Alfred, also signed a treaty, the text of which survives, that created the Danelaw as a legal entity. The text defined the border between the territories ruled by Alfred and those under Danish law: up on the Thames, and then up on the Lea, and along the Lea unto its source, then straight to Bedford, then up on the Ouse to Watling Street. Guthrum, who had come within a battle victory of taking all of England, lived as king of the Danelaw until he died of natural causes in 890: the man who almost turned England into Daneland.
A passage from Bede’s ‘Thirty Questions on the Book of Kings’ states:
In accordance with the custom of cities, Samaria must have had earth (piled) next to its interior walls and nearly level with them so that the walls would not, for want of a supporting embankment, be destroyed by the repeated blows of a ram.
This suggests to me that Anglo-Saxon fortifications possibly had interior earth banks as Bede certainly never left the country and presumably based his knowledge of defensive fortifications on contemporary practices. But I don’t know of any archaeological findings that confirm or disprove the idea.
This year, 2023, is the 100th anniversary of my parish, Our Lady of Lourdes, in north London. As part of the celebrations the parish priest, Fr David, asked me to edit a commemorative book about the parish and its history. So last week I made an appointment to visit the archives of the Diocese of Westminster, where I was given the box containing the parish archives.
Among the papers I found a copy of a previous commemorative booklet, one that had been produced to mark the 20th anniversary of the parish’s founding. Only, this was in 1943, in the middle of World War II. Among the other items in the booklet was a poem, modelled on Rudyard Kipling’s If, telling what life was like in a north London suburban parish that had seen much bombing due to the main east coast railway line running through the parish. The poem was written by the parish priest, Fr Joseph Sunn, who founded the parish in 1923. It is one of the most vivid portraits of what life was like for the people on the home front that I have ever read and finding it in the archive was an inexpressible delight.
For the first time in 80 years, you can read it too. Below are pictures of the text, and below that my transcription of the poem.
IF (with apologies to Kipling)
Fr Joseph Sunn
If you can keep your head when, all about you, Old London burns, and feel IT’S UP TO YOU And, grasping mask, shield, pipe, pump, tin hat, shovel, Put out your fire – and perhaps your neighbours too. If you can wait, and not be bored by waiting, For the “All Clear” which means some blessed sleep, And rise, when your alarm – an hour later – Says, “Time for work!” (No breakfast, that must keep.) If you can dream, and not make dreams your masters, If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim; Remember pre-war juicy steaks and onions, Eat bread and marge – but pay about the same. If you can meet the nightmare weekend shopping, Hear shopmen call in chorus, “No! No!! No!!! “Bananas, what are they?” “Eggs, perhaps next Friday: If I should hear of one I’ll let you know.” If you can watch the crazy world about you, Not criticise, but grin and keep your wits, They’ll put you in the history books, and call you, “The Sleepy Britishers who beat the Blitz.” If you can travel on the tubes and buses With half a dozen people on your feet, And in the evening queue up for a sausage Before you take the foul thing home to eat; If you can wash up nasty pans and dishes, Then – spurning slippers – put on heavy boots And, taking turnip seeds, fork, spade and shovel, Pull up your favourite rose tree by the roots. If you can force your nerve, and heart, and sinew To do a little more than just your whack. And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the will which says to you, “HIT BACK!” If you can say “I’ve done my bit already, But I’ll do more to help the fighting man; If I can’t drop a bomb, or fire a rifle, By heck, I’ll buy one for the chap who can!” But you HAVE done these things, and will continue To do two jobs each day instead of one (On half the rations too, instead of double), You may be doing three before you’re done! But you have found the all-deciding answer, No one will rule you with a Nazi rod, Three years ago you stood alone, unaided, But in your heart you knew you stood with God. If you can put your faith in Him, your Father, Not ask “Why send this war?” “What have I done?” (Not only sinners suffer on the journey, To weariness and pain He sent His Son.) You on God’s side, and at His side, rebuilding A new world on His pattern, brave and clear, Already in the East the clouds are breaking – Work, when you look again, Dawn may be here!
This is an enlightening, enriching and superbly written account of the shifting waters and treacherous sands that join the River Thames to the North Sea. Lichtenstein works broadly downstream, starting from London and moving eastwards, telling the extraordinarily varied stories of the lives that intersected and intersect with the river. The river was what made London, bringing the world to the city, but what is fascinating is how much life went on in and around the river, from dredgers and fishermen, to a self-declared autonomous republic on an old sea fort in the estuary.
The sea fort, calling itself the Principality of Sealand, has been fought over, invaded and defended in its time. The river itself flows with tales, from drowned boats laden with unexploded munitions to the hard lives of the fishermen, and Lichtenstein does a superb job of telling them.
