Llangors Crannog

Viewing platform

Llangors Lake (also called Llyn Syfaddan and Brycheiniog Mere) is the largest natural lake in South Wales. It is located in south-east Wales, not far from Brecon.

Map link: Llangors Lake 

Llangors Lake was formed by glacial meltwater after the last Ice Age. It is a shallow lake (only about 7 m deep), notable for an abundance of fish and water birds (and a legendary aquatic monster or afanc).  It is also the site of the only known crannog in England and Wales.

Llangors Crannog

A crannog is an artificial island, typically constructed a little way offshore in an inland lake, river or estuary.  Crannogs were dwelling places, with access either by boat or via a causeway to the shore. Most of the known crannogs in the British Isles are in Ireland and Scotland, where they range in date from the Neolithic to the early medieval period.

Llangors Lake is the only known example of a crannog in Wales, and perhaps reflects Irish connections.

Llangors crannog from the shore

The Llangors crannog was excavated by archaeologists in 1989-1993. It was constructed from bundles of brushwood laid on the lake bed and held in place by hardwood beams and a ring of massive split oak piles, with a layer of sandstone boulders placed on top of the brushwood to create a platform about 25 m across (Wait et al 2005).

According to the information board at the site, dendrochronology dating on the timbers indicated that the crannog was constructed from trees felled in 889–893 AD. It would have been a very considerable construction project, requiring substantial resources in material and labour.

The excavation found a fragment of a very high-quality embroidered textile and a bronze hinge from a reliquary of a style associated with Ireland in the 8th to 9th centuries AD. This is consistent with the Llangors crannog having had high-status occupants, and the reliquary hinge suggests an ecclesiastical connection. One of the Llandaff charters records that a King Awst of Brycheiniog granted ‘Llan Cors’ and its surrounding estate to a Bishop Euddgwy in the 8th century AD (Wait et al 2005). The charter may just be a post hoc ecclesiastical attempt at a land grab, but it is consistent with the presence of the reliquary hinge and may reflect a genuine church connection. Perhaps the crannog was the site of a royal and/or episcopal hall.

Destruction of the crannog

A destruction layer of charcoal and charred timber indicated that Llangors crannog had been destroyed by fire (Wait et al 2005).

The destruction layer may relate to an event recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

A.D. 916.  This year was the innocent Abbot Egbert slain, before midsummer, on the sixteenth day before the calends of July.  The same day was the feast of St. Ciricius the martyr, with his companions. And within three nights sent Ethelfleda an army into Wales, and stormed Brecknock; and there took the king's wife, with some four and thirty others.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, available online 

Ethelfleda is Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians and daughter of Alfred the Great. ‘Brecknock’ is an alternative spelling of ‘Brycheiniog’.

The kingdom of Brycheiniog

Brycheiniog (anglicised version, Brecon) was an early medieval Brittonic kingdom in what is now south-east Wales. Its eponymous (legendary?) founder, Brychan, is traditionally said to be the son of a Brittonic mother and an Irish king. Whether literally true or not, the legend is consistent with connections between Brycheiniog and Ireland, which might account for the Irish-style reliquary hinge and the construction of a crannog, a type of dwelling more often associated with Ireland.

According to Asser’s Life of Alfred, Brycheiniog had been an ally (or vassal state, depending how voluntary the arrangement was) of Wessex during the reign of Alfred the Great, seeking protection against attacks from Gwynedd.

Helised, also, son of Tendyr, king of Brecon, compelled by the force of the same sons of Rotri, of his own accord sought the government of the aforesaid king [King Alfred]

Asser, Life of Alfred, available online

The ‘sons of Rotri’ were the kings of Gwynedd, sons of Rhodri Mawr. Attacks by Norse raiders may also have added to the pressure, as Annales Cambriae says that Norsemen laid waste Brycheiniog in 895.

