Danegeld

It was characteristic of royal policy in both England and Francia during the ninth through eleventh centuries, collected both as tributary, to buy off the attackers, and as stipendiary, to pay the defensive forces.

In Anglo-Saxon England tribute payments to the Danes was known as gafol and the levy raised to support the standing army, for the defence of the realm, was known as heregeld (army-tax).

Initially it was levied as a tribute to buy off Viking invaders but after the Danish Conquest of 1016 it was retained as a permanent land-tax to pay for the realm's defence.

[a][4] In 1012 Æthelred the Unready introduced an annual land tax to pay for a force of Scandinavian mercenaries, led by Thorkell the Tall, to help defend the realm.

In fact, the Primary Chronicle relates that the regions paying protection money extended east towards Moscow, until the Finnic and Slavic tribes rebelled and drove the Varangians overseas.

[8] In southern England the Danegeld was based on hidages, an area of agricultural land sufficient to support a family, with the exception of Kent,[c] where the unit was a sulung of four yokes, the amount of land that could be ploughed in a season by a team of oxen; in the north the typical unit was the carucate, or ploughland, equivalent to Kent's sulung; and East Anglia was assessed by the hundred.

[11] It was used by William the Conqueror as the principal tool for underwriting continental wars, as well as providing for royal appetites and the costs of conquest, rather than for buying-off the Viking menace.

[15] Judged by an absolute rather than a contemporary standard, there is much to criticise in the collection of the Danegeld by the early 12th century: it was based on ancient assessments of land productivity, and there were numerous privileged reductions or exemptions, granted as marks of favour that served to cast those left paying it in an "unfavoured" light: "Exemptions were very much a matter of royal favour, and were adjusted to meet changing circumstances ... in this way Danegeld was a more flexible instrument of taxation than most historians have been prepared to allow.

Certainly they were paid off on more than one occasion, and such payouts may have included money (besides other valuables), but the imposition of a tax on the people to pay either a stipend or a tribute is not recorded in the sources, although it is possible that some monies were raised this way.

[19] In 847 the Breton leader Nominoe was defeated three times by some Danish Vikings before finally opening negotiations with their leaders and enticing them to leave by offering them gifts, as recorded in the contemporary Annales Bertiniani: Dani partem inferioris Galliae quam Brittones incolunt adeuntes, ter cum eisdem bellantes, superant; Nomenogiusque victus cum suis fugit, dein [per] legatos muneribus a suis eos sedibus amovit.

Certainly, according to Regino of Prüm, Pascwet later (in 873) paid a stipendiary Danegeld of an undisclosed amount to hire as mercenaries some Vikings with which to harass his opponent for the ducal throne of Brittany, Vurfand, Count of Rennes.

[19] The most important Danegeld raised in East Francia was that used by Charles the Fat to end the Siege of Elsloo and convert the Viking leader Godfrid into a Christian and a Duke of Frisia (882).

[20] Local Danegeld may have been raised in the Eastern kingdom as needed, such as by one Evesa to ransom her son, Count Eberhard, at a "very great price" in 880, according to Regino of Prüm.

Soon after, a report was sent to Charlemagne, then at Aachen contemplating a campaign against the Danish king, Godfred, stating that the Frisians had already collected through taxation and paid a sum of one hundred pounds of silver.

[22] The total sum paid out is unknown, but it was without doubt raised through taxes, as Einhard in his Vita explicitly says: "And the victorious Danes imposed a tribute on the vanquished, by means of taxes one hundred pounds of silver from the Frisians is already released" (Danosque victores tributum victis inposuisse, et vectigalis nomine centum libras argenti a Frisionibus iam esse solutas).

[23] In 837, either because the Frisians were unprepared or defected from their Frankish overlords, some Vikings managed to land on Walcheren, capture several counts and other leading men and kill them or hold them for ransom.

[24] The Bertiniani and Xantenses annals record how Lothair, though aware of the outrage, was unable to stop it, and the Vikings left Frisia laden with booty and captives.

Their demands met, the Vikings left without devastating the territory, as recorded in the Annales Bertiniani and the Miracula sancti Bavonis, a life of Saint Bavo.

[24] One later, tenth-century source, Dudo of Saint-Quentin's De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, records that Rollo forced the Frisians to pay tribute, but this is unlikely.

Neither the reason for Lothair's payment nor the result is recorded in the only source to mention it, the contemporary Annales Bertiniani: Hlotharius, Hlotharii filius, de omni regno suo quattuor denarios ex omni manso colligens, summam denariorum cum multa pensione farinae atque pecorum necnon vini ac sicerae Rodulfo Normanno, Herioldi filio, ac suis locarii nomine tribuit.

There is also a story told by Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum of how Reginar Langhals was ransomed by his wife in 880 for all the gold in Hainault, but this is probably a legend.

[28] Prince Oleg, who was a relative of Rurik the Viking, after moving to Kiev, imposed a dan on the people of Novgorod of 300 griveni / per year "for the preservation of peace".

The poem ends thus:[32] It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation, For fear they should succumb and go astray; So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say: –

[g] On 22 July 1939, two British newspapers, The Daily Telegraph and the News Chronicle, reported that Robert Hudson of the Department of Overseas Trade had visited the German Embassy in London two days before, to meet the German Ambassador Herbert von Dirksen and Helmuth Wohlthat of the Four Year Plan organisation, to offer Germany a huge loan worth hundreds of millions of pound sterling in exchange for not attacking Poland.