The Winter of the Danes

I, Asser, monk of St Davids in the land of Cymru, have preserved these writings. I collected many such stories in the service of my friend and master, Ælfred, whom men are now calling 'The Great.' Some stories I used in my scholarly work, The Life of King Ælfred. Perhaps you have read it?

These tales you now find here were unsuitable for such a book but may hold sufficient interest for the reader to be worth recording.

Great Ælfred now is dead these nine years and the land of the West Saxons is held by Edward, his son. Edward is a good soldier but, I fancy, an indifferent King. I have great hopes, on the other hand, for Ælfred's grandson and Edward's son, Athelstan. Time will tell; though I doubt sufficient time will be vouchsafed to me to see the end of all of these things of which I witnessed, if not the start, at least the substance.

I am an old man now and have an old man's memory. That which transpired those many years ago, I remember like yesterday: Yesterday, I remember not at all! However, I have always written down what I saw and heard that I deemed of moment and these scribblings have been ever of use to aid and bolster failing memories - my own and others'.

It is a wonder to me that it is a man's vanity that holds out against the ravages of age the longest. Teeth, hair, virility; all will have deserted him but still vanity remains. Thus and thus it is that old men grow more mighty in their youth with each passing year. The older they get, the braver they were. The longer ago the deed, the mightier it becomes. Thank God for the humility of the monk's station. By such have I avoided the sin of false pride.

In the manner of my late King and comrade, I have rendered these tales in the Anglo Saxon Tongue. Ælfred will be remembered as a warrior and it will soon be forgot that he was a scholar of great merit. He had a gift, you see. He could take the Church Latin of Bede or Gregory the Great and turn into simple, beautiful Anglo Saxon phrases.

Yes, Men will remember Ælfred the Warrior, the Ring-Giver: how many will praise Ælfred the Book-Giver, the Law-Maker? Enough!! Those who will may read my book. The rest of you idlers may derive some benefit from these tales.

Author's Note - The Winter of the Danes

Ivar the Boneless, the most famous Viking of his age, disappears from History in the winter of 871/872 AD. History does not relate the origins of his soubriquet. I would like to think that the rough humour of the Vikings could have been referring to impotence. There is absolutely no historical basis for suggesting he was paedophile.

His brother, Halfdan, left England in about 876 AD and was replaced by even more ambitious marauders. Like Ivar and Halfdan, Asser, King Alfred's friend and biographer, is an historical reality as indeed are Alfred himself, Æthelred his brother and Archbishop Wulfhere. All others are characters of my own imagining.

The Anglo-Saxons used the term 'Danes' to cover all their Scandinavian invaders, whether from Denmark, Norway or the Baltic.

I have used the mystery of Ivar's end as a device for this story. I have tried to remain faithful to history but have also used a certain amount of licence. Likewise, I have used Anglo-Saxon spellings and place names - Thetford becomes Theodford. Waneting is modern-day Wantage, Gyldeford is Guildford, Fullanhamm is Fulham, now firmly a part of London. Sceaftensbyrig is Shaftesbury in Dorset, Windlesora is Windsor and Wintanceaster is modern-day Winchester, where King Alfred's statue stands guard outside the cathedral. I have used these styles simply to add 'atmosphere' and to show what a clever bastard I am.

If you want to know more about this period I recommend 'Anglo Saxon England' by Sir Frank Stenton. It may be a few years old now and some sections might bear revision, but it is still the best work on the English Dark Ages for both clarity and readability.

(N.B. Æthelred is a popular Anglo-Saxon name meaning 'Good Counsel ' The most well known to bear this name is, of course Æthelred Unrede. Not 'unready' in the sense of unprepared but 'unrede' -' no counsel'; a harsh but accurate contemporary pun on the King's name. This Æthelred lived considerably later and should not be confused with Alfred's unfortunate brother)

The Winter of the Danes, AD 871/872

"The King has summoned the Fyrd to meet at Reading". My father's voice held an edge of resignation. It was the third time that year that King Ælfred had called out the Shire levies. The House Ceorls muttered among themselves. This must mean the Danes had broken the peace we had fought so hard for, starting at Wealingaford that May. Wealingaford had been my first battle.

I had stood in the shield wall that day beside my father as the Danes charged up the ridge. We were Ælfred's sworn men. I could smell the fear, my own among it. The enemy looked huge. Out in front were the naked madmen; those in whom the fighting madness raged to the point they went 'bare-sark', as the Danes say, without clothes. Their skaalds were singing some of kind of battle hymn. They were all noise and frightfulness.

