BookLog: Battle of Maldon I
The Battle of Maldon was fought in 980. Though the battle may have been seen as of no great consequence at the time, it did signal a new level of Scandinavian threat to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The poem which commemorates the battle is not only one of the masterpieces of AS literature but also an expression of the spirit of defiant men who are willing to die, defending their families and their country.
That kingdom, you will recall, emerged from centuries of conflicts among the larger AS kingdoms--particularly Mercia, Northumbria, and, the ultimate victor, Wessex. Wessex succeeded in unifying England partly through her kings' success in combatting the Danes. Alfred (king in 871), Edward the Elder (903), Aethelstan (924), Edmund (939), and Edgar (957) had all with varying fortunes beaten back the Danes and expanded the direct control of their state all the way to southern Scotland. There were reverses, of course, especially the temporary conquest of York by Vikings from Dublin, but when Edgar died in 975, the condition of the kingdom was strong, and the Danes had become loyal subjects. We (certainly I) know too little of the English dialects in the 9th century, but Danish was certainly beginning to fuse with AS, as the two not dissimilar peoples married and lived side by side.
After Edgar's death, however, the kingdom faced two challenges: the first was a new and more vigorous set of Viking raiders and the second, perhaps equally serious, was the internal disorder. Viking history lies far outside my field of study, and what I have to say is derived from reading I did two years ago. The Anglo-Saxons now had to face a new more virulent breed of Vikings, who were better oganized.
Archaeological excavations in Scandinavia reveal fortress complexes said to have been more powerfully built than anything since the fall of the Roman empire. These forts, which could hold thousands, confirm a Viking tale told of these days, how the Danish king Harald Bluetooth established a fortified settlement, Jomsburg, on the Baltic Sea between the mouths of the Oder and Vistula Rivers. The harbor was big enough to shelter 300 ships, and the Viking warriors—without women or children—lived according to strict military discipline. They were a corporation of warriors sworn to put their loyalty to the community and their King above any loyalty to family and king.
King Harald Bluetooth himself (who became king of Denmark in 958) is said to have taken refuge in Jomsburg, perhaps after his son overthrew him. This Harald is one of the great men of the 10th century. He was a military ally of Richard the Good, Duke of Normandy , whose sister Emma would marry both a Saxon king and, later, Harald’s grandson, Canute, the son of Sweyn Forkbeard (King 986-1014) who deposed his father Harald Bluetooth. It gets complicated.
This new breed of Vikings—led by chiefs such as Thorkell the Tall, his brothers Sivaldi (Jomsburg commander) and Heming—had the typical Viking superiority at sea, but, with their greater discipline and training and centralized command structure, they also enjoyed distinct advantages on land. Apart from exceptional men like Thorkell, the new breed were even more terrifying in their merciless brutality than earlier raiders had been.
About to face this great threat, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom was undergoing a crisis in leadership. Edgar left behind two sons by two wives: Edward "the martyr," as the elder, was his heir, but Aethelred had the support of an influential mother. When Edward was murdered in 978—the foulest crime, as the chronicler says, to have stained England since the arrival of the AS—Aethelraed came to the throne. As an 11-year old child, he was probably innocent of the deed, but his reputation was already damaged. A later generation and probably many contemporaries would blame his mother Aelthfryth, but there is no solid evidence, and the crime was certainly carried out by Aethelraed’s ambitious retainers who wanted to put their child-king on the throne. The irascible Dunstan had virtually cursed Ethelred at the baptismal font, and he made the curse explicit at the coronation ceremony when he crowned the king: “The sin of your wicked mother and her accomplices will rest upon your head.” it was not long before he was known as Aethelraed Unraed, a pun on his name. Aethelraed means of noble counsel, while Unraed means of ill counsel. Despite her evil reputation Aelthfryth did have support from several of the leading nobles of the kingdom, including Ealdorman Byrthnoth of Essex.
Within two years of his accession, Aethelraed and his supporters had the chance to prove their mettle, when the Viking raids began afresh. Initially, the raiders seemed to have been disgruntled warriors who resented the increased order and control that Harald Bluetooth had imposed. In the 980s Ealdorman Byrthnoth made a vigorous defense until he was killed in the Battle of Maldon.
The Battle
In 991 Olaf Trygavvson, later king of Norway, led a strong force of Vikings to England. For the next 25 years England would be harried and scourged by apparently endless waves of Viking invaders. One of the bands, in August of 991, attacked Essex, probably up the Blackwater River to an island now called Northey located two miles below the village of Maldon. If this reconstruction is correct, the Vikings wanted to use the island as a base. At high tide, it was inaccessible except by boat but at low tide, it was reachable by a causeway/ford. Byrhnoth's mistake, then, was to allow the Vikings to cross the causeway without having to fight.
