St. Brice’s Day Massacre Facts & Worksheets

• The subsequent summer, he captured Exeter, which Æthelred had notably granted to Emma. Swein proceeded to besiege Wessex and obliterate Wilton. The Viking attacks escalated, and a royal document from 1004 referenced ‘the wrath of God manifesting with ever-growing ferocity against us’. Upon Æthelred’s death in 1016, the majority of England was governed by Cnut, the son of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark. The subsequent year, he claimed Emma as his own. In 2008, during an excavation at St John’s College, Oxford, archaeologists discovered the bones of 37 individuals who had been slaughtered.
• In 2009, a mass grave containing 54 young, tall, fit males was unearthed in Weymouth, Dorset, Southern England. All had been beheaded, and their skulls were interred nearby. The absence of defensive wounds led experts to hypothesise that they were executed rather than perished in the conflict.
• The examination of the bones and teeth from the two groups prompted archaeologists to determine their Viking identity provisionally, but certain data contradicted this conclusion. Radiocarbon dating of the remains from both groups indicated they perished between 960 and 1030, coinciding with the timeframe of the St. Brice’s Day Massacre. The molars of one individual from the Dorset mass burial exhibited cuts, suggesting that his group may have been raiders rather than settlers. This may suggest they were not slain on St. Brice’s Day. All individuals looked to be male, except for two whose age precluded sex identification. The majority were between 16 and 25. 
• Chemical analysis conducted in 2012 by researchers from Oxford University indicates that the remains are of Viking origin; older scars on certain bones imply a combination of settlers and Danes who had emerged on the island, including individuals with historical battle scars; the lead archaeologist of the site determined that the victims bore no defensive wounds, were unarmed, and were killed while fleeing from being burned alive in the church, with injuries located on their backs. The dead bodies exhibit signs of several severe injuries inflicted by various weapons. Their demise resulted from a furious assault by many assailants from all directions when they were defenceless.

VIEWS ON THE ST. BRICE'S DAY MASSACRE

• Following the murders, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark initiated a series of potentially retaliatory assaults. These raids destabilised the Anglo-Saxon realm and established the groundwork for the ensuing periods of Danish control that transpired throughout the 11th century. If the Viking retaliations were indeed a direct consequence of the murder of Danes in England ordered by Æthelred, the Anglo-Saxon king’s directive may be one of the gravest errors in English history.
• The St. Brice’s Day Massacre was probably not directed at all individuals of Danish heritage in England. It has been noted that few, if any, moneyers of discernible Scandinavian descent (or at least with Scandinavian names) active in Æthelred’s dominion seem to have perished during this period. In 1002, Danish mercenaries, Viking raiding parties, and the remnants of a substantial Danish army that had arrived in 991 were active over the island’s southern region. 
• The Vikings had seen a resurgence in England during the past two decades, conducting raids across the nation, forming and dissolving alliances with the king, and instilling fear in the English and Anglo-Dane populace. The evidence from our sources, the political backdrop of early 11th-century England, and the archaeological discoveries suggest that the massacre was aimed at Danish mercenaries and maybe at newly built Danish frontier outposts. 
• Although this does not justify Æthelred’s acts, it does lend them a semblance of rationality — violence, and maybe retribution, aimed against a perceived adversary. The enthusiasm demonstrated by the residents of Oxford in executing this requirement suggests public endorsement of Æthelred’s decree. 
• The initial record of St. Brice’s Day that aligns with the misleading portrayal of genocidal violence associated with the festival is located in a section of William of Jumiège’s Deeds of the Norman Dukes, written in 1050. Æthelred is charged with ‘defiling the kingdom’ by ‘murdering in a single day, without any accusation, the Danes who resided happily and harmoniously across the realm and who harboured no dread for their lives’. William describes Danish women being slaughtered by bands of wolves and their infants being crushed to death – actions inconsistent with the Chronicles, the charter, and the Viking mass burials discovered in Oxford and Dorset, which predominantly included adult males.
• Jumiège also discusses young Danish men escaping to Denmark in pursuit of an audience with Forkbeard, who would, 12 years later, invade England and dethrone Æthelred. However, this account suggests just a two-year gap. William is essentially presenting a genesis tale for the ascendance of the Danish dynasty. A narrative that rationalises the ascendance of the Danish dynasty as divine retribution for Æthelred’s actions, as it was the final monarch of that dynasty who elevated Edward the Confessor to the throne, and through Edward the Confessor and William of Normandy asserted his claim to the English throne. No Scandinavian or pre-Conquest English sources substantiate this account.