The Year 1071 - Resistance and Revenge

The Harrying of the North series is woven around historical fact and tells the story of Hravn and Ealdgith, friends in their mid-teens who witness, then flee from, the Harrying of the North in Richmondshire in January 1070.  It follows their rapid transition from adolescence to adulthood, their evolving relationship and changing fortunes.  The series brings to life the Northern Dales, Cumbria and Northumberland at a time of great social upheaval and in so doing it explores how English daily life was affected and forced to change.  Hravn is Norse-Cumbrian by birth, and Ealdgith is Angle.  An underlying theme is how these races blended together to form the English nation within the North.

The Year 1071-Resistance and Revenge starts in the closing days of 1070 and the people of Yorkshire are struggling to survive under the harsh feudal regime imposed by their new Norman masters.

Set in the wooded Richmondshire hills, the faces and places of a forgotten age are brought to life in a tale of fiction based closely on historical fact.

Ealdgith returns to Richmondshire with Hravn, to whom she is now betrothed.

They join Hravn’s father who has managed to gather disparate refugees into a series of secretive settlements in the remote and hilly Richmondshire woodlands. 

Ealdgith discovers that she is the only member of her immediate family still alive and she finds that people now look to her to help them in her late father’s stead.  Prior to the harrying her family owned manors around Richmond that the Normans are now developing as a military base from which to control northern Yorkshire.

Hravn and Ealdgith are driven to resist and take revenge for the loss of her family’s lands and the impoverishment of their people.  They do so with the support of Earl Gospatrick, and create and train a small war-band that brings to life the ancient tales of the ‘green men of the forest’. 

The story that unfolds is one of love, loyalty, remarkable leadership, courage and ingenuity as a small group of disposed people strive to survive and overcome oppression and cruelty.  As they do so the ‘green men’ become a central part of Earl Gospatrick’s plans to undermine Norman authority.

Hravn develops into a very competent and capable soldier and leader.  He is part Cumbrian and speaks Cumbric, a Brittonic Celtic language with close ties to Bretton.  He is able to communicate with the soldiers of Richmond’s Bretton garrison.  At Earl Gospatrick’s instigation he is employed as a translator by Count Alan Rufus and is able to gather intelligence that assists the Earl’s wider resistance.

Ealdgith is admired as a female warrior but feels that she needs to be more involved in the care of her people.  She is trained as a herbalist and midwife by Hravn’s grandmother.

The story concludes with the imposition of King William’s Forest Laws and the resultant destruction of the woodland refuges.  Hravn and Ealdgith lead the surviving refugees to safety in the, as yet untouched, villages of the upper dales.  They then take the ‘green men’, and the women and children that comprise their wider family, and escape through the Eden Valley to join Earl Gospatrick in his Northumbrian fortress at Bamburgh.

Earl Gospatrick is deeply grateful for the disruption that the resistance has caused and the intelligence that Hravn has gleaned about Norman intentions.  He knights Hravn and awards Ealdgith and Hravn lands in their own right in the Cumbrian Eden Valley. 

This sets the scene for the third book in the series: ‘The Year 1072-Retribution’.