PAST CRIMESon Jomsborg in the Baltic. Even among other Vikings, they held the
reputation of being the most brutal and horrifying band. One contemporary
chronicle records the presence of such a group in England at the time, led by
a man called Thorkel the Tall.
The theory suggests that they were ambushed and executed by the Anglo
Saxon locals at some point during the reign of Aethelred the Unready, between
968 and 1016. Elite killers, these men would never have surrendered or stood
down from a fight. They may have been raiding as a reprisal for the Saint
Brice’s Day massacre–13 November 1002, when Aethelred had ordered the
killing of all Danish men living in England, itself a reprisal for Danish raids
on British shores. Something that supports this idea is the fact that, unusually,
they were beheaded from the front, rather than through the back of the neck.
The Jomsviking code demanded that its followers meet death face on–they
would see the blow coming but never flinch.
The AngloSaxon killers then hacked the bodies to pieces, venting some of
the frustration and rage that had built up over decades of raiding, pillage, rape
and murder committed on English villages by these fearsome Viking raiders.
For once, they could strike back.^5
Evidence for the Saint Brice’s day murders may have been found in
Oxford, underneath St. John’s College. Nearly forty young men had been
killed and thrown into a ditch at a date between 960 and 1020. One had his
head cut off, and five more had been stabbed in the back. Other skulls had
been crushed, though it is not clear whether this happened before or after
death. There may also have been an attempt to burn them. Tests of collagen in
the bones showed that these men had originally come from the north of
Europe, and there was evidence to show that they were mostly big, robust
men. Other Danes had fled for safety to a wooden church in Oxford, but this
was burned down by the local residents. There were also report of massacres
taking place in Gloucester, Bristol and London.
Sometimes, it seems that slaves were killed to accompany their masters into
the grave. Slaves were an accepted part of AngloSaxon society, although it
was nothing like the kind of slavery we associate with the black slavery of
more recent centuries. Saxonperiod slaves had some legal rights, and could
possess or sell their own products. Slavery was not necessarily a permanent
condition–slaves could be freed by their owners and a number of wills record
this. They could buy their freedom, and sometimes churchmen bought
freedom for slaves. People could also sell themselves or their children into
slavery, often temporarily, as a way of avoiding starvation. The slave owner
had a legal duty to care for and feed their slaves, which might be the only way