Anglo-Danish Empire: A Companion to the Reign of King Cnut the Great 9781501513336, 9781501519819

Table of contents :
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Prologue “King of Danes, Irish, English and Island- Dwellers”: An Audience with Knútr inn Ríki
Part I: Cnut’s Conquest
Chapter 1 London into the Age of Cnut: An Archaeological Perspective
Chapter 2 Coins of Æthelred II and Cnut the Great from London Excavations
Chapter 3 Early-Eleventh-Century Weapons from the Site of Old London Bridge: A Reassessment
Chapter 4 The Reign of King Æthelred the Unready in Multiple Maps
Chapter 5 The Æthelredian Fragment of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Personality of its Author
Chapter 6 Æthelred’s Death and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s Tone
Chapter 7 King Edmund II Ironside and the Siege of London, 1016
Part II: Cnut’s Kingdom
Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017–1019
Chapter 9 “In London, Very Justly”: Cnut’s English Reputation and the Death of Eadric Streona
Chapter 10 Cnut’s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment
Chapter 11 Heroic Legend: Sigmundr Fáfnisbani in the Court of King Cnut
Chapter 12 An Icelander in Cnut’s Court: The Case of Sigvatr Þórðarson
Chapter 13 Behold the Front Page: Cnut and the Scyldings in Beowulf
Part III: Cnut’s Empire
Map: The empire of Cnut the Great (1016–1035).
Chapter 14 “Vuiberg Hic Coronatur Rex Dacie”: The Crowning of King Cnut in Viborg, 1019
Chapter 15 King Cnut of England and the Danish Homelands
Chapter 16 Cnut’s Ecclesiastical Policy in the Context of His English and Danish Predecessors
Chapter 17 Cnut’s Gift of a Swithun-relic to “Dacia”: A Gift to Denmark or Norway?
Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs
Chapter 19 Cnut’s Reign in England and Denmark: The Western Slavonic Perspective
Chapter 20 St. Clement of Rome: Patron Saint of Cnut and the Dynasty of Denmark
Epilogue Cnut and the Potential Uses and Abuses of the Late Narrative Sources from Northern Scandinavia
Notes on Contributors
General Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Anglo-Danish Empire

The Northern Medieval World

On the Margins of Europe Editorial Board Carolyne Larrington, St. John’s College, Oxford (Chair) Oren Falk, Cornell University Dawn Hadley, University of York Kate Heslop, University of California, Berkeley Jana Schulman, Western Michigan University Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Universitetet i Oslo

Anglo-Danish Empire A Companion to the Reign of King Cnut the Great

M IP

Edited by Richard North, Erin Goeres, and Alison Finlay

MEDIEVAL

ISBN 978-1-5015-1981-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1333-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1337-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022932367 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Ringerike style grave slab, from St Paul’s Churchyard, supplied courtesy of the Museum of London Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Abbreviations

IX

List of Figures

XI

List of Maps List of Tables

XV XVII

Acknowledgments

XIX

Erin Goeres and Richard North Prologue “King of Danes, Irish, English and Island-Dwellers”: An Audience with Knútr inn Ríki 1

Part I: Cnut’s Conquest Andrew Reynolds Chapter 1 London into the Age of Cnut: An Archaeological Perspective

21

Julian M. C. Bowsher Chapter 2 Coins of Æthelred II and Cnut the Great from London Excavations John Clark Chapter 3 Early-Eleventh-Century Weapons from the Site of Old London Bridge: A Reassessment 75 Simon Keynes Chapter 4 The Reign of King Æthelred the Unready in Multiple Maps

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Contents

Zoya Metlitskaya Chapter 5 The Æthelredian Fragment of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Personality of its Author 113 Michael Treschow Chapter 6 Æthelred’s Death and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s Tone

129

David McDermott Chapter 7 King Edmund II Ironside and the Siege of London, 1016

145

Part II: Cnut’s Kingdom Ryan Lavelle Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017–1019

169

Eleanor Parker Chapter 9 “In London, Very Justly”: Cnut’s English Reputation and the Death of Eadric Streona 191 Barbara Yorke Chapter 10 Cnut’s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment

209

Simon C. Thomson Chapter 11 Heroic Legend: Sigmundr Fáfnisbani in the Court of King Cnut Russell Poole Chapter 12 An Icelander in Cnut’s Court: The Case of Sigvatr Þórðarson

235

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Contents

Richard North Chapter 13 Behold the Front Page: Cnut and the Scyldings in Beowulf

277

Part III: Cnut’s Empire Jesper Hjermind Chapter 14 “Vuiberg Hic Coronatur Rex Dacie”: The Crowning of King Cnut in Viborg, 1019 305 Marie Bønløkke Spejlborg Chapter 15 King Cnut of England and the Danish Homelands

337

Caitlin Ellis Chapter 16 Cnut’s Ecclesiastical Policy in the Context of His English and Danish Predecessors 355 Eldbjørg Haug Chapter 17 Cnut’s Gift of a Swithun-relic to “Dacia”: A Gift to Denmark or Norway? 379 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs

399

Jakub Morawiec Chapter 19 Cnut’s Reign in England and Denmark: The Western Slavonic Perspective 419 Barbara E. Crawford Chapter 20 St. Clement of Rome: Patron Saint of Cnut and the Dynasty of Denmark 431

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Contents

Timothy Bolton Epilogue Cnut and the Potential Uses and Abuses of the Late Narrative Sources from Northern Scandinavia 459 Notes on Contributors General Bibliography Index

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485 487

Abbreviations AD AJ ANS AntJ ASC ASE ASPR ASSAH BAR BL BNJ CCHAG CE CR DN EETS EHD 1 EHD 2 EHR EMC EME HSJ ÍF KB KLNM LArch MGH MoLAM MoM MS N&Q NMS NOWELE PAS PBA SRG SS TLAMAS TRHS vv. VMS

Anno Domini (see also CE) Archaeological Journal Anglo-Norman Studies The Antiquaries Journal Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, gen. ed., Dumville and Keynes; trans. Swanton Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History British Archaeological Reports British Library British Numismatic Journal Corpus Christianorum: Hagiographies Common Era (see also AD) Coin Register (annually in BNJ; see General Bibliography) Diplomatarium Norvegicum The Early English Text Society English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock English Historical Documents, ed. Douglas and Greenaway English Historical Review Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds (www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/ coins/emc) Early Medieval Europe Haskins Society Journal Íslenzk Fornrit Det Kongelige Bibliothek (Copenhagen) Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder (og vikingtid) London Archaeologist Monumenta Germaniae Historica Museum of London Archaeology Monographs Maal og minne Mediaeval Scandinavia Notes & Queries Nottingham Medieval Studies North-Western European Language Evolution Portable Antiquities Scheme Proceedings of the British Academy Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi Scandinavian Studies Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Transactions of the Royal Historical Society verse(s) Viking and Medieval Scandinavia

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List of Figures Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2a Figure 1.2b

Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 3.1

Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3 Figure 3.4 Figure 3.5 Figure 8.1

Figure 10.1 Figure 10.2

Figure 10.3

Figure 10.4

Figure 10.5 Figure 10.6

Figure 11.1

The so-called “Agas” map of London of ca. 1561 40 Number 1 Poultry in the tenth century 47 Number 1 Poultry ca. 1000–1050 (after Burch and Treveil, The Development of Early Medieval and Later Poultry and Cheapside, fig. 13) 48 The eleventh-century St. Paul’s tombstone decorated in the Ringerike style (© Museum of London) 55 The eleventh-century Cheapside jeweler’s hoard (© Museum of London) 61 Photograph of the finds from Old London Bridge, originally published as the frontispiece to the London Museum catalogue London and the Vikings (1927). The item illustrated top right (described as a pair of tongs) may not belong with the other finds. Photograph © Museum of London 76 Axe-head A23346 with decorated brass collar. Photograph © Museum of London 90 Drawing of axe-head, with detail of decorated brass collar, from London Museum catalogue London and the Vikings, 1927 90 Spearhead A23353 with decorated socket. Photograph © Museum of London 91 Drawing of spearhead A23353 with detail of decoration, from London Museum catalogue London and the Vikings, 1927 91 Single sheet charter of Cnut granting an estate at Drayton (Hants) to New Minster, Winchester (S 956, dated Easter 1019). By permission of the Warden and Scholars of Winchester College 182 The Winchester Cathedral mortuary chest bearing the names of King Cnut and Queen Emma. Photograph © John Crook 210 Cnut the Great and Queen Emma present a cross to the New Minster, Winchester. Vitae of the New Minster 1031, prefatory image, BL Stowe 944, fol 6r. Photograph: British Library 211 The second half of the inscriptions of the later-twelfth-century Purbeck marble tomb-slabs for (upper) Earl Beorn and Richard, son of William I, and (lower) Edmund Ironside, son of Æthelred II. Photograph © John Crook 225 Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture from Old Minster, Winchester, showing what may be the episode of Sigmund and the wolf known from Vǫlsunga saga. Photograph © John Crook 226 The site of Queen Emma’s manor of Goodbegot in High Street, Winchester today. Photograph © Barbara Yorke 228 Fragmentary runic inscription from church of St. Maurice, Winchester. Photograph © Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture: photographer Simon I. Hill 229 The Sigmundr stone: Photograph © Martin Biddle, “Excavations at Winchester 1965: Fourth Interim Report.” (Plate LXII) 236

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Figure 11.2 Figure 11.3

List of Figures

Drawing showing all lines carved on the extant fragment 237 Suggested completion of the scenes implied by the narrative frieze, showing the degree of extension necessitated by the extant image 239 Figure 14.1 Overview of the excavated house structures at the Sct. Peder Stæde settlement 1966–1967. Notice house V, the most well-built house with wooden wall planks and curved outer walls. After Levin Nielsen, “Pederstræde i Viborg,” 25, Figure 2 310 Figure 14.2a The workshop seen from the south. In the background, the anvil pit and the forge 312 Figure 14.2b Overview of the area excavated in 2001 313 Figure 14.3a Reconstructions of the earliest smithy from 1018 314 Figure 14.3b The altered building from ca. 1020 from the Søndersø area. Drawing Sara Heil Jensen (2001) 315 Figure 14.4 (a) Gold brooch found near Hornelund. (b) Its lead patrice found at Viborg Søndersø. Photo: Lennart Larsen and Arne Vindum 315 Figure 14.5 Sherds from a watering pot made in Stamford, England from the early eleventh century. The pot of whitish clay with a green glaze had holes in the bottom. It could have been used to water rush covered earthen floors – thus keeping down the dust. Photograph: Lars Guldager 317 Figure 14.6a–c A cross-guard from a sword hilt, a chape from a scabbard together with a piece of ring mail. Drawing Mohan Subramaniam Arulanadam 318 Figure 14.7a–b Spurs and bridle fittings from Viborg Søndersø. Drawing Mohan Subramaniam Arulanadam 319 Figure 14.8 Bones of a goshawk and a kestrel, recovered from the excavations in 2001. Photograph: Geert Brovad 320 Figure 14.9 The point of the lance pole found at Viborg Søndersø. Photograph: Viborg Museum 321 Figure 14.10 Two small lead pieces. The piece to the right shows great similarities with some of the coins minted in the reign of Cnut the Great. Photograph: Lars Guldager 322 Figure 14.11 An eleventh-century shoe from Viborg Søndersø displaying possible English style influences, possibly of English origin or alternatively made by an English shoemaker in Viborg. Photograph: Lars Guldager 322 Figure 14.12 Coins of Cnut the Great, minted in Viborg. Photograph: Lennart Larsen 324 Figure 14.13 The Mammen axe with silver inlays is found in a grave dated to 970/ 971. Photograph: Lennart Larsen 325 Figure 14.14 The Asmild rune stone. Photograph: Lars Guldager 326 Figure 14.15 A row at least 15 m long of oblong postholes from trench S. It is probably much longer from trench S. Could it be a part of an extremely visible and impressive demarcation of the Thingstead area at the foot of the Thingstead itself – Borgvold? Drawing Hans Krongaard Kristensen 330

List of Figures

Figure 14.16

Figure 20.1 Figure 20.2 Figure 20.3

Ornaments like this in the fashion of a coin struck in Viborg under Cnut the Great was presented to the English troops who rolled into Viborg on May 12, 1945. Photograph: Jesper Hjermind 335 Martyrdom of St. Clement by Bernardino Fungai (ca. 1500). © York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery) 433 View of St. Clement’s from Roskilde Harbour, and North Doorway Altar panel from Skjærvøy, Troms, Norway (after 1500), showing St. Clement with his papal tiara, holding papal cross and anchor (Oslo Universitets Oldsaksamling) 455

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List of Maps Map 1.1

Map 1.2 Map 1.3 Map 1.4

Map 1.5

Map 1.6

Map 1.7 Map 1.8 Map 1.9

Map 1.10

Map 1.11 Map 2.1

Map 3.1 Map 3.2 Map 4.1 Map 4.2a Map 4.2b Map 4.2c Map 4.3 Map 4.4a Map 4.4b

The topography of London and the Roman city, showing Cripplegate fort, the amphitheater, forum basilica, the principal roads of the Roman period, and the location of the late/sub-Roman martyrium at St. Martinin-the-Fields 26 Distribution of select artefacts of fifth- to seventh-century date found in the walled city and the location of St. Paul’s 28 The relationship between Lundenwic and Lundenburg 30 Distribution of select seventh- to ninth-century artefacts, haga, burh, and other potentially middle Anglo-Saxon place-names and features 33 Gustav Milne’s reconstruction of London’s street grid in the tenth century (after Milne with Cohen Excavations at Medieval Cripplegate, London, fig. 140) 42 (a) Streets dated to the late ninth to tenth centuries. (b) Streets dated to the eleventh century (after Horsman et al., Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, figs 109 and 110) 44 The chronology of waterfront development along the north bank of the River Thames (after Milne, The Port of Medieval London, fig. 7) 45 The location of Number 1 Poultry, Guildhall, and Bull Wharf 46 The Guildhall amphitheater in the tenth and eleventh centuries; note the ward and parish boundaries (after Bowsher et al., The London Guildhall, fig. 13) 50 Churches with fabric characteristic of the earlier eleventh century (open circles) and dedications indicative of Scandinavian foundations (after Milne with Cohen, Excavations at Medieval Cripplegate, London, fig. 144, with additions) 53 The position of London Bridge in relation to the city and to the burh at Southwark (after Watson et al., London Bridge, fig. 27) 59 Hoards and single coins from Lundenburh. Open circles denote finds listed by Stott 1991, closed circles represent finds made subsequent to 1991. Uncertain “London” or “Thames” and foreshore finds are omitted. Adapted from Ayre & Wroe-Brown “The Eleventh- and Twelfth-century Waterfront and Settlement at Queenhithe.” 67 Finds of early Anglo-Saxon spearheads from the Thames in the Museum of London collection 83 Finds of late Anglo-Saxon/Viking-Age weapons from the Thames in the Museum of London collection 84 Viking raids in the 980s 98 The Viking army in England 991–994 99 The Viking army in England 997–1000 100 The Viking army in England 1001–1005 101 The Viking raid of 1006–1007 103 Thorkell’s army in England 1009–1010 104 Thorkell’s army in England 1010 105

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Map 4.4c Map 4.5 Map 4.6 Map 4.7 Map 4.8 Map 8.1

