Battle of Edington (878): Alfred the Great Defeats the Danes

The Battle of Edington was fought in May 878 between King Alfred of Wessex and a Viking army led by Guthrum, at a place the sources call Ethandun, probably Edington in Wiltshire. Only months earlier a surprise attack had driven Alfred into hiding in the Somerset marshes, and Wessex, the last independent English kingdom, seemed close to collapse. His victory, the surrender that followed and Guthrum’s baptism turned the war and laid the foundations for the later kingdom of England.

Background: the Viking conquest of England

From 865 a large Scandinavian force, known in English sources as the “great army” and today as the Great Heathen Army, campaigned across England. Within a decade it had taken York and Northumbria in 866–867, killed King Edmund of East Anglia in 869 and driven King Burgred of Mercia into exile after wintering at Repton in 873–874. Of the four major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, only Wessex in the south and south-west remained under an English king.

Alfred, the youngest son of King Æthelwulf, became king of Wessex in April 871 after the death of his brother Æthelred, in a year of almost constant fighting. He bought peace that year, a common tactic of the time, and the Danes turned their attention elsewhere.

In 875 the army divided. One part under Halfdan settled Northumbria, while another, led by Guthrum and two other kings, moved south. In 876 it slipped past Alfred’s forces to Wareham in Dorset, and in 877 it occupied Exeter. Each time Alfred hemmed the Danes in and extracted oaths and hostages, and in August 877 they withdrew into Mercia, around Gloucester.

From Chippenham to Athelney

The surprise attack

In January 878, at midwinter just after Twelfth Night according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Guthrum’s army struck Chippenham in Wiltshire, a royal estate where Alfred was probably spending the Christmas season. The attack broke the winter truce that normally paused campaigning.

The Chronicle reports that the Danes occupied Wessex and settled there, that many people fled overseas, and that most of the rest submitted to them. Alfred escaped with a small band. The Chronicle describes him moving with a small force through woods and into strongholds in the fens, a picture of a king reduced to a fugitive in his own country.

Athelney: the king in the marshes

After Easter 878, which fell on 23 March that year, Alfred built a fortification at Athelney, an island of higher ground in the marshes of the Somerset Levels. From there he and the men of Somerset waged a small war of raids against the Danes.

Alfred was not entirely alone. In the same year a Viking force of 23 ships, led by a brother of Ivar and Halfdan, landed in Devon and was defeated at a fortress the sources call Cynuit, perhaps Countisbury Hill. The Chronicle says 840 of the attackers were killed and a raven banner was captured. Asser credits the victory to the king’s thegns, and it showed that local West Saxon leaders were still fighting.

The best-known image of these months, Alfred burning the cakes of a herdsman’s wife while lost in thought, is a later legend. It first appears in a Life of St Neot written around the late 10th century, roughly a hundred years after the events.

What happened at Edington

In the seventh week after Easter, which in 878 means early May, Alfred rode out of Athelney to a meeting place called Ecgbryhtesstan, “Egbert’s Stone”, east of Selwood Forest. There he was met by the men of Somerset, Wiltshire and the part of Hampshire on this side of the sea (those who had not fled overseas), and the Chronicle says they rejoiced to see him. The location of the stone is uncertain, but it lay near the borders of Somerset and Wiltshire.

The army camped one night, moved to a place called Iley (Iglea), and the next day advanced to Ethandun. There it fought the whole Danish army and put it to flight. Asser, Alfred’s Welsh biographer, describes a dense shield wall and a long, hard fight, followed by pursuit of the fleeing Danes to their stronghold. No numbers survive for either side; historians generally assume armies of a few thousand men at most.

Alfred then besieged the Danes in their fortress, usually identified as Chippenham, for about 14 days. Short of food and suffering, according to Asser, from cold and fear, they sued for peace. They offered hostages without asking any in return, and swore oaths that they would leave the kingdom and that Guthrum would accept baptism.

Where was Ethandun?

