Anglo-Saxon Beasts Of Death

For 10th-century warriors, the appearance of wolves, ravens and eagles on the battlefield meant an unlucky few had been chosen to die. Eric Lacey digs into a grisly superstition

On the banks of the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex, stood an array of Anglo-Saxons, weapons drawn. Facing them, on the tiny Northey Island, was a band of Vikings. They had come to harry and pillage, but could not cross a narrow tidal causeway to the mainland without confronting the Anglo-Saxon army.

Attempts to bribe their way across had failed and so, on this day in August 991, the Vikings now readied themselves for the inevitable. Raising their shields, they waded to the shore and lined up information. On both sides, the soldiers sized up their foes and tightened their grips on their weapons. Loud cries erupted over the battlefield – not from the soldiers, but from the ravens and eagles that wheeled overhead, already in position to feed on the imminent corpses. They had arrived there, the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon tells us, because “wæs seo tid cumen þæt þær fæge men feallan sceoldon” (the time had come for doomed men to fall).

The arrival of these birds before the fighting had even begun reads like something out of myth or legend, and stands out starkly from the gritty, matter-of-fact account of the battle presented throughout the poem. Yet time and again, in the writings left to us by the Anglo-Saxons, we hear of three particular animals – the raven, the eagle and the wolf – possessing the uncanny ability to presage death.