List of Maps

Thorkell’s army in England 1011–1012 106 Swein Forkbeard’s invasion 1013–1014 108 England 1014–1015: Intermission 109 Cnut’s invasion 1015–1016 110 Edmund Ironside and Cnut 1016 111 The estate at Drayton (Hants) granted to New Minster, Winchester, in 1019, with places named in the text. The boundaries of the Domesday hundreds and other eleventh-century vills are marked with regard to information in the Alecto Historical Editions Domesday Book maps. (The uncertainties of boundaries and the placement of vills have not been represented in this map, and this should only be taken as an approximate guide.) 184 Map 10.1 Plan of Late Saxon Winchester (north at the top). © Martin Biddle 214 Map A The empire of Cnut the Great (1016–1035) 303 Map 14.1a The great North–South route running down through the Jutland peninsula – the Military Road or Ox Road begins in Viborg. After Matthiessen, Hærvejen, 1930 307 Map 14.1b All roads lead to Viborg, meeting in a fan-shape north and south of the town. After Matthiessen, Viborg-Veje, 1933. Drawing Svend Kaae 2004 308 Map 14.2 On the flat foreland below the slopes leading up to the plateau lies the Søndersø area, and close by stands a pronounced 12 m high earthen bank, Borgvold, which rises up from an island in the tunnel valley. Drawing Lars Agersnap Larsen 2016 308 Map 14.3 Overview of all areas excavated at Viborg Søndersø 1981, 1984–1985 and 2001. Drawing Svend Kaae and Louise Hilmar 329 Map 14.4a–c The probable extent of the Søndersø settlement around a: 1020; b: 1050; c: 1100, superimposed onto a contour map, where modern earthworks have disturbed the historical landscape – the dam and roadway running down through the center of the illustration and backfill under the Golf Hotel´s south-eastern corner. A: Brænderigården; B: Golf Hotel, Viborg; C: Borgvold. Drawing Sara Heil Jensen 332 Map 14.5 Venetian portolan chart from 1339 with the Latin text, “vuiberge hic coronatur rex dacie” – Viborg here the Danish king is crowned 334 Map B Denmark, Norway, Sweden in Cnut’s reign (1016–1035) 353 Map 18.1 Western Slavonic territories in Cnut’s reign (1016–1035) 402 Map 20.1 Clement dedications in Northern Europe 432 Map 20.2 Route to Kyiv from Scandinavia via the Baltic 435 Map 20.3 Map of Kyiv (Kiev) in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries 437 Map 20.4 Map of Trondheim, Norway, showing the location of St. Clement’s Church (KLEMENS KIRKE) close by the royal residence and warf (Kongs Gaard og Brygge) at the time of Olafr Haraldsson (1016–28). Based on Blom (1956), 228 439 Map 20.5 Site of St. Clements in Gamlebyen, Oslo, ca. 1300 440 Map 20.6 Early urban centres in Denmark with Clement churches 442 Map 20.7 Map of Roskilde Showing Site of St. Clement’s Church 445 Map 20.8 Urban churches dedicated to St. Clement in England 447

List of Tables Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 10.1

Categories of River Thames finds by period 80 Medieval weaponry from the River Thames by zone 82 Genealogy showing the relationships of Edmund Ironside, the family of Cnut and the early Norman kings (with those buried in Old Minster, Winchester underlined) 227 Table 11.1: The twelfth-century connection between Cnut and Sigmundr 248 Table 18.1 Dynasties of the Piast, Jelling, and Nakonid kindreds 403

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Acknowledgments This book came out of “Æthelred II and Cnut the Great: The Siege of London in 1016,” a conference held to commemorate the millennial anniversary of Cnut’s accession to the throne of England. The conference was held July 6–9, 2016, at University College London and the University of Winchester, as part of a two-year research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, which was called “The Siege of London, 1016: Immigration, Government, and Europe in the Age of Æthelred and Cnut.” The aim of the project was to mark England’s transition from King Æthelred II to Cnut the Great, exploring the consequences of that change of regime for the history and culture of early medieval Europe. In relation to Cnut’s Danes, the theme of “Englishness and Europe” a thousand years ago was also discussed in tandem with the national debate, or lack of it, on contemporary notions of this in the months that led up to the Brexit referendum of June 23. Taking place just a fortnight later, the conference bore the blow of departure in the hope that this might not be final. After all, England had been joined to Denmark before. As the Ambassador said, quoting a song: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” The present volume, while it speaks to the same themes of immigration, government and Europe that led us to the research project, also raises a few questions about the nature and implications of the Anglo-Danish empire which lasted from 1016 to 1042. In the preparation of this book we have been fortunate in our collaborators, whom we would like to thank for their hard work and patience in ensuring that it could appear on the millennial anniversary of one of the years of Cnut’s reign. These and other thanks are especially due in the context of Covid, unrelenting since March 2020. We would like to thank Carolin Esser-Miles and Eric Lacey in Winchester for their cheerful enterprise, as well as Haki Antonsson in the organizing committee for his quiet efficiency, and Calum Cockburn, Emily Klimova, and Arendse Lund who helped with the organization of the Cnut Conference in London and Winchester with such attentiveness that the conference became a success. We gratefully acknowledge UCL and the University of Winchester as well as the Embassies of Denmark and Iceland for their financial support. For the wherewithal and space for a reception at the British Library during the conference, we thank Claire Breay, Head of its Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts, as well as His Excellency Mr Claus Grube and Mrs Susanne Fournais Grube of the Danish Embassy at that time. We owe a debt to the keynote speakers, Roberta Frank, Simon Keynes, Andy Orchard, Andrew Reynolds, Elaine Traherne, and Barbara Yorke, of whom two gave us their papers and one an eagerly awaited commentary. For their great practical help in developing this Companion mostly from the conference papers, we would like to thank Shannon Cunningham and Theresa https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-207

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Acknowledgments

Whitaker from MIP and Robert Forke, Christine Henschel, Elisabeth Kempf, and and Julia Sjöberg from Walter de Gruyter, as well as Ulla Schmidt and her team from Datagroup Deutschland and Victoria Blud and some anonymous readers all of whom contributed many fine and useful observations. For the maps and drawings, we gratefully acknowledge Barney Harris, Miles Irving, and the late Reginald Piggott. All proprietary rights for figures are acknowledged where they appear. For their help in guiding the work in all chapters, we thank Anthony Bache, Roberta Baranowski, Jan Brendalsmo, Margaret Cormack, Øystein Ekroll, Haki Antonsson, Astrid Forland, Clas Gejrot, Ildar Garipzanov, Michael H. Gelting, Trine Haaland, Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen, Anne-Marit Hamre, Lars Ivar Hansen, Hallvard Haug, Alf Tore Hommedal, Steinar Imsen, Torstein Jørgensen, Espen Karlsen, Kevin Kiernan, Halvor Kjellberg, Lars Løberg, Fraser McNair, Gustav Milne, AnneHilde Nagel, Janet L. Nelson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Levi Roach, Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Paula Utigard Sandvik, Daniel Sheerin, and Steinunn J. Kristjánsdóttir.

A Note on Verses, and Names Skaldic verses, which are numbered by the half-line, are presented in two ways: one of these is the long-line format which is consistent with Gustav Neckel’s edition of Eddic verse; the other is the half-line format which Neckel replaced. Although the latter has been superseded in most editions of Eddic verse, it was used in Finnur Jónsson’s 1912–1915 edition of skaldic poetry, was preserved in Íslenzk Fornrit (1933–), and is presently getting a renewed lease of life in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (2009–), the definitive series from Brepols. Some skaldic verses are so significant as to be quoted more than once, by different contributors, in either of these line formats and with differing translations, but in the end the text will (mostly) be the same. Names in this volume are worth noting in two ways. Formally, personal names from the Anglo-Saxon period have been modernized or changed in recent centuries according to the conventions of each discourse. In one way, Cnut is still known as “Canute,” Æthelred as “Ethelred” and so on, in newspapers and other media in which æ and other outdated letters are unknown. In another way, the forms “Knútr,” “Æðelræd,” “Þorkell,” and “Hǫrðaknútr” represent the scholarly ideal but are too intricate for cross-disciplinary appeal. The solution here will be to find a middle ground, writing “Cnut,” “Æthelred,” “Thorkell,” and “Harthacnut.” This book standardizes these and other known names from the period within a system which makes them recognizable. Important figures with names from other languages, such as Polish or Russian, appear, if they are well known, with spelling a little closer to English. Variant forms for people-names,

Acknowledgments

XXI

such as “Abodrites” or “Obodrites,” will also appear. Scandinavian names are here subject to a compromise of their own in which most are spelt according to the conventions of Old Icelandic (also known as Old Norse). This is because the non-runic Old Scandinavian literary sources of the tenth and eleventh centuries are skaldic poems, which were nearly all made by Icelanders, whose descendants started writing down their language at the start, and the poems towards the end, of the twelfth century. Because the Danes did not write longer Danish texts in Roman characters until the thirteenth century, most Old Scandinavian names which are not familiar in the English discourse (in contrast to “Thorkell the Tall,” for example, which is), are spelt in the normalization of thirteenth-century Icelandic that has become common over a century of editing these texts. The fact that the sagas – the later narrative sources for Cnut from Scandinavia which preserve skaldic verses – were written mostly in this century in Iceland often gives their stories an illusion of historicity. As stories, the sagas have so defined our understanding of the period that their spelling is often accepted even for Old Danish names. To take King Sveinn Haraldsson, Cnut’s father, as an example: the English called him “Swegen” before the Norman Conquest and “Sweyn” after, while today there is also “Swegn,” “Swein” or even “Swen.” This book calls him “Sveinn,” mainly because that is how the skalds, speaking to us through their modern editions, refer to him. The same usage, with less justice, will be adopted for his grandson King Sveinn II Ástríðarson (ca. 1047–1076), whom English-speaking scholars call “Sweyn,” “Swein,” or “Sven Estrith(s)son,” and Danish ones “Svend Estridsen.” That is because this Sveinn, son of Earl Úlfr by Cnut’s sister Ástríðr or Estrith, was also commemorated by Icelanders, as well as by Adam of Bremen, who called him “Suein.” There again, the names of some of Cnut’s associates, such as “Urk,” are so unusual as to preclude change to the forms in which they appear. Who could have seen that Urk (founder of Abbotsbury abbey in Dorset) would have been an “Órækja” had he gone to Iceland instead? (Bolton, is the answer.) Consistency may never be achieved. Ideologically, one people-name is worth noting in an area of nomenclature where scholarship now seeks to set a moral example. Recently the term “AngloSaxon,” normal for some scholars, has been dropped by others in favour of “early medieval English” or “early British” in response to a common problem, the wrongful appropriation of this and other historical terms by racist political agitators. Our response to the problem is not to surrender this term to extremists, but to keep “Anglo-Saxon” alongside “English,” the substitute which causes less offence. While “English” is more accurate than “British” for the language and society of eastern Britain in the tenth and eleventh centuries, this book acknowledges that “Anglo-Saxon,” used by the people for themselves, remains the only fitting name for the history, literature, archaeology, sculpture, craftwork, architecture,

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iconography, and palaeography of a Latin-based culture embodying elements not only from Wales, Scotland and Ireland, but also from France, Flanders, Germany, Poland, Italy, Tunisia, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Syria, to name some other sources of influence. Of course, Anglo-Saxon England had elements also from Denmark and Norway: after a while, the people of “the Danelaw,” that is, most of England to the east of Watling Street and some to the west of it, considered themselves English most of the time, using whatever local name obtained; at other times and to other people they would have said they were Danish, after their older language; at the same time many speakers of dǫnsk tunga (the Danish tongue) were Norwegian Gaels in the north-west, as well as Icelanders visiting England some of whom were of Irish descent. For ease of reference, “Danish” and even “Anglo-Danish,” as in our title, will be used here for Scandinavians in England in the early eleventh century. Richard North Erin Goeres Alison Finlay

Erin Goeres and Richard North

Prologue “King of Danes, Irish, English and IslandDwellers”: An Audience with Knútr inn Ríki In the year 1027, or thereabouts, the Icelandic poet Óttarr svarti (“the dark-haired”) composed a verse in honor of Knútr inn ríki (“the mighty”) Sveinsson, whom we call King Cnut the Great: Svá skal kveðja konung Dana, Íra ok Engla ok Eybúa, at hans fari með himinkrǫptum lǫndum ǫllum lof víðara.1 [So shall I greet the king of the Danes, Of the Irish, and of English and Island-Dwellers, That his praise may travel, with heavenly support, More widely through all lands.]

Poets who flocked to the royal courts of Scandinavia are well known for the bombastic – some would say propagandistic – nature of their works, but the claim in Óttarr’s verse is broadly true: by the time of his death in 1035, Cnut’s influence did stretch across much of the northern world over the seas from Dublin and the Western and Northern Isles to Norway, western and southern Sweden and the kingdom of Denmark, with friends in Normandy and vassals in Flanders, Pomerania, and Poland, and with subject territories as far east as Skåne, Bornholm, Öland, perhaps even Estonia.2 Who was the man at the helm of this thalassocracy?

1 “Óttarr svarti: Lausavísur,” ed. Townend, 786 (v. 2). Translated by Erin Goeres. “Islanddwellers” here probably refers to the inhabitants of the Orkneys, but the term may also encompass those of Shetland and the Hebrides: see Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 227. Óttarr’s epithet echoes Cnut’s styles in charters: “Anglorum cęterarumque adiacentium insularum basileus” (king of the English and the other islands lying nearby: S 959, from 1023), translated later in the century as “Ænglelandes kining ⁊ ealre ðare Eglande þe ðærto licgeð” (king of England and of all the islands that pertain to it: S 959); and “rex totius Albionis cęterarumque gentium triuiatim persistentium basileus” (king of all Albion and emperor of nation rising upon nation: S 963, from c. 1030). See Charters of Christ Church, Part 2, ed. Brooks and Kelly, 1080 (no. 151), 1094 (no. 151A), 1127 (no. 158). 2 Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 193–202. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-001

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Rise of a Younger Son The story of Knútr begins with a long war in England in which victory shifted from one side to the other for more than twenty years.3 Viking hosts who had raided the kingdom of Æthelred II (978–1016) in the 980s took vast sums of Danegeld from the country after the battle of Maldon in 991 and continued to raid between payments for the rest of the decade.4 Early in this period, possibly in ca. 995 in Jelling in Jutland, Knútr was born to King Sveinn Forkbeard Haraldsson of Denmark (ca. 986–1014) and a Polish princess whose name does not survive. Sveinn raided less, enlarging his power in Scandinavia, until St Brice’s Day, November 13, 1002, when King Æthelred ordered the death of as many Danes as could be found in his kingdom outside the Danelaw. Eying up perhaps this as well as the main chance for conquest, King Sveinn brought his fleet to East Anglia in the following spring. Although his invasion there was checked militarily and by famine, so that in 1005 he was forced to sail home, a new fleet arrived in 1009, led by an earl from Skåne, Thorkell the Tall, soon followed by another led by Hemming, Thorkell’s brother.5 While these armies laid waste to the east of England, closing in on Canterbury, Sveinn was busy recruiting in Scandinavia, preparing for an even bigger campaign. In July 1013 he left his elder son Haraldr to hold Denmark and took Knútr with him on the long-awaited expedition to England. The royal Danish fleet first sighted Sandwich, from where Sveinn steered north along the coast into the river Humber and then south for some 25 miles up the Trent to Gainsborough in West Lindsey, the inmost inland port in the Danelaw.6 Almost at once, Ealdorman Uhtred of Northumbria and the rulers of Yorkshire and Midland Anglo-Danish territories yielded to Sveinn and gave him hostages. These he left with young Knútr, who stayed in the northern Midlands and contracted a marriage there with Ælfgifu, a lady from Northampton.7 Ælfgifu’s highborn family could call on support right through the north of England up to the borders of Scotland.8 Sveinn,

3 For a breezy summary from the Old Danish point of view, see Lund, “Why did Cnut conquer England?,” 26–38. 4 £10,000 after Maldon in 991, £16,000 in 994, £24,000 in 1002, £30,000 in 1007, £3,000 interim geld to Thorkell’s host in 1009, £48,000 after the sack of Canterbury in 1012, £72,000 plus £10,500 from London to Cnut in 1018. See ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 74–75. 5 Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 462–463 (s.a. 1009). On the earlier Viking campaigns and Æthelred’s response to them, see Keynes later in this volume, pp. 97–107. 6 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 55–56; Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 190–92. 7 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 67; see also Lavelle, p. 176, Yorke, pp. 230–31, and Spejlborg, pp. 341–42, in this volume. 8 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 70–71, and “Ælfgifu of Northampton.” Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 190–92.