She also has a great deal of time for the various artists who seek to incorporate the river into their work – sometimes with near fatal results. Taking a photographer with her to record the sailing of an old yacht, the photographer faffs around for so long trying to set up his camera that the boat crashes. In the crash, Lichtenstein is quite badly injured. Her commitment to river side artists shows a notable lessening thereafter!
For anyone interested in the river and how the people living alongside it have used, abused, loved and hated it, this is a wonderful book.
William, Duke of Normandy, knew Edward, future king of England, as a boy. This is because, when William was born, Edward was living in exile with his mother’s relatives in Normandy. Cnut had conquered England and Edward had fled with his mother, Emma, He had no expectation of ever becoming king. But when, via a series of unexpected marriages and early deaths, Edward came to the throne in 1042, William was 14 and quite old enough to be engaged by the politics that brought Edward the crown.
As king of England, Edward retained close links with the court where he had grown up. As king, Edward had had to engage with the powerful Earl Godwin and his family, marrying Godwin’s daughter, Edith, and raising Godwin’s son Harold to an earldom. But Edward apparently chafed at this dependence and in 1051 Edward moved against the family, forcing Godwin and his sons into exile and sending Edith to a convent. However, Godwin and his sons returned the following year with an army and, to prevent civil war, Edward had to reinstate them and take Edith back as his wife and queen.
However, during the year when Edward was free of the Godwins, one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded a visit from across the Channel. Around October or November of 1051, William with his retinue visited Edward. Remembering his debt to the Norman court and his dislike of Earl Godwin and his family, it’s possible that Edward promised the throne to William should he remain childless.
William returned to Normandy convinced that, so long as Edward and Edith did not unexpectedly produce an heir, then he would be king of England.
Of course, what William did not know was that Edward did not have the authority to promise the crown to William. There were no fixed laws of succession but rather a series of traditions, starting with blood relation to the previous king but also involving the promise of the previous king and the assent of the English magnates.
The situation was slowly being set for the disaster that was to befall the English nobility.
You know all those stories and memes about Christmas actually being a pagan feast that the early Church appropriated? Christmas trees, yule and yule logs, even the actual day of the celebration? Turns out that the myth of the Christian origin of Christmas is as much a myth as its detractors claim the feast is itself.
Nick Page does an excellent job of chasing the historical roots of Christmas down to their often obscure origins. In particular, he digs down into the origin of the feast in the Christian calendar and the roughly contemporary start of the pagan feast that the Church was supposed to have muscled in upon.
Coming closer in time, it’s fascinating to learn how many apparently ancient Christmas customs are actually relatively recent, with most of them starting in the 18th and, particularly, 19th centuries. The book’s subtitle – Tradition, Truth and Total Baubles – shows Page’s love of jokes and puns. For this reader, there were slightly too many but that’s down to taste. All in all, the book is an excellent and readable account of how we have come to have the Christmas that we celebrate today.
The Battle of Hastings brought the world of the old Anglo-Saxon nobility to a bloody end. Twenty years after the battle, when the Domesday Book, William’s inventory of the country was completed, Englishmen owned just five per cent of the country. William of Malmesbury (c.1095 – c.1043), an Anglo-Norman monk and chronicler, wrote that “England has become the dwelling place of foreigners and a playground for lords of alien blood. No Englishman today is an earl, a bishop or an abbot.”
The Anglo-Saxon nobles who survived the invasion and William’s brutal supression of the rebellions of the next decade went abroad. Exiled Englishmen fetched up all over the old North Sea world. But some went further, all the way to Byzantium. With so many battle-trained exiles looking for employment, the Emperor’s Varangian Guard, which had previously been manned by Scandinavians, became a largely English unit.
They left behind an England where it seemed that the language might change as completely as land ownership. The new Norman kings spoke French and Latin and made little attempt to learn the language of their subjects. However, Henry I, the third in the line of Norman kings, began a revival in English and English customs that might have led to early reconciliation if it was not for his lack of a male heir. Henry designated his daughter, Matilda, as ruler but Stephen, William’s grandson, wanted the crown for himself. The ensuing 20-year civil war caused such destruction that it was called the Anarchy and, the Chronicle lamented, “Christ and his saints slept.”
But at the more local level, contacts between the 8,000-odd Norman settlers and the native English slowly improved. Intermarriage had become common by the early 12th century. While there were no English abbots, Englishmen served as priors in monasteries and monks worked to improve relations between the two peoples. And when the Anarchy ended and Henry II ascended the throne at the end of 1154, things had changed. A century after Hastings, English had become again the national language, although the Old English names were largely lost. The English were now a race of Roberts and Johns and Williams, rather than Æthelwins and Œthelwalds and Oswalds.
By 1170, Richard fitz Nigel could write, “In the present day, the races have become so fused that it can scarcely be discerned who is English and who is Norman.” The conquerors had, in the end, been assimilated.