The English paid off the Vikings for almost a century. But was the Danegeld such a bad idea?
It’s easy to say now that paying the Vikings to go away ‘didn’t work’. But this obscures the fact paying off one Viking band didn’t ensure another would stop coming.
When King Æthelred II ascended to the English throne in 978 CE, England had been spared from major Viking attacks for many years. However, this peace was short-lived. Within two years of his reign, the Vikings returned, leading Æthelred to adopt a new policy of paying the Vikings off to buy their peace – a payment known as the Danegeld.
The Danegeld was a kingdom-wide tax levied on the English population, designed to raise large sums of silver to purchase peace with the Vikings. Initially, the amount was ₤10,000 in 991 CE, rising to ₤48,000 by 1012 CE. Over his reign, Æthelred paid a total of ₤240,000 in tribute to Viking raiders, equivalent to around 84 tonnes of silver or roughly 58 million pennies.
This sum, unprecedented in contemporary western Europe, left a lasting archaeological trace, with tens of thousands of Æthelredian coins found in Scandinavian hoards. While critics argue the Danegeld was ineffective, it's important to note that the Vikings were not a united force and paying off one band did not guarantee another would stop.
Moreover, Æthelred was not the first king to pay for peace with the Vikings, a common method used by Frankish kings. King Alfred the Great had previously paid for peace with the Vikings in the 870s CE. Despite the Danegeld's failure to stop the Vikings, one of its successors, Cnut, continued the practice, imposing a massive Danegeld and introducing the heregeld, an annual land levy used to maintain the kingdom's armies and fleets.
The legacy of the Danegeld continued, with subsequent English rulers leveraging the administrative resources developed to collect these taxes.
Written by urgent.news from The Conversation AU's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
