THE BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH

They take the rustic rumour of their bourg

For the great wave that echoes round the world.

Idylls of the King

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

We will probably never know where the Battle of Brunanburh was fought; but there
are many theories. Some of these rely on geography and topography, but one,
which located the Battle in Brinsworth near Rotherham, relied almost wholly on the
supposed derivation of place-names. This is an unreliable methodology; but it was
popular (and apparently unquestioned) in the 12th century, when Geoffrey of
Monmouth wrote his Historia Regum Britanniae (‘History of the Kings of Britain’).
Geoffrey tells us that our island took its name from Brutus, Prince of the Trojans, in
the same way that (according to early Scottish historians) Scotland took its name
from the daughter of an ancient Pharaoh, Scota. One would not have expected a 20th
century audience to be so gullible.

The Problem

For 400 years after the first Germanic settlers arrived on our shores, ‘England’ was
not even a geographical expression. The southern parts of the old Roman province
of Britannia were occupied by a number of tribes whom we have come to call ‘the
Anglo-Saxons’. They were ruled by a large number of petty kings, though
eventually there were only seven kingdoms which mattered. According to Bede, the
Anglo-Saxons sometimes recognised one of them as ‘Bretwalda’, or ‘leader of the
Britons’ (whch may have implied lordship over Celtic Britons as well as Teutonic
kinsmen).
During the late 9th century, these kingdoms came under attack from Danish
Vikings, who overran large parts of northern and eastern England while, in the early
10th century, Norse Vikings settled in the North and the West, briefly creating a
kingdom based on York. However, Alfred the Great (871-899) managed to preserve
the independence of Wessex, and then claimed lordship over all England; but, as
that great student of Anglo-Saxon law, Patrick Wormald, put it, ‘while there is
evidence that Alfred came to see himself in some sense as a king of all Englishmen,
there is almost no evidence that Englishmen beyond Wessex and perhaps the West
Midlands would have agreed’.
Alfred’s son Edward the Elder (899-924) succeeded in liberating a large part of
Mercia, with the help of his sister Aethelflaed, the so-called ‘Lady of the Mercians.’
(911-918); and Alfred’s grandson Athelstan retained strong connections there. The
latter’s coinage styled him ‘King of all Britain’; but England was still only a
‘fledgling’ kingdom, whose survival remained precarious.
Despite his great victory at Brunanburh in 937, Athelstan is an unsung hero,
who (unlike his grandfather) was never called ‘Great’. H.E.Marshall (author of Our
Island Story, first published in 1905) mentions him only once, and then only in
passing:

When Edward the Elder and Ethelfleda both died, Edward's son, Athelstane,
came to the throne. He, too, was a good king, and he, too, had to fight with
the Danes.

There was a little more to it than this! For a start, more legal texts survive
from Æthelstan's reign than from any other 10th century English king; and
Athelstan’s preoccupation with the maintenance of law and order has invited the
anachronistic comment that he was ‘tough on theft, and tough on the causes of theft’.
In addition, Athelstan’s success in battle enabled him to assume a new role in Anglo-
Saxon England and indeed throughout these Islands. He gave generously to the
Church, founded new monasteries, and did his best to revive a kingdom which had
been badly damaged by Viking depredations.
Athelstan travelled a good deal around his kingdom. According to the
evidence of charters, he visited Nottingham, Tamworth and Whittlebury (near
Northampton) – all of which had at one time been part of the ‘Danelaw’ - as well as
Colchester, London and Exeter. At Eamont in the Lake District, he was recognised
as overlord by King Constantine of Alba in Scotland, Hywel Dda of Deheubarth in
Wales, Ealdred ruler of Bamburgh, and Owain of Strathclyde. He summoned the
Welsh kings to Hereford, imposed an annual tribute on them and fixed the border
between England and Wales in the Hereford area at the River Wye. Welsh kings also
attended his court between 928 and 935. The alliance produced peace between
Wales and England, though some of the Welsh undoubtedly resented English
supremacy. According to William of Malmesbury, Athelstan went on to expel the
Cornish from Exeter and fix the Cornish boundary at the River Tamar. He had a
good claim to be the new ‘Bretwalda’.
Meanwhile, relations between Athelstan and Constantine of Scotland had
broken down; and further fighting resulted in a meeting at Cirencester in 935 which
Michael Wood has characterised as a ‘Durbar’; but, beneath the ceremonial veneer,
there was seething resentment in Scotland of the recently imposed English
hegemony; and Constantine organised a grand coalition of Athelstan’s opponents.
The Scots were joined by Norse Vikings from Dublin, Gaels from the rest of Ireland,
Britons from Strathclyde, Northumbrian rebels and Icelanders, and the allied army
marched South.
What were their objectives? In Land of My Fathers (1974) Gwynfor Evans was
in no doubt that they wanted to drive the Anglo-Saxons back into the sea, whence
they had come; and in The Story of A Scotland (2009) Neil Oliver wrote this:

