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Updated: June 5, 2025
"Now I think I can speak to you as if no longer a heathen at least?" "As a Christian, my king," I answered. "Well, then," he said, smiling on me, "go and speak to Guthrum and tell him what I have said. I think that he will listen to you better than if I sent a priest or even Bishop Sigehelm. Warrior may speak to warrior plainly." Now this was a hard thing for me to do, as it seemed.
He strolled here and there, playing on a harp and singing Saxon ballads. At last, Guth'rum, the commander of the Danes, ordered the minstrel to be brought to his tent. Alfred went. "Sing to me some of your charming songs," said Guthrum. "I never heard more beautiful music." So the kingly harper played and sang for the Dane, and went away with handsome presents.
The oath of fealty, as prescribed by the law of Edward and Guthrum, was very similar to that used at a later period, and ran thus: "Thus shall a man swear fealty: By the Lord, before whom this relic is holy, I will be faithful and true, and love all that he loves, and shun all that he shuns, according to God's law, and according to the world's principles, and never by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do aught of what is loathful to him, on condition that he me keep, as I am willing to deserve, and all that fulfil, that our agreement was, when I to him submitted and chose his will."
So we came home, and soon the old life began again as if naught had altered, but for the loss of loved faces round us. Yet in peace or war that must come, and in a little while we grew content, and even happy. Soon Guthrum came to Thetford, and many times rode over to me, asking me many things.
Alfred's successors annexed the Danelaw which Alfred had left to Guthrum, but their efforts to assimilate the Danes provoked in the first place a reaction against West Saxon influence which threatened more than once to separate England north of the Thames from Wessex, and, secondly, a determination on the part of Danes across the sea to save their fellow-countrymen in England from absorption.
And on this occasion Guthrum, being caught far from home, and without supplies or ships, "keeps the peace well," moving as we conjecture, watched jealously by Alfred, on the shortest line across Devon and Somerset to some ford in the Avon, and so across into Mercia, where he arrives during harvest, and billets his army on Ceolwulf, camping them for the winter about the city of Gloster.
England was saved. In his moment of victory Alfred proved generous. He gave the Danes an abiding-place upon English soil, on condition that they should dwell there as his vassals. To this they were to bind themselves by oath and the giving of hostages. Another condition was that Guthrum and his leading chiefs should give up their pagan faith and embrace Christianity.
No man saw the whole of that fight, for it began at noon, as I have said, when Guthrum turned to find the hillward road blocked behind him. And from that time on it raged from spur to spur and point to point, as step by step the Danes won back to the hillsides.
It seemed that he had forgotten nothing, and that the day must go as he said he thought it would. Men slept on their arms that night, without watch fires, lest any prowling Danes should see that somewhat was on hand, although Guthrum had drawn to him every man from out of Wessex, as was said, and as seemed true.
It is a matter of a few days only, for food runs short at once in the besieged camp. In former years, or against any other enemy, Guthrum would probably have preferred to sally out and cut his way through the Saxon lines, or die sword in hand as a son of Odin should.
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