2021 Round-up (and Æthelflæd’s Daughter) plus News!

We once again spent much of the year in lockdown but writerly things were still able to happen and, indeed, are planned (find out more at the end of this post). Highlights of my year were:

Being shortlisted for the prestigious Exeter Story Prize and Trisha Ashley Award with my story The Borrowed Days.

The publication of the second and last in my Tales of the Iclingas series. Book One, Cometh the Hour, told the story of Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, his feud with the Northumbrian kings and his quest to avenge his womenfolk. Now The Sins of the Father continues the tale by focusing on the next generation. All are scarred in one way or another by the continuing feud, but does any of them have the strength to end it? The reviews have been lovely, with one reader saying:

 "Annie Whitehead’s writing is an absolute joy to read. Her prose is lyrical, her research is meticulous, and she recreates the Anglo-Saxon world so faithfully that it’s easy to lose yourself in the pages of the story. Whenever I read any of her stories, I can’t help but feel that I’m sitting in a mead hall, being entertained by the scop while I dine on fresh cheese and honey. The Sins of the Father, the sequel to Cometh the Hour, delivers everything I’ve come to love from one of Annie’s novels and more. She can’t produce a time travel machine, but she’s given us the next best thing. From the opening scene until the last, I was hooked. "

2021 also saw the publication of the paperback edition of my second nonfiction book, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, of which Imogen Robertson, author and chair of the Historical Writers' Association, said: 

"Absolutely fascinating - Annie Whitehead pieces together the evidence with meticulous care, then tells the stories of an exciting variety of remarkable women in fluid, crystal-clear prose. It is a pleasure to read her thoughtful and nuanced portraits of peace-weavers, queens and saints and have my eyes opened to the complex histories of these forgotten Anglo-Saxon leaders."

And the publication of the paperback version of 1066 Turned Upside Down, our collaborative re-imagining of the events of 1066.

Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, my first nonfiction book, continued to occupy a place in the top five of books on Anglo-Saxon history on Amazon and found its way onto several bookshop tables, including the huge five-storey branch of Waterstones in Birmingham just before Christmas.

In the autumn, I took part in the Ask Historians Digital Conference, where I discussed the misrepresentation of Anglo-Saxon Women by the later chroniclers, and you can see our roundtable discussion HERE

I was interviewed by Seb Whitehouse for his Youtube channel, where we chatted about social history as well as kings and queens and, of course, Mercia. You can catch the interview HERE

I had a lovely chat with the Tudors Dynasty podcast, too. Now, you might be wondering, what on earth does Anglo-Saxon history have to do with the Tudors? But, there is a link, and here's a little bit more information about that connection:

I'd been talking to a friend not so long beforehand, about the enduring popularity of the Tudors and why it should be so. I think the fascination is partly to do with two things: a king executing his queens is unique in English history, and women succeeding women to the throne is something which had never happened before and has not happened since, unless you count Anne’s succeeding William and Mary.

Well, I say it hadn’t happened before. It did, once, albeit briefly.

I’ve written a great deal about Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, in my novel To Be A Queen, and both my nonfiction books, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom and Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England. She was the daughter of Alfred the Great, and she was born at a time when ‘Viking’ incursions were not only a major nuisance, but had already seen two kingdoms - East Anglia and Northumbria - fall pretty much permanently under Danish (and Norse) control. Only the very top part of Northumbria, some of Mercia and the whole of Wessex were still under English rule. Alfred, and later his son, Edward, began working alongside Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians and, when a concerted joint effort pushed the invaders out of London, the alliance was sealed by the marriage of Alfred’s daughter Æthelflæd to Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians. 

We don’t have much information for the early years of their marriage, except the details of the continuing campaign against the 'Vikings'. Around the year 902, however, the chronicles stop mentioning Æthelred’s name and the Irish annals make it clear that he was suffering from some kind of illness, which prevented him from fighting but did not stop him giving strategic advice to his wife. This gives me the impression that by this stage, this was one amazing power couple, happy to support and protect each other - she looking after him while he was ill and he being happy to delegate to a ‘mere’ woman.