Everyone has heard of Hastings, of 1066. But who has heard of Brunanburh?
And yet this more than anything that happened in Sussex a century and
more later was what determined the shape of the Britain we live in today.

The two armies met at Brunanburh; and no one knows how many men fought
and died there, nor are we ever likely to know. The estimates are almost wholly
fantastic; and the debate is unlikely to advance much further, in the absence of
relevant battlefield archaeology. For this to be useful, the archaeogist has to have
reliable information as to approximately where a battle was fought; and in the case
of Brunanburh, this is absent. Yet many historians are not content to leave it at that.
Driven by antiquarian enthusiasm and local patriotism, they give estimates of the
number of troops involved on each side which are based on guesswork; and purport
to know where the battle was fought.
J.H.Cockburn thought that 30,000 men were involved in the coalition army,
on the basis of an ancient account which tells us that 615 ships entered the Humber,
but all we can confidently say is that comparatively large forces must have been
involved, given the number of different parties who took part in the battle, and the
importance to all concerned of the struggle. As for the location, some writers opt for
Brunanburh in Wirral, others for Brinsworth or Burghwallis in SouthYorkshire; and
some prefer Burnley in Lancashire, or Lanchester or Hunwick in County Durham.
Is there anything in any of these theories? The geography provides a very
rough guide. In the time of Alfred the Great, Danish Vikings had overrun all the old
English kingdoms except Wessex while the hold which the King of England had
over the former Danelaw was questionable, and his control of Yorkshire was non-
existent, even in Athelstan’s reign. It is therefore likely that the coalition forces
invaded and met Athelstan’s somewhere in the North of England. Further, the two
most likely candidates for the location of Brunanburh are Wirral and South
Yorkshire.
There is no shortage of primary sources for the battle, but they are both
difficult (because written in Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Latin, Old Norse, Middle English
and Anglo-Norman). First is the vernacular poem entered into manuscript A of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the mid 10th century, but probably composed in Winchester,
the capital of Wessex, soon after the battle. This tells us simply that the enemy
invaded ‘our land’ (meaning the English kingdom). It also tells us that Æthelstan
left Wessex and won a great victory, and that Constantine of Scotland returned to his
land after that. So the fighting must have taken place somewhere between the
borders of Wessex and Scotland, which does not take us very far.
Æthelweard (d.c. 998) tells us little more:

[N]ine hundred years plus twenty-six more had passed from the glorious
Incarnation of our Saviour when the all-powerful King Athelstan assumed the
crown of empire. Thirteen years later there was a massive battle against
barbarians at Brunandun [sic] which is still called 'the great war' to the
present day by the common folk. The barbarian hordes were then overcome
on all sides and they held sway no longer. Afterwards he drove them from
the shores of the sea and Scots and Picts alike bent their necks. The fields of
Britain were joined as one; everywhere there was peace and abundance in all
things. No fleet has since moved against these shores and remained without
the consent of the English.

The Anglo-Norman chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar tells us about Brunanburh in

his History of the English (fl. 1130s) but again gives only the vaguest of details:

After that reigned Edward's son Athelstan. When he had reigned to the
fourth year, he waged a battle against the Danes; and he defeated Guthfrith
the king. After that he assembled a great army and into the sea issued a great
fleet. Directly to Scotland he went; he harried that country well. One year
later, no less no more, at Brunanburh he had the upper hand over the Scots,
and over the men of Cumberland, over the Welsh, and over the Picts. There
were so many slain I think it will be told forever.

