The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great (18 page)

Guthrum managed to find his way back to his fortress that night, eluding the hunters of Wessex and slipping back into Chippenham before dawn the next morning. By sunrise, a handful of the surviving Danes had joined Guthrum and, along with the forces the Viking king had left behind to protect his temporary capital, they began to fortify the walls of Chippenham in a desperate attempt to prepare for the coming Saxon siege.

Their preparations were none too soon. Within hours of daybreak, Alfred had positioned his army all about Guthrum’s feebly defended walls, cutting off all chance of escape. Once he had ensured that his siege of the walls of Chippenham was sufficiently orchestrated, Alfred turned his remaining troops to the land surrounding Chippenham, laying to waste what had become over the past few months a Viking settlement. Any captured Danes were slaughtered immediately, and the horses and cattle the Vikings had pastured outside the city walls were all seized.

Within the walls of Chippenham, the scene began to look desperate. The Viking strength had been cut to ribbons at the battle of Edington. The few surviving warriors who had managed to return from the slaughter were wounded and exhausted. The reserve troops that Guthrum had kept behind at Chippenham were too few to resist the Saxon throng outside the gate. And if the predicament of the Danes was not already dire, the Chippenham fortress had just begun to reach the end of its winter stores, as the harvest was still many months away and the fortress had not yet been sufficiently supplied to hold out for any length of time. It is not surprising that the historical account of Guthrum’s plight from the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
described the Danes at this point as “terrified by hunger, cold, and fear.”

Alfred and his men waited hungrily at the gates of Chippenham for an entire fortnight, looking for their opportunity to strike and definitively end the Viking excursion into Wessex. As the impossibility of his situation became clear, Guthrum finally resigned himself to pleading for Alfred’s mercy and seeking out terms of surrender. After fourteen days of siege, Guthrum sent a message to Alfred begging for an opportunity to abandon Chippenham and remove his men from Wessex entirely. In his desperation, the Viking king offered to give to Alfred as many hostages as the Saxon king requested and promised to let Alfred choose the hostages. Additionally, Guthrum offered to leave without taking any Wessex hostages with him.

All the Danish ruler requested was that he and his men might be allowed to leave Wessex alive. An invading Viking king had never before offered this type of one-sided peace treaty, one-sided in the favor of the Saxons. But the battle of Edington had suddenly reduced Guthrum to groveling for his life.

Alfred was prepared to grant Guthrum the mercy for which he begged. Up to this point, the Wessex king had been cruel and harsh in pressing home his victory. This brutality had been necessary to ensure that he not allow the Saxon victory to slip from his grasp. Now that his victory was sure and his throne was securely established once again, it was time to make room for mercy. Alfred sent the Danish emissary back to Guthrum with the good news that the king of Wessex was prepared to allow the Danes to quit the town of Chippenham peacefully, though Alfred made one significant addition to the terms of Guthrum’s surrender.

In granting Guthrum’s desperate request, Alfred was being much more gracious to Guthrum than the Danish conquerors had ever been to the various Saxon kings who had surrendered to the Viking raiding armies. In East Anglia, Ubbe Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless had mockingly filled King Edmund with arrows until he bristled like a hedgehog, and then beheaded the Christian king. In Northumbria, Ivar and Halfdan had ritually sacrificed King Ælle to the Norse god Odin in the gruesome spectacle of the blood eagle. If this Guthrum were to be treated as the Viking kings had previously treated their conquered foes, if this humbled Danish king were to receive measure for measure, he would be cruelly executed before the Saxon troops for their evening’s entertainment, and all the captured Viking soldiers would be quickly beheaded. Alfred was determined to make his victory clear to the vanquished Dane in terms that the Vikings would understand, but he also wanted to set a new example with this victory.

And so, just as Ivar and Halfdan had once sacrificed the conquered King Ælle to their god in the barbaric blood eagle ceremony, Alfred insisted that Guthrum must likewise be given over to the God of his conquerors. If Guthrum refused, the doom of the Viking soldiers was certain, and they would never leave Chippenham alive. Rather than the sadistic human sacrifice that Odin required, however, Alfred insisted that Guthrum be handed over to the Christian God by the bloodless ceremony of baptism. The Vikings could go free from Chippenham if Guthrum was given to the triune God of Christianity through Christian baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Throughout the ninth century, baptism had often played an important role in the negotiations between pagan and Christian rulers. Numerous Viking rulers leading campaigns in northern Europe had already received Christian baptism in the hopes that the adoption of the Christian faith would improve their ability to bargain with the Carolingian rulers. Of course the effectiveness of this practice remains a debatable matter. Many of the pagans receiving baptism proved to have undertaken the ceremony with less-than-noble intentions. The seed sown in the hearts of the Viking rulers often fell on stony places or amidst choking thorns.

Certainly, Alfred had good reason to be suspicious of oaths taken by Danes. He had already seen the Vikings break countless vows, vows made before the Christian God, vows made to their own gods, even vows made with Viking hostages given as guarantees. None of these had proved sure. How could Alfred think that Guthrum would suddenly begin to respect the vow of Christian baptism? Nevertheless, after a siege of one fortnight, this is what Alfred demanded of Guthrum: not only was Guthrum required to take Alfred’s God as his own, but King Alfred was to stand as Guthrum’s new godfather at this christening. Guthrum accepted Alfred’s terms immediately and swore to Alfred that he would honor the terms of this treaty, offering to Alfred his pick of the surviving Danish noblemen for hostages to guarantee this vow.

