Dan Snow's History Hit - England's Great Viking Battle

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

On 11 August 991 one of the most important anglo-Viking battles took place near Maldon in Essex. This clash was immortalised in one of the finest examples of early English poetry that tells the story of a heroic defeat in the face of the ferocious Viking invaders. To remember both the battle itself and the poem Dan is joined by Professor Levi Roach from the University of Exeter. They discuss what led to the battle, the tactics used by both sides, why the Vikings won, the consequences of the English defeat and why we should probably take the heroic tales told in the poem with a pinch of salt!

Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Hi everyone. Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This week is the anniversary of one of the most and Snow's History Hit. This week is the anniversary of one of the most important Anglo-Viking battles. We've had a few Anglo-Viking battles over the last couple of months. I don't know why. It just tickles me. It's my podcast. Thanks for listening. I get to do what I like, and hopefully you guys come with me. It's awesome. But this one is the Battle of Malden,

fought on the coast of Essex. It gave us the extraordinary poem poem one of the finest early medieval poems in english history my favorite bit is as follows slaughter wolves waited then he did not water the viking band over bright water bore their shields there against anger rithnoth stood ready surrounded by warriors he bade them with shields build the battle hedge hold that troop fast against foes then was the fight near glory in battle a time had come when fey men must fall there clamor was raised there ravens circled eagles eager for carrion there was uproar on earth so that folks is the description of the Battle of Maldon fought on, we think, the 11th of August, 991. Professor Levi Roach is at Exeter University.

I've long been a big fan of his on Twitter. It's great to finally have him on the podcast. And I want to ask him in this episode, do we remember Maldon because of the poem? It just happens to be one of those battles that's wonderfully chronicled, or was it actually a very important encounter? And I found his reply fascinating. So this is Levi talking all about the Battle of Malden, that second great wave of Scandinavian attacks and eventually conquests of the 10th and 11th centuries. It is the piece of Viking history the English don't like talking about. So we're going to talk about it right here and right now. If you want to go and watch the first great piece of Viking history the English don't like talking about. So we're going to talk about it right here and right now. If you want to go and watch the first great wave of Viking attacks and how it was defeated,

you can do so on History Hit TV. It's the history of TV, simple as that. It's my new digital history channel. I've just been nominated for an award here in the UK, so that's very exciting. I'm very honoured to receive that short listing. But go over to historyhit.tv, sign up, you can get a subscription, pens, you won't even notice it simple and then you get a month for free and then you can watch all these wonderful tv shows including dr cat jarman and i going on the path of the first great viking army to cut a swathe across britain so please head over there and do that but in the

meantime everyone here is levi roach enjoy is Levi Roach. Enjoy. Levi, thanks very much for coming on the pod. Thank you for having me. You know what? I always think that 10th to 11th century Viking invasions are the ones that the English, the Brits like to forget. A lot of Alfred action, a lot of Athelstan, but then the Vikings, well, they return. Is it push-pull? Is it English weakness? Is it Scandinavian strength? What's going on here? It's a bit of both, really. What we have going on is, on the one hand, structures are getting more powerful in Scandinavia, and then English weakness draws them towards England rather than other parts of Europe. But the real game-changer is what's going on in Denmark and, to a slightly lesser extent, Norway. So particularly in Denmark in the 10th century, we've seen a centralised kingdom first created in the 950s, 960s. And this means both the Danish

kings are raising bigger and larger armies than ever before, but also there are the people, the petty chieftains who lost out of this process, some of whom are now looking to make good their losses, who are now homeless and just going off freebooting. So the kingdoms are growing more powerful, but yeah, you've also got that dangerous thing, which is kind of disgruntled, landless, ultra-violent leaders of men. Exactly. And so it's a kind of knock-on fact that everybody in Scandinavia is now also raising larger armies and operating on a larger scale than we've ever seen before. Is it appropriate, or anachronistic, therefore, to call these kind of national armies, whereas the armies of the 9th century were war bands led by Lothbroks or whoever. Does that mean there's a difference

in the composition of these armies? In some of them, but probably not in all of them. There's still a bit of both going on. So there's still a significant element of freebooting, and a lot of these armies coalesce for a brief period of time, work together, and then break up. But we also do start to see more national armies, if you like. particularly later in Æthelred's reign, we see armies of conquest coming over as single armies, Danish armies in that case, looking directly to conquer England. That again is certainly something very new. Was the warfare different? I mean, is the fact that the Danes are now Christian, does that matter? The fact that they're fighting in this perhaps slightly more organised way and

under a royal head rather than these more informal war banks, does that change the nature of warfare? So it probably doesn't change the nuts and bolts of warfare that much, but it does go hand in hand with the centralisation of power and the growth of kingship that Harold Bluetooth, who gives us modern Bluetooth technology as a name, is famously the king who first brings Denmark together, Bluetooth technology as a name, is famously the king who first brings Denmark together, unifies it like Bluetooth unifies our devices. And he's also a first Christian Danish king. And so there's no doubt that Christianity here is serving to legitimate these more powerful kings and also integrate them into this kind of wider European network of power, authority, diplomacy. So that is certainly helping enable them to raise some of these larger armies.