Some accounts written after 1066 are more helpful. In particular, around
1122, John of Worcester based himself on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle poem, but gave
additional information, in particular that the enemy were led by Anlaf, ‘a pagan king
of Ireland and many islands’, encouraged by his father-in-law Constantine.
Crucially, he says that the invasion fleet entered the river Humber; and this
statement is repeated verbatim by several other 12th century writers.
The lengthiest account in any historical source is in the Gesta Regum (‘Deeds of
the Kings’) of William of Malmesbury. William includes several pages from a 10th
century poem which is reproduced in the Appendix hereto;but the crucially
important line is the one which refers to the ‘northern land; which ‘gave willing
assent’ to Anlaf’s invasion, following his arrangement with the King of Scots.
According to Wood, ‘the Northern land’ does not mean Scotland (as one might
assume) but Northumbria, which in turns gives credence to the idea of that the
coalition’s army landed in the Humber estuary.
 With so little to go on, one might think that scholars would tread carefully,
and not give definite opinions as to the location of the battle. Indeed, 75 years ago
Alistair Campbell ended his study of the problem with the conclusion that ‘unless
new evidence can be produced… all hope of localising Brunanburh is lost… and an
honest nescio [‘I don’t know’] is greatly to be preferred to ambitious localisations
built upon sand’; but not everyone has been so cautious. Several writers have
preferred to adopt Fluellen’s broad-brush approach, when examining toographical
evidence. In Shakespeare’s Henry V, the Welsh captain compares the town of
Monmouth with Ancient Macedon, birthplace of Alexander the Great:

FLUELLEN:

I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is porn. I

tell you, captain, if you look in the maps of the
'orld, I warrant you sall find, in the comparisons
between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations,
look you, is both alike. There is a river in
Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at
Monmouth…and there is salmons in both.

Solutions

Northampton?

In 1996 the normally skeptical Eric John expressed a view as to where Brunanburh
might have been fought:

Olaf's army was composed of Irish Norwegians, Scotsmen and so on, and
men tend to fight as far from their homeland as they can. The English
casualties show that the battle was a close one and suggests that the English
choice of strategy was limited. Their enemies would never have fought so far
north from choice. The most convincing arguments about the site of the battle
seem to me those of Dr Alf Smyth. Smyth thinks it was probably very near
Northampton.1

As we can tell from his tone, John was not really committed to Northampton; and his
(and Smyth’s) theory has not found favour with other historians.

Bromborough?

1 Eric John, Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England, Manchester University Press, 1996

The argument for Bromborough (on Merseyside) was put forward in a 40 page
pamphlet published by W.T. Tudsbery in 1907; and it is still being urged upon us
today, not least in The Battle of Brunanburh, A Casebook. This is a remarkable
compendium, containing a very wide range of source material, and the editor’s
commentary appears to be neutral at various points; but the map which appears at
page xvi focusses on Wirral. At page 19, Livingston even goes so far as to write that:

The case for Bromborough is currently the standard against which all other
theories are measured. Put simply, it is currently so firm that many scholars
are engaged not with the question of whether Bromborough occurred on [the]
Wirral, but where on the peninsula it took place.

We shall see whether this claim is fully justified; but it is certainly true that
the case for Wirral has wide support, and some evidential basis. The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle describes the battle as taking place "around Brunanburh", and numerous
locations nearby have been proposed, including the Brackenwood Golf
Course in Bebington. Charters from the 13th century suggest that Bromborough was
originally named Brunanburh (which could mean "Bruna's fort"). Recent research by
local historians has identified a possible landing site for the Norse and Scots, which
is Wallasey Pool, near the River Mersey. Not long ago the Journal of the English
Place-Name Society claimed corroborative, indeed clinching, evidence with the
interpretation of an elusive phrase in an Old English poem on the
battle, ondingesmere, as a place-name in Wirral; and in December 2004 The
Times announced that ‘the battle which decided the destiny of Britain has been
located’, while the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 trumpeted the discovery of the
‘birthplace of Englishness’.
Yet the popular TV historian Michael Wood (b.1948) has advanced several
cogent objections to the Wirral theory. He points out that there is no tradition in
Chester or Cheshire of the battle taking place so close to home, and that even the the
chronicler Ranulf Higden (c. 1280-1364), who was an ardent Cheshire patriot,
repeated the story that the Viking army in 937 invaded via the Humber in 937, not
via the Mersey or Dee.
As for place-name evidence, ‘Bromborough’ appears as a place-name only in
the first half of the twelfth century, and the manor is not called Bromborough in
Domesday Book (compiled in the late 11th century), but Estham (Eastham). The
Bruna who allegedly gave his name to the site may well have lived in the early 12th
century. In that case, the suffix ‘burh’ would not refer to a Viking fortification but
rather to the enclosure of a twelfth-century manorial house. Small wonder that the
first historian of Cheshire, George Ormerod, wrote in 1819 that:

