St Brice's Day massacre
The St. Brice's Day massacre was a mass killing of
Background
The name (
Historians believe there was significant loss of life, though evidence is lacking on any specific estimates. There are historical records that state Gunhilde, the sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, the King of Denmark, was a victim along with her husband Pallig Tokesen, the Danish Ealdorman of Devonshire.[citation needed] He had taken part in raids on the south coast.[7]
Oxford massacre
The massacre in
For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books. Afterwards, with God's aid, it was renewed by me.[8]
During an excavation at
The Ridgeway Hill Viking burial pit near Weymouth, Dorset, a site dated as being between 970 and 1038 AD discovered when building a new relief road, contained 54 Scandinavian males all beheaded, suggesting a mass execution that may be linked to Oxford and the territory-wide decree by Æthelred.[8]
Historians' views
Historians have generally viewed the massacre as a political act which helped to provoke Sweyn's invasion of 1003.[13] Simon Keynes in his Oxford Online DNB article on Æthelred described it as the reaction of a people who had suffered under Danelaw through mercenaries who had turned on their employers.[14] Æthelred's biographer, Ryan Lavelle suggests it was probably confined to frontier towns such as Oxford, and larger towns with small Danish communities, such as Bristol, Gloucester and London within territory under Æthelred's control noting lack of remorse shown in the Oxford charter which exploited ethnic hatred and millenarianism.[5] Audrey MacDonald stated it had eventually led to the accession of Cnut in 1016.[7] The historian Levi Roach states "These purges bred suspicion and division at a critical moment, and in the end [Æthelred's] death was soon followed by the conquest of England by the Danish ruler Cnut."[15][16]
See also
References
- ^ "The 13th of November 1002 AD, St Brice's Day Massacre". Information Britain. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ^ Cavendish, Richard (November 2002). "The St Brice's Day Massacre". History Today. 52 (11): 62–63.
- ^ a b c d "Vengeance on the Vikings". archaeology.org. Institute of America. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
- ^ Sloan, Liam (5 November 2010). "Experts reveal brutal Viking massacre". Oxford Mail. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ^ ISBN 978-0752446783.
- ^ "Oxford Reference". Oxford University Press. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
- ^ )(subscription required)
- ^ a b c Wates, Michele. "Massacre at St Frideswide's". Oxford Today (Michaelmas 2002 ed.). Archived from the original on 7 October 2009.
- ^ Ord, Louise (12 August 2011). "Skeletons reveal Viking massacre". BBC News. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ^ Durrani, Nadia. "Burial Pit, ca. 960–1020, St. John's College, Oxford". Archaeology Magazine. Archaeological Institute of America. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
- ^ a b Sample, Ian (9 June 2021). "Skeletons of Viking men to be reunited in Danish exhibition". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ^ "Skeletons found at mass burial site in Oxford could be 10th-century Viking raiders". ScienceDaily. 1 May 2012. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ISBN 978-0198217169.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/8915. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)(subscription required)
- ^ Roach, Levi (11 November 2016). "The St. Brice's Day Massacre: Then and Now". Yale University Press. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-300-22972-1.
Further reading
- Ferguson, Robert (2009). "16". The Vikings, a History. Viking Penguin. ISBN 9781101151426.
- Vaughan, Richard The Chronicle of John of Wallingford (English Historical Review73.286. pp. 66–77. January 1958)