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meanwhile, led his companies south to Watling Street and the border with nonDanish England, where they “worhton þæt mæste yfel þæt ænig her don mihte” (wrought the greatest evil that any raiding-army could do).9 He took Oxford and then Winchester before meeting resistance at London, in a failed assault in which many of his Vikings drowned in the Thames. From there Sveinn withdrew to Wallingford and took the submission of the west and then the rest of England. Nonetheless, his acts of devastation continued until Æthelred left London for safety in Normandy, parting company with Earl Thorkell, who had helped him repulse Sveinn’s attack on London. Thorkell, following his murder of Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury, had hired himself and his forty-five ships out to Æthelred in 1012. With the king’s departure, the fate of the southern English was sealed. Only then did London, the great trading capital of southern England, yield to King Sveinn. Sveinn’s victory was short-lived, however. Just over a month into the following year, on February 2 or 3, 1014, the new king of Denmark and England died where he had first disembarked, in Gainsborough. It has been argued that he had been planning to have himself crowned in York, to the dismay of the English “witan” (council of wise men).10 These southern magnates responded to their king’s death not by accepting Knútr, his son, as the fleet had done, but by asking Æthelred home from exile, “gif he hi rihtlicor healdan wolde þonne he ær dyde” (if he would rule them more justly than he did before).11 Ealdorman Uhtred rejoined King Æthelred when he came home. Having made the outlawry of Danish kings a prerequisite, Æthelred attacked Lincolnshire “mid fulre fyrde” (in full force) before Knútr could muster, “⁊ mann þær hergode ⁊ bærnde ⁊ sloh eall þet mancynn þet man aræcan mihte” (and there was plundering and burning and slaying of any human being they could find).12 Leaving his people to face these reprisals without him, Knútr steered his fleet home to Denmark.13 Before crossing the North Sea at Sandwich, however, he left the witan a message about agreements: “læt man þær up þa gislas þe his fæder gesealde wæron, ⁊ cearf of heora handa ⁊ earan ⁊ nosa” (there he put ashore the hostages which were granted to his father, and carved off their hands and ears and noses).14

9 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 58 (s.a. 1013); (E), ed. Irvine, 70 (s.a. 1013); (E), trans. Swanton, 143 (s.a. 1013). Translations of the Chronicle are here and elsewhere based on Swanton’s. 10 Wilcox, “Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos,” 390; Bolton, Cnut the Great, 66–67. 11 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 59 (s.a. 1014); ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 71 (s.a. 1014). 12 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 59 (s.a. 1014); ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 71 (s.a. 1014). 13 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 71–73. 14 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 59 (s.a. 1014); (E), ed. Irvine, 71 (s.a. 1014); (E), trans. Swanton, 145 (s.a. 1014).

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Knútr was back a year later, making land at Sandwich in September 1015. Unlike his father before him, he turned his fleet south, rounded Kent and sailed to the coast of Wessex, where his new soldiers from all over Scandinavia and Frisia disembarked, laying waste to Æthelred’s heartland with fire and sword. Knútr had chosen a rift between the king and his surviving son Edmund as the moment to strike.15 Sailing north and raiding the eastern coast, Knútr went further inland and devastated Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire. He marched his army into Uhtred’s territory around Bamburgh, while this northern earl was busy ravaging in the south, near Chester, helping Edmund to punish the people of Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Leicestershire for not joining the war effort against Knútr. To save his patrimony, Uhtred was forced to retire north and submit to Knútr, who promptly had him killed.16 In the south, Æthelred suffered an even worse defection, that of his rapacious enforcer Eadric “Streona” (Acquisitor). Knútr was also joined by Thorkell the Tall, who had offered to help him after reappearing in Denmark.17 As their skalds bear witness, Knútr’s hardbitten brother-in-law from the Trøndelag, Earl Eiríkr Hákonarson, was already helping him in the devastation of England.18 This man had fled to the Humber from Norway when Óláfr Haraldsson defeated him in the battle of Nesjar in 1015. Now, early in 1016, Knútr appointed Eiríkr earl over some of Uhtred’s territory in the north of Northumbria.19 Later these men would run his kingdom effectively as viceroys: Earl Thorkell in 1017–1021, Earl Eiríkr in 1021–1023, finally Earl Godwine in 1023–1035.20 Edmund Ironside had all these experienced commanders and armies ranged against him. By good generalship, nonetheless, he began to turn the tide against the Danes in battle. When Æthelred died on April 23 (St. George’s Day), probably in London, the Londoners chose Edmund as their king. Meanwhile, since the rest of southern England had elected “Cnut” as Æthelred’s successor, London became the key to the young Dane’s wealth and power. Perhaps he saw his father’s choice of York as a mistake. After Easter, not long after May, Cnut laid siege to London, in which Æthelred’s body rested within St. Paul’s.21 When his mercenaries, 15 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 78–79. Insley, “Politics, Conflict and Kinship,” 32–35. 16 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 118. 17 If we trust the relatively reliable Supplement (or Appendix) to Jómsvíkinga saga, Thorkell had fostered Knútr as a child. See Encomium Emmae, ed. Campbell, rev. Keynes, 92 (text); but see Campbell on p. 89: “perhaps a confused memory of Thorkell’s guardianship of Knútr’s son.” 18 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 80 (Þórðr Kolbeinsson and Óttarr svarti). 19 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 75. 20 Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 43–88. 21 See McDermott later in this volume, pp. 148–51.

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descending on London from Greenwich, failed to make headway because of the city’s old Roman walls, Cnut and Thorkell made them dig a channel in Southwark for their ships to pass around by the southern end of London Bridge; this would also stop movement in and out of the town. Meanwhile Cnut and possibly (according to the Encomium Emmae) also Thorkell moved west from London into Wiltshire, drawing Edmund into a battle at Sherston that lasted two days, apparently the first in which Cnut had English troops on his side. This battle was inconclusive and chiefly notable for seeing Ealdorman Eadric, who had served Sveinn but had reconciled with Edmund after Æthelred’s death, change sides again.22 By offering money or favour, Cnut was drawing ever more allies of King Edmund into his orbit.23 Edmund fell back to Wessex for reinforcements, allowing Cnut to rejoin the siege of London. Edmund relieved the siege of London at the Battle of Brentford, in which he defeated the Danes, then returned to Wessex. Having reengaged successfully in Kent, he saw his army destroyed by Cnut in Assandun (Ashingdon or Ashdon) in Essex and withdrew again westwards. This time Edmund was again defeated and this time seriously wounded near the Forest of Dean, whereupon he sued for peace. In this way, his war with Cnut came to an end near the end of the summer of 1016. The Chronicle says that they met on “Olanige” (Olney or Alney), an island on the Severn in Gloucestershire, swore brotherly love and “þæt gyld setton wið þone here” (set the payment for the raiding-army).24 Edmund was thus left with Wessex, while Cnut took Mercia, the East and the North. The city of London, whose garrison had almost thwarted Cnut’s campaigns, was obliged to make a separate peace: ⁊ Lundenwaru griðode wið þone here ⁊ him frið gebohton, ⁊ se here gebrohton hyra scipu on Lundene ⁊ him wintersetl ðærinne namon.25 [And the people of London made peace with the raiders and bought their security, and the army brought their ships to London, and therein provided themselves with winter-quarters.]

When Edmund died, probably of an infection from his wounds, on November 30, the whole kingdom fell into Cnut’s hands.26 The Londoners, besides contributing to the national English payment of £72,000, are said to have paid him an

22 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 81–82. 23 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 82–87. 24 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 62 (s.a. 1016); (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1016); (E), trans. Swanton, 153 (s.a. 1016). 25 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 62 (s.a. 1016); (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1016); (E), trans. Swanton, 153 (s.a. 1016). 26 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 90.

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extra massive sum, £10,500. Moreover, when some of the Scandinavian army returned to Denmark, “xl. scypa belaf mid þam cynige Cnute” (forty ships were left with King Cnut).27 Like a rich prisoner, in this way, London was forced to pay fees to her jailers. Cnut established one garrison in Southwark and later another to the west of London’s walls, on the Strand near St. Clement Danes.28 London had seen Norsemen before, on decks and siege-ladders, but the poem Liðsmannaflokkr (Soldiers’ Song), composed apparently by Danish officers in ca. 1017–1019, a year or two after the peace of 1016, portrays them more constructively.29 After attributing much presence of mind to Knútr in a stanza in which he is said to order his troops to pause, not to attack, one of the officers composing this poem diverts from the failure of this action with an implication that some of them are planning to stay on, now that the siege has been lifted.30 As he says to his putative lady, in what appears to be the end of this sequence of skaldic verses: Dag vas hvern, þats Hǫgna hurð rjóðask nam blóði ár, þars úti várum, Ilmr, í fǫr með hilmi. Kneigum vér, síz vígum varð nýlokit hǫrðum, fyllar dags, í fǫgrum, fit, Lundúnum sitja.31 [Early it was each day that Hǫgni’s door went red With blood, when we marched out, Lady, with the Protector; O meadow of the ocean’s sun, now that the harsh battles Have concluded, we may settle down in fair London.

His shield-kenning “Hǫgna hurð” (Hǫgni’s door) refers to the tale of Hildr, a princess over whom Hǫgni and Heðinn, respectively father and abducting lover, are doomed to fight till the end of time. Whether or not his gold-adorned companion is English, like Ælfgifu, Cnut’s wife from Northampton, the unnamed, probably Danish, officer makes clear that the present war is over and the capital a promising place to live in.32 It was a different story with Cnut, however. It seems that Cnut never warmed to London. The old Roman city, which had never surrendered,

27 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 62 (s.a. 1016); (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1016); (E), trans. Swanton, 153 (s.a. 1016). 28 See Clark, p. 95 and Crawford, pp. 450–52, later in this volume. 29 Poole, “Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History,” 284–86. 30 For a shrewd commentary, see Goeres, “Being Numerous,” 75–82. 31 Text based on “Liðsmannaflokkr,” ed. Poole, 1028 (v. 10). Translation by Richard North. 32 For other suggestions as to who this lady is, see Morawiec, “Liðsmannaflokkr,” 93–115 and in the present volume, p. 421 (Cnut’s mother), and Poole, Viking Poems, 113 (Cnut’s queen Emma).

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holding out against both him and his father before him, was his only by treaty. Small wonder that Cnut kept a watchful eye, even while he made London the center of his government to the west of the North Sea. On the eastern side lay Jutland and Viborg, where, as we shall see later in this volume, Cnut began to succeed his brother Haraldr formally as king of Denmark in 1019.33 From here and later from England his foreign ventures continued within a wider frame. There was an expedition to the Baltic in 1022–23, then a campaign in north-eastern Skåne which succeeded in halting a combined Norwegian-Swedish army at the Battle of Holy River in 1026, from which time Cnut was overlord over southern and southwestern Sweden. In 1028 this was followed by a successful campaign in Norway that saw his leading rival, King Óláfr Haraldsson, driven into Ukrainian exile and then two years later, in 1030, put down at Stiklestad in the Trøndelag. The historical record also hints at Cnut’s conflicts with Welsh and Irish forces around the same time, and at a series of military engagements with the Scottish kings, from which Cnut emerged victorious in the early 1030s.34 War, however, was not the only form of interaction that took place between Cnut and his neighbours. The king actively pursued diplomatic relations with the dukes of Normandy, in 1017 marrying Emma, sister of Duke Richard II and widow of his defeated rival, King Æthelred, and later, probably in the eary 1020s, arranging the marriage of his own sister Ástríðr or Estrith to Richard’s son Count Robert I.35 In February or March 1027, Cnut went on pilgrimage to Rome, where he attended the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad II (1027–1039). Cnut became a major player in European politics. Praise of him must indeed have traveled widely throughout Europe the more he drew England into this empire of his making, which lasted until 1042. Having visited Denmark and the Baltic thus in 1019–1020 and 1022–1023, Skåne, Germany, and Rome in 1026 and 1027, Norway in 1028, and perhaps even Scotland in 1031, Cnut spent more time in England, where he died in Shaftesbury, Dorset, on November 12, 1035. He was interred in the Old Minster, Winchester, possibly near the tomb of St. Swithun.36

33 See Hjermind later in this volume, pp. 321–31. 34 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 138–150. 35 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 33, n. 17. 36 Crook, “‘A Worthy Antiquity,’” 173–176. For more on Cnut and St. Swithun, see Haug later in this volume, pp. 380–83.

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Overview of the Companion This book is interdisciplinary, but without its chapters being grouped by discipline or theme. Unlike the other great millennial tribute, a Plutarchian one to Cnut and William,37 it is set out with an overarching narrative that follows Cnut to the English throne and from there to the rise of his great domain through conquest, kingdom, and empire. The first of these titular sections, “Cnut’s Conquest,” traces the end of Anglo-Saxon rule in England and the beginning of a new Danish regime. Focusing for three chapters on London, as the lingering hold-out to Cnut and his least willing English prize, this section lays out a background to the final Danish victory. Both the decline of the Anglo-Saxon kings and Cnut’s winning strategy are studied in archaeological, historical, and literary records. To start with the archaeology: Andrew Reynolds (chap. 1) lays foundations for this section by assessing how early and with what boundaries the city of London took shape and what roles therein were played by Kings Æthelred and Cnut. Two more contributions on London’s material culture offer their own perspectives on the conflict. Julian Bowsher (chap. 2), in a study that gathers the results of many excavations at various riverside locations over the past thirty years, discusses a small but notable corpus of coins produced for both kings. Bowsher evaluates these new discoveries and argues that, despite the upheaval London suffered during the numerous sieges of the Anglo-Danish conflict, some stability may be seen in the smooth transition from the use of coins minted for Æthelred to those minted for Cnut. John Clark (chap. 3) discusses a group of weapons, apparently of Scandinavian origin, found in the old bed of the River Thames. Setting these weapons in the context of other early medieval river finds, he argues for their possible role in the Scandinavian attacks on the London area during the early eleventh century. The war is discussed in more detail in four more chapters. A commentary on the conflict as portrayed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is provided by Simon Keynes (chap. 4), with the aid of twelve detailed maps of the war which Sveinn initiated and his son inherited in the last years of King Æthelred II. Going into the form as well as the content of the sources, Zoya Metlitskaya (chap. 5) evaluates the style and ideology of the author of the so-called Æthelredian Fragment of the Chronicle. In her study of the formulae of this and related texts, Metlitskaya argues that the author seems to have been influenced more by the heroic values of the Anglo-Saxon past than by such overtly Christian ideals as penance and divine punishment. She makes the case that this author was affiliated with the supporters of Æthelred’s sons and began to compose this part of the Chronicle just after the accession of Edmund II.

