|  The
Battle of Maldon is considered one of the best Anglo Saxon
poems written in the English language. It is deemed one of
the greatest Anglo Saxon heroic poems next to the epic Beowulf.
The fragment of this poem that remains tells how the main
protagonist Byrhtnoth permitted his Danish antagonists to
cross a well-defended causeway and array themselves for battle
on the banks of the river Blackwater near the isle of Northey.
Byrhtnoth is rewarded for his magnanimous gesture with a Viking
spear thrust into his side. As the mortally wounded hero crumples
to the dust, some of the Saxons flee the field, while other
warriors press forward to avenge their lord or die trying.
The poem has been said to exemplify the basis of the Saxon’s
heroic code.
“When battle has been joined,
it is shameful for a leader to be surpassed in valor,
shameful for his retinue to lag behind… infamy
and lifelong scandal awaits the man who outlives his
leader by retreating from the battle-line: to defend
their chief and guard him, to ascribe to his glory their
own brave deeds, is their foremost oath.”
-Tacitus “Germania” |
The poem, The Battle of Maldon, is set in the turbulent late
10th century England during the reign of the ineffective Saxon
King Aethelraed “The Unready.” Aethelraed came
to the throne with a bad name. His ambitious mother Elfrida
was suspected of having her retainers commit regicide on Aethelraed’s
brother, King Edward by stabbing him to death so that her
son Aethelraed would become king in his place. Aethelraed’s
duplicity was so despised by those loyal to Edward that when
the powerful Abbott of Glastonbury, Dunstan, was forced to
crown the eleven year old Aethelraed, at his coronation in
979, he is said to have reluctantly placed the crwon upon
the boy’s head with a curse.
“Even as by the death of thy
brother, thou didst aspire to the kingdom, hear the
decree of heaven. The sin of thy wicked mother and of
her accomplices shall rest upon thy head; and such evils
shall befall upon the English as they have never yet
suffered, from the days when there first came into the
isles of Britain, even until the present time.”
-Dunstan, Abbott of Glastonbury
979 C.E. |
Dunstan subsequently induces the boy king’s subjects
to attribute all of their misfortunes to the monarchy. When
foreign invaders plied English waters, Dunstan undermined
the citizens resolve to resist those Vikings and directly
instigated the people into abandoning their king by heaping
blame upon Athelraed’s head for the evils to which they
were exposed. He effectively deprived the king of his ability
to rally his people to the defense of England and in so doing
England was ripe to succumb to any invader.
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