835-848: The Arrival of the Danes

After the initial raids on Northumbria and Iona in the 790s, there were a further set of raids (three in all) on Iona in 800, with 68 monks killed on one occasion alone. This severely undermined its position as a Northern cultural centre. The Vikings appeared again in 825 at Iona, killing the Bishop and several monks and setting the settlement alight. By 850, the important treasures of Iona are being brought inland to Dunkeld by the Picts - other items were transferred to Ireland. Scotland may be on the edge of English and European affairs but is equally plagued by the Viking threat. The Pictish King is, for example, killed by the Danes in 839. In Ireland, the Danes found Dublin as their premier trading station and power base in 841. All this intense pressure may have had something to do with the increased unity of Scotland: in 844, Kenneth MacAlpin, a Pictish King, began the process of creating the Kingdom of Alba, merging the Picts and the Scots into one proto-nation.

The Southern British may have been horrified as Christian men by events in Northumbria and Iona but they may also have been complacent. That complacency ended in 835 when the Danes began to raid the Kentish coast. The Danish threat to England crystallised in the following year when Egbert of Wessex was defeated by an army made up of the men of 25 Danish ships at the Battle of Carhampton in Somerset, in the very heart of Wessex. The Danes appeared again in 838, this time in alliance with the Cymri of Cornwall, but Egbert (who died in the following year after a long 37 year reign) defeated both at Hingston Down so that the Danes and Cornish were forced to withdraw. Egbert was succeeded by Athelstan, a son, as sub-King of the small Kingdoms (Kent, Sussex, Essex and Middlesex) and by another son, Ethelwulf, as King of Wessex, indicating once again a tendency of the Anglo-Saxons to divide before they unify.

The Danes reappeared in 840, not merely to raid and to leave but to survive through the winter on English soil. The armies are increasing in size as well. In that year, Ealdorman Wulfheard has to beat off 37 shiploads of raiders at Southampton. Another Ealdorman, Aethelhun, has to fight them off at  Portland but is defeated and killed while there is a slaughter of Saxons in the Romney Marshes with the killing of Ealdorman Herebryht in the following year. This force then undertook a programme of murder, rape and plunder along the Kentish, Essex and Lincolnsire coasts throughout 841 and down the Thames estuary in 842, killing many in Rochester and London.  The outcome of this particular set of raids was only resolved (temporarily) with a Saxon defeat (led by Ealdorman Earnulf of Somerset and Ealdorman Osric of Dorset) of a Danish army at the River Parrett in 845. There will be more raids to come but Wessex appeared to have had sufficient resilience to mount a military challenge to the raiders when necessary. Whether it could sustain this costly resistance as the Danish armies grew in size, tactical ability and sheer greed would be the issue that would dominate the ninth century.