Battle of Maldon

Of all the Viking attacks in Western Europe, those against Britain were the most savage and the most unremitting. The major Viking expedition which reached England in AD 991 pillaged Folkestone, Sandwich and Ipswich before it was confronted at Maldon by a force of East Saxons led by Ealdorman Brihtnoth.

The Vikings had established themselves on Northey Island, linked to the Essex mainland by a causeway submerged except at low tide. The crossing was blocked by the East Saxons. Brihtnoth, needing to defeat the Vikings or risk them taking to their ships and continuing to raid the coast, agreed to let them across to engage in battle. In a bloody encounter, with heavy casualties on both sides, Brihtnoth was killed and the Vikings were victorious.

The battle began the process which led to Anglo-Saxon England becoming incorporated for a quarter of a century into a Scandinavian empire. In its aftermath, the English sought to buy peace with a payment of £10,000. The main source of the battle is a contemporary poem, The Battle of Maldon, one of the finest battle poems in English literary history.

In 991 the landscape was very different from that of today. The shoreline was firm and the land dry. The channel between the mainland and Northey Island was only half its present width. Sea-level rise over the last 1,000 years led first to flooding then to the reclaiming of the land by means of a sea wall by 1822. Mud has accumulated on the seaward side, so that the creeks now present give a misleading impression of the nature of the battlefield in 991.