St Brice's Day Massacre (1002): Æthelred Orders Danes Killed

The St Brice’s Day Massacre was the killing of Danes living in England on 13 November 1002, the feast day of St Brice, on the orders of King Æthelred II. The king believed that Danes in his kingdom were plotting against him. The massacre did nothing to end the Viking threat; instead it became part of the background to more than a decade of renewed raiding that ended in the Danish conquest of England.

Background: a kingdom under attack

Æthelred II became king in 978 while still a boy, after the murder of his half-brother Edward the Martyr. From the 980s Viking fleets began raiding England again. After the Battle of Maldon in 991 the English began paying huge tributes in silver to make the raiders leave.

In 1002 another payment was made, this time of 24,000 pounds. Some Scandinavian warriors had also entered English service as mercenaries, and others had settled in towns as traders. Their loyalty was a constant worry, since some had changed sides in earlier campaigns. In 1001 a Danish force had ravaged Devon and Hampshire, and the Chronicle says that a nobleman named Pallig, who had received gifts and estates from Æthelred, deserted the king and joined the raiders.

The atmosphere at court was one of fear and suspicion. Æthelred’s government had already seen the failure of armies, the defection of nobles and the repeated payment of tribute. A rumour of a plot against the king’s life could easily be believed.

The same year Æthelred married Emma, sister of Duke Richard II of Normandy, partly to stop Viking fleets using Norman ports. The marriage would later link the English and Norman royal families, with far-reaching results in 1066.

The order and the killings

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that in 1002 the king ordered all the Danish men who were in England to be killed on St Brice’s Day, because he had been told that they intended to take his life, and then the lives of his councillors, and seize the kingdom.

The best direct evidence comes from Oxford. In 1004 Æthelred issued a charter renewing the lands of St Frideswide’s monastery. Its text explains that a decree had been sent out to destroy the Danes, whom it compares to weeds among the wheat. The Danes in Oxford fled into St Frideswide’s church and barricaded themselves in. When the townspeople could not get them out, they set the church on fire, destroying its books and ornaments. The king then paid for the church’s restoration.

It is striking that the king himself described the event in a charter without any sign of shame. To him and his councillors it was a lawful act against traitors, not a crime.

The Chronicle entry is short and gives no details of how the order was carried out elsewhere. Later medieval writers, such as Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century, added dramatic stories, including the claim that secret orders were sent to every town to be carried out on the same day. These later details cannot be confirmed, and modern historians rely mainly on the Chronicle and the Oxford charter.

How widespread was it?

The order cannot have been carried out against everyone of Danish descent. Large parts of eastern and northern England, the former Danelaw, had been settled by Scandinavians in the ninth century, and their descendants formed much of the population there. Killing them all would have been impossible.

Most historians therefore think the massacre targeted more recent arrivals: Danish merchants, mercenaries and their families living in towns in the south and Midlands, where they formed a visible minority. How many died is unknown. Estimates range from a few hundred to a few thousand, and any figure is a guess.

The archaeological evidence

In 2008, excavations at St John’s College, Oxford, uncovered a mass grave of at least 35 individuals, almost all young men aged about 16 to 25. Many skeletons showed multiple wounds, some from behind, and some bones were charred. Radiocarbon dating placed them between about 960 and 1020. Researchers suggested they could be victims of the 1002 massacre, though they might also be Viking raiders executed after capture.

A second mass grave, found in 2009 on Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth in Dorset, held about 50 decapitated men. Isotope analysis showed they had grown up in Scandinavia. They are usually interpreted as a captured raiding crew executed sometime between about 910 and 1030, not as victims of St Brice’s Day, but the find shows how violent relations between English and Scandinavians could be.

Key people

• Æthelred II (king 978–1013 and 1014–1016) gave the order. His nickname “Unready” is a later pun on his name, which means “noble counsel”, and the Old English word “unræd”, meaning “bad counsel”.
• Sweyn Forkbeard, king of Denmark, led several major attacks on England after 1002 and was accepted as king of England in 1013.
• Emma of Normandy married Æthelred in 1002; she later married Cnut and was the mother of Edward the Confessor and Harthacnut.

Consequences: the Danish revenge

Sweyn Forkbeard raided England in 1003, sacking Exeter and Wilton, and in 1004 burned Norwich and fought an English army near Thetford. Further great raids followed, including the campaign of Thorkell the Tall from 1009 to 1012, during which Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury was killed.

In 1013 Sweyn invaded with the aim of conquest. The north and east submitted quickly, London eventually gave way and Æthelred fled to Normandy. Sweyn died in February 1014, and Æthelred returned, but the war continued under Sweyn’s son, leading to Cnut the Great’s conquest of England in 1016.

Historians have also asked whether the massacre deserved its reputation as the cause of the Danish conquest. Most now think that Sweyn’s campaigns were driven above all by the prospect of plunder, tribute and a crown, and that England’s weakness, not revenge, explains why they succeeded. Still, the killings gave the Danes a grievance and a justification for war.

Myths and facts

Myth: all Danes in England were killed. This was impossible and is not what any contemporary source describes in detail; the killings were local and selective.

Myth: Sweyn’s sister Gunnhild died in the massacre, provoking his invasion. This story appears only in twelfth-century writers such as William of Malmesbury and is not supported by earlier evidence.

Fact: the king openly justified the killings. Æthelred’s 1004 charter for St Frideswide’s is unusually direct evidence of a royal order for mass killing in early medieval England.

Timeline

• 978: Æthelred II becomes king.
• 991: The first large tribute is paid to Viking raiders after Maldon.
• 1002, spring: Æthelred marries Emma of Normandy; 24,000 pounds is paid to a Viking army.
• 1002, 13 November: Killings of Danes on St Brice’s Day.
• 1003: Sweyn Forkbeard sacks Exeter.
• 1004: Royal charter describes the burning of St Frideswide’s church in Oxford.
• 1013: Sweyn conquers England; Æthelred flees to Normandy.
• 1014, February: Sweyn dies; Æthelred returns.
• 2008: Possible victims are excavated at St John’s College, Oxford.

Why it matters

The St Brice’s Day Massacre shows a frightened government turning on a minority it suspected of treachery. It failed in its purpose, deepened hostility between English and Danes, and stands in the record as one of the darkest episodes of late Anglo-Saxon England.