Part 9

In return for their promotion in the social scale, ceorl and merchant alike were of course bound to follow the king to the field in full mail when he raised his banner, and no longer got off with the less arduous service expected from mere members of the shire-levy. We cannot doubt that such measures caused a large increase in the numbers of the thegnhood, and thereby provided the king with a more efficient and better armed core for the national host than his predecessors had ever possessed.

The campaigns against Hasting and the “Great Army” in 893-896 give, as we have already said, the best test of the efficiency of Alfred’s reorganisation of his realm. The invaders came ashore in two places, Appledore in Kent and Milton by the Thames mouth. Each host found itself at once observed by a strong force, and unable to disperse for plunder. The king “encamped as near to them as he had room for the wood-fastnesses and the water-fastnesses, so that he might reach either if they might seek a field. Then they tried to go through the weald in troops, on whichever side there might not be a force. But each troop was sought out by a band from the king’s host, and also from the burhs.” At last the whole host at Appledore broke up and tried to march northward. Alfred stopped them at Farnham, took all their baggage, and drove them in disorder over the Thames. The survivors joined part of Hasting’s army at Benfleet in Essex: the pirate king himself was absent with the rest. Following hard on their heels, the English stormed the camp, captured Hasting’s wife and sons, and took a vast booty. But Alfred was not in person with this army: a third Viking host of a hundred ships had laid siege to Exeter, and he had flown westward to deal with it. On his approach the Vikings took to their ships and sailed up to the Channel and round the North Foreland to Shoeburyness in Essex, where they picked up the remnants of the force that had been routed at Benfleet, and some other reinforcements from the East Anglian Danes. Swelled to a large host by these accretions, the army that had failed at Exeter marched across Southern Mercia to the Severn, and “wrought a work” at Buttington.[23] Here they were at once beset by Alfred’s son-in-law and most faithful servant, Ethelred Alderman of the Hwiccas, who had with him the levies of Somerset, Wilts, Gloucester, and Worcester. Expelled by him from the Severn valley, the Vikings retired to their kinsmen in Eastern England. There they again gathered reinforcements, and returning to the west, seized the empty walls of Chester—desolate since Ethelfrith had sacked the old Roman town in 606—and tried to establish themselves there. But again they had no rest: the forces of English Mercia, aided by the kings of North Wales, laid siege to the place. Starvation finally compelled the Vikings to abandon it. They went back through the friendly territory of their Northumbrian kinsmen, and returned to East Anglia (895). Their last effort was made in the following year, and consisted in the advance up the Thames and Lea which we have already had occasion to describe. There King Alfred assailed them in person, and captured their fleet by the device of blocking the river by his two burhs. Deprived of their vessels the Danes made their last march: pressing overland, they for the second time entered the Severn valley and “wrought a work” at Quatbridge.[24] Alfred followed them with the bulk of his host, and lay opposite them as the winter set in. It was impossible to get away from this untiring pursuer, and in the next spring the “Great Army” broke up in despair: “some returned to East Anglia and some to Northumbria, and those that were moneyless got themselves ships and went south over sea to the Seine. Thanks be to God, the army had not broken up the English race” (896).

These splendid campaigns, known to us, alas! only in outline, are the finest testimony to Alfred’s powers of organisation that could be given. Wherever the Vikings appeared they were at once met by a sufficient force and held in check. Their strong camps could not defend them as of old: sometimes the palisades were stormed, sometimes blockade did the work, and the host had to depart in order to save itself from starvation. Three years of perpetual disaster tired out at last even the obstinacy of the battle-loving Northmen. They dispersed and sought other scenes of activity and enemies less formidable than the great king of Wessex.

For the last four years of his life Alfred was undisturbed save by trifling raids of small squadrons, which he brushed off with ease by means of the new fleet of “great ships” which he had built. The work of defence was done: Wessex was saved, and with Wessex the English nationality. In a few years the king’s gallant son, Edward the Elder, was to take the offensive against the old enemy, and to repay on the Danelagh all the evils that England had suffered during the miserable years of the ninth century. That such triumphs lay within his power was absolutely and entirely the work of his great father, who had turned defeat into victory, brought order out of chaos, and left the torn and riven kingdom that he had inherited transformed into the best organised and most powerful state in Western Europe.

