The Return of the Vikings: The Battle of Maldon 991 by Donald Scragg

Author:Donald Scragg [Scragg, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Viking Wars, Strategy & Tactics, Medieval
Amazon: B00D0UXU04
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

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The Battle of Maldon

By their very nature, battle sites leave little in the way of archaeological remains. The English dead following the battle of Maldon would have been carried away to be given honourable burial, and the Vikings may well have dealt with their own casualties, or, if that were impossible, the English would have left them for nature to take care of, or perhaps burnt them. Material objects such as weapons and armour were useful to both sides, and such weapons as the Vikings left on the field would have been quickly taken by the English survivors. The Bayeux Tapestry shows the dead being stripped of body armour. For knowledge of most early battles we are dependent on literary sources, and in the case of Maldon, we have a surprisingly large number. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported the encounter, but only (in the case of chronicle A) in the starkest terms, noting the large size of the fleet, the outcome of the conflict and its repercussions. There is also a short account of the battle in the Vita Oswaldi or Life of St Oswald (bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York, died 988), which is a work by Byrhtferth, a monk of Ramsey, who is known to be the author of a number of texts in the decade or so after the fight occurred. That Byrthferth was writing so soon after the event might be seen at first sight as giving his work particular authority, especially as Ramsey benefited from Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s will and might have wished to preserve an accurate account of his death. The abbey was a relatively minor beneficiary, however, in comparison with Ely, and the account of Byrhtnoth’s fall in the life of St Oswald has to be read in the light of its author’s habitual style, which depends more on rhetorical patterning and grand gestures than attention to detail. After stating that Byrhtnoth’s personal retinue fought alongside him and that he encouraged his men when they were in battle formation, he tells us that the hero of his narrative was tall and white-haired (both confirmed by other sources), and that he struck blows with his right hand and protected himself with his left, unmindful of the weakness of his body. In a particularly grandiose passage, he has him fighting in the thick of the battle, adding, more pertinently perhaps:

An infinite number of them and us were killed, and Byrhtnoth himself was killed, and the remainder fled. The Danes too were severely wounded; they were scarcely able to man their ships.

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