MICHAEL WOOD ON… A WOMAN WHO HELPED DEFINE THE 10TH CENTURY Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. He has presented numerous BBC series, and is the author of several books including The Story of China (Simon & Schuster, 2020). His X (formerly Twitter) handle is@mayavision
IT’S A TRUISM, BUT HISTORIOGRAPHY – THE study of the writing of history – always reflects the interests of the rulers and their elites, and the assumptions of the time of writing. It’s amazing sometimes how long it takes for perceptions to change. When I was at university there wasn’t a paper, let alone a course, on women’s history. Only in this last generation or so could you say that women’s history has really come into the mainstream, as exemplified by Janina Ramirez’s recent sparkling medieval survey, Femina.
This month, the first major academic study of Æthelflæd, ‘Lady of the Mercians’, will be published. Edited by Rebecca Hardie, Æthelflæd Lady of the Mercians and Women in Tenth-century England comes 80 years after Frank Stenton’s account in his still great Anglo-Saxon England; more than 60 years after the pioneering study of FT Wainwright. Since then – with a few honourable exceptions, such as in the work of Pauline Stafford – Æthelflæd has remained cloaked in mystery . The 1100th anniversary of her death in 2018 saw some good popular accounts, but we’ve had to wait until the third decade of the 21st century for a book dedicated entirely to one of the most important female rulers in English history.
Daughter of Alfred the Great, Æthelflæd reigned for 32 years, starting in her late teens and sharing the rule with her husband, Æthelred. After his death, she ruled for eight years on her own, although she had been the leading partner from about 902 due to his poor health. A short but valuable set of annals written in Worcester over the last part of her life gives us precious insights into her rule. She was known as ‘Lady of the Mercians’ – a hlæfdige or domina, that is, the female lord. She received the enthusiastic allegiance and support of her bishops, ealdormen and thegns (the landowning aristocracy) in Mercia. So in terms of decision-making we have to assume that she participated in all discussions of policy, sending expeditions and embassies, building towns and forts, and even leading the army (though not, one assumes, in the battle line). Sometimes the annals give a tiny hint of the emotional bond between Æthelflæd and her w
