Dan Snow Explains: Battle of Brunanburh

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]It was a field of bodies. Among them, five kings laid dead. A glittering coalition from across the British and Irish isles and beyond had brought kings and yalss and lords to this corner of England. And here they had died. The rest of the fallen, we're told, countless.

[00:00:22]40 years later, the English were still calling it the great battle.

[00:00:29]It was England's great hardening, the testing ground, the moment when England could have been snuffed out. It was the battle of Brunamb. In this episode of Dan Snow's history, I'm going to tell you that story. The story of not only how two armies clashed on that field, 1100 years ago, but how they embodied two opposing visions for Britain and Ireland. On the one side, you've got the Scots, what we might call the Welsh.

[00:00:59]You've got the Irish, the Vikings. And on the other side, a political experiment, fragile, uncertain, and upstart, England, under arguably its first king, Athlan.

[00:01:15]I am extremely grateful to the kind and enthusiastic legends of the Whirl Archaeological Trust, who introduced me to what they believe is the battlefield.

[00:01:24]They let me come with them for some metal detecting and some surveying work.

[00:01:27]Also to professor Fiona Edmunds who came with me that wonderful day and Mike Livingston great friend of history for his fabulous book Never Greater Slaughter. This is the story of Brunenber Athalan and the rise of England.

[00:01:48]In the early Middle Ages, Britain and Ireland was a contested space. Groups within the isles fought each other and they fought outsiders. In around, let's say 750 AD, there was a patchwork of little states. So if you drew a line across the aisles from Dover, you would have the Kingdom of Kent, you would go through Wessex, you'd go through the Kingdom of Mercia, you'd go into a little mosaic of Welsh statelets like Gwent and Paris and Gwyneith and others.

[00:02:19]You'd cross to Ireland where there was another collision of competing kingdoms, me, Lester, Connor, others. And that's just a a cross-section from sort of east to west. You've also got Cornwall in the south. In the north of Britain, there were lots of other little kingdoms uh like Anglo-Saxon North Umbrea, Strath Clyde, which is a British kingdom, Welsh if you like. War was the norm between all of these different states. In the later 700s and the 800s, well, lucky them, they had the opportunity to fight outsiders, too. In 787, a Reeve, so that's a local government official, he was at, we think he's in Portland in Dorset. He hastened down to the keyside to investigate and uh presumably try and charge some tax on an unfamiliar trading ship that had called in. The crew was well they were men from the north and by the way they had no interest in paying any taxes. They had no interest in the writ of the Reev or his king. They killed him and they pushed off. Three years later, worryingly similar men stormed ashore on the holy aisle of Lindesfan and slaughtered the priests they found there. Bookbindings dripping with jewels were torn from the venom pages within. Lurggical implements, so you've got your silver chalice and the like. They were thrown into their ship's holds by these Northmen who couldn't believe their luck. The Vikings had come to the archipelago. They arrived in Scotland a few years later and then Ireland in the 830s. There were waves of them. At least two groups of Vikings fought each other and many Irish kingdoms.

[00:04:03]It was Ireland that became the Viking stronghold in the Isisles. Dublin became a thriving Viking town, but they didn't restrict themselves to Ireland. In 865, Vikings sailed around and seized the aisle of Thanet in Kent. Now, that's long been the gateway to England. The the Romans had built a massive triumphal arch there. St. Augustine of Canterbury arrived there on his mission to the English. The Anglo-Saxon chronicle at this point, it talks about a cabal of Viking brothers perhaps, possibly sons of Ragnar Lothrock, Iva the Boneless, his brother Uber. Later sources talk about even more brothers. Bjorn Ironside, Sigured Snake in his eye, Haftan.

[00:04:46]It is possible that these were a mixture of Vikings from Scandinavia and some that had already settled in Ireland. We just can't be sure. The men of Kent, the people of Kent, bowed to the inevitable and they just paid a massive bribe. The Vikings raided the coast before they headed north to East Anglia. There the king also tried to bribe them, bought them off with a lot of horses, but they didn't go home. For the first time ever, they spent the winter in Britain. They stayed in Thatford. The following spring, a chunk of them swapped their dragon ships for horses and set off to the north. Their naval forces moving on a parallel track up the coast. In November 866, they pulled off a real coup. They seized the greatest northern city, York. If it wasn't already clear, this was now a massive threat. These Vikings were here to conquer. And from this point on, there would be decades of near continuous war. York would be the heart of those wars. It was a glittering prize.