894  Anarawd came with the Angles and laid waste Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi.

895  The Northmen came and laid waste Lloegr and Brycheiniog and Gwent and Gwynllywiog.

--Annales Cambriae, available online

The date of the alliance between Brycheiniog and Alfred is not precisely stated.  Since it was against the sons of Rhodri, it was presumably after the death of Rhodri Mawr in 878. Anarawd ap Rhodri of Gwynedd co-operated with ‘the Angles’, presumably Alfred, in 894 according to the Annales Cambriae, so the relationship between Brycheiniog and Alfred was most likely established before then. This suggests a date some time in the 880s.

As the crannog was built with timber felled in 889-893, its construction may have been a response to all this political and military upheaval, perhaps a desire for a secure place of refuge in the face of many threats and/or an attempt to proclaim an identity as an independent kingdom and resist being swallowed up as a vassal state.  I wonder if it was in existence when the Norse ‘came and laid waste Brycheiniog’ in 895, and if so, whether it was attacked and how it withstood the attack. Or indeed whether it was built as a reaction to this Norse attack, using timber that had already been felled a few years earlier.

Whatever the nature of the relationship between Alfred and the king of Brycheiniog, Aethelflaed clearly did not regard Brycheiniog as an ally at the time of her attack in 916. Possibly she felt that it was a Wessex arrangement that did not apply to her in her capacity as Lady of the Mercians, or that it had been negated by the death of Abbot Egbert, or that circumstances had changed and an alliance from the previous generation was no longer relevant.

It can’t be often that one queen captures another queen in battle. I wonder about the story or stories behind these fragments of archaeology and the laconic references in the chronicles. Who was the now-unknown Abbot Egbert, how was he murdered and why was he so important that his death started a war? Why did Aethelflaed blame Brycheiniog for the murder?  Was the attack on Brycheiniog really revenge for the abbot’s death? Aethelflaed seems to have acted very fast if she despatched an army within three nights of the abbot’s death, especially as news would take at least some time to travel. Was Abbot Egbert’s death merely a convenient cover for some other motive? (or an unrelated event that was attributed an unwarranted significance by an ecclesiastical chronicler who assumed that everything revolved around church affairs?)  What did Aethelflaed think of Alfred’s alliances with the various Brittonic kingdoms?  Aethelflaed and the queen of Brycheiniog may have known each other personally, or at least have met at royal court events. I wonder what they thought of each other.

Nowadays, Llangors Lake is a tranquil place between the Black Mountains on one side and the Brecon Beacons on the other. You can’t get to the crannog itself (except maybe by boat; I have no idea whether you might need a permit to land there). A walkway leads out from the shore to a modern viewing platform, with a central shelter under a roof like an Iron Age house and a gallery all round to give uninterrupted views of the crannog, the lake and the surrounding mountains. Information boards explain a little about the geography and history of the lake and the archaeological investigation on the crannog. If our visit is anything to go by, it’s home to a lot of dragonflies, ducks and swans (alas, I didn’t spot the afanc).

 

Llangors crannog from the viewing platform

References

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, translation available online 

Annales Cambriae, available online

Asser, Life of Alfred, available online 

Wait G, Benfield S, McKewan C. Rescuing Llangors Crannog. British Archaeology 2005;84, available online

Sword Song, by Bernard Cornwell. Book review

Edition reviewed: Harper, 2008. ISBN 978-0-00-721973-5. 360 pages.

Fourth in Bernard Cornwell’s Uhtred series, Sword Song is set in 885. Alfred of Wessex (later known as Alfred the Great), Aethelred of Mercia, Alfred’s daughter Aethelflaed and the Danish leader Haesten are based on historical figures. All the main characters are fictional.

Uhtred of Bebbanburg is now 28, married to his beloved Gisela, sister of the Danish king of Northumbria (told in Book 3, The Lords of the North). Still reluctantly oath-bound to serve King Alfred of Wessex, he is lord of the burh of Coccham (modern Cookham) on Wessex’s eastern border. Alfred and the Danes have signed a treaty, ceding north and east England to Danish rule (the Danelaw), and the land is more or less at peace. When a new group of Norse adventurers come to Lundene (modern London) bent on conquering Wessex, they offer to recognise Uhtred as King of Mercia if he will join them. Uhtred has to choose between allying with the Danes, whom he likes but does not entirely trust, and remaining loyal to Alfred, whom he neither likes nor trusts but to whom he is bound by a sworn oath. When Aethelflaed, Alfred’s lovely and spirited daughter, enters the frame, Uhtred’s uncertain loyalties shape the fate of kingdoms.

