Corbridge

The Second Battle of Corbridge?

The Irish source often referred to as the 'Three Fragments' contains a passage which may relate to the battle fought at Corbridge in 918.

In his paper 'The Battles at Corbridge', F.T. Wainwright comments: "It gives a long and, as is usual in the Three Fragments, a garbled and legendary description of a battle between the Scandinavians and the English. Errors, later additions, and legendary details may bring the Three Fragments under suspicion, but we cannot dismiss as mere fabrication a source which, though itself confused and inaccurate, apparently preserves a core of genuine historical fact."

The 'Three Fragments' relate:

"In that year great armies of Dark Foreigners and Fair Foreigners [Danish and Norwegian Vikings] came again to attack the Saxons, after the installation of Sitric [Sihtric] grandson of Imar [Ivar] as king. They challenged the Saxons to battle, and the Saxons did not delay, but came at once to attack the pagans. A hard and ferocious battle was fought between them, and there was great energy and heat and contention on both sides. Much noble blood was spilled in this battle; nevertheless, it was the Saxons who won victory and spoils after massacring the pagans. For the king of the pagans was taken ill, and he was carried out of the battle to a forest nearby, and he died there....

F.T. Wainwright: "The introduction of Sihtric, grandson of Ivar, into the story is obviously an error ... It is possible that the name Sihtric was added as a mistaken explanatory gloss to "grandson of Ivar" and was transferred to the text by a later copyist. Both Ragnald and Sihtric were grandsons of Ivar and both appear under this description in Irish annals for the years 917 and 918." Wainwright points out that, although Ragnald did not die in the battle of 918, another Irish source does list him as being killed there. He continues: "It looks as if a scribe whose work is now incorporated in the Three Fragments made worse, by a faulty gloss, an error already current in at least one Irish version: Ragnald was present at the battle of 918 but he did not die there; Sihtric, so far as we know, was not even present."

.... Now Oittir, the most greatly esteemed earl in this battle, when he saw the Saxons slaughtering his people, fled into a dense wood near him, along with those of his people who survived. A huge throng of Saxons came after him, and they surrounded the wood. The Queen commanded them to hack down all of the forest with their swords and battleaxes, and they did so. First they felled the trees, and then all the pagans who were in the wood were killed. The pagans were slaughtered by the Queen like that, so that her fame spread in all directions....

There are suggestions that the battle described is actually the 910 battle of Tettenhall - certainly, an Earl Ohter was amongst the Danish nobility killed there, and it was a decisive English victory - but, nevertheless, the impression given that the Viking force arrived from overseas, and the description's placing, in the 'Three Fragments', make a link to the 918 battle of Corbridge rather more comfortable.

.... Aethelflaed, through her own cleverness, made peace with the men of Alba [i.e. the Picts and Scots] and with the Britons [of Strathclyde], so that whenever the same race should come to attack her, they would rise to help her. If it were against them that they came, she would take arms with them. While this continued, the men of Alba and Britain overcame the settlements of the Norwegians and destroyed and sacked them."

F.T. Wainwright: "There is much to this story that we cannot accept, but the record of an Anglo-Celtic alliance against the Norsemen is of first-rate importance, and the account of the battle, though garbled and legendary in its present form, is worthy of consideration."