37 Conquests in Eleventh-Century England, 1016, 1066, ed. Ashe and Ward.

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The poignant portrayal of Æthelred’s death in the same account is also discussed by Michael Treschow (chap. 6), who suggests that the king’s death in London, as Cnut’s ships approach, is emblematic of a personal inability, demonstrated throughout his reign, to deal with the problem of the Danish invasions and of the costly tribute which these entailed. Treschow reveals the tone of futility surrounding Æthelred and his death to be established in imitation of biblical chronicle, while the story of political catastrophe takes on a cathartic role. Hereby the traumatized reader is prepared for Cnut’s triumph through a subtle acquiescence to the hidden workings of providence. Lastly, David McDermott (chap. 7) gives pride of place to Æthelred’s son and successor, Edmund II Ironside. Acknowledging that the Second Viking Age in England is usually portrayed as a struggle between Æthelred and Cnut, McDermott observes that the campaign against Cnut in 1015–1016 was led by Edmund, Cnut’s last English antagonist. Focusing on the increasing political significance of London during the period, McDermott notes that the Londoners, besieged so many times during the Anglo-Danish conflict, spurred Edmund on to resist the invaders and regarded him as a liberator, forever hating Cnut for defeating him. The Companion’s second and third sections focus on Cnut’s reigns in England and abroad and on the changing relationship between England, Scandinavia, and the European continent. The second section, “Cnut’s Kingdom,” reflects first the political skill with which Cnut continued to cultivate allies and amass power in his new English kingdom, then the effects of his rule on the awakening political and literary culture of a new “Anglo-Danish” environment. Ryan Lavelle (chap. 8) looks at the early years of Cnut’s reign and at the mechanisms employed by the young king as he sought to assert his legitimacy as the new ruler. Lavelle describes how Cnut was able to adapt himself to Anglo-Saxon forms of kingship and argues that this was particularly necessary during the early years of his reign, when, before the birth of his son Harthacnut, the king’s long-term control over England remained vulnerable to the survival of Æthelred’s sons and other pretenders from the previous dynasty. Eleanor Parker (chap. 9) examines one of the most widespread stories about Cnut in post-Conquest historical writing, namely, his disposal of Eadric Streona, reportedly executed by Cnut himself as his reward for betraying Edmund Ironside. Tracing the development of this tale from its likely origins at the Anglo-Danish court, Parker notes ways in which the narrative deflects any notion of duplicity in Cnut, its protagonist, before considering ways in which it shaped the later accounts of his conquest and reign. Barbara Yorke (chap. 10) reconsiders and revises the belief that Cnut had much to do with Winchester in his reign. For all that Cnut assimilated into the family of King Æthelred II, Yorke argues that he concentrated his patronage of the city in two distinct phases, at the start and end of his reign. She finds, on the one hand,

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that such acts on Cnut’s part as the issue of an Anglo-Saxon-style law code at a council in Winchester served to demonstrate the king’s desire for reconciliation with his conquered subjects; on the other, that the king’s later interaction with Winchester was more limited, until he prepared a mausoleum for himself and his queen in the Old Minster. Observing that Winchester was thus the Dane’s ideological capital, Simon Thomson (chap. 11) discusses the fragment of a relief carving in stone from the same minster, in the first of three chapters on the Anglo-Danish character of the literature associated with Cnut. On the basis of this and of the detailed archaeology of Martin Biddle, Thomson argues that the stone depicts Sigmundr, later known as a hero of Vǫlsunga saga (Saga of the Volsungs), in a story which both features in the saga and predates it by a long way. Insofar as he suggests that Sigmundr at this time, as with Sigemund in Beowulf, was celebrated as a dragon-slayer, Thomson argues that the stone reveals a lively interest in Germanic myth and legend at Cnut’s court, whether in Winchester or elsewhere in England. The theme of a new Anglo-Danish hybridity continues with Russell Poole (chap. 12), who draws attention to a striking quantity of non-Scandinavian-derived vocabulary and expressions in the work of the most prolific and widely traveled Icelandic poet, Sigvatr Þórðarson. Poole links the language of Sigvatr’s poetry to his journeys through France, England, and Italy. Focusing, in particular, on the influence of English literary discourse on the poet’s work, he argues that Sigvatr may have become a vernacular spokesman for members of the English-influenced Scandinavian elite. Finally in this section, Richard North (chap. 13) posits the existence of at least two copies of Beowulf in Cnut’s reign. Proposing that one of them, the one in the Nowell Codex that we have now, was made just after Cnut’s conquest, North sees an attempt in the copying to insinuate a kinship between Beowulf and the ancient kings of Denmark. Referring to the work of four skaldic poets, he suggests that Cnut created a Skjǫldung ideology on the basis of the opening folio of another copy of Beowulf, one perhaps in Winchester. North ends with a speculation that in 1019–1020 Cnut took this folio, like a charter with the names of his ancestors, to Zealand and Skåne as the proof of his right to rule Denmark. “Cnut’s Empire,” the third and final section, offers a broader perspective in its consideration of how Cnut’s reign affected England’s relationship with mainland Scandinavia as far north as Norway and with Continental Europe as far east as Ukraine. The first two chapters draw firstly on archaeological evidence to examine Cnut’s Danish heritage and the uses to which this was put in the consolidation of his royal power in Denmark. Turning to Viborg, near to an important assembly site where it seems Cnut was first crowned king of Denmark in 1019, Jesper Hjermind (chap. 14) discusses recent excavations from the northern banks of Viborg’s Lake Søndersø. Detailing a number of the most impressive finds, including a fragment of painted Middle Eastern glass, a turned boxwood bowl,

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English-style pottery, and gaming pieces, he argues that such objects, associated as they are with royal and aristocratic courts, provide a material witness to Cnut’s journey to Viborg in this year. Marie Bønløkke Spejlborg (chap. 15) reviews the evidence for further Danish arrivals, mostly returning Danish settlers, from England over the sea. Observing that that the material record of eleventh-century connections between the two countries has improved significantly in the last thirty years, Spejlborg shows that modern archaeology reveals many types of contact between all levels of English and Danish society, and that the period surrounding the conquest of England by Cnut was one of the most intense for such interactions, usually through the English church. Caitlin Ellis (chap. 16) examines Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy in Scandinavia during his years of expansion, taking the famous image of Cnut in the Winchester Liber Vitae as a starting-point. Regarding King Cnut’s imports of English and English-trained clergy in the context of rivalry between the York-Canterbury axis and the ambitious diocese of Hamburg-Bremen, Ellis studies his use of ecclesiastical patronage for political ends. Taking this beyond England and Denmark, Eldbjørg Haug (chap. 17) discusses Cnut’s connections with the cult of St. Swithun in Norway, as well as the claim, made in a vita of the saint, that the king was responsible for translating one of the saint’s relics to Scandinavia. Within this context Haug sets the cult of St. Swithun in Stavanger, associating the translation with Norway rather than Denmark and particularly with respect to the untimely death of the local magnate Erlingr Skjálgsson. Turning to lands further east, the next two chapters consider a highly complicated but relatively under-studied aspect of Cnut’s life: his and his family’s relationship with the Western Slavs and Poles. Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli (chap. 18) traces a connection between Cnut’s dynasty and the Slavs of what is now the North German coast, revealing an association that began with his grandfather, Haraldr blátǫnn (“Bluetooth”) Gormsson. Gazzoli demonstrates that this connection played an important role in the conquests of England, first by Sveinn and later by Cnut, and that it continued to play a role in the formation of Danish royal identity in the generations that followed. Jakub Morawiec (chap. 19) concentrates on Cnut’s Polish connections in a renewed discussion of his and his brother Haraldr’s mother, who was an anonymous daughter of Duke Mieszko I. Morawiec finds instances in which these connections influenced Danish policy with European neighbours, even while he shows that Cnut’s kinship with such Polish royals as his cousin, Mieszko II, did not make him side with the latter in his conflict with Conrad II, the Holy Roman Emperor. From here we move further east, to the Ukrainian principality of the Rus’ in search of St. Clement, whom Barbara Crawford (chap. 20) shows to have been patron of Cnut’s dynasty. Crawford concludes this third section on “Cnut’s Empire” with a survey of the evidence for the proliferation of St. Clement in the many churches dedicated to this maritime saint. As she shows, these extend from Kyiv

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to Norway and from Denmark to London and Oxford and elsewhere in England, from east to west in a movement which follows the fleets of Cnut’s thalassocracy and may indicate the presence of the garrisons that maintained it. In the course of these chapters, the reader may notice that their authors sometimes disagree on matters of historical fact, and indeed that there is little in the field that may be called secure. Consequently, this book is equipped with an Epilogue in which Timothy Bolton reflects on the utility of the sources, particularly on kings’ sagas from thirteenth-century Iceland. He gives an overview of King Cnut’s reception, not only in these and other medieval Scandinavian histories that narrate his life and times and those of his foes and friends, but also in the modern historical trends which have caused the information within these sources to be accepted, rejected, or even ignored, by historians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In effect, Bolton, who is Cnut’s leading biographer, restores old pathways to the subject of this Companion by showing how narratives in later Old Norse (or Old Icelandic) literature, particularly skaldic verse, may be trusted to deliver a credible account of actual historical events. Central to each chapter is the young man who rose without trace to become England’s first royal player on the international stage. As a younger son of the Danish royal family, Knútr had no choice but to succeed in England, which he did by campaigning with such sure strategy and instinct that he won the war and made himself an empire. This Prologue will end with an attempt to glimpse the workings of Cnut’s mind some seven years later, on a June evening in 1023, when he “translated” Archbishop Ælfheah’s body from St. Paul’s back to his old diocese in Canterbury.

Knútr inn ríki, Tomb-Raider The story is told by the Kentish monk Osbern in his Translatio sancti Ælfegi (translation of St. Elphege) of ca. 1080.38 Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury (1006–1012) achieved sanctity when he was killed by Earl Thorkell’s men on April 19, 1012 in an assembly in Greenwich, more than half a year after they took him prisoner upon breaking into Canterbury on September 29, 1011.39 One day after his murder, the Danes sold Ælfheah’s corpse to the men of St.

38 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris. The present text is theirs, the translation based on theirs. 39 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 56–57 (s.a. 1011–12); (E), ed. Irvine, 68–69 (s.a. 1011–12); (E), trans. Swanton, 141–43 (s.a. 1011–12).

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Paul’s Church in London, where it was swiftly interred. His tomb became a site of pilgrimage and brought the church significant income. The Worcester Chronicle, which gives the longest contemporary account, opens by saying that in 1023 “Cnut kyning binnan Lundene on Sancte Paules mynstre sealde fulle leafe Æðelnoðe arcebiscope” (King Cnut, within St. Paul’s Minster in London, gave full leave to Archbishop Æthelnoth) to have St. Ælfheah translated to Canterbury.40 Thus the initiative came from Æthelnoth, who had arrived in London on June 1. The location of the first scene in St. Paul’s is common to both accounts. Osbern’s Translatio matches or follows the Chronicle in which Ælfheah’s body is shipped from there “ofer Temese to Suðgeweorke, ⁊ þær þone halgan martyr þan arcebiscope ⁊ his geferum betæhton” (over the Thames to Southwark, and there they committed the holy martyr to the archbishop and his companions). On the evidence of this annal, it seems likely that Æthelnoth had presented his claim to Cnut, whose relations with Canterbury were always good, within a few years of the king’s taking power. Nonetheless, to save Canterbury’s blushes about the manner of removal, Osbern tells the story as if the idea for the saint’s translation were Cnut’s. Lavelle calls it “an early medieval ‘special operation’”; Bolton, a “heist”; Sarah Foot, “an opportunity to use major public spectacle to demonstrate visually and symbolically his repentance for the violence of the Danish army during his father’s lifetime, and his willingness to do reparation for their sins.”41 Thus the space which Osbern opens up for Cnut in his story causes disagreement even today. To us, however, it may afford a glimpse of the man as he was remembered by witnesses. In this respect, Osbern’s story, which he based on the witness of Godric, a man who was there, is so far from relating an orderly translation that it resembles stories, written in thirteenth-century Iceland, but mostly set elsewhere in Scandinavia, in which an aristocratic haugbrjóti (mound-breaker) breaks into a haugr (grave-mound) to steal a precious object such as a sword from a relatively benign haugbúi (barrow-dweller) inside.42 Although it is the body of the dead that is stolen in his account, Osbern’s image of Cnut, in a role that translates as “tomb-raider” for our days, is rather similar. It is this story that gives the most vivid picture of Cnut’s involvement with a city that had no love for him. Osbern wrote the Translatio as a sequel to his Passio sancti Ælfegi (Passion of St. Elphege) of ca. 1075, in which he says that the people of London brought the archbishop to St. Paul’s, having bought his body from the Danes after his

40 ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 64 (s.a. 1023); (D), see also ASC (D), trans. Swanton, 156 (s.a. 1023). 41 Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, 194–98 (p. 194). Bolton, Cnut the Great, 112. Foot, “Kings, Saints and Conquests,” 159. 42 On this tradition, see Guerrero, “Stranded in Miðgarðr,” 40–59.

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martyrdom in Greenwich in 1012. The mention of money makes that part of the Passio credible. Less credibly there, however, Osbern goes on to say that some twelve thousand Danes and Englishmen, having wept floods of tears in repentance for the archbishop’s demise, now danced with joy in the streets while his body “ad ęcclesiam Doctoris Gentium aduectus, in eadem conclamatus honoratus collacatus est” (was conveyed to the Church of the Teacher of the Gentiles, acclaimed therein, and honorably laid in state).43 Eleven years later, according to the Translatio, Cnut summons Archbishop Æthelnoth and tells him the plan for retranslation. Osbern says that Cnut first summons Æthelnoth to see him in London on Saturday, the eve of Pentecost 1023 (i.e. on June 1), letting him know that he wishes to make good on a promise he had made to the English in 1016, to translate Ælfheah “ad sedem patriarchatus sui seruato more antiquorum” (to the see of his patriarchate in the traditional way of the ancients).44 Archbishop Æthelnoth, arriving in London, goes straight to the church. Osbern says that he “mandauit \regi/ in balneas descendenti se adesse. & quid ipse uelit statuere. in ęcclesia Beati Pauli apostoli expectare” (commanded the king, who, as it happened, was getting into the bath, to come to him in the church of the blessed apostle Paul and declare what he wished to have done).45 There is a distinct possibility that Cnut was bathing in the former Roman public bathhouses at Huggin Hill, between St. Paul’s and the river, on the site of a tenement which, in the late ninth century, belonged to the bishop of Worcester;46 perhaps it is not coincidental that the Worcester text gives the fullest Chronicle account. Cnut falls in with the archbishop’s command as if this were the most natural thing in the world: Quo ille accepto sine mora de lauacro surgit, clamide solummodo nudum corpus obtegit simplices pedibus subtalares inducit sicque ad presulem impigro gradu tendit.47 [When he heard this, he rose up from his ablutions without delay and, wrapping merely a cloak around his naked body, placed his feet in plain sandals and thus quickly made his way to the archbishop.]

To us the Dane’s towel and sandals might lend him a careless air, belying the gravity of a situation in which Æthelnoth will have dressed for an audience in archiepiscopal robes. In the story that follows, nonetheless, Cnut puts a plan

43 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 283 (lines 11–12). 44 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 300 (lines 72–73). 45 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302 (lines 83–85). 46 Pers. comm. Andrew Reynolds; see also Reynolds in this volume, pp. 24, 35 and Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302, n. 20. 47 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302 (lines 86–88).

