Simon Keynes
The accompanying series of maps, which will be found at intervals in this chapter, represents an attempt to visualize a framework within which we may begin to understand the unfolding course of events during a long and complex reign, and in this way to maintain a sense of perspective.1 The purpose of any such exercise is to make it easier to follow the events on the ground (for example, when reading the annals in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle); and to be reminded at the same time where significant law codes, coin-types, charters, and other forms of evidence belong in the story as it unfolds. The maps, originally devised as teaching-aids, are unashamedly old-fashioned in appearance; needless to say, much more could be done, by way of historical mapping, with the aid of modern technology.
Map 4.1 (980s), covers a period from Æthelred’s accession in 978 (aged about twelve) to the end of the 980s, by which time he would have been approaching his mid-twenties. It was a difficult period, marred by continuing resentment in certain quarters of the impact of the monastic reform movement, accompanied by abuse of church privileges. The death of Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, in 984, was regarded as a point when the young king lost his way, leading to further abuses. The period also saw the resumption of Viking raids along the coasts, which soon came to be regarded as a sign of God’s anger with the English people for their sins.
Map 4.1: Viking raids in the 980s.
Maps 4.2a (991–994), 4.2b (997–1000), and 4.2c (1001–1005), in combination, cover a complex but critical period of Viking activity in England. It began in the summer of 991, with the arrival of a large force led by Óláfr Tryggvason, accompanied apparently by Sveinn Forkbeard. The death of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth at the Battle of Maldon (August 10, 991) followed soon afterwards. It would appear that a substantial part of the Viking force remained at large in the kingdom for several years thereafter, as raiders, settlers, or mercenaries, and that it was not until 1005 that those who remained active as raiders were finally driven away, not so much by military might as by a serious famine. The period as a whole, however, was significant for many other reasons. Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury (990–994), and his successor Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury (995–1005), seem to have taken forward a program of reform and renewal which found expression in various ways. The business of the kingdom was conducted, and was seen to be conducted, at assemblies convened on perhaps a grander scale than before, leading directly or indirectly to significant activity in various aspects of royal government, religious learning, and literature in Latin and in the vernacular. The presence and therefore the reality of the threat posed by the Viking forces, attended also by heightened concern about the apocalypse, led to intense debate in high circles about the measures required in response, and was accompanied, unsurprisingly, by differences of opinion and the emergence of faction. When the Viking force left England in 1005, two of the king’s closest associates – Æthelmær (in effect, the head of the royal household), and Ordulf (the king’s uncle) – chose to withdraw from life at court, and to “retire” to the monasteries they had founded at Eynsham (Oxfordshire) and at Tavistock (Devon). As it happened, Archbishop Ælfric died at about the same time (November 16, 1005), much lamented by those who knew what he had contributed while in office.
Map 4.2a: The Viking army in England 991–994.
Map 4.2b: The Viking army in England 997–1000.
Map 4.2c: The Viking army in England 1001–1005.
Map 4.3 (1006–1007), in one part, and Maps 4.4a (1009–1010), 4.4b (1010), and4.4c (1010–1012), in combination, cover two major Viking invasions which must have had a devastating impact on Æthelred’s kingdom. Map 4.3 begins with a “domestic” upheaval in circles high enough to be mentioned in the Chronicle (with an echo in the Welsh annals), perhaps an expression of faction in high places (in the aftermath of the developments towards the end of 1005). The concentration of such events has the look of a “palace revolution” – one which culminated, perhaps, in 1007 with the appointment of Eadric Streona as ealdorman of the Mercians, finding further expression a few years later in Eadric’s promotion to the primacy over all of the ealdormen. In the summer of 1006 a “great fleet” came to Sandwich, and set about its business, led conceivably by the Tostig who is named on a Swedish runestone of this period as a Viking leader active in England before Thorkell the Tall (in 1009). The Vikings received a large payment of gafol, and apparently stayed over the winter of 1006–1007 in their “sanctuary” on the Isle of Wight, counting their “Helmet” pennies; but one does not know whether they stayed there as a mercenary force, or settled elsewhere, or returned to their homelands. Map 4.4a (1009–1010) incorporates, top left, two boxes (not to be overlooked) which refer to the significant measures taken by the king and his counselors in 1008, led now by Ælfheah, archbishop of Canterbury (1006–1012), and by Wulfstan, archbishop of York (1002–1023). The emphasis, however, is on the arrival of Thorkell’s army at Sandwich in August 1009, which precipitated at first a “local” peace in Kent, and soon afterwards the remarkable program of prayer devised at an assembly at Bath in the late summer of 1009, associated with the Agnus Dei coinage and the desperate appeal for God’s help. (It was arguably in 1009, rather than 1014 (as stated on the map), that Archbishop Wulfstan first preached his famous Sermo ad Anglos, recycling it thereafter on various occasions.2) The further movements of Thorkell’s army are tracked in Map 4.4b (1010) and Map 4.4c (1011–1012), including the chronicler’s detailed account of the shires which had been devastated by the Danes, and by the martyrdom of Archbishop Ælfheah at Greenwich on April 19, 1012, followed by his burial in St. Paul’s. The two chrismons reproduced on Map 4.4c appear as pictorial invocations on diplomas of King Æthelred dated 1011 and 1012, when Thorkell’s army was at large in Æthelred’s kingdom. They encourage a modern mind to be moved by the desperate appeal for the divine assistance needed to bring the Viking attacks to a close.
