Part 8: Invasion

Danish Invasion

By fortune foul upon the land, one Danish dam who tasted Anglish steel was sister to King Swein. For this, the noble culling of his dearly sister kin, Swein Forkbeard then declared revenge upon our Æthelred.

By 1011, fifteen Shires had been laid to waste by Forkbeard’s wrath. In anno domini 1012, Swein Forkbeard looted Canterbury’s great Cathedral. The Archbishop then was put to death. Swein had conquered up one part in four of all of pretty England then!

Viking warriors returned with every Spring and Summer season, well demanding Dane-geld in increasing sums from Æthelred, despite his smaller part of Angle’s land he ruled thenover. In the year of 1013, Swein demanded Dane-geld, wrought from sterling silver bullion, weighing in at three score eighteen long tonnes: all the silver could they carry then away in their flotilla. And King Æthelred? He paid.

In 1014, Swein Forkbeard laid his claim to England’s realm in its entirety! Æthelred fled to the Continent, to Normandy, and stayed he there in exile for a time, for Swein’s enconquerment would surely put his family to the blade.

The people of the Northlands here in England pledged their loyalty to Swein. They were in some part children of the Norse and Danish realm, and Swein did please them with his vigor over Æthelred’s weak wane. Swein so married up his son named Canute to Ælfgifu,[1] a daughter of an Ealdorman of York. Cnut did not care well for Ælfgifu, but upon her sired up a son named for his father: Sweyn, he known as Knutsson, who would take the throne of Norway in his time.

But God was with the Anglish men just then, as five short weeks abast, Swein Forkbeard died and breathed his last! His son, Canute, was left as mewling king, without the loyalty of any of Swein’s men to keep him there enthroned in England’s seat.

Æthelred called to him Norman allies to his dismal banneret and led a desperate counter back to England’s throne, and took it from Swein Forkbeard’s brat. Æthelred might had a chance to end the thing upon that fateful charge, but Cnut forsook his men and even then his family, and fled across the Channel back to Danesmarch, thought he never to look back.

Æthelred, enblooded by some better Norman counsel at this time, took fort to his position, finally. His family’s men tracked down each nobleman of Anglo-Saxon blood who sided with the Danes. Two Thegns of Darbyshire, north side the Trent in Mercia were put to sword and their possessions seized. Edmund Ironside, the first son of King Æthelred took one Thegn’s wife to cleave unto his breast – a bride from war was now his own. This victory engendered hunger from the scion then for more. Avarice awakened breeds ambition and a lust for blood and goodly treasures. Foolish youth when bred with these partake in deadly measures.

So then in that 1014, King Æthelred was crowned again. But faced he new resistance from his own so mentioned son, this Edmund Ironside. Edmund knew his father would be feckless once again in face of Danish and Norwegian Viking forays to his pretty realm, and wanted Edmund dearly for this land of his defend. He loved this England and her people more than he so loved his sire, Æthelred. Also, did he seek to rule and make the oversight and lawmoot[2] o’er this land, and well inspan[3] the Treasury within his grasping hand.

Wessex Divided

This budding civil war made place for young Canute, enriched through Denmark’s plundering of England through the bloody seasons seen, a chance to bring invasion, marking Wessex House’s leat.[4] A house divided, Wessex was it, girding up for civil war ‘tween Edmund and old Æthelred. And so Canute made easy work of hewing blood from bone. This was the year of 1015.

Before much longer then in 1016, old Æthelred received his life’s reward. He died; perhaps of some base malady, or mayhap from a poisoned blade. No one knows for sure except our Father in the golden realm, else also the dead king himself, because the runeline[5] shews but naught.

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[1] Ælfgifu means literally “elf’s gift.”

[2] Governance.

[3] Harness.

[4] Ditch or cut in the land; in this case: a schism in Wessex.

[5] Inscription, as on a monument or gravestone.