Slaughter of Dane Vikings Ordered in St. Brice’s Day Massacre, Nov 13, 1002

After a couple of hundred years of Viking raids, payments of tens of thousands of pounds of silver in protection money, and conquests over the Anglo-Saxons, by the year 1002 it seems King Aethelred II of Wessex in Southern England was nearing the end of his tether. But what apparently really led him to send out his kill-all order were rumors that the Danes were plotting his and his council’s death.

In response to this supposed threat, Aethelred ordered his people to kill every Danish man on English soil. It is unclear how many Danish Vikings perished in the massacre, which was carried out on Nov. 13, 1002, St. Brice’s feast day.

Archaeologists have recently been studying two mass graves of young men who died by violence and have speculated that they may have been slain in the St. Brice’s Day Massacre.

Painting of Æthelred the Unready, circa 968-1016. (Public Domain)

Vikings Establish Hegemony over Much of Northern England

The Danish Vikings carried out their first raid on England in Northumbria in 793. They looted the Lindisfarne priory, a religious institution, showing that they feared no one, including God. They stole gold and silver artifacts and sold some of the captives into slavery in Asia and Europe.

In 865, the Great Heathen Horde of Vikings came ashore in East Anglia. Within six years, the Vikings took Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, defeating their armies and killing the kings.

Wessex was the only kingdom over which the Anglo-Saxons still held sway. In 878, King Alfred of Wessex defeated the Viking Guthrum and his army at Edington, Wiltshire.

Alfred made a deal with the Viking Danes to bring peace, ceding the lands in the north and east of England, an area dubbed ‘Danelaw’. Alfred ruled over the wealthy, powerful realm of Wessex in the west and south.

Viking Influence on the Areas they Controlled

The Viking economy was not just raiding and pillaging. It included farming, crafting and trading. Many of the Danes who settled in England were warriors who had success in war and got land grants. Some of them brought their families to England and settled in.

The Vikings intermarried with the Anglo Saxons and engaged in trading. The Danes influenced place names and the language, and their presence is still attested to in some surnames. The Vikings accepted some of the local beliefs and traditions, but there may have been resentment between the two peoples.

Æthelred Comes into Power and Conflict with the Danes

Aethelred the Unready, as he was known, came into power in 978 and ruled until 1013. He ruled again from 1014 until 1016. After the 991 battle of Maldon, he paid tribute known as Danegeld to the Vikings.

The tribute paid to Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard was galling to the Anglo-Saxons. Also, there was a constant threat of Viking raids and conquests.

Things came to a head in 1002, when rumors about killing Aethelred and conquering Wessex began. He responded with the St. Brice’s Day massacre. Recently, historians have stated that only Danish migrants and elites in lands outside the Danelaw were killed, says an article at Archaeology Magazine, discussing a mass grave found on the grounds of St. John’s College at the University of Oxford in 2008.

Map showing the Danelaw and Anglo-Saxon lands. (Public Domain)

Some historical sources say Danish King Sweyn was furious that the Anglo-Saxons killed his sister, her husband and their children. The article says the family and some other Danes requested sanctuary at a church in Oxford, but were killed anyway.

In a royal charter, Aethelred said:

“When all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books.”

Some tried to escape but were killed as they fled.

When Sweyn invaded and became king of England in 1013, Aethelred fled to Normandy, but after Sweyn died, he returned a short while later to rule again. Aethelred died two years later. He was succeeded by his son Edmund Ironside, who died within a few months. Then Sweyn’s son Cnut ruled England.

Excavating Mass Graves Linked to the St. Brice’s Day Massacre

In 2008, archaeologists unearthed a mass grave of more than three dozen young men killed in a frenzy on what became the grounds of the University of Oxford. They were tall and strong, and all were killed by violence. One was decapitated, and beheading was attempted on five others. Twenty-seven of the victims had broken skulls, and others were stabbed. Some of the skeletons were burned, leading the archaeologists to speculate they were killed in the St. Brice’s Day massacre.

In 2009, another mass grave, of 54 young, tall, fit men was discovered in Weymouth, Dorset in Southern England. They had all been beheaded, and their skulls were buried nearby. They did not have defensive wounds, so researchers speculated that they were executed rather than killed in combat.

Analysis of the bones and teeth of the two groups led archaeologists to tentatively conclude they were Vikings, though some evidence refuted that. Radiocarbon dating of the remains from the two groups showed they died between 960 and 1030, within the time range of the St. Brice’s Day massacre. The teeth of one of the men from the Dorset mass grave had incisions, which indicate his group might have been raiders instead of settlers. This may indicate they were not killed on St. Brice’s Day.

Top image: A burial pit of apparent Viking victims in Dorset. These men were ritually executed.     Source: Oxford Archaeology

By Mark Miller