Having seen the BBC television series, 'The Last Kingdom' (broadcast 2015-22), I was reminded that at the Battle of Chippenham in 878, King Alfred the Great was defeated by the Danish Army. He had to flee to the unhealthy Somerset Levels to hide out until he was able to rebuild the Anglo-Saxon Army and go on to defeat the Danes, pushing them back from recent gains in Wessex and to begin establishing what would become England under his grandson, even though it took Alfred himself another 21 years of fighting to get to that position. I had already written a short story which features in my anthology, 'Route Diverted' (2015) showing the execution of King Alfred in 879 so I had given some thought to this scenario. I was also very riled by a number of portrayals of various historical characters in the BBC series. I sought to rectify that more in the direction of how I judged those people, and indeed, I must confess, the way they were shown in the programme.
With Alfred dead, even if his supporters notably Odda, Ealdorman of Devon who in our history defeated the Danes at the Battle of Cynwit, had been able to fight on a lot would have gone from the Anglo-Saxon campaign, not just Alfred's victories after Chippenham but also his promotion of scholarship, development of a navy and particularly the development of towns around England into burghs. Burghs were better defended against Danish attack but also reinvigorated various towns that had been in decline since the departure of the Romans. Rather than following on directly from the death of King Alfred I moved forward 25 years to 903 and envisaged his real son, Edward the Elder who in our history succeeded him to be King of Wessex in 899, instead having lived in exile among the Welsh kingdoms, then as a man using Welsh backing to try to seize back his father's throne.
While Edward is defeated, his (second) wife, Ælfflæd and his children both by her and his first wife, escape. The mission to track these heirs to the throne of Wessex is at the heart of the story. I wanted two characters who while not having magic per se might have been perceived as sorcerers by the people of the time, so I created Øfura ‘The Blood’ and her brother Ræf ‘The Ghost’. They might be twins; they might be half-siblings, they do not know. However, while Øfura had brilliant red hair and is covered all over with large freckles, Ræf is an albino. Added to this, they have the ability to envisage a landscape, particularly battlefields as if seeing them from a bird's eye view. They also have very fast reactions - I was thinking of the athlete Jesse Owens and his remarkable ability to respond so fast to the sound of a starting pistol. These are skills that aid them on the battlefield and might appear as magic, but in fact we know people genuinely have these traits. They are assigned, with the help of one of Ælfflæd's servants to track down the would-be monarchs of Wessex.
The chase from Gloucester to Lewes across south-western and southern England, renamed 'Danelagen' in this alternative, presents them with many risks especially as Ælfflæd's bodyguard fight back and supporters of Ælfflæd seek to frustrate the pursuit. As well as providing action - Øfura and Ræf, plus their own band of warriors and assistants get caught up in a raid by Vikings from northern France in what is now Southampton - the journey shows how different England would be after twenty-five years under Danish rule. Towns have changed names. Towns that prospered under Alfred are still left in decline whereas others important to the Danish rulers and settlers have grown up and both locations and many residents now have Danish names and live under Danish laws. Indeed rather than the forced conversions to Christianity seen in our world, the religion of Odin and the Nordic pantheon have made Christianity into a marginal religion in Danelagen almost followed in secret. This creates a greater divide between Danelagen and the assorted Welsh kingdoms that are proud Christian heirs of the last phase of the Roman Empire. It could be argued that the coming of Christianity was inevitable, though we can note that Lithuania only stopped being a Pagan country in 1387, almost 500 years after my novel is set. Perhaps controlling all of what otherwise would have been England would have boosted the Danish adherence to Paganism.
Of course the impact of the shift in history does not all run one way. Controlling a larger kingdom, puts pressure on the Danish kings and jarls in the British Isles to become more bureaucratic; to keep records and make more use of coinage which had been well established much earlier in the British Isles than Scandinavia. Faced with countering Christian priests, rather than having the head of a family officiating as de facto priests, full-time gothi as they were known are beginning to develop. In addition now in control of what had been the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the rulers face attacks from other Nordic groups that had settled in Ireland, Wales and northern France, just as the Anglo-Saxons had faced Danish Viking raids. Furthermore in the 11th Century the relationship between the heirs of the Vikings would have been very different from the entangled Norman-English relationship which led to the invasion of 1066, though of course, as the rule of King Cnut, showed, it may simply have been replaced by a similar but different entanglement with Scandinavian kingdoms, though interestingly, probably sharing a more similar language.
Overall I hope I have produced an exciting adventure story which shows what I feel is a very feasible alternate route that England could have ended up going down, that would have left a significant legacy most likely down to present day.
As always I did some maps for the book. The first shows how I envisaged the kingdoms of the British Isles existing in 903 and the second what I imagined the names of various English towns would have become under the Danes.
Alternate British Isles in 903 Following Killing of King Alfred the Great in 878
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