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REVIEW BY JEFFREY JAMES
This new book by Don Hollway ambitiously sets out to describe the complex interplay between competing European royal houses during what academics call ‘The Second Viking Age’. Hollway does so by examining the motivations and ambitions driving the period’s main actors: notably, Æthelred the Unready, Cnut, Queen Emma of Normandy, Emma’s son Edward the Confessor, his successor King Harold Godwinson, and Harold’s rivals for the kingship of England, Harald Hardrada of Norway and William the Bastard of Normandy.
Men and women feature in equal measure in the book, and family inter-relationships become important threads throughout the narrative. The author brings to life the Court intrigues and bitter rivalries dividing Europe’s nobility, shedding light on an otherwise dark period of our history, when judicial murder and a resort to arms was the norm. The narrative builds on the evidence of Scandinavian sagas, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the works of Norman historians. Hollway provides a useful summary of each of the main sources, as well as a helpful who’s who, and, as background, provides the reader with a good summary of events during the 9th century, a period known as ‘The First Viking Age’, when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and tracts of Mercia fell under Danish control and were subjected to mass immigration from Scandinavia.
Decades later, in the early years of King Æthelred’s reign, from 980 onwards, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle highlights a reoccurrence of attacks on England from Scandinavian pirates. The raiders looted monasteries and carried off young men, women, and children to be sold off in Viking slave marts. After this, they started demanding payment from the English Crown in the form of silver coinage. Only later did conquest become their aim. Saga evidence suggests the English were outmatched militarily by the Vikings by the end of the 10th century: paying them off must have seemed a better way forward than putting the whole of England on a war footing. Masses of Æthelred’s silver pennies have in modern times been found in Scandinavian hoards. England was a rich country. It could probably afford such payments. Yet its wealth in a sense became its downfall.
The attacks had begun a year or so after the murder in obscure circumstances of the young King Edward the Martyr. His unavenged death close to the millennium and the almost simultaneous return of the Vikings served to whip up apocalyptic fears among churchmen. One chronicler wrote of a ‘bloody cloud’ being seen over England ‘in the likeness of fire’: a meteorological display portending God’s wrath against the English and King Æthelred in particular for allowing Edward’s murder to go unpunished. The Vikings were personified by clerics as God’s avenging agents.
Keeping the peace
Although a great deal of money was spent to keep the peace, numerous battles were fought. The most famous occurred at Maldon in Essex in the year 991, when a strong English army was defeated and destroyed by a larger invading Viking army – an epic fight afterwards immortalised in verse. It was this defeat that first persuaded Æthelred’s government to pay money to make the raiders go away. The author’s narrative vividly details these epic events, unknitting the complex interplay between members of an English nobility struggling to come to terms with the mounting crisis posed by the Vikings.
The first part of the book culminates in Cnut’s conquest of England in 1016 – a year of battles fought between Cnut and King Edmund Ironside (Æthelred’s martially adept successor). Edmund died towards the end of the year, probably from wounds sustained in battle (although Hollway suggests a number of draconian alternatives). The author goes on to document Cnut’s imperial rule and the consolidation of a great northern empire encompassing England, Denmark, Norway, the Orkneys, Shetland, and parts of northern Scotland – justifying his nametag Cnut the Great. The author then covers the brief period of misrule under Cnut’s youthful sons: Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut, emphasising all the while the dramatic rise to prominence of the Anglo-Danish Godwin family. The Godwins came to enjoy a virtual stranglehold on power during the reign of the unwarlike Edward the Confessor, Æthelred’s eldest son by Emma of Normandy.
Edward died childless in 1065, leading to perhaps the most famous succession crisis in English history, between the three big beasts at large in Europe with claims to the English throne: the in situ King Harold Godwinson of England, Duke William of Normandy, and King Harald Hardrada of Norway. All three were fearsome warlords, about whom the author writes, ‘In their world a man’s heart needed to be hard as his armour, his wits honed as sharp as his sword, and his goals as pointed as the tip of his spear’. In the autumn of 1066, Hardrada was defeated and lost his life at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, near York. This battle came just a matter of weeks before the famous clash between King Harold and Duke William north of Hastings – a battle about which the author devotes a full chapter, describing the battlefield terrain, the opposing armies, and their tactics. William’s combined-arms force of cavalry, archers, and spearmen faced Harold’s axe-wielding housecarls and supporting spearmen, drawn up in close order blocking the road from Hastings to London.
Reliable facts for this period come at a premium. First-hand accounts are a rarity. What we think we know comes, in the main, courtesy of moralising chroniclers writing sometimes decades (even centuries) after the event. It is impossible to be sure about characterisations. Men’s and women’s reputations are either lauded or trashed by the clerics. God punished the wicked (the losers) and smiled on the good (the winners). To his credit, the author urges caution against blind acceptance of the chroniclers’ copy, but includes it in the narrative with the good excuse that ‘even rumours of the time are worth examining’.
Battle for the Island Kingdom is thoroughly enjoyable, and is recommended to anyone looking for a comprehensive and accessible history of the period.
Battle for the Island Kingdom Don Hollway Osprey Publishing, hbk, 432pp (£20) ISBN 978-1472858931
