It’s Christmas day 854. King AEthelweard of East Anglia, a king who we know almost nothing about, is dead. The only evidence we really have that he was alive in the first place are his coins, and this is likely due to the fact that, throughout the Viking Age, succeeding bands of Scandinavian pyromaniacs destroyed the East Anglian written records. But coins don’t burn all that well, so at least we have that. Now, on this Christmas day in 854, prince Eadmund… AEthelweard’s 14 year old son… succeeded to his father’s throne. East Anglia, once the home to mighty King Raedwald Bretwalda, has suffered through succession issues, conquest, civil war, and now a child king. More importantly, though, is that they have a child king at a time where they were under siege by seemingly endless armies of Scandinavians. Things for East Anglia were bad, and they just keep getting worse. Here’s how bad these Vikingr raids were becoming. In the following year, 855, we read in a Mercian Charter of Vikingr armies active in the countryside near the Wrekin. Now, the Wrekin was a well known landmark at the time… and in fact it’s still a fairly well known landmark in the midlands today. The Wrekin is a prominent hill in Shropshire that has been used for centuries to denote boundaries and direction. Nothing fancy, just a hill. What’s shocking about this information is where Wrekin IS. Today it is in the area we know as Shopshire, and if you don’t know where that is, go ahead and check it on a map. In the Anglo Saxon era, Wrekin was close to the border of Powys and Mercia; deep in Central britain. This isn’t a coastal landmark. There aren’t clear navigable waters leading directly there. To get there from the ocean, ANY ocean, is a serious march. It’s like hearing a Navy force invading North America was patrolling the Rockies in Central North America. And it leaves me wondering how they got there? Did they land on the West Coast and march inland? In that case, what happened to towns in areas of North Wales, Chester, Stoke on Trent, and Shrewsbury? They probably would have passed all of them on their way to the Wrekin. If they marched from the east, what happened to all the Mercian settlements they passed on their way to the Western portion of Mercia? What happened at their landing site? Did they land in Northumbria? London? Did they land in East Anglia and make the long march through the Fens? What did these Vikingrs do about their boats? Did they just leave them? Did they have enough warriors with them that they felt confident that the guard they left behind could defend the camp from an army, while the rest of the warriors could handle any other armies they encounter? It’s crazy to think about. We don’t know exactly what happened here, partially because so many records ended up being put to the torch, but we’re getting hints of just how extensive this invasion had become at this point. We aren’t looking at coastal raiders anymore. We’re looking at armies… and critically, we’re looking at armies that were becoming so confidant that they were making massive marches inland.
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