Battle of Ringmere

The Battle of Ringmere was fought on 5 May 1010. Norse sagas recorded a battle at Hringmaraheior; Old English Hringmere-hūō, modern name Ringmere Heath.[1]

The sack of Thetford occurred in 1004. Sigvat records the victory of King Ethelred, allied with Saint Olaf,[2] over the Danes under Sweyn Forkbeard during the latter's campaigns in England.

The Battle site was located in lands under the control of Ulfcytel Snillingr, then of East Anglia, at a site once thought to be near Wretham,[2] but now thought to be at Rymer in Suffolk.[3] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that during the sack of Thetford in 1004 Ulfcytel Snillingr and the "councillors in East Anglia" attempted to buy a truce with Swein, but that the Danes broke the truce and marched to Thetford where a part of the East Anglian fyrd engaged them. The Danes managed to escape. During the battle of Ringmere however it was the East Anglian fyrd who took flight, leaving the muster from Cambridgeshire to stand firm in their absence. However they were broken after a time leaving North-East Mercia exposed to the Danes.[4]

John of Worcester also records that the Danes defeated the Saxons. Over a three-month period the Danes wasted East Anglia, burning Thetford and Cambridge.[1]

References
  1. Stevenson, W. H. (April 1896). "Notes on Old-English Historical Geography". The English Historical Review. 11 (42): 301–304. doi:10.1093/ehr/xi.xlii.301. Retrieved 20 May 2011.
  2. Sturlason, Snorre (2004). Heimskringla or the Lives of the Norse Kings. Kessinger Publishing. p. 225. ISBN 0-7661-8693-8.; Edited with notes by Erling Monsen
  3. Briggs, Keith (December 2011). "The battle-site and place-name Ringmere". Notes and Queries. OUP. 256 (4): 491–492. doi:10.1093/notesj/gjr151. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
  4. Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edition, Oxford: Clarendon, Oxford, p. 383
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