- F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1943), p. 339.
- A. Campbell, The Battle of Brunanburh (London, 1938), pp. 57–80.
- A. H. Smith, ‘The Site of the Battle of Brunanburh’, London Med. Studies, 1·1 (1937), 56–9.
- J. McN. Dodgson, ‘The Background to Brunanburh’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society, 14·4 (1957) 303–16, reprinted in The Wirral and its Viking Heritage, ed. P. Cavill, S. Harding and J. Jesch (Nottingham, 2000), pp. 60–9.
- J. McN. Dodgson, The Place-Names of Cheshire, iv (English Place-name Society, 1972), 237–40.
- Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg (Oxford, 1999), pp. 54–5.
- Paul Cavill, ‘Revisiting Dingesmere’, Jnl English Place-Name Society, 30 (2003–04), 25–38.
- Prof. Margaret Gelling in a letter to the author; The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook, ed. M. Livingston (Exeter, 2011).
- Roger of Wendover, Chronica sive Flores Historiarum, ed. H. O. Coxe (London, 1841) p. 385.
- ‘The Chronicle attributed to John of Wallingford’, ed. R. Vaughan, Camden Miscellany, xxi (London, 1958), p. 41. Though some words have dropped out of the text, it evidently specified Sihtric’s rule as far as the Tees. For the background to these events, see C. Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 97–105; A. P. Smyth, Scandinavian York and Dublin, ii (Dublin, 1979), 31–55.
- William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum, ed. R. Mynors, R. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1997), p. 214; M. Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems as Evidence for the Reign of Æthelstan’, in Anglo-Latin Literature (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 77.
- Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems’, pp. 77–8.
- ‘John of Wallingford’, p. 45; D. Whitelock, ‘The Dealings of the Kings of England with Northumbria’, in P. Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons (London, 1959), pp. 70–88.
- Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 338.
- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, 6: MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Woodbridge, 1996), p. 41; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 338.
- William of Malmesbury, pp. 214–16.
- William of Malmesbury, p. 216; Sawyer Charters S 399 and S 400 (online edition: www.sawyercharters.com.)
- Sawyer Charters S 416 and S 425.
- The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ii (Oxford, 1995), 389–91; this entry is shared by the common group of northern (York?) annals, for instance Roger of Wendover, p. 389; and Ailred of Rievaulx, Genealogia Regum Anglorum, in J-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (Paris, 1844–55), vol. 195, col. 724.
- Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio, ed. D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000), pp. 136–7.
- ‘Historia Regum’, in Symeonis Monachi Opera, ed. T. Arnold, ii (London, 1885), 93. See, too, Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 161–2.
- Ifor Wiliams, Ames Prydein (Dublin, 1972), pp. xii–xxiv; for other opinions on the date of the Armes, see D. Dumville, ‘Britanny and “Armes prydein vawr”’, Études Celtiques, 20 (1983), 145–58; A. Breeze, ‘Armes Prydein, Hywel Dda and the reign of Edmund of Wessex’, Études Celtiques, 33 (1997), 209–22; G. R. Issac, ’Armes Prydain Fawr and St David’, in St David of Wales, ed. J. Wyn Evans (Woodbridge 2007), pp. 161–81. Sawyer S1792 records a great assembly at Cirencester attended by Constantine, Owain of Strathclyde and three Welsh kings in 935, perhaps the occasion referred to in the Armes.
- Libellus de Exordio, pp. 138–9.
- L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. A. Bell (Oxford, 1960), p. 112; The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. A. Campbell (London, 1961), p. 54.
- Annals of Clonmacnoise, ed. D. Murphy (Dublin, 1896), p. 151. Their route northwards after Anlaf’s departure from Dublin is perhaps indicated by the attack on Cill-Cleithe on Strangford Lough by ‘the son of Barith’: Annals of the Four Masters, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100005B/index.html, 935–7). This may well be the mac Barid who fought at Brunanburh in Annals of Clonmacnoise, p. 151.
- Vita Odonis in Anglia Sacra, ed. H. Wharton (London, 1690), ii, p. 78.
- Annals of Ulster, ed. S. Mac Airt (Dublin, 1983), pp. 384–5.
- Campbell, Æthelweard, p. 54.
- Historia Anglorum, ed. Diana Greenway (Oxford, 1996), p. 311.
- Campbell, Æthelweard, p. 54.
