1. Eddius, Life of Wilfrid, in Webb (1965: 152).
2. All quotations unless otherwise sourced are from the Everyman edn. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, tr. Garmonsway (1953).
3. Annals of Ulster, AD 490–500.
4. Annales Cambriae, www.kessler.web.co.uk. Chronicle of Ystrad Ffur, www.webexcel.nidirect. co.uk
5. Books on Dark Age arms and armour include Pollington (1996), Siddorn (2003) and Underwood (1999).
6. ‘bows were busy’ (Bogan waeron bysige). Battle of Maldon, Griffiths (2000:27).
7. ‘make a war-hedge’ (wyrcan thone wihagen). Ibid. 27.
8. Vegetius, De re militaris. For discussion of this source, see Ferrill (1983: 127–33).
9. See, for example, Tom Cain, online correspondence, Society Medieval History, http://scholar. chem.nyu.edu
15. English Heritage, Battlefield Register.
16. The Gazetteer for Scotland, Scottish Battle Register, www.geo.ed.ac.uk
1. Historia Brittonum. Cited in Morris (1993).
5. Geraint poem quoted in Morris (1993: 104–5). The poem calls the place Llongborth, meaning ‘ship-port’.
6. Chron. Ystrad Fflur: ‘577: In this year the battle of Dyrham was lost’.
1. Gildas, De excidio et conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain).
3. Full translation: ‘From that time now our countrymen won, then the enemies, so that in this people the Lord could make trial (as He does) of this latter-day Israel to see whether it loves him or not. This lasted right up to the year of the siege of Mount Badon, pretty well the last defeat of the hated ones, and certainly not the least. This was the year of my birth; as I know, one month of the forty-fourth year since then has already passed.’
5. Morris (1993). His uncited source seems to be Historia Brittonum: ‘On Hengest’s death his son Octha came down from the north of Britain to the kingdom of the Kentishmen. Then in those days Arthur fought against them with the kings of the Britons, but he was the commander (dux) in the battles.’
7. On dating the battle from Gildas, see Wood (1999a: 31–8), and summary on Battle of Mons Badonicus online on Wikipedia.org
8. Chron.Ystrad Fflur: ‘570. In this year Gildas, wisest of Britons, died.’
9. Bede 1. 16: ‘Under [the leadership of Ambrosius] the Britons took up arms, challenged their conquerors to battle, and with God’s help inflicted a defeat on them. Thenceforward victory swung first to one side and then to the other, until the battle of Badon Hill, when the Britons made a considerable slaughter of the invaders. This took place about forty-four years after their arrival in Britain ...’
12. Burkitt and Burkitt (1990).
13. For excavations at Liddington Hill, see Hirst and Rahtz (1996).
17. See online Guide to Arthurian Archaeology: www.arthuriana.co.uk
19. Tennyson, Idylls of the King, The Passing of Arthur:
On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed.
Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west.
... So all day long the noise of battle roll’d
Among the mountains by the winter sea
Until King Arthur’s Table, man by man,
Had fall’n in Lyonesse about their lord,
King Arthur.
20. Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur, book 21, ch. 3: ‘And then King Arthur drew him with his host down by the seaside westwards toward Salisbury; and there was a day assigned betwixt King Arthur and Sir Mordred, that they should meet upon a down beside Salisbury, and not far from the seaside ... Thus they fought all the long day, and never stinted till the noble knights were laid to the cold earth; and ever they fought still till it was near night, and by that time was there an hundred thousand laid dead upon the down.’
21. Chron. Ystrad Fflur: ‘550. In this year Derfei Gadern, who fought at Camlann, and Teilo went to the Lord.’
22. Crawford (1949). Crawford was a pioneer of the use of aerial photographs in archaeology, as well as retaining the imagination of an antiquarian in a scientific age.
23. For example, Carroll (1996).
24. Ibid. Summary at: www.legendofkingarthur.com/camlann
25. Morris (1993: 118-23) records many early Welsh Arthurian traditions of doubtful historical reliability.
26. For celebrations at Camelford see www.tintagelweb.co.uk/Battle
27. Chron. Ystrad Fflur: ‘573. In this year the battle of Arfderydd between the sons of Eliffer and Gweddolau son of Ceido; in which battle Gwenddoleu fell; Myrddin went mad. And this was the third futile battle of the island of Britain.’
