By the time of Athelstan’s consecration, the Thames estuary, no longer churned by the oars of Viking dragon ships, had become a scene of prosperity and peace. Boats crammed the wharfs built by Alfred within the ancient walls of London; fields stretched unburnt down to the banks of the river as it snaked inland; Kingston, set amid the colours of ripening harvest, provided a fit stage for the awesome ritual about to unfold.
King Athelstan (called “Athelstan the Mighty” in the sagas), is an interesting and enigmatic Anglo-Saxon king. I remember an entry about Alfred the Great in a kids’ encyclopedia from my childhood. It said that Alfred was the only Anglo-Saxon king remembered as “the Great.” But Athelstan certainly might have shared the cognomen – he was the first king to rule a united realm called “England,” embracing all the English speaking sub-kingdoms. And he won a victory over the Vikings (and the Scots) at Brunanburh which equaled or surpassed Alfred’s triumph at Ethandun.
Tom Holland’s Athelstan is part of the Penguin Monarchs series. It’s a short, brisk book for the non-specialist, but the author brings to it scholarship, literary skill, and psychological insight. The big problem with Athelstan’s story is that (although he was as keen on learning and record-keeping as his grandfather Alfred) relatively little documentary evidence remains to us from his reign. Historical focus changed after the Norman conquest, and much was lost.
So historians have to do what they can with the sparse surviving records, supplemented by outside reports (including, with caution, the Icelandic sagas), archaeology, and informed speculation. Tom Holland provides an excellent introduction here.
Athelstan was a highly readable book, and I enjoyed it. It increased my admiration for this undeservedly obscure historical figure.
Okay, I’ve capped my superhuman achievement of watching the Vikings series all the way through, by watching all 5 seasons – plus the final 2-hour movie – of the Netflix series, The Last Kingdom.
As I opined in a previous post, The Last Kingdom benefits from a previous viewing of Vikings, because it looks better by that comparison. But, as is the way of this world, things deteriorated as they went on.
The first two seasons followed Bernard Cornwell’s original novels fairly well – or so I’m told. (I haven’t read the books myself.)
Starting with Season 3, one seems to discern the influence of the Vikings series. One imagines studio executives gathering the writers in a shadowy dungeon, threatening them with racks, iron maidens, and thumbscrews, and telling them, “Make it more like Vikings. Which means more like Game of Thrones. Give us more treachery. More betrayal. The shortest distance between any two points ought to be through a knife wound in the back.”
Thus (aside from the obvious – such as the hero Uhtred’s adoption of Ragnar Lothbrok’s ahistorical rooster’s comb haircut), we see characters changing their personalities abruptly, for no particular reason. They make unreasonable demands, tell lies for the fun of it, and choose suicidal policies guaranteed to make enemies out of friends. The point is not realism, but the maximum possible treachery. I said that it’s Uhtred’s idiotic life choices that propel the plot in the early seasons. Later on, Uhtred becomes the voice of reason, restraining a succession of kings from one disastrous, counterintuitive caprice after another.
I was particularly disappointed, in the later seasons and the final movie, of the treatment of King Athelstan, one of my personal favorites. I’m fond of Athelstan because he raised Norway’s King Haakon the Good at his court, and made him a Christian.
[Spoiler alert] In the final movie, Seven Kings Must Die, Athelstan, who’s been a decent fellow up to now, suddenly murders his brother treacherously (something that absolutely did not happen in real life), and is also portrayed as a homosexual.
Yeah, I should have seen that coming. Athelstan never married or fathered a child, so obviously he must have been homosexual. As you can probably understand, I take that canard personally.
Interestingly, Paul Anderson, in his novel, Mother of Kings, makes Athelstan’s foster son, Haakon, a homosexual.
Fictioneers have treated this admirable pair very shabbily.
And it occurred to me then that somebody ought to write a good novel about Haakon’s life, emphasizing his education (there’s a good chance he might even have been literate) at Athelstan’s court.
Eric Schumacher has written a series of books on Haakon, but I read the first one and didn’t like his treatment.
And then I thought of a Bridge Character for a Haakon story. Which means I’ll have to write the book now.
I’ve mentioned more than once that I attribute the success of my Erling books (success as literary works, not financial success, obviously) to the insertion of Father Ailill as a bridge character. A bridge character is a character with a relatable enough personality that he can explain a very alien, antique culture to modern readers. (Hobbits are the classic bridge characters in Tolkien, which is why The Lord of the Rings is so much more accessible than the Silmarillion.)
This bridge character came to me almost in a moment. He won’t be anything like Father Ailill. In fact, he’ll be a Viking himself.
How can a Viking be a bridge character to the Viking Age?
This will not be your ordinary Viking.
Watch this space for the next couple years, for more information.