- Campbell, Battle of Brunanburh; Janet Bately, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition 3: MS A (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 70–2; for a facsimile of MS CCC 173, see R. Flower and H. Smith, The Parker Chronicle and Laws (Oxford, 1941). There are no grounds for thinking that the poem was written specifically for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as it had already gone through at least one stage of scribal transmission and corruption: see, for instance, Campbell, Battle of Brunanburh, pp. 106, 107, 113; Bately, p. xciii. The opening ‘Her’ is outside the metre: see Campbell, Battle of Brunanburh, p. 96.
- For Constantine as the instigator of the war, John of Worcester, p. 391; William of Malmesbury, p. 220.
- Earlier scholars such as G. Nielson who placed Brunanburh by the Solway (‘Brunanburh and Burnswark’, Scottish Hist. Rev., 7 (1909), pp. 37–55) confused the events of 937 with William Ketell’s account of 934, though influencing even the redoubtable W. H. Stevenson. This idea was recently revived by K. Halloran, ‘Brunanburh Reconsidered’, SHR, 84 (2005), 133–48, but as will be shown below, it is a misreading of the sources.
- Campbell, Æthelweard, p. 54; Mac Airt, Annals of Ulster, pp. 386–7.
- The alliteration and the scribal hand in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS ’A’ (and later MSS) clearly indicate a hard ‘d’ not ‘th’.
- T. N. Toller, supp. (1921) to J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898); for ON and OI analogues, Geir T. Zoega, A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Oxford, 1910), p. 99: dynja is ‘boom resound gush shower pouring of water, rain’, etc. Additional evidence to support this is suggested by OE glosses of the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially in Aldhelm MSS, where the first element dyne is glossed as fragore or clangor: A. S. Napier, Old English Glosses (Oxford, 1900), 1, 4417; 2, 326; 17, 55; 22, 1; and in particular by the glossing of crepante/ concrepans as dynegendum/ dynigende: 7, 11; 7, 104; 8,5. The readings of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Brunanburh poem in MS D, dynigesmere, and MS C, dinnesmere, also strongly suggest that the later Anglo-Saxon Chronicle scribes understood the word as derived from or related to dynian. I am grateful to Elaine Treharne, Stuart Lee, Elisabeth Solopova and Steve Pollington for advice on this.
- Mac Airt, Annals of Ulster, pp. 386–7: the fifth entry for 938, though the first three are obits.
- Annals of the Four Masters, 936–98, the 14th entry (most of them obits) in the online edition on the CELT site: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100005B/index.html. Though drawing on Annals of Ulster, Annals of the Four Masters had another source for 937 as is shown by the misplaced entry for Brunanburh at Annals of the Four Masters, 938 (the 18th and last entry, perhaps suggesting a date very late in the year?).
- F. M. Stenton, Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1970), p. 320.
- For instance, the Badby charter of 940: Sawyer S1565.
- On Wulfsy the Black and Wulfric Spot, see P. Sawyer, ‘The Charters of Burton Abbey and the Unification of England’, Northern History, 10 (1975), 28–39; Charters of Burton Abbey (British Academy, 1979), pp. xxxviii–xlvii, with map pp. xvi–xvii.
- A. H. Smith, The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire (EPNS VII, 1962), p. 46 n. 2.
- Campbell, Æthelweard, p. 54. An important caveat, especially if the site was in a Danish-speaking area: in Scandinavian-influenced areas — where, incidentally, probable examples of Bruna names are more common — OE brun cannot be distinguished from the cognate ON brunn ‘brown’ or brun ‘hill brow’: D. Parsons and T. Styles, The Vocabulary of English Place-Names 2, Brace-Caester (Nottingham 2000), pp. 48–9. When shortened in compounds, it could also be confused with place-names such as bruni, brunni, which can mean too ‘a place cleared for burning’. NB the alternative spelling brunnanburh, ‘the burh at the spring,’ which appears in OEC mss B and C.
- William of Malmesbury, p. 220.
- M. Beaven, ‘The Regnal Dates of Alfred, Edward the Elder and Æthelstan’, English Hist. Rev., 32 (1917), 517–31; see Bately, p. 70.
- Mac Airt, Annals of Ulster, p. 384; Annals of Clonmacnoise, p. 151.
- Annals of Clonmacnoise, p. 151.
