Real Vikings - 3. Blood Eagles: The Great Heathen Army

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Emboldened by their forays, the Vikings escalate their raiding. Using shield walls, berserker shock troops and opportunistic tactics, the Norsemen’s military capacity grows. We experience life inside a Viking winter camp, as pirates become occupiers. A massive invasion force - the Great Heathen Army - overwhelms England. The only hold-out is the Kingdom of Wessex, whose ruler - Alfred - must deal with this unstoppable foe…A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Iain Glen.Featuring Lars Brownworth, Ben Raffield, Elizabeth Rowe, Pragya Vohra, Davide Zori.Written by Roger Morris | Produced by Jeff Dawson | Executive Producer: Joel Duddell | Research by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow | Fact check by Grant Jones | Sound Supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Additional editing by Rob Plummer, Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan. Recording Engineer: Tom Rouse at Jungle Studios.Get every episode of Real Vikings two weeks early and ad-free by joining Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's 836 AD. A battle is in progress in the kingdom of Wessex. A fleet of 35 Viking longships has put in at Karam, modern-day Carhampton on the Somerset coast, not far from Minehead. They've been met by an army led by King Egbert. Egbert is a formidable military leader. Under his reign, Wessex, a large southern territory

has become the most dominant of the English kingdoms, a position secured by defeating neighbouring Mercia. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle will dub Egbert Brett Walder, overlord of Britain. It is the first step towards the position that his grandson, Alfred the Great, will one day claim, king of all the English.

The battle rages. Sword blades crash, spears probe for gaps between shields. Battle axes shatter skulls. A hail of battles. barrows blocks out the sun. For the Viking warriors, death holds no fear. If they survive the battle, they will live to fight another day. If not, a glorious afterlife in Valhalla awaits. They throw themselves into the fray, pushing against the mass of the enemy with their shields. A blind fury possesses them. Suddenly, the word goes round, snarl from man to man.

Sveen-fil-king, or boar's snout. The formation takes shape. A triangular wedge. Two men at the front, then three, then four, then five, drives forward into the enemy ranks, splitting the opposition force down the middle. As the Vikings break through, they surge round to attack the enemy from behind.

The West Saxon soldiers are sandwiched between two banks of seething Norsemen. The air around them is lethal, filled with flailing, sharp-edge metal. There is no way out of this but death. Eventually the Vikings' bloodlust abates. A carpet of corpses covers the ground. Crow's circle above.

Among the dead they will feed on are several members of the West Saxon elite. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records, the Danes had possession of the place of slaughter. For the Vikings at last, a corner of England has not just been raided, but occupied. I'm Ian Glenn from the Noyser podcast network. This is Real Vikings, Part 3.

So far in this series, we've witnessed dragon boats appear over the horizon as raiders from the north terrorize the monasteries of England. We've heard how Viking fleets ravaged the coastlines of mainland Europe and advanced along rivers in their clash with the Christian Empire of the Franks. A clash which culminated in 845 with the audacious siege of Paris, led by the legendary Viking warlord Ragnar Lothbroke. We're about to meet his sons. The Battle of Carhampton is the first pitch battle that we know of between Vikings and English forces. In the Anglo-Saxon world, this is how disputes are settled.

Two sides pitted against each other across a battleground. There are strict rules of engagement. so much so that at times warfare can seem an almost ritualized business. Often battle locations are chosen because, for the Saxons, they have symbolic rather than strategic significance. For example, an ancient holy site. There's a season for fighting too. It's a summer activity, like cricket.

Both sides accept the necessity of breaking off from warfare to bring in the harvest. Winter, when the roads are impassable, is unanimously avoided. Plus, the Vikings need to sail back home in favorable seas. But as for the other rules, the Vikings do not acknowledge them. For one thing, they prefer to avoid pitch battles if they can. They're not interested in symbolic victories. They want plunder.

