Why I Wrote... The Blood and the Ghost
- cepmurphywrites
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
By Alexander Rooksmoor.
Quite often I have been inspired to write a short story or even a novel as a result of disliking how a story I have read or seen turns out. The Blood and The Ghost was stimulated by me watching all 5 seasons of the TV series The Last Kingdom (broadcast 2015-23).
The series, based on the Saxon Stories novels by Bernard Cornwell, is set in Wessex between 866-878 CE, the eponymous ‘Last Kingdom’ not under Danish rule. My main prompt for an alternative history was being reminded how close King Alfred of Wessex came to dying earlier. Following his defeat at the Battle of Chippenham in January 878, Alfred and a small group of supporters were compelled to hide in the Somerset Levels. This was an unhealthy situation; even if he had not been killed at Chippenham, Alfred could have died subsequently in hiding. He might have also suffered a coup attempt at Chippenham. Instead, Alfred survived to rally lords and armies from Somerset, Wiltshire and western Hampshire in such strength that he was able to defeat the Danes at Edington and compel them to adopt Christianity.
Given these developments in our history it is easy to imagine an alternative in which Alfred was died in 878 and thus was not able to stabilise Wessex against Danish expansion. The feasibility of this development is strengthened by the later reign of King Cnut, a Danish prince who ruled what had become England, 1016-35 and combined it from 1018 with ruling Denmark and from 1028, Norway too. By 1042, however, England was again ruled by Anglo-Saxons.
Thus, the ease of envisaging a different historical outcome was one motive for the novel, but there was another. Sometimes I get riled that a character was treated ‘unfairly’ so, like many readers/viewers, I want to portray the kind of ending that I like for them. In this case, I was so riled by Eliza Butterworth’s self-righteous portrayal of Lady Aelswith, wife of King Alfred of Wessex, that I was motivated to ensure she had a different outcome. I was also irritated by David Dawson as King Alfred, who again portrayed him in a weaselly, self-righteous and bullying way. Indeed, I could not cope with the rendering of the characters to the extent that I handed back all the novels I had been given not wanting to read them if I had to go through such behaviour in text. Conversely, I felt Æthelflæd, Lady of the (English) Mercians, did not get the romantic ending she deserved, whether in our history or Cornwell’s story, so in my alternative she is swept away by a Danish hero to live a happier life in ‘Sussex’.
I was also interested in employing characters who had abilities that at the time might have appeared ‘magic’ but that we know now are just natural developments in some people. As I often mention, I typically feel a need with alternate history writing to have sufficient characters featured to allow me to show different perspectives on the alternative context. However, I have learnt that having too many upsets readers, so I settled on just a brother and sister, alternating the point of view between them throughout the novel. Ræf is an albino whereas his sister, Øfura is a redhead. I often look at online images that sum up the characters I am going to write and came across images of women who are covered all over in large freckles. I thought that would be a look that would make her appear unusual, even otherworldly.
I imagine these days Ræf would be considered neurodiverse, but it allows him an ability to envisage landscapes and dispositions of people as if seeing them from above or laid out before him in three dimensions. Øfura has faster than usual reactions. I thought very much of the 1930s athlete Jesse Owens who was found to be able to react to the sound of the starting gun faster than his fellow competitors. These are natural traits that I felt they would give the characters an edge but might be viewed with suspicion.
Øfura felt important to feature because, as more evidence of female warriors comes to light through archaeology, I thought it appropriate include a true skjöldurmær (usually translated as ‘shield maiden’ though ‘shield bitch’ is more accurate). This was, not least, influenced the character of Jarl/Queen Lagertha, a legendary woman from our history, featuring in another TV series, Vikings (broadcast 2013-21) - played so well by Katheryn Winnick - and indeed the band of female warriors she is shown as assembling.
As with many of my novels, I had tested out a version of the counter-factual already in a short story, ‘The Return of the King’ which features in my anthology, Route Diverted: What If? Stories of the British (2015). That story had shown Alfred being executed in Winchester in 879 having been captured by the Danish army. My concern was that if I continued the story that close to the point of divergence, then it would simply be a kind of follow-on from The Saxon Stories simply going down a different path. Instead, I felt there was more to be gained in seeing how a Danish ‘England’ would turn out. Thus this novel begins in 903, twenty-five years after the death of Alfred, when his son Edward ‘the Landless’ tries to launch an invasion of Danelagen, with the backing of Christian Welsh kingdoms which had given him refuge following his father’s death.