It is acknowledged by all writers that the fleet of the invaders was placed in
the Humber, and although the battle took place at such a distance from the
 point of landing, that the pursuit and slaughter of the Danes and islanders
lasted two days. It is impossible to trust sufficiently to the similarity of
names, as to believe any circumstances could bring the conflicting armies to
the distance of Bromborough.

Brinsworth, South Yorkshire?

There had long been a tradition in South Yorkshire that ‘Brunanburh’ was to be
identified with Brinsworth (now a suburb of Rotherham); but in 1931 a local
solicitor, John Henry Cockburn, purported to provide massive documentary proof of
the theory. He evidently thought that his legal qualification would lend weight to
his arguments, but the full title of his work - The Battle of Brunanburh and its Period as
elucidated by PLACE NAMES - is enough to start alarm bells ringing; and the
suspicion is confirmed as soon as one starts reading the tome.
There are fundamental problems with Cockburn’s methodology. He admits
that he is aware that the connection between any single modern place-name and the
ancient one in documentary or literary records may be tenuous; but he claims that,
where there is a clear connection between such names in very many cases, this
‘cannot be ignored’. Well, why not? Surely, a large number of dubious propositions
does not constitute a single convincing argument.
Cockburn had no such doubts. For example, he lists dozens, if not hundreds,
of similarities between place names and the names of warriors who fell, or fought, at
Brunanburh, according to the medieval sources; but some of the alleged similarities
are not very close; and many places must have been named long before Brunanburh
was fought, though the earliest evidence for them is often in Domesday Book
(c.1086). Further, the derivation of many place names is already well established,
and the battle of Brunanburh is simply not relevant to the process. Lastly, it is well
established that some place names derive from geographical features, rather than
personal names.
Places often take their name from settlers rather than warriors (e.g. Kettlewell
and Hubberholme in the Yorkshire Dales); but Cockburn seems to have thought that
anyone present at Brunanburh might have given his name to a local place. Thus, he
lists place-names said to derive from warriors who fought for the coalition, that is
against Athelstan’s English army; but it is very difficult to see why local people
would have named places after enemy soldiers. Finally, Cockburn even lists places
which are relatively far away from the supposed site of the battle (e.g. Thorpe
Hesley, which is over six miles from Brinsworth); and it is difficult to see why these
should have had any connection with it.2

2Cockburn seems to have assumed that very large numbers of men were involved at Brunanburh. At
one point he makes a comparison with Scutari, in the Crimea! But it was impossible for medieval
 One could go on; but the main point has been made, and indeed it was made
by the Sheffield Daily Telegraph in reviews published on 9 July and in the Hull Daily
Mail on 18 July 1931. The most the Telegraph could find to say in the book’s favour
was this:

We can at least say of it that we should be very glad to believe that things
were as Mr. Cockburn describes, for it would give a new importance to this
district in English history, and a new interest to many of the names that trip
so lightly off our tongues, but of which we know very little regarding their
origin, meaning, or historical value.

