What if Alfred the Great had lost at Edington?
In 878 Alfred came out of the Somerset marshes and beat the Danes. What if Wessex had fallen too?
What actually happened
The Great Heathen Army landed in East Anglia in 865. Within a few years it had taken York, killed King Edmund of East Anglia and overrun much of Mercia. Wessex alone held out. Alfred became king in 871 in a year of constant battles, and paid the Danes to leave.
In January 878 the Danish king Guthrum struck Alfred's estate at Chippenham in a surprise winter attack. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, many of the West Saxons submitted or fled overseas, and Alfred retreated with a small band into the marshes of Athelney in Somerset (the later story of the burnt cakes belongs here). From a fort there he raided the Danes through the spring.
In May he summoned the men of Somerset, Wiltshire and part of Hampshire to Egbert's Stone and defeated Guthrum at Ethandun, generally identified with Edington in Wiltshire. After a two-week siege the Danes surrendered; Guthrum was baptised with Alfred as his godfather and withdrew to East Anglia. A later treaty divided England between Alfred's lands and the territory under Danish law, the Danelaw.
The turning point
The winter of 878 was the low point. Alfred's realm had effectively collapsed and some of his nobles had made terms. Two things kept resistance alive: Alfred's survival in the marshes and the defeat of another Danish force in Devon, where its leader was killed. Edington itself was a hard-fought shield-wall battle whose result was not foregone.
Our main sources, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser's Life of King Alfred, were produced at or close to Alfred's court, so they may sharpen the drama of the comeback. Even so, historians agree that in 878 Wessex came close to sharing the fate of Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: having lost Chippenham, Alfred never came out of the marshes again; when the last fyrd gathered at Edington scattered, the thegns of Wessex knelt to Guthrum one by one, and all four kingdoms of the island became the Danes'. The game then removes the scripted events that follow from a West Saxon England: the unification of England, Cnut's conquest, Edward the Confessor and Hastings.
Beyond the game, a Danish England would have been tied far more closely to Scandinavia. The English language already absorbed many Norse words in the Danelaw; across the whole island the effect would have been greater. The West Saxon programme of learning, laws and fortified burhs that laid the base of a single English kingdom might never have existed.
It need not have been a lasting Scandinavian state. Danish rulers converted, intermarried and adopted local ways quickly, as they did in Normandy. An England ruled by Guthrum's heirs might have become a Christian Anglo-Danish kingdom much like the one Cnut ruled in the eleventh century.
Ripples through time
If Wessex falls, the year 1066 and the Battle of Hastings do not happen in the game at all.
Carried into the Middle Ages (1200), England is ruled by a dynasty descended from Guthrum, on friendly terms with Denmark, and with no Norman conquest the English king holds no land across the Channel: Normandy is a French vassal duchy and the rest of the Angevin lands belong to France.
- Shapes What if Harold had won the Battle of Hastings?
- Carries into the next era Middle Ages
Play this turning point
Start in the Age of Vikings and Coronations, or take the scenario The Marshes of Athelney, which begins in 878 with the king in hiding. The Currents of History story Alfred and the Danelaw lets you join Wessex or the Great Heathen Army.
To change history, fight for the Danes; to keep it, stand with Alfred. The balance of power between the Danish army and the English kingdoms counts here, as do your deeds in the story.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “The marshes of Athelney” →
Questions and answers
Where was the Battle of Edington?
Ethandun is generally identified with Edington in Wiltshire; the battle took place in May 878.
Did Alfred really burn the cakes?
The story first appears in sources written about a century after Alfred's death. It is a legend, though it reflects his real retreat to Athelney in 878.
What was the Danelaw?
The parts of northern and eastern England settled by Danes and governed by Danish customs, recognised in the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum.
Sources and further reading
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Asser, Life of King Alfred. Modern accounts: Richard Abels, Alfred the Great; Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England; David Sturdy, Alfred the Great.
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