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into action, ordering “omnibus familię suę militibus quos lingua Danorum huscarles uocant” (all the soldiers of his household, who are called “housecarls” in the Danish tongue) to divide into groups: one to perform a diversion, the other a raid. Cnut orders “ut eorum alij per extremas ciuitatis portas seditiones concitent” (that some of them should incite rebellions at the outer gates of the city: these would have been from the garrison by St. Clement Danes on the Strand); and that others “pontem & ripas fluminis armati obsidant, ne exeuntes eos cum corpore sancti Lundanus populus prępedire ualeat” (arm themselves and occupy the bridge and the banks of the river, so that the people of London would not be able to stand in the way of those leaving with the saint’s body).48 These words of Osbern’s presuppose an English citizenry then in control of the Roman city of London, north of the river, whom the Danes of Southwark were watching from the southern end of London Bridge. Cnut’s plan for a diversion by some or all the gates of the City of London may indicate that he expected capture from any Londoners he ran into on the way to the foreshore. Once Cnut arrives in the church, according to Osbern, he announces his plan to the archbishop “lętabunda simul ac tremebunda uoce” (in a voice which was shaking with joy).49 In contrast, the archbishop bewails his hearing of this only now, the prospect of capture by the Londoners outside, and above all the small number of Danes in their party: for who will move the stone at the entrance of Ælfheah’s tomb? These cares the king brushes aside with words which entrust the outcome to the dead man himself: In hoc pater sancte maxime apparebit quia nobiscum beatus ille uolet transire. si quod impossibile hominibus est. ipse sua uirtute fecerit esse possibile. semper enim difficultas miraculum gignere consueuit.50 [This, Holy Father, is just how the blessed man will make clear his wish to cross with us. Whatever is impossible for men, he will make possible through his own power. Ever is it the way of difficulty to beget a miracle.]

Despite the affective piety of Osbern’s record, it is as if Ælfheah interacts with his rescuers. Is there is a Scandinavian touch to the idea that the corpse, like a Norse haugbúi, has its own role to play?51 At any rate, Cnut stays outside, offers to stand guard, and asks Æthelnoth to pray for help and his monks to move the stonework. The monks are given as Godric – later dean of Christ Church, Canterbury,

48 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302 (lines 89–94). 49 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302 (lines 96–97). 50 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 304 (lines 112–15). 51 Guerrero, “Stranded in Miðgarðr,” 49–51.

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where he became the younger Osbern’s source52 – and the older Ælfweard the Tall, who, if he truly was a servant of Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury (d. 988), may have been tested some forty years later. With Æthelnoth’s blessing, they tear open the chamber’s plaster wall with an iron candelabrum and push the stone cover of the inner tomb easily aside. St. Ælfheah is discovered lying uncorrupted within. Finding a board providentially the right size, the monks carry the saint’s body through a dark narrow street (possibly Paul’s Wharf Hill) down to the shore, followed by Cnut and the archbishop, whose surprise is left to us to imagine cum ecce regia navis aureis rostrata draconibus, armigeris repleta militibus, uenienti martyri obuia offertur. quam citius dictu rex insiliens, expansis brachiis martyrem suscepit, deinde protensa dextera pontificem induxit.53 [when lo! a royal longship with golden dragon prows, full of armed men, come to meet the martyr, is placed in their way. Quick as a flash, the king jumped in and with arms open picked up the martyr. Then, offering his right hand, he helped the pontiff aboard.]

The longship shoots off with King Cnut at the helm, east and downstream to the opposite bank. At this moment, God’s great favor to St. Ælfheah is revealed, “dum hinc pontem & totas fluminis ripas loricatis stratas militibus conspiceres” (as here you would have seen the bridge and the entire banks of the river lined with armed men).54 That the south bank lay outside London is probably why we may take the words “totas fluminis ripas” to exclude the northern side. Albeit in reverse, the scene is painted as vividly as the day St. Ælfheah’s body first entered London: Illinc per extremas urbis portas simulatorias seditiones excitatas audires, attenderes regem nauem regentem, remigem nobilem remos trahentem, orantem archiepiscopum & sanctos monachos obsequium pręstantes.55 [over there you would have heard the pretended rebellions incited at the outer gates of the city; you would have espied the king steering the ship, the noble oarsmen pulling on the oars, the archbishop praying and the holy monks performing obsequies.]

Out of sight, the fighting in progress by London’s Roman gates, as the Londoners fall for Cnut’s trick west, north, and east of St. Paul’s, is implied to have a sound of its own. Disembarking on the Southwark foreshore, Cnut has the saint loaded on a wagon, for a troop of monks and housecarls to escort him to Rochester along

52 53 54 55

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 304 (lines 119–20). Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (lines 171–74). Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (lines 177–78). Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (lines 178–81).

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what is now the Old Kent Road. The king’s attention to detail emerges further in the way he prepares to cover their escape, “timebat nanque ciuium irruptiones” (for he feared attacks from the citizens). So had Æthelnoth on the crossing; perhaps his prayers were too loud: Deinde surgens. & liberalibus iocis archiepiscopo alludens: “Liberatus es inquit & meoimunere de periculo mortis, de qua te liberari non posse arbitrabaris. Iam securus ad sanctum profiscere, atque ut nostris faueat temporibus humiliter deprecare. Ego uobiscum pariter irem. Si magnis ut nosti regni negotiis occupatus non essem.”56 [Then Cnut rose, and with great good humour, jested with the archbishop, saying: “With my help you are freed from the threat of a death from which you were thinking you could not be delivered. Go now to the saint in safety, and humbly beg him to bless us with more favourable times. I would go with you too if I were not, as you know, busy with affairs of state.”]

Teasing his beneficiary thus, Cnut turns to face a crowd of Londoners advancing from the northern end of the bridge. Perhaps they, too, hope to recover the martyr’s remains. Enjoying the fury of his least favorite city, Cnut promises Æthelnoth that he will ask Queen Emma, now in Kent with their young son Harthacnut, to join the archbishop and his party in Canterbury “cum tota nobilitate” (with all the nobility).57 Cnut had married Queen Emma in July 1017, a year after the death of her first husband, King Æthelred II. Then the party of archbishop, monks, and others sets off for Canterbury. There is more adventure down the road in Plumstead, where Cnut’s housecarls, supposing that the Londoners have come after them, take up position against them, making ready to die and to give Æthelnoth’s party time to escape. Yet their pursuers turn out to be friendly, not Londoners at all, and soon the archbishops are back home in Canterbury.58

Opening Questions This Companion will open with some questions about Cnut Sveinsson, supplanter of Edmund and Æthelred II and the first non-English ruler of England. How much Cnut changed of Æthelred’s England in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, how much he allowed to remain; how much or little he valued Winchester,

56 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (lines 186–91). 57 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (line 193). Emma arrives in Canterbury three days after Ælfheah, although, according to the Worcester text of the AngloSaxon Chronicle (D), s.a. 1023, she joins the party in Rochester. 58 Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308–312 (lines 195–217).

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even while he made London, the city he disliked, into his political and economic capital; how much planning or improvization there was in his creation and upkeep of a maritime empire that he doubtless wished his children to inherit; what the aftermath of his power was in the later eleventh century in London, England, and Scandinavia: these wide-ranging questions are approached here by 22 scholars in order of the events. With recent research in history, archaeology, and literature, let us try for some answers.

Part I: Cnut’s Conquest

Andrew Reynolds

Chapter 1 London into the Age of Cnut: An Archaeological Perspective This chapter will review the archaeology of the city of London, beginning with a brief consideration of the city’s archaeological resource, its extent, and recovery, before charting the early history of this city from its Roman origins through to the later tenth century and then the early eleventh when Cnut, having secured the city from Æthelred and Edmund, began to take an increasing interest in London as his new capital.1 London’s early development is complex, both in terms of its chronological and spatial development, and this background is necessary to place its urban floruit in the reigns of Æthelred and Cnut in perspective. The recent publication of a series of large-scale excavations in the heart of the walled city allows for a high-resolution reading of the redevelopment of London, in which the later tenth and early eleventh centuries are shown to have been a period of substantial and apparently planned urban growth in contrast to much less regular (and comparatively sparse) prior occupations. New findings support the idea that the Roman amphitheater discovered in the 1990s served as an assembly place for the city’s aldermen, and here the evidence for the defense of London in the so-called “second Viking Age” will also be reviewed. Overall, a case will be made for the rise of London as England’s principal urban center in an intense and relatively short period in the early eleventh century, in contrast to previous arguments for a later-ninth-century urban foundation by King Alfred.

Introduction After a brief overview of the archaeology and history of London, from Roman beginnings to the earlier Anglo-Saxon period and the reemergence of urban life

1 For this chapter, I acknowledge the organisers of the conference upon which this volume is based. I should also like to thank John Clark for his sage advice and Barney Harris for producing the illustrations. I thank my teacher Gustav Milne for encouraging me as an undergraduate, for his insight, and for several enjoyable years in which we worked on the medieval buildings of London; his writing on London is an inspiration. Lastly, I am grateful to the generations of archaeologists whose skill and commitment enabled the material story of London to be told. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-002

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in the form of Lundenwic, this chapter will consider the oft-supposed direct translocation of extramural settlement back inside the walls of the former Roman city in the late ninth century. London’s earlier history provides the background necessary to appreciate the full significance of the developments in London’s urban fabric in the later tenth and earlier eleventh century. The focus here will be on the topographical development of the city, rather than on such details of its economic or material culture history as are covered elsewhere in this book. Archaeological inquiries into London’s past have resulted in a series of transformative realizations about the nature of human occupation not only in both Roman and medieval cities, but also in Lundenwic, the “transitional” settlement to the west of the walled city. Lundenwic eluded recognition until the 1980s, despite the fact that the place-name Aldwych (Old Wic) gives away its location unambiguously.2 The nature and extent of Roman London, Londinium, is relatively well understood. Even though the chronological details continue to be refined, whilst the meaning of the name itself has puzzled scholars of place-names,3 the exceptionally well-preserved deposits of this period in many parts of the city have allowed scholars to map out fluctuations in the extent and character of the Roman settlement with relative clarity,4 particularly in comparison with what is known of occupation in and outside the walled city between the fifth and eleventh centuries. This chapter is not the first to review the post-Roman material. In particular, two key book-length treatments of London’s post-Roman history and archaeology have lost none of their relevance despite decades of subsequent archaeological and historical investigation, of which an impressive synthesis has recently appeared.5 The first monograph is Brooke and Keir’s beautifully written and perceptive investigation of the written and topographical evidence, published in 1975;

2 Biddle, “London on the Strand”; Vince, “The Aldwych.” 3 Rivet and Smith, Place-Names of Roman Britain, 396–98, though they draw no conclusion about what Londinium means, emphasize that the name was probably communicated by either Vulgar Latin or British speakers to Germanic speaking people (p. 397). Where they dismiss Ptolemy’s association of Londinium with the Cantii (the people of Kent) in his (ca. 125–150) Geography (p. 398), it may be said that Ptolemy’s view may merely reflect London’s evolving relationship with the surrounding regions. Ekwall, in English Place-Names, 303, more boldly suggests that “The immediate base may be a pers.[onal] n.[ame] Londinos or a tribal name formed from the adjective,” with the first part of the name cognate with Old Irish lond (wild). 4 Perring, Roman London and “Recent advances”; Mattingly, An Imperial Possession, 273–76; Hingley, Londinium. 5 Naismith, Citadel of the Saxons. Although this appeared too late for its detail to be included here, there appears to be broad alignment between his conclusions and mine. Naismith’s volume is an expert sysnthesis, particularly strong on the economic and administrative organization of the city.

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the second is Alan Vince’s expert overview of archaeological findings, published in 1990.6 My contribution will set the historically informative results of several recently published excavations of the city within the context of revisions in overall thinking about the urban process in England and neighboring countries.

Archaeology in London: The Resource Whereas historians and literary scholars must be ever mindful of the partial nature of their evidence, as well as of the factors that led to the initial production and subsequent survival of this evidence, archaeologists confront problems of a different kind, for all the theoretical parallels that can be drawn between written and physical evidence.7 Unchecked construction work and controlled excavation are both destroyers of archaeological strata. Nonetheless, our knowledge has increased enormously over the last seventy years; and particularly dramatically since the mid-1970s, when concerted archaeological inquiry witnessed such a marked upturn, both in extent and methodological approach, that Brooke and Keir, in their preface to London 800–1600: The Shaping of a City, acknowledged that “it is the worst time to be writing a book on London in the period most likely to be illuminated by these [archaeological] studies.”8 How perceptive they were. Preservation and recovery are the two most important factors that impact upon the archaeologist’s ability to reconstruct the past. While Londoners started to dig basements and cellars for their houses from the late tenth century onwards,9 the effects of these structures upon archaeological strata pale in comparison to the devastating destruction wrought by the digging of cellars in the exponential expansion of London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In many cases, even the earlier reconstruction of vast expanses of the city, after the Great Fire of London in 1666, sealed rather than erased archaeological deposits. Many of London’s churches, rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren and others, lay directly upon the foundations of their medieval predecessors, thus preserving earlier remains below them and medieval ground plans in later fabric.10 The one

6 Brooke and Keir, London 800–1216; Vince, Saxon London. 7 The key notion is that archaeological strata may be “read” as text by an excavator with the “linguistic” skills to decode the many and complex facets of the archaeological record. 8 Brooke and Keir, London 800–1216, xiv. 9 Horsman, Milne, and Milne, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, 109. 10 As, for example, at St. Vedast, Foster Lane and St. Brides, Fleet Street: Milne and Reynolds, “St.Vedast”; Milne, St. Bride’s.

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glaring exception to this rule is St. Paul’s Cathedral. Here the scale of the works involved in the construction of the present edifice are likely to have left little in the way of structures or strata relating to the medieval and earlier religious complex, at least below the footprint of the current building.11 A pioneering study of the survival of archaeology in London, undertaken in the 1970s by Martin Biddle, Daphne Hudson, and Carolyn Heighway, revealed that no less than 25% of archaeological deposits within the walled area had been erased by later activities, with at least 58% of the urban area at least partially effaced.12 This important and innovative study, The Future of London’s Past, was itself produced in an era of activity, when the pressures of redevelopment were ramping up again after the immediate reconstruction following World War II. A number of these developments were monitored or excavated via small trenches by dedicated teams of archaeologists funded by public donations, who managed to record only a fraction of the sites being redeveloped in the 1940s to 1960s.13 The challenges facing these pioneers of urban archaeology were immense, especially given the extent of rebuilding necessary after the sustained bombing of the city in the early years of the war.14 Although the history of archaeological recovery in London may be found elsewhere,15 it is important to recognize that the figures given for archaeology lost by 1973 only increased in the rest of the 1970s, while the newly formed Department of Urban Archaeology, based at the Museum of London, fought to recover the material remains of Roman and medieval London, often from the jaws of mechanical excavators. It was not until 1990 that the responsibility for recording the archaeology in advance of development, together with the burden of cost, was formally passed to property developers. This was done through planning guidance issued by the government, which, though itself not legally binding, was now at least part of the formal planning process; indeed, it worked remarkably well. In part, the need for new regulations came about due to a series of threats to high-profile archaeological sites in the city, notably the Huggin Hill Roman bath-house and (with greater media coverage) London’s Rose Theatre of 11 McCourt, “An Archaeological Assessment,” 214; Tatton-Brown, “Topography of AngloSaxon London,” 23. 12 Biddle, Hudson, and Heighway, Future of London’s Past. 13 Grimes, Roman and Mediaeval London. 14 There were, for example, fifty-seven consecutive nights of aerial bombardment between September 7 and November 2, 1940, while on December 29 that year the City experienced the most extensive fire since the blaze of 1666: Milne with Cohen, Cripplegate, 1. 15 For an excellent short summary, see Milne with Cohen, Cripplegate, 1–3. For a longer consideration, see Sheldon and Haynes, “Twenty-five Years,” and Morel, Archaeology in Global Cities.

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Shakespeare’s time.16 Since the 1990s it has become routine for the excavation and recording of archaeological remains to precede development. Nevertheless, one wonders what has been lost. The archaeological record, though partial in its survival and partial in its recovery, is extensive. It has a huge potential to reveal so much more of London’s early history, and moreover in a way that written sources, barring the discovery of long-lost documents, are unlikely to replicate.

