Needless to say, the Ealdorman also made good his own escape.Īethelred vented his rage on the Ealdorman’s son, Aelfgar, having him blinded. The night before the two fleets were due to engage, he leaked the English plan to the Vikings who had time to make good their escape with the loss of just one ship. Unfortunately, the Ealdorman was not the most astute of choices. The intention was to confront and trap the Vikings at sea before they reached land. In 992, Aethelred assembled his navy at London and placed it in the hands of, among others, Ealdorman Aelfric. However Aethelred was neither.Īethelred’s response to the Viking threat was to hide behind the walls of London and delegate his country’s defence to incompetents or traitors in a series of well-intentioned but appallingly executed operations. The invaders might still have been repelled had the Anglo-Saxons had a decisive and inspirational leader. In 980 AD, a new Viking campaign against Britain began. Aethelred’s succession was born out of treachery it’s probable either he or his mother murdered his reigning half-brother, Edward, at Corfe Castle in Dorset, martyring Edward in doing so and prompting the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to lament, ‘…nor among the English was any worse deed done than this since they first sought the land of Britain‘.
Alfred had beaten-off a first Viking attempt to conquer Britain in the late 800s, and his grandson Aethelstan had crushed an attempted reassertion of power by northern Britain at the Battle of Brunanburgh in 937.īut then it all turned sour. How did this happen? The mid-to-late 900s AD witnessed an Anglo-Saxon golden age of peace and prosperity. Vassal states in orange other allied states in yellow The North Sea Empire (1016-1035): countries where Cnut was king in red Whether they liked it or not, England, Wales and Scotland were on the road to assimilation into the North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great, forming a political union with Norway, Denmark and parts of Sweden. This would not be the first time that Scotland has enjoyed close ties with Scandinavia.Ī millennium ago in 1014, a five-hundred year old Anglo-Saxon monarchy was fighting for its survival against the Viking invaders. A ‘yes’ vote would see Scotland not only withdraw from the UK, but also re-orientate its political and economic relationships from western Europe and the Commonwealth to northern and eastern Europe and particularly, to the Scandinavian countries of Norway and Denmark.
It is likely that Scotland will soon be voting on whether it should become an independent country.
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