That wasn't Ælfred's way. We stood shoulder to shoulder. The King's House Ceorls started the beat, a steady drumming of the great axes upon our shields rising to a climax when we would shout as one, " God Almighty!!" Then the drumming would subside before rising to another crescendo and another shout. Shoulder to shoulder in the shield wall. That is how the men of Wessex fight.

I killed my first man that day, I was 18 years old and I killed and killed. They broke on our wall like the tide dashing upon the rocks; like the rocks we stood. The great axes smote them. The golden dragon banner flew above our heads; we roared our war-shout in defiant unison, "God Almighty!!!!" I have heard old warriors say that there is nothing more frightening than to charge a shield wall. I hope I never have to do it. I was frightened enough to stand amid the carnage, seeing the severed limbs fly and the bright blood's gouting.

The pagans came again and again and died for their pains and their courage. Ivar, the one the men call 'The Boneless' led them on. His brother, Halfdan, was their chief but I never saw him on the field that day. Ivar dressed always in black. He wore a necklace of men's knucklebones, sheathed in silver. They say he adopted his garb the day his father, Ragnar Lothbrok, died in Jorvik, betrayed and friendless, hurled into a pit of serpents. Old 'hairy britches' was a savage man and he came to a savage end but he could never compete in cruelty with Ivar, his son.

We chased them back to the river that day. There were eight more battles to follow, all bloody, none conclusive. We came to Terms. Ælfred granted them the King's Peace if they stayed away from Wessex so they turned north into Mercia and headed for the Five Boroughs, to winter at Leicester, as we thought. Now it appeared they had broken out and we were summoned to Reading to answer Ælfred's call. There would be no peace that year and no marriage for me while the Danes were abroad.

After Wealingaford, my father had called on Ædwig, Thegn at Warmynster, and arranged my betrothal to Elfgirda, his youngest daughter. She was almost fifteen and ripe for marriage and would bring a handsome dowry. I didn't care; I loved her. She was slight and gentle but had a merry spirit in her cornflower eyes. I had known her since we were small. My father's lands in the Sceaftensbyrig Hundred ran by her father's. They were both men of rank, had been House Ceorls to Æthelred, Ælfred's elder brother and King before. When Æthelred had died of pleurisy, Ælfred had released them with honour, preferring younger and, it must be said, more Godly men. Both our fathers had been baptised but the seed of Christianity never fell in more barren soil than those two. They feared no man and no man's Gods, but taking the vows pleased Ælfred, our scholar-King.

My father dispatched messengers to rouse our men and the next morning, before the sun had risen over the hills, we were on the march. Besides my father and I were nine House Ceorls and one hundred and twenty men, Cottagers and Freeholders all. The Ealdorman of Sceaftensbyrig does not fight with thralls. Forty miles to Reading as the Crow flies, sixty-five by the winding road and we forced marched it in two days. But the Danes had tricked us. They crossed the Thames above Windlesora and stormed into Wessex, sacking Farnham and only being turned back by a force of levies out of Wintanceaster. They avoided battle but pillaged and burned the villages about before heading back to join with their Ships at Putney, just above London.

That was when misfortune struck. Elfgirda and her mother had taken advantage of the peace to visit her sister at Waneting, where she was married to the Thegn's heir. On their return, they had driven east to avoid the Danes, near Reading, so they thought. They crossed the Thames at the Wey's bridge and walked into the rearguard of the Danish raiders at Gyldeford, where the road forks west to Wintanceaster. Their entourage was small. The guards were overwhelmed and the women were taken by Ivar the Boneless.

Bad news travels swift as a raven, as the saying goes. We heard the news of the Danish foray and my Elfgirda's capture the following day. The messengers arrived within an hour of dawn, grim news writ in their exhausted eyes. The King ordered us across the river and we marched along its banks towards London. The country thereabouts, once pleasing to the eye, was all devastation. Blackened ruins stood where once were farms. We came across a burnt-out church; the priest was nailed to the door in the Blood Eagle. These pagans hated priests most of all.