1. Praise poems by Taliesin quoted in Morris (1993: 232–3).
2. From Nennius, Historia Brittonum: ‘Urien blockaded [Theodoric] for three days and three nights on the island of Metcaud. But he was butchered during this undertaking on the instigation of Morcant, from jealousy, because his military skill surpassed that of all other kings.’
3. For quotations from The Gododdin, I used Short (1994). A full translation is available online at www.missgien.net
4. The identification of Catterick with Catraeth is generally accepted. The name has survived 2,000 years from the Roman Cataracta through the Old English Cetreht or Cetrehttun and the Domesday Book’s Catrice to the medieval Kateric, now spelt Catterick. It probably comes from the Latin word for waterfall, though it may also incorporate the British catu- meaning ‘war’.
5. The elegy for Cadwallon is a Welsh poem, Moliant Cadwallawn (In praise of Cadwallon), preserved in the Panton collection in the Welsh National Library as MSS 55. Its date is uncertain.
6. The date of the Battle of Catraeth is much disputed. Around 600 was the usual best guess, but Koch (1997) made a closely argued case for c.570. See also ‘Gododdin Revisited’, the review of the book by Tim Clarkson (1999) in The Heroic Age,1.
7. For detailed archaeological excavations see Wilson (2002) and summary at www.english-heritage.org.uk
11. Aedan’s military potential discussed in Evans (1997: 31).
12. For site of Degsastan, see Bannermann (1974).
13. Mael Umai is killed in the battle as related in Adomnan’s Life of St Columba, but died a decade later in 612 in Annals of Innisfallen.
14. Halsall (undated, but c.1985).
16. Chron. Ystrad Fflur: ‘615. In this year was the Massacre of the Saints of Bangor Iscoed and Selyf ap Cynan Garwyn was defeated by Aethelfrith at Chester’. Annals of Ulster have ‘Chester where the saints were slain.’
20. Moliant Cadwallawn (see n. 5 above).
22. For legends surrounding Edwinstowe and environs, see www.nottshistory.org.uk
27. Adomnan, Life of St Columba.
29. Annales Cambriae: Catscaul. Annals of Ulster: Cantscaul.
31. Annales Cambriae: ‘The battle of Cogfry in which Oswald king of the Northmen and Eawa [Eoba] king of the Mercians fell’. Bede and the Chronicle of Ystrad Fflur call the battle Maserfelth. Having dismissed the battle in a few lines, Bede devotes most of book 3, chs. 9 to 12, to describing the miracles wrought at Oswald’s cross and tomb.
34. Historia Brittonum, 64-5. Iudeu was probably a hill fortress on the way to, if not actually on, Stirling Rock.
36. Chron. Ystrad Fflur: ‘655. At the end of the year was the slaughter of the field of Gai and Oswy killed the king of the Britons, and Penda with them, save only Catamail Catguommed.’
37. Churchill (0000: book 1, ch. 5).
38. Edmund Bogg’s 1893 article is reproduced online at www.oldtykes.co.uk as ‘Elmet’s Battles of the so called Dark Ages’. See also ‘The Battle of Winwaedfield’ by Arthur Bantoft, published in Journal of Barwick-in-Elmet Historical Society, reproduced online at www.winwaed.com
1. Stephan, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, 19.
2. Nennius, Historia Brittonum, 57.
3. The ties of kinship between Ecgfrith and Bridei are discussed, together with a reconstructed family tree, in Fraser (2002: 22–3).
5. Source is a Gaelic poempreserved in the Life of Adomnan, quoted in Fraser (2002: 22).
6. Gaelic poem, Iniu feras Bruide cath, quoted and discussed in Fraser (2002: 21–2).
7. Annals of Tigernach: ‘The Orcades were annihilated (deletae sunt)byBridei’.
8. Bede, Life of St Cuthbert, 24, 27.
9. Symeon, Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae: ‘Ecgfrith ... was slain with the greater part of his warriors he had brought with him to lay waste the land of the Picts ... at Nechtanesmere, which is the lake of Nechtan (quod est stagnum Nechtani)’.
10. ‘Bellum Ecgfridi’. Adomnan’s Life of St Columba.