ALFRED AS A GEOGRAPHER

BY SIR CLEMENTS MARKHAM

ALFRED AS A GEOGRAPHER

The single-minded devotion of King Alfred to the service of his people is shown in every action of his life; and one of the greatest, certainly the most remarkable undertaking for that end, was the conveyance of knowledge to them in their own language, through paraphrased translations. It was thus that he strove to disseminate some acquaintance with theology, moral philosophy, history, and geography. It is a very striking and suggestive fact that a ruler who surpassed all others that the world has ever seen in wisdom and insight, as well as in complete abnegation of every selfish thought in his dealings with his people, should have given so high a place to geography. Alfred knew by experience that an acquaintance with the relative positions of places on the earth’s surface was the necessary foundation of the kind of knowledge required equally by the statesman, the soldier, and the merchant; and he therefore gave its due place to geography in his grand scheme for the enlightenment of Englishmen. In this he was centuries in advance of his age, and even now the standard in this, as in other respects, is below that of the wisest of our kings.

Alfred, as was his wont, when he had resolved to bring knowledge on any particular subject within the reach of his people, diligently sought out the best authority on geography. Ptolemy, Strabo, and Pliny were unknown to his generation, still hidden away in dark repositories and not to be unearthed until the dawn of the Renaissance. In the ninth century the best geographical work was that of Paulus Orosius, who had lived in the days of the Emperor Honorius. He was a native of Tarragona in Spain, and took orders in the Christian church. Perplexed by the controversies in his own country, the young Spanish deacon undertook a voyage to Africa, to receive the solution of his doubts from the famous Bishop of Hippo. Orosius secured the friendship of St. Augustine, who sent him to Palestine on two occasions before A.D. 416, and gave him opportunities for study. The result was a work intended to refute the pagan opinion that the sack of Rome by Alaric was due to the anger of the ancient gods. It, however, contained much more than mere polemics, and was in fact a summary of the world’s history from the creation to the days of Honorius, with a sketch of all that was then known of geography.

Alfred brought high qualifications to the task of translating and editing Orosius.[25] In his boyhood he had twice made journeys to Rome, which, as regards danger and hardships, may be compared to an expedition to Lhasa at the present day. In after life he had become very intimately acquainted with the topography of his native island, from the Humber to the shores of the Channel, and from the Severn to the East Anglian coast. As a military tactician he knew each river, valley, hill range, and plain; as an administrator he had examined the capabilities of every district; and as a naval commander, the harbours and estuaries, the tides and currents were familiar to him. So far as his personal knowledge extended, Alfred was a trained geographer. He was also in a position to increase the information derived from his own personal experiences by diligently collecting materials from those foreigners who frequented his court, and by reading. He had the gift of assimilating the knowledge thus acquired, and he studied most diligently. Above all, he was eager to investigate unknown things for the great end he always had in view—the good of his people.

Alfred’s design was to collect the best and most extensive geographical information, without confining himself to the text of Orosius. Thus he commences his geographical work with a very lucid account of the peoples of central Europe and of their relative positions, which is not in the work of Orosius, but was composed by the king himself from his own sources of information. It is the only account from which such details in that age can be derived.