History records - and yes, it’s a bit of a spoiler - that after this protracted illness she ended up ruling alone. That’s also worth a moment’s pause. Only once before had a woman ruled an English kingdom, and it didn’t end well. Seaxburh, queen of Wessex, was the only Anglo-Saxon woman to be included on a regnal list. She ruled for somewhere between one and two years in the seventh century but as a later chronicler said, the men of the kingdom would not go to war under the leadership of a woman. I think ‘war’ is the clue here. It’s likely that she was actually ruling as regent for her son during a time of conflict over the succession. At any rate, her rule was not long, and was not successful.

Æthelflæd, on the other hand, ruled Mercia for seven years on her own and in that time she worked in partnership with her brother Edward to wrest occupied Mercia out of 'Viking' hands, building defensive towns called burhs, and famously taking Derby with her troops and losing in the fighting ‘four thegns who were dear to her.’ Derby was one of the strategically important ‘Five Boroughs’ of the Danelaw (the other four being Lincoln, Stamford, Nottingham and Leicester). By the time she died at Tamworth, their work was almost done.

From beyond the grave though, she pulled off another remarkable feat: her daughter Ælfwynn succeeded her. 

We know virtually nothing of Ælfwynn’s life, not even her year of birth, but we do know that she witnessed a charter of her mother’s, issued at Weardbyrig (unidentified but possibly in Shropshire) in 915, when Æthelflæd was in the midst of her intense burh-building programme. Even if Ælfwynn had been born late in the marriage – and it seems unlikely that she would have been conceived after her father fell ill in around 902 – she probably wouldn’t have been on campaign with her mother if she was still tiny. Most likely she was a young adult at the very least. Given that it would have been far safer for her to remain in the Mercian heartland, there could well have been a specific reason for her presence at Weardbyrig, that of watching and learning from her mother, with the intention that one day she would take over.

But if she was already a young woman, why had she remained unmarried? Again, I think it might be because she was being groomed to take over the country and keep it in Mercian hands. It’s said that her mother raised the future King Athelstan in Mercia but she clearly didn’t consider him her heir and, when she died, the Mercian council declared for Ælfwynn. We know this because, like Seaxburh all those years ago, her tenure was short-lived. Her uncle Edward, who’d been happy for his sister to rule, wasn’t so accommodating when it came to her daughter and according to the annal known as the Mercian Register, she was ‘deprived of all authority’. Thus they clearly believed that she was rightful ruler.

We don’t know what happened to her after that, other than that she was probably taken into Wessex. A later charter speaks of a holy woman called Ælfwynn, but there is no proof at all that this was the same woman. Like so many before and after, she simply disappeared off the pages of history.

But we should not overlook that very important point. In Mercia in 918 a remarkable thing happened: a woman ruler was succeeded by a woman ruler. This would not happen again until the time of the Tudors.

And finally... a version of the above mini-article first appeared on author Samantha Wilcoxson's blog and might give a slight hint of the direction my next novel will take me. But first, I have a talk to prepare for the re-enactment group, Swords of Penda, and I will be contributing a chapter for a new book about English kings and queens which will be published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2023. That should all keep me busy for a while!

Thank you for reading my blog articles - I have many more planned for the coming year so do please keep popping by.

Finding Stories in Legends: The Anglo-Saxon World

A royal son, in defiance of his frail and useless father, released the king’s prisoner from jail and married her, before leading the kingdom in an heroic fight against the invaders. A king went to war because his sister had been mistreated. A princess was accused of killing her little brother and her punishment was that her eyeballs fell out. A teenaged king was found in bed on his wedding night with his wife and her mother…

These are all tales worthy of books. Even Films maybe. But they’re tales of Anglo-Saxons, so you might not have heard of them. 

It’s less true now, thanks to The Vikings TV series and The Last Kingdom – TV series and books - but the Anglo-Saxon period has at times suffered from a lack of interest. 

But why? A bit of shameless name-dropping here: over lunch one day, Fay Weldon told me that she thought it had a fair bit to do with the costumes. The Tudors, for example, had exquisite clothing and accurate paintings which can be used to reproduce the garments for telly shows. The Anglo-Saxons left only drawings which lacked perspective and detail and yes, it’s fair to say that in comparison, their clothes were a shade less flamboyant.