They go for soft targets, unarmed monks and villagers, over well-armed soldiers drawn up in discipline ranks. They have a creative, anything goes approach to fighting, favoring ambushes and raids, valuing surprise above all. Lars Brownworth Vikings were not actually great out in the open. In fact, there's several examples of when they're caught in the open country, doesn't end well for them.

They're kind of hit and run people. Their speed makes them absolutely terrifying. They tended to be somewhat decentralized, and it was a strength in that they could, kind of peel off, and it's very hard to kind of shatter the Viking force because they were so, so mobile. Vikings are born to be warriors. It's been ingrained in every boy since he's old enough to hold a wooden sword.

Girls, too. A unique feature of Viking warfare has been the advent of the shield maiden, fighters as adept and every bit as fierce as their male warrior counterparts. although perhaps not as commonplace as represented in popular culture. At Carrhampton, as we have seen, the shield itself is an indispensable piece of kit. They can be overlapped together to form an impenetrable bulwain, a mighty battering ram, the famous shield wall. When an engagement descends into a free-for-all, the thrusting spears and stabbing knives used at close quarters will be supplemented by full-length swords. or in the main and for the more budget conscious, compact deadly battle-axes that can be twirled one-handed.

For protective clothing, a Viking warrior will wear padded leathers, some with the addition of chain mail or breastplate, and on their heads. It is time here to dispel one of the most enduring and erroneous myths that Vikings wore horned helmets, sometimes winged ones. As striking as the imagery is, it is one born out of Victorian art. The horns largely appear in 1800s. There were several discoveries of Celtic ceremonial helmets with these large horns. But of course, having huge handlebars on your helmet is not a good idea going into battle. So no Viking ever wore the wings or the horns.

Those who do have headgear wear plain metal helmets that hug the skull, sometimes with an eye visor, much like your typical Saxon or Frankish soldier. What differentiates them from their foes, a huge psychological advantage, is that sheer willingness to die. Some Vikings belong to a cult known as berserkers, quite literally bare-shirters. Men who can work themselves into such an animalistic frenzy that they sometimes abandon armor altogether, even weapons. launched into the fray as demonic shock troops high on hallucinogens.

They would apparently chew these things and drink these things. It was almost like having a seizure where they would seem to feel no pain and they would fight with their teeth and with their fingernails and everything when their swords were broken. You could lop off an arm and they would keep coming. They were absolutely terrifying and also terrifying to their fellow Vikings. They seemed to be out of their head, the berserk, literally berserk. It's where we get the expression.

But this is all on dry land, for the Vikings are still masters of their signature form of combat, amphibious warfare. They're hardly likely to give up their most important strategic advantage, just to conform to Anglo-Saxon notions of fair play. Professor Davidae Zori. If they have a military advantage, it's their ships. Again, the Viking ship is the catalyst of the Viking-Aids. It allows them to show up quickly, hold their shallow-drafted ships onto the beaches, and sail out quickly. They can go up the rivers with these shallow-drafted boats. They can easily take down or put up their sails, so it makes these ships really versatile.

Viking attacks in the south of England continue between 840 and 853, building in frequency and intensity. As has been said, the Vikings don't always have it their way. In 838, two years after Carhampton, there's a rematch at Hengistun, modern-day Hingston down in Cornwall, in the far southwest of England. This time the Vikings are defeated by King Egbert. Over the next few years, Wessex successfully repels a series of Viking offensives. In the face of such stiff opposition, the Vikings are badly. abandon harassing Wessex and focus on the Saxon territories along England's east coast, Northumbria, East Anglia, and Kent.

We notice another change, too. They are no longer scuttling back to Scandinavia as the night's drawing. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the year 850, heathen men stayed over the winter for the first time. The first phase of the Viking Age is seasonal raids, probably farmers, supporters of chieftains, getting on Viking ships, going abroad, doing rating in returning and timed for the harvest. This goes on until the 840s, where we have our first records of Vikings overwintering.

