Olaf Triggvison made no assault upon the town, but pitched his tents on the high ground between the two streams where he had landed. He allowed the East Anglians to carry off their dead and give them Christian burial. His own dead numbered over four hundred, and he had them laid in a mound with all their armour and weapons, and built a cairn over them according to the heathen custom.
He lay with his ships off Maldon during the rest of the summer, and raided in Essex and Suffolk without hindrance.
Now it might be thought that King Ethelred, hearing, as he soon heard, of the taking of Ipswich and of the defeat of the East Anglians at Maldon, would lose no time in gathering an army to expel the invaders.
The spirit of the nation was ready for a vigorous resistance of the northmen, and with a few such men as Brihtnoth to lead them the English might without much difficulty have driven every viking out of the land. But Ethelred was a man of quite another stamp from the valiant Earldorman of East Anglia, and he adopted the fatal system of looking to gold to do the work of steel.
Olaf Triggvison and a party of his captains returned to the camp one day, after a great boar hunt, and they found that in their absence certain messengers had arrived from Andover, where the king held his court. Olaf directed that the men should be brought to him in his tent, and there he held speech with them. On entering the tent the messengers set down before the viking chief two heavy bags containing the sum of ten thousand pounds in gold, This money, the men said, had been sent by King Ethelred as a gift to the leader of the Norsemen.
"And for what reason should King Ethelred send such a gift to me who have done him no good service, but have only been despoiling his lands and disturbing his peaceful subjects?"
"It is because the king wishes you to cease your ravaging in East Anglia and take away your ships and men," returned the spokesman. "That is the condition he imposes on your accepting the gold."
"And how if I refuse the gold and say that it does not suit my purpose to remove my ships?" asked Olaf. "Will your king then march with his armies against the vikings, and give us the exercise of another good battle?"
The messenger shrugged his shoulders.
"King Ethelred does not doubt that you will take the gold," said he. "And as to his marching against you, of that matter he has said no word."