Although the poet gives us a vivid and detailed description of the fight, historians have not been able to use the text as a basis for reconstructing either the strategy of the two sides or the course of the battle.
What interests us most, I think, is the contrasting ethos of those who leave the battle, after the death of the ealdorman, and those who stay. Some scholars have argued that argument used by the loyal retainers--that they have a duty to die in an attempt to avenge their fallen lord--is anachronistic. Pope and Fulk, however, argue quite persuasively that the poet expects his readers to admire the heroes and approve their moral reasoning.
Loyalty
The loyalty to lord and nation is a hallmark of Anglo-Saxon poetry, as readers of Beowulf are aware. It is the code of the Anglo-Saxon warrior, one that Travis and Crockett and Bowie understood. What makes Maldon so interesting is that we know we are dealing with an historical incident described by someone more or less contemporary. Disunity in the face of the new Danish threat, along with Aethelred's incompetence, is what exposes England to Danish rule. A similar note is sounded by Wulfstan's Homily to the English:
Wolfram's Homily was delivered in 1014, 25 years after Maldon, and he blisters the English for their faithlessness and disloyalty. "Understand also well that the Devil has now led this nation astray for very many years, and that little loyalty has remained among men, though they spoke well. And too many crimes reigned in the land, and there were never many of men who deliberated about the remedy as eagerly as one should, but daily they piled one evil upon another, and committed injustices and many violations of law all too widely throughout this entire land."
Even family loyalties have declined: "Nothing has prospered now for a long time either at home or abroad, but there has been military devastation and hunger, burning and bloodshed in nearly every district time and again. And stealing and slaying, plague and pestilence, murrain and disease, malice and hate, and the robbery by robbers have injured us very terribly. And excessive taxes have afflicted us, and storms have very often caused failure of crops; therefore in this land there have been, as it may appear, many years now of injustices and unstable loyalties everywhere among men. Now very often a kinsman does not spare his kinsman any more than the foreigner, nor the father his children, nor sometimes the child his own father, nor one brother the other."
They have been ultimately unfaithful to their lords and even to the king: "For there are in this nation great disloyalties for matters of the Church and the state, and also there are in the land many who betray their lords in various ways. And the greatest of all betrayals of a lord in the world is that a man betrays the soul of his lord. And it is the greatest of all betrayals of a lord in the world, that a man betray his lord's soul. And a very great betrayal of a lord it is also in the world, that a man betray his lord to death, or drive him living from the land, and both have come to pass in this land: Edward was betrayed, and then killed, and after that burned; and Æthelred was driven out of his land."
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Some heavy historical background -- it'll probably take a couple re-reads to digest, though it's probably not so difficult as the more bizarre background & context of our modern wars will be for some future student.
"when Edgar died in 975, the condition of the kingdom was strong, and the Danes had become loyal subjects."
This is intriguing, and something occurs to me... the inhabitants of the Danelaw were only about a century removed from being Vikings themselves when the new lot showed up, right?
Yet, I may take it the Danes didn't decide to join in the mayhem when the most recent round of invasions occurred? Might this be because they had become settled, and thus had acquired a vested interest in the land and had dropped pillaging as a mode of life?
Or maybe their acceptance of Christianity under Alfred gave them solidarity with the Anglo-Saxons?
I think all the things youu mention played a part. It is true that many Danes rallied Round sweyn but so did the English. Remember the close connections of the AS with Danes--a
and Geats apparent in Beowulf. This sort of fusion would not be possible with Chinese or Aztec invaders. I probably néed to recheck dates and correct spellings.
Thank you for this discussion, Dr. Fleming. I look forward to the next one.
A former disrupter of the discussions accuses me of cowardice for eliminating his comments. In fact, he is automatically.blocked. If we had a fulltime webmaster we could monitor each post, but we don't. To make it easier, I'll just summarize his school of thought: the great white race is the ultimate reality that must dominate every discussion. Everything else is just noise. It is like the Gary Larson cartoon about what your dog hears, "fido&&&&&&&&& walk&&&&&&&&&treat@&&&@@@".
On my first reading of The Fight At Maldon (Garnett's1889 translation) I was struck (deceived?) by what seems to a modern ear its homely, almost clumsy style; I would call it the aural analog of the look of old hand made tools. But then something happens: one becomes aware of the fine fit between diction, style, syntax and subject matter:
"then was breaking of boards; the seamen stormed,
Enraged by the fight; the spear oft pierced
The fated one's life-house."
