Battle of Brunanburh (937): Athelstan's Great Victory

The Battle of Brunanburh was fought in 937 between King Athelstan of England and an alliance of the Norse king of Dublin, the king of the Scots and the king of Strathclyde. Athelstan’s victory, celebrated in an Old English poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, preserved the kingdom of England that he had created ten years earlier. The battle was one of the largest in early medieval Britain, yet its location is still not known for certain.

Background: a new kingdom under pressure

In 927 Athelstan captured the Viking kingdom of York and became the first king to rule all England. At Eamont that year the rulers of northern Britain, including Constantine II of the Scots, accepted him as overlord.

The peace did not hold. In 934 Athelstan invaded Scotland with a land army and a fleet that raided as far as Caithness, apparently because Constantine had broken the agreement. Constantine was forced to submit again, but he had reason to look for allies.

The natural ally was Dublin. Its Norse kings, the descendants of Ívarr, had ruled York before Athelstan took it, and their claim to the city was unfinished business. Olaf Guthfrithson, son of the Guthfrith whom Athelstan had expelled from York in 927, became king of Dublin in 934. In August 937 he defeated a rival Norse group at Limerick, freeing his hands for an expedition to Britain. Owain of Strathclyde, whose kingdom lay between the Scots and the English, appears to have joined them. Hywel Dda, the most powerful Welsh king, does not seem to have taken part, despite Welsh resentment of English overlordship.

The campaign of 937

The sources do not give a full narrative. Olaf crossed the Irish Sea with a fleet, probably late in 937. The twelfth-century chronicler John of Worcester says he sailed into the Humber with 615 ships, but this figure and route are doubted by many historians, and a landing on the west coast is also often suggested.

The allies seem to have advanced into English territory before Athelstan brought his army to meet them. Later writers suggest that Athelstan was slow to respond, but the details of their accounts are hard to verify.

The battle

The main contemporary account is the Old English poem known as “The Battle of Brunanburh”, which replaces the prose entry for 937 in several versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It says that Athelstan and his brother Edmund, then about sixteen, fought “around Brunanburh”, breaking the shield-wall of their enemies.

According to the poem the fighting lasted from sunrise until sunset. The West Saxons pursued the fleeing enemy throughout the day, while the Mercians fought hard against Olaf’s men. Five young kings and seven of Olaf’s earls lay dead on the field, along with countless others.

Constantine, described as an old warrior, escaped north but lost his son in the battle. Olaf fled with a small band to his ships and returned across the sea to Dublin.

The poem is a work of celebration rather than a report. It uses traditional heroic images, such as the raven, the eagle and the wolf feasting on the dead, and declares that no greater slaughter had happened in the island since the Angles and Saxons first came over the sea. Its details must therefore be treated with care, but its broad outline is supported by other sources.

Irish annals confirm the scale of the battle. The Annals of Ulster describe a great, lamentable and horrible battle in which many thousands of Norse were killed, and Olaf escaped with a few followers.

Key people

• Athelstan (c. 894–939): king of the English, commander of the victorious army.
• Edmund (c. 921–946): Athelstan’s half-brother, later king.
• Olaf Guthfrithson (died 941): king of Dublin, leader of the Norse force.
• Constantine II (reigned c. 900–943): king of Alba, the kingdom of the Scots.
• Owain: king of Strathclyde, whose presence is reported by John of Worcester.

The debate over the site

The name Brunanburh probably means “Bruna’s fortification” or “the fort by the stream”. Other early writers call the place Wendun, Weondune, Brunnanwerc or similar, and the thirteenth-century Icelandic Egils saga describes a battle at “Vínheiðr” that many readers identify with Brunanburh.

Dozens of sites have been suggested. The leading candidate is Bromborough on the Wirral peninsula, whose medieval name Brunburh fits the Old English form well. The Wirral had a substantial Norse population and lay close to the sea route from Dublin. Since the 2010s, local archaeologists have reported finds from the area that they link to the battle, but these have not been fully published or widely accepted.

Other proposals include places in South Yorkshire such as Brinsworth, near Rotherham, sites in Lancashire and Lincolnshire, and Burnswark in Dumfriesshire. Without contemporary evidence for the route, the question remains open.

Consequences

The victory confirmed Athelstan’s position as the most powerful ruler in Britain, and later writers looked back on it as a turning point. The late tenth-century chronicler Æthelweard noted that people still called it simply “the great war”.

The success was short-lived in the north. When Athelstan died in October 939, Olaf Guthfrithson returned, was accepted at York and took the Five Boroughs of the Midlands. Edmund recovered the Midlands in 942, and York was only secured permanently in 954. Constantine abdicated around 943 and retired to a monastery at St Andrews.

According to William of Malmesbury, two of Athelstan’s cousins, Ælfwine and Æthelwine, were among the English dead and were buried at Malmesbury Abbey. Athelstan himself chose to be buried there.

Myths and facts

• Myth: the site is known. Despite confident local traditions, no location has been proven by archaeology.
• Myth: Egils saga is an eyewitness account. The saga, in which the Icelandic poet Egill Skallagrímsson fights for Athelstan, was written about 300 years later and mixes tradition with literary invention.
• Fact: casualties were very high. No reliable numbers survive, but English, Irish, Welsh and Scandinavian sources all remember the battle as exceptionally bloody.

Legacy

The Brunanburh poem became one of the best-known pieces of Old English verse. Alfred Tennyson published a verse translation in 1880, and the battle has since been described as “the battle that made England”. It also appears in modern historical fiction.

Brunanburh is also a rare event remembered in English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Scandinavian sources alike. The Welsh annals record it simply as the battle of “Brune”, and the Welsh prophetic poem Armes Prydein, which calls for an alliance of Welsh, Irish, Norse and Scots against the English, is often linked to the political mood of these years, though its date is debated.

For Scotland, Dublin and Strathclyde, the defeat ended the most serious attempt to reverse the rise of the English kingdom. Strathclyde and Alba remained independent, but the English kings were now the dominant power in Britain.

Timeline

• 927: Athelstan takes York and receives submission at Eamont.
• 934: Athelstan invades Scotland; Olaf Guthfrithson becomes king of Dublin.
• 937, August: Olaf defeats the Norse of Limerick.
• 937: The Battle of Brunanburh; Athelstan and Edmund defeat the allies.
• 939, 27 October: Athelstan dies; Olaf soon takes York.
• 941: Olaf Guthfrithson dies.
• 954: York comes permanently under English rule.

Why it matters

Brunanburh decided whether the newly united English kingdom would survive its first great test. The victory did not end conflict in the north, but it ensured that England remained a single realm and that Viking Dublin would not rebuild its power in Britain.