A word may be needed with regard to the sources from which this story of King Eadmund's armour bearer and weapon thane have been drawn.

For the actual presence of such a close attendant on the king at his martyrdom on Nov.

20, 870 A.D.we have the authority of St.Dunstan, who had the story from the lips of the witness himself.
But as to the actual progress of events before the death of the king, the records are vague and imperfect.

We are told that, after the defeat at Thetford, the king had intended to seek safety in the church, probably at Framlingham, where the royal household was, but was forced to hide, and from his hiding place was dragged before Ingvar the Danish leader, and so slain.
The two local legends of the "king's oak" in Hoxne woods, and of the "gold bridge", may fill in what is required to complete the story.
The former, identifying a certain aged oak as that to which the king was bound, has been in a measure corroborated by the discovery in 1848 of what may well have been a rough arrow point in its fallen trunk; while the fact that, until the erection of the new bridge at Hoxne in 1823, no newly-married couple would cross the "gold bridge" on the way to church, for the reasons given in the story, seems to show that the king's hiding place may indeed have been beneath it as the legend states.

If so, the flight from Thetford must have been most precipitate, and closely followed.
There are two versions of the story of Lodbrok the Dane and Beorn the falconer.