A Guide to Old English by Bruce Mitchell & Fred C. Robinson

Author:Bruce Mitchell & Fred C. Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

12

The Battle of Maldon

In August of the year 991 marauding Vikings sailed up the river Blackwater (then called ‘Pante’) and beached their ships on an island not far from the town of Maldon. The English ealdorman, Byrhtnoth, called out the local levy and, combining with this force the warriors from his own personal retinue, marched to the river-bank across from the island and confronted the Viking army. The ensuing battle (which is reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 991 printed above in selection 7) is the subject of the poem which we are about to read.

The Battle of Maldon is the story of a military disaster suffered by the English in the course of their long and losing struggle against Scandinavian invaders. (Since 980 the Viking fleets had been raiding Southampton, Thanet, and elsewhere, and in the second decade of the eleventh century they seized the English throne.) The Anglo-Saxon king who presided over this prolonged humiliation of the English was Æthelræd (dubbed by later chroniclers ‘the Unready’1), whose reign seems to have been characterized by demoralization in the military and, if a famous sermon by Archbishop Wulfstan is to be believed, in the populace as a whole. It is against this unhappy background that the battle of Maldon is fought by the Englishmen and celebrated by the poet. The poem is about how men bear up when things go wrong. The fighting men at Maldon, no less than those at Balaklava and Dunkirk, triumph in this test of character in a manner of which Englishmen have always been especially proud. The Anglo-Saxons who fight to the bitter end are portrayed by the poet as glorious in defeat, and their valour redeems the honour of their country. The poet of course idealizes the actual battle; his verses are poetry, not history.

To understand the action of the poem, and especially the action in ll. 62–99, one must have some idea of the geography of the battle. (See map on p. 248, which shows the site which most scholars agree to be the likeliest location of the battle.) The Vikings occupy the island now called Northey, and Byrhtnoth’s Anglo-Saxons array themselves across the water along the river-bank. At high tide the island is completely surrounded by water, but when the tide recedes (l. 72), an elevated road or causeway (called a bricg in ll. 74 and 78) is exposed, thus providing access to the island from the mainland. When the two armies first confront each other, the tide is in and the causeway is submerged (ll. 64–71). When the tide goes out, the Vikings begin to file across the causeway to the mainland, but the Anglo-Saxons block their progress from the narrow passageway to the shore (ll. 72–83). Seeing that they are at a serious disadvantage, the Vikings ask Byrhtnoth to order his troops to stand back and allow the invaders free passage to the shore (ll. 84–8). Byrhtnoth rashly agrees to give the enemy this advantage (ll. 89–95), and the battle begins.

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