In 991 AD, Vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defense-force led by their duke, Beorhtnoth, resulting in brutal fighting along the banks of the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex. The attack is widely considered one of the defining conflicts of 10th-century England, due to it being immortalized in the poem “The Battle of Maldon.” Written shortly after the battle, the poem would inspire J.R.R. Tolkien to compose his own dramatic verse-dialogue, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” which imagines the aftermath of the great battle. Leading Tolkien scholar Peter Grybauskas presents for the very first time Tolkien’s own prose translation of “The Battle of Maldon,” together with the definitive treatment of “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth” and its accompanying essays.