The Battle of Maldon

The poem is told entirely from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxons, and names many individuals that scholars Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson[1] believe were real Englishmen.

Mitchell and Robinson conjecture that the lost opening of the poem must have related how Byrhtnoth, an Anglo-Saxon ealdorman, hearing of the Viking raid, raised his troops and led them to the shore.

In his "ofermōde",[note 1] Byrhtnoth allows the Vikings to cross to the mainland, giving them room in which to do battle, rather than keeping them penned in on the island.

Individual episodes from the ensuing carnage are described, and the fates of several Anglo-Saxon warriors depicted—notably that of Byrhtnoth himself, who dies urging his soldiers forward and commending his soul to God.

There follow several passages in which English warriors voice their defiance and their determination to die with their lord, and descriptions of how they are then killed by the un-personified "sea-wanderers".

[9] While this may seem strange to a modern audience, who are used to "realistic fiction", this is in fact a fairly strong argument for an early composition date.

[11] Clark argues that if one accepts the detail and specificity as indicators that the events were related to the poet by a witness or close descendant, then the presenter or narrator must have either been "one of the cowards or a retainer who missed the battle by legitimate accident and later chatted with one or more of the men who abandoned his lord".

[12] Clark further argues against an early composition date by exposing the contradictory descriptions of Byrhtnoth, both within the poem and against historical record.

[13] R. K. Gordon is not so specific, writing that this "last great poem before the Norman Conquest ... was apparently written very soon after the battle",[14] while Michael J. Alexander speculates that the poet may even have fought at Maldon.

[2] S. A. J. Bradley reads the poem as a celebration of pure heroism—nothing was gained by the battle, rather the reverse: not only did Byrhtnoth, "so distinguished a servant of the Crown and protector and benefactor of the Church", die alongside many of his men in the defeat, but the Danegeld was paid shortly after—and sees in it an assertion of national spirit and unity, and in the contrasting acts of the two Godrics the heart of the Anglo-Saxon heroic ethos.

"[1] Several critics have commented on the poem's preservation of a centuries-old Germanic ideal of heroism: Maldon is remarkable (apart from the fact that it is a masterpiece) in that it shows that the strongest motive in a Germanic society, still, nine hundred years after Tacitus, was an absolute and overriding loyalty to one's lord.The Anglo-Saxon scholar and writer J. R. R. Tolkien was inspired by the poem to write The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son, an alliterative dialogue between two characters at the end of the battle.