Edmund Ironside Led a Fierce Resistance Against Danish Invaders
One of the last heroic kings of the Anglo-Saxon era was Edmund II, AKA Edmund Ironside (circa 993 – 1016), England’s king from April 23 to November 30, 1016. He was the son of one of England’s worst kings: the weak and vacillating Ethelred the Unready. The son was a vast improvement over his father, and Edmund proved himself made of sterner stuff than his predecessor. He earned the surname “Ironside” for his staunch resistance to a massive invasion led by the Danish king Canute – the one whom legend describes as having ordered the sea’s waves to stop.
Starting in 991, Edmund’s father, Ethelred the Unready had unwisely sought to buy off the Danes, who were then occupying northern England. To get them to stop their nonstop raids into his kingdom, Ethelred decided to pay them a tribute known as the Danegeld, or “Danish gold”. Unsurprisingly, all that did was embolden the Danes. Seeing that they were dealing with a pushover, they starting upping their demands, insisting on ever greater tribute payments.
Worse for Anglo-Saxon England, Ethelred had set himself up for extortion without getting anything out of his people’s gold. They Danes collected the tribute, and continued raiding and plundering England, secure in the knowledge that they had little to fear from its weak king. Finally, after over a decade of bankrupting his kingdom and beggaring its people with the high taxes needed to pay the Danegeld, Ethelred snapped. In 1002, the Anglo-Saxon king ordered a massacre of all Danish settlers in his kingdom.
Understandably, that massacre upset the Danish settlers’ kin and countrymen. The result was an invasion by the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard, who conquered England in 1013 and forced Ethelred to flee to Normandy. However, Sweyn died the following year, at which point Ethelred returned, and with his son Edmund playing a leading role, chased Sweyn’s son, Canute, out of England in 1014.
Canute returned the following year at the head of a large Danish army, and proceeded to pillage and devastate much of England. However, crown prince Edmund mounted a fierce Anglo-Saxon resistance, which stymied the Danish invaders. When Ethelred died in 1016, Edmund, who by now had earned the nickname “Ironside” because of his toughness and tenacity, succeeded him on the English throne as Edmund II.
Unfortunately for Anglo-Saxon England, their heroic king’s reign proved short lived, as Edmund died not long thereafter, in weird circumstances that demonstrated that even if the king’s sides were iron, his bottom was not. On the night of November 30th, 1016, Edmund went to the privy to answer a call of nature. Unbeknownst to him, however, an assassin was waiting in the cesspit for the royal bottom to show up. When Edmund sat down to do his business, the assassin stabbed upwards with a sharp dagger, then made his escape, leaving the weapon embedded in the king’s bowels.