Eleven Hundred Years On, England's First King Athelstan Remains Largely Forgotten

In his lifetime he was well known across Europe, yet today his name is barely found in history books. Eleven hundred years have passed since the coronation of Athelstan, the first king of England, and the anniversary has revived the question — how did a country forget its first king?

Athelstan was the grandson of the famous King Alfred the Great. Alfred won fame in the ninth century for war against the Vikings and major victories over the Danes. He extended his influence northwards from Wessex and strengthened his position in parts of the former kingdom of Mercia.

Alfred's son Edward, Athelstan's father, retook East Anglia from the Danes. According to Oxford University professor Sarah Foot, by his death Edward's kingdom stretched as far as the River Humber, and he held the title 'King of the Anglo-Saxons'. Edward's work laid a strong path for his son.

Born around 894, Athelstan came to the throne in 924 after his father's death. Some evidence suggests his half-brother Elfweard was at first king of Wessex while Athelstan was recognised as king of Mercia. Cambridge University professor David Woodman, Athelstan's biographer, says Elfweard died within a month in unknown circumstances and Athelstan became sole ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. He was formally crowned in September 925.

Events then moved quickly. In 926 Athelstan married his sister to the Viking king of Northumbria in the north. When that king died a year later, he took over Northumbria. Claire Downham, professor of medieval history at the University of Liverpool, says this was an important moment in the formation of the kingdom of England.

By uniting the separate kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, Athelstan became the first king of all England. Sarah Foot says he knew what he was doing; he was building a new kind of kingdom and establishing a unity in the British Isles not seen since Roman times. He was also the first English king to wear a crown — a tradition that continues in Britain today.

Holding that unity together also required fighting. At the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 he defeated an alliance of Vikings, Scots and the Welsh of Strathclyde who had challenged his authority over England. The exact site of the battle is unknown, though it was probably in north-west England.

Athelstan was not only a warrior ruler. According to Woodman, he kept close connections with Europe, married several half-sisters into Europe's ruling families and encouraged European scholars to come to England. His royal assemblies drew people from England's different kingdoms, from across Britain and from Europe, speaking languages including Old Welsh, Old Norse, Old English and Latin.

Historians say that diversity is central to today's discussion. Woodman says Athelstan's story challenges the centuries-old idea that England was culturally uniform from the start. Downham agrees that what is now called England held much cultural diversity, and that there was no single English unity stretching back to the year 500.

Yet after his death in 939, the kingdom he had built quickly fell apart, and Northumbria again became a separate kingdom. Woodman says this shows how fragile his construction was, but also how far ahead of its time his achievement was, and how much it depended on one person. The idea of a larger kingdom did survive — Foot notes that a united kingdom is seen again from 954, and was never permanently divided afterwards.

So why was he forgotten? A major explanation from historians is that Alfred had a biography written in his lifetime by the Welsh monk Asser, giving a vivid picture of the grandfather. Athelstan had no contemporary biographer. A biography was written in the tenth century after his death, but the original text has not survived; what remains are documents such as charters, orders and agreements, which do not offer an engaging account of a life. He was later overlooked again in the Elizabethan age's search for England's origins, and remained only a marginal mention in the Victorian era.

Woodman believes that reviewing his reign at the 1,100th anniversary of his coronation offers important lessons for those who want to understand what it means to be English. The time has come, he argues, to remember this forgotten first king properly.