SCANDINAVIAN BRITAIN
1.Vikings=men of creeks (tortuous channels of the sea), from today's Denmark; lumbermen and shipbuilders from dark forests; living up the hills on the S. peninsula with snow-fields and glaciers; in search of food and fortune; the water-thieves (fur-traders, whalers, fishermen, merchants, pirates, assiduous tillers of the soil, the amphibious people; the sea-lubbers (rats); their only communication with the outer worlds via the sea-long ships=galleys, plunderers of monastries (shrines with treasure), massacres of monks carried to be bartered as slaves on the continent; robbing gold and gems; fanatical enemies of Christianity; cruel, intrepid, fighting with Anglo-Saxons to beat them off; 3 invasions:
a) Eastern Line----Slavs and Russians
b) Inner Line: Britain and Normandy
c) Outer Line: Island, Scotland, down via Wales to Spain
2. Danelaw-the law imposed by the Danish (Norsemen); with arms, mangonel (catapult); military craft, battle-axes, mail shirts, disciplined ship crew and dragon-prow galleys vs. Saxon shields and spears;
3. 865 AD for the next 13 years, mass destruction of all Eng. Kingdoms except Wessex---the partition of the land for settlement. 878AD—threat for English civilization to be destroyed.
Alfred—moral authority, defender of civic virtues, the law-maker and observer, he codified the English law, consulting his council (witan)—the strength of Old Eng. society. Law based on the balance between the needs of the State and the rights of the individual.—a law founded on custom and modified by consent. So Alfred gave the nation the UNITY, they never had before, strengthened by diversity. The UNITY created not by force but by Alfred who was a political genius, a transparently good man who unified the nation by instilling literacy (a miraculous gift to be shared with all).
4. Alfred's contribution to the formation of the nation:
Saving the state
Rescuing civilization from ruins
Building a fleet
Organizing the system of urban defence, creating a militia
Setting up a diplomatic service
Educating a ruling class, importing scholars, transforming his court into a center of leaning, administrative innovation, and systematic justice, all this done with bare hands
Author of the A-S Chronicle; translator, scholar; :he finally concluded a treaty with the Danes to demarcate the frontier and interlock the legal systems by establishing an agreed scale of wergild allowing for the penetration of the Danes by the English culture. Wergild was the amount of money a person or family could accept in place of vengeance if a man was killed. The wergild went a long way toward delineating social class in Saxon England. In fact, it was the most common method of determining such classes. If you were a wealthy family, it was because you had a large wergild. Nobles, obviously, had the largest wergilds. Below the nobles were the ceorls, or free men who owned property independently but had smaller holdings than the nobles. Below the ceorls were chattels, or slaves, who had wergilds that were either very small or nonexistent.