Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - II. The Danelaw - 5. Svein and Knút
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the act of negotiation, committed a murder for which
he was outlawed. Then it was resolved to meet plot
with plot, and kill off all the Danes in England, or at
least all those of Pallig’s command. The massacre of
St. Brice’s day (November 12, 1002) has been reduced
to its lowest terms by Freeman, but that it struck the
English themselves with horror and shame is evident.
Henry of Huntingdon records that in his boyhood,
eighty years later, the event was still remembered in
common talk. At Oxford the sanctuary of the church
was as little respected by the English as ever it had
been by the Vikings : St. Frideswide’s was burnt with
all the Danes who had taken refuge in it. It was the
common reproach that the Vikings spared neither age
nor sex : but now the English beheaded Gunnhild, a
royal princess, a Christian, and a hostage, after both
her husband, jarl Pallig, and her son had been killed
before her eyes. If the circumstances of this, which
all England might have regarded as a natural and
laudable act of vengeance, have been exaggerated,
what are we to think of the chroniclers’ stories of
Viking crime but that they must be taken with great
abatement?
The massacre was "not only a crime but a blunder,"
as Freeman remarks, and it brought a speedy revenge.
Next year Svein, now king of Denmark and Norway,
invaded and took Exeter, Wilton, and Old Sarum ;
in 1004 he sacked Norwich, and overcame the East
Anglian fyrd under Ulfketil, the old ealdorman’s right-hand
man, the Ulfkell Snillingr of the sagas, a true
English patriot though his name betrays a Viking
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