Most historians identify Ethandun with Edington in Wiltshire, a village beneath the northern edge of Salisbury Plain, near the Iron Age hillfort of Bratton Camp. The place-name evidence and the route from Somerset support this, although a few writers have argued for Edington on the Polden Hills in Somerset. A memorial stone to the battle was set up near Bratton Camp in 2000.

The baptism of Guthrum

About three weeks after the surrender, Guthrum came with 29 of his leading men to Aller, near Athelney. There he was baptised, with Alfred standing as his godfather and receiving him from the font as his adopted son. Guthrum took the Christian name Æthelstan, a West Saxon royal name.

The ceremony of unbinding the baptismal chrism took place eight days later at Wedmore, a royal estate in Somerset. Guthrum stayed with Alfred for twelve nights, and the king gave him and his men many gifts. Such sponsorship was an old Frankish and English diplomatic tool: it bound a defeated pagan ruler to his victor through a spiritual kinship.

Consequences

The Danish army kept its word. Later in 878 it moved to Cirencester, then in Mercian territory, and in 879 went to East Anglia, where the Chronicle says it settled and shared out the land in 880. Wessex was free of the main Viking army.

At some point between 878 and Guthrum’s death in 890, Alfred and Guthrum agreed a formal settlement, the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum. It drew a boundary between their realms, roughly along the Thames, the Lea, the Ouse and Watling Street, and set equal compensation values for English and Danes. The lands to the north and east later became known as the Danelaw.

Edington did not end the Viking wars. New armies arrived in the 880s and 890s, but Alfred used the respite to reform his defences. He built a network of fortified towns, or burhs, so that no part of Wessex lay far from a refuge; reorganised the army so that half the men served while the rest stayed at home; and built ships. When a large Viking force returned in 892, these measures helped Wessex survive four years of campaigning without collapse.

Key people

Alfred (848/849–899) was king of Wessex from 871 and, from the 880s, styled king of the Anglo-Saxons. He was in his late twenties at Edington.

Guthrum (died 890) was one of the kings who led the Danish army south in 875. After his baptism he ruled East Anglia as a Christian king and struck coins under his baptismal name.

Asser (died c. 909) was a Welsh monk from St Davids who joined Alfred’s court in the 880s and wrote his Life of King Alfred in 893. He is the main narrative source for the campaign alongside the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Legacy

Alfred’s victory preserved an English-ruled kingdom from which his son Edward the Elder, his daughter Æthelflæd and his grandson Æthelstan reconquered the Danish-held lands in the early 10th century. By the 920s Æthelstan ruled a single kingdom of the English.

The story of Edington was shaped first by Alfred’s own court. The common stock of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was put together in Wessex around 890, and Asser wrote in 893, both while Alfred was alive. Their account of a king who lost almost everything and fought back is vivid, but it also served the king’s reputation.

Later centuries added legends: the burnt cakes, and a 12th-century tale in William of Malmesbury of Alfred entering the Danish camp disguised as a minstrel. Victorian Britain made Alfred a national hero. A bronze statue by Hamo Thornycroft was unveiled in Winchester in 1901 to mark the thousandth anniversary of his death, then believed to have been in 901; he actually died on 26 October 899.

Myths and facts

Timeline

• 865: The Great Heathen Army lands in East Anglia.
• 871, April: Alfred becomes king of Wessex.
• 876–877: Guthrum’s army occupies Wareham and then Exeter before withdrawing to Mercia in August 877.
• 878, January: Guthrum’s surprise attack on Chippenham; Alfred flees to the Somerset marshes.
• 878, after Easter (23 March): Alfred fortifies Athelney.
• 878, May: Alfred musters at Egbert’s Stone and defeats the Danes at Ethandun; siege of their fortress for about 14 days.
• 878, early summer: Guthrum is baptised at Aller, with the ceremony completed at Wedmore.
• 879–880: Guthrum’s army moves to East Anglia and settles there.
• 890: Death of Guthrum.
• 899, 26 October: Death of Alfred.

Why it matters

Edington was the turning point of the Viking wars in England. It kept Wessex independent, converted a Viking king into a Christian neighbour and gave Alfred the breathing space to build the defences that let his descendants unite England.