The St Brice’s Day Massacre

Since their first attack on English land in 729AD, the Vikings mercilessly and relentlessly raided the British countryside, causing the locals to label them as ferocious combatants who were worthy of fear.

Many thought the Vikings to be a form of godly wrath, sent to penalise Christians for deviating from their devout ways. However, it soon became clear that these invaders were plundering purely for assets, as they stripped cities of their riches and claimed the land for their own.

Thus, pushed to breaking point on November 13, 1002 AD, King Æthelred Unræd - fearing that the Vikings were about to claim the southern territories - ordered all Danish men who had settled in England to be slain. These commands led to what is now known as the St. Brice’s Day Massacre in honour of the religious feast day on which the slaughtering took place. 

The build-up to the massacre

The St. Brice’s Day Massacre is perhaps one of the more major British events about which so little is known. Although it is typically considered a poorly thought out act of panic that led to vengeful slaughter, the extent to which the King’s orders were carried out remains in question. Clearly, the orders were enacted to a certain extent, yet to fully understand the reasoning behind such a vindictive decree, we must first consider the history behind it. 

There is still a great deal of debate between Historians regarding the alliance between the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons. Although popular imagery of the Vikings typically includes horned-helmeted warriors and ferocious invaders in longboats, they were also farmers and traders from Scandinavia and Denmark who settled on English land with their families. Living shoulder-to-shoulder with the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings not only bartered peacefully with them but eventually even intermarried with them. Yet, despite this familiarity, there was bound to be some deep-rooted resentment on behalf of the natives against the Danish invaders. 

The Vikings that invaded England quickly established a Danelaw in the areas in which they settled, which consisted of predominantly Danish colonisers who controlled the northern territories of England. By doing so, these Danish Vikings destroyed what was then a heptarchy of seven different regions controlled by different rulers. Although these settlers didn’t forcefully impose any change of religion on the area’s people, they did inflict their cultural laws and traditions. 

In the period between the mid to late 900s, there was a peaceful period where the Vikings withdrew from English land after the death of Eric Bloodaxe - the Viking King of Northumbria. Yet, this phase did not last for long, as the Vikings returned with a renewed vigour for violence towards the port towns of England.

King Æthelred soon became desperate as the Vikings required Danegeld (Viking money) as a bribe not to attack the southern territories, but it had become scarce, and the pressure to keep them from invading was building - Vikings had settled in Northern France and were lending support to their troops as they rested up between English invasions. 

Despite attempts at a harmonious resolution to the conflict - such as organising a political union between a noblewoman and a Viking - King Æthelred’s methods did not achieve the outcome that he hoped for. Instead, under the threat of even more invasions from the Vikings, and possibly even on his life, Æthelred responded by ordering the death of all Danish men on English soil on an upcoming holy day.

However, despite understanding the circumstances that led to the massacre, the event itself is still shrouded in misinformation. Some historians believe that the killings were limited only to recent migrants and members of the Danish nobility outside of the Danelaw, but others believe it to be inclusive of all Danish men. Thus, how many people actually died on St. Brice’s Day remains a mystery.

What’s more, archaeological attempts did very little to reveal more about the events that transpired on this fateful day. That is, until the recent discovery of two mass graves almost one thousand years after the event itself. 

What was found in the mass graves?

In 2008, while digging on one of Oxford’s most prestigious colleges - St. John’s - archaeologists unearthed a mass grave that turned out to be one of Britain’s largest Neolithic henges.

It had a large ditch which was seemingly used as a medieval dump for waste such as rubbish, food, and broken pieces of pottery. Amongst this detritus, the archaeological team uncovered the bodies of thirty-seven people. The majority of these remains appear to have been male between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five and were deemed too large and strong to have been typical of people of Anglo-Saxon heritage for that period. What’s more, whoever these remains belonged to, they clearly died a considerably violent death; some had cracked or fractured skulls, others were stabbed, and some were semi or fully decapitated. The remains also bore evidence of having been burned prior to being buried in the ditch.  

From an analysis of the bones, it was determined that these men didn’t die in a manner typical of the medieval ages. Instead of dying in hand to hand combat, the men were more than likely attacked by multiple people in a surprise strike. This is because the remains showed evidence of having been assaulted by multiple aggressors at once, and also in the back as the victims attempted to flee.

Furthermore, radiocarbon dating of the bodies placed them to be from the Anglo-Saxon era, and thus, the period of King Æthelred, and a chemical analysis of the collagen found in the bones and tooth enamel of the remains determined that the victims had a diet that was high in seafood - uncommon for locals during this period. Therefore, this information is further evidence that these bodies belonged to people that weren’t native to England. As a result, the archaeologists are understandably convinced that they found the remains of victims of the St. Brice’s Day Massacre.

Further support for the theory that these remains found in Oxford belong to the St.Brice’s Day Massacre victims came with the discovery of a second mass grave in Weymouth, Southern England. The parallels between this burial site and the one in Oxford were astounding; the grave contained the remains of fifty-four men, all of whom had met a violent end similar to the men found in Oxford. What’s more, these men were seemingly attacked in a surprise ambush rather than having been killed in combat. 

The burial sites unearthed at Oxford and Weymouth are evidence of a vengeful attack against foreign settlers, and whereas this discovery has provided valuable insight into the mystery surrounding the St. Brice’s Day Massacre, the evidence does remain somewhat circumstantial. Although there are undoubtedly more mass graves of this nature that could potentially provide more answers, for now, what happened on the feast day of St. Brice in 1002 AD remains an enigma. Nevertheless, what is known, is that the slaughtering likely did very little for the political prowess of King Æthelred-the-ill-advised.

Conclusion

Regardless of the nature of the relationship between the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons, the Danish invaders undoubtedly had a significant cultural influence on the English language, countryside, and heritage that persists today.

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