Years ago, I once persuaded a gentleman in my local bookstore who said he loved the Sharpe series but had got fed up with Bernard Cornwell’s medieval novels to try The Last Kingdom, on the grounds that it was essentially Sharpe with Vikings and battleaxes instead of rifles and Frenchmen. Well, it seems that early assessment was not too far off the mark. The Uhtred series seems to get more like Sharpe with each succeeding book. Sword Song has all the trademark ingredients: the detailed blood-splattered battle scenes; the resentful hero from the wrong side of the tracks with an unrivalled talent for violence and war; the incompetent/vicious/deceitful/hypocritical enemies in high places on his own side; a plot constructed around one or two set-piece battles. In Finan, the capable Irish warrior introduced in Book 3 (Lords of the North) and now Uhtred’s loyal friend and comrade-in-arms, there may even be an echo of Sergeant Harper. Sword Song is located firmly in the south along the River Thames, so Ragnar and the likeable Guthred of Northumbria don’t make an appearance, but Finan and the ebullient Welsh warrior-turned priest Father Pyrlig inject a cheerful note into the proceedings.

All the usual features of the Uhtred series are present too: Vikings are cool; whenever Uhtred kills someone he quite likes he makes sure to put a weapon in the man’s hand so they can drink together in the corpse-hall after death; Christianity is “…a religion that sucks joy from this world like dusk swallowing daylight…” and its senior clergy are cruel woman-oppressing hypocrites; Uhtred miraculously overcomes impossible odds. Fans of the series so far will know pretty much what to expect.

Sword Song is a quick, easy and undemanding read. The plot is somewhat average, and in places it feels almost as if it has been padded out to fill in the space between the battles (e.g. a dozen pages devoted to an obscure Old Testament ceremony with no evidence of it ever having been used by the relevant characters). As one would expect, the set-piece battle scenes are suitably bloodstained, brutal and graphic. For me the highlight was the assault on Lundene in the middle of the book, with its attack and counter-attack and its bitter fighting among the gates and ramparts of the old Roman fortifications.

Poor Aethelred of Mercia gets a very unflattering portrayal, and probably has grounds for joining the Support Group for People Unfairly Maligned in Historical Fiction. Not that much is known about Aethelred, and he may well not have been the greatest ruler ever, but there’s no evidence that he was a stupid wife-beating snake. It’s his misfortune to be in the right historical place at the right time to be cast as a fictional hero’s antagonist, and I suspect he also has to be cast as a loathsome creep so that the reader won’t mind when Aethelflaed cuckolds him. Bernard Cornwell, to his credit, acknowledges in his Historical Note that he has probably been extremely unfair to the real Aethelred.

The Historical Note also acknowledges that there is more fiction in Sword Song than in the previous Uhtred novels. In particular, the major plot strand involving Aethelflaed is completely fictional, as acknowledged in the Note. I can see its attraction; it has the same obvious dramatic appeal as a meeting between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I. I can’t help wishing, however, that something more interesting had been made of it. The historical Aethelflaed was a remarkable woman, a highly effective ruler of Mercia whose death was respectfully noted in the Annals of Ulster (“U918.5. Ethelfled, a very famous queen of the Saxons, dies”) and Annales Cambriae (“917. Queen Aethelflaed died”). In Sword Song, however, she is merely beautiful and haughty and spends most of the novel being taken here and taken there, willingly or otherwise, by the various men in her life. Perhaps this is because she is still only about fourteen or fifteen, and maybe she will come into her own in the later novels in the series. I hope so.

Entertaining adventure yarn with Cornwell’s trademark battle scenes carrying a rather slight plot. Not his best, but still an enjoyable read.

The Lords of the North, by Bernard Cornwell. Book review

Harper Collins, 2007. ISBN 978-0-00-721970-4. 377 pages.

