AD 991 Now known for its sea salt, Maldon on the Blackwater estuary in Essex was once the site of a skirmish that led to one of the great works of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
Three thousand Viking raiders led by Olaf Tryggvasson were camped on Northey Island in the estuary. Against them, Byrhtnoth, a local ealdorman (or earl) loyal to King Aethelred, led a much smaller English force, drawn up on the bank opposite the island. The Vikings offered a truce for gold, which Byrhtnoth scornfully refused.
Unable to get off the island except at low tide via a narrow causeway bordered by mud, the Vikings realised that only a few of their fighters at a time would be able to confront the English. Their numerical advantage would be cancelled out. So they asked leave to be allowed off the island before the battle began. In a gesture still debated by historians, Byrhtnoth granted this condition. In the battle that followed he was killed, along with many of his household thanes, and the militia raised locally was defeated.
The Battle of Maldon, written that same year, focuses on English values still discussed today as part of the national identity. First, there was Byrhtnoth’s concession to the Viking raiders, explained in the poem as fair play prompted by his ofermode (literally ‘over-mind’), which can mean courage as well as pride.
Then came loyalty to the liege lord even in defeat. The poem invokes the virtue of sacrificial courage, in full knowledge of the hopelessness of the cause. After Byrhtnoth is hacked down, the old retainer Byrhtwold speaks to the remaining English soldiers:
‘Hige sceal the headra, heorte the cenre,
mod sceal the mare, the ure mægen lytlath,
Her lith ure ealdor eall forheawen,
god on greote; a mæg gnornian
se the nu fram this wigplegan wendan thenceth.’1
The Battle of Maldon provides early proof that the English see moral lessons in defeat, relish and remember it far more keenly than victory.
1 ‘Thought shall be harder, heart the keener, / Courage shall be greater, as our might lessens. / Here lies our elder all hewn down, / The good [man] in the dust; may he mourn [forever] / Who from this warplay thinks to turn [away].’