[00:05:43]But neither Viking nor should I say Anglo-Saxon appetites would be sated with that glittering prize. They were playing for the highest possible stakes.

[00:05:54]So the North Umbreans, the you know the English North Umbreans tried to seize back their capital in 867, but the Vikings defeated them soundly. We hear from a source a year later. North Umbrean King Ella had his back sliced open, his rib cage torn outwards, his lungs pulled out so that he resembled an eagle with bloody wings. From there the Vikings surged onwards that their numbers swollen by fresh recruits from across the sea. Lured by tales of riches as whole kingdoms fell. The army marched south they wined at Nottingham.

[00:06:26]Desperate mercians. So that's the English kingdom of the Midlands bribed them to leave and they did leave for a year or so. They went back to York to toast their good fortune but they marched south again in 869.

[00:06:40]And don't think they'd forgotten East Anglia where they'd intimidated their first English king. They returned there and they killed him. King Edmund. They shot him to death with arrows. According to later sources, he is buried in Berry, St. Edmunds. Iva the Bonus, we think, then headed to Scotland. He successfully besieged Dumbartan, which was capital of the the the kingdom of Strathclide, it was called, in about 870. He he filled his ship's holes with slaves and booty and he sailed back to Ireland. His brothers though they stayed in the south. In fact, they crisscrossed east and central England and eventually pushed south where an Anglo-Saxon kingdom was still holding out. It was called Wessix. In 871, Wessix had got a new king. His name was Alfred. He'd been the younger brother of the previous king, but after a series of battles, his big brother had been killed, mortally wounded. we think anyway died and Alfred took the throne. Within five or six years of that, Mercia had fallen to the Vikings. So Wessix was the only Englishspeaking kingdom left in Britain.

[00:07:48]Look, it wasn't clear if Wessex would survive. In January 878, a small Viking force launched a lightning strike against Alfred himself while he was at Chippenham. He he fled further to a small island in the Somerset marshes and briefly that island was pretty much Wessix. That was England. But Wessix was more than just territory. It was an idea. And Alfred rolled the dice. He summoned the third. So that's the able-bodied men of the surrounding counties. Like we call them might call them a militia. And they responded. It was one of the most dramatic moments of English history. Alfred arrives at the pre-arranged meeting point. He must have been slightly worried there'd be no one there to meet him because he knew that local lords, well, they make their accommodations with the Vikings. They try and save their own skin, their own property. So maybe no one's going to show up. Instead, as he got there, he found an army. Alfred's in the game.

[00:08:41]That army went on to fight the Vikings at a place called Ethnon. We think it might be Edington and Wiltshire. It's a win. It's a crushing victory. The the Viking King Guthram, he retreats to Chippenham. There's a siege. Guthram submits. He surrenders. He agrees to become a Christian. He agrees to leave Wessex. And then even more so that there's a treaty between Guthram and Alfred. and they draw a line from the north of London to Chester. Everything south and west of that line was Alfred's sphere of influence. Now, Alfred is very cunning at this point. Very cunning indeed. There's a rebrand. He extended his power over this area, but not as the king of Wessix, but as the king of the Angles and Saxons, as king of the English. There weren't any other English kings around because the Vikings had killed them all. Alfred as the last English king sets his stall out to become the first king of the English.

[00:09:38]And Alfred didn't just talk about a new kingdom. He really built one. He constructed a series of burrs around the kingdom. So those are fortified towns and they're garrisoned with a standing force. They're properly protected. That was all paid for by a sophisticated system of taxation. And it meant that the English were more able to effectively respond to a large Viking raid, say on Kent in the mid 890s. Now, across the other side of that line in Viking territory to the to the east and north of that line, well, the Vikings were not unified at all. They were a quarrel of competing.

[00:10:16]Alfred died in 899. His oldest son, Edward, succeeded him. Edward himself had a son of around five years old. His name was Athlan. And just before Alfred died, he presented his grandson Athlan with a scarlet cloak, a sword belt, and a sword.

[00:10:36]He is saying at that point, "This is the future of my royal line." So meanwhile in Ireland, the Vikings have been driven out of Dublin by the Irish. These were this was a tumultuous time, folks.

