CHAPTER SIX
“I remembered also that I saw, before it had been all ravaged and burned, how the churches throughout the whole of England stood filled with treasures and books,”
—KING ALFRED
In A.D. 737, St. Boniface, who had been born in Wessex, wrote home from Germany to implore all who were “sprung from the stock and race of the English” to support his missionary work among the Germanic heathens. “Have pity on them,” he wrote of his constituency, “because even they themselves are wont to say: ‘We are of one blood and one bone.’ ”
A close identification with the German homelands informed early Anglo-Saxon sensibilities and accounted for the particular desire of the English Church to convert its heathen kin on the Continent. Bishop Torhthelm of the Mercian town of Leicester, for example, wrote to Boniface to congratulate him for his labors on the behalf of gens nostra—“our race”—while St. Aldhelm, who was related to the king of Wessex, similarly refers to “our stock” and “the Germanic race.” The identification was expressed in numerous ways, as seen, such as the perpetuation of Germanic heroic values expressed in poetry and song, as well as actual deeds, and the determination of Anglo-Saxon kings to trace their genealogies to a Germanic past.
At the same time, once in possession of Britannia, the Germanic barbarians and their descendants showed a remarkable affinity for the cultural legacy of Rome—the Latin language, the literature, the architecture, and the symbols of imperial authority. When the Roman Empire had held sway, the Rhine and the Danube had served to delineate not only territorial boundaries—the extent of Rome’s domain—but also boundaries of civilization. The Germanic tribes north and east of these great defining rivers were officially outer barbarians—even if many served in Roman armies.
But while still retaining and honoring a keen awareness of their Germanic origins following their conversion, the Anglo-Saxons adopted what survived of the culture of Rome, now mostly in the caretaking of the church. Within a hundred years of Augustine’s arrival in Kent for missionary duties, Anglo-Saxon monasteries had established renowned scriptoria and were enhancing their own libraries. Bede knew the works of Pliny, and Alcuin the works of Virgil. Anglo-Saxon pilgrims to Rome encountered the most striking remnants of imperial might, but there were Roman ruins to contemplate in their own land as well: St. Cuthbert, according to an anonymous biographer, was in 685 shown the walls of the town of Carlisle, “formerly built in a wonderful manner by the Romans.” Anglo-Saxon rulers seeking to convey their kingly status grasped at Roman symbols and practices. When the Anglo-Saxons began producing their own coinage, for example, they naturally copied the most successful currency the world had known. A penny struck for the East Anglian king Æthelberht at the end of the eighth century bore an image of Romulus and Remus, while coins of King Offa of Mercia depicted the king robed and crowned with a diadem in imperial style.
Anglo-Saxon culture, then, was a fusion of old Germanic and Roman—or Romano-British—culture, informed and shaped by Christianity. And while the Anglo-Saxons themselves looked to the inhabitants of their continental homelands with interest and compassion, they were aware that they themselves were no longer Saxons or Angles, Frisians or Jutes, but something other—Mercians and Northumbrians and West Saxons, for example. English identity as such did not yet exist, and it was the appearance of another Nordic-Germanic people on Anglo-Saxon soil that helped sharpen the sense of common identity.
The Vikings: Their name first appears in Old English in the late-seventh-century poem Widsith, as Wicinga cynn, the race of the Vikings. The word is thought to derive from the Vik, the bay area in southeastern Norway, believed to have been an important maritime region. Coming from homelands lying in modern Norway and Denmark, they were sea pirates, raiding coastal and river communities for plunder in their swift, shallow-hulled boats. In A.D. 787, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “came first three ships of the Northmen from the land of robbers.” Landing in Portland, in Dorset, their visit resulted in the death of the local sheriff, who in his innocence greeted “the Danish men,” who presumably went on to carry out a raid. But the Vikings storm into history, so to speak, on June 8, 793, with their sack of the Lindisfarne monastery on the Holy Island.
Initially the Vikings came only for portable plunder; then, perhaps like the Saxons and Angles before them, they realized that land, and with it power, was also for the taking. By the mid-ninth century, they were not only sacking, but also occupying and controlling whole regions of Britain. In 867, they put the Northumbrian city of York to the torch and its king, Aelle, to their “blood eagle” ordeal, ripping out his ribs and lungs as a living sacrifice to Odin.
