they availed themselves of these advantages showed a natural genius for war. To seize a headland or a slip of land at a river mouth, to draw a trench across it and back their trench with earthworks, to haul up their vessels within this camp and assign it a campguard, was the prelude to each northern foray; and it was only when their line of retreat was secured that they pushed into the heart of the land.1 From the moment of their advance caution seemed exchanged for a reckless daring. But their daring was far from being reckless. They were in fact the first European warriors who realized the value of quick movement in war. The earliest work of the marauders was to seize horses; once mounted, they rode pillaging into the heart of the land; and the speed with which they hurried along baffled all existing means of defence. While alarm beacons were flaming out on hill and headland, while shire-reeve and town-reeve were mustering men for the fyrd, the Dane had already swooped upon abbey and grange. When the shirehost was fairly mustered the foe was back within his earlier times. Their large, red-brown sails, about seventy feet long, are but a few feet shorter than that of the Wikings' ship of Gokstad; sails of that kind rising above the fringe of reeds and over the long reaches of marsh-land must often have struck terror into the dwellers on the Humbrian shores. (A. S. G.) 1 In their own land, which was penetrated throughout by arms of the sea, no spot lay more than ten miles from the water, and the whole country was thus necessarily exposed to pirate raids, such as those of the Wendish sea-rovers who for a time made a part of the coast of Jutland a mere desert. It was under these conditions that the Danes had learned their special mode of warfare. See Dahlmann's "Geschichte von Dannemark," vol. i. pp. 129, 136. (A. S. G.) CHAP. III. The Making of the Danelaw. 858 878. CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858878. camp; and the country folk wasted their valour upon The Making entrenchments which held them easily at bay till the black boats were shoved off to sea again. Nor was this all. The Danes were as superior to their opponents in tactics as in strategy. An encounter between the shire-levies and the pirates was a struggle of militia with regular soldiers. The Scandinavian war-band was a band of drilled warriors, tried in a hundred forays, knit together by discipline and mutual trust, grouped round a leader of their own choosing, and armed from head to foot. Outnumber them as they might, a host of farmers hurried from their ploughs, armed with what weapons each found to hand, were no match for soldiers such as these. The Danes in It was now nearly fourteen years since the Danes had appeared in the western seas. In 852 a force of these "Dubhgaill" or Dark Strangers made its way to the Irish coast under a sea-king called Olaf the Fair, himself no Dane, but a son of one of the petty rulers of the Norwegian Upland; and after hard fighting with the "Finn-Gaill" or White Strangers, the Norwegians whom it found in possession of the pirate field, the Danes withdrew to return four years after in overwhelming force. From 856 the Wikings about Ireland submitted to Olaf, and his occupation. of Dublin made it the centre of the Ostmen.2 At the same time Ivar the Boneless, who, whether a son of the 1 The Landnama Book calls him a son of King Ingialld, who came of the stock of Halfdan Whitefoot, King of Upland. 2 Todd, "War of Gaedhil and Gaill," Intr. p. lxxviii.-ix. "Ostmen was the name given to the pirates settled on the east coast of Ireland. (A. S. G.) CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858 878. mysterious Ragnar Lodbrok or no, was a Skioldung, or of the kingly race among the Danes, seems from The Making the Irish annals to have been fighting in Munster. But for ten years we see nothing more of these leaders or of their Danish followers; and it is not till 866 that we find them united in an attack on the greater island of Britain. While the Ostmen gathered in a fleet of two hundred vessels under Olaf the Fair, and threw themselves on the Scotkingdom across the Firth of Forth, a Danish host from Scandinavia itself, under Ivar the Boneless, landed in 866 on the shores of East-Anglia.1 We can hardly doubt that this district had been the object of many attacks since the raid on its shores. which is recorded more than twenty years before,2 for the Danes were suffered to winter within its bounds, and it was only in the spring of 867 that they horsed themselves and rode for the north. in York. Their aim was Northumbria; and as they struck The Danes over Mid-Britain for York they found the country torn by the wonted anarchy, and two rivals contending, as of old, for the throne. Though the claimants united in presence of this common danger, their union 1 The English Chronicle calls it a "micel here," but names no leader. Æthelweard however calls it "classis tyranni Igwares ;" and the Chronicle names Inguar and his brother Hubba as leaders of the “here” when it conquered East-Anglia four years later. The lists of after writers are made up of all the names mentioned in the subsequent story. I have omitted all reference to the legend of Ragnar Lodbrok's death, which does not make its appearance for a couple of centuries. 2 Eng. Chron. a. 838, CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858878. came too late.1 The Danes had seized York at their The Making first arrival, and now fell back before the Northumbrian host to shelter within its defences, which seem still to have consisted of a wooden stockade crowning the mound raised by the last Roman burghers round their widened city. The flight and seeming panic of their foes roused the temper of the Northumbrians: they succeeded in breaking through the stockade, and pouring in with its flying defenders, were already masters of the bulk of the town when the Danes turned in a rally of despair. From that moment the day was lost. Not only were the two kings slain, but their men were hunted and cut down over all the country-side, till it seemed as if the whole host of Northumbria lay on the fatal field. So overwhelming was the blow that a general terror hindered all further resistance; those who survived the fight "made peace with the Pagans;" and Northumbria sank without further struggle into a tributary kingdom of the Dane. Ruin of Northumbria. But the loss of its freedom was only the first result of this terrible overthrow. With freedom went the whole learning and civilization of the North. These, as we have seen, were concentrated in the great abbeys which broke the long wastes from the Humber to the Forth, and whose broad lands had as yet served as 1 Sim. Durh. "Hist. Dun. Ecc." lib. ii. c. vi. 2 "Non enim tunc adhuc illa civitas firmos et stabilitos muros illis temporibus habebat." Asser (Wise), p. 18. 3 "Illic maxima ex parte omnes Northanhymbrensium coeti, occisis duobus regibus, cum multis nobilibus deleti occubuerunt." -Asser (Wise), p. 18. Flor. Worc. gives the date of this battle as Palm Sunday, or March 21, 867. refuge for what remained of order and industry in the growing anarchy of the country. But it was mainly the abbeys that roused the pirates' greed; and so unsparing was their attack after the victory at York' that, in what had till now been the main home of English monasticism, monasticism wholly passed away. The doom that had long ago fallen on Jarrow and Wearmouth fell now on all the houses of the coast. The abbey of Tynemouth was burned. Streoneshealh, the house of Hild and of Cadmon, vanished so utterly that its very name disappeared, and the little township which took its place in later days bore the Danish name of Whitby. It was the same with the inland houses. Cuthbert's Melrose, Ceadda's Lastingham, no longer broke the silence of Tweeddale or Pickering. If Wilfrid's church at Ripon still remained standing, his abbey perished; and though Archbishop Æthelberht's church still towered over York in the glory of its new stonework, we hear no more of library or school. As a see indeed, York in time profited by the blow. On the general fabric of the church in the north it fell heavily; after the sack of Holy Island the Bishop of Lindisfarne was hunted from refuge to refuge with the relics of Cuthbert ; the Bishop of Lindsey was driven to seek a new home in the south; while the bishopric at Hexham came wholly to an end. But the ruin of its fellow sees 2 3 1 Bernicia, however, was not ravaged nor its abbeys destroyed till Halfdene's raid in 875. 2 It was destroyed by Eadred in 948. 3 Sim. Durh. "Hist. Dunelm. Ecc." lib. ii. c. vi. Stubbs, "Const. Hist." i. p. 274. CHAP. III. The Making of the Danelaw. 858 878. |