King Alfred in Anglo Norman Histories: Disorder and the Danish Wars

This paper asks how and why Anglo Norman writers in England (c. 1120–1150) narrated the Danish wars of the late ninth century and King Alfred’s role as a military general. It examines their accounts of defensive maneuvers in which Alfred was engaged against the Danes, both before and during his reign, in particular the key points at which these chroniclers deviated visibly from their sources. Several of these literary changes have been seen as points of clarification or as embellishments, but they actually effect material changes in historical perspective. Unlike later encomiasts of Alfred, these chroniclers wrote about Alfred’s experiences of warfare without drawing significantly on hindsight or evaluating his actions in light of their ultimate outcomes. Instead, they elaborated on moments of disorder and crisis. By amending the narrator’s temporal location in the narrative, and choosing a vantage point closer to the events and people they described, they sought to adopt the participants’ lack of foreknowledge of the future. Anglo-Norman historians portrayed disorder during the Danish wars less as a step towards greatness or as a conquest of circumstance, and more as something suffered by many, often in a deeply unsatisfactory way. Not authors of a ‘great man’ history, they highlighted the critical contributions of Alfred’s allies, as well as Alfred’s mistakes, uncertainties and challenges as a ruler. Their narratives illuminate ways in which these chroniclers sought to realize the experience of disorder by mirroring it in narrative form