11. Annals of Ulster: ‘BellumDuin Nechtain’. Annals of Tigernach: ‘Cath Duin Nechtain’.
12. Historia Brittonum, 57. Ecgfrith’is the one who made war against his fratruelis,whowasthePictish king Birdei ... and he fell there with all the strength of his army and the Picts with their king emerged as victors, and the Saxon thugs never grew thence to exact tribute from the Picts. From that time the battle is called Gueith Lin Garan.‘
16. Anonymous Life of St Cuthbert in: Two Lives of St Cuthbert, ed. BertramColgrave (1940).
22. Bede, Life of St Cuthbert,27.
24. Anonymous Life of St Cuthbert.
27. Fraser (2002: esp. app. 6).
30. Cruickshank (1999a), Fraser (2002: 104–5).
31. Julia Fox Parsons,’The First Battle for Scottish Independence:The Battle of Dunnichen, ad 685’, MA thesis, State University of East Tennessee, 2002.
1. ‘And Ecgbert succeeded to the kingdom of Wessex: and the same day ealdorman Aethelmund rode from the Hwicce over [the Thames] at Kempsford, and there was met by ealdorman Weohstan with the men of Wiltshire. There was a great battle, and both the ealdormen were slain there, and the men of Wiltshire won the victory.’
4. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum.
7. In Higden’s Polychronicon, cited by Halsall (1985b).
12. Scottish Chronicle, cited in Smyth (1984).The’men of Fortriu’ were slaughtered’beyond counting’ in a battle against the ‘gentiles’ or heathen Vikings. Among the dead was ‘Uven’ (Owen), last of the independent Pictish kings, and his brother, Bran.
15. Asser, 9, in Keynes and Lapidge (1983: 69).
16. Asser, 5, in Keynes and Lapidge (1983: 68).
17. Keynes and Lapidge (1983).
18. Passio de Sancti Eadmundi, in Smyth (1995: 21–2).
19. Discussed in Smyth (1979: 189–94).
23. Gaimar, cited in Whitelock (1969).
25. King Alfred, prose preface to Gregory’s Pastoral Care, in Keynes and Lapidge (1983: 124–5).
26. Annals of Ulster, 871. ‘Amalib [Olaf] and Imar [Ivar] returned to Ath Cliath [Dublin] from Alba with two hundred ships bringing away with them in captivity to Ireland a great prey of Angles and Britons and Picts.’
1. From the preface to Gregory’s Pastoral Care, Keynes and Lapidge (1983: 125). ‘To the track’ is a hunting metaphor.
3. Geffrei Gaimar, L’Estoire des Englais, cited in Smyth (1995: 34).
8. Traditional site of Ashdown summarized in Grinsell (1937). For a more accessible summary of Uffington legends, see www.berkshirehistory.com/legends/alfred
9. Burne (1950: 17-18). Burne’s site for Ashdown is less closely argued than for most of his other Dark Age battles.
13. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles all use similar wording.
17. Channel 4, Weapons that Made Britain, 31 July 2004.
18. Smyth (1995: 95). Edington was Alfred’s ‘finest hour’, not only for his victory but for his diplomacy in its aftermath, culminating in Guthrum’s baptism.
19. ‘The Footpaths of Edington’, booklet published by Edington Parish Council.
1. On the confusion of Olafs at Brunanburh I have followed Smyth (1984:201–5).
2. From the battle poem, ‘better workmen were in the conflict of banners, the clash of spears, the meeting of heroes’.
3. Quotations from Egil’s Saga are from the Penguin edn. (Scudder and Oskardottir, 2004).
4. Williamof Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, in Whitelock (1979).
5. The Brunanburh poemis contained in the Winchester (‘A’) manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle against the year 937.
6. Cited in Wood (1981a: 212–13).
7. Cited in Wood (1999b: 203–4), from prophetic poem Armes Prydein (Great Prophesy) in the Book of Taliesin.
8. McDougall (2004), who concludes that ‘Setting off to find Brunanburh equipped only with a copy of Egil’s Saga offers prospects of little more than a pleasant walk and a good read.’
9. Scudder and Oskardottir (2004: 218).
10. Williamof Malmesbury, in Whitelock (1979).
11. Symeon of Durham, Historia ecclesiae dunelmensis, in Whitelock (1979).
12. Williamof Malmesbury, in Whitelock (1979).
14. Florence (John) of Worcester, Chronicle, in Whitelock (1979).
16. Hill (2004: 135–60) looks at over twenty competing sites.
1. Quotations from The Battle of Maldon are from the text and translation edited by Griffths (2000). The key modern source on the battle is Scragg (1991).