I can't think of any written description of battle I've read that conveys more power and passion than that.
The poem incorporates Christian elements (e.g. prayers) but does it also exemplify the pagan warrior ethos? Byrhtnoth and his men are often referred to as "feymen" (doomed men), which summons up images of heroic action in fated doom such as the fighting of giants at Ragnarok.
How does it read in the Anglo-Saxon? What baggage does this word carry?
@ MAR: Obviously I can't have any opinion myself. But for what it's worth, my OE textbook -- which has so far struck me as a good piece of work, both a well-written aid to the language and fairly levelheaded in terms of the interspersed commentary -- has a short and relevant introductory passage on OE literature.
"... [in OE literature] there is also a great awareness of the transitoriness of life... some critics of Old English sometimes talk as if this were an idea peculiar to Germanic or Anglo-Saxon paganism. But other peoples have grasped the idea that life transitory. Numerous passages could be quoted from Latin and Greek authors. Rider Haggard quotes a Zulu saying that life is as 'the breath of oxen in winter, as the quick star that runs along the sky, as the little shadow that loses itself at sunset.' A famous passage in the Wisdom of Solomon, chapter V, compares the passing of the things of this earth to the passage of the shadow, of a ship in the waves, and of a bird or an arrow through the air. In James, chapter IV we read that life is 'a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.'
You should therefore view with suspicion any comment on such poems as 'The Wanderer' and 'The Seafarer' which draws unreal distinctions between pagan and Christian elements as a result of failure to realize that the transience of life is a perpetual human theme peculiar to no civilization, age, or culture..."
A little later:
"... in 'The Seafarer' and other poems, we find the pagan idea of *lof* Christianized -- it now consists of praise on earth and life in Heaven and is to be won by fighting against the Devil and doing good. If we bear all this in mind, the incongruities to which our attention is so often drawn by critics of Old English poetry will trouble us less.
After all, we can today 'thank our lucky stars' and say 'By Jove!' without believing that the stars really influence our lives or that Jupiter will protect us in battle. Similarly, if we find that our own interpretation of *Beowulf* commits us to the view that the author was a passionate believer in Christianity, we need not be deterred by the fact that he speaks of the power of *wyrd*..."
It may also be relevant that Shakespeare uses the term *wyrd* or rather *weyard* in *Macbeth* -- the actual title for the witches is "The Weyard Sisters," which highlights their resemblance to The Fates. I don't think we would say that the Weyard Sisters exemplify a pagan ethos, or would we?
Certainly we might refer to a soldier on a battlefield today as, say, "unlucky", without our words necessarily conveying any deep metaphysical import...
Again -- obviously I realize I'm just speculating, and don't know what I'm talking about.
But I would claim we should always lean on the side of caution whenever we start wondering whether we can claim that 'X' is a Christian trait/term while 'Y' is a pagan trait/term. Though obviously there is a world-changing, redemptive divide between the two creeds, both Christians and pagans are human beings, and hence will share certain inherently human concepts.
Maybe "drawing the short straw" is one of those concepts?
I didn't intend to imply that we can simply divide the world at this time into strictly pagan or Christian traits. Obviously, during watershed periods, such as when this poem is set, syncretism exists. Each belief set influenced the other. I was just struck by repeated use of 'feymen'. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. But this poem is much closer to the pagan world, than say MacBeth, so it is not unreasonable to think that some of the words might carry older meanings, whatever those older meanings might be.
Doing a superficial search on 'feymen', I found this from the Prose Edda:
A witch dwells to the east of Midgard, in the forest called Ironwood: in that wood dwell the troll-women, who are known as Ironwood-Women. The old witch bears many giants for sons, and all in the shape of wolves; and from this source are these wolves sprung. The saying runs thus: from this race shall come one that shall be mightiest of all, he that is named Moon-Hound; he shall be filled with the flesh of all those men that die, and he shall swallow the moon, and sprinkle with blood the heavens and all the air; thereof shall the sun lose her shining, and the winds in that day shall be unquiet and roar on every side. So it says in Völuspá:
Eastward dwells the Old One in Ironwood,
And there gives birth to Fenrir's brethren;
There shall spring of them all a certain one,
The moon's taker in troll's likeness.
He is filled with flesh of fey men.
Reddens the gods' seats with ruddy blood-gouts;
Swart becomes sunshine in summers after,
The weather all shifty. Wit ye yet, or what?"