With the battle of Edington won and the army of Guthrum decisively conquered, it would seem that the time for Alfred to begin his celebrations had come. Surely this hard-won peace deserved a great feast in the mead hall of one of Alfred’s great royal estates? But the Anglo-Saxon historian describing Alfred’s victory speaks of no celebrations until three weeks after Guthrum’s acceptance of Alfred’s terms, when the Christian king led the pagan Guthrum and thirty of the Viking king’s most trusted noblemen to a small church in the village of Aller to receive the sacrament of baptism.

The choice of the seemingly insignificant church at Aller for this ceremony may seem, at first, difficult to explain. One would expect Alfred to choose a church whose size and splendor would impress upon Guthrum the greatness of Alfred’s kingdom and the glory of his reign. It would seem to make more sense for Alfred to have conducted this ceremony in the royal city of Winchester, where Alfred could have overwhelmed Guthrum with his own majesty and kingliness. Instead Alfred chose the very humble village church of Aller, a modest church constructed of wood rather than stone, set deep in the remote wilds of Wessex.

Aller sits just a short walk to the east of Athelney, in the midst of the wastelands that had provided Alfred with shelter throughout his desperate winter exile. It was at this meager shack of a church that Alfred had worshiped as a hunted fugitive. For some reason, he felt a strong urge to share the scenery of his banishment with the Viking who had until recently hunted him. Perhaps he wanted to show Guthrum the landscape of his exile, pointing out where he had hidden as the Danish troops scoured the countryside for him. Or perhaps, having spent countless hours in prayer in the ramshackle church of Aller begging God for deliverance from the Viking invasion, now Alfred felt a strong pull to bring Guthrum back to this very church, an acknowledgment that those prayers were being answered in this baptism.

Silently the mixed procession of Wessex noblemen and Viking chieftains wound their way upon the path alongside the river Parrett, leading to the village of Aller. Looming large on the horizon sat Burrow Mump, from whose heights Alfred’s men had regularly stood wary watch, ready to send word to the forces hidden at Athelney of approaching Danes. It had been five weeks since the great Saxon victory at Edington, and the wounds of the noblemen had largely healed.

After the parade of warriors arrived at the church of Aller, they were greeted at the door by the priest who was to conduct the ceremony. For Guthrum and his men, the following ceremony must have felt bizarre and foreign. The ninth-century liturgy for baptism was filled with a number of symbolic ceremonies designed to portray the significance of taking on the Christian faith and the necessity of turning from all elements of paganism. But for the priest conducting the ceremony, as well as for the Christian noblemen who stood watching, this baptismal liturgy must have seemed entirely foreign as well. The Anglo-Saxons administered baptism as soon after birth as possible. A family who waited more than thirty days to baptize their newborn child could be subject to a fine. Thus, the spectacle of a crowd of grown men, seasoned warriors, all being escorted into a church in their white robes to receive baptism, must have been an almost humorous sight. It is likely that this was the first time any of the men of Wessex had ever seen a grown man baptized.

In the early church, new converts to Christianity would spend a lengthy period of time as a
catechumen
before receiving baptism
.
A catechumen was someone who had made an initial commitment to the Christian faith but was still learning the basic elements of Christianity and searching his heart to ensure he was truly prepared to be baptized (which would usually be performed on either Easter or Pentecost). But for the Anglo-Saxons, whose lives were a little more uncertain and the odds of living until the next Easter or Pentecost seemed much slimmer, it was thought that baptism should be administered as soon as possible, so the church dispensed with the intervening months or years that many Christians spent as catechumens preparing for baptism. Therefore, the Anglo-Saxons combined the two ceremonies of being received as a catechumen and of receiving baptism. Becoming a catechumen was performed at the door of the church, and was referred to as the
cristnung
. Now a catechumen, the candidate for baptism was immediately led to the font for baptism.

The
cristnung
began with the
exsufflatio
, in which the priest would blow on the face of the candidate. The blowing was attended with a prayer, which explained that the breath of God would terrify the devil and drive him out, freeing the candidate from the lusts of the flesh. Next, the priest placed a bit of salt under the man’s tongue, which by its pungency signified the power of divinely given wisdom. Then the priest wet the recipient’s ears and nostrils with his own spittle, to show that wisdom would come to him through hearing and smelling. Last, he anointed him with oil in the shape of the cross on his chest and on his back, to declare that the cross would form a shield for this man to protect him from Satan’s fiery darts from in front and from behind. With that, the
cristnung
was complete, and the Danes, now catechumens, proceeded on to the baptismal font.

Here Guthrum was met by King Alfred, who stood next to the Dane as his sponsor while he renounced Satan and professed his new faith in Jesus Christ. At this, the priest plunged the Viking’s head into the font, immersing him three times, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And with this last immersion, Alfred, as his sponsor, grasped Guthrum by the shoulders and lifted him up from the water, now a Christian man. By doing so, Alfred received Guthrum from baptism, meaning he took the Dane as his own godson. In addition to his new faith, Guthrum also received a new name at his baptism, a Christian name. He was now called Æthelstan, godson of King Alfred.

By taking Guthrum as his godson, Alfred intended to form a bond of kinship between himself and the conquered Viking ruler, a bond that would hopefully help maintain peace between the Saxons and the Danes. The creation of familial connections between the ruling families of two different kingdoms had been a common way of trying to create a fondness between nations. Alfred’s older sister, Æthelswith, had been given in marriage to Burgred, the Mercian king, in an attempt to maintain an alliance with that once great Saxon nation. Alfred’s wife, Ealswith, was descended from the Mercian royal family as well, and Alfred’s fondness for his wife helped to keep a fondness for Mercia in his heart.