Map 4.3: The Viking raid of 1006–1007.
Map 4.4a: Thorkell’s army in England 1009–1010.
Map 4.4b: Thorkell’s army in England 1010.
Map 4.4c: Thorkell’s army in England 1011–1012.
Maps 4.5 (1013–1014), 4.6 (1014–1015), 4.7 (1015–1016) and 4.8 (1016) cover the fast-moving events and crowded annals of the closing years of Æthelred’s reign, and the short reign of his son Edmund Ironside. As before, in 1006 and 1009, the chosen point of arrival for Sveinn’s fleet, in 1013, was Sandwich in Kent, which would be used again by Cnut in 1015. It is obvious why; but it seems also to unite them all in the same enterprise. One should also notice how Sveinn, in 1013, turned north from Kent to invade the kingdom from his base at Gainsborough on the Trent (Map 4.5), and how Cnut, in 1015, headed west along the south coast to Southampton, and thus conducted a rather different campaign (Map 4.7) There is no substitute, however, for following the movements closely, on the ground, as described at considerable length in the annals for 1013–1016, observing at the same time how the sustained external pressure was only part of the problem for the English. After Sveinn’s death, as king of the English, in February 1014, the English had turned back to King Æthelred, who had taken refuge in Normandy; he soon returned to England, having come to a mutual understanding with his people (Map 4.6). Æthelred’s eldest son Æthelstan became the natural successor; but when Æthelstan died unexpectedly, on June 25, 1014, conflicting political interests were exposed as Edmund Ironside, and others, sought to secure their own interests, thereby exposing the weaknesses of the kingdom itself (Map 4.7). The final map of the series represents the vigorous campaign waged by Edmund Ironside, as king, against Cnut in 1016; the five occasions when Edmund is said by the chronicler to have fought “with all the English nation” against the Danes stands in sharp and perhaps deliberate contrast with earlier events (Map 4.8). A colored drawing depicting Edmund’s single mounted combat with Cnut, supposed to have taken place at Olney or Alney, near Deerhurst, in Gloucestershire, may be found in Matthew Paris’s Chronica Maiora at the foot of folio 80 verso in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 26.3
Map 4.5: Swein Forkbeard’s invasion 1013–1014.
Map 4.6: England 1014–1015: Intermission.
Map 4.7: Cnut’s invasion 1015–1016.
Map 4.8: Edmund Ironside and Cnut 1016.
Notes
1
The example was set by Hill, in Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, 63–71. The maps form part of a series extending from the seventh century to the eleventh, developed over several years for the purposes of university teaching, and were drawn on my behalf by the late Reginald Piggott, of whom there is an account online (Wikipedia); see also Keynes, “Mapping the Anglo-Saxon Past,” 167. The maps for Æthelred’s reign were deployed as a handout at the London conference “The Siege of London” in 2016 (four maps to each of three pages of an A4 handout). I am grateful to James Kirwan, Digitisation Services Manager, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, for his invaluable help in separating them into twelve. I am also indebted to Alison Finlay and Richard North for giving me the opportunity to make them more widely available.
2
For discussion of the date, see Wilcox, “Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos,” 376–83; and Keynes, “An Abbot, an Archbishop, and the Viking Raids,” 203–13.
3
https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/rf352tc5448.