There is more than one question here. First off, is there evidence to show that something fatalism was a dominant part of the belief-system of early Germanic peoples? Second, if there is, do we know to what extent it survived Christianization? To some extent the answer depends on our own preconceptions. I once had to correct a Marquette English professor who was giving a lecture on Chesterton in which he insisted that Chesterton distinguished sharply and correctly between Christian free will and Greek pagan fatalism. I had to point out that there is a streak of what sounds like fatalism in many Christian writers and not all of them Calvinist (yes, in Augustine and Paul this is a misunderstanding), that the Greeks were absolutely not fatalists, and finally that Chesterton acknowledged that in Greek tragedies, while the chorus is going on and on about destiny and necessity, the actors behave as if they are free.
The use of faege, doomed to die, in "Maldon" need mean nothing more than that the poet, looking backward, knows the man is going to die. In this case, the Ealdorman's retainers go knowingly to their death rather than incur the dishonor of abandoning him without revenge. If they are doomed, it is because they have doomed themselves. (I do not say this is the only meaning, even in this poem.) Having dismissed philosophical fatalism, I think we do have to say that there we encounter a gloomier view of life and its harshness and inevitabilities in northern as opposed to southern pagan literature. Partly this may be due to a lack of balance and perspective that is only supplied to our people by Christianity, which took some time to absorb.
Does anyone have a recommendation for an introductory book on learning Old Englsh? I have Sweet and also Bright, but they simply provide a summary of the language which they do not actually teach. What about Peter Baker?
There is an electronic "edition" of Baker's book here:
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/index.html
There is a companion site that offers online texts and exercises to use in coordination with the electronic and print editions of Baker's introductory text here:
http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/OEA/
Being less than halfway thru an intro course, naturally I have zero authority to make any recommendations. But for what it's worth, we are using both the online text mentioned by Mr. Van Sant and another book (the one I cited earlier) first published in 1964 by a Bruce Mitchell of Oxford and Fred Robinson of Yale. I like the Mitchell/Robinson text a lot so far:
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Old-English-Sixth/dp/0631226362#reader_0631226362
From what I understand, their text was specifically designed for self-teaching. I'm not sure whether I could use it effectively without an instructor, but I suspect those already versed in inflectional languages would find it pretty smooth reading.
As skeptical as I am about most technological bells & whistles, I have found the interactive grammar exercises included in the online Baker edition to be helpful.
Thank you for the essay, Dr. Fleming. The decline of Anglo-Saxon England under Ethelred the Unready would seem to show a weakness in the Medieval monarchical system. England was fortunate to have three very strong kings in a row- Alfred, Edward and Aethelstan- who strengthened the kingdom immensely. During the rule of those three the Viking threat subsided and the Danes were gradually incorporated into England. The five kings immediately after Aethelstan extended England's power. Yet it all unraveled during Ethelred's rule. This seems a common thread in Medieval history. Witness France. Under Kings Philip Augustus, St. Louis and Philip the Fair, the power of France grew exponentially. Yet, by the middle 1300s, English armies pounded larger French armies and English armies marrauded throughout much of France as weaker kings failed to defend the country.
I have added the following paragraph to the original essay:
The Battle
In 991 Olaf Trygavvson, later king of Norway, led a strong force of Vikings to England. For the next 25 years England would be harried and scourged by apparently endless waves of Viking invaders. One of the bands, in August of 991, attacked Essex, probably up the Blackwater River to an island now called Northey located two miles below the village of Maldon. If this reconstruction is correct, the Vikings wanted to use the island as a base. At high tide, it was inaccessible except by boat but at low tide, it was reachable by a causeway/ford. Byrhnoth's mistake, then, was to allow the Vikings to cross the causeway without having to fight.
Although the poet gives us a vivid and detailed description of the fight, historians have not been able to use the text as a basis for reconstructing either the strategy of the two sides or the course of the battle.
What interests us most, I think, is the contrasting ethos of those who leave the battle, after the death of the ealdorman, and those who stay. Some scholars have argued that argument used by the loyal retainers--that they have a duty to die in an attempt to avenge their fallen lord--is anachronistic. Pope and Fulk, however, argue quite persuasively that the poet expects his readers to admire the heroes and approve their moral reasoning
One of the common themes in these declines is a loss of central power. Although I am a staunch advocate of local jurisdictions, the truth is that both the AS and Frankish provincial nobilities could be rather narrow-minded in making their own deals and in building up their local authority at the expense of the king. In the case of Burgundy, this amounted to a complete defection from France. In England, Aethelred has himself largely to blame. He was weak from the beginning and chose bad advisors. Edward the Confessor will have a more serious problem, especially with Godwin, but in Edward's case it is not clear to me how much he is to blame as opposed to a victim of a bad system already in place.
