As I wrote the story of King Ethelred the Unready for this week’s article, I was struck by the number of parallels that could be drawn between this period of ancient Engl
In the early years of Ethelred’s reign, he faced what can be classified as a terrorist threat. Unable to figure out a way to meet this threat militarily, he acceded to the terrorist demands – in this case money. However, far from fixing the problem, this encouraged and emboldened the terrorists. Their attacks became bigger, more frequent, and more savage. In the end, the Vikings realized there was more to be gained by just taking over than by taking bribes, and Anglo-Saxon England was lost. It is a terrific example of what many have said - giving into to terrorist demands only makes matters worse.
In an attempt to counter the Viking threat, Ethelred organized the slaughter of hundreds of peaceful Danes living within England. What is scary about this part of the story is how readily the Anglo-Saxons turned on their Danish neighbours, many who had lived in England for generations. It’s a story that has played over and over, in places such as Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Such an extreme reaction against innocent people only heightened the problem. If there is ever any hope to stop a terrorist threat, people first must recognize the difference between the terrorist group and their innocent neighbours who just happened to share the same race, religion, hats, or whatever as the terrorist group.
Finally, by the time Ethelred fully realized how bad the situation had gotten, his own country was far too fractured to put up any kind of organized resistance. In-fighting, power-grabs, and specific targeting of certain groups of people had sucked the strength from England. Ethelred may have been a terrible leader, and perhaps having followed him would have led to destruction, but certainly the numerous attempts to undermine his plans without offering any sensible alternative to the problem at hand did nothing but hasten that very destruction.