What about English weakness? Is it about the lack of continuity at the level of king, the rapid change of monarchs, a sort of troubled succession that leads to Æthelred's eventual reign? So it's partly that, and partly probably that England's been a victim of its own success. So there's not been much in the way of major armed conflict with England's been a victim of its own success. So there's not been much in the way of major armed conflict with England's neighbours within the last generation or so. So what you don't have is those kinds of men around who are experienced in battle, who've won or even lost multiple fights before, which you previously had between about Alfred the Great in the late 9th century and the end of, say, Eadred's reign in the mid-10th century,

you have almost continual violence, regular campaigns by kings happening almost year in, year out. After that, we have this long, relatively quiet and peaceful period under Æthelred's father, Edgar the Peaceable, as he's later known. And that probably is partly where some of this weakness starts to set in, that the English simply aren't accustomed to fighting on a regular basis anymore. How interesting, because Edgar's, remember, is something of a golden age, but in fact, without regular conflict, I guess you lose your edge in this early medieval period. Yes, to a certain extent. And it's also a quite common phenomenon we see across the Middle Ages, that very successful rulers are often a hard act to follow, partly because of the weight of expectation, but also often because they ruled domestically with a heavy hand.

Certainly Edgar does. So they also are all these kinds of factions that a powerful king has just been keeping the lid on. The moment they then die, come back to the fore. So that's the other factor that's going on for the English, is I would say that they are probably slightly weaker militarily than they have been before, but they're also divided politically. And that ends up being really crucial in Æthelred's later years. They're constantly fighting each other as well as external enemies. And how are they fighting each other? Are you seeing the cracks appear in this very recent union that is England, which is made up of what had once been very recently proud, very distinct kingdoms? Or is it just political and religious differences within England that aren't

regionally or geographically based? I think you've got both going on there. You have on the one hand, those old divisions of the earlier kingdoms of England, the Mercian identity in the Midlands. You've got the Danelaw identities in East Anglia and in the North. And those certainly do show different kinds of tendencies. For example, when Swain Fortbeard invades England in 1013, he attacks the Dane law first and they submit to him. So there is that element, but there also is an element of simply what we see at all medieval courts, where there's lots of competition over patronage and who's in and who's out. And so that's the other way we start seeing these kinds of divisions, particularly by Æthelred's later years, he has sets of sons from two different wives. And we start seeing

kind of coalitions building behind these two rival lines to the throne then. And again, that's a very common phenomenon. It's nothing new, but it's something England could have done without with big whopping great Danish armies arriving. We know about the first wave of Scandinavian, let's call them Viking attacks, famously Lindisfarne. During Edgar's reign, is there a complete stop almost, or when do you start to get these first incursions again in this, I guess we could call it the second great wave of Scandinavian attacks? Yes, it's what Peter Sawyer famously called the second Viking age of the British Isles. So it's a bit hard to pin this down because one of the difficulties is

knowing how far we can trust our sources. We don't hear of any Viking attacks in the 950s, 960s or 970s. And that might lead us to think it's not happening at all. That's actually unlikely. There probably are small scale attacks going on throughout this period. So famously in the mid 10th century, King Eadred, in his will, leaves money aside for his nation to pay off pagan attackers, which are clearly Vikings. So he clearly foresees this might be a likely possibility. So there's probably a lot of small-scale background noise going on there that we don't capture in our sources. But what certainly is true is this isn't threatening in any way the political integrity of

the realm. And that really starts to change probably with the Malden campaign in 991, that we hear of a few earlier attacks in Æthelred's reign in the early 980s and 988, but they all seem to be very small scale affairs. And we probably only hear of them actually because they build up to later bigger attacks. But it's in 991 we see a game changer. Maldon is we happen to have this unbelievable source for the Battle of Maldon and the great texts of early medieval England. And I've always been confused whether we remember the Battle of Maldon because of this text or because, in fact, it is, by coincidence, an important turning point, an important milestone in this second Viking Age. I think it is one of those events that gets more publicity because of the poem than it would otherwise. So there's a slight danger there, not least because the poem is a kind of favourite to teach also undergraduates Old English. But even without the poem, I think it would be clear that this was an important event. It

