Page 35 - BBC History - September 2017

Carnage in the shadow
TOPFOTO/ALAMY/AKG IMAGES/ TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
ABOVE: A rune stone from
Gotland, Sweden depicting
the journey of dead Viking
warriors into the afterlife
BELOW: Edmund Ironside
fought seven battles against
the Danes before agreeing
to divide England with
Cnut Sveinsson
BBC History Magazine
of the forest
The battle of Dane’s Wood 1016
COMBATANTS: Cnut Sveinsson and Edmund Ironside
OUTCOME: Cnut and Edmund make peace
The year 1016 was a bloody one. Edmund was not
It saw the Anglo-Saxon king Edmund
‘Ironside’ taking up the sword wielded yet dead, and
so ineffectively by his father, Æthelred
the Unready, and standing resolute there was to be
against the challenge posed by the
Danish prince, Cnut Sveinsson. one more battle
Edmund and Cnut met in battle no
fewer than seven times that year – six before he would
of these clashes are well known, but
the final one was almost lost to history. lay down his arms
Cnut’s father, Svein Forkbeard, had
briefly made himself king of England in stanza of poetry composed in praise
the winter of 1013/14. Svein had died of Cnut by the Viking skald Ottar
suddenly – slain, so it was said, by the the Black: “Prince, you won fame
murderous ghost of St Edmund, the with the sword north of mighty
king of East Anglia martyred by the Danaskógar, and it seemed a
Vikings in AD 869 – and the English slaughter to your followers.”
crown had reverted to the West Saxon Danaskógar means ‘forest of the
dynasty. Cnut, however, was not a Danes’, and nowhere in England is
man to drop a claim to power lightly. known to ever have had such a name.
In 1016, Cnut and Edmund fought
major battles at Penselwood (Somer- However, it is known that Edmund had
set), Sherston (Wiltshire), London, retreated with his army towards
Brentford (Middlesex) and Otford Gloucestershire, where – beyond the
river Severn – the Forest of Dean might
(Kent). Edmund prevailed against the have provided arboreal refuge. It is
Danish challenger in all of these possible that the Old Norse speakers
struggles (apart from Sherston, which of Cnut’s army, pursuing Edmund’s
had ended in stalemate), and it must battered forces into these western
have seemed that Cnut’s campaign
was on the brink of sputtering out. woods, heard the word ‘Dean’ and
But at Assandun (probably Ashing- interpreted it, not as Old English denu
don in Essex), the Danish warlord (‘valley’), but as Old English dena: ‘of
the Danes’. Retranslated into Old
brought his army to bear once more, Norse, the Forest of Dean became the
and – thanks to the disloyalty of the Forest of the Danes – a place won and
perfidious West Saxon nobleman renamed with the sword.
Eadric Streona (who fled at the In the aftermath, Edmund and Cnut
beginning of hostilities) – Cnut pulled made peace. Within a few months,
off a stunning victory. It was a calamity Edmund was dead and Cnut succeed-
for the English. As the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle reported it: “There Bishop ed him as king of all England.
Eadnoth was killed, and Abbot
Wulfsige, and Ealdorman Ælfric, and Thomas Williams is curator of early
Godwine the ealdorman of Lindsey, medieval coins at the British Museum. His
and Ulfcetel of East Anglia, and latest book, Viking Britain: An Exploration,
Æthelweard, son of Ealdorman is published by William Collins this month
Æthelwine, and all of the English
nobility was destroyed there.”
The battle of Assandun is generally DISCOVER MORE
assumed to have been the decisive COLLECTOR’S EDITION
moment of the war, and the event that E Read more about the
paved the way for Cnut to eventually bloodiest episodes of
reclaim the throne prematurely the Viking age in our
vacated by his father. But Edmund was collector’s edition, The
not yet dead, and there was to be one Story of Vikings and
more battle before the English king Anglo-Saxons. For
would lay down his arms and come to more details, go to
terms. It is mentioned only in a single buysubscriptions.com
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