‘In this year Ipswich was ravaged and quickly after that Ealdorman Byrhtnoth was slain at Maldon. And in this year tribute was first paid to the Danes because of the great terror they caused along the coast.’ Thus reports one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's annal for 991 (see 8/20–3 for the OE text). This incident at Maldon, in Essex on the east coast of England, might have gone unnoticed in the larger picture of defeat and capitulation which characterised England in the 990s; the Danes were stepping up their attacks, which would continue with little opposition from King Æthelred and his nobles until the Danish Cnut took the throne in 1016. But an anonymous poet ensured that posterity would know a little more about this particular defeat. Indeed, by invoking the old heroic ideals of his countrymen's Germanic past, and using the poetic style associated with the celebration of those ideals, he turned the dire events at Maldon into a sort of moral victory: English heroes died, but they died well.

How soon after August 991 the poem was written is not known, but nothing in its language or style precludes a more or less contemporary date. Yet its purpose in relation to events of the time is not clear. Stirring as the defiant speeches of loyal but doomed heroes may be, in practical terms they scarcely constitute an effective national rallying cry, and it may be that the poem had a more parochial aim, to commemorate the English leader Byrhtnoth.