This opens up a second phase, where instead of going only during the summer and coming back each year, they decide it'd be easier to stay. Then we're here when the next rating season begins. And so with that, you have professional Vikings essentially emerging. Ben Raffield is Associate Professor of Archaeology in Ancient History at Uppsala University. From the 850s we see records in England of these groups staying and establishing encampments in England and staying there through the winter, implying a much more prolonged presence in the field. The native population must have viewed the advent of vast Viking encampments with dread.

Talk about the neighbors from hell. A year-round presence brings with it the potential for year-round raiding. In places like the Isle of Shepi, off the coast of Kent, the local residents are driven out, houses are overrun or burnt down, while churches are converted to feasting halls. But what must life have been like in one of the Viking winter camps? The camp sprawls over an area the size of a small town. There are signs of industry everywhere.

Some men are putting up a wooden palisade around the perimeter. Others dig trenches. The camp residents know they are not exactly welcome in their new home. Their habit of stealing livestock from nearby farms hasn't made them any friends. Neither has the huddle of despondent prisoners chained together with iron hoops around their necks. A river runs nearby, providing an exit route to the sea. or an expressway to the interior where future targets await. Some men use the time to carry out repairs on their boats,

scraping off barnacles, replacing damaged timbers and checking the rigging. The camp is also close to an old Roman road, another excellent line of communication. A shanty town of wooden huts has sprung up in no time at all. In one hut, a blacksmith forges weapons. In another, artisans work metal to form art. in the shape of Thor's hammer. Here, a man works away at a piece of horn to create a fine-toothed beard comb.

There's always a market for such articles of grooming. Despite their rugged reputation, Vikings are a vain lot. They take care over their appearance. Elsewhere, sculptors carve wood into mythological figures and scenes. Odin hanging from the sacred tree or the goddess Freya driving her carriage drawn. the carriage drawn by cats. And potters form bowls, cutting intricate designs into the layered clay. In another hut, men are relaxing, drinking mead as they play Nefer Tafel, a Viking board game.

And here, children play with dolls and toy weapons as their mothers prepare food. Yes, there are women and children in the camp, families, not just hardcore warriors. Dr. Pragyavora. There is evidence of women and children being part of the group. There is evidence of craftworking, quite extensive craft working, both in terms of ceramics as well as in terms of metalworking and earthenware. Where did the women come from? They can't all have sailed over from their homeland.

So these are, I think, family groups from Scandinavia on the move, but they are naturally, I think, picking up people as they go along. In one mass grave that has been uncovered, many of the women seem to have come from England itself. Are they captives who have been forcibly removed from their communities by these raiding groups? They may not be. Because of the surviving narrative of the historical sources,

we place an emphasis on conflict between Viking groups and regional populations when actually the nature of that interaction was both peaceful, and it could be hostile. So we do have to think about intermixing the peoples as part of this. Women may not be the only locals drawn to join a Viking encampment

or raiding fleet. Some Anglo-Saxon men clearly don't see the Vikings as an enemy. If you spend your life as a subsistence farmer and you have an opportunity to win wealth, status, you know, if you decide to join one of these fleets, maybe for some, that's an attractive option.

At this stage, Viking winter camps are far from settled communities. They're highly mobile, ready to move on when local conditions are no longer favourable. It's a new way of operating. They're not just coming into violent contact with local and regional populations elsewhere, but they're also engaging in diplomacy. They're engaging in trade. The Vikings are an unpredictable presence in any region,

at times willing to trade and negotiate. At other times, simply take. taking what they need by force before moving on and leaving behind a squalid sight in the middle of a devastated countryside. But the destruction they have meted out so far is nothing compared to what is to come. So in the year 865, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the arrival of something that it calls the Mikkel-Herer. Mikkel in Anglo-Saxon being large and Herra being army. So it's the large army or the Great Army. And what it refers to here is a significantly larger band of Viking raiders than they have seen before now.

