Return of the Vikings
Almost as soon as the fleet of Viking ships arrived in the English Channel in AD 991, its crew made clear they weren’t on a goodwill mission. Within weeks, they had attacked and plundered Folkestone and Sandwich, and also paid an equally unwelcome visit to Ipswich. By early August, they had sailed up the Blackwater Estuary, and set up camp on Northey Island, where they were threatening the Essex town of Maldon. A prosperous spot with a royal mint, it’s not surprising that Maldon made a tempting target for the Scandinavian raiders.
We don’t know for certain who led this Viking raiding force. It may have been Olaf Trygvasson, a Norwegian adventurer who made himself King of Norway, or it might have been the notorious warrior, Svein Forkbeard, King of Denmark. It may, in fact, have been both of them or even someone else but, whoever it was, the raiders presented a threat that couldn’t be ignored. It fell to a veteran servant of King Æthelred called Ealdorman Brihtnoth to lead the English response. An ‘ealdorman’ was a type of noble, responsible for the defence and government of a particular region, which in Brihtnoth’s case was Essex.