Battle of Brunanburh (poem)

The Battle of Brunanburh is an Old English poem. It is preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a historical record of events in Anglo-Saxon England which was kept from the late ninth to the mid-twelfth century. The poem records the Battle of Brunanburh, a battle fought in 937 between an English army and a combined army of Scots, Vikings, and Britons. The battle resulted in an English victory, celebrated by the poem in style and language like that of traditional Old English battle poetry. The poem is notable because of those traditional elements and has been praised for its authentic tone, but it is also remarkable for its fiercely nationalistic tone, which documents the development of a unified England ruled by the House of Wessex.

The Battle of Brunanburh was a culmination of the conflict between King Æthelstan and the northern kings. After Æthelstan had defeated the Vikings at York in 928, Constantine II, the Scottish King, recognised the threat posed by the House of Wessex to his own position, and began forging alliances with neighbouring kingdoms to attempt a pre-emptive strike against Æthelstan. He married his daughter to Amlaíb mac Gofraid (also called Olaf Guthfrithsson, and Anlaf in the poem), the Norse-Gael King of Dublin. Amlaíb had a claim to the throne of Northumbria, from which Æthelstan expelled his father in 927. Thus, the invading army combined "Vikings, Scots, and Strathclyde Britons." On the English side, Æthelstan was joined by his brother, the later King Edmund. In the ensuing battle, the combined forces of Wessex and Mercia won a decisive victory.

The poem is preserved in four of the nine surviving manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the Parker Chronicle, its verse lines are written out as poetry, following common Anglo-Saxon scribal practice. The 73-line long poem is written in "indeterminate Saxon," that is, the regular West-Saxon dialect in which most surviving Old English poetry is copied. It is referred to as a panegyric celebrating the victory of Æthelstan and Edmund I.

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