The night that saved England

Thanks to the centenary of the first world war, counter-factuals are much in vogue. How different might history have been had Archduke Franz-Ferdinand never been assassinated, had Britain kept out of the conflict, had the Allies been defeated? Questions such as these are more than just a parlour game. They serve to cast the shadow of contingency over events that otherwise can seem all too predetermined. Deep and strong though the tides of history are, there have indeed been moments in the past when their flood-surge might have been diverted along profoundly different courses — moments when the fate of nations did truly hang in the balance.

The protagonists of one such episode are currently starring in the British Museum’s latest spectacular. The Vikings have always been box-office, and the new show is charged with an intimidating sense of their charisma, their ambition, their Game Of Thrones-style violence. Gold blazes, axes glint, and a dragon-ship, the longest ever found, dominates the exhibition space. No one can visit the show and not come away with a better appreciation of just how terrifying it would have been to see a fleet of Wicingas gliding up towards the beachfront.

For all the justified emphasis in the exhibition on the achievements of Iron Age Scandinavian culture, no one should doubt what the Vikings, when they first crossed the North Sea, meant for Britain. In the 9th century, the English came closer to having their civilisation snuffed out than they ever did during the two world wars. Set as they were on an island rich in treasure and dotted with wealthy monasteries, it was only to be expected that they should have found themselves the prey of sea-borne pirates. Fiery dragons in the sky had heralded the first arrival of Vikings on British soil: fitting omens of the devastation that was to come.