Faint praise indeed; and this helps to explain why Cockburn’s work failed to
gain much credence even in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It has certainly been
ignored by subsequent scholars, even in a painstaking symposium like Livingston’s.
Though he did have many scholarly doubts, Michael Wood did at one time
argue that Brinsworth was the most likely location for the battle. In chapter 11 of his
book In search of England, Wood told how he had visited Brinsworth as a schoolboy
in the early 1960s, and then again in the 1970s, 1981 and 1999, and how the
schoolboy in him became convinced that Brunanburh had been fought there,
specifically in or near Tinsley Wood (see illustration). He was almost lyrical in his
descriptions of this (though it had largely disappeared by the time of his last visit,
and is now difficult to find). He mourned the destruction of the environment
brought about by agriculture, industrialization and de-industrialisation. He was
clearly inspired by local stories and traditions about a great battle fought nearby at
an unknown date by unknown armies, which could have given rise to the idea that
Athelstan’s greatest victory was won near here; but he also read up on the
background, studied the maps, did the fieldwork, and spoke to archaeologists who
had excavated local sites.
Wood did not rely on the work of John Henry Cockburn. He was sceptical
about the value of place-name evidence and, in particular, about the alleged
similarity between ‘Brinsworth’ and ‘Brunanburh’. He pointed out that the former
meant ‘Bryi’s ford’, whereas the latter meant ‘the fort by the Bruna’. He relied
instead on geography and topography. He realized that, strategically, the battle was
always likely to have taken place near the Roman road through Castleford and
Doncaster to Nottingham and Derby. He also knew that, not far from Brinsworth,
and also on the Don, there was another place which was important during the Saxon
period, which was Conisbrough - the King’s town (the centre of what the Rotherham
Alderman John Guest called ‘Ivanhoe Land’ (see chapter 2 below).
Wood noticed how the layout of Brinsworth and nearby Tinsley wood, in
particular the proximity of the river Don, Tinsley Wood and White Hill, resembled

commanders to concentrate their forces in the same numbers as the Romans had done, or the
Victorians were able to do again.
the description of the battlefield in Egil’s Saga. He also noticed the proximity of the
chapel of St Laurence, which had received a royal stipend in the middle ages, and
which might have originated in a royal grant for the saying of masses for the souls of
the dead (see illustration). Could these have been the souls of men who fell that day
in 937, whilst fighting in royal service? All these features might be at the base of the
local tradition that Brinsworth had a special place in the history of the kingdom of
England.
However, Wood became more sceptical as he grew older and wiser. He
retained his original enthusiasm for Athelstan but lost faith in the idea that the
King’s greatest victory was fought near Brinsworth:

Going back to the mystery of Brunanburh, I have to say that I no longer

think the site can be located with any certainty. Of course, I don't deny
that something might turn up….I am still sure that the general area is
right - it can hardly have been much further south, otherwise how would
southern and Midlands annalists have failed to record where it was? But,
for the moment at least, I've come round to agreeing with what Alistair
Campbell wrote in 1938, that by now 'all hope of localising Brunanburh is
lost'.

Barnsdale Bar?

In 2013 Wood wrote an article for the Yorskhire Archaeological Journal entitled
Searching for Brunanburh: The Yorkshire Context of the ‘Great War’ of 937, in which he
theorised that Brunanburh may have been fought near Barnsdale Bar on the Great
North Road, north of Doncaster. He rehearsed the argument that a Yorkshire, rather
than a Cheshire, location is more likely, pointing out once again that the ‘Great War’
of 937 was in fact only one campaign, in a prolonged period of fighting between
Anglo-Saxons and Viking for control of the North of England. More specifically, the
Viking kingdom of Yorvik was only established in the early 10th century, a period
when the Northumbrians were still proudly independent. Any battle with
Athelstan’s Wessex was therefore almost bound to take place on or near ‘the Great
North Road’.
Wood also pointed out that no surviving bruna- name has yet proved of any
help in the search for the site, but that the form ‘Wendun’ appears in a set of 10th
century annals, written in Chester-le-Street from between the 890s and 954, while a
later source (using John of Worcester, and compiled by Symeon of Durham) also
tells us that:

King Æthelstan fought at Wendun and drove into flight King Anlaf with 615
ships, and Constantine King of the Scots, and the King of the Cumbrians,
with all their host.
 Finally, Wood now argued that the topography points to a location near the
River Went, between the Don and the Aire, and that ‘Went Hill’ fits very well with
the name ‘Wendun’:

It is worth also drawing attention to another very prominent hill south of the
Went in a vital strategic position astride the Roman road to York. This is the
imposing rounded hill of Barnsdale Bar which rises steeply 150 feet above the
important Roman site at Burghwallis, where the Great North Road is met by
the Roman road from Templeborough.

In addition:

Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, the area around the Roman fort
at Burghwallis, Robin Hood’s Well, and the great hill at Barnsdale Bar, was
viewed as the customary assembly place for the Northumbrians, where they
met the southern kings for ‘adventus’ ceremonies of greeting and submission,
and also, crucially, where they made their military assemblies.

