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King Alfred's ships: text and context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Extract

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's well-known reference to King Alfred's plan for a new design of war-ships is problematic both in general and in detail. In the account of the year 897 (recte 896), we are told how, after the raids made along the coast of Wessex by Danish gangs based in East Anglia and Northumbria, and in particular with raiding-vessels (OE œscas, ON askar) which they had built ‘many years before’, Alfred ordered ships of a new type to be constructed to meet the Danish menace. In the near-contemporary Winchester manuscript (A) the critical passage reads:

Þa het Ælfred cyng timbran langscipu ongen ða æscas. Þa wæron fulneah tu swa lange swa Þa oðru. Sume hæfdon lx ara, sume ma. Þa wæron ægðer ge swiftran ge unwealtran ge eac hieran Þonne pa oðru; næron nawðer ne on fresisc gescæpene ne on denisc, bute swa him selfum ðuhte Þæt hie nytwyrðoste beon meahten.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

1 ‘Then King Alfred ordered “long-ships” to be built to oppose the askar. They were well-nigh twice as long as the others, some had sixty oars, some more; they were both swifter and less “walty”, and also hieran than the others; they were neither of Frisian design nor of Danish, but as it seemed to himself that they might be most useful’: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS A, ed. Bately, J. M. The AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition, ed. Dumville, D. and Keynes, S. 3 (Cambridge, 1986), 60Google Scholar; cf. Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1990), pp. 57–9Google Scholar; The Parker Chronicle and Laws, ed. Flower, R. and Smith, H., EETS os 208 (London, 1941), 19a.Google Scholar

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74 McGrail, , Ancient Boats, p. 117, table 8.2.Google Scholar

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90 Goodburn, D. M., ‘Anglo-Saxon Boat Finds from London, are they English?’, Crossroads in Ancient Shipbuilding, Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, Roskilde 1991, ed. Westerdahl, C. (Oxford, 1994), pp. 97104 (summary table at p. 98).Google Scholar

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99 ‘Antony's fleet had a hundred and seventy ships, which were fewer in number (than Octavianus' ships) but greater in size, inasmuch as they rose ten feet above the sea.’

100 ‘Antony had eighty ships, in which travelled ten legions; but by so much as he had fewer (than Octavianus) by so much were they better and larger, because they were so built that they could not be overladen with men, in that they were not ten feet high above the water’: The Old English Orosius, ed. Bately, , pp. 129 and 317.Google Scholar

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104 Sturluson, Snorri, Heims kringla, ed. Aðalbjarnarson, I, 335–6, 344–6, 356et passim.Google Scholar

105 Vries, de, Altnordisches Wörterbuch, p. 67, s.v.Google Scholar

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109 King Alfred's West Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, ed. Sweet, H., 2 vols., EETS os 45 and 50 (London, 18711872), 29, 55, 128et passim.Google Scholar

110 See above, pp. 9–10, n. 51.

111 See above, p. 9.

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113 Ibid. I, 90–1.

114 Alan Binns ingeniously supposes that the deliberately beached askar were using rollers (perhaps spare oars), unlike the accidentally grounded English ships: ‘The Navigation of Viking Ships round the British Isles in Old English and Old Norse Sources’, The Fifth Viking Congress, ed. Nicolasen, B. (Tórshavn, 1968), pp. 103–17, at 109–10.Google Scholar

115 See Bede, , De temporum ratione liber, c. xxix, ed. Jones, C. W. CCSL 123 B (Turnhout, 1977), 366–71Google Scholar, and generally Stevens, W. M., Bede's Scientific Achievement (Jarrow, 1985), pp. 1318.Google Scholar

116 For a general account of what might have been happening, see Magoun, F. P., ‘King Alfred's Naval and Beach Battle with the Danes in 896’, MLR 37 (1942), 409–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Binns, , ‘The Navigation of Viking Ships’, pp. 108–10.Google Scholar

117 Smyth, , King Alfred, pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

118 ‘as it seemed to himself, see above, p. 1, n. 1.

119 ASC 911, 1008, Two Chronicles, ed. Plummer, I, 96–7 and 138.Google Scholar On the later Anglo-Saxon navy, see Hollister, C. W., Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions on the Eve of the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1962), pp. 103–26Google Scholar, and Abels, R. P., Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1988), passim.Google Scholar

120 Chronicle, ed. Darlington, and McGurk, , pp. 424–7.Google Scholar

121 V Æthelred 27 and VI Æthelred 33: Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, F., 3 vols. (Halle, 19031916) I, 242–3 and 254–5.Google Scholar

122 Two Chronicles, ed. Plummer, I, 194–7.Google Scholar

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