And for the first time, what we get with this Great Heathen Army is its interest in acquiring territory. This Great Heathen Army, the term used by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, inflicts a great deal of damage, spreading chaos and misery wherever it goes. That said, it is most likely not a single coordinated invasion force. Instead, it evolves out of the existing mobile winter encampments, which are continuously supplemented by more and more Vikings coming over to England. These are disparate bands, originating from different parts of Scandinavia and following different, sometimes rival leaders.

Each of these smaller groups has its own agenda. They come together when their interests coincide. And yet the impressions sometimes given is that, to begin with, at least, the Great Heathen Army is a coherent, unified force led by a small group of legendary commanders united by blood and driven by a deeply personal motive. According to legend, the leaders of the Great Army are the sons of Ragnar. of that Ragnar of Paris fame. The great Ragnar Lothbrock,

the most famous Viking warrior of all. If you remember, according to historians, Ragnar had died soon after his famous siege of Paris back in 845 from an attack of dysentery. But that's not exactly a hero's death, and it's not the one you'll read about in the sagas.

Legend has it that Ragnar then led an ill-fated invasion of Anglo-Saxon England and was captured by the Northumbrian king Ayla, who then threw him into a pit of venomous snakes. He had died calling on his sons, the piglets, to his hunted boar, to avenge his death. The story of filial revenge may actually come courtesy of some revisionist history. The idea that Ragnus' sons came to England likely originated 200 years later as a way to justify the reign of King Canute, the Danish king of England. Professor Elizabeth Roe.

This is a story that entirely fits the reign of Canute. Certainly there must have been people saying, oh, well, if we look at the previous Danish presence in England, they weren't there as robbers and murderers and underers taking our land, but they were there for a virtuous, heroic reason to avenge the unjustified killing of one of their parents. As for the true motivation of the leaders, even if they are Ragnos' sons, that may have more to do with what's going on back home

than what did or didn't happen in an Othumbrian snake pit. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives them the title of kings, but these are not kings whom we can match up with any kings of territories back in Scandinavia. These are people who are kings from an entirely military context, And because they are not actually kings of territories back in Scandinavia, it makes complete sense that they would stay in England over the winter and keep going with their raiding activities from year to year. Whatever the case, Ragnar's boys are here and they mean business, as well as sporting some catchy street names. They are Eva the boneless, Bjorn Ironside, Seagard's snake in the eye. Halfadan of the Wild Embrace and plain old Abba.

It's Eva, Halfadan and Abba, who are most associated with the Great Heathen Army. The Great Heathen Army is first reported landing on the shores of East Anglia, on England's east coast. During the late 20th century, there was sort of a minimalistic view, almost of these groups, that they might be several hundred people. But I think, you know, we are now, I am anyway,

They're comfortable in talking in the thousands. I mean, these are very large groups of people. If we accept that there are thousands of men involved, the number of long ships has to be in the hundreds. The arrival of such a vast fleet must have been a daunting sight for the locals. While there, the Vikings take tribute from the East Anglian ruler, King Edmund. It is the first recorded payment of Danegalt in England, continuing a means of financial leverage that has already become a feature of Viking raiding in Francia.

Crucially, the payment made by Edmund includes horses and provisions, guaranteeing the Viking army's exceptional mobility and basic survival. Call it extortion, protection money, blackmail, a racket, a shakedown. Effectively, Edmund is paying the Vikings to go away and bother someone else, which they do. In 86, as the warmer weather of spring sets in, the Great Heathen Army up sticks from East Anglia and heads with lightning speed up the Great North Road.

As the land army sweeps across the country, the fleet sails up the East Coast, carrying supplies. News of the army's progress races ahead of it. Terrified villages flee their homes. Farms are left deserted, Facing no resistance, the Vikings take what they want along the way and destroy what they don't. The speed of the advance is startling,

though they are sure to take time out to plunder any churches they come across. King Edmund has got what he wanted. The Vikings are someone else's problem now. The morseless rampage continues as they move further north. The Vikings then head to York to Northumbria, presumably because they've heard of the kind of political unsettledness of Northumbria at the time. The Vikings always see instability as an opportunity ripe for exploitation. And what do you know?