[00:10:49]People were up and down. These Irish Vikings now been scattered across uh well much of Europe really. So we have accounts of these Vikings battling King Constantine of Scotland in 9004. We have accounts of Vikings landing in Lanasher.

[00:11:06]Some tried to capture the aisle of Anglesy off the northwest coast of Wales but rebuffed by the Welsh. That band of Vikings sails along the coast till it arrives near Chester in in what have been the kingdom of Mercia. Now Mercia was being ruled by Alfred's daughter Athlad. She was married to someone described not as a king of Mercia but as a lord of Mercia. So look clearly what's happened here is that Wessex has conquered Mercia under this exciting new banner of Englishness. Alfred's daughter is calling the shots there. Uh she's fortified Chester which had briefly fallen to the Vikings in 893. Now, importantly, the new king of Wessix, Edward, he sent his oldest son, Athlstein, to live with his aunt, Athlad. He wants her to be educated by her. He wants his sister to introduce his son to the battlefield. Um, Edward himself had remarried. He had lots of new kids, and it's possible his new wife wanted his son, Athlan, away from his father's gaze, and perhaps she wanted her own children on the throne one day.

[00:12:05]We're not certain. Athlad uh for her part she conquered territory. She pushed back the Vikings but she does seem to have let this little band of Vikings settle on the whirl peninsula between the rivers Murzy and the river D. We can see some of the place names. West Kirby for example is a classic Viking place name. It's still there to this day. In 9009 Ethelad and her brother King Edward launched a raid into the Midlands uh in retaliation. And the Vikings gathered up a huge fleet and sailed up their rear up the river 7. But the English burrs, the English forts held and Atalad and Edward caught the Viking force near Wolverampton, the Midlands. Vast number of the Vikings were slain. Kings were slain, including the rulers of North Umbrea. The local English were able to reestablish English control in North Umbrea in that northern kingdom. And the English realized the key to holding back the Viking is going to is is is building these defensive towns. So there's a massive expansion of burr building in the next few years into Essex, into East Angia, parts of the East Midlands. You can just watch England expanding. That is Englishness expanding across Britain.

[00:13:16]At the same time, while that process is going on in 917, the Vikings stormed back into Dublin. Men called Ragnel and Citri. We think they're grandsons of Iva the Boneless. They they came back to Ireland in force. Ragnel hit Waterford on the southeast coast. Citri reclaimed Dublin in the east. A brutal battle followed and the Irish were left with catastrophic losses. Boyed up by this, Ragnel decides to invade England once more. He decides to invade North Umbrea once more. Reestablish Viking control of North Umbrea. The English once again kicked out. They were deposed. The king of the Scots who'd marched down to deal with the Vikings to help deal with the Vikings. He was defeated. North Umbrea with its capital of York. Once again, Vikings. So, as you can see, the political complexion of the isles is just veering this way and that. It's all up for grabs. In June 918, Athelad died at the height of her power. Her brother, King Edward of Wessix, swiftly steps in.

[00:14:15]He removes Athlad's daughter from rule and installs his own son, remember his own son, Athalan, as Lord of Mercia.

[00:14:22]Atalstan's grown up there. He knows the people. He might have been a popular choice, but it's clear that Mercy was no longer independent. It had been absorbed into this expanding expanding empire of Wessix if you like and that was fast becoming the kingdom of England. In July 924, possibly while putting down a rebellion in Chester, Edward himself died. He he may have been fighting and died as a result of of a wound. He left behind this young English kingdom that he and his sister had built on their father's foundations. Their England controlled nearly all the south of Britain. The Vikings rule North Umbrea. The Welsh rule up through Wales and into into Strath Clyde. So that's Cumbria and Glasgow. Then we got the Kingdom of the Scots to the north and east of that. This is Edward's legacy.

[00:15:10]This Kingdom of England, could his son sustain it? Could he grow it? Athlest was 30 and he was probably with his dad when he died, having put down this revolt. Straight away he had himself held as king in Mercia. But back in Wessex, his younger half brother was proclaimed king. So this was quite a moment. Was the fragile English union over? Would Wessics and Mercia returned to their ancient division? No, they wouldn't. We don't know exactly what happens next. We do not know. But very sadly and strangely, his younger half brother, who I'm sure Atlan was very, very close to, accidentally and shockingly died within the month. Oh dear, never mind. Athlstein persuaded the Wessex nobles to accept him as king.