Roman Beginnings The earliest occupation of the site that became Roman Londinium is dated by some to no earlier than 50 CE. However, London’s role as the administrative center and preeminent settlement in the Roman province of Britannia seems to come slightly later, between 60 and 70, perhaps due to the sack of Colchester, the earlier provincial capital, in Boudicca’s revolt in 60 or 61 (London was also sacked).17 Interestingly, the evidence for early Roman period occupation at London has been read by some as a sign that it was in origin a commercial settlement, an entrepôt, rather as Lundenwic was some six hundred years later to the west of the Roman city; by others, however, this evidence has been taken to indicate a military foundation in the Roman invasion of Britain in 43.18 Besides its location upstream of the Thames Estuary, in itself a major gateway into southern England from Continental Europe, the site of London is relatively unprepossessing. Topographically uninspiring, with relatively little variation in elevation, the area enclosed by the third-century Roman wall (128ha) incorporates a minor river fed by rivulets (the Walbrook) draining southwards into the Thames, as well as large areas of boggy ground initially unsuitable for settlement and exploitation. The eastern part of the walled area retained this character into the late Anglo-Saxon period and was the latest part of the city to be resettled. The late-first-century Cripplegate Fort, whose north-western part lay for many years unrecognized in the outline of London’s city wall, provided a military focus which was subsumed, at least partly, with the development in the third century of a walled encient that was to dictate the extent of the city of late

16 Sheldon and Haynes, “Twenty-five Years,” 5; Bowsher and Miller, The Rose and Globe; Bowsher, Shakespeare’s London, 68–80. 17 Mattingly, An Imperial Possession, 265. 18 Mattingly, An Imperial Possession, 273–75; Perring, “Two Studies on Roman London.”

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Anglo-Saxon, medieval, and later London (Map 1.1).19 The walls of Roman towns and cities now tend to be seen as a symbolic reflection of urbanitas which denotes distinctions between urban and rural identities: the cost and responsibility for erecting walls appears to have been borne by a given town’s population rather than by the state.20

Map 1.1: The topography of London and the Roman city, showing Cripplegate fort, the amphitheater, forum basilica, the principal roads of the Roman period, and the location of the late/sub-Roman martyrium at St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

The relatively early onset of urban decline in Roman London can be observed in terms of an economic downturn, one which followed a spate of devastating fires and a neglect of public buildings and public space, all beginning in the late second century.21 By the end of the third century, major public edifices such as the forum-basilica and amphitheater had passed out of use.22 By the fourth century, much of the intra-mural area appears to have been turned over to agriculture. Presumably this was done to provide an immediate source of sustenance for the smaller number of urban dwellers within the city walls, many of whom were living by that time in large villas but in much less demographically dense occupations overall. Evidently the Roman city wall, including the riverside wall,

19 For an important series of essays on the form and function of the city at this time, see Bird, Hassall, and Sheldon, Interpreting Roman London. 20 Mattingly, An Imperial Possession, 331–32. 21 Mattingly, An Imperial Possession, 334, 338; West and Milne, “Owls in the Basilica.” 22 Mattingly, An Imperial Possession, 336–37.

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remained more or less intact into the early Middle Ages, at least in its outline if not in its verticality, on which I shall say more below. By earlier standards the occupants of the late Roman city lived in a strange place, with ruined elements of a bygone age of classical urbanism as well as large tracts of agricultural land within the city walls: this townscape is revealed dramatically by the Number 1 Poultry excavations in the heart of the city, of which more below. In many ways, the late Roman city of London would have been a dangerous and dilapidated place to live in, not a magnet for folk seeking an urban way of life. Nonetheless, immediately to the west of the walled city some exciting new finds have been made which bring a new perspective to the cultural transformation of Roman to Anglo-Saxon London. These are the remarkable discoveries at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where a late Roman cemetery appears to have continued into the fifth century, possibly as a martyrium and associated shrine, and where two fine blue glass palm cups of seventh-century date were recovered in the eighteenth century.23 These palm cups (probably from a burial, to judge by other graves found nearby and by burials with palm cups from the emporium at Ipswich),24 bear witness to the rejuvenation of London as a center of population, commerce, and production, all within an economic upturn that was enjoyed by much of northern Europe from this period up until the impact of the Vikings in the ninth century; this upturn reconfigured the socioeconomic pattern of the European macro-region.

Early post-Roman London within the Walls The fifth century is a particularly difficult period to understand in London’s history. Elsewhere, owing to well-known problems of scientific dating across the later Roman to early Anglo-Saxon transition,25 this century is marked both by a hiatus in the use of coin for monetary transactions and by the disappearance of readily datable commodities of the kind that were commonplace during the period of Roman occupation. In the two centuries following the latest datable Roman occupations within the walled area, the evidence for activity of any kind is extremely sparse (Map 1.2). Principally it is limited to a few sherds of early Anglo-Saxon

23 Telfer, “New Evidence.” 24 Malcolm and Bowsher, Middle Saxon London, 21, fig. 13: Scull (2009). 25 The C14 calibration curve presents particular difficulties across the fifth and sixth centuries, and the Roman period in general.

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pottery recovered from later contexts from a scatter of sites,26 with a Germanicstyle brooch of fifth-century date from a layer of fallen roof tiles at the Lower Thames Street bath-house and with a sixth- or seventh-century Merovingian-style buckle loop from a twelfth-century context at the Guildhall.27 Three complete pots of northern Frankish origin, dating to the late sixth to early seventh century, which were purportedly found in the western part of the walled area (one from Gresham Street, and one from Christ’s Hospital, Greyfriars, and one from Aldermanbury), may be items from an antiquary’s collection.28 The seeming sparsity of these visits to the former Roman city, evidenced by a few objects here and there, shows that occupation only really began again from around 600 onwards.

Map 1.2: Distribution of select artefacts of fifth- to seventh-century date found in the walled city and the location of St. Paul’s.

The key documented event for the reoccupation, on any scale, of the walled city is the foundation of the monastic community of St. Paul’s in the western end of the walled area in 604. Hot on the heels of the first party of missionaries

26 Vince, Saxon London, 10–12; Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral,” 82 (Table 1). 27 Marsden, Roman London; Evison, “Early Anglo-Saxon Applied Disc Brooches,” 270–71, fig. 2a; Bowsher, Dyson, Holder and Howell, The London Guildhall, 300–301. 28 Vince, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London II, 20; Vince, Saxon London, 11–12, fig. 5; Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral,” 81.

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sent to Kent in 597 was a second, also sent by Pope Gregory, in 601. This party included Mellitus, the first archbishop of the (re)founded diocese of London, and Paulinus, who went on to evangelize in northern England. Gregory’s accompanying letter, in which he outlines instructions for the establishment of two ecclesiastical provinces, one based around London, the other around York, was probably inspired in part by his knowledge of the former importance of these cities in the late Empire, although his plan may also have reflected their contemporary significance (symbolically, politically, or both).29 The initial foundation, assumed quite plausibly to be upon the site of the medieval and later St. Paul’s Cathedral, relied on the political support of the East Saxon and Kentish kings, but lasted only for the reign of the East Saxon king Sæberht (r. 604–616). This king had been a close ally of Æthelberht of Kent (r. 560–616 or 565–618), Augustine’s initial target for conversion. Sæberht’s sons rejected Christianity, as did Æthelberht’s, whereupon Mellitus was expelled. No permanent community at St. Paul’s was reestablished – or at least protected by royal authority – until about 675, when Earconwald, then Abbot of Chertsey, was installed as Bishop of London by Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (r. 668–690). At this time, political power over London was exercised by the East Saxon royal house, who were the first known political entity to affect control over the city after the Roman occupation of Britain: the medieval diocese of London, incorporating Essex, Middlesex, and south-eastern Hertfordshire, is quite probably a reflection of the early East Saxon kingdom to its greatest historical extent.30 A few decades after the initial foundation of St. Paul’s, London became mercantile once more, an entrepôt to the west of the ancient walled city, known to contemporaries as Lundenwic.

Lundenwic As we have seen, the location of middle Anglo-Saxon London was unknown until the 1980s, even though there had long been clear written evidence for its existence in texts which include toll remission charters and Bede’s famous account of Lundenwic as “a mart of many nations.”31 After years of failing to identify the emporium of Bede’s day within the walled area, careful plotting of material culture and discoveries of archaeological features led Martin Biddle and Alan Vince to the dawning realization that Lundenwic, as the name Aldwych had always told us, lay

29 Biddle, “A City in Transition,” 22; Vince, Saxon London, 10. 30 Baker, Cultural Transition, 9. 31 Kelly, “Trading Privileges”; Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica (II.iii).

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not within the walls but to the west of the former walled encient (Map 1.3).32 When the editors of the English Place-Name Society compiled their volume for Middlesex in the 1930s and early 1940s, they interpreted Aldwych as “old dairy farm,” seeing its origin in a rural context.33 Yet the name is noted in a series of sources from the end of the twelfth century, while an “Adwych Lane,” recorded in 1551, survived into later centuries as “Wych Street”: originally the medieval lane – which is almost certainly older – incorporated the Strand as far as St. Giles in Covent Garden.34 The current Aldwych erased the course of its earlier nemesis when it was constructed at the start of the twentieth century, with the name given to it in 1903 by the then London County Council.35

Map 1.3: The relationship between Lundenwic and Lundenburg.

A further toponym, “The Strand,” a name meaning “bank” or “shore,”36 describes an environment perfectly suited to a beach-market, in which shallow draft boats could be easily landed. Indeed, a charter of 951×95937 reveals that the term (strande) was (at least in the tenth century) applied to the north bank of the Thames from the outfall of the River Tyburn at Westminster downstream as far as the outfall of the River Fleet. This stretch of river frontage mirrors the extent of

32 33 34 35 36 37

Biddle, “London on the Strand”; Vince, “The Aldwych.” Gover, Mawer, and Stenton, Place-Names of Middlesex, 166. Gover, Mawer, and Stenton, Place-Names of Middlesex, 185. Gover, Mawer, and Stenton, Place-Names of Middlesex, 166. Smith, Place-Name Elements, 162. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 670.

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seventh- to ninth-century finds on the northern side of the Thames.38 The earliest occupation of Lundenwic is dated by material culture to the earlier seventh century, thus before the founding of Earconwald’s church of St. Paul’s. Lundenwic flourished across the eighth century; its decline at the end of this century resulted in a scatter of settlements along the bank of the Thames to the west of the River Fleet.39 At its maximum extent, this emporium covered an area of about 60 ha. Since the 1980s, a series of excavations has revealed the character of the middle Anglo-Saxon settlement. While most, but by no means all, interventions have been small in scale, they have provided a basis for mapping the limits of the settlement. As with the other English emporia (Ipswich (Gippeswic), Southampton (Hamwic) and York (Eoforwic)), the material culture of Lundenwic reveals links with northern France and particularly the Low Countries, with evidence for a range of industries producing textiles, glass, metal objects, materials of bone, horn and antler, and wooden objects as well.40 On the thorny issue of the chronology and nature of the shift from Lundenwic to Lundenburh, a close reading of the archaeological evidence for the latest occupation of the wic, and of the earliest settlement within the walls of the burh, reveals an unexpected picture. Viking attacks on Lundenwic are recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entries for 842 and 851, but the shift in the focus of settlement was by no means straightforward. On the one hand, we know that Lundenwic was in decline by the end of the eighth century. On the other, the most recent analysis by Victoria Ziegler, based on a close reading of the archaeological sequences, their dating and material culture, presents a convincing case for a hiatus in occupation between the cessation of settlement in Lundenwic from the late eighth into the early ninth century, and the later reemergence of urban (as opposed to ecclesiastical) life within the walled city.41 Ziegler’s investigation focused on the very latest activity in the emporium and earliest evidence from the burh. Her view will be bolstered by conclusions reached in this chapter, that the city was largely devoid of anything approaching dense urban occupation until the later tenth and eleventh centuries.

38 Gover, Mawer, and Stenton, Place-Names of Middlesex, 173, 222–23; Cowie amd Blackmore, Lundenwic, 87 and fig. A1.3. 39 Cowie and Blackmore, Lundenwic, 209. 40 Cowie and Blackmore, Lundenwic, 156–69. 41 Cowie and Blackmore, Lundenwic, 209; Ziegler, “From Wic to Burh.”

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Lundenburg The “Haga” Phase: The Earliest Occupations in the Walled City? A few documented events in the earlier ninth century reveal that, although devoid of an urban mode of occupation, the walled city of London retained significance by virtue of its former status and evidently contemporary appearance. On August 1, 811, the Mercian King Cenwulf (r. 796–821) held a council in London “in loco praeclaro oppidoque regali lundaniae vicu,”42 an interesting turn of phrase that surely refers to the walled encient: the word vicu perhaps in this case applied with its Roman rather than early medieval meaning, as in “in the renowned place and royal burh, in the settlement of London.” Indeed, one of the most spectacular numismatic finds of recent years is the fine gold mancus minted in the name of Cenwulf with the legend IN VICO LVNDONIAE and now exhibited in the British Museum. However, whether this was minted in the emporium or within the walled area is unknown and perhaps dependent on the location of the royal palace at this time.43 In 839 Bishop Helmstan of Winchester “professed” his obedience to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Ceolnoth, “in loco praeclaro antiquorum Romanorum arte constructa vulgoque per tulluris spatia vocitato civitas Lundonia magna” (in the famous place, built by the skill of the ancient Romans, commonly called throughout the whole world the great city of Lundonia).44 Although lacking urban life, the walled area with its monastery and allied settlement clearly had great renown and attracted high-level political engagements. A century earlier, Bede’s varied terminology when referring to London appears also to make a distinction between Lundenwic (his word emporium), London as a capital city (his word metropolis, presumably connoting an area based on the religious community at St. Paul’s), and the walled city as a whole (his word civitas).45 The main point to note here is that it is no longer enough to think of a straightforward shift in focus with regard to the settlement at London. Instead, we must think of a polyfocal arrangement whereby parts of the whole fluctuated in terms of function, importance, and density of occupation.

42 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 168. 43 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_2006-0204-1 44 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, 621–22. 45 For a discussion of Bede’s urban vocabulary for London and more widely, see especially Campbell, “Bede’s Words for Places,” 34–42. I am grateful to John Clark for referring me to this piece.

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Nonetheless, the western part of the walled area may have seen an intermediate phase of occupation. First, a series of finds of pottery from the fifth century through to the ninth has been made on sites mainly to the south of St. Paul’s but also to the north-west.46 The distribution of these mainly middle Anglo-Saxon finds suggests that the focus of settlement and occupation within the walls during this period lay between St. Paul’s and the waterfront to the south (Map 1.4).

Map 1.4: Distribution of select seventh- to ninth-century artefacts, haga, burh, and other potentially middle Anglo-Saxon place-names and features.

The place-name record also supports such a view of earlier Anglo-Saxon occupation in the western part of the city where a series of parcels of land are indicated by names ending in -haga (hedge, enclosure, curtilage) and -burh (enclosure, fortification). A few cursory observations may be offered about this shadowy phase. The middle Anglo-Saxon finds made to date probably represent the beginnings of settlement within the walls, perhaps dependent on the monastery, perhaps part of the monastery, or both, but the haga and burh names appear to reflect the development of estates in both ecclesiastical and secular ownership within the walls. However, the lack of structures and other features suggestive of occupation within the walled area, such as boundaries, latrines, and wells, further indicates a pattern of sparsely occupied parcels of land within the walled area, rather than dense settlement.

46 Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral,” 82 (Table 1).

