Seminar 3 The Vikings, 800 to 1066

Alfred's dynasty

The idea that the Vikings had forced Wessex to submit may have been invented to magnify the achievement of its king, Alfred, the only English king to be called 'the Great'.

Famously, he hid in the marshes near Athelney (Somerset) in 878 AD, but then emerged, re-formed his army, and defeated the Vikings later that year at Edington (Wiltshire).

After the peace that Alfred forced on the Vikings, the Viking army seems to have moved across the Channel (it established winter quarters in Paris in 886 AD), giving the king some time to organise for war.

Æthelstan's victory did not end the Viking threat or the slow expansion by the Scots.

He built fortresses, established a defensive strategy, and built up a navy. By the time the Vikings returned in the 890s, the West Saxons were able to resist, leaving Alfred, at his death in 899 AD, king of the only independent English kingdom.

Thanks to Alfred's own propaganda machine, we know more about him than about most early medieval kings in Britain. He ordered the compilation of the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', a major source of information that was continued as contemporary chronicles in various centres until the 12th century.

Under Alfred's auspices, the Welshman Asser prepared a 'Life of Alfred', after the model of Einhard's 'Life of Charlemagne'. Like Charlemagne, Alfred was deeply interested in promoting literacy and learning, and he sponsored (and perhaps even took part in) the translation of various Latin works into English.

Alfred was succeeded by his son Edward the Elder (899-924 AD) and grandson Æthelstan (924-939 AD). Both these rulers were in many ways even more important in the history of England than Alfred himself.

In a few expeditions Edward (with the direct military help of his sister Æthelflæd, widow of the Mercian king) conquered the south of England from the Danes, and incorporated Mercia itself into his kingdom.

The 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' tells us that Edward built a fortress at Bakewell (Derbyshire), and there he was chosen 'father and lord' by the king of the Scots, the king of the Strathclyde Welsh, and the people of Northumbria.

All of them were perhaps in need of protection from aggression by the Vikings of Dublin.

There was a similar submission to Æthelstan in 927 AD, at Eamont (Cumbria), when Welsh kings as well as the Scottish king submitted to him. The great Welsh king Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good) was apparently a close ally. In fact, he was so Anglophile that he named one of his sons Edwin, and sponsored a written law code after the English model.

Æthelstan's greatest success was the victory at Brunanburh, somewhere in the north. A Viking army led by Olaf Guthfrithson, allied with the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde, invaded Northumbria in 937 AD. Our source tells us that five kings and seven of Olaf's earls died on the battlefield, as well as the son of Constantine II of Scotland.

Æthelstan's reputation was immense on the continent, and an Irish monk called him 'the pillar of the dignity of the western world'. But his victory did not put an end to the Viking threat in the north, nor to the slow expansion of the power of the Scots.

The last Viking king of York, Eric Bloodaxe, was only expelled from Northumbria in 954 AD, after Æthelstan's rule. In that same year the Scots took Edinburgh from the English.