[00:15:57]And he was crowned in Kingston, which is very symbolic because that is where Wessix meets Mercia. It's a symbol of the union of the two realms. He's he's crowned right there on the border. And that he's saying these two realms are now indivisible. They're embodied by me and I'm sitting astride this traditional frontier. I'm not king of Wessix. I'm not king of Wessix and King of Mercia.

[00:16:20]I'm king of the Angles and Saxons. This was an ambitious claim. It was quite a statement because lots of Angles and Saxons were living in parts of Britain under uh well British or or or Scottish rulers. This was a maximalist vision.

[00:16:36]Other princes in other parts of the archipelago, well, they took notice.

[00:16:42]He quickly married his sister to Citri, the Viking ruler of York, hoping that like his aunt Ethel fled, she would somehow manage to take over the country.

[00:16:52]And luckily, Citri did indeed die very shortly afterwards. And Athlan charges up to York, forced the North Umbreans to acknowledge his rule. So he's managed to take control of North Umbrea. And then shortly after that, he seems that he realized the dream of so many past kings. He pulled off the remarkable coup of securing loyalty oaths of all the other rulers on the island whether they be Vikings whe they be Welsh British whatever they are would they be Scots.

[00:17:20]So Constantine of Scotland for example, Idrid of Bambber who controlled a little slice of North Umbrea, Huel Daur in Wales, Aane of Strathclyde, all of them.

[00:17:32]It was the 12th of July 927.

[00:17:37]And if Atalan and his propagandists are to be believed, this was a huge moment.

[00:17:44]The Anglo-Saxons, the English appeared to be dominant on the island. He's got these oaths of loyalty from everyone else. We think he pressured the Welsh to accept his overlordship. He visited Cornwall to enforce his claim there as well. And certainly Atalan friendly sources stressed at this point he was the overlord of all of Britain. The king of Scotland, his willing subordinate.

[00:18:09]How willing was clearly up for question because in 934 Athlan invaded Scotland.

[00:18:15]He moved fast. His navy shattered him as he as he marched up the North Sea coast.

[00:18:20]Uh he left Wessex in late May. He went north, raided, campaigned. He was back in southern England again by early September. Pretty impressive. We don't know how successful he was other than that the king of the Scots, Constantine, was at his side in England playing the sort of subservient role as a sub king.

[00:18:36]So, seems to have worked. Now, as you'll know from listening to this podcast and watching these videos, in the medieval period, acknowledging that someone is an overlord is something that kings and princes and ears could actually be quite relaxed about. You swore an oath, you went home and got on with ruling your own lands. It doesn't really mean that Atlan can tax all those subjects up there in Scotland. He can't settle legal disputes in sort of eastern Scotland or Wales or Galloway. It doesn't mean he can wander about in Abodenia or in Gwyneith without an army to look after him, but it I think it still means something. It's an acknowledgement of raw power. And Athalan was at that moment the most powerful ruler in Britain. All of that meant that the rest of Britain and Ireland now had an English problem. The English were now threatening to overwhelm the myriad of other states in the islands. The only way to solve this was to work together.

[00:19:36]There's a great medieval saying that I've always loved about the Welsh, which is if they would only be inseparable, they would be insuperable. So, if they'd worked together, no one could defeat them. But the disperate peoples of Britain and Ireland at this point were not inseparable. They were definitely separate. In fact, they all hated each other. But perhaps this was enough of a crisis to bring them together. That's a great poem by a Welshman at the time.

[00:20:01]The great prophecy of Britain. It fantasizes about driving the English, who it calls the from Thanet, the tormentors of the island. It fantasizes about driving them back into the sea. It imagined the people of Wales, the people of Ireland, of Anglesy, of Scotland, of Cornwall, of Strath Clyde, all of them working together. The Saxons will fall as food for wild beasts. there will be floods of blood. So at least someone was thinking big. At least this poet was trying to normalize the idea that all the other peoples of the isles should put aside their differences and strike at Athalan and commit genocide while they're at it.