- There is no such feature near Bromborough. Indeed, there are no ‘dun’ place-names in Wirral Hundred according to Dodgson, Place-Names of Cheshire, pp. 166–335, with the exception of a fourteenth-century field name, p. 234.
- William of Malmesbury, p. 206; in a twelfth-century context this could mean anywhere in southern Northumbria or the North Midlands.
- Annals of Clonmacnoise, p. 151; British Library Add. MS 4817, fols 81v–2.
- ‘Historia Regum’, pp. 93–4; on Orm, Roger of Wendover, pp. 395–96; for his career, see Michael Wood, ‘Dux Urm’, Trans. Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Soc., forthcoming.
- John of Worcester, p. 387.
- The Humber annal is in: Libellus de Exordio, pp. 138–9, dating from c. 1125 (original compilation c. 1095–1115, and most likely Northumbrian); The Chronicle of Melrose, facsimile ed. A. O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson (London, 1936), from Cotton Faustina B ix, fol. 12 (mid-thirteenth century); Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs (London, 1868), 1, p. 54 (late-twelfth century); Aluredi Beverlacensis Annales, ed. T. Rawlinson (Oxford, 1716), p. 110 (c. 1140); R. Higden, Polychronicon, ed. J. R. Lumby (London, 1865–8), 6, p. 436 (fourteenth century); The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, ed. T. Wright (London, 1866), 1, pp. 330–1 (late-thirteenth century); Roger of Wendover, Flores, ed. H. O. Coxe (London, 1841), p. 392 (c. 1219); Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, ed. H. Luard (London, 1872), p. 451 (mid-thirteenth century). See, too, The Book of Hyde, ed. E. Edwards (London, 1866), p. 123 (fourteenth century); Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle, ed. T. Hearne (Oxford, 1714), 1, p. 272; The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. W. A. Wright (London, 1887), p. 402 (late-thirteenth century). It should be remembered that stories about the ‘Great War’ were ‘still fresh’ in the twelfth century, according to William of Malmesbury (p. 207) and the general location of the war may well still have been known then.
- On the composition, see John of Worcester, pp. lxvii–lxxiii; the nature of the York source used by John of Worcester as yet remains unexamined.
- Annals of Clonmacnoise, p. 151.
- Egils Saga, ed. Bjarni Einarrsson (London, 2003), p. 72; Egils Saga, trans. C. Fell (London, 1975), p. 74. Olaf is ‘Red’ in Welsh poetry, too: A. Breeze, ‘The Battle of Brunanburh in Welsh Tradition’, Neophilologus (1999), p. 81. For an earlier Scottish royal marriage with an Irish chief in this period, see for example, Mac Airt, Annals of Ulster, 913, p. 361.
- For instance, N. Higham, ‘The Context of Brunanburh’, in Names, Places and People, ed. A. R. Rumble and A. D. Mills (Stamford, 1997), pp. 144–56, esp. p. 152; P. Cavill, ‘The Place-Name Debate’, in The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook, ed. Livingston, pp. 337–9; but it was taken seriously by most earlier scholars, among them Turner, Palgrave, Lappenburg, J. Stevenson, Skene, Green, Ramsay; and by C. H. Pearson, Historical Maps of England, rev. edn (London, 1883), a pioneering study in historical geography including a map, pp. 24–5, on which Stenton based his end map. Pearson (pp. 38–9) felt that the sources ‘point to a battle on the southern confines of the Humber… not far from York’, and perhaps, if John of Worcester’s account can be trusted, ‘in the region of Conisbrough’. Peter Sawyer agrees, in Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1998), p. 121.
- A. H. Smith, The Place-Names of the East Riding of Yorkshire (EPNS, 1937), pp. 285–6.
- ‘Historia Regum’, pp. 93–94. This set of Northumbrian annals was also used by Roger of Wendover, p. 395; its chronology appears to be more reliable than that of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS D, which as Plummer noted in Two Saxon Chronicles, ii (Oxford, 1899), p. lxxxi, incorporates doublets and disjoints the order of events: see in detail Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS D, pp. xxvi–xxvii, xxxv–xxxix.
- Dodgson, ‘Background to Brunanburh’, p. 68.
- Professor Gelling in a letter to the author; but see the caveat above, fn. 43.
- Brinsley, Notts, is a case in point, a Bruna name but evidently named after the 1086 tenant: The Place-Names of Nottinghamshire, ed. J. Gover, A. Mawer and F. M. Stenton (Cambridge, 1940), p. 117.
