From the Utrecht Psalter (nineth century).
A page from the Utrecht Psalter illustrating Psalm 150:3-4, “Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance.” (A psalter is a book containing the text of the psalms; a psaltery is a portable harp.) The Psalter was made in Rheims in the early ninth century, just a few years before Alfred was born, and illustrated with lively sketches by a now unknown Anglo-Saxon artist. The book had found its way to Canterbury by the turn of the 11th century, and was kept in England for over six hundred years, exercising a profound influence over sacred art. It was smuggled out to the Netherlands in 1642 to save it from Cromwell’s reformers.
Part 1 of 2
FIRST, as it was important to know how numerous those pestilent Danes were,* and how they were fortified, King Alfred, being a good musician, disguised himself as a glee-man or minstrel,* and went, with his harp, to the Danish camp.* He played and sang in the very tent of Guthrum the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes as they caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing but his music, he was watchful of their tents, their arms, their discipline, everything that he desired to know.
And right soon did this great king entertain them to a different tune; for, summoning all his true followers to meet him at an appointed place, where they received him with joyful shouts and tears, as the monarch whom many of them had given up for lost or dead, he put himself at their head, marched on the Danish camp, defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and besieged them for fourteen days to prevent their escape.*
This was the Great Heathen Army of Ingwaer (?-873, on whom the semi-legendary King of Dublin Ivar the Boneless is based) and his brother Halfdan, which came to England in 865. The first Vikings were ruthless heathens bent on subduing a more civilised Christian society, yet that society ended up civilising them to the mutual benefit of each, as Dickens emphasises.
‘Glee’ comes from an Old English word gléo, which meant simply ‘entertainment’. Another name for a hearpe (harp) was a gleobeam, literally ‘a (piece of) tree for entertainment’. For more information, see The Sound of the Sutton Hoo Harp.
This story apparently goes back no further than the Chronicle of Ingulf (?-1109), Abbot of Crowland Abbey; Asser (?-909) does not mention it in his ‘Life of Alfred’. It quickly resurfaced in the Chronicle of William of Malmesbury (1095–1143), a monk at the Abbey where Alfred’s grandson, Athelstan, was buried in 939. It became a firm favourite, repeated in the influential ‘History of England’ by Italian scholar Polydore Vergil (published in 1534, though drafted by 1513) and in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577, 1587), a key source for William Shakespeare’s historical plays.
Alfred’s victory came at Edington in Wiltshire in May 878; the ancient sources name it Ethandun and the identification with Edington is common but not certain. After the battle, Guthrum retreated to his fortress at Chippenham, taken from Alfred at Twelfth Night on January 6th that year; Alfred had been forced to take refuge at Athelney in the Somerset marshes, the setting for two classic tales, How Alfred Burnt the Cakes and King Alfred and the Beggar.
Précis
Charles Dickens recounts the legend of how King Alfred disguised himself as a minstrel, and spied out the camp of Guthrum’s Great Army before trouncing it in 878. His ruse showed him their strength, their weapons and their battle plans, and after his victory Alfred was able to keep them pinned down for a fortnight. (54 / 60 words)
Part Two
A reconstructed Anglo-Saxon village at West Stow near Lackford in Suffolk. See West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village. Alfred was a ruler who forged a united English people out of implacable enemies, and for Dickens the key had been Christianity, which unlike the various political and religious ideologies that come and go in this world does not seek to achieve good through Power, but by Example.
BUT, being as merciful as he was good and brave, he then proposed peace: on condition that they should altogether depart from that Western part of England, and settle in the East; and that Guthrum should become a Christian, in remembrance of the Divine religion which now taught his conqueror, the noble Alfred, to forgive the enemy who had so often injured him.
This, Guthrum did. At his baptism, King Alfred was his godfather.* And Guthrum well deserved that clemency; for, ever afterwards he was loyal and faithful to the king.* The Danes under him plundered and burned no more, but ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and led good honest English lives.
And I hope the children of those Danes played, many a time, with Saxon children in the sunny fields; and that Danish young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married them; and that English travellers, benighted at the doors of Danish cottages, often went in for shelter until morning; and that Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of King Alfred the Great.*
At Wedmore in Somerset. Guthrum took the name Athelstan, ‘noble stone’. He should not be confused with Alfred’s grandson Athelstan (r. 924-939), King of the English.
Guthrum (Athelstan) also struck up a friendship with fellow-Viking and Christian convert Rollo of Normandy (?860-?930), the great-great-great-grandfather of William the Conqueror.
Although the Vikings had a disastrous impact on English life all along the east coast, they brought vigour and courage to the nation, and afterwards the English kings recruited Viking warriors for their armies just as the rulers of Kievan Rus’ and the Byzantine Empire did. In turn, English bishops taught the Vikings to abandon superstition and raiding in favour of Christian learning and trade, to everyone’s advantage. One example stands out: King Olaf I Tryggvason of Norway, a former Viking raider who had embraced Christianity in England, organised a mission to evangelise Greenland in about 1000; and while carrying out the errand, Leif Ericson accidentally discovered America. See The Baptism of Olaf Tryggvason and Vinland.
Précis
Eventually the Danes surrendered, and Alfred showed his qualities as a Christian king by agreeing peace. In return, Guthrum was baptised, and he and his men settled down to peaceful lives thereafter. Dickens liked to think of English and Danish children playing together, and of old adversaries fondly remembering Alfred as a king who deserved the title ‘Great’. (58 / 60 words)