The king of Northambria is Ayla, the very same man who, according to the plot, killed their father, Ragnar Lothbrog. You can see how the story of filial revenge fits the facts, or how the facts can be made to fit the story. This is how legends are born. What is indisputable is that King Eilah is unable to offer any meaningful resistance to this massive Viking force. The great heathen army sweeps into Air Forewick, York.

For the Vikings, it is a momentous breakthrough. York is the royal capital of Northumbria, home of York Minster, the seat of an important diocese, second only. to Canterbury. And it is now in the hands of a heathen rabble. Not just that, but its entire provincial hinterland. The Christian kingdom of Northumbria is no more. According to legend, King Ela now finds himself the prisoner of Ragnar's boys who are hell-bent on revenge. A 13th century saga called The Tale of Ragnar's Sons goes into gruesome detail of how the brothers, led by Eva the boneless exact their terrible retribution.

First, Eva has the shape of an eagle cut into Ayla's back. Then Ayla's ribs are severed from his backbone with a sword. His lungs are pulled through to flap in the open-like wings. The Blood Eagle, as it's called, has attained mythic status as a savage Viking means of execution. But whether this sadistic act was ever actually practiced, is debatable. In the case of Ayla's death, it's more likely a fiction that arose because of a misreading of a very ambiguous Norse verse. One interpretation of this text is that Eva simply killed Ayla, then left his body for the eagles to feast upon. In other words, it's just one of those

colourful descriptive phrases that abound in Norse poetry. After the fall of Nathumbria, the great heathen army targets the central Midlands Kingdom of Mawks. Mercia, overwintering there at the end of 867. The Mercian king Burred appeals to Ethelred of Wessex for help. At the head of the West Saxon army, Ethelred and his brother, the future Alfred the Great, reach Nottingham where the enemy is hauled up. Their plan is to engage the Vikings in a pitched battle. But as we know, the Vikings don't follow the Anglo-Saxon rules of warfare.

they refuse to come out of the fortified city. The confrontation ends in stalemate. Like Edmund before him, King Burred resorts to paying the Vikings to go away. For the Vikings, putting yourself where you're not wanted is turning out to be a profitable business. As Rudyard Kipling will put it one day in verse, that if once you have paid him the Dane gilt, you never get rid of the Dane. The heathen army temporarily returns to Northumbria before sweeping back down to East Anglia in 870. It overwinters in Thetford, Norfolk, at the time a major town, once the base of the great Aicene warrior queen Budica.

So much for the Dengel that East Anglia's King Edmund handed over just a few years ago. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, that winter King Edmund fought with them, And the Danes took victory and slew the king and took all the land. King Edmund, for his pains, will be remembered by history as Edmund the Martyr. His shrine will become a place of pilgrimage, given rise to an abbey and surrounding town, or burr, known today as bury St. Edmunds. From the days of raiding and trading to now, the Vikings have acquired a taste for territorial conquest. this marks a definite shift in their MO.

Nothing on the scale of the great heathen army has ever been seen in England. New sprawling camps spring up at sites such as Torxey in Northumbria, dwarfing any previous winter encampments. Today, Torxey is a small village about ten miles from Lincoln. Back then, however, it was a navigation gateway, sitting on the eastern bank of the tidal river Trent, which empties its waters into the Humber Basin. The location meets the key requirement for a Viking fleet base, easy access to the sea.

Nowadays, the green and pleasant setting includes a golf course. There's no clue that this was ever the site of a major Viking occupation, though archaeological digs reveal otherwise. The excavation at Tauksie covers roughly about 55 hectares. which is massive. It's larger than some long-established urban settlements in Scandinavia as well as in Britain. So it gives you the sense of just how many numbers were involved. At places like Torxie, the great army encampments reach a new level of sophistication.

