A Chronological History of Britain
Episodes of The British History Podcast that include cultural history matters. You’ll learn about the diets, economics, and all the other aspects of daily life for the Celts, Romano-British, Britons, Anglo Saxons, and more.
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Today we’re going to cover 5 or 6 years, and we’re going to cover a fascinating theory that (if true) should color virtually everything we know about the life of Alfred the Great… and that’s because the Life of Alfred the Great might not have been written for Alfred.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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“I can not find anything better in man, than that he know, and nothing worse than that he be ignorant.”
That’s a quote from Alfred, and I think it’s my favorite quote. The nice thing about Alfred is that he’s a man for all seasons. There’s something in his reign for everyone. He’s got an excellent comeback story. He’s goes through a sort of Che Guevara phase. He’s got a period where he’s riding around with a cavalry strike force like King Arthur. He’s got a pious side. A scholarly side. A horny side. He has a keen mind for politics, for manipulation, and for tactics. Whatever your need… there’s an Alfred for that.
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One of the interesting things about piecing together the life of Alfred is that we find little windows into who he was in the strangest of places. Most kings of this era didn’t write much down for us to read… but Alfred did. In fact, he translated entire books (which we’re going to talk about today) and he didn’t just translate the books, he included his own thoughts on them as well. For example, in his translation of Pastoral Care by Pope Gregory the Great. Alfred tells us…
“[T]here were happy times then throughout England and… the kings, who had authority over this people, obeyed God and his messengers; and how they not only maintained their peace, morality and authority at home but also extended their territory outside; and how they succeeded both in wisdom and in warfare.”
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Dr. Hills discussed material culture, ethnicity, Anglo Saxon migration, and more in this fascinating interview. You can learn more about what Dr. Hills at her departmental website here.
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Follow Rory on Twitter @Rory_Naismith and make sure to follow him at his Academic page at Kings College London as well as on Academia.edu.
This episode covers how the economy transitioned from food rent to coinage, how currency was a reflection of the soul, why King Offa had such funky hair, and much more.
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Today, we are going to talk about the early steps of Alfred’s guerrilla war against King Guthrum. We will talk about the elements of this sort of war, the circumstances of the West Saxons under Guthrum’s rule, and the resulting fallout within Wessex.
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At some point early in the Viking Age, a group of Northmen came across a natural harbor on the western side of the Irish Sea. Being that they were a seafaring people, having places in foreign lands where they could safely make port was a significant advantage. Orkney was already showing its usefulness, and now they needed another waypoint further south. The life of a northman, even the life of a Vikingr, involved a lot more travelling and trading than it did actual raiding. So having friendly trading spots along their route wasn’t just convenient, it was good business.
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When we left off, Guthrum had marched into the heart of Wessex without being noticed, lead his forces right past Alfred’s hold in Winchester, and seized the Royal tun of Wareham. In response to this, Alfred raised the Fyrd, marched upon the southern port town, and besieged it. Now all of our surviving sources are silent on how long this siege lasted. Alfred may have tried to end it quickly, but it’s just as likely that he and his army camped on the edge of Wareham for a very long time and that Guthrum’s army was running low on supplies. Looking at the record, our best guess is that the siege lasted until winter and only came to a conclusion in either in the end of 876 or early 877, but this is one of those details we will never know for sure.
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Today we begin in Orkney.
The history of Orkney is rather obscure, and that fact is reflected in the show… with it appearing only occasionally in the Scotcasts and Celtcasts. However, in the last 80 years, things have been changing rapidly for the inhabitants of this misty land, and the people of Orkney started to play a key role in the Nordic invasion of Britain and actually provide a window into what’s coming for Northumbria.
Early in the Viking Age, the Norse discovered that only about a couple days voyage to the south lay an archipelago of about 170 islands that spanned the northern portion of Britain. It was ideal for their needs. The voyage to the British isles were perilous. It required the longships to travel out of the sight of land and that meant that, rather than beaching their ships at night and resting, they would instead have to sail adrift in undecked open ships over black night time waters.
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We begin our story in Alt Clut.
Alt Clut was an ancient British Kingdom and it could trace itself back to Roman Britannia – and possibly even further. At the center of this kingdom was an old fortress on a River, the River Clyde. The Kingdom’s name derived from the Brythonic name for the rock featured by this fortress. Alt Clut: Rock of the Clyde.
This rock feature on the river Clyde probably defined the area for many of its people, and over time it likely came to define the people themselves.