This them of loyal warriors vs. those who flee is of course a feature of Beowulf. Surely this is more than just coincidence?
No, not coincidence but not necessarily imitation. It is the code of the Anglo-Saxon warrior, one that Travis and Crockett and Bowie understood. What makes Maldon so interesting is that we know we are dealing with an historical incident described by someone more or less contemporary. Disunity in the face of the new Danish threat, along with Aethelred's incompetence, is what exposes England to Danish rule. A similar note is sounded by Wulfstan's homily to the English: http://english3.fsu.edu/~wulfstan/trans.html.
Wolfram's Homily was delivered in 1014, 25 years after Maldon, and he blisters the English for their faithlessness and disloyalty. "Understand also well that the Devil has now led this nation astray for very many years, and that little loyalty has remained among men, though they spoke well. And too many crimes reigned in the land, and there were never many of men who deliberated about the remedy as eagerly as one should, but daily they piled one evil upon another, and committed injustices and many violations of law all too widely throughout this entire land."
Even family loyalties have declined: "Nothing has prospered now for a long time either at home or abroad, but there has been military devastation and hunger, burning and bloodshed in nearly every district time and again. And stealing and slaying, plague and pestilence, murrain and disease, malice and hate, and the robbery by robbers have injured us very terribly. And excessive taxes have afflicted us, and storms have very often caused failure of crops; therefore in this land there have been, as it may appear, many years now of injustices and unstable loyalties everywhere among men. Now very often a kinsman does not spare his kinsman any more than the foreigner, nor the father his children, nor sometimes the child his own father, nor one brother the other."
They have been ultimately unfaithful to their lords and even to the king: "For there are in this nation great disloyalties for matters of the Church and the state, and also there are in the land many who betray their lords in various ways. And the greatest of all betrayals of a lord in the world is that a man betrays the soul of his lord. And it is the greatest of all betrayals of a lord in the world, that a man betray his lord's soul. And a very great betrayal of a lord it is also in the world, that a man betray his lord to death, or drive him living from the land, and both have come to pass in this land: Edward was betrayed, and then killed, and after that burned; and Æthelred was driven out of his land."
I am always struck by how much of the Germanic warrior culture survived in Saxon England, even after their conversion. Dr. Fleming, did the Anglo-Saxons of Aethelred's time recognize any kinship with the Viking invaders, or see their pre-Christian selves in them at all?
On a side note, I'd once read the events leading up to Hastings described as a battle for England fought by three armies of Northmen - the Saxons, the viking under Hardrada, and the Normans themselves. Had the Normans retained in any measure their Germanic warrior heritage as the Saxons did? Did the Normans recognize themselves as north-men, or were they at that point entirely Gallicized? I know it was not altogether that many generations between Marching Rolf and William the Bastard.
Thank you, Dr Fleming. I suspected it was something like that but I failed to be precise in wording the question.
I notice a similarity of tone between Wulfstan's homily and Gildas' Ruin and Conquest of Britain. As a churchman in Britain, would Wulfstan have been aware of Gildas' work, or possibly have been influenced by it?
It makes me wonder, again, whether the English would have seen the parallel between the Viking invasions that threatened them, and the Anglo/Saxon/Jutish invasions that threatened (and eventually overwhelmed) the Romano-British.
Disregard my last question - I see now that Wulfstan mentions Gildas at the end of the homily.
Should have finished before asking. I apologize.
A large chunk of Harold's army at Hastings were housecarls, or royal household troops, of Scandavanian derivation. The housecarls do not seem to have been truly integrated with the Anglo-Saxons of England. The origins of the housecarls as an institution in England seems to have begun with the Danish conqueror Canute, King of England from 1016-1035. The loyalty of the housecarls appears to have been more to the ruling family in England- Canute and his two drunken sons, Edward the Confessor and Harold- rather than to the English people. Danish influence in England collapsed after Hastings and those of Scandanavian heritage in old Danelaw were treated no better than the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans. The Normans were the rulers and the people of England of whatevere origins were the ruled.
Mr. Toddard should be congratulated for jumping to a correct confusion. I don't know enough to say how distinctively Danish were the housecarls in the days of Edward and Harold. I'm going to start Campbell's book on the later Saxon state, and he may provide clues.
For anyone interested, here is a link to the poem read aloud in Old English (scroll to the bottom to start at the beginning):
http://fred.wheatonma.edu/wordpressmu/mdrout/category/battle-of-maldon/
Thanks for the link. I had listened to some of his podcasts on ITunes.
You're welcome, Dr. Fleming. And thank you for the fascinating discussion, and for Chronicles itself.