Lords of the North is Book 3 in Bernard Cornwell’s Uhtred series, set in 878-880 AD mostly in Northumbria, against the backdrop of the conflict between Alfred the Great and the Danes*. Historical figures such as Alfred the Great, Ivar Ivarrson, King Guthred and Abbot Eadred feature as secondary characters. The main characters are fictional.

Uhtred is now aged 21, a seasoned and highly capable warrior. After Alfred the Great’s victory over the Danes at the battle of Ethandun (told in Book 2, The Pale Horseman), Alfred and the Danes have signed a peace treaty. For the moment there is no fighting in the south of England, and Uhtred is angry with Alfred, feeling he has been short-changed after his role at Ethandun. So he returns to his native Northumbria to pursue a blood-feud against the Danish warlord Kjartan the Cruel, who murdered Uhtred’s foster-father Ragnar five years previously and now holds Ragnar’s daughter Thyra prisoner (told in Book 1, The Last Kingdom). Northumbria is riven by violence and political chaos, and Uhtred finds himself becoming the mentor and right-hand man of its new King Guthred. Uhtred hopes to use Guthred to further his revenge on Kjartan, but instead finds that Guthred is using him. Betrayed into slavery, it will take all Uhtred’s determination – and a little help from some old friends – to survive and pursue his feud to its bloodstained climax at Kjartan’s impregnable stronghold of Dunholm.

I admit that I was a little disappointed with Books 1 and 2, which is why I haven’t reviewed them here. They seemed longer on incidental detail, such as how to paint shields or burn charcoal, and thinner on story than is usual for a Bernard Cornwell adventure. I found the portrayal of Alfred unconvincing, and I found it frustrating that the first-person narrative meant I had to see everything through the eyes of Uhtred, a belligerent teenager who thinks any problem can be solved by murder if he feels like it. However, in this third instalment Uhtred is starting to grow up a little and even to recognise that other people might have their own point of view, becoming more interesting and less limited as a result. Alfred is a shadowy figure in the background, and so little is known of Northumbria around 880 that there’s essentially no history to get in the way of an exciting action-adventure yarn of the kind that Bernard Cornwell does so well.

If you’re already familiar with Bernard Cornwell’s military adventures (Sharpe, the Grail Quest, etc), Lords of the North is very much in the classic mould. Uhtred is the near-invincible warrior-hero – since the series is framed as him looking back on his adventures from extreme old age, the reader already knows he is indestructible – a loner with ties to both Alfred’s Wessex and to the Danes. The trademark battle scenes are as frequent and graphic as one would expect, and after two climactic shield-wall clashes in Books 1 and 2 we are treated to a different type of engagement in Book 3.

Uhtred’s adventures spin along with hardly a dull moment, this time taking him as far afield as Iceland. Some of the plot twists are, well, improbable, and the outcome of the battle for Kjartan’s stronghold is not much short of fanciful. But the narrative sweeps along with such verve that I just suspended my disbelief and enjoyed the ride, without bothering over plausibility (even if I did find myself saying later, “Now hang on a minute, if she could do that, how come she’d been a prisoner all this time?”).

Uhtred, the central character and narrator, is a more interesting figure than I found him in the two previous books, perhaps because he seems to be starting to realise that life is not always quite as simple as “if it annoys you, kill it, if it wears a skirt, hump it”. He is even beginning to get a glimmer that Alfred is more than a priest-ridden wimp; the two men are never going to like one another, and therein no doubt lies several more books’ worth of dramatic conflict, but there’s a hint of respect starting to emerge. Alfred’s daughter Aethelflaed, now aged 9, gets a walk-on part, so it looks as if Bernard Cornwell is still setting up to make her the heroine of later books in the series – as the historical Aethelflaed deserves. I confess I was also mildly gratified to see that I had correctly spotted her husband-to-be when he first appeared in Book 1. A feature I particularly liked about Lords of the North is that it shows the Danes and the English beginning to mingle and integrate in Northumbria.

Although this is Book 3 in the series, all the novels can stand alone and you don’t have to have read the first two books to read this one.

A rattling adventure yarn full of derring-do. Imagine Sharpe with swords and Vikings rather than rifles and Frenchmen, and you won’t be far wrong.





*Vikings, if you prefer.