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Emperor1956 -> RE: What Do These Things Have In Common? (11/30/2006 3:07:24 PM)
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quote:
Our current list, courtesy of Emperor1956, is still unsolved. There are some hints in the preceding messgages.
Folkestone
Malden
Ipswich
Sandwich
I don't want the list to stagnate, so I'll answer this one and someone can jump in with their next rour.
Those who were looking in Mass. or Maine were about 8000 miles and 1000 years off: What these four English sites have in common is that they are the three towns that were sacked by Viking invaders before the Battle of Maldon in 991 (you remember that, right?), which established Viking hegemony over England for the next 25 years.
The Battle of Maldon is also famous for one of the great stupid tactical mistakes in the history of warfare. The "headman" for the East Saxons (i.e. the "good guys" if you are an Anglophile), Ealdorman Brihtnoth, had a dilemma.
The Vikings were camped on a small, flat island known as Northey Island which was linked to the Essex coast by a causeway that only was passable at low tide, and otherwise was under the sea. Brihtnoth and his men held the causeway. The Vikings had their backs to the sea and their ships. Brihtnoth's dilemma was did he let the Viking marauders cross the causeway to the mainland and engage his troops, or block the path, and presumably allow the Vikings to get to their ships and continue plundering the Essex coast? In a valiant but dumb move, Brihtnoth allowed the marauding Nordic troops to cross back to the mainland. Both sides took heavy casualties, Brihtnoth was killed, and the Vikings prevailed and England became a province of the Scandinavian "barbarians" for the next several decades.
He who fights, and runs away/lives to fight another day.
E.
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