“I remembered also that I saw, before it had been all ravaged and burned, how the churches throughout the whole of England stood filled with treasures and books,” recalled King Alfred, writing in the late ninth century. In 870, after taking Northumbria, the Viking army “rode over Mercia into East Anglia,” according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. That winter, King Edmund met them, “but the Danes gained the victory and slew the king; whereupon they overran all the land, and destroyed all the monasteries to which they came.” The following year, the army rode into Wessex, now the only kingdom they had not taken, where they were confronted by King Aethelred and his younger brother, Alfred. After several inconclusive campaigns that year, which also saw the death of Aethelred, Alfred, at the age of 22, became king of Wessex.
Over the ensuing seven years, Alfred and his Wessex army fought the Vikings in a relentless series of intensifying, but still inconclusive, battles. At last, in spring 878, Alfred won a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington, in Wiltshire. In war, the young king had proved himself to be a skilled and determined warrior, and in victory he was to prove a statesman. In a move that was at once strategically brilliant and desperately risky, Alfred made a pact with Guthrum, the Viking king. Three weeks later, according to theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, “King Guthrum, attended by some thirty of the worthiest men that were in the army, came to [Alfred] at Aller, which is near Athelney and there the king became his sponsor in baptism.”
With the baptism of the Viking king, Alfred had won a moral as well as martial victory. Under Guthrum, the Vikings left Wessex and eventually settled in East Anglia, where they lived more or less peacefully. The Danelaw was established—a huge swath of Britain, encompassing Northumbria, East Anglia, and part of Mercia, which was mutually recognized as being under Danish law. Still, sporadic raids continued, with new ships arriving from Denmark, and Anglo-Saxon England was never again wholly free of the Viking menace. The Anglo-Danish population, like that of the Romano-Britons and the British Anglo-Saxons before them, would leave their distinctive mark on the evolving nation. This is seen, for example, in the concentration of place-names ending in -by, meaning “village”—Wetherby, Grimsby, Crosby—in the Danish territories known as the Five Boroughs, or the fortified towns of Lincoln, Stamford, Derby, Leicester, and Nottingham.
At the time of the coming of the Vikings, England had been divided into its several unequal kingdoms, including Northumbria, or the land north of the River Humber; Mercia in the Midlands; East Anglia, or the land of the Angles, to the east; and the West Saxon lands, or Wessex. Each kingdom had been formed by the consolidation of smaller tribes, chiefdoms, and even other kingdoms, acquired sometimes through alliances but mostly by battle. There had been powerful, wide-ruling kings before Alfred; Offa of Mercia, for example, had ruled all land south of the Humber and had termed himself Rex Anglorum—King of the Angles. But they remained more or less local figures, with their self-identification and outlooks rooted in their particular kingdoms. In this respect they represented particularly successful examples of the traditional Germanic lord.
But now, following his historic victory at Edington, Alfred was the first to warrant the title “King of England.” In A.D. 887, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records, “the whole English nation turned to him, except that part of it which was held captive by the Danes.” Here, a note of caution must be sounded regarding that uniquely valuable, much-relied-upon document, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle itself, the earlier parts of which were put together from a number of lost sources around 892, in Wessex—compiled, in other words, during Alfred’s reign. Consequently, we know a great deal more about Wessex and Alfred the Great than of any other kingdom or king, and the representation that the eyes of a grateful and now unified nation turned instinctively toward the king of Wessex must be taken at something less than face value. This said, the fact remains that Alfred’s victories against a foreign foe had implications for people beyond his own now very powerful kingdom. The Viking threat had thrown into disarray the old assemblage of independent kingdoms and, at the least, enforced a broad awareness that the Angel Cynn—or English people of Angle land, or England—were collectively vulnerable to overseas invasion, and in this awareness can be seen a seed of national identity.
The same year in which Alfred was hailed as king of England also saw, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, his fortification of the city of London. London was not only the largest and most important city in all of England, but also the principal town of Mercia, and Alfred’s refurbishment of the city should be seen as an expression of the authority of Wessex over an old rival, as well as a remarkable public work. The grid of streets he lay out within the restored city walls would endure for nearly eight centuries, or until the Great Fire of London in 1666, while its influence has endured to the present day.
The restoration of London was only part of a grand and farsighted plan that extended to the defense of Wessex, now the base of England’s authority and power. Alfred strategically established a network of burhs, or fortified towns and settlements, throughout the length and breadth of southern England. No inhabited settlement was more than one day’s march, or 20 miles, from the safety of these strongholds. An estimated 27,000 laborers were conscripted for the execution of this audacious plan, which required thousands of tons of paving flint and miles of walls, ditches, and palisades, while some rivers—which had provided the Vikings with such ready access—were barred with defensive stations on either bank. Excavations have revealed the careful town planning that went into the construction of the burhs and have shown that they were not intended merely as safe havens where refugees could huddle in times of danger, but also as places to be inhabited and settled and developed. In later times, many would become centers of trade and royal mints—important elements of the infrastructure of wide governance.