3. The most detailed of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles is the ‘Parker Chronicle’ (‘A’), which runs as follows: ‘In this year came Anlaf [Olaf Tryggvason] with ninety-three ships to Folkestone ... and so on to Maldon. Ealdorman Byrhtnoth came to meet them with his levies and fought them, but they slew the ealdorman there and had possession of the place of slaughter.’
4. Vita Sancti Oswald, cited in Griffiths (2000: 7-8).
10. Tribal Hideage, discussed in Stenton (1971: 295-7).
12. Book of Ely, cited in Griffiths (2000: 8-10).
14. English Heritage (2003). Maldon is one of six battlefield walks set out in booklet form.
1. The events of Aethelred’s reign are recounted in most detail in the Laud or Peterborough (‘E’) Chronicle. Instead of being a mere list of dates and events, it offers a commentary on the Danish invasions. Obviously written in hindsight, the chronicler strikes a pessimistic note in line with other writings of the time, most notably Bishop Wulfstan’s ‘Sermon of the Wolf’. Whoever he was, our chronicler was literate, well-informed and with a nice line in irony.
2. 1004: ‘The next morning when [the Danes] planned to retire to their ships, Ulfcytel came up with his force and there was a fierce encounter and great slaughter on each side. There were slain the chief men of East Anglia, but if they had been up to full strength the enemy would never have got back to their ships, as they themselves admitted’ (‘E’ Chronicle). The battle cannot be located exactly but is believed to have taken place on East Wretham Heath, four miles north-east of Thetford on the road to Norwich.
3. 1006: ‘They went to Wallingford and burned it to the ground and proceded along the Berkshire Downs to Cuckhamsley Knob, and there awaited the great things that had been threatened, for it had often been said that if they ever got as far as Cuckhamsley Knob, they would never again reach the sea; but they went back by another route. Then levies were mustered there at East Kennet, and there they joined battle; but the Danes soon put that force to flight, and bore their plunder to the sea.’ The village of East Kennet lies on the Ridgeway close to the point where it crosses the Kennet and near a crossroads formed by a Roman road from Marlborough to Bath. The battle probably took place close to the present village.
4. The sources for Ringmere are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and several Scandinavian praise poems, notably the Olafsdrapa or Olaf’s Saga and Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla, both of which refer to ‘Hringmera Heath in Ulfkell’s land’.
5. Florence of Worcester says it was fought on 5 May, a date confirmed by the twelfth-century Ely Calendar. However, the Chronicle, being much closer in time to the battle, has priority.
6. Palsson and Edwards (1986).
7. Olafsdrapa: ‘All the race of Ella stood arrayed at Hringmaraheldr (Ringmere Heath)/Men fell in battle when Harold’s heir stirred up strife’, in Whitelock (1979).
9. Eiriksdrapa, in Whitelock (1979).
11. Oman (1885): the starting point of modern Dark Age and medieval battlefield studies.
12. The exact site of the Battle of Penselwood is conjectural. The area is rich in archaeological remains, but none can be linked to the battle.
13. The main sources for the Battle of Sherstone are the Chronicle and Knutsdrapa, the praise poem of Canute by Ottar the Black, quoted in Whitelock (1979). The most recent assessment of Canute is Rumble (1994).
14. Knutsdrapa, in Whitelock (1979).
16. Movements of the armies before Assingdun are discussed in Rodwell (1993: 131–9).
17. The wording is the same in the ‘E’ and ‘F’ chronicles.
18. The dead of Assingdun and their significance are discussed by Higham(1997: 66–8).
19. Knutsdrapa, in Whitelock (1979).
20. The Norman chroniclers offered several lurid versions of the murder of Edmund Ironside.William of Malmesbury had heard he was murdered by a ‘sharp basulard’ as he sat down to relieve himself. Another version has him being hit by an arrow driven by a secret mechanism with in a wooden statue. Gaimar combines both versions by having the unfortunate king shot in the nether parts ‘as far as the lugs’ by an assassin hiding in the latrine.
22. Swete (1893), and, more accessibly, via www.meetingpoint.org