The Liberation of England
Alfred's crusade.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, compiled during the reign of Alfred the Great (871-899), cites the year 787 as the first English encounter with the “first ships of Danishmen which sought the land of the English nation”:
“This year king Bertric took to wife Eadburga, king Offa's daughter; and in his days first came three ships of Northmen, out of Haeretha-land [literally, “the land of robbers,” Denmark].”1
Raiding continued for 78 years, until the arrival of the Great Heathen Army. The population of England during the 8th and 10th centuries was between 500,000 to a million inhabitants. At minimum, the Great Heathen Army was composed of at least 1,000 sailors. By contrast, Alfred the Great’s forces number no more than 20,000.
For comparison, the population of Russia is 140 million, and the Wagner mutiny included no more than 50,000 soldiers. In other words, a state can be threatened, theoretically, with 0.04% of the total population. The Great Heathen Army represented at least 0.1% or even 0.2% of the English population, twice or even quadruple the size of the Wagner mutiny.
The invasion and occupation of England by Scandinavians was not unprecedented. Scandinavian raids first began to occupy Dublin around 841, and established the Norse Kingdom of Dublin in 853. The kingdom lasted until 1170, although it changed hands many times over three centuries. The Norse established a sacred grove by Dublin called Caill Tomair, which was eradicated by Gaelic Christians in the year 1000.
The fact that the Norse invaded and occupied Dublin before ever attempting to establish a permanent foothold in England indicates that they found either the risk to be lower, or the reward to be greater. Given the disunity of Irish clans, as compared with the well established and organized Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, it may have been the case that Ireland was a softer target. While Ireland had a population almost as large as 9th century England (500,000), it had nearly 150 kings. England was much more united, and was divided on the whole into four kingdoms: Northumbria, East Anglia, Wessex, and Mercia.2
Additionally, the Anglo-Saxons had proven themselves to be militarily superior to the Gaelic kingdoms of Wales and Dumnonia, so it may have also been the case that Irish military culture was of a quality similar to the Welsh. The fact that Norse raiders sailed around England, avoiding settling it for several decades, instead making the longer journey to Ireland, suggests that Irish defenses were weaker than Anglo-Saxon ones.
Part of the Norse strategy in England was to conclude peace treaties, and then violate them. In this sense, the Norse approach to England was not unlike the European treaties with Native Americans: temporary, tactical ceasefires in order to consolidate a position for a later attack.3 In exchange for a ceasefire, the Norse would extract payments of ransom or danegeld, which could then be used to purchase horses, armor, ships, or entice more mercenaries from Denmark and Norway to join as reinforcements.
Reinforcements came in 871, and were known as the Great Summer Army. The Kingdom of Wessex began to win battles against the Danes, such as at the Battle of Ashdown. The battle featured King Aethelred, as well as his younger brother and future king, Alfred the Great, and resulted in the death of the Danish king Bagsecg. By 876, the Norse are recorded as beginning to settle and farm the land of Northumbria.
At the Battle of Edington in 878, Alfred the Great defeated the Danes and forced the Treaty of Wedmore (alternatively, the Treaty of Chippenham) in 880. This agreement forced the conversion of the Danish King Guthrum to Christianity, and even forced the king to take on an Anglo-Saxon "baptismal" name of "Aethelstan."
This was not the first time a Norseman or Dane converted to Christianity. In 826, Harald Klak sought Frankish allies to restore him to the Danish throne, and was baptized. However, the conversion of Guthrum was remarkable in that it successfully secured Guthrum’s allegiance as a Norse ally of the Kingdom of Wessex. Although Guthrum maintained alliances with pagans, Christianization served as an extremely effective tool to prevent the typical Norse tactic of “temporary truces.” The peace between Guthrum and Alfred was much more honest.
For example: just two years earlier, in 876, during the occupation of Wareham, the Danes swore oaths on a "ring of Thor" to abide by the terms of the truce. Hostages were exchanged to guarantee the truce — but instead of keeping the truce, the Danes decided to kill all the Anglo-Saxon hostages.4 This kind of treachery made diplomacy almost impossible, and endless war was inevitable. During Guthrum’s rule, his conversion to Christianity had profound moral and political consequences.
In 883, Alfred and Pope Marinus began a taxation scheme in which the Saxons would send annual payment to Rome in exchange for certain privileges in Rome. It may have been in reward for Alfred's bravery and Christian evangelical fanaticism against the Norse pagans that Marinus sent Alfred, reportedly, a piece of the wooden cross on which Christ was crucified.5
In 886, Alfred took back the city of London, which had been lying in waste due to constant Danish raids. It was during this time that Alfred announced himself as the King, not just of Wessex, but of all Anglo-Saxons. This event demonstrates the way in which the Norse invasions served to consolidate a united English identity, which was previously divided among different “nations.” The distinction between different groups of Anglo-Saxons could be compared to the divisions between Australians, New Zealanders, Scottish, English, Welsh, Canadians, Americans, and Irish. All of these supposedly separate nations speak the same language, have similar laws and political systems, and have a shared religious heritage (with the exception of Ireland). If there was to be a common invasion threat facing all these nations simultaneously, we might expect that whichever political leader was able to successfully resist the invasion might style himself as “king of the English speaking world.” In fact, during the Cold War and War on Terror, American Presidents were described as “leaders of the free world.”