According to the traditional, romantic story line, England was forged from Alfred’s victories over the Vikings. In fact, both during Alfred’s reign and for some time afterward, fully half of England was officially in Danish hands. The creation of unified England is more properly credited to Alfred’s grandson, Æthelstan, whose serial victories, from Scotland in the north to Wales in the west to Cornwall in the south culminated in his being recognized, in 926, as not only Rex Anglorum but also emperor of the world of Britain. This seemingly definitive landmark in England’s history was in turn overtaken and overturned by subsequent events, which saw more wars waged between both old and new factions. Even to skim the entries of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is to conjure a chronic state of turbulence: “This year King Æthelstan and Edmund his brother led a force to Brunanburh,” states the chronicle for the year 937, nearly a decade after the ratification of an agreement between Æthelstan and the other kings of the island; “and there fought against Olaf; and, Christ helping, had the victory: and they there slew five kings and seven earls.” Nor were the Viking depredations of Alfred’s late ninth century by any means the last England was to see of Danish and other Scandinavian invaders. For nearly two decades in the early 11th century, Cnut, a prince and later king of Denmark, was king of all England.
The official end of the Anglo-Saxon era can be dated with exactness to Saturday, October 14, 1066. This was the day on which William, Duke of Normandy, having sailed across the English Channel with an army of Norman and mercenary forces, confronted the English army under Harold Godwinson, king of England. Until a generation before the invasion, Normandy had been a Viking province, and its leaders the Duces Northmannorum—Leaders of the Northmen. The Viking Northmen, however, had embraced French culture with what seems to have been great facility and ardor, and by the time of the invasion they were French in all but genealogy. Linked to the English royal family through Emma, his great aunt, William saw the invasion of 1066 as his rightful claim—backed by the pope—to the throne of England.
In autumn 1066, King Harold was in York, and he had just celebrated a hard-fought victory over an invading Norwegian army when he received word of William’s invasion. Rushing south, Harold, and possibly as little as a third of his army, met William and the Normans near Hastings, in Sussex. The Battle of Hastings commenced in the morning and concluded at dusk, with William and the Normans victorious and King Harold hacked brutally to death.
“William the earl landed at Hastings, on St. Michael’s-day: and Harold came from the north, and fought against him, before all his army had come up: and there he fell, and his two brothers, Girth and Leofwin; and William subdued this land. And he came to Westminster, and Archbishop Aldred consecrated him king.” Thus the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle succinctly records the passing of England from Anglo-Saxon into Norman hands.
Today, throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom, visible relics of England’s remarkable hybrid history survive. In the county of Staffordshire, for example, one can still see fragments of the vanished, once-powerful kingdom of Mercia. Odds and ends of Anglo-Saxon life, such as traces of the town’s defenses and a water mill, have been found in Tamworth, the capital of Mercia, where a statue stands to LadyAethelflaed, King Alfred’s daughter, who ruled Mercia in the early tenth century before it was incorporated into a united kingdom of England. Repairs made to the nave of the medieval cathedral of Lichfield, once the Mercian episcopal see, recently brought to light a carved angel from Offa’s ninth century. In Repton, where the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the burial of the murdered King Æthelbald of Mercia in 757, the vaulted crypt of St. Wystan’s Church dates to the ninth century. The modern A5 roadway now follows the route of Watling Street, the Roman road that once took the unknown travelers and their sack of gold to wherever they were traveling. The remote heathland where the travelers buried the gold today supports vegetables, horses, and cattle. The Staffordshire Hoard itself can be seen in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and the Stoke-on-Trent Potteries Museum—both established in what was Mercian territory.
An elegy delivered for the hero Beowulf makes a fitting tribute to the robust, bloody, and epochal Anglo-Saxon age: “So it is goodbye now to all you know and love / on your home ground,” says Wiglaf, faithful companion who stood by the aged Beowulf until his death; “the open-handedness, / the giving of war swords. Every one of you / with freeholds of land, our whole nation,/will be dispossessed.”
THE VIKINGS
Agrowing population in Scandinavia, pressures from the Carolingian Empire, and the vulnerability of areas overseas are all likely to have played a part in precipitating the Viking raids of the eighth century. Scandinavian longships and expert seamanship made possible open-sea crossings, allowing Vikings to reach North America and to sail into the Mediterranean. One group founded a kingdom on the Volga, which was named after them—the Rus (sia).
