On St Brice's Day 13 November 1002, Aethelred II ordered the killing of all Danes in England — a catastrophically miscalculated act. Among those killed was Gunnhild, reportedly the sister of Sweyn Forkbeard. Sweyn's subsequent campaigns of revenge in 1003, 1004, and beyond were explicitly motivated by this atrocity. The massacre shows how politically desperate Aethelred had become and directly accelerated Danish conquest.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
Research a location near Berkshire