With the death of Guthrum in 890, however, the peace of Alfred was threatened again. By 893, more than 330 ships landed in England, more than the initial invasion which conquered most of England in 865.6 However, the amount of troops was not necessarily larger: these ships contained many Norse women and children who arrived as settler-colonists, similar to the pilgrims of the Mayflower. The number of colonists could not have exceeded 7,000, which represented somewhere on the order of 1% of the English population. In comparison, this would be as if 3 million Mexicans entered America in a single year. However, by 897, many of these colonists returned home, since they had difficulty establishing farms and securing food supplies.
In response to the English failures against Danish invasion, Alfred established a series of military bases, known as burhs or burgs (related to the term borough) in a document called the Burghal Hidage. These fortresses were often composed of old Roman ruins. He also established a system of primitive highways to connect these bases, known as Herepaths or Herewags (here meaning army). The Burghal and Herepath system was expensive and caused complaints among the nobility. However, it was an important step in centralizing England as militarily united nation, rather than as a series of loosely affiliated localities, each with their own parochial militias.
While Anglo-Saxon military vessels existed at least since 850, Alfred also invested heavily in England’s navy. The fleet constructed in 897 was not meant to travel far distances. Danish vessels needed to be capable of traveling from Scandinavia to Ireland. Alfred’s fleet, by contrast, was focused on fighting in short engagements not far from shore. The purpose of these ships was likely to “lash” opposing ships, that is, to tie them together while they were still at sea, so that English sailors could board the Danish vessel and fight in hand-to-hand combat.
Alfred's legal reform, the domboc or Doom Book, codified all previous Anglo-Saxon laws and add to them the Ten Commandments of Moses7 as well as Christian law. The term dom meant to judge or law, as in the term “dominion.” Alfred’s domboc was his political and legal testament to the English people. In the introduction, Alfred paraphrases Leviticus:8 “Judge thou very evenly: judge thou not one doom to the rich, another to the poor; nor one to thy friend, another to thy foe, judge thou.”9
Alfred instituted the death penalty for paganism: "[Law 32:] And let him who sacrificeth to gods, save unto God alone, perish by death;" and "[Law 48:] Swear ye never by heaten gods, nor cry ye unto them for any cause."10 Alfred also directly quotes Exodus 22:21, "[Law 33:] Vex thou not comers from afar, and strangers; for ye were formerly strangers in the land of the Egyptians."11 Alfred’s xenophilia and love of foreign cultures demonstrates his Christian devotion, especially in the face of the Danish invasion. It is possible that Alfred had a sense of internationalism owing to the fact that his people were, like the Israelites, refugees from another land. Alfred was keenly aware that the Anglo-Saxons were not native or aboriginal to Britain, but conquered the land as pagans from its previous Celtic-Christian inhabitants.
After Alfred’s death in 899, the Battle of Tettenhall (910) decisively repelled Danish forces from making any further southern incursions for the next 26 years. In 927, the grandson of Alfred, Aethelstan, managed to conquer Scandinavian York, also known as Northumbria. In 934, he also forced the King of Scotland, Constantine II (Causantin) to submit to English fealty. This was a remarkable turn of fortune for the Anglo-Saxons, who two generations prior stood on the brink of ruin.
Aethelstan’s enemies, ranging from the Norse of Ireland, the Scots, and the Welsh, all conspired against him. In 937, they assembled in a broad alliance at the Battle of Brunanburh, and were defeated. While Aethelstan failed to unite all the Anglo-Saxon lands permanently (York fell under intermittent Norse rule again), he solidified the legacy of Alfred and the strength of the English nation against its Norse and Gaelic enemies.
During this period in the 10th century, Scandinavia also gradually began to experience Christianization, very similar to the missions sent to the Anglo-Saxons in the late 5th and 6th centuries. Christianization brought political consolidation and the establishment of functioning bureaucracies.
In Denmark, Harald Bluetooth converted to Christianity shortly after beginning his rule in 958. Eric the Victorious, crowned in 970, was not the first Swedish king. However, he was the first Swedish king to have a son who would also become the king of Sweden. Before Eric, kings of Sweden were not hereditary, but rose and fell in the blood of war. The normalization of Swedish succession was part of a larger trend of political normalization and stabilization in Scandinavia. Rather than sending out dissociated adventurers all across Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, Russia, and France, Scandinavians began to think of themselves as part of a collective bureaucratic entity known as the “state.” From such a basis, the nature of military conquest shifted from something sporadic, opportunistic, and adventurous to something orderly, planned, and conspiratorial.
The Danish and Norwegian raids on England beginning in 787 were extremely similar to those of the Anglo-Saxons, hundreds of years earlier. However, in the 10th century, Scandinavian kings arose who, for the first time, began to adopt many of the elements of bureaucratic statecraft from their Frankish and English neighbors. They began public works projects, such as the Ravning Bridge in Denmark. This consolidation of forces took the wild energy of the Northmen and regimented it to the degree that it could be united in a concentrated fashion. This set the stage for the invasions of Sweyn Forkbeard in 1002.
Giles Tr., J.A, ed., Six Old English Chronicles: Æthelweard's Chronicle. p. 19.
Donnchadh O Corrain, Ireland before the Normans (1972).
Christopher Wright, Kent through the years (1975). Batsford. p. 54.
Abels, Richard. Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (1998).
Abels, Richard. Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (1998).
Merkle, Benjamin. The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great. (2009) p. 220.
Leviticus 19:15.
Page 55, Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (1840).
Harald Bluetooth was Danish, not Norwegian. Ostensibly the son of Gorm the Old, he is officially the king who christened the Danes. Visit Jelling in Jutland to see contemporary signs.