s and a fleet of 40 ships, which was subsequently reduced. Its last remnant was disbanded by Edward the Confessor

Edward the Confessor

Edward the Confessor also known as St. Edward the Confessor , son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, was one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England and is usually regarded as the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 to 1066....

 in 1051.

In the 11th century, three courts outside Scandinavia were particularly prominent in recruiting Scandinavian troops: Novgorod-Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 (Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

) c. 980-1060, Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

 (the Varangian Guard

Varangian Guard

The Varangian Guard was an elite unit of the Byzantine Army in 10th to the 14th centuries, whose members served as personal bodyguards of the Byzantine Emperors....

) 988-1204, and England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 1018-1051. Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

 was however also a recruiting area for attacks against England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and this is why a defence needed to be organized by the Danish king Cnut the Great. The Thingmen attracted Swedish mercenaries, and probably some Norwegian as well.

Formation and structure

In 1012 King Æthelred the Unready of England ended several years of devastating attacks by a Danish army led by Thorkell the Tall by making a huge payment of Danegeld. Most of the raiders dispersed, but Thorkell himself entered English service with 45 ships and their crews. This force, based at Greenwich

Greenwich

Greenwich is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.Greenwich is best known for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time...

, was paid with money collected through the tax system established to raise Danegeld. They remained loyal to Æthelred during the Danish invasion led by King Swein Forkbeard in 1013, which eventually drove Æthelred to flee the country. When he was restored to power in England in 1014, after the death of Swein, Æthelred retained or regained the services of Thorkell and his men, who continued to receive large sums of money. However, in 1015 Thorkell, accompanied by 9 ships, joined the fresh invasion of England being prepared by Swein's son Cnut. According to a later saga tradition this defection was due to the massacre of a separate force of Danish troops brought to England by Swein and commanded by Thorkell's brother Hemming. The chronicle of Florence of Worcester claims that the 40 ships which deserted Æthelred to join Canute's invasion force after its arrival in England, under the leadership of Ealdorman

Ealdorman

An ealdorman is the term used for a high-ranking royal official and prior magistrate of an Anglo-Saxon shire or group of shires from about the ninth century to the time of King Cnut...

 Eadric Streona

Eadric Streona

Eadric Streona was an ealdorman of the English Mercians. His name a loose translation of the Anglo-Saxon "the Grasper." Streona is historically regarded as the greatest traitor of the Anglo-Saxon period in English history....

 of Mercia

Mercia

Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

, were manned by Danish crews. If so, these may have been the residue of Thorkell's former followers who had remained in Æthelred's service when their leader left.

While the upheavals of 1015 thus ended this experiment in the maintenance of a standing tax-funded force of Scandinavian mercenaries in England, it set a precedent which was followed by Cnut after his conquest of England, completed in 1016. Most of his invasion army was dismissed and returned home, but 40 ships and their crews were retained in the king's service. The 12th century Danish chronicler Sven Aggesen told a story of how these men were selected. According to this tale, Cnut had attracted a large number of men and many had not had the opportunity to distinguish themselves in battle. Consequently, he decided to select those that were the most prominent in origin or wealth in order to form a royal bodyguard. Therefore, he had a herald

Herald

A herald, or, more correctly, a herald of arms, is an officer of arms, ranking between pursuivant and king of arms. The title is often applied erroneously to all officers of arms....

 proclaim that only those who had especially valuable weapons would have the distinction of counting themselves among the king's housecarls. After this proclamation, those who were less affluent retired while the successful warriors, who had gathered considerable amounts of spoils of war, used their wealth to embellish their weaponry with gold and silver. He selected 3,000 men who were thenceforth The Thingmen . The Thingmen had their own laws, which enforced quality within the unit, even going so far as to make the men equal to the king.

Later development and dissolution

Under Cnut the system of direct taxation in silver, based on an assessment of land value, which had been used as an occasional expedient by Æthelred to raise individual lump sums of Danegeld, became a regular annual levy to support this standing force, a payment now known as heregeld (army-tax). Each man was paid 8 marks of silver, 12 marks for the helmsman who commanded each ship. As the new Danish dynasty consolidated its position the number of troops employed was considerably diminished. By the reign of Cnut's son Harold Harefoot

Harold Harefoot

Harold Harefoot was King of England from 1037 to 1040. His cognomen "Harefoot" referred to his speed, and the skill of his huntsmanship. He was the son of Cnut the Great, king of England, Denmark, and Norway by Ælfgifu of Northampton...

, who came to power in 1035, only 16 ships were kept in service. Harold's half-brother Harthacnut, who succeeded him in 1040 and arrived with a fleet from Denmark, dramatically increased the tax burden to pay for 60 or 62 ships in the first year of his rule in England, but reduced this force to 32 ships in 1041. This tax increase provoked violent unrest. Under Edward the Confessor, who came to the throne in 1042, the standing force was further reduced and by 1050 he was employing only 14 ships. In that year 9 of these were dismissed and in 1051 the remaining force was disbanded and the heregeld was abolished.

Runestones

Several of its members are commemorated on runestones, such as the Viking Runestones

Viking Runestones

The Viking Runestones are runestones that mention Scandinavians who participated in Viking expeditions. This article treats the runestone that refer to people who took part in voyages abroad, in western Europe, and stones that mention men who were Viking warriors and/or died while travelling in the...

 and the England Runestones

England Runestones

The England runestones is a group of about 30 runestones that refer to Viking Age voyages to England. They constitute one of the largest groups of runestones that mention voyages to other countries, and they are comparable in number only to the approximately 30 Greece Runestones and the 26 Ingvar...

. One example is the Komstad Runestone which was raised in memory the marshall Vrái, who had served in England with his brother Gunni, something that Vrái reported himself on the Sävsjö Runestone. Other examples are the Kålsta Runestone, where two sons report that their father was a member of the Assembly Retinue, and the Gåsinge Runestone which was raised in memory of a warrior who served Canute the Great.

Sources and external links

• Enoksen, Lars Magnar. (1998). Runor : historia, tydning, tolkning. Historiska Media, Falun. ISBN 91-88930-32-7
• Jansson, Sven B. (1980). Runstenar. STF, Stockholm. ISBN 91-7156-015-7
• Morgan, Kenneth O. (1984, 1997). The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. ISBN 0-19-285174-8
• Pritsak, Omeljan
  Omeljan Pritsak
  Omeljan Pritsak was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and the founder and first director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.-Career:Pritsak began his academic career at the University of Lvov in interwar Poland where he...
  
  . (1981). The origin of Rus'. Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. ISBN 0-674-64465-4
• F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford 1971)
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, ed. and tr. Michael Swanton (London 1996)