The East Franks, he tells us, were established east of the Rhine and north of the source of the Danube. The Swabians were to the south and beyond the Danube, while the Bavarians were farther east round the town of Ratisbon, both peoples occupying the country up to the foot of the Alps. East of the Bavarians was Bohemia, and to the north-east was Thuringia. Turning to the north of Germany the king places the old Saxons round the mouth of the Elbe, and the Frisians farther west. North of the Elbe were the Angles, who nearly all came to people England, and the Danes on the mainland and in the island of Zeeland. King Alfred then gives some details respecting the Slavonic tribes in the eastern part of Germany. The Afdrede were established in what is now Mecklenburg, and the Wylte in that part of the mark of Brandenburg then called Hæfeldan. The Sysyle were in a part of Eastern Prussia then known as Wineda-land. Eastward from the countries of the Bohemians and Bavarians were the Moravians; and to the south, beyond the Danube again, and extending to the Alps, was Carinthia. A desert, by which the Karst may be intended, extended between Carinthia and the land of the Bulgarians, beyond which was the Byzantine empire. To the east of Moravia was Wisl-land, the region watered by the Vistula, Dalamensan, Horithi, and Surpe. These Slavonic peoples occupied Poland, and to the north-east was Sermende, the modern Livonia.

Having given the relative positions of the peoples inhabiting central Europe, King Alfred turns to the north, and takes us to the countries bordering on the British sea and the Baltic, or Ost-sæ as he calls it. The north Danes were then in the provinces of Halland and Scania, now part of Sweden, as well as in the islands. To the eastward were the Afdrede already mentioned as occupying Mecklenburg, the Burgendas apparently on the island of Bornholm, and Osti or Easterlings, a Finnish race, inhabited Esthonia. On the Scandinavian peninsula were the Sweon or Swedes, the Northmen, and the Scride-Finnas or “striding Finns.” Far to the north, between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Arctic Sea, including Finmarken, was the waste country called Cwenland.

Having given this most valuable summary of the inhabitants of Central and Northern Europe during the ninth century, King Alfred proceeds to relate the particulars of two important voyages made by distinguished seamen who had come to his court and recited their adventures to him. The first was an influential Northman or Norwegian named Oht-here, or in old Norwegian, Ottar. The name is derived from the two words _oht_ (dread or fear) and _hær_ or _here_ (an army), _hærmand_, a warrior. The right meaning of Oht-here is, therefore, “terror-causing warrior.” This able navigator “told his Lord King Alfred that he dwelt northmost of all Northmen, on the land by the west sea.” The district in which he dwelt was called Halgoland, the land of fire, or more probably “the land of the northern lights.” Oht-here’s home has been placed on the shores of Lerivik Sound, between the Island of Senjen and the mainland. “He said no man abode north of him. He was a wealthy man in those possessions in which their wealth consists,” possessing 600 tame reindeer of his own breeding, 20 horned cattle, as many sheep and swine, and horses with which he ploughed a small extent of tilled land. But his revenues were chiefly derived from tribute paid to him by the Laplanders, called Finns by the Norwegians, in furs and skins, birds’ feathers, whalebone, and ropes made from walrus hide. Oht-here called his country Northweg (Norway), and described it as being very long and narrow, with all the pasture and culturable land near the sea, which, however, is very rocky in some places. Inland, he said that there were high mountains, and farther to the eastward were Sweden in the south and Cwenland in the north. He added that to the north of Halgoland the country was waste and desert, except in a few places, where the Laplanders were encamped for hunting, or on the sea-coast for fishing in the summer.

Oht-here was evidently a man of high position and great influence, one who was worthy of the friendship and confidence of King Alfred. He was inspired by the noble desire for Arctic exploration and discovery, or, as he expressed himself to the king, he desired to find out how the land lay far to the north. So he undertook a most adventurous voyage to the northward, coasting along the land, keeping the wild, rocky coast on his starboard side and the wide Arctic Sea on what he called his _bæc-bord_. Continuing this course for three days, he passed beyond the most northern point to which the whale-hunters ever went in those days. Still pressing onwards, he attained the most northern point ever reached by man, in about 71° 15′ N. The land then trended eastward, and, after waiting a short time for a westerly wind, he shaped a course along the coast to the eastward until he reached the entrance of the White Sea on the fourth day. Here he waited for a northerly breeze, which enabled him to coast round the Kola peninsula to the mouth of the Varzuga river, and thus to discover the White Sea. Here he stopped owing to fear of hostilities from the natives beyond. These were the North Carelians, on the western coast of the White Sea. Oht-here calls them Beormas, and says that they had a well-peopled land.