There’s a big line, too, drawn across history and making a cultural and documentary barrier: 1066. For a long time, the Anglo-Saxons were separated from us by that line, seen as a people from a far-off, almost mythical world. The ‘Dark Ages’ is now termed the ‘Early Medieval’ period but that tends to mean that the Anglo-Saxons are presumed to have had the same medieval ideas as the Normans, when in fact their laws, particularly relating to women, were a lot more enlightened.

I’m a historian, so I like to sift and sieve, trying to tease the facts from a jumble of chronicles written by people who had a political agenda and told the stories from their own point of view. But I’m an author, too – so I like to get behind the facts and envisage the real people.

Athelstan, from St Bede's Life of 
St Cuthbert

Scenarios described in the opening paragraph have already formed the basis of two of my novels. 

Penda was a pagan warlord who fought against the Northumbrian kings. Bede, a Northumbrian, naturally enough didn’t have much in the way of pleasant things to say about him. But tucked away in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People are a couple of nuggets about Penda: he was tolerant of Christians and he went to war because a neighbouring king repudiated his wife, who happened to be Penda’s sister. Two short sentences allowed me to build up a picture of a man whose motives for war were much less clear-cut and not necessarily driven by bigotry. A man loyal, above all else, to his family. This man intrigued me.

The Venerable Bede

To miss out on Anglo-Saxon history is to miss out on a treat. Such a wealth of stories, such an array of characters…

That three-in-a-bed romp? Well, it may or may not be completely true, but as an opening chapter it served me well. The alleged incident caused widespread fall-out and shaped the politics of tenth-century England. And the novel it inspired also includes the next king’s wife who just happened to be accused of murdering an abbot, colluding with the king in the killing of her first husband, oh, and that of her stepson too. Those women made rather sumptuous ‘bookends’! Behind the fruity gossip though, were a young woman whose reputation was besmirched, and a queen who had to give up two of her children when she married the king, and then lost another when he was still an infant.

King Edgar, from the New Minster
Charter, 966

Another woman whose life story packs a metaphorical punch is Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, daughter of Alfred the Great. She ruled a country in all but name and was instrumental in holding back the Viking onslaught. She probably never wielded a sword yet her story is fascinating none the less. How did she, who was only half-Mercian and a woman, manage to command the loyalty of the Mercian troops? I’ve pondered the paradox of her status many times, in fiction, nonfiction, and even on the ‘stage’.

I still have questions. Why was this remarkable woman so little remarked upon? Her leadership of a kingdom, whether as a politician or a sword-swinging warrior-woman, was unprecedented. Yet the chroniclers either took this completely in their stride, or, with a couple of exceptions, ignored it all together. I couldn’t not write her story.

Æthelflæd, from a 14thC
Genealogical Chronicle

All of my fiction happens to be set in Mercia, the ancient kingdom of the Midlands. So, having written three novels, I realised that I had enough material, along with my original undergrad notes and research books, to undertake the telling of the story of Mercia itself. Here I was able to search for the truth behind such legends as:

Offa – not just a dyke-builder but a major player on the international stage, getting himself involved in a trade war with the emperor, Charlemagne. (Okay, there was a little bit of murder, too…)

Also from Mercia were Lady Godiva - did she really ride naked through the streets of Coventry? – and Eadric Streona, whose name means ‘The Grasper’ and who turned round and changed sides so often during the wars with Cnut that he must have got positively dizzy. In the end, Cnut ordered that Eadric should be paid what was owed him, and one can imagine how he then drew his finger across his throat as he gave the command.

My photo of the Godiva Statue in Coventry

Exciting as these tales are, the Anglo-Saxons were so much more than this. Their world was not one of ‘sword and sorcery.’ They weren’t illiterate heathens (well, Penda was, but this didn’t make him bad); they were real people, whose laws were sophisticated and whose metal-working skills were exquisite. (Think Staffordshire Hoard or the Sutton Hoo treasures.) Their love of tales and drama means that there is a wealth of material from which to draw. Some of those tales are indeed lurid, but it doesn’t take much scratching to reveal the human stories underneath. 

So many of the stories seemed to concern women that I soon had enough to write another nonfiction book, this time concentrating on those women and trying to separate the facts from the fiction of the later chroniclers.

Sometimes it is merely a footnote: the main character of one of my novels had no recorded wife. But a woman is mentioned as having been deprived of property by his successor. Was she his widow? If they weren’t married, did they have a relationship? Writing historical fiction means being guided by the facts, but sometimes it requires reading between the lines, too. Look closely and there you’ll find the stories.

