In the year 1008, as a final show of power against the persistent Viking invasions that had harried England for decades,

a vast armada of ships was ordered to be built by King Ethelred.

By early 1009, a huge army, potentially as many as 10,000 men had assembled on the southern coast, accompanied

by a vast fleet of 80 ships, perhaps the largest fleet ever yet assembled by an English king.

Within a matter of weeks, however, a dispute between two English eldermen, Britric, the brother of the King's chief

enforcer Edric Stryona, and a Sussex lord named Wolfnoth resulted in infighting between

elements of the fleet. In the ensuing carnage, much of the armada was destroyed by a combination

of bad weather and burning by enemies when they came ashore.

In response, Ethelred supposedly ordered his men to simply disband and return to their shires

without ever facing the enemy they had been drawn together to fight. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Kent, Thorkel the Tall, a ruthless warrior lord who had spent decades

carving himself out a reputation in the icy waters

of the Baltic Sea, was now on a murderous rampage, allegedly in the wake of his brother's

death at the hands of the English. He was on his way to their shores.

Thorkell was a ferocious warrior, probably the leader of the legendary brotherhood known as the Joms Vikings, the scourge of seas from the Baltic to Iceland.

He brought with him a large force of brutal professional warriors, blooded from decades of war

in the frozen seas of the North.

And probably possessing a decent knowledge of England too, at least some of them, having

served there during the maelstrom of violence that had become the norm over the past three decades.

The failure of Ethelred's Armada, coupled with the timely arrival of Thorkel, had the effect of eroding away the last vestiges of confidence in the English King.

By 1011, Thorkels warriors had overrun Kent, East Anglia, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Berkshire, Hampshire and even Wiltshire. Many of the men present were probably operated in England

for decades, and as such they knew how to avoid large settlements with garrisons and armies,

yet harried the countryside at will in search of plunder and money.

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