Sweyn Invades

It may well have been news of the wholesale slaughter of Danes in 1002 that was ordered by King Æthelred that motivated Sweyn Forkbeard to invade England. The St. Brice's Day Massacre is said to have killed Sweyn's sister Gunhilde and her husband, Pallig.

According to John of Wallingford, a Benedictine monk in the early 13th century, Sweyn was behind invasions between 1002 and 1012, many of which were commanded by Thorkell the Tall. Despite the massacre, an apparent arrangement between Sweyn and Duke Richard II of Normandy to sell Sweyn's plunder in Normandy suggests that one reason for invasion was, as always, loot. Of course the Danes were often bought off with Danegeld, and Sweyn accumulated a lot of it in those invasion years.

Sweyn is said to have personally led an invasion force in 1013, accompanied by Cnut. According to the Peterborough Chronicle:

before the month of August came king Swein with his fleet to Sandwich. He went very quickly about East Anglia into the Humber's mouth, and so upward along the Trent till he came to Gainsborough. Earl Uchtred and all Northumbria quickly bowed to him, as did all the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey, then the people of the Five Boroughs. He was given hostages from each shire. When he understood that all the people had submitted to him, he bade that his force should be provisioned and horsed; he went south with the main part of the invasion force, while some of the invasion force, as well as the hostages, were with his son Cnut. After he came over Watling Street, they went to Oxford, and the town-dwellers soon bowed to him, and gave hostages. From there they went to Winchester, and the people did the same, then eastward to London.

London resisted, partly because by then they had Danish help from Thorkell the Tall, who had defected, with many men and ships loyal to him, because he objected to the stoning of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ælfheah. Sweyn then went to Bath and other locations where they all surrendered. London soon followed, fearing how severe his revenge would be if they continued to resist.

With the capitulation of London, Æthelred went to the Isle of Wight and sent his sons to Normandy. Sweyn started to manage his new kingdom, but he died five weeks later, on 3 February 1014. His body was embalmed and returned to Denmark for burial.

His position in England was taken over by Cnut, of whom much has been said. Who has never been mentioned is Sweyn's daughter, Estrid, who lived a long and not-dull life. Let's talk about her next time.

The Oxford Massacre

One site of the St. Brice's Day Massacre in 1002 seems to have been Oxford. Æthelred called it in a 1004 charter "a most just extermination" of Danes, because of the rumor that they intended to kill him and all his council and take over the entire island, not just the part known as the Danelaw.

The sad part of the situation in Oxford was that the Danes there saw it coming and decided to take advantage of sanctuary. Sanctuary allowed anyone to take refuge in a church. Sanctuary had a time limit of 40 days, but in that time the refugee could get aid from outside to create a defense on their behalf against the persecutors.

The Danes in Oxford went to St Frideswide's Church (now Christ Church Cathedral), which Æthelred's charter tells:

For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defense for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs;

This should have been recognized as a safe haven for them,

...but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books. Afterwards, with God's aid, it was renewed by me.

Were the Danes all stuck inside while it burned? Or did they flee and meet the angry mob outside?

In 2008, an archaeological dig found the remains of 37 people who had been massacred. So far as could be determined, they were all male, between the ages of 16 and 25, and some had scars suggestive of previous injuries such as would be incurred by warriors. There were, however, newer injuries all over the bodies that did not have time to heal, as if attacked by a crowd from all sides. Radiocarbon dating suggests they all died between 960 and 1020 CE.

This was not the only site of aggression against Danes, but the king's decree and stories about St. Brice's Day may have been the impetus for what Sweyn Forkbeard did next. Let's get back to him.

The St. Brice's Day Massacre

Clashes with Danes in England resulted in establishing the Danelaw, originally just the set of Danish laws agreed upon with Alfred the Great (848 - 899) wherein Danes could rule themselves while living on English soil. It later came to refer to a specific geographical territory (the pink area in the illustration).

This created a time of relative peace, with each group largely staying out of the other's way. In the 980s, however, Danes started making raids into English territory. In 991, after the Battle of Maldon, King Æthelred the Unready paid Danegeld, a tribute to the Danes to stop their attacks.

The attacks did not stop, however, and from 997 to 1001 there were savage raids by Danes across Southern England, burning towns and killing Anglo-Saxons.

Then Æthelred learned of a rumor, that the Danes intended to kill him, all his councilors, and then possess the entire kingdom. To put it in the words of the (translated) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

...in the same year the king gave an order to slay all the Danes that were in England. This was accordingly done on the mass-day of St. Brice; because it was told the king, that they would beshrew him of his life, and afterwards all his council, and then have his kingdom without any resistance.

Contemporary and near-contemporary and modern historians disagree on the phrase "all the Danes that were in England." Some say it was only those who were warriors, some (like the A-SC) believe it was every Dane they could find.

The massacre took place on the feast day of St. Brice, a Frankish bishop (c.370 - 444) who succeeded St. Martin as bishop of Tours. It took place in Oxford, and a royal charter issued in 1004 by Æthelred called it "a most just extermination."

Part of it involved an act of cruelty that mirrored the much later Clifford's Tower incident, an act so horrendous that it might have been the deciding factor in Sweyn's invasion. I'll explain more next time.

Sweyn Forkbeard

European history classrooms in America often talk about the Danish King Cnut (Canute) and his conquest of England. The modern world also hears about Cnut's grandfather, Harald Bluetooth, from whom the wireless protocol Bluetooth™ gets its name.

Whom we don't hear enough about is the generation sandwiched between these two familiar names, Harald's son and Cnut's father, Sweyn Forkbeard, who managed to be King of Denmark, King of Norway, and King of England (although in England only for a little over a month). He also fathered two kings and a queen.

His birthdate is unknown, but in the mid-980s he was old enough to rebel against his father, Harald, driving Harald into an exile in which he died in either 985 or 986. Despite this treasonous act, the Encomium Emmæ Reginæ ("Encomium for Queen Emma"), written for Emma of Normandy (widow of Æthelred the Unready and later Cnut's wife), claims Sweyn was universally loved:

Sveinn, king of the Danes, was, I declare, as I have ascertained from truthful report, practically the most fortune of all kings of his time, ... The Divine Power granted him such great favor that even as a boy he was held by all in close affection, and was hated only by his own father. No fault of the boy deserved this: it was due only to envy. When he grew to be a young man, he increased daily in the love of the people, and accordingly, his father's envy increased more and more, so that he wished not in secret, but openly, to cast him out, affirming by oath that he should not rule after him.

Some reports say that it was Sweyn embracing Christianity that ultimately turned his father so against him that Sweyn had to depose Harald and take the throne. One German historian, Adam of Bremen, claimed Sweyn was a rebellious pagan, upset that his father embraced Christianity. We also read in some chronicles that Harald was baptized by a cleric named Poppo, who performed a miracle that convinced Harald that Christianity was true. (Other versions claim Poppo performed for Sweyn instead.)

We know about Sweyn's invasion of England in 1003. Now, Danes were frequently invading England, and had established an enormous foothold, an occupied area known as the Danelaw, an agreed-upon compromise between the Danes and Alfred the Great. Was there a reason why Sweyn felt he had to start ravaging other parts outside of the Danelaw?

He might have had a very good reason, we could even say a legitimate reason, because of an incident in November of 1002. Tomorrow we'll learn about the St. Brice's Day Massacre.