[00:20:44]And in 937 extraordinarily the rulers came round to that point of view. A grand anti-English alliance was born. Constantine of Scotland, Owen of Strathclide, Anlaf, Viking King of Dublin. They formed a coalition. Men who'd spat insults at each other over shield walls suddenly and dramatically decided to fight together. Former enemies would march shoulderto-shoulder to try and strangle a kingdom.

[00:21:19]We know an invasion of England took place. We know it climaxed in a truly decisive battle called Bruna, but very annoyingly we do not know where all that happened. There is nowhere called Bruna anymore. And even more painfully, there are several different names for the battles in different sources. So we get Brunof in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, Brun in the Welsh chronicle, Brunand Dune, Wendune, Brunfield, and the Plains of Ollin in in the old Irish chronicle from some time later.

[00:21:51]One chronicler writing in the mid 1100s, so quite a long time later, says that coalition forces sell up the Humber to do battle in northeast England. Now, I'm enormously skeptical about that suggestion. It is a 900 mile sea journey from Dublin to the Humber. In the summer of 937, we know that the Vikings of Ireland, who were often at each other's throats, well, they'd met up. They'd come to an agreement. Uh there may have been violence, there may not have been violence. We're not sure. The Limmerch Vikings were commanded by Olaf. The Dubliners by Andlaf. West met east right in the middle of Ireland at Lockery.

[00:22:23]That was we think in August.

[00:22:26]So within 8 weeks Olaf and Anlaf are side by side at the battle of Brun. So it seems unlikely to me that they sailed all the way around Britain in that time.

[00:22:36]On the other hand Dublin to Lanasher is just over 100 miles. That's less than 24 hours with a fresh westerly breeze in your sails.

[00:22:45]We know this Viking invasion force was joined by the king of Strathclide. They were a west coast kingdom of of Welsh Britains. We can call them. Of course, they could have marched across the entire island, the river Humber, but the idea of them nipping down the coast of Lancasher feels, I think, better. If you ask me, I'm afraid west is best. So, the question is where in the west? And this is where we turn our attention to the Whirl Peninsula. I've mentioned this lovely spot before. It sits between England and Wales. It's a beautiful place. My wife grew up right next to it, so I need to proceed with caution. We still go there a lot. At low tide on the west side, there are wide, beautiful sandbanks that run out from the shore.

[00:23:25]I've explored them with my kids as the sun set on a summer's night. Then I've enjoyed a pint in the pub while my kids continue to explore and get caught by the incoming tide. It's character forming stuff. On the east of the Royal Peninsula, you have the mighty Murzy.

[00:23:41]You can clearly see the glorious city of Liverpool. on the far bank but on the whirl you get the town of Bromea. It sits about halfway down on the Murzy side. Now in 1611 a map of the will was produced and on that map the town of Brome is given a different name. It's called Brunber.

[00:24:04]I think that's as close as we're going to get. The Whirl is just a very obvious place to land. It's a perfect place to land if you're attacking from Ireland.

[00:24:12]It is an excellent place to meet armies coming down from the north. It already has a Viking population. Remember I mentioned that little band that were allowed to settle there by Afflead. West Kirby where in fact we were staying with friends where the pub is which I went to and Griezby next door have the classic suffix B meaning settlement in Norse.

[00:24:32]Those are Viking names and those are very rare in that part of eastern England. In the heart of the world there's even a place called Thingwall which is old Norse basically for meeting place. There are things in Iceland in Norway in Sweden in Ornne you name it.

[00:24:48]It it is the ideal meeting point for Irish Vikings for the Scots for the Strathcludians and for any anti-Wessex northerners and for any Welsh if they choose to join. More on that later. It is near Chester, which is really important lynchpin of England. And from Chester, there's a big old Roman road running like an arrow into the heart of the Southlands. Mike Livingston, veteran of this podcast, friend, legend, historian. He thinks it was here, and that's good enough for me. This is where the Alliance fleet beach themselves and its cargo of armorclad warriors disced onto beaches.

[00:25:30]We think 500 ships is a reasonable bet.

[00:25:33]Mike Livingston reckons there might be up to 50 men on each ship. That's a rough place to start. And that gives us around 25,000 men. But you also need supplies. You also need non-combatants.