In this novel there is not a single state in England. Danelagen (‘Dane law’) covers England south of roughly the Mersey-Humber line. North of this is the Kingdom of JórvÃk modelled on the historic ‘Viking’ rule of Yorkshire and Northumbria via puppet kings or directly, and stretching up to the River Forth in what these days is south-east Scotland. Drawing from actual history, Cumbria is perceived as being largely under Norse rule while the remainder of it being controlled by the Kingdom of Strathclyde. Most of the action of this novel takes place in western and southern Danelagen with its capital at Vadfolks (Thetford).
Given that even these days you can trace the regions of England that were under Danish rule by the place names which endure, it seemed probable after a quarter century of such a situation many of the Anglo-Saxon towns would have been renamed. In addition, children born in this period are likely to have been given more Danish names to fit in with the culture of the new rulers. In contrast, some things would probably have in fact changed less than they did in our history. With King Alfred removed from the scene, his work in the 880s on burhs, defensive towns, especially in southern England, is unlikely to have occurred. Thus, more of the Roman remains and structures in these towns would have persisted and this is seen in the novel when the characters visit Vedbade (Bath).
I had known Winchester well for 20 years before coming to write the novel. As well as being one of King Alfred’s sometime capitals, it is a town in which it is relatively easy to see the Roman and early medieval patterns even today. I had been working with a colleague who had specialised in Anglo-Saxon history and pointed out various aspects which can be traced back in the modern town to those times. I had also visited the Iron Age fort which lies just to the south of the town. Thus, I felt I was in a good position to envisage how the town would become Sejrby (‘victory town’) under Danish rule.
There are some great resources online for finding relevant details of the period. I made particular use of Nordic Names for character names and Viking Answer Lady for many details. When I struggled to find appropriate Old Danish vocabulary I tended to fall back on modern day Icelandic to give me pointers. It seemed likely anyway that an ‘English’ dialect of Danish would have developed. As it was, Old English was closer to Scandinavian languages than post-Norman Conquest English became.
I knew it was likely that some of my choices for the novel would be challenged as ‘wrong’. Consequently, like many alternate history authors I got my rebuttal in first. My wife always complains that my novels have insufficient sex in them. While I know many alternate history readers are averse to its inclusion (or indeed the inclusion of women), I felt obliged to feature some. Yet, this was a potential point of annoyance for readers. While people tend to perceive Vikings as purely heterosexual, in fact bisexuality, as long as neither same-sex partner played a ‘submissive’ role, was acceptable. Loki is shown as bisexual, so I thought this was a realistic element to include but I made sure to reference my source for it carefully.
Of course, in the occupied ‘England’, there would have been those holding on to the pre-Danish conquest ‘old ways’, e.g. favouring Anglo-Saxon names and adhering to Christianity in secret. Given that the Welsh kingdoms remained Christian, it seemed likely that missionaries would come, possibly at great risk, across the border into Danelagen, let alone being landed from Christian parts of Europe. In this respect I saw such the ‘old believers’ as being rather like Catholics in Elizabethan England.
Of course, the cultural traffic would not have been all one way. One strength of Christianity was its priesthood. In the Nordic Pagan beliefs, though there were attendants at sacred sites, the gothi, often seen as an equivalent of a priest, was in fact usually the head of a tribe or of an individual household carrying out religious roles rather than this being their full-time job. As a consequence, in this novel the gothar are becoming more established as a having full-time roles, in part to combat Christian missionaries. Counter to those who feel the spread of Christianity was inevitable in England at this time, I point to Lithuania which held on to Paganism into the 14th Century.
One thing that Britain had to its advantage was coinage. At the Verulamium Museum in St. Albans you can see coins that were in circulation in the region even before the Romans conquered. In contrast, Nordic countries kept to lumps of precious metal, or bartering. It seemed probable that the rulers of Danelagen would see the sense in producing their own coins, and kings do like to see their heads everywhere in their kingdoms. Similarly it felt likely that the written word would be needed to be used more and so the runes would begin to be put down on vellum as well as carved on stones.
Bringing all of these elements together I hope successfully provided a context for an adventurous story but also one which showed how a 10th Century entirely Danish England, which so easily might have occurred, might have looked like.
The Blood and the Ghost is on sale from Amazon and Smashwords now.