The sums are eye-watering. In 991 the English king Æthelred paid the Vikings £10,000 to cease them sacking the east coast of England. Three years later a sum variously recorded as £16,000 or £22,000 was given. In 1002 they have been again: this time they received £34,000. Nobody might say that Æthelred didn’t attempt bribery first.
However what then? The reply, it appears, was butchery. On St Brice’s Day, 13 November 1002, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says Æthelred ‘ordered all of the Danish males who have been in England to be slain’. His motive? ‘The king had been knowledgeable that they might treacherously deprive him, after which all his councillors, of life, and possess this kingdom afterwards’, because the chronicle notes. ‘With none opposition’, one model provides, though Æthelred’s status for indolence suggests his capability to oppose something was restricted.
Who exactly was focused? In all probability settlers. A constitution of 1004 refers to these attacked as ‘the Danes who had sprung up on this island, sprouting like cockle [weeds] among the many wheat’. Mass graves have been present in Oxford and Dorset.
Nevertheless many died, the bloodbath didn’t work. The Vikings returned in higher pressure; in 1007 Æthelred needed to pay them £36,000. Inside months of his dying in 1016 they seized England itself.
