The Heathens and the Saint, Vikings Invasions

As the winter of 869 arrived, the Vikings marched south to East Anglia, taking over and fortifying the town of Thetford. Edmund, the local Saxon king, had managed to postpone a war with the Vikings in 865 by providing the Norse with steel and horses. But as the old joke goes: 

Q: What’s the best way to make a Viking come back? 
A: Pay him to go away.

Realising that this time the Vikings weren’t going anywhere, Edmund gathered his forces and struck Thetford. The battle was fierce, but eventually the Vikings, led by Ivar and Ubba, gained the upper hand, and either killed the Saxon king on the field of battle or captured and executed him.

A later 10th-century biography of Edmund tells us that the king was captured after the battle. The invaders demanded that he renounce his Christian faith and share power. Edmund refused, and so was tied to a tree, shot with arrows, and decapitated. The Vikings now claimed a second Saxon kingdom, slowly but surely surrounding Mercia and Wessex.

The received story of King Edmund’s death forces us to take another step back and consider the facts. The account we have of his martyrdom was written by a French bishop in the 10th century, and the manner of his death is suspiciously close to that of Saint Sebastian, who was also tied to a tree and decapitated after refusing a pagan ruler's demand that he renounce his faith (this time the Roman emperor Diocletian). Edmund’s legend continues with a pious wolf taking possession of the king’s head and calling out “Hic, hic, hic” (here, here, here) to the king's followers. Then, when the men placed the head next to the body, it magically reattached itself.

With this story’s spread across the British Isles, King Edmund the Martyr became the first patron saint of England. His cult grew quickly in the decade after his death, and his story of resolve inspired the Saxons in the face of this apocalyptic new threat. More than that, the story of Edmund’s sacrifice was shared by all the disparate Saxon realms, and this bound them together. This was a first step in the creation of a shared Anglo-Saxon identity that stood in opposition to the invaders. As the Vikings ravaged the British Isles, they were creating the English.

Then, in the summer of 871, more bad news for the Saxons: a great host of reinforcements, led by the Viking king Bagsecg, had arrived in East Anglia. This was the Great Summer Army. With their forces bolstered and their spirits high, the invaders turned their attention to Wessex, their last serious rival. In January, the Vikings left East Anglia and crossed into Aethelred and Alfred’s kingdom.