certainly was a step change in Scandinavian activity in the British Isles, and in many respects sets the parameters for Æthelred's later responses to the Vikings. So he becomes infamous for paying them off, for paying them tribute instead of fighting them. And that policy really starts here and arguably is kind of his response to a complete catastrophe where they try fighting, they lose, and then they have to pay tribute. So in the future, they just pay tribute and at least stop that losing a battle thing in the first place and get around it that way. Let's talk about that campaign then. We'll come to the poem in a second. How well attested are the events of the Battle of Malden outside the poem?

So the fact of the battle and of English defeat is well attested in contemporary sources. We have it mentioned in Latin hagiographies written around the turn of the first millennium, so within about a decade. We also have it mentioned in an entry in the so-called A Manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is written in its present form probably before the year 1001, so again within a decade of these events. Both of those mention a battle at Malden in which the English lose against the Vikings. So that degree of specificity we know and we have very securely attested. And tell me, in that case, what do we know? Who was leading the Vikings? So that's where it starts getting a little bit more complicated. But at least some of our sources

state that they're being led, or at least that one of their leaders is Olaf Tryggvason, who becomes the later king of Norway. And they seem to be trustworthy on this point. There probably are some others involved. So when in 994 a treaty is made between the English and this force, so it ends up staying in England for many years, Olaf is mentioned alongside two other Viking leaders. So he seems to be there as part of a kind of coalition. It seems to be one of these armies that has a number of major players. And in this case, we're probably looking at displaced individuals because Olaf is partly outside of Norway because the Danes have conquered southern Norway themselves and are controlling that.

There's an English myth that they were terribly outnumbered at Malden. Do we have any idea of the sort of size of forces involved? It's hard to be precise on this. We do have a number of estimates of the Viking army, just said to number a bit over 90 ships in two different independent sources, which probably means we're looking at a force somewhere, say, between 3,000 to 4,000 men, probably means we're looking at a force somewhere, say, between 3,000 to 4,000 men, something like that. How many English is much harder to estimate? Because we, to be honest, have no source that mentioned their numbers. But given they chose to engage the Vikings at all,

it's probably a safe bet that they were around the same size, possibly a little bit larger, but not much, if so. You listen to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about the Battle of Malden. More coming up after this. There are stories to tell, myths to explore, legends that shaped the medieval world to captivate the imagination. I'm Matt Lewis,

and with my co-host, Dr Kat Jarman, I've gone medieval. We're waiting here for you to join us. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and let everyone know that you providers? Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Land a Viking longship on island shores.

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or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. How did it work? I mean, what's so striking to me as someone who finds naval history so fascinating was the failure of the English to interdict Viking invasion fleets at sea. I mean, obviously it was incredibly difficult,

but is it a case of Vikings landing and word just getting out and the local authorities, the local thanes, people in positions of power having to gather forces and go and march out to meet them? Probably largely. So one of the things that is noteworthy in this period is we get very few naval conflicts in that traditional sense of actually managing to

intercept your enemy at sea. That's actually extremely rare, even when you have ships guarding your coast. So particularly with the Vikings, the one thing they tend to really have up on English is that they are better seamen and that they use their boats to very strong advantage. So what they'll do is they'll strike where you least expect, and then they'll leave before you can gather an army. And that seems to be one of the problems that English are facing in this period, is that the Vikings show up and they don't have much forewarning. What we do know about defensive measures in this period is that we do know they have things like beacon systems. So famously, Tolkien's ideas and the Lord of the Rings actually come from Anglo-Saxon practice there.

So it's quite possible that they'd have beacons warning them. They would have lookouts on bits of the coast, but it probably would be a case of the Vikings coming within sight of the coast, then warning notes being sent to the English. And it may well be that one of the reasons why Beardnoth, who's leading the English army, decides to engage the Vikings at all is that he knows that if he doesn't, they're just going to pop back in their ships. They're not going to stay around otherwise, and they'll just attack somewhere where his army isn't. The geography of Malden is particularly famous in this battle. Unusually for battles, I suppose. We have a very good sense of what happened. Is that because the poem or because