They are minting imitation coins at these sites. So there's a complexity to them that we hadn't imagined before the archaeological evidence emerged. Another site linked to the Great Heathen Army is Repton, now home to a famous public school. Situated in Derbyshire, bang in the heart of England, Repton is a quiet village with leafy streets mixing Georgian, Victorian and post-war housing. The village is surrounded by floodplains. Like Torxey, Repton's. sits on the river Trent, or at least it did back in the ninth century. The river has changed its course over the years. While the encampment at Repton is on a smaller scale, it is nevertheless

the site of a significant archaeological find. The story of its discovery begins in 1686. A workman called Thomas Walker is digging near St. Wistons Church. Suddenly, the blade of his shovel hit something hard. Walker scrapes away the soil to reveal part of a stone wall buried just beneath the surface. Further excavation and covers a structure, about 15 feet long, a subterranean building. When Walker enters it, he finds inside what appears to be a large stone coffin. He heaves off its heavy lid and makes a startling discovery. The coffin contained, as Walker recounted, counts, a skeleton of a human body, nine foot long. Walker also claimed that a hundred other skeletons were positioned around the giant,

their feet pointing towards the coffin. These were apparently of ordinary size. The workman confesses that he took the giant skull from the grave and gave it to the headmaster of the local free school. What became of the skull is not known. Not everyone believes Thomas Walker's story. It is dismissed as fantastical, but the House of Bones is rediscovered in the late 18th century and then again in 1914. We have to wait until the 1970s and 80s for the mass grave to be systematically excavated.

1,68 bones are dug up, the remains of 264 individuals. Other graves are discovered nearby. Various objects are found among the bodies, including coins which date the burial site to the 870s when the great heathen army was present. There are both men and women among the dead, although the majority, 80%, are male aged between 18 and 45, fighting age. Many of the bones bear the marks of trauma. Isotopanalysis indicates that most, though not all, came from Scandinavian.

Although no giant skeleton has ever been found, it seems likely that the one described by Thomas Walker was that of a Viking lord, killed in battle and buried with his loyal followers. Speculation about the identity of this lord has been rife ever since, with a popular theory being this is the final resting place of Eva the Bownless. Of course it can't be proven, but it's an intriguing idea. Army encampments like Repton and Torxie represent one experience of life in Viking-controlled areas of England. York is another. Today the only hordes invading York are the tourists thronging through the shambles. The city's preserved medieval shopping street. And the only people running amok are the schoolchildren bored with queuing to get into the Yorvik Centre.

But in the ninth century, the city is overrun by Vikings. In many ways, York is an exception rather than the norm for Viking settlement in Britain because it is an urban centre. It was already an established urban centre by the time the Vikings show up. But it does provide very valuable information about the kinds of lives that settlers in Britain would have led. One of the most valuable sources of information we have is the excavation that took place, in the 1980s along Coppergate in the center of the city. There, archaeologists uncovered a row of properties fronting the River Foss.

The houses are crammed next to each other. They are small. Some of them would have been two-story houses, but they would have included spaces for animals as well as humans living side by side. The ventilation in these spaces is not great. We can't recreate the smell in audio, just as well perhaps. All of these indoor spaces would have been smoky and difficult to see in, they would have been dark.

Diseases spread rapidly in the cramped living conditions. You might ask why anyone would choose to live like this. Living in York obviously had its advantages because trade from all over the world blowed in to York, people would have been relatively well off. The story of Viking activity in England in the ninth century is one of gradual escalation culminating in full-scale land grabs and political hegemony. But England, of course, isn't the only place where Vikings are active. I think what we sometimes, you know, what we miss is that this is an incredibly complex

