The Roving Reporter : 1,000 Years After This Dark Age Anglo-Saxon Queen Died, Archaeologists Made An Astounding Discovery

By Ken Macdonald           April 16, 2019
Archaeologists in Magdeburg, Germany are about to open a stone tomb in the city’s cathedral that’s lain undisturbed for 500 years. It’s said that this monument contains the remains of Edith of England, Queen of Germany, 1,000 years ago. The researchers know, though, that the strong likelihood is that this ancient grave will be empty. But what they find when they open the lead coffin astonishes them.

We’ll find out what the archaeologists discovered in that ancient tomb in magnificent Magdeburg Cathedral shortly. But first let’s learn something about this Englishwoman who became the Queen of Germany in 936. In fact, Edith is a modernizing of her name. In Old English, it was the tongue-twisting Eadgyth. But we’ll stick with Edith.

Born into the House of Wessex in the year 910, Edith could hardly have had a more illustrious genealogy. Her father was Edward the Elder, the English king. Her mother, Ælfflæd, was Edward’s second wife. And her grandfather, Ælfflæd’s father, was King Alfred the Great, certainly one of the best-known of all the English monarchs.

Edith was actually one of eight children that Edward and Ælfflæd had together. Notable among her siblings were Eadgifu, who wed the King of West Francia, Charles the Simple, and Eadhild, who married Duke of the Franks, Hugh the Great. Edith’s parents sadly divorced when she was aged just nine or ten. She then joined her mother, who was sent to a monastery, perhaps in the cities of Salisbury or Winchester.

The princess’s royal pedigree, in fact, went back through the mists of time to the fifth century. Indeed, her royal lineage was said to be the oldest in Europe, stretching back to one Cerdic of Wessex. Cerdic is said to have been among those who led the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England. And Britain’s current monarch, Elizabeth II can also apparently trace her line back to that same ancient ruler.

Alfred the Great, born around 848, ruled the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Wessex from about 871 to 886. This territory stretched across the south and west of England before it became a unified land. In fact, Alfred started the process of creating the modern nation of England by expanding the influence of the Wessex kingdom across the country.

Strangely, Alfred is famous, not for his expansion of the Wessex kingdom, but for a culinary mishap. The surely apocryphal story is set early in his reign when Wessex was under severe pressure from Viking attacks. The King, it’s said, escaped a deadly Viking assault on the town of Chippenham in January of 828 by the skin of his teeth. The Danes then put most of the townsfolk to the sword.

Alfred made good his escape to the Levels in Somerset, marshy lands in western England. There, a country woman, ignorant of the fleeing King’s identity, gave him shelter. At one point, she left the monarch in charge of some wheat cakes cooking on an open fire. Distracted by the cares of the world, he allowed them to burn.

When the woman returned and discovered Alfred’s mistake, the ruler felt the sharp edge of her tongue. This is a story that British schoolchildren have heard for generations. And they all take delight in the idea of a commoner scolding a king. But truly, the monarch’s real place in history comes from his success in fighting off the Vikings and expanding his kingdom, a precursor of a fully united England.

By the time Edith was born in 910, though, her father, Edward, had been on the throne for 11 years following the death of Alfred. Meanwhile, the creation of a united nation was an ongoing project. During the princess’s childhood, Edward succeeded in seizing control of most of England, with only the northern territory of Northumbria still under the sway of the Vikings.




To be continued:                            
The Roving  Reporter