the particular striking nature of where the action took place? That is because of the poem. All the other sources simply say there was a battle at Malden, and that's it. But what the poem describes is a Viking fleet initially stopping on what seems to be a tidal island. We suspect it's a northy island now, which has a tidal causeway over to the mainland. And then it describes how they initially fight with the English at that causeway before coming over and having the main battle on land. So it's the poem alone that allows us to identify that as the probable site, but it's nearby Malden, which a number of other sources say is where the battle was fought. And then there's this great moment for which the battle is perhaps remembered when the English,

they have the Vikings at disadvantage, but then they sort of perform a slightly gentlemanly act that they may come to regret. Is that a fair characterisation? Well, that does seem to be perhaps how the poem describes it. Whether or not that's precisely how it happens is trickier because other sources don't provide that level of detail. But you're right. What happens is the Vikings are initially on this island, which is cut off from the mainland by the tides, but then the tides start to go out. And initially the English fight them at the causeway. And three Englishmen are said to hold this because it's so narrow and the Vikings are unable to make headway.

But then they say, why don't you let us across and let battle join fully? And the English proceed to do so. According to the poem, they do so because of Beirutnoth, the English general's pride. The old English term, overmode, that this is a foolish mistake, certainly is his view. Tactically, it may well actually have been a sensible move precisely because of those logistical concerns we were just talking about in terms of ships that realistically, if Beardnoth and the English aren't going to let them over, the Vikings are just going to go back to their ships and raid somewhere further up the coast where the English army isn't, and they'll travel more quickly by boat than the English can on foot. So probably

the strategic thinking is we either get them here right now or they're gone for good. And so they make that gamble. And in the end, it fails and they lose on the mainland. Do we know much about the battle? If we're looking at other battles, we hear about these shield walls. They appear in both English and Scandinavian sources. It's a truly terrifying way of making war. It would have been probably in the moment an absolutely astonishing and terrifying experience

for those present. Our poet does describe, yes, shield walls being used on both sides. Beyond that, all we're told is they engage each other, that it's closely fought. And the decisive moment seems to be when the English leader, the English general, Beartnoth, is killed. That then leads to the rout, and then everyone retreats on the English side except for Beartnoth's own hearth troop, his closest men, his closest retainers, who decide to fight to the last man. And again, one suspects this isn't perhaps the most historically accurate, but it's one of these lovely tropes like the guard not surrendering, that they repay their loyalty to him by fighting to the last man. Oh, Levi, you only medievalist. You're ruining the romance. I've always dreamed of his housecarls falling beside him, as you say, like the guard at Waterloo refusing to surrender.

Do you think it's hyperbolic? Absolutely. So there clearly are significant losses, but no army, no matter how well trained, really fights to the last man. And of course, the poet never really manages to explain how he knows all of these things. So much detail about a battle in which everyone died. Who told the story? No, so it's almost certain that most of the force indeed breaks and retreats. But what probably is happening, particularly in the later parts of the poem, where it's largely this valiant fight to the death, this is a kind of roll call of the fallen. And the purpose of the poem seems to be to commemorate those dead. So it's a poem that's

operating a little bit like Tennyson's later Charge of the Light Brigade. This is kind of a coping mechanism for the English and particularly the people of Essex to remember their fallen and the glorious dead and to turn what was this kind of catastrophic defeat into, at least at some level, almost a moral victory. Well, that's the interesting thing. Is that what the poem's doing? I think that's a significant element of what the poem's doing, that it's trying to make it, Beutanoff is this flawed hero, he criticises his pride, but otherwise he's perfect. And so it is a bit like watching a Shakespearean tragedy. It was written for an audience who know that the battle ends badly. This is no surprise. So there's a great deal of pathos to the whole thing. All of

these valiant shows that you know are going to be in the end in vain, but they're almost all the more poignant for that fact. What's the aftermath? What's this defeat mean for the English? So in the aftermath of the battle, the English famously pay their first tribute to the Viking forces to stop their immediate ravaging, but it's clearly not a payment or at least not a large enough payment to get rid of them completely. And that army stays encamped in England for the next three years. And finally, in 994,

the English pay them another, even larger tribute. And then the bulk of the force leaves, and some of them stay on, a smaller amount stay on to become mercenaries in Æthelred's army. So this is kind of a classic get a thief to catch a thief kind of trick.

