ABSTRACT
Our sole contemporary account of the Danish conquest of England by Swein Forkbeard, king of Denmark, begins innocuously enough: ‘Before the month of August [1013], King Swein came with his fleet to Sandwich.’1 Just four months later the English king Æthelred II sailed to Normandy and into exile, and ‘the full nation’ recognised Swein as king over England.2 The timing of Swein’s arrival could not have been worse for the AngloSaxons, who had already endured some twenty-five years of sustained viking attacks. These raids included those conducted by the devastating ‘great fleet’ in 1006-7,3 and those of the army led by Thorkell the Tall in 1009-12, which culminated in the martyrdom of Ælfheah, archbishop of Canterbury, at the hands of Thorkell’s followers.4 Swein had led multiple raids on England during Æthelred’s reign,5 but the events of 1013 represented something of a different order entirely, focused not on the rapid acquisition of wealth but on the subjection of the English to Danish rule.
