continued to appear even after the immediate threat had passed.
If we are to appreciate the impact of the Vikings on southern Britain, we must briefly go back to the Middle Saxon period and say a few words about the relationship of the Vikings, in what would later be known as the Danelaw, to the two major Saxon territories west of them, the Mercians in the Midlands and the West Saxons in Wessex. Many will know of Wessex and King Alfred the Great in the ninth century, but Mercia, under great rulers such as Offa, was of comparable power in the previous century.
Those of us who have the good fortune to live in the middle of England have always believed that we live in the belly of the place. What the Midlands digests, England consumes; this is the part of the country where we are proud to make and grow things, and where you find the best beer and the warmest people. In the Saxon period the Midlands was synonymous with the kingdom of Mercia. It was the most powerful kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England in the first part of the Middle Saxon period (late seventh and eighth centuries). The heart of Mercia was the middle Trent Valley. This is where its episcopal centre, Lichfield (founded 669), and two royal sites, at Tamworth and Repton, were located. As we will see, Repton is currently being excavated, and is producing very exciting results. Mercia’s early kings Penda and his son Wulfhere were aggressive soldiers, and managed to exact tribute payments from all around: from southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, from British kingdoms to the west, and from Northumbria.
Mercian power peaked in the eighth century with two kings, Æthalbald* and Offa (757–96); the latter is mainly remembered today for the construction of Offa’s Dyke, a massive earthwork which runs north – south for 192 kilometres between England and Wales. It consists of a bank to the east and a ditch to the west, so defenders could stand atop the bank and shower attackers with rocks, spears, arrows and anything else that came to hand while they struggled across the ditch and up the steep slope. The positioning of the bank behind the ditch clearly suggests that the earthwork was built to defend the territory of Mercia from attacks from Wales and the west. At first glance Offa’s Dyke seems like a single massive construction, but research by Sir Cyril Fox in the 1950s showed it to have been built in a series of sections, some of which don’t marry up too well.7 Fox suggested that it was essentially a symbolic ‘line in the sand’ created by the might of Mercia against the altogether more puny Welsh. More recently, detailed survey and excavation by Dr David Hill of Manchester University has shown that it was constructed in earnest as a defensive work against concerted attacks from the powerful Welsh kingdom of Powys.8 It was a serious piece of military engineering, probably regularly patrolled by Mercian troops and linked to a system of warning beacons. Anglo-Saxon beacons were an important military tool and consisted of large thatched bonfires which were always at the ready.
FIG 8 The principal kingdoms of Britain in the late eighth century (Middle Saxon period).
Contrary to popular belief, Offa’s Dyke does not extend from sea to sea across the entire eastern approaches to Wales. In fact the original Mercian earthwork is only found across the central part of Wales – a stretch of just over a hundred kilometres. The rest is unprotected, and David Hill believes that this stretch represents the boundary between Mercia and Powys, the source of the principal recurrent threat. Mercia was not at war with the kingdoms of Gwynedd to the north, or with Ercing or Gwent to the south. So that was the boundary Offa defended – there was no point in doing any more. This tells us that boundaries and political treaties were generally honoured. It also tells us that Offa was a pragmatist, and was not about to do anything that was not strictly necessary. It is known that Offa lost Mercian land to the kingdom of Powys in the mid-eighth century, and David Hill regards the Dyke as a fallback position to ensure that there were no further incursions into his territory.
The massive expansion of Mercia in the eighth century gave it control of land to the south and east, including, as we have seen, London, Kent and Sussex. If not actual control, Mercia also managed to impose significant influence on Essex, Surrey and East Anglia. Wessex somehow retained its independence. After Offa’s death these new territories were kept within Mercian control by Cenwulf (796–821), but his successor, Beornwulf, could not stem the tide of increasing resentment against Mercia. In the year 825 he was defeated by King Egbert of Wessex at the Battle of Ellendun, and with the battle went Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Essex.
We have seen how the Norse raids began a few years before 800, and for the next three centuries Scandinavian raiders, soldiers and settlers were to play an active part in the development of early medieval Britain. It would be a mistake to think of this time as some sort of ‘Viking Period’, because many parts of Britain remained largely unaffected by these events. It would also be an exaggeration, because although Scandinavian people did influence certain areas a great deal – Viking York or Jorvík, which was captured by the Danish ‘great army’ in 866, is the obvious example – the language and basic culture of most of Britain remained fundamentally the same. In England, families born to the new arrivals often adopted Christianity and soon spoke the native language (Old English). The changes brought about by the Scandinavian ‘presence’, as J.D. Richards* has termed it, were much less far-reaching than the earlier adoption of an Anglo-Saxon way of life, which happened in the three or so post-Roman centuries.
The earliest Viking raids were essentially hit-and-run affairs aimed at rich coastal targets such as monasteries. Monkwearmouth, made famous some sixty years previously by that extraordinary genius the Venerable Bede, was just such a site. After persistent raiding it, and its twin monastery at Jarrow, were abandoned by the monks around 800. Scandinavian raiding turned to settlement quite rapidly in certain outlying areas of Britain, such as the north-western isles of Scotland and the Isle of Man. Strangely, perhaps, Wales seems to have been missed. The story of Norse raiding and settlement in England is recorded in some detail in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. This, or rather these, accounts are a fascinating mixture of history and propaganda.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles is one of the most important pre-Norman histories of Britain.9 It was established by King Alfred sometime in the 890s. In form it was an annal written in Old English, which was maintained and updated at major ecclesiastical centres, where the monks’ choice of the events worthy of record often reflected local concerns, such as the appointment of a new bishop. Happenings in more distant parts of Britain often failed to get a mention. Julian Richards describes his excitement on being allowed actually to read a copy of the Chronicles in the library at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.10 Like most archaeologists he was extremely keen to read at first hand the account of the Lindisfarne raid of 793. But he was to be sadly disappointed. The copy before him had been made in Winchester, where such far-off events were not thought worthy of inclusion.
The Chronicles begin with the Roman invasion, the account of which was mainly based on Bede, and they were still being updated in the mid-twelfth century, when the project was dropped. Surviving manuscripts are associated with Canterbury, Worcester, York and Abingdon. As Julian Richards discovered, the Chronicles can be patchy as a reliable source on early events, but are much better in their later coverage of the reigns of Alfred (871–99), Æthelred (865–71), Edward the Confessor (1042–66) and the Norman kings. Initially King Alfred set the project in motion for political ends. It was written to glorify his deeds, his reign and the emerging English nation. It does not give the other side of the story. For that, we will shortly turn to archaeology.
We learn from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles that there was a ‘great army’ from Denmark in eastern England from 865. This force was highly mobile, and it took York the following year. It then went on to capture additional territory in the north of England (Northumbria), the Midlands