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First, names of London streets and parishes, those which preserve elements suggestive of social groupings or persons of a middle Anglo-Saxon character (i.e., tribal groupings with ingas-suffixed appellatives, or street or parish names that incorporate personal names attested only in early sources), cluster around the area of Cripplegate fort and immediately north-east of the precinct of St. Paul’s;47 this cluster broadly reflects the distribution of finds of this date. The names in question, like the earliest charters referring to property within the walls, reflect a landed interest in the city by people from well outside its limits. For example, Basinghall Street, which skirts around the eastern side of the Roman amphitheater, and Bassishaw parish, the only parish within the walls which is coterminous with a ward, are names apparently derived from Old English Basingahaga (enclosure of the people of Basing).48 Place-name evidence locates this social group firmly in northern Hampshire; the Basingas were apparently of some significance, given the evidence both for the extent of their heartlands49 and for their implied presence in London at such a seemingly early date. Although the name Basingahaga is only documented from 1180×1190,50 names ending in -ingas are long recognized as signifying medium to large-scale group identities in the very earliest period of supra-local and regional polity formation in Anglo-Saxon England, effectively from the later sixth century to the eighth.51 Contemporary written sources ranging from the notional list of early English “tribal” groupings found in the much-discussed “Tribal Hidage,” of probable late seventh-century date, to the grand narrative provided by Bede of the emergence of the earliest English kingdoms, with other sources in between, reveal a nomenclature for social groups that find examples among the early place-names of the walled city of London. As noted above, it is plausible that the name Bassinghall Street records the Basingas’ early interest in the walled city, potentially as a sub-group of the emerging West Saxon dynasty whose various families were vying for power at this time; their geographical proximity to London perhaps gave them the edge over their more westerly counterparts. The south coast of Hampshire was the location of Hamwic, one of the other major coastal emporia of the middle Anglo-Saxon period and contemporary with Lundenwic, and it might be suggested the “people of Basing” perhaps had active interests in both places. The other haga-names recorded in London are those estates granted by charter in the ninth century, which provide the first incontrovertible evidence

47 Biddle, “A City in Transition,” 23. 48 Ekwall, Street-Names, 94. 49 Eagles, From Roman Civitas, 162–64. 50 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Ninth Report, 44a. 51 On the matter of these groupings, see, for example, Bassett, “In Search of the Origins.”

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of regeneration of life in the walled area of the city. A grant of 857 to Bishop Alhun of Worcester by the Mercian king Burgred of “Ceolmundingahaga in the street of London not far from the west gate” suggests a location for the haga either just inside or outside of Cripplegate Fort.52 Two further charters granting parcels of land along the waterfront south-east of St. Paul’s, one of 889 and the other of 898 or 899,53 have attracted a great deal of scrutiny and commentary from historians and urban topographers, notably Tony Dyson.54 This is particularly because streets and alleys are mentioned as boundary markers, a feature which tallies with the material indicators of middle Anglo-Saxon occupation in this part of the city: both grants have been securely identified with Queenhithe (known as Æthelred’s hythe in the later document).55 The charter of 889 records a grant of land to Wærferth, Bishop of Worcester within the walled city of a parcel named Hwætmundes stan, the enclosed space of an ancient (Roman) stone building (Huggin Hill bathhouse), for the purpose of holding a market.56 This reference suggests yet another enclosure within the walled city and confirms the view provided by excavations in the central area of the walled city of a townscape characterized by Roman ruins in the ninth century (see Number 1 Poultry below). The fact that the 898/99 charter refers to a greater number of streets than the 889 grant suggests that the area saw increased development in the ten years between the two records.57 The granting of land in the period from the late eighth to the ninth century attests to one of the great cultural shifts in tenurial history in England, namely to the transition from grants made almost solely to monasteries, to grants whereby secular individuals increasingly received lands not only by royal bequest but also, as time progressed, by will and sale. It must be significant that the three ninth-century grants considered here were made to ecclesiastics and not to members of the newly emerging secular elite. A further haga-name is that of the people of Staines (20 miles west of London), Staeninghaga, which was granted by Edward the Confessor to Westminster Abbey and is now identified with the parish of St. Mary Staining inside Cripplegate Fort.58

52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 208; Vince, Saxon London, 20. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 346 and S 1628. Dyson, “Two Saxon Land Grants.” Dyson, “Two Saxon Land Grants,” 201–2. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 346; Biddle, “A City in Transition,” 21. Vince, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London, II, 22. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 327–28, S 97; Dyson and Schofield, “Saxon London,” 306–7.

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The street name Lothbury – also the name of a ward in the thirteenth century59 – has also been proposed as a further unit of great antiquity, as “the manor of Lotha’s people or descendants.”60 The name is located a short distance south-east of the Roman amphitheater and resembles that of the Kentish king Hlothere (673–685).61 At any rate, it is the only recorded instance of “Lotha” in Old English.62 The street pattern of Cripplegate Fort was for many years the one element of the Roman street layout which was thought to persist from its initial laying out to the present, in the case of Wood Street; and until the 1960s, in the case of Addle Street and Silver Street, which were erased when the London Wall dual carriageway was constructed.63 However, a fundamental reanalysis of the records of post–World War II excavations has shown that both the south and east walls of the fort were levelled within the Roman period and that the alignments of the medieval churches ignore those of the fort and its original streets. It has been observed that the medieval street pattern diverges from the underlying Roman one the further one moves away from the gates.64 While much has been made in that past about the presence of a royal palace of King Offa of Mercia (757–796) in the fort in the second half of the eighth century, this notion has been conclusively shown to be a myth started by the thirteenth-century writer Matthew Paris.65 The medieval church of St. Alban in Wood Street, in the center of the fort, is now plausibly redated to the early to middle eleventh century on the basis of an archaeological analysis; it cannot have been a middle Anglo-Saxon foundation associated with Offa’s supposed palace.66 Another contender for an early enclosure in the city is the area occupied by the former Roman amphitheater; this feature was only again recognized in the 1980s as a function of excavations below the former Guildhall Art Gallery built in 1886 in the Guildhall Yard.67 Previously an unknown entity, the discovery of London’s Roman amphitheater occasioned much excitement among archaeologists.68 For our present purposes the key issue is that the outline of the amphitheater was evidently visible when certain streets in that part of the city were laid out. Aldermanbury 59 Ekwall, The Street-Names, 196. 60 Dyson and Schofield, “Saxon London,” 310, n. 9; Biddle, “A City in Transition,” 23. 61 Biddle, “A City in Transition,” 23. 62 Ekwall, The Street-Names, 196–97. 63 Tatton-Brown, “Topography of Anglo-Saxon London,” 21. 64 Milne with Cohen, Cripplegate, 122–25. 65 Milne with Dyson, “Saxon Palace at Cripplegate,” 127–29. 66 Cohen, “St. Alban’s, Wood Street,” 91. 67 Bateman, “Discovery of Londinium’s Amphitheatre.” 68 Maloney, “The Guildhall Amphitheatre.”

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(“burh of the ealdormen” (or “ealdorman”)) to the west and Bassinghall Street to the east both markedly curved around its once upstanding remains: excavations have shown that the amphitheater stood to a height of 1.6 m in the late AngloSaxon period.69 Both the haga and burh place-name elements, in combination with the survival of the outline of the amphitheater, suggest a further enclosure of significance in the Anglo-Saxon era, although the name Aldermanbury almost certainly belongs to the Late Saxon period and arguably to the function of the former amphitheater in the tenth and eleventh centuries (see Guildhall Yard below). It is worth remembering that haga-names were still current in the late Saxon period, as exemplified by the terminology of many borough entries in the Domesday Survey of 1086. It remains possible that the late-recorded haganames represent that terminology alone. However, the existence of enclosed spaces within the walls starting in the middle Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the precinct of St. Paul’s, is also a convincing explanation for this name at an earlier time, despite the fact that Grimes’s various Cripplegate excavations revealed no pottery earlier than the later tenth to eleventh centuries.70 It should also be noted that other sociocultural appellatives, such as -ingas names, also persisted late into the Anglo-Saxon period. Significantly, although forty years of rescue archaeology have revealed little evidence of permanent occupation during this formative period, and although there are few pre-Conquest ecclesiastical finds in what must at least in part have been St. Paul’s precinct, two key discoveries hint at the potential of the area to yield valuable evidence. A number of burials (a minimum of thirtyone individuals) found to the north of Wren’s cathedral have been dated by C14 to between the eighth and tenth centuries (773–883 to 894–986 (2 sigma),71 while a ditch, possibly that enclosing the Anglo-Saxon monastery, incorporated an organic filling which provided a C14 determination between the late ninth and mid-twelfth centuries.72 Unfortunately, the redevelopment of Paternoster Square (a substantial area to the north and west of St. Paul’s in the 1990s) revealed only the extent of the degradation of archaeological remains by later developments, with mainly Roman features cut into the natural gravels surviving.

69 Bowsher, Dyson, Holder, and Howell, The London Guildhall, 301. 70 Milne with Cohen, Cripplegate, 122. 71 Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral.” 72 Cowie and Blackmore, Lundenwic, 101; see also, Schofield, St. Paul’s.

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Lundenburh: Renewed Urban Life Rather than dwelling on the nature of occupation at Lundenwic or early St. Paul’s,73 let us consider the emergence of later Anglo-Saxon London as an urban settlement within the walled area of the burh, with all of the characteristics of town life.74 As we have seen, the old hypothesis that the population of the walled city resulted from a wholesale move from Lundenwic, with the threat of Vikings and King Alfred’s reaction to them providing the primary motivation to resettle the walled area,75 is now evidentially weaker than the view that there was a hiatus in urban-type settlement. The business of controlling London had been a central concern of the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex as they competed with each other in the eighth and ninth centuries, before, in the ninth and tenth, Wessex finally bought London within its political orbit. The need to dominate London, on the part of militarized political elites, came again to the fore during the Scandinavian incursions and eventual conquest in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The big question is the chronology of resettlement of the walled city: was this the outcome of Alfredian urban planning, or was it due to the initiatives of either Æthelred or Cnut? The unknowable human agency of a multitude of undocumented citizens must also account for a significant element of the development of the settlement space. As we have already noted, the distribution of finds from within the walled area dating to before the late ninth century is mainly in the western part of the city, west of the Walbrook stream and around the precinct of St. Paul’s, of which the Anglo-Saxon extent(s) are effectively unknown.76 Vince’s analysis revealed a picture of occasional opportunistic visits by rural dwellers to a ruinous urban area: doubtless dangerous, but surely with huge potential for personal or communal economic gains, in terms of the rich resource available for reclamation. One thinks here not of building stone, sculpture, and other high-end building materials – for these barely feature in Anglo-Saxon settlements or burials in the surrounding region – but more of portable material culture such as coin, iron, lead, and other objects with the potential for direct reuse or recycling. Despite claims from some

73 For a fine synthesis of the former, see Cowie and Blackmore, Lundenwic. 74 Defenses, urban-type plots, dense occupation, social and ecclesiastical, hierarchy, minting, commercial activity, production and manufacturing, and so on: see, for example, the list of urban characteristics produced by Martin Biddle, “Towns,” 100. 75 Milne, “King Alfred’s Plan,” 206; Keynes, “King Alfred,” 35. 76 Although a tentative and reasoned case has been put forward on topographical grounds: see Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

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quarters for a strong desire on the part of Anglo-Saxon elites for Romanitas,77 the degree to which Roman material was consciously sidestepped is nothing less than a striking indication, at least in non-ecclesiastical settings, of the stronger socioideological pull of different cultural concerns. Roman building materials feature in the eleventh-century churches of London and region, but with regard to the Roman city it is worth considering what happened to its physical remains. While one site in particular has shown with great clarity how the first occupants of the central area of the walled city negotiated visible Roman townscape (see Number 1 Poultry below), many excavations within the walls (where deposits have not otherwise been destroyed or truncated by later developments) encounter deep accumulations of dark grey silt, known to urban archaeologists throughout post-Roman Europe as “dark earth.”78 The formation processes that resulted in these soils are much debated: some think they originated as a function of cultivation, others from domestic occupations of an ephemeral but persistent nature.79 Cultivation, dumping, and robbing activities are perhaps more likely in view of the fact that the material culture of early medieval Lundenwic and of contemporary rural settlements, those excavated beyond the walled area, is distinctive and durable with buildings of a regular type;80 if the intra-mural dark earths had resulted from settlement, one should expect to find the material culture and structural evidence to go with them. Whatever the mode and period of formation of the city’s dark earths, it is clear that, when occupation beyond the precinct of St. Paul’s began again in earnest in the tenth and eleventh centuries, at least some of the urban area had been cleared of most of its earlier buildings, at least above ground; there is evidence from both place-names and archaeology to support Gustav Milne’s proposal that the dark earth soils beyond the tenth-century core of the settlement were cultivated.81 It remains a fact that a huge quantity of building stone, roof tile, and other associated structural items is still unaccounted for. Even taking into account the effects of Christianization and the ensuing building of churches, there is no satisfactory explanation as to what happened to the built environment of Roman London, or for that matter to many other cities and major constructions

77 See Carver, Birth of a Borough, 143–45, for an exposition of this concept. 78 Horsman, Milne, and Milne, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, 110–11; Macphail, Galinié, and Verhaeghe, “Dark Earth.” 79 Ottaway, Archaeology in British Towns, 71; Milne with Cohen, Cripplegate, 122. 80 See, for example, the many sites of fifth- to ninth-century date drawn together in Cowie and Blackmore, Early and Middle Saxon. 81 See Milne “King Alfred’s Plan,” on the extent of the tenth-century core. On the evidence for cultivation within the walled area, see Milne with Cohen, Cripplegate, 120–22.

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in Britain, unless the late Anglo-Saxon refurbishment of the city wall utilized just such a resource: this is quite possible in the reigns of either Æthelred or Cnut, to judge by the scale of the clearance of Roman buildings at the Number 1 Poultry site (see below).

The Regeneration of Urban Life in the City The great urban surveys of London of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries record a layout that can in large part be traversed today, but it is debatable how far back in time the street pattern that these maps depict can be pushed. The earliest such map, spuriously attributed to the surveyor Ralph Agas (ca. 1540–1621) in the later sixteenth century, was printed from woodblocks now lost;82 however, it was based on an earlier map of ca. 1550, known as the “copperplate map.” No versions of the early “woodblock map” survive, but fortunately a modified version was reprinted in 1633. Minus the imposition of major streets in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the “Agas map” and its derivatives and successors are widely taken to portray the layout of medieval London’s streets. This map still provides the basis for all forays into the shape and form of Anglo-Saxon London (Figure 1.1). We will now assess the range of interpretations on offer for their qualities.

Figure 1.1: The so-called “Agas” map of London of ca. 1561.

The move back to within the walls of the Roman city and the laying out of its network of streets are commonly attributed to King Alfred the Great, in the context of the first Viking Age and his taking of the city – that is, either the walled 82 https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm. Accessed March 3, 2019.

