In August of the year 991, in the reign of Æthelred II, a battle was fought near Maldon in Essex. On the one side was the defence-force of Essex, on the other a viking host that had ravaged Ipswich. The English were commanded by Beorhtnoth son of Beorhthelm, the duke of Essex, a man renowned in his day: powerful, fearless, proud. He was now old and hoar, but vigorous and valiant, and his white head towered high above other men, for he was exceedingly tall[1] , The "Danes"—they were on this occasion probably for the most part Norwegians—were, according to one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, led by Anlaf, famous in Norse saga and history as Olaf Tryggvason, later to become King of Norway. [2] The Northmen had sailed up the estuary of the Pante, now called the Blackwater, and encamped on Northey Island. The Northmen and the English were thus separated by an arm of the river; tilled by the incoming tide, it could only be crossed by a "bridge" or causeway, difficult to force in the face of a determined defence. [3] The defence was resolute. But the vikings knew, or so it would seem, what manner of a man they had to deal with: they asked for leave to cross the ford, so that a fair fight could be joined. Beorhtnoth accepted the challenge and allowed them to cross. This act of pride and misplaced chivalry proved fatal. Beorhtnoth was slain and the English routed; but the duke's "household", his heorðwerod, containing the picked knights and officers of his bodyguard, some of them members of his own family, fought on, until they all fell dead beside their lord.

A fragment—a large fragment, 325 lines long—of a contemporary poem has been preserved: it has no end and no beginning, and no title, but is now generally known as The Battle of Maldon. It tells of the demand of the vikings for tribute in return for peace; of Beorhtnoth's proud refusal, and challenge, and the defence of the "bridge"; the cunning request of the vikings, and the crossing of the causeway; the last fight of Beorhtnoth, the falling of his golden-hilted sword from his maimed hand, and the hewing of his body by the heathen men. The end of the fragment, almost half of it, tells of the last stand of the bodyguard. The names, deeds, and speeches of many of the Englishmen are recorded.

The duke Beorhtnoth was a defender of the monks, and a patron of the church, especially of the abbey of Ely. After the battle the Abbot of Ely obtained his body and buried it in the abbey. His head had been hacked off and was not recovered; it was replaced in the tomb by a ball of wax.

According to the late, and largely unhistorical, account in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis the Abbot of Ely went himself with some of his monks to the battlefield. But in the following poem it is supposed that the abbot and his monks came only as far as Mal-don, and that they there remained, sending two men, servants of the duke, to the battlefield some distance away, late in the day after the battle. They took a waggon, and were to bring back Beorhtnoth's body.

They left the waggon near the end of the causeway and began to search among the slain: very many had fallen on both sides. Torhthelm (colloquially Totta) is a youth, son of a minstrel; his head is full of old lays concerning the heroes of northern antiquity, such as Finn, King of Frisia; Fróda of the Hathobards; Béowulf; and Hengest and Horsa, traditional leaders of the English Vikings in the days of Vortigern (called by the English Wyrtgeorn). Tidwald (in short Tída) was an old ceorl, a farmer who had seen much fighting in the English defence-levies. Neither of these men were actually in the battle. After leaving the waggon they became separated in the gathering dusk. Night falls, dark and clouded. Torhthelm is found alone in a part of the field where the dead lie thick.

From the old poem are derived the proud words of Offa at a council before the battle, and the name of the gallant young Aelfwine (scion of an ancient noble house in Mercia) whose courage was commended by Offa. There also are found the names of the two Wulfmaers: Wulfmaer, son of Beorhtnoth's sister; and Wulfmaer the young, son of Wulfstan, who together with Aelfnoth fell grievously hewn besides Beorhtnoth. Near the end of the surviving fragment an old retainer, Beorhtwold, as he prepares to die in the last desperate stand, utters the famous words, a summing up of the heroic code, that are here spoken in a dream by Torhthelm:

Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,

mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað.

"Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens."

It is here implied, as is indeed probable, that these words were not "original," but an ancient and honoured expression of heroic will; Beorhtwold is all the more, not the less, likely for that reason actually to have used them in his last hour.

The third English voice in the dark, speaking after the Dirige is first heard, uses rhyme: presaging the fading end of the old heroic alliterative measure. The old poem is composed in a free form of the alliterative line, the last surviving fragment of ancient English heroic minstrelsy. In that measure, little if at all freer (though used for dialogue) than the verse of The Battle of Maldon, the present modem poem is written.

The rhyming lines are an echo of some verses, preserved in the Historia Eliensis, referring to King Canute:

Merie sungen ðe muneches binnen Ely,

oa Cnut ching reu ðerby.

'Roweð, cnites, noer the land

and here we ther muneches saeng'.

The sound is heard of a man moving uncertainly and breathing noisily in the darkness. Suddenly a voice speaks, loudly and sharply.

Torhthelm.

Halt! What do you want? Hell take you!

Speak!

Tídwald.

Totta! I know you by your teeth rattling.

Tor.

Why, Tída, you! The time seemed long

alone among the lost. They lie so queer.

I've watched and waited, till the wind sighing

was like words whispered by waking ghosts

that in my ears muttered.

Tíd.

And your eyes fancied

barrow-wights and bogies. It's a black darkness

since the moon foundered; but mark my words:

not far from here we'll find the master,

by all accounts.

Tídwald lets out a faint beam from a dark-lantern. An owl hoots. A dark shape flits through the beam of light. Torhthelm starts back and overturns the lantern, which Tída had set on the ground.

What ails you now?

Tor.

Lord save us! Listen!

Tíd.

My lad, you're crazed.

Your fancies and your fears make foes of nothing. Help me to heave 'em! It's heavy labour to lug them alone: long ones and short ones, the thick and the thin. Think less, and talk less of ghosts. Forget your gleeman's stuff!

Their ghosts are under ground, or else God has them;

and wolves don't walk as in Woden's days,

not here in Essex. If any there be,

they'll be two-legged. There, turn him over!

An owl hoots again.

It's only an owl.

Tor.

An ill boding.

Owls are omens. But I'm not afraid,

not of fancied fears. A fool call me,

but more men than I find the mirk gruesome

among the dead unshrouded. It's like the dim shadow,