The
Battle of Maldon took place on
10 August 991 near
Maldon beside the
River Blackwater in
Essex, England, during the reign of
Aethelred the Unready. Earl
Byrhtnoth and his
thegns led the
English against a
Viking invasion, which ended in defeat. After the battle Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury and the aldermen of the south-western provinces advised King Aethelred to buy off the Vikings rather than continue the armed struggle. The result was a payment of 10,000 Roman pounds (3,300 kg) of silver, the first example of
Danegeld in England.
An account of the battle, embellished with many speeches attributed to the warriors and with other details, is related in an
Old English poem which is usually named
The Battle of Maldon. A modern embroidery created for the millennium celebration in 1991 and, in part, depicting the battle can be seen at the
Maeldune Centre in Maldon.
One manuscript of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said a Norwegian,
Olaf Tryggvason, led the Viking forces, estimated to have been between 2,000 and 4,000 fighting men. A source from the 12th century,
Liber Eliensis, written by the monks at Ely, suggests that Byrhtnoth had only a few men to command: "he was neither shaken by the small number of his men, nor fearful of the multitude of the enemy". Not all sources indicate such a disparity in numbers.
The poem The Battle of Maldon
'The Battle of Maldon' is the name conventionally given to an outstanding 325-line fragment of
Old English poetry. Linguistic study has led to the conjecture that initially the complete poem was transmitted orally, then in a lost manuscript in the East Saxon dialect and now survives as a fragment in the West Saxon form, possibly that of a scribe active at the Monastery of Worcester
late in the 11th century. Fortuitously this was early attached to a very notable manuscript, Asser's
Life of King Alfred, which undoubtedly assisted its survival. The manuscript, by now detached, was burned in the
Cotton library fire at
Ashburnham House in 1731.
John Elphinstone had transcribed the 325 lines of the poem in 1724, but the front and back pages were already missing from the manuscript (possibly around 50 lines each): an earlier catalog described it as
fragmentum capite et calce mutilatum ("mutilated at head and heel"). As a result, vital clues about the purpose of the poem and perhaps its date have been lost.
At the time of battle, English royal policy of responding to
Viking incursions was split. Some favoured
paying off the Viking invaders with land and wealth, while others favoured fighting to the last man. Recent scholarship suggests that Byrhtnoth held this latter attitude, hence his moving speeches of patriotism in the poem.
The
Vikings sailed up the
Blackwater (then called the Panta), and Byrhtnoth called out his levy. The poem begins with him ordering his men to stand and how to hold weapons. His men, except for his household guard, were peasants and householders from the area. He ordered them to "send steed away and stride forwards": they arrived on
horses but fought on foot. The Vikings sailed up to a small island in the river. At
ebb, the river leaves a land bridge from this island to the shore; the description seems to have matched the
Northey Island causeway at that time. This would place the site of the battle about two miles southeast of Maldon. Olaf addressed the Saxons, promising to sail away if he was paid with
gold and
armour from the lord. Byrhtnoth refused.
Olaf's forces could not make headway against the troops guarding the small land bridge, and he asked Byrhtnoth to allow his warriors onto the shore. Byrhtnoth,
for his ofermōde (line 89b), let all the Vikings cross to the mainland. The Vikings overcame the Saxons after losing many men, killing Byrhtnoth. An Englishman called Godrīc fled riding Byrhtnoth's horse. Godrīc's brothers Godwine and Godwīg followed him. Then many English fled, recognizing the horse and thinking that its rider was Byrhtnoth fleeing. After the battle Byrhtnoth's body was found with its head missing, but his gold-
hilted
sword was still with his body.
There is some discussion about the meaning of "
ofermōd." Although literally meaning "over-heart" or "having too much heart", it could mean either "pride" or "excess of courage" (cf. Swedish
övermod or German
Übermut, which mean both "hubris" and "recklessness"). One argument is that the poem was written to celebrate Byrhtnoth's actions and goad others into heroic action, and Byrhtnoth's action stands proudly in a long tradition of heroic literature. Another viewpoint, most notably held by
J.R.R. Tolkien, is that the poem is an elegy on a terrible loss and that the monastic author pinpoints the cause of the defeat in the
commander's
sin of
pride, a viewpoint bolstered by the fact that
ofermōd is, in every other attested instance, used to describe Satan's pride. There is a memorial window, representing Byrhtnoth's dying prayer, in St Mary's church at
Maldon.
Norse invaders and Norse raiders differed in purpose. The forces engaged by the English were raiding, or (in
Old Norse) "
í víking", to gather loot, rather than to occupy land for settlement. Therefore, if Byrhtnoth's forces had kept the Vikings off by guarding the causeway or by paying them off, Olaf would likely have sailed farther up the river or along the coast, and raided elsewhere. As a man with troops and weapons, it might be that Byrhtnoth had to allow the Vikings ashore to protect others. The poem may, therefore, represent the work of what has been termed the "monastic party" in Ethelred's court, which advocated a military response, rather than tribute, to all Norse attacks.
Other sources
The death of Byrhtnoth, an
ealdorman of
Essex, was recorded in four versions of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Its Cotton Tiberius
manuscript says for the year 991:-
Her wæs Gypeswic gehergod, ⁊ æfter þæm swyðe raþe wæs Byrihtnoð ealdorman ofslagan æt Meldune. ⁊ on þam geare man gerædde þæt man geald ærest gafol Deniscum mannum for þam myclan brogan þe hi worhton be þam særiman, þæt wæs ærest .x. þusend punda. Þæne ræd gerædde ærest Syric arcebisceop.
Here
Ipswich was raided. Very soon after that, ealdorman Byrhtnoth was killed at
Maldon. And on that year it was decided to pay
tax to
Danes for the great terror which they made by the sea coast; that first [payment] was 10,000
pounds.
Archbishop Sigerīc decided first on the matter.
, written in
Ramsey, England around the same time as the battle, portrays Byrhtnoth as a nearly supernatural, prophetic figure.
In 1170, the
Book of Ely retold and embroidered the story and made the battle two fights, with the second being a fortnight long against overwhelming odds. These texts show, to some degree, the growth of a local hero
cultus.
Manuscript sources
In the
Cotton library, the "Battle of Maldon" text had been in Otho A xii. The
Elphinstone transcription is in the
British Library.
In modern fiction
- K.V. Johansen's short story "Anno Domini Nine Hundred and Ninety-One", in the collection The Storyteller and Other Tales is a retelling of the Battle of Maldon.
- In one episode of the science fiction novel Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, the protagonist (a philologist from Cambridge transported to the planet Venus) recites "The Battle of Maldon" in order to keep up his courage while wandering dark tunnels deep under the alien planet's surface.
- The Swedish bestselling historical novel "The Long Ships" ("Red Orm") includes a long fictionalised account of the Battle of Maldon, described from the Scandinavian side.
- In David Drake's short story As Our Strength Lessens in Keith Laumer's Bolo series, a sentient tank named after the battle of Maldon discusses the battle with a human officer. They consider whether Byrhtnoth and his men acted nobly or failed in their mission to protect the land and people from the Viking invaders.
See also