The earliest raids, such as the attack on Lindisfarne in 793, were small-scale, despite the outrage they caused. Later Viking armies led by kings campaigned and wintered in England, bent on conquest, not loot. Despite their rapacious reputation, the Vikings were heavily involved in trade: Silk has been found at Lincoln and York, and Arab silver coins in England show Viking links with Baghdad and the Muslim world. In the late ninth century, King Alfred halted the conquest of England, thus forcing the Vikings to settle for only half the country, thereafter known as the Danelaw. In the 11th century, Cnut conquered the whole of England, which then formed part of his transient Danish empire.
In 1066 England was conquered by the Normans, another Viking people, who had adopted French as their language. The Viking legacy in England included many common words from Danish, as well as place-names ending in -by and -thorpe that show where Vikings settled. Finds of small metal objects by metal-detector hobbyists like Terry Herbert, discoverer of the Staffordshire Hoard, are making important contributions to our knowledge of the Vikings. It was once thought that, with the exception of some carved stones, no archaeological evidence existed for them in England. But now large numbers of these metal objects decorated in Viking style, such as brooches and strap fittings, present another picture. Most of these finds are of poor quality, indicating that ordinary Scandinavians moved to England, not just the aristocratic leadership. 
THE ANGLO-SAXON LEGACY
The Anglo-Saxon–dominated chapter of Britain’s history lasted for over 650 years—from A.D. 410, when Rome withdrew, until the Norman Conquest in 1066. After this long history, what aspects of the Britain we know can be traced back to the Angles and Saxons?
The English language would appear to be the greatest lasting contribution, but English has changed substantially since the Anglo-Saxon (also called Old English) of the Dark Ages. Under the Vikings it incorporated bits of Old Norse and then changed even more with Norman French. However, modern English is distinctly rooted in Old English. It is notable that all of the main farmyard animals—cow, sheep, and pig—have English names, but the words for their meat—beef, mutton, and pork—are all French, showing who was rearing livestock and who was getting to eat it. Old English literature gives us some of the earliest records of English society, through such classics as Beowulf; the Lindisfarne Gospels; poems, law codes, wills, and charters; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
English religious rankings and church districts arose during the earliest years of English Christianity. The Archbishoprics of Canterbury and York predate the English monarchy by hundreds of years. The redistricting of dioceses by Theodore of Tarsus in the 670s and 680s laid the foundations for the Church of England.
The strongest and longest-lasting Anglo-Saxon legacy, however, lies in government institutions, which the Normans left intact. The British Parliament originated in two Anglo-Saxon traditions: the witan, a king’s advisory council, which evolved into the House of Lords; and the moots—regular shire, or county, meetings—which inspired the House of Commons. The Anglo-Saxons also established regional governments in the shires, further divided into hundreds and tithings. Courts were held regularly, with oath-givers, like juries, that helped establish guilt or innocence. These were the foundations of English Common Law that later spread around the world with the British Empire.
THE DOMESDAY BOOK
Unique in Europe, the Domesday Survey was ordered by William the Conqueror at Christmas 1085 and completed with amazing efficiency the following year. Although the commissioners appear to have counted everything, this is deceptive: William was interested only in learning who owned what land, how much revenue it generated each year, and how much wealth he could grab for himself. The document looks simple and straightforward; it is written in abbreviated Latin, and each entry follows a set formula. But the survey is in fact highly complex and ambiguous. In addition to figures for 1086, it also quotes figures for 1066. These indicate a fall in revenue in the intervening years, with large areas described as “waste,” some of which was likely due to the trauma of the Norman Conquest. Certainly the names of the landowners show that changes had taken place. By 1086 very few of the large landowners were Anglo-Saxon; they had been replaced by Normans who had come across with William. Although land was the main asset recorded, the commissioners looked at everything of economic interest: woodland, meadow, grazing land (for hogs), plow teams (of eight oxen each, without which the land was valueless), mills, churches, fisheries, and ironworks—all were counted. Then there were the people. The Domesday Survey was not a census—it counted only heads of households—but we can get an idea of their status, since villeins (peasants), sokemen (freeholders), and servi (slaves) were all mentioned.
William found that the annual value of England in 1086 was about £73,000, not all of which would have been in coins; much would have been in goods. The only coin in use at the time was the silver penny, and, while it is difficult to make comparison, it was probably equivalent to about nine dollars. William took 15 percent of the national income for himself—twice as much as his predecessor.