Below Windlesora, the ruin of the country grew worse. At every habitation, we came across the bodies of women and children, raped and slaughtered out of hand. The army's mood grew grim. For this was the nature of the war in those days. Somehow the Danes always moved faster. Ælfred had ever to raise the Fyrd; the Danes had no such cause for delay, they were an army always. Whenever our host came up with them, they retreated to their ships. The King would command a fleet to be built but that was in the future. For the present we could only pursue on land. And pursue we did.

It was a tired army that straggled into Fullanhamm that night. The village had been sacked and burned and we made a cold camp within the ruins. The King sent scouts along the riverbank. They returned at midnight with a prisoner. They caught the pagan after a sharp fight. Ten of ours met six of theirs but they gave a good account of themselves, sending four good Saxons to the Lord before being overwhelmed.

The prisoner was a savage. An axe had taken his sword-arm at the elbow and he was weak with loss of blood. Still he spat at us and cursed us in their uncouth tongue. My father sent for me as I had some words of Danish, learned, like my Frankish and Latin, from the old Friar who had tutored us at the Abbey schoolroom in Sceaftensbyrig. They had tried torture and got curses in return for their trouble and his pains.

"We are going to kill you," I told him and he shrugged. He knew that.

"Tell me what I ask and you may die with a sword in your hand." Thus he would go to Valhalla and not be a wandering ghost, or such were his beliefs. He looked at me closely.

"Can I trust you, puppy?" He said. "My oath," I replied and he nodded. "Ask away."

"Ivar has taken my Thegn's wife and daughter. Whither is he bound?"

"Is the girl young?"

"Fifteen, come winter."

"Then thank your milksop God. She's too old for Ivar. He dines on younger meat."

"What will he do with her?"

"Ransom or slavery, it's all one to the Boneless man."

"Where will he take her?"

"To the winter camp at Theodford, most like. I can tell you no more, now give me the sword, puppy, and make an end."

"I will, as I swore. But one more thing; why do men call him the Boneless?"

He laughed at this with genuine amusement. "No iron in his sword, puppy, when it comes to women. That's why he's for the bairns! He's a devil in a fight but droops at the sight of tits! Now come, puppy. I would hear the valkerie."

I killed him then, with a sword in his hand, as I'd promised. He deserved to die but there was no call for cruelty. I killed him clean. He smiled as he died, but I did not.

I told my father what I'd learned and he told the Thegn. "Then they are lost," was all he would say and turned aside from us. I looked at my father and he shook his head. "The King has forbidden ransom," he said and I could hear the sadness in his voice. "Then it must be a rescue," I said. He looked at me as if I was suddenly struck with madness. "The King will send no army into Danelaw for a woman and a girl, boy," he said, but it was not unkind. I nodded agreement. The King would never leave Wessex unprotected, even to rescue the Queen herself.

I felt the rage building inside me and hot tears burning in my eyes. I struggled for control and then I said, my voice choked and cracking, "An army would be no good, Father. They would know we were coming and vanish into the fens or back to their ships. I will go alone." My father stared then gave a mirthless laugh. "That's your heart thinking, my son, not your head. Do you think the Danes will stand aside and let you take them? They will kill before you get twenty miles."

But my mind was made up. It was all one to me. If I couldn't save Elfgirda than I might as well be dead. The young believe such things and I muttered some such nonsense. My father put his arm about my shoulders and looked deep into my eyes. Whatever he saw there I don't know but he shook his head sadly. "Well, you're a man now and must go to Hell your own way," he said. "Go if you must and with a father's blessing. It wouldn't hurt to get the blessing of the Church as well. Bishop Wulfhere is with the King. Go you and make your confession and ask his intercession with St Anthony for your success." St Anthony was my father's particular Saint, invoked on all occasions of great import or solemnity. It was the only bit of Christianity that ever rubbed off on him. So I went to the Bishop and had my blessing.

Ælfred heard of my attempt and sent for me. I bowed to my King; we Saxons do not kneel or grovel like the Franks. "Hereward, son of Edmond of Sceaftensbyrig," said the King. "There would be no shame now to give this up and no man here will say you are forsworn. Sometimes it takes greater courage to walk away than to fight. Are you still determined on this rescue?" "I am, my Lord," I replied and the King smiled. "Very well," he said, "So be it." He turned to one of the House Ceorls. "Give this man three of the best horses and such provisions as he needs." He turned back to me and he still smiled. "Go then, Hereward, with my favour." He raised his voice to the host about. "Wessex need not fear when her sons are such men as this!" And my heart swelled with pride as I rode from the camp, the cheers of the army ringing in my ears.