52 ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2018it was unclear whether the camp extended beyond this fortified
area, some experts took these findings to suggest that the
Great Army was not actually so great after all, numbering at
most in the hundreds—and that the Chronicle’s authors had
exaggerated its size to make it appear more fearsome.
Now, however, an archaeological project at another loca-
tion, Torksey, in Lincolnshire, where the army camped from
872 to 873 , has established that it was indeed very large—it
was in fact far more than a mere army. According to Hadley,
codirector of the Torksey research project along with Julian
Richards of the University of York, “We are getting the sense
that the force that was at Torksey and that is referred to as
an army in the Chronicle actually comprised not just warriors,
but people engaged in trade and manufacture, and women and
children as well.”
Evidence of the camp at Torksey has been unearthed, for
the most part, by avocational metal detectorists. Long active
in the United Kingdom, they are strongly encouraged to notify
scholars of their finds. When Hadley and Richards learned
that a group of detectorists in the Torksey area had discovered
ingots, weights, and a concentration of ninth-century coins,
including a number of Arabic silver dirhams, all of which
appeared to be associated with the Viking Great Army camp,
they set out to carefully document the evidence. “We got the
detectorists to record their finds more systematically,” says
Richards. “We gave them portable global positioning devices
to log the coordinates of each discovery so we could plot maps
of where everything was coming from.”
The dimensions of the camp that emerged from mapping
these finds covered a vast expanse—some 136 acres stretching
over six present-day agricultural fields near the east bank of the
River Trent north of the modern village of Torksey. “The scale
of activity over all those fields suggests a large force, measuring
at least in the thousands, with quite a degree of organization,”T
he Anglo-SAxon ChroniCle describes the Viking
Great Army’s exploits in outsized terms. In a single
day’s battle against Wessex, for example, it reports a
death toll in the thousands. “The implication is that it’s larger
than any previous army seen in England,” says Dawn Hadley
of the University of Sheffield.
But until recently, there had
been little archaeological
evidence of its presence. Only
one overwintering camp
mentioned in the Chronicle
had ever been discovered,
at Repton, the capital of
Mercia, in present-day
Derbyshire, where the army
spent the winter of 873 – 874.
Excavations conducted there
between 1974 and 1993 by
Martin Biddle and his late
wife, Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle,
had revealed a small, heavily
defended enclosure covering
just an acre or two. AlthoughThe site near Torksey (left) where the Viking Great Army
spent the winter of 872–873 is surveyed by a member of the
archaeological team. The camp covered parts of six present-
day agricultural fields.Metal gaming pieces such as this one (top, far right) suggest how Viking army members spent leisure time
at Torksey. Evidence of tremendous wealth has also been uncovered at the site, including (clockwise from
above right) pieces of hackgold, hacksilver, a gold Carolingian coin, and a silver Arabic dirham.