But he shoved with his shield–so that the shaft burst,
And the spear broke, and it sprang away.
Wroth was the chieftain, he pierced with his spear
That proud Viking who gave him that wound.
Yet prudent was the chieftain; he aimed his shaft to go
Through the man’s neck–his hand guided it
So that he reached his sudden enemy’s life.
Then he a second swiftly sent
That the breastplate burst–in the heart was he wounded
Through the ring-harness–and at his heart stood
The poisoned point; the earl was the blither:-
Laughed then that high-heart–made thanks to God
For his day’s work–that his Saviour granted him.
This vivid description belongs to the famous poem The Battle of Maldon, an engagement that took place near the Blackwater Estuary in Essex in 991. Because it contains one of the few portrayals of an Anglo-Saxon army in battle, the poem is referred to many times in this book. But what does it tell us about what it was like to be involved in warfare during the Anglo-Saxon period? The answers are nearly all there provided we know what we are dealing with. It is often assumed that the surviving literary evidence for warfare is of limited value due to its colourful and formulaic language. But to argue this is akin to staring the evidence in the face and ignoring it. Things were spoken or written for a reason. All we have to do is understand the reasons for the works being written in the first place, and their references to weapons and warfare can be taken in context and conclusions can be drawn from them. But of course, it is not always easy to reach this understanding.
Some scholars have sought to look at warfare from the participant’s point of view, most notably John Keegan in his The Face of Battle. This is a useful exercise that gets the reader closer to the true horrors of war, but for periods of history where the literary evidence is not so direct or at best enigmatic, the approach becomes harder. The poem The Battle of Maldon, quoted from above, is a literary device before it is anything else. It was written in a certain style for a certain political purpose. It does, however, mention things that simply must have been true, however dramatic they may appear. The pushing and shoving of a shield wall line was a reality. The snapping and breaking of a spear shaft as a warrior pressed his shield against it was also a reality. So too was the bloody end to a life brought about by a brutal thrust of a weapon into the body’s unprotected parts, the result of a struggle fought at close quarters with a deadly result.
The brutality of Anglo-Saxon warfare has been evidenced by recent archaeology. One can only imagine the scene on the ridgeway in Weymouth on the southern coast of England, played out sometime in the late tenth or early eleventh century (Plate 19). The discovery by archaeologists of fifty-one decapitated Scandinavian male bodies in a huge pit in 2009 shows such brutality in an unambiguous way. Clearly beheaded while still alive, these young men had also been stripped naked and when they were placed in the pit, their heads were neatly stacked to one side. Archaeologists have established their Scandinavian origins through isotope analysis of the males’ teeth, concluding a wide-ranging yet truly Scandinavian origin for each of the men. One of them is thought to have come from north of the Arctic Circle. Radiocarbon dates established that this horrific event took place sometime between the years 910 and 1034. Here in a dark pit on the south coast of England is evidence that the Anglo-Saxons were perfectly capable of unequivocal demonstrations of their own power at a time when historians have often put them on the back foot. Were these victims hostages whose leader had defaulted on an agreement with the Anglo-Saxon king or ealdorman? Had they just been one ship’s company of marauding Vikings who had come ashore in Wessex at a time when it was strongly defended? It is too early to say. We may never know the answer. Whoever they were, they met their death at a weapon’s edge in the most dramatic of ways.
Throughout this book there are countless references to the reality of warfare in the Anglo-Saxon period. This is not to say that these grim examples are included at the expense of sensible objective discussion. They are there to provide us with a realistic idea of why things happened the way they did. It is hoped that by the end of this volume the reader will be closer to understanding the answer to the crucial question, what was it really like fighting a war in Anglo-Saxon England?