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Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History. Francis Pryor
Читать онлайн.Название Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History
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isbn 9780007514755
Автор произведения Francis Pryor
Издательство HarperCollins
Maritime archaeologists have realised that many of the handling characteristics of full-sized vessels can be replicated in half-scale models, with the help of some simple mathematics.4 These smaller vessels also present the shipwrights involved in their construction with most of the technical challenges faced by their ancient counterparts, but at considerably reduced expense. So far half-scale models have been constructed of a smaller Viking-age vessel, the fourteen-metre clinker-built Graveney boat, which it is estimated could have carried a cargo of six to seven tonnes. This vessel, which was abandoned in the mid-tenth century, was carrying a cargo that included (presumably Kentish) hops – comprehensively destroying the myth that all medieval ale was unhopped. The half-scale model of the Sutton Hoo ship, a twenty-eight-metre vessel, has been named the Sae Wylfing. I have seen her in action, and I was particularly impressed by her lightness – she could easily be dragged up onto a sloping beach by her crew, and would not require a quay unless heavily laden. The constructors of the Sae Wylfing were so impressed with her handling in rough water that they were inclined to attribute much of the political success of the builders of her original to such vessels.5 It is thought that the Sutton Hoo vessel was buried within a barrow mound to commemorate or conceal the last remains of King Raedwald of Essex, one of the Wuffingas, the early kings of Saxon East Anglia.
Boat or maritime archaeology has become a sub-discipline in its own right, and landlubbers are advised to walk its companionways with extreme caution. Its practitioners can be as ferocious as Captain Bligh. So the point I want to make has to be simple: yes, ocean-going Viking longships were quite probably the finest open clinker-built vessels ever built, but they were not the only ships afloat at the time – we know of many humbler boats from Viking Britain – and they were not ‘the reason’, as I was taught at school, that the Vikings voyaged abroad. The Vikings came first, the ships second. In other words, the longships were built because the men who sailed them wanted to travel and had the necessary skills to build them.6 It was not the other way around.
It should also be stressed that Viking longships did not appear, as it were, out of the blue. They can be seen to form part of an evolutionary tree whose roots probably extended back to the Early Bronze Age, around 1900 BC, when the first plank-built boats (found at Ferriby on the Humber) made their appearance. These boats could have crossed the Channel, and were probably used for trade along the coast. By the Late Bronze Age (say 1000 BC) trade and exchange around the North Sea was taking place on a regular basis. During Roman times Britain exported huge amounts of grain across the Channel to feed the later Roman field armies. We know that the Anglo-Saxons were excellent sailors, and we have evidence for this in the clinker-built ship from Sutton Hoo, dating to around AD 625. This vessel superficially resembles a Viking longship, and would have been perfectly capable of crossing the North Sea. And of course in the previous chapter we saw the extent of trade throughout northern Europe in the Middle Saxon period and afterwards. So Viking ships, like the Viking phenomenon in general, were part of a process that had roots many centuries old.
Viking warships, and some Viking art, were intended to strike terror into their enemies, and in this they undoubtedly succeeded, because images of Viking ships, such as that in wrought iron on the door of Stillingfleet Church, North Yorkshire, continued to appear even after the immediate threat had passed.
If we are to appreciate the impact of the Vikings on southern Britain, we must briefly go back to the Middle Saxon period and say a few words about the relationship of the Vikings, in what would later be known as the Danelaw, to the two major Saxon territories west of them, the Mercians in the Midlands and the West Saxons in Wessex. Many will know of Wessex and King Alfred the Great in the ninth century, but Mercia, under great rulers such as Offa, was of comparable power in the previous century.
Those of us who have the good fortune to live in the middle of England have always believed that we live in the belly of the place. What the Midlands digests, England consumes; this is the part of the country where we are proud to make and grow things, and where you find the best beer and the warmest people. In the Saxon period the Midlands was synonymous with the kingdom of Mercia. It was the most powerful kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England in the first part of the Middle Saxon period (late seventh and eighth centuries). The heart of Mercia was the middle Trent Valley. This is where its episcopal centre, Lichfield (founded 669), and two royal sites, at Tamworth and Repton, were located. As we will see, Repton is currently being excavated, and is producing very exciting results. Mercia’s early kings Penda and his son Wulfhere were aggressive soldiers, and managed to exact tribute payments from all around: from southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, from British kingdoms to the west, and from Northumbria.
Mercian power peaked in the eighth century with two kings, Æthalbald* and Offa (757–96); the latter is mainly remembered today for the construction of Offa’s Dyke, a massive earthwork which runs north – south for 192 kilometres between England and Wales. It consists of a bank to the east and a ditch to the west, so defenders could stand atop the bank and shower attackers with rocks, spears, arrows and anything else that came to hand while they struggled across the ditch and up the steep slope. The positioning of the bank behind the ditch clearly suggests that the earthwork was built to defend the territory of Mercia from attacks from Wales and the west. At first glance Offa’s Dyke seems like a single massive construction, but research by Sir Cyril Fox in the 1950s showed it to have been built in a series of sections, some of which don’t marry up too well.7 Fox suggested that it was essentially a symbolic ‘line in the sand’ created by the might of Mercia against the altogether more puny Welsh. More recently, detailed survey and excavation by Dr David Hill of Manchester University has shown that it was constructed in earnest as a defensive work against concerted attacks from the powerful Welsh kingdom of Powys.8 It was a serious piece of military engineering, probably regularly patrolled by Mercian troops and linked to a system of warning beacons. Anglo-Saxon beacons were an important military tool and consisted of large thatched bonfires which were always at the ready.
FIG 8 The principal kingdoms of Britain in the late eighth century (Middle Saxon period).
Contrary to popular belief, Offa’s Dyke does not extend from sea to sea across the entire eastern approaches to Wales. In fact the original Mercian earthwork is only found across the central part of Wales – a stretch of just over a hundred kilometres. The rest is unprotected, and David Hill believes that this stretch represents the boundary between Mercia and Powys, the source of the principal recurrent threat. Mercia was not at war with the kingdoms of Gwynedd to the north, or with Ercing or Gwent to the south. So that was the boundary Offa defended – there was no point in doing any more. This tells us that boundaries and political treaties were generally honoured. It also tells us that Offa was a pragmatist, and was not about to do anything that was not strictly necessary. It is known that Offa lost Mercian land to the kingdom of Powys in the mid-eighth century, and David Hill regards the Dyke as a fallback position to ensure that there were no further incursions into his territory.
The massive expansion of Mercia in the eighth century gave it control of land to the south and east, including, as we have seen, London, Kent and Sussex. If not actual control, Mercia also managed to impose significant influence on Essex, Surrey and East Anglia. Wessex somehow retained its independence. After Offa’s death these new territories were kept within Mercian control by Cenwulf (796–821), but his successor, Beornwulf, could not stem the tide of increasing resentment against Mercia. In the year 825 he was defeated by King Egbert of Wessex at the Battle of Ellendun, and with the battle went Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Essex.