Oht-here’s discoveries included the whole of the Arctic coast of Finmarken and the shores of the White Sea as far as the mouth of the Varzuga. He was the first to double the North Cape, and Oht-here’s farthest north held its ground for nearly seven hundred years, until the voyage of Willoughby and Chancellor in 1553.

Oht-here calls the country between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Arctic Sea, Terfinna land, _Ter_ being the ancient name of the Kola peninsula. Terfinna therefore means the Finns in Ter. He describes it as entirely waste and uninhabited, except where the Laplanders were encamped for hunting or fishing. He was told many tales respecting their country by the Beormas, but King Alfred did not record them, because they were only from hearsay, and not things the explorer could testify to from personal knowledge. Besides discovery, another object of Oht-here’s voyage was the capture of walrus, for the sake of their hides and tusks. He calls the walrus a horse whale, but says that it is much smaller than other whales; thus correctly including whales, usually supposed to be fish in ancient times, under the head of mammalia, by classing them with the walrus. The length of a walrus is given, with approximate accuracy, at 14 feet. Oht-here told King Alfred that the great whales were from 96 to 100 feet long, and that the best whale-hunting was off his own country of Halgoland. The skill and energy of those old Norsemen must have been most remarkable, for Oht-here says that his was one of six vessels which killed sixty whales in two days. The ships must have had very large crews, and a considerable number of boats for each ship, to have achieved such an unequalled feat, probably without a rival in the whole history of whaling. But it is more likely that Oht-here alluded to walrus or “horse whales.”

Oht-here also described to the king a voyage to the south from Halgoland, along the coast of Norway, to Denmark and Slesvig. He said that with a fair wind, and anchoring each night, the voyage from Halgoland to a port he calls Sciringesheal, might be made in a month. Sciringesheal is in old Norwegian _Scirings-salr_, which, in the ninth century, was a town on the shores of a small bay in Larviks-fjord, called Viks-fjord. In the English of Alfred the termination _salr_ (a large room) is changed into _heal_ (a hall). On the _bæc-bord_ is Norway, and on the starboard side is Iraland and other islands. He then describes a great sea running inland, the Kattegat and the Baltic, with Jutland and Zeeland on the other side. The Baltic, he adds, runs several hundred miles up into the land. Oht-here sailed from Sciringesheal southwards, through the Danish islands to the coast of Slesvig, and reached the port of Haddeby. Alfred adds the interesting fact that the Angles dwelt in these lands round Haddeby before they came into England.

Oht-here made a present of walrus ivory to King Alfred; but he was not the only adventurous seaman who brought welcome information to the king. A Dane named Wulfstan gave him an account of a voyage in the Baltic from Haddeby to Truso, in what is now Eastern Prussia, and described to him the manners and customs of the people he visited.

Haddeby, mentioned both by Oht-here and Wulfstan, was no doubt an important trading port in the ninth century. The word, as given by Alfred, is _æt Hæthum_, meaning “at the Heaths.” “The town at the heaths” is the same as Hedeby or Haddeby, the ancient name of Slesvig. It is now a pretty little village, with a very ancient granite church, on the banks of the river Schley, just opposite the more recent town of Slesvig. Wulfstan made the voyage from Haddeby to Truso in seven days. He had the Danish islands on the _bæc-bord_, and the land of the Wends, now Mecklenburg, and Pomerania on his starboard side; then the Swedish provinces of Bleking and Smaland, and the isles of Bornholm, Öland, and Gothland, to the north; and the mouth of the Vistula to the south. Wulfstan finished his voyage by entering the inland sea, called Frische Haff, by a narrow strait, and going up the Elbing river to the town of Truso on the Drausen lake in East Prussia.

