Note 464 — Chapter V · THE DANISH CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.[464] 975–1016.

Our main authorities for this period are essentially the same as those to which we have to go for our knowledge of earlier times. The English Chronicles are still our principal guide. For the present they may be quoted as one work, as the differences between the different manuscripts, pointed out by Mr. Earle in the Preface to his Parallel Saxon Chronicles, are not as yet of much strictly historical importance. Florence of Worcester gives what is essentially a Latin version of the Chronicles, with frequent explanatory additions, which his carefulness and sound sense render of great value. The Charters and Laws of the reign of Æthelred are abundant, and, besides their primary value as illustrating laws and customs, the signatures constantly help us to the succession of offices and to a sort of skeleton biographies of the leading men of the time. These, the Chronicles, Laws, and Charters, form our primary authorities. The later Latin Chroniclers, from William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon onwards, supply many additional facts; but their accounts are often mixed up with romantic details, and it is dangerous to trust them, except when they show signs of following authorities which are now lost. This is not uncommonly the case with both Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury. Local histories, like those of Ely, Ramsey, and Abingdon, supply occasional facts, but the same sort of cautions which apply to the secondary writers of general history apply to them in a still greater degree. We now also begin to draw some little help from foreign sources. The Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, the Chronicles of Swegen Aggesson, the various Sagas, especially the famous Saga of Olaf Tryggvesson, are very hard to reconcile with the more authentic notices in our own Chronicles; but among much that is doubtful and much that is clearly fabulous, they often help us to facts, and to the causes and connexions of facts, which our own writers leave obscure. The Norman writers also begin to be of some importance for the events which connect England and Normandy. For the early part of the reign of Æthelred we have no contemporary Norman writer, but the accounts in the Roman de Rou and in William of Jumièges at least show us what was the Norman tradition. Later in the period, we have, in the Encomium Emmæ (reprinted in the nineteenth volume of Pertz by the name of “Gesta Cnutonis”), the work of a contemporary Norman or Flemish writer, which, though throughout unfair and inaccurate, is worth comparing with our English writers. Occasional notices of Danish and English affairs are sometimes to be gleaned from the German writers, like Adam of Bremen and the contemporary Thietmar of Merseberg.

On the whole the materials for this period are ample, and, as regards England, they are fully trustworthy. The difficulty lies in reconciling the English and continental narratives.