- Dodgson, ‘Background to Brunanburh’, p. 314; Wirral and its Viking Heritage, p. 68.
- Dodgson, ‘Background to Brunanburh’, pp. 315–16; Wirral and its Viking Heritage, p. 69; cf. Dodgson, Place-Names of Cheshire, pp. 239–40.
- Sawyer S407.
- ‘Historia Regum’, pp. 93–94; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: MS D, sub anno 943, pp. 43–4; Roger of Wendover, pp. 395–6.
- K. Cameron, The Place-Names of Derbyshire (Cambridge, 1959), 2, p. 240 (Dor), and p. 327 (Whitwell).
- P. Sawyer, Charters of Burton Abbey (Oxford, 1979), pp. xxxviii–xlvii.
- References to this route — the via regia (regalis), alta strata or magnum chiminium — from the twelfth century are in R. T. Timson, The Cartulary of Blyth (London, 1973), p. 551, with maps after p. lxxxviii and p. xcix; see, too, C. J. Holdsworth, Rufford Charters (Nottingham, 1981), 1, p. xxvi, with map p. xxxii; but the estates of Wulfsy Maur’s family (see map in Sawyer, Charters of Burton Abbey, pp. xvi–xvii) show that the Roman road north from Derby was the key strategic route in the tenth century.
- Campbell, Æthelweard, p. 54; cf. Annals of Clonmacnoise, p. 154.
- On Tanshelf, see the excavation report which has now pinpointed a Northumbrian residence with church and chapel: Ian Roberts, Pontefract Castle: Archaeological Excavations, 1982–6 (Leeds, 2002), pp. 9–10.
- ‘John of Wallingford’, p. 49.
- As does Castleford’s Chronicle, ed. C. D. Eckhardt, 2 (Early English Text Soc., 1996), 799, which, although possibly influenced by contemporary Scottish attacks in the early fourteenth century, may come from an earlier written south Yorkshire tradition.
- ‘Historia Regum’, pp. 93–4; Roger of Wendover, pp. 395–6.
- Annals of Clonmacnoise, p. 151; Historia Anglorum, p. 317.
- William of Malmesbury, pp. 220–2. For a full treatment, see Michael Wood, The Lost Life of King Æthelstan (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); for preliminary comments, Michael Wood, ‘Stand Firm Against the Monsters’, in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. J. Nelson (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 197–9; and In Search of England (London, 1999), pp. 153–9.
- But see Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 339, and D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, i (London, 1979), 303–10.
- P. Hunter Blair, ‘The Northumbrians and their Southern Frontier’, Archaeologia Æliana, 26 (1948), 98–126; reprinted in his Anglo-Saxon Northumbria (London, 1984).
- Roger of Wendover, p. 395; ‘Historia Regum’, p. 94.
- For representative parallels to William of Malmesbury’s assensum serenum, see, for instance, John of Worcester 941, p. 394: Nordhymbrenses... infidelitatem preferentes; and John of Worcester 949, p. 400: fidelitatem iuraverunt sed non illam diu tenerunt...
- William of Malmesbury, p. 220.
- Castleford’s Chronicle, 2, p. 799.
- William of Malmesbury, p. 220.
- William of Malmesbury, p. 206.
- C. Blunt, ‘The Coinage of Æthelstan, King of England, 924–39’, British Numismatic Jnl, 96 (1974), 92–93. Seven out of ten known specimens of Æthelstan’s coins from Nottingham are made of two regular reverse dies combined, that is, without showing his name. These are all from the official Nottingham mint and are clearly too many examples to be accidental. Something similar happened at York (Blunt, pp. 92–3). At Derby the main mint of the North Midlands at this same time produced a wide range of irregular coins which the evidence of coin hoards suggests were minted in the latter part of Æthelstan’s reign, but before its end. See Blunt, pp. 93–4, 108–9, 112, and further remarks in Coinage in Tenth-century England, ed. C. Blunt, I. Stewart and C. Lyon (Oxford, 1989), pp. 209–10. If all these factors are combined, then they might suggest a situation when for some time — weeks or even months — moneyers in the northern Danelaw and York avoided using the king’s name.
- William of Malmesbury, p. 222.
- Two Saxon Chronicles, 2, p. 140.
- The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, 2·2 (London, 1819 [1882 edn]), 427.
