Searching for Brunanburh: The Yorkshire Context of the ‘Great War’ of 937

Abstract

The site of the Battle of Brunanburh has long been controversial, but a consensus has grown over the last few years that it should be located in the Wirral. This article sets out to show that the events of the war of 937 must be understood in the context of Northumbrian history in the Viking age, and that the battle probably took place south of York in the main war zone of the second quarter of the tenth century. A new location is proposed near the River Went, whose name it is suggested is contained in an alternative Northumbrian name for the battle, Wendun.

Keywords:

• Brunanburh
• Æthelstan
• Northumbria
• Viking York
• River Went

My thanks to Clare Downham, Charles Insley and Matt Townend for their helpful comments, Alex Woolf for bracing discussion of some points, Eric Houlder for infor- mation about his excavation of the Roman crossing of the Went; and Judy Jesch and the contributors to the Brunanburh conference at Nottingham University in 2011 for inviting me to present some of these ideas.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Wood

Michael Wood is a film-maker, broadcaster and historian with a special interest in the reign of Æthelstan, on which he has published many articles. His recent work in this area includes ‘“Stand Strong Against the Monsters”: Kingship and Learning in the Empire of King Æthelstan’, in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Janet Nelson (Cambridge, 2007), and ‘A Carolingian Scholar in the Court of King Æthelstan’, in England and the Continent in the Tenth Century, ed. C. Leyser, D. Rollason and H. Williams (Antwerp, 2010). His study of William of Malmesbury’s account of the king, The Lost Life of King Æthelstan, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2014. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, and in 2010 received the Historical Association’s Medlicott Medal for outstanding services and current contributions to history.

Correspondence to: Michael Wood, 6 Kinghorn Street, London ec1a 7hw, UK. Email: [email protected]