Wulfstan gave a very full account of this country of Estum or Esthonia to King Alfred. There are kings in every town, he says, and the richer folk drink mare’s milk (probably the fermented _kumiss_ made from milk), while the poor people drink mead. The custom of treating their dead is to keep the bodies preserved in ice for a long time before they are burnt, during which there is drinking and festivities. The dead man’s property is then divided into several lots, and placed along a course to be raced for, so that swift horses become uncommonly dear. King Alfred was also much struck by Wulfstan’s account of the way in which the Esthonians could produce cold, both for preserving the dead during the period of festivities, and for icing their liquors.

In recording the information received from his two sailor visitors, Oht-here and Wulfstan, the clearness and perspicacity of the narrative, and the rejection of all hearsay evidence, show that King Alfred was most careful and conscientious, anxious to secure accuracy, and only to present to his people what was reliable. The voyages themselves are interesting, because they prove that, although the seas were alive with the piratical fleets of Rolf the Ganger, Hasting, and many other warriors bent only on pillage and rapine, there were at the same time peaceful ventures and even expeditions of discovery.

The first voyage of Oht-here is memorable as the first Arctic expedition undertaken for the sake of discovery and exploration. There is nothing to show that it was undertaken under the auspices, or even with the knowledge, of Alfred. But it is certain that it received the cordial approval of our great king, and that its motives had the sympathy and appreciation of one who, in regenerating the navy of England, knew well that such training was of vital importance to a naval power. The welcome he extended to his Arctic visitor, and the care with which he elicited his information and recorded it, leave no doubt of what Alfred’s feelings were upon this subject. When it is remembered that Alfred the Great rebuilt the English navy from his own designs, improving upon the lines of Danish and Norse ships, it ought not to be forgotten, in the same connection, how highly he valued the work of Arctic exploration. He at least knew that a training in deeds of seaman-like daring and adventure is as important as the building of ships for securing and maintaining power on the sea. We have no further knowledge of the personal intercourse between the first Arctic explorer and “his Lord King Alfred.” He was cordially received at the English court, he presented the king with an offering of walrus ivory, and there must have been conversations in the course of which the king received and sifted the evidence of his guest, until he was able to record the lucid and accurate narrative which has been preserved and handed down to us.

After recording the events of the voyages of Oht-here and Wulfstan, King Alfred returns to the text of Orosius, where the geography of Greece and the islands is discussed, as well as that of the countries on the shores of the Adriatic. Thence Orosius passes to Italy, France, and Spain; and in the latter country Cadiz and Betanzos in Galicia are mentioned. France was personally known to Alfred, who had visited the court of Charles the Bald, but he gives no reminiscence of his journeys. Nearly all Spain was then under the enlightened rule of the powerful western Khalifas Almondhir and Abdallah, while the Christian kings of Oviedo fought to maintain a struggling existence in the mountains of Asturias. Even Leon was not occupied by them until after the death of Alfred. In his reference to Britain and the surrounding islands, including the Orkneys, there is an allusion to “the uttermost land that men call Thule,” north-west of Ireland. Alfred held it to be Iceland, apparently.

Africa is then treated of, with rather more fulness. The positions of Egypt and Libya Cyrenaica, of the Nasamones, near the Syrtis Major, of Numidia, Mauritania, and the Atlas Mountains, are laid down; and after a passage where Orosius remarks on the ingratitude of the Egyptians to the memory of Joseph, King Alfred inserts an interesting reflection of his own: “So also it is still in all the world. If God for a very long time grants any one his will, and he then takes it away for a less time, he soon forgets the good which he had before, and thinks only upon the evil which he then hath.”

The concluding part of the work refers to the Mediterranean islands. Sicily is described with its three points, Pelorus, Pachynum, and Lilybæum; but there is a serious mistake as regards its size, perhaps due to an error in transcription. Finally, there are notices of Scythia and Bactria, of Arabia and India, of Palestine and the Jordan, and of Cilicia, Isauria, and other places in Asia Minor, this part being from the text of Orosius. Africa seems to have been conceived to be a long, narrow continent, smaller than Europe, with no very great extension towards the south.