and interconnected world, of course, and not least because you have Viking groups moving back and forth between these regions quite regularly. The same names crop up in different places, in England and in Ireland, for example. A lot of these names are fairly common, and there was certainly more than one Evar running around in the Viking Age. But of note, one of these Evars reaches the highest level of Irish society. He was king, at least partly, he was a king in Dublin, and there was somebody of the same name. maybe it was the same person who was also active in England at the same time. If it is the same person, and an even bigger if, if it's the Evar identified as Evar the Boneless,

son of Ragnar, then there really is something interesting going on here. We see Evar aspiring to a stable kingship in Dublin, while at the same time crossing the Irish Sea to act as an agent of chaos in England. It's a reminder that the boundaries we sometimes place on Viking spheres of action were not ones they themselves recognised. Water is never a barrier. As time wears on, Dublin and York will become the twin pillars of the Vikings' island conquests. We'll return to Ireland in a future episode.

By the beginning of the 870s, the great heathen army has brought about the downfall of three of the main English kingdoms. Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia. Only one kingdom is holding out. Wessex, ruled by King Ethelred. In December 870, a contingent of Vikings sails up the River Thames and takes Reading, an important trading settlement. Ethelred and his brother Alfred moved quickly to try and kick them out. At Nottingham, the West Saxons had been frustrated by the Vikings' refusal to come out and fight.

This time, the Vikings take the bait and give battle. According to Bishop Asa's biography of King Alfred, written during Alfred's reign, like wolves they burst out of all the gates and joined battle with all their might. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle adds, A great slaughter was made on both sides. But it is ethelred soldiers who flee the onslaught, leaving the Vikings victorious and still inmate. possession of Reading. A week later, now into January 871, the two sides meet again. At nearby

Eshesdan, or Ashtan, the Vikings split into two divisions, overlapping their shields to form shield walls, a tactic which the Saxon army mirrors. While Alfred leads the king's forces into battle, Ethelred stays in his tent to pray. To us, this might seem like a sign of despair. To a devout Christian king of the 9th century, however, it's an urgent bid to get God on his side. Despite the confusion and terror, Alfred holds his forces together. The West Saxons advance on the Vikings with disciplined aggression.

Ethelred's prayers are answered. As Asa records, one of the two Viking kings and two earls were cut down in that place, and many thousands on the Viking side were slain there too. The entire Viking army is put. put to flight, the Christian soldiers give chase continuing the slaughter. It's the first major defeat of the Great Heathen Army on English soil. It marks a turning of the tide and consolidates Alfred's credentials as an exemplary military commander.

In April 871, King Ethelred dies. Alfred is crowned. Alfred the Great, as he is known to posterity, takes over. the struggle against the Northmen. Devout, wise, scholarly, and yet plagued by ill health, Alfred emerges from history as not just the defender of his own kingdom, but the father of a new nation, with a claim to be one of the greatest kings of Anglo-Saxon England, but it could so easily have been different. In the same month that Alfred becomes king, there's a new kid on the blocking, bringing a fresh threat to Alfred's realm.

Guthrum, leader of another major invasion fleet, dubbed this time the great summer army by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, to differentiate it from the original great heathen army, which is now fragmenting. Guthrum is a little bit of an enigma. We don't know very much about him. What we do know is that he shows up as part of the reinforce. to the Great Army that arrive in 871. There are groups within the Great Army that appear to be seeking or they decide to establish land holdings.

So we see now and then moving into the 870s the Great Army divide up into contingents, some who go off to settle the landscape in the eastern and northern England. One part of the army heads north. Its leader, Hulfodan, allegedly one of the sons of Ragnar, establishes himself as king of Northumbria in 876. He divides up the land between his followers who begin to support themselves by ploughing the fields, and thus the ferocious marauders become peaceful farmers.

As for the rest, those who are still hungry for battle and booty, they are galvanized by the arrival of this energetic new leader, Gathram, and follow him to Cambridge in the east of England. From there, eventually, they make their way to Wessex. They are about to come into conflict once more with Alfred. It's January, 878. We're in Chippenham, Wessex, at King Alfred's Royal Palace. People here sense that there is a fresh threat to Wessex, but now is not the time.