So keeping some Vikings on his side to hopefully prevent further attacks in future years. You know, Levi, classic get-a-thief-to-catch-a-thief kind of trick. So keeping some Vikings on his side to hopefully prevent further attacks in future years. You know, Levi, we were all taught in school that paying the Vikings money was the worst idea in the whole world. But actually, there are examples of it working around Europe, aren't there? Including, dare we say, the ultimate warrior, William the Conqueror, pays the Scandinavians to leave as well early in his reign. What is your now considered view on the wisdom or otherwise of paying this dame guilt? So as you say, it's a policy that's been roundly criticised, particularly by 19th century scholars. The great early historian of Anglo-Saxon

England, Edward Augustus Freeman, called it a case of expecting gold to do the work of steel. But as you say, actually, it's a very sensible strategy sometimes, and almost all medieval rulers used it sometimes. So William the Conqueror uses it, Alfred the Great uses it, Æthelred uses it, and there's not a big difference really in how they use it, and at least in the short term it can be highly effective. So actually in 994 they pay this last tribute and some of the Vikings join Æthelred's armies as mercenaries. For the next three years there are no further attacks on England at all, and when they start again it actually seems to be that the mercenaries themselves have turned coat. So it does seem to have often been in the short term a successful

policy. Obviously alone, it generally is insufficient. So if all you have is payment, that becomes a problem. And I think for Æthelred, actually defeat at Malden hangs over his reign. That makes him, and probably his generals as well, afraid to engage the Vikings and perhaps a bit trigger happy with paying tribute. From then on, they decide, let's not fight, let's just pay tribute, when really you probably need to be balancing the two of sometimes paying tribute when you don't think you can win, or when it's more expedient, sometimes facing them down in battle, or using the time you've gained from the tribute to improve your defensive measures. Right there. That's the nuanced view I'm looking for. I like that. That's excellent. But eventually, Æthelred is overwhelmed. He is, though to be fair to Æthelred,

he actually dies before he's overwhelmed. So he gets a very bad reputation, and partly with some justification. But actually, he doesn't have as bad a track record as you might think. So he dies in 1016 while Canute is in the process of trying to conquering. What would have happened if Æthelred had been in good health? He's clearly already ill when Canute invades, is anybody's guess. The interesting thing is in 1014, two years before this, he's actually driven Canute out of his king. So he's not nearly as useless as we might think. The problem, of course, for us as modern historians is that both medieval chroniclers and then modern scholars know that in the end Æth Apple Red's regime fails. So we tend to kind of

telescope events. For my money, he's in control and doing just about all right till around the year 1000. But then slowly the wheels fall off. And what kind of happens is that these Viking attacks get bigger and bigger and bigger, partly because he is probably overusing tribute. But at the same time, his internal problems are getting worse and worse and bigger, partly because he is probably overusing tribute. But at the same time, his internal problems are getting worse and worse and worse. And it's probably those that are actually decisive. Because for example, when Canute invades the kingdom in 1015 for the second time, what prevents the English from fighting him really directly and effectively is that Æthelred and his eldest son are at loggerheads and neither trust each other. So it's these court factions that

have actually led to Æthelred and his own eldest son not trusting each other at all, meaning they can't join forces, meaning they can't present a unified front. It's the old story. It's the oldest story in the book. That first decade of the century, the millennium, I guess, the scale of violence is extraordinary. You get Viking armies marching into places where you don't usually, you know, this is not a coastal story. It's not happening in the east. The country has been crisscrossed. There was nowhere safe from the violence, was there? Yes. And again, this is something that seems to be slowly scaling up. So Malden's right on the coastline. That army is doing damage, but it's doing damage very much to the eastern seaboard

of England. What changes, particularly from about 1005-1006 onwards, is we start seeing these armies marching deep inland, marching past Winchester, taking cities like Oxford and Wallingford and things like that. And probably the death knell, really, for Æthelred's regime comes in 1009-1012 and doesn't actually come from Canute or his father, Swain Forkbeard, these two Danish rulers, but actually comes from one of these other freebooters, a Danish freebooter called Thorkell the Tall, who brings a very large army to England in 1009. And that's the army, which you're probably thinking of there, that just seems to go wherever they want to. They attack all over the kingdom. In the end, a massive tribute is paid

and Thorkell is actually recruited by Æthelred. But it seems that the damage is basically done. From then on, Æthelred's best defense is presented by Æthelred himself. The English army, the English navy seems to be a spent force from then on. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You're writing a big history of the Normans at the moment, which is very exciting. So we'll get you back on to talk about that whenever that's done. But in the meantime, what books should we all go out and buy? Well, if you want to know more about this, there's my biography of Æthelred the Unready, which has a section on Malden, of course. That's part of the series, isn't it?

Yes, that's the part of the Yale Monarchs. It's excellent. I've urged everyone to read that. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast, Leo. It's great to have you on. I've admired you for many years on the internet. Now it's great to meet you in person. Well, it's great to be on.

I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the end of this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is obviously crucial for that project.

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Thank you. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at phys.ca.