- ‘Historia Regum’, p. 93. The form Wendun appears in a set of tenth-century annals, termed by Whitelock ‘the second set of northern annals’ in English Historical Documents, 1, pp. 277–80, a contemporary record written in Chester-le-Street from the 890s to 954. A later set of annals using John of Worcester and compiled by Symeon of Durham, the Libellus de Exordio, pp. 138–9, has Weondun, but Wendun is evidently the earlier form.
- ‘Historia Regum’, p. 93.
- Smith, Place-Names of the West Riding, pp. 142–3. The Went appears from the twelfth century onwards as Wint, Wenet, and Wente: a derivation from Celtic wined or wened, from gwen (white) was suggested by Smith, after Eckwall, but see now Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, ed. V. Watts (Cambridge, 2004), p. 663.
- Smith, Place-Names of the West Riding, p. 64.
- On this boundary, see Smith, Place-Names of the West Riding, p. 35 and n. 2; and M. S. Parker, ‘Some Notes on the Pre-Norman History of Doncaster’, YAJ, 59 (1987), 29–43, with a valuable map at p. 40. The area of the Deanery of Doncaster was perhaps the territory dependent on the important tenth-century burh at the refurbished Roman fort at Doncaster, which appears in the will of Wulfric Spot (Parker, p. 38). Its northern border (which is still the administrative and ecclesiastical boundary) was the river Went.
- H. M. and J. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 1 (Cambridge, 1965), 119; on its history, J. Hunter, South Yorkshire, 2 (London, 1831), 483–6; cf. P. F. Ryder, Saxon Churches in South Yorkshire (Barnsley, 1982), pp. 7, 35–45, 123, pl. 4; while the tower is an eleventh–twelfth-century Saxo-Norman replacement of an earlier structure, the small nave and chancel appear to be tenth-century: Ryder, pp. 7, 123.
- For what follows, see Hunter South Yorkshire, 2, p. 487; B. Boothroyd, A History of the Ancient Borough of Pontefract (Pontefract, 1807), p. 133; for 1536, see M. L. Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Rebel Armies (Manchester, 1996), p. 374 ff., map p. 375; R. W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2003), pp. 282 ff. For the earlier royal itineraries cited below: T. D. Hardy, ‘Itinerarium Johannis Regis Angliae’, Archaeologia, 22 (1829), 137ff; The Itinerary of King Edward the First, ed. H. Gough, 2 vols (London, 1900). Edward I camped here in 1280, 1291, 1293, 1296 and 1300, where no doubt he was received by the northerners. The extraordinary historical importance of this ‘liminal’ zone has been emphasised by recent debate about 1536 in Northern History, 45 (2008) and 46 (2009).
- The much-disputed Scandinavian tradition in Egils saga lies beyond the scope of this paper. The saga (first half of the thirteenth century) says that a battle which was evidently Brunanburh was fought by a river Vina which the saga implies is south of the ‘chief town’ York. The saga may use English written sources: B. Einarrsson, Litteraere forudsaetninger (Reykjavik, 1975), pp. 229–53. Though the saga is often dismissed out of hand as unhistorical, the name Vina appears in skaldic poetry of possibly the tenth and certainly the eleventh centuries, and Matt Townend’s recent study of place-names in skaldic verse suggests it often contains very good topographical detail and excellent spellings, in particular of river names in Yorkshire, some of which survive in skaldic verse in their earliest recorded forms, e.g. Teisa and Ousa. (English Place-Names in Skaldic Verse (EPNS, 1998), pp. 78–87). On the name Vina, see Townend, pp. 88–9. Later Scandinavian sources indicate that the Vina was regarded as a tributary of the Humber: you went in to it (or past it) to sail into the Ouse, upp eptir anni Vino til Usu, according to Hrokkinskinna, a fifteenth-century compilation partly based on earlier material: Fornmanna Sogur, vi, ed. S. Egilsson (Copenhagen, 1831), 406; cf. Alan Binns, East Yorkshire in the Sagas (York, 1966), p. 34; Michael Wood, ‘Brunanburh Revisited’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society, 20·3 (1980), 216, n. 68. As Binns thought, then, the saga’s Vinheithr may simply be an ON rendering of Wendun.
- Campbell, Battle of Brunanburh, p. 80.
Yorkshire Archaeological Journal
A Review of History and Archaeology in the County
Volume 85, 2013 - Issue 1