12 February 2006 Maldon The snow is deep here, or since this is a town of relativism, relatively so. I see about five inches on the railing of my balcony, and the trees limbs are cloaked in white, and the flakes are still coming down. North and west of the city there may be over ten inches, and more to come in a desultory way.  My bet is that with the balmy winter thus far and with snow days in the bank, the school districts will grab at the chance to take a day off tomorrow, and the Feds will likely go with “liberal leave,” which is the furthest thing from it. it is actually coersion, since if the kids are home, at least one of the parents has to stay home to mind them. But the Office of Personnel Management doesn't want to give a free pass to the Federal worforce, and that is just the way it is. A friend wrote me this morning about the Danes. I think I may have disparaged them for their timidity in the aftermath of the controversy over the disrespect shown to the Prophet of the True Faith. I think I had tried to place the controversy in the context of a collision of cultures. My favorite of the cartoons was the one that depicted the artist at his drawing table, his blinds drawn, furtively sketching a picture of a man in a turban, the image partly covered by an elbow. There is a look of apprehension and fear on his face as he puts pencil to paper. Would he be caught expressing an opinion? I thought it was pathetic. So my pal wrote me to remind me of Sven Forkbeard, astride the deck of the Long Serpent as he sailed from Denmark at the end of the first millennium, and what he did to valiant Brythnoth, the Saxon Earl of Essex. It was worth thinking about, since the blood of the Northmen runs diluted through my veins. The Irish side of the family, according to the surviving enlistment papers, shows that the Lads who crossed the water were blonde and blue-eyed, and my Great-grandfather was six feet in height. It has always occurred to me, that coming from a former Viking stronghold like Cork, as my people did, I probably have as much in common with the Jormsvikings as the Leprechauns. The Danes of the time were hard as nails, and civilized people had learned to fear the wrath of the North. During the raiding season in the full summer of 991 AD, Sven Forkbeard and his berserkers entered the Blackwater estuary and occupied the island east of a hill called Maeldun, meaning “the hill with a Cross.” We know it now as Maldon. The island was connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway, which is visible at low tide even today. The Earl of Essex was a doughty man named Brythnoth, and he commanded a force of his thanes and retainers. He assumed position on the mainland end of the causeway, and the Danes assembled to shout their demands across the water. The tide was high, and the exposed causeway was narrow. The demands promised peace in exchange for gold and silver, or sudden and violent death as soon as the water dropped low enough for them to wade across. To show their resolve, some of the berserkers tried to force the narrow crest of the causeway, but like Horatius at the Bridge, some hard Essexmen stood their ground and brought them to a halt. There is controversy to this day about why Brythnoth made the decision he did. They say that the Blackwater's muck even at low tide would have bogged down the heavily laden Vikings. If he had stood his ground, and guarded the landward end of the causeway, Forkbeard might have taken his men and looked for another chance on another day. Or perhaps it was exactly that prospect that caused the Earl to accede to Forkbeard's request to cross and fight on the dry wheat field, fair and square. There is no such thing as a fair fight, or so I have come to believe. If you are going to fight, you may as well just win. Perhaps that is what the Earl was thinking, that on this ground with the Vikings backed against the Blackwater, he could finish them once and for all. Then Essex could sleep sound through the fall, not fearing the men from the North would land once more. But it did not work out that way. The Danes were far from home, and there was only death, or victory for them. The fight went on through the long day, and ended only when the Earl was killed. With their leader killed, the English began to melt away. The battle of Maldon could have been remembered only as another in a long sad footnote of defeat. But the Danes who sang of the fight remembered how the Earl's personal bodyguard conducted themselves as their comrades fled the field. Knowing the fight was lost, they simply closed ranks around the body of their chief and fought on, faithful unto death. Those Englishmen impressed even the savage Danes, who sang of their death in one of the oldest of the surviving My friend is one of those who may choose to go out in a Viking funeral when the day comes. He is one of my favorites in this world, because honor still means something to him. My ancestors, had they been from Essex, might already have taken to their heels, to reach home before the Danes, and bury the silver and flee with the women deep into the woods. >From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, delivery us. But my friend reminded me that the last ones fighting in Berlin, Hitler dead and the Red Flag flying over the broken Reichstag, were Danes wearing the mottled camouflage of the SS Nordland Division. They were a long way from home, and there was little mercy coming their way from the Red Army, considering what had gone before. Perhaps, like the men of the Earl, they considered there were no other good options for them. In the swirl about reletavism and cultural sensitivity, I came across a curious book a few weeks ago called “A Woman in Berlin.” The author is anonymous, which is to say that it might be apocryphal. There is a lot of that going around these days, and even poor Oprah has been bamboozled. But whether it is literally true or not, it is close enough. It tells the story of the eight weeks that followed the end of the fighting and what it was like to be a prim young Berlin woman whose neighborhood was occupied by the Soviet 50th Shock Army. For the dead, the war was over. For those who lived, it was only changing its face, presenting a grim visage known well to the families of the losers from the dawn of human strife. The Sabine women would know. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra www.vicsocotra.com Close Window