The Battle of Maldon: History and Analysis
The Battle of Maldon
The Battle of Maldon recounts the victory of the Danes, possibly under the famous Olaf Tryggvason (956–1000), an illustrious leader of the Vikings and later king of Norway. The events of the poem took place in 991, and the author of the poem apparently did not know the identity of the enemy leader. Moreover, it is thought that the leader of the East Saxon levy was Byrhtnoth, the veteran Ealdorman of Essex, and that the Viking host had sailed up from Ipswich and beached their longships on an island in the estuary of the River Blackwater. This island, Northey, is linked to the shore by a causeway, which nowadays is still covered at high tide as it was at the time of the battle. The Vikings had to use this ford to cross this river since they could not use their ships because the water is very shallow.
The Battle of Maldon relates how the English easily prevented the Vikings’ attempt to cross, and how Byrhtnoth, magnanimous and over-confident, allowed them passage. The poet comments that Byrhtnoth “yielded too much land to the hateful people” (90) because of his ofermod (89; great pride, over-confidence). In the poet’s opinion, Byrhtnoth was deceived by the Vikings and took the wrong course of action; he lacked sapientia. Byrhtnoth is in error because he forgot his responsibility to his men, whom he commits to death because he thought only of his own glory.
Composition and Art of the Poem
If we focus on the poem, it was composed soon after the battle: memory of all that happened was still fresh, and it gives the impression of being the work of a man well acquainted with the topography of the battlefield, the character of the English leaders, and all the events of the battle. Also, it is the most trustworthy account of the battle.
Now, focusing on the poet, we can affirm that he was occupied with the fate of the English heroes who were his friends; their manner of dying was what mattered, and the Vikings were merely the agent of destruction. Their names might interest a writer taking a general historical view but were inessential to the poet of the heroic defeat. Also, the poet was probably not present at the battle. An example could be: “I heard,” he says of Eadweard’s killing a Viking. Besides, the poet was well versed in the old heroic and aristocratic traditions of poetry, and an aristocratic poet in Essex would be certain to know Byrhtnoth.
The aristocratic quality of Maldon is evident both in the glorification of the military ideals of the comitatus and in the closeness in art with other Old English court poetry. Maldon is indeed the only purely heroic poem extant in Old English, since Beowulf is usually accounted heroic and epic with ultimately elegiac aims.
Additionally, there is no other poem that shows a truer understanding of the spirit and code that demanded resistance even when all hope of success was gone and retreat would be wiser. In the heroes themselves, the source of heroism was the instinctive sense of honor: to live without honor was felt to be worse than death; that was the true defeat. The heroic faith was that all was well with the man whose spirit remained unyielding, however painfully the body might be sacrificed.
We are not told how the Vikings advanced, but we are told in full of Byrhtnoth’s exhortations, his skill in the front of battle, and his heroic death. The poet was less interested in the spectacle and movements of battle than in the heroic problem.
The Manuscript and the Text
The manuscript of Maldon, produced in the late 11th century, had passed to the Cotton Library early in the seventeenth century and was almost completely destroyed by the fire of 1731. Only a few charred fragments survive, still kept in the British Library under the old Cottonian pressmark, Otho A xii.
Some years before the destruction of the Cotton manuscript, a transcript of the poem was made by John Elphiston for the antiquary Richard Graves (1677–1729), and it was printed in an appendix to a Chronicle in 1723. The actual transcript has been preserved and is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Besides, we should add the fact that the beginning and ending of the poem are lost, apparently, through loss of whole leaves from the Cotton manuscript at some point before 1696. Though we should expect the poem to be composed in Essex, the language of the text is mainly late West Saxon.