[00:25:43]So you strip out some of those men and replace them with food and weapons. You might end up with a a fighting strength of 10,000 or so. They would have come ashore using little tendrils of water that crept in land. The inlets which once crisscrossed this peninsula. Now, if I have banged on about it once on this podcast, I have banged on about a thousand times. The coast of England today is almost unrecognizable to what it was in in preodern times. Vast tracks of land have been drained. They've been reclaimed. The coasts of Hampshire, Sussex, Lincolnshire, Norolk were all far more higgled piggledy. There were marshes and wetlands stretching miles in land. There were not straight lines.

[00:26:25]There weren't sea defenses and well-kept fields dividing up by neat hedros. And that's true of the Whirl Peninsula as well. Wallally at the top end I think was was probably an island cut off at high tide where the docks are now just north of Birkinhead. The flood tide would have surged in. I in fact the flood tide would have surged in just north of the excellent Hubot Museum. We should go and check out now at in fact at the point where the ferry across the Mury sets off for Liverpool. Wallacey means of the foreigners. So because C means island like angle sea or port sea and while is the same root word in English as the Welsh. So uh land of the pl of the foreigners. And we can imagine the Viking ships grounding there. Horses lashed to trees along the shoreline.

[00:27:09]Perhaps a kedge anchor out to keep them morowed for and men and stores unloading different languages. Men gathered from across the archipelago and beyond. A mass of warriors, weathered faces, forearms scarred from blacksmithing, from fighting. Men wading to and fro from the ships. They're carrying bundles of arrows on their shoulders, squealing goats, sheep, pigs, their weapons reasonably similar to each other, swords for the high status warriors, men with gold on their arms and at their throats, spears on wooden shafts. These men would have carried axes that they used to split wood. They had at their waist the knives they used to carve meat. And these men would be splitting and carving before the campaign was up. Some men carried the larger axe, a twohanded vicious weapon. Traditionally, a Viking weapon blows powerful enough to behead a horse. To our eye, it might have been difficult to differentiate one group from another. To them though, I'm sure they'd have known a Strathclide Brit for an Irishman from a Scot to a man of Norse descent. Yeah. There would have been little tales. Hair, body markings, colors, shirt, jewelry. These were men who would have been as happy fighting one another as fighting English. But this was now and here. And their lords had sworn oaths. And so today, they would march together.

[00:28:34]They would have been greeted by the local inhabitants of Viking origin. They got themselves together. They built fires to warm and dry themselves after their trip across the Irish Sea. Voyages from which I have never emerged dry.

[00:28:48]They stretched themselves on land for a decent sleep after the uncomfortable snoozes on and under wooden thwarts. I imagine pretty quickly they set their eyes on Chester, the great Roman city, the key to northwest England, the gateway to Wales. That was the target initially. They advanced some way down the peninsula, but then they paused.

[00:29:11]Ahead of them was an army blocking the way south. At its head, England's warrior king, grandson of the mighty Alfred, sired from the line of Serdic himself, king of kings, overlord of Britain. Here was Athalan.

[00:29:31]The English had been quick. Athalan had been able to respond to the threat. A network of messengers, perhaps beacons, had done the job. Athlan had been be able to gather enough men fast enough to march on the whirl and block off its exit. Now, this is exactly what King Harold would try and do to William the Conqueror at Hastings in 1066.

[00:29:51]March the sight of the invasion, bottle up the enemy, and then hopefully hurl them back into the sea. I wish we knew more about what happened next. Did Atal stand stride down the length of his line, calling on his men to fight for him, as their parents had fought for Edward and Atlad, as their grandfathers had fought for Alfred on the other side.

[00:30:12]Did Anlaf promise that his men would seize the golden armings of their slaughtered enemies? Was there a cacophony of exhortation? Viking, Norse, British, English, a babble of languages, different ways of saying the same things.

[00:30:27]It was a time to conquer or die. We can assume the two sides morphed into massed shield walls. Dense bodies of men packed together. I'm sure the higher status men reserved the front rank. Lords squarely at the front of their households. Their younger brothers, their sons around them, behind them, their followers, either paid or owing some obligation.