Hunwick?

In Brunanburh Located through Egil’s Saga (CreateSpace, 2018), Stefán Björnsson and
Björn Vernhardsson claim that the great battle took place somewhere else entirely.
They argue:

The battlefield is near Vinovia on the Roman Road, Dere Street, in the county
of Durham. And the battle was fought in a field close to and north of
Hunwick. In the saga we have description of a field big enough with river on
the east side and wood on the west side. Hunwick is only one kilometer
northwest from the bridge over the river Wear from Vinovia. The saga
tells of two towns in intermediate distance and we assume Durham to be the
one in the north and Darlington in the south.

My inclination, on reading Egil’s Saga for the first time, was to think that it
was literature rather than chronicle or history, more like Homer’s Iliad than
Froissart’s Chronicles, especially since it was written in Iceland in the early 13th
century, about events which had taken place some 300 years earlier. My doubts
were reinforced when I read A.Keith Kelly’s essay Truth and a Good Story, which is
included in Michael Livingston’s Casebook on Brunanburh (2011). Kelly explains that
Old Norse literature of this kind was intended to be both ‘truthful’ and a ‘good
story’, while explaining that the Icelandic author(s) or composer(s) would not have
understood the distinction. He concludes that Egil’s Saga ‘is not intended to be taken
as an authentic record of history: there are simply too many red flags in the way’,
starting with the fact that the King of Scotland according to the Saga was Olaf (old
Norse for Anlaf), whereas the historical King was Constantine.
There are two further points which can be made about the Saga. First, the
composer tells us that messengers were sent by Athelstan from the place where he
had decided to give battle, to see the King of Scotland; and that they rode back and
forth no less than three times, during the course of protracted negotiations:

Athelstan's men sent messengers to King Olaf to tell him that their king was
ready to do battle and had a great army with him, but that he wanted to avoid
inflicting casualties on the scale that seemed likely. Instead, he told them to
return to Scotland, offering to give them a shilling of silver for every plough
in all his realm, as a pledge of friendship between them. King Olaf began
preparing his army for battle when the messengers arrived, and intended to
set off. But when they had delivered their message, he called a halt for the day
and discussed it with the leaders of his army. They were divided over what to
do. Some were eager to accept the offer, claiming that it would earn them
great renown to return after exacting such a payment from Athelstan. Others
discouraged him, saying that Athelstan would offer much more the second
time if they turned this gesture down. This was what they decided to do.

The negotiations were fruitless; but the narrative strongly suggests that the
messengers could complete the journey between the rival camps in a day. If we take
this seriously it surely rules out a location in South Yorkshire (which is 240 miles by
road from Gretna Green, and 193 to Berwick on Tweed) and argues in favour of
Durham, not Yorkshire.3
The second point relates to the description of the battlefield itself. Egil’s Saga
contains these lines:

There was a fortress north of the heath where King Olaf stayed and kept the
greater part of his army, because beyond it lay a large stretch of countryside
which he considered well suited for transporting provisions for his army. He
sent his men up to the heath which had been appointed as the battlefield, to
camp there and prepare themselves before the other army arrived. When they
reached the place chosen for the battlefield, hazel rods had already been put
up to mark where it would be fought. The site had to be chosen carefully,
since it had to be level and big enough for large armies to gather. At the site of
the battlefield there was a level moor with a river on one side and a large
forest on the other. 4

3 Though Dick Turpin is supposed to have ridden from London to York (on Black Bess in 1735), in 15
hours - a distance of just over 200 miles.
4 Egil’s Saga (Penguin Classics, 2004).
 So, there is a fortress, a heath, a level moor with a river on one side and a
large forest on the other. However, the lines in question might refer to a dozen, or
even a hundred locations in the North of England, especially in medieval times,
when there was more forest, more uncultivated land than now, and a legion of old
fortresses surviving. So far from indicating a location in or near Hunwick, the
passage is surely evidence of the inherent difficulty in locating a battle by reference
to a poem which was composed over 300 years after the event.

