Mark Atherton - The Battle of Maldon

The Battle of Maldon

For my mother Brenda Atherton (19342007) and my father Nigel Atherton (19312020)

The Battle of Maldon

War and Peace in Tenth-Century England

Mark Atherton

Contents

The following friends and colleagues have read chapters or sections of this book and/or offered advice and suggestions, which have all been very gratefully received: Helen Appleton, Hannah Bailey, Stephen Baxter, Rachel Burns, Julie Dyson, Rob Ellis, Mark Griffith, Peter Grybauskas, Tony Harris, Susannah Jayes, Kazutomo Karasawa, Simon Keynes, Eric Lacey, Alex Larman, Stuart Lee, Francis Leneghan, Richard North, Andy Orchard, Rafael Pascual, Eleni Ponirakis, Lynn Robson, Lucinda Rumsey, Daniel Thomas, Julian Thompson, Erik Tonning , George Wright. All errors are mine and not theirs. Julie gave the closest support, and a camera, and she even purchased a car, which was invaluable for field work: we are grateful for hospitality from our friends Trace and Diane Horsman, and Simon and Julie Watson, who gave us board and lodging as we travelled the breadth and depth of East Anglia and Essex.

Map of tenth-century England. Reginald Piggott and Simon Keynes.

Maldon to Colchester. Public domain.

Maps

The importance of The Battle of Maldon

Feoll a to foldan fealohilte swurd

( THE BATTLE OF MALDON , 166)

[It fell to the earth the golden-hilted sword]

A rich heirloom a noblemans sword lying on the ground of what the poem The Battle of Maldon calls thelreds kingdom (53) is a telling image of what happened on a day in August in the year 991. The English contemporary chroniclers identify the army as the East Saxon defence-force lost a pitched battle against a force of Viking raiders, but many of the English fought to the end, and the wealth of England lay in the dust of the field. Indeed, the adjective golden-hilted, as used in the poem, is fealo-hilte , which is connected by alliteration and half-rhyme with feoll , fell. And the colour-word fealo , though it clearly refers to the precious metal of which the hilt of the sword was made, has connotations of autumnal decline and fall. This, then, is the view of the poet in The Battle of Maldon , a famous poem from tenth-century England, one of the first expressions in English literature of the idea of national unity, reminiscent, perhaps, of Alfred Lord Tennysons The Charge of the Light Brigade in the Victorian period. The initial impression is heroic. The poem honours the men who died defending their land against Viking invaders, and it even glorifies the fighting. But on a second reading the reader will see other messages, suggested here in this passage by that double meaning of fealo . The essential background is the unification of England, a gradual process which had only relatively recently been completed under King Edgar, who ruled from 959 to 975. His sudden death plunged the country into uncertainty, and thelred, the king who eventually succeeded in 978, was a mere child at the time. Viking raiders, who seem to have left the country untouched for two generations, started to return. Now, in the face of Viking invasions from Denmark and Norway, and with the first line of defence shattered, the prosperity and cohesion of the new English kingdom was at stake.

The battle fought at Maldon on the coast of Essex in the year 991 is therefore important for two reasons: as a historical event and as the subject of an influential poem. First, it was a decisive event because it was a shock; it changed attitudes at the English court. It helped to introduce new policies which, at least for a time, served to halt the Viking conquest of England. The cultural renaissance that had accompanied the unification of the English kingdom and the long period of peace under Edgar was able to continue. Secondly, The Battle of Maldon as a poem is an important text because it is unique. It expresses very poignantly the cultural concerns and mentalities of the period, particularly of the lesser nobility and the free landowners who feature so prominently as the heroes of the action in the second half of the text. And since the rediscovery of the text in the eighteenth century, its literary value has been recognized; it has become a celebrated poem, part of the canon of English literature: an elegy, a skilfully wrought poem of action, a heroic tale of pride and piety and defiance in defeat.

As we know from the documents of the time, the veteran Byrhtnoth, the governor of the East Saxons (i.e. of Essex and the east of England) and the leading member of the English nobility, fell in the fighting. He was sorely missed. But thereafter Edgars young son, thelred Unrd , the notoriously ill-advised king, was forced to mend his wilful ways.

The action of the poem

Since the first page of the poem The Battle of Maldon is lost, the reader is thrown mid-sentence into the action: a view of individual members of an English army arriving at the battlefield. The general is making arrangements for the coming battle, and is shortly named as Byrhtnoth, and later described as the grey-haired leader, the earl, King thelreds thegn. But here, at the beginning of the text, he rides up and down the ranks advising the men on the tactics that they will employ during the battle: it seems they will fight on foot behind a classic war-fence or shield-wall. As it turns out, they are the East Saxons, preparing to confront the ship-army, as they are called, that is, the Vikings, who have landed on the far shore of the tidal river of the Blackwater, or Pantan stream (the river Pant) as it is called in the poem. A ford or bridge (both words are used) connects the two shores at low tide. But the tide is rising and in a matter of minutes the sea covers the bridge. Soon a stretch of tidal water separates the two shores.