Widukind

                   SOURCES:
    Vore Forfedre, by Mogens Bugge (FHL 929.2481 B865b) A History of the Vikings, by Gwyn Jones, Oxford University Press

NOTES:
    A History of the Vikings, pp. 97-98 states that in 772 Charlemagne launched the first of a series of campaigns which would be pressed hard for more than thirty years before they ended in complete victory. Saxony was bounded by the rivers Elbe and Saale to the east and by the Rhine to the west. Northward its frontier ran flush with that of the Danes along the river Eider, but southward it was less defined. The Saxons had no one ruler who could speak on their behalf, and they were heathens who believed in Thunaer or Woden. The forcible conversion of the Saxons to Christianity was brutal and shameless. There was extermination for every Saxon who did not embrace the faith of the Franks. Under Charlemagne there was a massacre at Verden on the Aller in 782, and in 794-5, every third Saxon was transported from his native soil. This began the uprooting of whole settlements. In 777 the Saxon Chieftain Widukind fled for shelter to Sigfrid in Denmark (then Nordmannia).