The Forgetting of Brunanburh

At the time, Brunanburh was hailed as a great English victory, and Athelstan as the
hero of the hour; but by 1300 the battle and the man were relegated to the
backwaters of English culture, a position which they continued to occupy for
centuries. How this came about, and why, is explained by Robert Rouse in his
contribution to Livingston’s Casebook (2011).
The background to the relegation is the Norman Conquest of England, which
saw the replacement of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy by French-speaking Normans
and their allies. These new men brought fundamental changes in Church and State.
The system of landholding was overhauled, in favour of a centralised and royal kind
of feudalism. Vast new forests were established, with their own laws and
jurisdiction. A separate system of Church courts was introduced. Almost all the
existing Cathedrals and Abbeys were pulled down and replaced. French became the
language of government, law and literature for around 300 years.
All this meant that the history of England and the English was gradually re-
written, and from a Norman point of view; and the Normans tended to look on their
predecessors as uncultured barbarians. In the 12th century there were still
chroniclers (notably Eadmer of Canterbury, John of Worcester and William of
Malmesbury) who told the story of Athelstan and his heroic triumph at Brunanburh;
but, in the Stanzaic Guy of Warwick, which appeared around 1300, the invading Danes
has become Saracens, and Athelstan have been replaced by Sir Guy of Warwick, who
defeats the invader by killing the African Giant Colbrund, in single combat at
Winchester. There is no mention of Brunanburh, while Athelstan has become a
cowardly tyrant, instead of a paragon of Christian kingship.
This is a startling and puzzling development, but one of the effects of the
Norman Conquest was to weaken English connections with Scandinavia, and
strengthen those with Western Europe - and more specifically, with France.
Moreover, the four centuries between 900 and 1300 saw the ‘making of the Middle
Ages’,5 as Western European civilisation expanded into Spain, Southern Italy, the
Balkans and even the Holy Land, while Germany expanded to the East, and the
Normans expanded in Southern Italy and the Holy Land, as well as England, Wales

5 The title of Sir Richard Southern’s first book, published in 1953.

and Ireland. Athelstan’s great war in northern England must have seemed distant
and parochial, by comparison.
At the same time, taste and fashion changed. People became interested in
Romantic, rather than Epic literature, and above all in the ‘Matters’ of Rome, France
and Britain. In particular, Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1095-c.1155) wrote about the
deeds of the mythical King Arthur, and his Knights of the Round Table, who were of
particular interest to the English, although (if they had existed at all) they had been
British. The emphasis now was on the daring deeds performed by individuals,
rather than the fate of nations; and this helps to further explain how Athelstan was
eventually replaced by Sir Guy of Warwick, who did battle with a Saracenic
monster, rather than with the Welsh, the Scots and the Norse. Athelstan was of little
interest, compared with Arthur and Lancelot.
The forgetting of Athelstan may also owe something to the infant medieval
tourist industry, since the monks of Winchester clearly had an interest in promoting
the new story, just as they promoted the cult of St Swithun; and Winchester was a far
more important place than anywhere in the North of England (except perhaps York).
The North- South divide undoubtedly existed, even in the Middle Ages.
Lastly, a change in the popular perception of monarchy may also have been
be important. In Anglo-Saxon times, Kings had been revered as heroes and demi-
gods: Alfred was called ‘Great’, while St Edmund of East Anglia (d.860) was both a
saint and a martyr for the Christian Faith; but, after the Conquest, the Gregorian
Reform of the Church brought a stricter division between Church and State, between
clergy and laity, and the political and the sacred. There were also unfortunate
arguments in England, between Henry II and Becket, and between King John and
Pope Innocent III, which caused some to think the less of kings. No post-Conquest
English king was ever made a saint, as Louis IX of France was (though it should also
be noted that there was only ever one English pope). This made it easier to
downgrade the great Athelstan; and he eventually came to be regarded as both weak
and tyrannical. It was only in the late 16th century, when William Camden moved
the study of English history out of the realm of myth and into the groves of academe,
that the King’s rehabilitation could begin, and it was not completed until the
Victorian era. Even then, it was his grandfather Alfred the Great who was hailed by
English historians as ‘the highest type of Englishman’ and ‘the greatest of English
kings.’6

6 Joanne Parker, in Livingston, 385-6.

Map of Brunanburh and district (Cockburn, 1931)

14
Tinsley Wood, 2018

15
St Lawrence Church, Brinsworth

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