[00:30:50]They were offering their own bodies and blood for their land and all their privileges. shoulders rubbing, men drawing strength from those around them, steam rising from the scrum of men if it was a morning cold enough. With small steps, they maintained their cohesion and closed with the enemy. Some men voided their guts. Some drank alcohol to dull the fear. I Yeah, I wish we knew more. Some battles begin with an ambush, others with a dashing cavalry strike like Alexander at Gorgamela. This one probably was very different. This would probably be much more deliberate, direct. A collision of unstoppable iron tipped masses of warriors. Archers shot arrows. They thed into shields. One or two found gaps and sunk into flesh, shoulders, thighs, feet. The wounded were so packed in by their mates, they would have been swept along like flatsom on a river.

[00:31:47]Eventually, the shield walls clashed, shield to shield. The front ranks pressed so close that men could smell the breath of their enemy. There was no room to swing a sword. Certainly no room to send a huge ax through its mighty arch. It was a shoving stamping. It was little jutting thrust with knives.

[00:32:07]I wish we knew more, but we do not. We do have a Bruno poem written in the old English preserved in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. We don't know when it was composed. It makes a point of praising Edmund who's Athlan's younger halfb brotherther and his successor. So I've always been drawn to the suggestion that it was written in his reign. So perhaps within 10 years of the battle being fought, but it's it's really pretty much all we've got certainly on the English side.

[00:32:34]Uh and it's far more poetic than me, so it's worth quoting at length. This year, King Athalan, Lord of Warriors, ringgiver to men, and his brother, also Prince Edmund, won eternal glory in battle with sword edges around Brun.

[00:32:53]They split the shield wall. They hewed battle shields with their hammerbeaten blades. the sons of Edward. It was only befitting their noble descent from their ancestors that they should often defend their land in battle against each hostile people. The enemy perished.

[00:33:12]Scots men and seaman fated they fell.

[00:33:15]The field flowed with the blood of warriors. From sun up in the morning, when the glorious star glided over the earth, God's bright candle, eternal lord, till that noble creation sank to its seat. There lay many a warrior by spears destroyed, northern men shot over shield. Likewise, Scottish as well, weary, warsated.

[00:33:40]It's pretty epic poetry, and I think it does reflect an epic drawn out clash. By evening, the dead were carpeting the ground. The grass beneath them churned up, the ground soden with blood, flesh and entrails scattered as if it was an abbittoire. The country folk from around the area joined camp followers in looting the corpses. Metal already being melted down and makeshift forges.

[00:34:05]Valuable male coats being scooped up by new owners. The odd arrow head and broken blade pressed into the soaking ground by careless feet. clues for later archaeologists.

[00:34:19]I'm lucky enough to spend time with those archaeologists. I' I've watched as metal detectorrists unearthe vast amounts of metal from parts of the potential battlefield. Parts of weapons, a coin from exactly the right period.

[00:34:31]There is still much to be done, but those heroes at Archaeology are on the case. While the battlefield was looted, the fighting hadn't finished. Most of the killing, I think, in these battles would take place when one side breaks.

[00:34:42]Together, men are strong, scattered their prey. They're just desperate, tired boys in a foreign land. They're running blind, hunted by swaggering victors. Let's hear from that old English poet again. He says that the West Saxon pushed onwards all day. They pursued the hostile people. They hued the fugitives grievously from behind with swords sharp from grinding.

[00:35:08]Uh the mercants did not refuse hard hand play to any warrior who came with Anlaf over the sea surge in the bosom of a ship. Those who sought land fated to fight. Five lay dead on the battlefield.

[00:35:23]Young kings put to sleep by swords.

[00:35:26]Likewise also seven of Anlaf's ears.

[00:35:29]Countless of the army sailors and Scots.

[00:35:34]Well, it was a one-sided day. Anlaf and Constantine, the king of the Scots, had survived, but they had been thrashed.

[00:35:42]They had been humiliated. They were, says the poet, ashamed in spirit. And I, frankly, they were worse than ashamed.

[00:35:50]Anlaf, I we think, may have lost two brothers. Constantine had lost his son, a beloved child, the future of his dynasty, a double blow, chief among the many burdens of kings. Owen of Strath Clyde, the king of Strath Clyde. He disappears from the record after the battle. His body may have been one of those left on the field. Let's go back to some of the poetry.

[00:36:12]They left behind to divide the corpses.