According to the Anglo-Saxon rules of engagement, you don't fight in winter, let alone on the of the great Christmas finale, the sacred twelfth night feast. But of course, the Vikings don't play by the rules. As the meat sizzles and the ale flows, a messenger bursts into the great hall. He has alarming news. The Danes, the Vikings, are closing in, just a few miles away. For the sake of his people, His Majesty must flee. Blindsided by this sneak attack, Alfred escapes in the nick of time. The Vikings have struck a blow into the very heart of his kingdom. Accompanied by his court, Alfred slips into the swirling mists of the Somerset levels, a vast flat tract of impenetrable marshland. There, local guides lead him to Athelny, an isolated spit of land surrounded by treacherous swamps.

For sustenance, the fugitive king must forage what he can from the countryside, doing what he must to simply stay It's a classic Hollywood plot line. The hero reaches his lowest point. He's lost his palace, his precious library, his kingdom, everything. And if the legend is true, he even has his ears boxed by an old woman for burning some cakes he was told to watch over. Then, or so the no doubt apocryphal story goes, St. Cuthbert appears to him in a vision, spurring him on with the words. To you and your sons was given all of Albion. You have been chosen as the king of all Britain.

With or without St. Cuthbert's intervention, Alfred finds the inner fortitude to go on. Word is sent out to nobles and officials, to every alderman, Thane and Reeve whose loyalty Alfred can count on. Muster your troops, prepare to fight for your king. Beacons are lit, spreading the... message from hilltop to hilltop and the call is answered levies are held in the hundreds and the shires and a battle is fought the battle of eddington may 878 this time victory is

alfred's guthram withdraws to east anglia after the dust of battle is settled alfred and guthrum draw breath perhaps both men have had enough of fighting realizing that now something else is needed for both their peoples. A permanent settlement, a two-state solution. Peace. Now they signed a treaty of Wedmore in 878, which essentially divides the country between the Scandinavians and the only kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons that's left, that's Wessex.

That treaty establishes a line that is going to define what later becomes known as the Dane Law, that encompasses Northumberland, half of Mercia and East Anglia. And it was essentially a treaty agreeing the boundaries, basically of Wessex and the East Anglian kingdom under Githrim's rule. On an approximate line from London in the southeast to Chester in the northwest, loosely following the old Roman road of Watling Street, Anglo-Saxon England has been slashed along a diagonal.

divided in two. This treaty is traditionally seen as the foundational document for what becomes called the Dane Law in later sources, and the Dane Law being the territory where Danish or Scandinavian law applies. It's not a single kingdom. There are various Viking leaders in power in the Dane Law, but it's almost a non-Wessex territory rather than anything in and of itself. It's an absence of Wessex.

But there is quid pro quo to this seeding of territory. As part of the treaty, Guthram must convert to Christianity. He is baptized with a new name, Ethelstan. How sincere and devouter Christian Guthrom becomes, we don't know. In this particular instance, in the case of Alfred and Guthrum, it is part of the political machinations that we're seeing between the two leaders. But equally, there's unlikely to have been any sort of personal resistance from the part of Guthrum, particularly if converting gave him access to the world of Anglo-Saxon power.

Alfred, by dint of being the only Saxon king remaining in England, can at last claim to be king of all Anglo-Saxons, while Gotham, reborn as the Christian king, Ethelstan, and in a state of mutual coexistence, will rule East Anglia. A new chapter in Viking-Saxon relations has begun. In the next episode, with stability in the West, Swedish Vikings turn east. Trade across the Baltic leads to new lands and new rivers,

ones that can carry long ships right to the steps of Eurasia. A Viking state is established, the ruse, and it comes with a fearsome matriarch, Olga of Kiev. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Real Vikings right now, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noyser Plus. Click the banner at the top of the feed, or head to Noyser.com forward slash subscriptions to find out

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