You can find all my books and stories HERE

[A version of this article first appeared on the blog of Mary Anne Yarde  in 2019]

Adding some Atmosphere

I've had some lovely compliments recently about the world-building in my novels, so I thought I'd share some aspects of 'Anglo-Saxon' life here with you today.

In my novel Cometh the Hour, I imagined the Sutton Hoo burial and mentioned the lyre that was included in the grave goods. But in all my novels, I've written scenes set in the mead hall during a feast, where invariably there is a scop telling tales, riddles, and playing music.

My photo of the reconstructed lyre at Sutton Hoo

Here's a link (the image of the inside of the mead hall is not strictly accurate) to a piece from Grendelcynn on Youtube, played on a similar instrument. It will give a flavour of the kinds of sound one might have heard at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_GVjcVBiP4

Of course, lyres weren't the only musical instruments. There were also wooden and even bone whistles, or flutes. The Malham Pipe was originally thought to have been Bronze Age, but is now thought to be post-Roman, and it might have sounded something like this:

https://soundcloud.com/pittriversound-1/malham-pipe-jig-eric-todd-1951

I'm very lucky in that the Thegns of Mercia specialise in reconstructing the earlier 'Anglo-Saxon period'. They are constantly inspiring me, and if you've read Cometh the Hour and/or the follow-up, The Sins of the Father, and want an idea of the wrap-over coats that my characters wear, well, here's an image, with kind permission from Æd Thompson and with credit to Jon Wylie of the Thegns:

Please do visit their site or catch them on Twitter and Facebook for more wonderful photos and reconstructions.

Of course, we all know that people at this time loved their 'bling'. Those who've read 'Sins' might recall that a Kentish bride was wearing a rather lovely, and rather large, brooch. My inspiration for this piece was the Kingston Brooch which, I think you'll agree, is also rather lovely:

Image via Wiki Commons: Link

This has been dated to the seventh century and was found near Kingston in Kent, so I'd say it's a pretty perfect fit for my seventh-century royal Kentish bride to wear on her wedding day!

Sadly, there are no surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon wooden buildings, but to get a sense of what they looked like, you could do worse than visiting West Stow Anglo-Saxon Settlement, where they have examples of various styles of buildings:

Via Wiki Commons - Link

There are a few surviving stone churches, however, and whilst it's fair to say that in the early conversion period the churches were also built of wood, there is a remarkable stone built church which has been dated to around the time that my main character in The Sins of the Father, Ethelred, became king of Mercia. This one is in Northumbria, land of his enemies, but let's not hold that against this beautiful building, which I was lucky enough to visit in the spring when the blossom was out:

My photo of Escomb Church, Bishop Aukland, Co Durham

So these are some of the sights, but what about the sounds? The characters in my books would all have spoken local dialect versions of Old English, which sounds like a language far removed from our own, but there are lots of recognisable words, if you look closely.

I wrote a post a little while ago, looking at the words of the Lord's Prayer, and how we can decipher some of the Old English words. 

The Lord's Prayer in Old English - written 
for me by calligrapher, reenactor, and friend,
Dawn Burgoyne

However, perhaps to get a flavour of the seventh-century mead hall we'd be better off listening to a lovely reading of the epic poem Beowulf - which might have originated in Mercia! - by Heiðniborg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CpKlEiahtI

A page from a copy of Beowulf

Outside the mead hall you'd hear various sounds, none louder than thunder. Animals, the clanging from the forge, and conversation (in Old English, of course). Whilst putting together this little blog post I came across this fun website. It's a bit too 'modern' for our purposes, but I reckon if you set the sounds to this pattern, you'll get an idea:

Click HERE to visit the site

Of course, one thing I can't do is bring you the smells of Anglo-Saxon life. In my books, I try to focus on the more pleasant aromas - cooked food, flower blossom, herbs - but I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that some other smells might have been distinctly unpleasant, so perhaps we should be grateful that blog posts can't yet bring Smell-0-Vision to the world!

My two-book series, Tales of the Iclingas, is complete and available now:

Cometh the Hour:

The Sins of the Father:

And you can find my other novels, stories, and my nonfiction books HERE