[00:36:14]The darkcoated one, the black raven, the hornbeaked one, the dustcovered one, the white-tailed eagle to enjoy the carrying, the greedy warhawk, and that gray beast, the wolf of the wood. Never greater slaughter was there on this island. Never as many folk felled before this by the sword's edges as those books tell us old authorities since here from the east the angles and Saxons came ashore. It was a crushing victory.

[00:36:47]It saved the English project. It had been battleh hardened. England emerged stronger. The English feasted. We get the best impression of what happened after the battle from weirdly a Viking saga. It's one that I wasn't familiar with before I went to Iceland the other day to make a a documentary for our history at TV channel. We visited the house of Snory Stellison and he is just a huge figure in Iceland.

[00:37:14]The father of Icelandic literature really. He wrote down the sagas. He is the reason that we know about Eric the Red, Thor, Odin, the whole Norse worldview. He was writing in the early 1200s. So he's writing a long time later. He could have made it all up, but the consensus among scholars is that is it's rooted in history. He's writing down stories told through long Icelandic winters. He is writing down oral traditions he's gathering up from source material now tragically lost. And one of his sagas is about Egil Scalar Grimson.

[00:37:47]And what a life this guy had. Born in Iceland, killed another boy with an axe, raiding in the Baltic states as a teenager. Now, weirdly, he signed up to fight with Athlan at Bernabra.

[00:37:59]Athalan paid his debts. So, men like Egiel and his brother Thorov were happy to fight for him. And we hear that Agiel chased down the fleeing enemy. He hacked down men in the shallows. They leapt aboard passing boats. He was tall. He was thick set. He was a lord of war. But he returned to the battlefield to find that his brother Thor had been killed.

[00:38:22]The saga says that he grieved his stout-hearted noble brother. He buried him with his sword and gold in the ground under a pile of rocks. And then he went off to find Athlan. The king was with his army. They were feasting. They were drinking. It was a wild group. They were happy to be alive. They were trying to blot out what they'd been through.

[00:38:41]Egiel walks in. A place of honor was made for him near the king. But Egiel did not take off his battered helmet or his male. slick with blood, filth, and the soil into which he just laid his brother. Overwhelmed with a sorrow worse than death pang he was. The hall fell silent, Athlstein looked up and without speaking he took off one of his golden arm rings. He walked down to Agiel and he placed it on his sword and he held it out to Egiel through the fire. Egiel accepted and then like all good Vikings he composed a song right there on the spot. In front of that throng he addressed Athlan as males monarch god of battle and that really that eased the tension. Egiel removed his helmet and joined the feast. Athalan later brought in two chests of silver in payment which I can imagine further cheered him up.

[00:39:42]Sometime after Egiel described Athlan as lavish of gold, king, glorious, great Athlan victorious.

[00:39:50]Well, those are the best glimpses that we have of that great battle. It is a milestone in the long and twisting and dramatic story of Britain and Ireland.

[00:40:01]On that field, on that day, 1100 years ago, the complex ethnic and national identities of these islands were hammered out. Literally hammered and hacked out. The lords of the north and the west came together, united by their fear and loathing for the man who ruled the east and the south. A different Britain was very possible that day. We could imagine a Scotland that runs down to the tease. Vikings ruling over all the Viking territory given to them in their deal between uh Alfred and Guthram. We can imagine a kingdom of Strath Clyde secure right the way down to Morham Bay. We can imagine the Welsh pushing east into a weakened England.

[00:40:42]All that was at stake as the shield wall swayed and buckled and flexed.

[00:40:49]That day the future was a blank. It was written with every thrust of sword and thud of axe.

[00:40:56]Nothing in this archipelago is straightforward. Now, as it happens, Athlan died two years later and the Vikings did seize the opportunity to return. Anlaf seized York. He and other Vikings grabbed back swaves of eastern England. But the tide would turn again and England would resume its march. It would continue on that trajectory set by Alfred and his heirs. Brun did not settle things forever. But it did set England more firmly on its path to the present.

[00:41:26]A grand coalition had tried to throttle England in its adolescence and it had failed. Well folks, I hope you enjoyed it. That's a remarkable story and it's one that's so important to understanding how England and the British and Irish ales were forged and yet it isn't nearly as well known as it should be. So, I hope that episode has closed the gap and feel free to send it to someone that you know would enjoy it.

[00:41:48]Thanks for listening folks. Don't forget to hit follow or leave a review for more explainers like this on DN history wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.