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area or Lundenwic or both – from the Vikings in 886.83 Jeremy Haslam, however, proposes an earlier dating of 879/880 on the basis of his reading of the political situation in southern England at that time.84 This period in London’s history has been widely taken as representative of a wider phenomenon in England: a teleological urban progression from a few large-scale coastal or riverine “urban” emporia to a multiplicity of fortified towns. This view is now questionable, however.85 The remainder of this chapter will suggest that the principal period of London’s growth into an exceptional urban center came later, in the period of Æthelred and Cnut. With little other than early maps of London and earlier documentary evidence for at least some of its streets to work from,86 Brooke and Keir noted the prominence of the principal east–west elements of the urban plan (Cheapside and East Cheap) which form the framework within which many of the city’s roads developed.87 Following early attempts to visualize the layout of Anglo-Saxon London by Mortimer Wheeler and W. F. Grimes,88 Tim Tatton Brown and Gustav Milne offered the first detailed reconstructions of the topography of late Anglo-Saxon London in the 1980s and 1990s, utilizing exactly the kind of data that Brooke and Keir predicted would recast our understanding of Anglo-Saxon London.89 Tatton-Brown’s suggestion, that gridded streets were initially laid out in the area west of Walbrook and immediately east and south of St. Paul’s minster, is supported by dated structures and streets; it reflects the distribution of material culture of seventh- to ninth-century date from within the walled area noted above. This perceptive view has been borne out by the most recent outlines produced by John Schofield, Lyn Blackmore, and David Stocker, and by Mark Burch and Phil Treveil on the basis of more recent archaeological discoveries.90 Milne’s reconstruction of a rectilinear core of planned streets set well within the walled area has remained influential and is well reasoned on the basis of the surviving street pattern in relation to the few archaeologically dated streets (Map 1.5).91

83 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 64 (s.a. 887 [for 886]). 84 The argument assembled by Jeremy Haslam is largely circumstantial: Haslam, “King Alfred, Mercia.” 85 Reynolds, “Spatial Configurations.” 86 Ekwall, The Street-Names. 87 Brooke and Keir, London 800–1216, 171–72. 88 Wheeler, London and the Saxons; Grimes, Roman and Mediaeval London. 89 Tatton-Brown, “Topography of Anglo-Saxon London”; Milne, “King Alfred’s Plan.” 90 Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral”; Burch and Treveil, Poultry and Cheapside, 169 and fig. 144. 91 Milne, “King Alfred’s Plan.”

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Central to Milne’s argument is the notion that a distinct block of rectilinear urban planning is identifiable within the walled area south of Cheapside, bounded to the west by the precinct of St. Paul’s minster, and running east as far as Billingsgate. In drawing together the evidence for the earliest post-Roman development within the walled city, Valerie Horsman, Christine Milne, and Gustav Milne reported that the layout of the former city’s streets and insulae was not followed in the early Middle Ages (nor was it then in Winchester), and that the post-Roman occupations were laid out over fields characterized by deposits of “dark earth” and of the kind observed in so many archaeological sequences in former Roman towns across the former empire.92 Their insightful conclusions of thirty years ago, especially that the morphology of the city’s streets owes little (gateways excepted) to the Roman pattern, has stood up to the subsequent development-led archaeological inquiry and synthesis of their findings that has taken place since.

Map 1.5: Gustav Milne’s reconstruction of London’s street grid in the tenth century (after Milne with Cohen Excavations at Medieval Cripplegate, London, fig. 140).

As for a chronology of settlement within the walls, the place to start is also the fundamentally important study by Horsman and others of buildings and street development at the western end of Cheapside and in the Billingsgate area to

92 Horsman, Milne, and Milne, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, 110–11.

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the east.93 Our first detailed view of the later Anglo-Saxon occupation in London was revealed by much intensive rescue archaeological work in both these parts of the City from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. The sites, seven in all, were dated with reference to ceramic phases numbered 1–6: nos. 1–4 concern us here, in that they cover a date range between the late ninth century (at the very earliest) to the late eleventh.94 That the earliest such phase (1) (Map 1.6a) is as long as a century must be taken into account by anyone trying to argue, like Milne and Haslam, for a concerted reoccupation in the late ninth century.95 Most of the elements attributed to this phase appear to represent a scatter of occupation which in some cases predates streets.96 Presently there is an acknowledged tendency in the study of the past to seek ever earlier origins for particular features or phenomena, but it is worth remembering that the range of London’s Ceramic Phase 1 (from the late ninth century to the late tenth) is broad, with London’s commonest domestic pottery at this time, the so-called Late Saxon Shelley (usually abbreviated to LSS) Ware, dated to between 900 and 1050.97 Taking the results of the Cheapside and Billingsgate analyses together, it is clear that the major horizons for renewed occupations and the construction of cellared buildings belongs to Ceramic Phase 2 (mid-tenth to early eleventh century), Phase 3 (early to mid-eleventh century) and Phase 4 (mid- to late eleventh century): particularly to Phases 2 and 3 (Map 1.6b).98 While the work of Milne and others took place in an environment strongly conditioned by the Winchester excavations and the topographical approach to English towns that resulted,99 it remains true that few streets within London’s walled area may be securely dated to the ninth century: the weight of the evidence leans towards a dating of ca. 900–950 for the earliest occupation along streets in the western part of Milne’s grid, including Bow Lane, Fish Hill Street, and Botolph Lane.100 Whereas Brooke and Keir suggested a pattern of development based upon the principal east–west thoroughfares, Tatton-Brown’s and Milne’s analyses promoted the view of planned rectilinear grids: these perspectives are not mutually exclusive, but actually compatible. The issue of dating of the observed pattern remains central to questions of exactly when the walled

93 Horsman, Milne, and Milne, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I. 94 Horsman, Milne, and Milne, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, 11 and fig. 3. 95 Milne, “King Alfred’s Plan”; Haslam, “The Development of London.” 96 Horsman, Milne, and Milne, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, 112. 97 Vince, Saxon London, 25. 98 See Horsman, Milne, and Milne, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, 114. 99 This approach began with Biddle and Hill, “Late Saxon Planned Towns.” 100 Horsman, Milne, and Milne, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, 110–16.

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Map 1.6: (a) Streets dated to the late ninth to tenth centuries. (b) Streets dated to the eleventh century (after Horsman et al., Aspects of Saxo-Norman London I, figs 109 and 110).

area again became an urban metropolis in the true sense of the expression. Presently, archaeological discoveries allow that certain streets between St. Paul’s and the Thames may have emerged during the ninth century if not earlier. In the main, however, the evidence from earlier excavations points towards the tenth and eleventh centuries as the key period of London’s urban growth, with the period following ca. 1000 as a key phase, now exemplified by new evidence.

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A further view of the development of economic activity within the city is provided by Milne’s synthesis of the development of waterfront structures. This clearly shows that during the tenth century such installations characterize the waterfront between Queenhithe and the outfall of the River Walbrook, whereas their eleventh and twelfth century equivalents extend along the entire length of his proposed early medieval core (Map 1.7).101 Again, the later periods stand out as marking exceptional urban growth (see Bull Wharf below).

Map 1.7: The chronology of waterfront development along the north bank of the River Thames (after Milne, The Port of Medieval London, fig. 7).

New Excavations: New Understandings (Map 1.8) Our understanding of London’s development as a political and mercantile center has increased dramatically in the last two decades as a function of development-led archaeological intervention. The main advances in knowledge, with regard to the dating and morphology of London within the walls, have been provided by large-scale excavations in the city at Number 1 Poultry and at Guildhall, where relationships between post-Roman settlers and the Roman legacy within the walled city have been revealed in intimate detail. These two sites, meticulously

101 Milne, The Port, 19, fig. 7.

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excavated and rich in artefactual and contextual detail, form the leading two case studies of this chapter, for they reveal unparalleled insights into the nature of urban expansion, on the one hand, and on the other, daily life in the city during the period of Æthelred and Cnut. The sequences of occupation revealed by these archaeological endeavours require detailed exposition, as both sites reveal the resurgence of settlement and economic activity in the later tenth and earlier eleventh century, thus squarely within the period with which this volume is concerned. A third key excavation that has been published since Vince’s synthesis is that of the London waterfront within the confines of the walled city at Bull Wharf, which has revealed river-edge activity from the ninth century, although that does not in itself prove urban occupation at this time.

Map 1.8: The location of Number 1 Poultry, Guildhall, and Bull Wharf.

Number 1 Poultry The development of the Poultry site has provided an astonishingly detailed view of a large area in the center of the walled city. The excavations included one extensive open area (A) and a series of spatially related investigations varying in scale, but which altogether describe a study area measuring some 300 m east to west and 200 m north to south. Poultry itself is a road that represents an eastwards extension of Cheapside (a name derived from Old English cēap, meaning “market”), the main market street in the late Anglo-Saxon city and

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beyond, with the main excavations taking place on the south side. As noted above, Cheapside/Poultry forms the northern limit of the suggested rectilinear core. Although Milne and Haslam suggest that this was part of King Alfred’s refoundation of the city, the Poultry investigations reveal that this east–west axis emerged in the tenth century, potentially earlier, but evidently not as part of a concerted effort to resettle this part of the city, and rather as a through-route which attracted intermittent settlement in the form of a few sunken-featured buildings.102 Period 8, Phases 1 and 2 dated to the tenth century (Figure 1.2a), reveal a fascinating insight into the state of the walled area at this time, with upstanding Roman buildings, of which one (Building 64) was partly reutilized to form part of a late tenth-century sunken-featured building (Building 101).103 About 30 m to the north-west a further sunken-featured building (Building 104) had been cut into the Roman street surface. These specific instances, taken together with the discoveries made elsewhere at the Poultry site, indicate the sporadic tenth-century occupation of a still-ruined city, as opposed to a thriving urban revival for which the archaeology again reveals a later chronological horizon.

Figure 1.2a: Number 1 Poultry in the tenth century.

102 Rowsome and Treveil, “Introduction,” 2; Burch and Treveil, Poultry and Cheapside, 20–30 and fig. 14. 103 Burch and Treveil, Poultry and Cheapside, 14 and fig. 13.

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Period 9 is dated to between 1000 and 1050, a chronology arrived at by narrowing the broad date range of LSS pottery by the presence of sandy Thetfordtype Ware.104 This phase is particularly important for us, for it is during this period that Æthelred and Cnut’s engagements with London took place. Divided into two phases of activity, the first (Phase 1) is characterized by evidence for a concerted redevelopment of the area comprising clearance of existing buildings and the consolidation and leveling up of the ground surface by dumping deposits of rubble, mortar, sand, and silt.105 The extent and nature of these activities match exactly the kind of groundwork one might anticipate in advance of a large-scale redevelopment, and this is indeed what followed in Period 9, Phase 2 at the Poultry site (Figure 1.2b). The subsequent laying out of properties along the line of Poultry and a further medieval street, Bucklersbury, reveals a dramatic transformation of the area from a ruinous scatter of occupation to an organized and regular (and presumably regulated) space with dense occupation. The ground to the southwest of Bucklersbury is argued to have retained common access, as it was characterized by dense agglomerations of cess-pits. Nonetheless, although the presence

Figure 1.2b: Number 1 Poultry ca. 1000–1050 (after Burch and Treveil, The Development of Early Medieval and Later Poultry and Cheapside, fig. 13).

104 Burch and Treveil, Poultry and Cheapside, 34. 105 Burch and Treveil, Poultry and Cheapside, 32.

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of both Poultry and Bucklersbury as streets in the tenth century is only an inference, their existence by the early eleventh century is a fact.106 One recent proposition is that the builders of both rural and urban settlements adhered to a rigid system of grid planning based upon regular units of measurement.107 However, it is equally, if not more likely that that the widths of the urban-type plots (defined by buildings aligned end-on to the street frontage) were determined by the standardized extents of houses and other structures at this time, rather than by land surveyors.

Guildhall Yard We have seen that the site of the former amphitheater remained as a distinctive feature within the walled area in the late Anglo-Saxon period, but what was its function or purpose during this time? Following an accumulation of dark earth up to 1 m deep, the first indications of reuse of the space belong to the tenth century, to go by the dating of pottery and other items, including a strap-end and horseshoes of tenth-century type: environmental analyses indicate a grassy environment “improved” with midden dumps containing the remains of foodstuffs both floral and faunal.108 While the remains are seen to represent domestic occupation, it is possible also that they relate to regular gatherings of people, to their provisioning and commercial exchange: all features that might be expected at assemblies. Indeed, shortly after the discovery of the Roman amphitheater, Biddle suggested that the coincidence and remarkably symmetrical location of the early Guildhall on its northern side (perhaps also the location of the Roman Governor’s box) might be more than coincidental (Map 1.9).109 One of the key observations to be drawn from the excavations of the Yard is that the space has effectively remained open ground since the Roman period. Access into the internal area in the tenth and earlier eleventh centuries appears, on the basis of the excavated evidence, to have been not only via the original south entrance, where a metalled surface was recorded, but also via the east entrance, where a late-tenth-century sunken featured building (134) lay on the south side of the point of entrance.110

106 Burch and Treveil, Poultry and Cheapside, 36. 107 The case for standardized units of measurement in both rural and urban settlements in Anglo-Saxon England is in Blair, Building Anglo-Saxon England, 139–76. 108 Bowsher, Dyson, Holder, and Howell, The London Guildhall, 11–14. 109 Biddle, “A City in Transition,” 24. 110 Bowsher, Dyson, Holder, and Howell, The London Guildhall, 13 and fig. 12.

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Map 1.9: The Guildhall amphitheater in the tenth and eleventh centuries; note the ward and parish boundaries (after Bowsher et al., The London Guildhall, fig. 13).

The name Aldermanbury, which, as we have seen, probably means “burh of the ealdormen” (or “ealdorman,” i.e., a senior official, sometimes head of a shire),111 must be significant here. It might be suggested, following Biddle, that

111 Brooke and Keir, London 800–1216, xix.

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London’s ealdormen gathered within the amphitheater for the court known as the Husting, effectively the shire court of London, before the guildhall itself was established in the early twelfth century, when the first reference to “terra Gialle” is found in a survey of St. Paul’s of ca. 1127.112 MnE husting derives from Old Norse húsþing (house assembly), probably from the tenth century; aside from being the word for the conclave that murdered Archbishop Ælfheah in Greenwich in April 1012, OE husting is first found in a charter of 1032×1035.113 Although the term implies a meeting inside a house, an additional sense of the word is “household,” perhaps with a sense of collective identity. The Husting certainly met at the Guildhall from the thirteenth century onwards.114 Perhaps London’s folkmoot also met within the confines of the amphitheater, before it met just to the north of St. Paul’s where the first record of the folkmoot there is also of the early thirteenth century.115 It is also significant that, as with most AngloSaxon assembly places,116 the amphitheater is where boundaries meet, in this case of Bassishaw, Cheap and Cripplegate wards and of the parishes of St. Lawrence Jewry, St. Mary Aldermanbury,, and St. Michael Bassishaw (Map 1.9).117 The finding of a rich variety of organic remains within the amphitheater, including various plants and dung, suggests that between ca. 1050 and ca. 1140 the space was used as a dumping ground, following an intensification of settlement and occupation round about which included the building of the church of St. Lawrence Jewry on the south side of the enclosure.118 This change in use of the space might be attributable to a reconfiguration of the geography of power in London as a function of Edward the Confessor’s move to his new royal palace at Westminster in the mid-eleventh century. It might further be suggested that it was then that what may have been an early eleventh-century palace in this part of the city came to an end, for indications in various written sources suggest a royal presence in the Cripplegate area in the reigns of both Æthelred II (978–1013, 1014–1016) and Cnut (1016–1035). Æthelred’s fourth law code (IV Æthelred, §1) notes the presence of guards at Aldersgate and Cripplegate, presumably by royal license, which implies a palace there, while the claim in the

112 Brooke and Keir, London 800–1216, 281. The wards each had their own courts (wardmotes). 113 ASC (E), ed. Irvine 69 (s.a. 1012): “leaddon hine to heora hustinga” (they led him to their assembly). Brooke and Keir, London 800–1216, 249, n. 5; Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 1465. 114 Biddle, “A City in Transition,” 24. 115 Brooke and Keir, London 800–1216. 116 Pantos, “‘On the Edge of Things’.” 117 Dyson and Schofield, “Saxon London,” 306 and fig. 104. 118 Bowsher, Dyson, Holder, and Howell, The London Guildhall, 19–28.

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Chronicle of John of Worcester (d. 1118)119 of the death of the wayward Eadric Streona, upon Cnut’s orders in the palace at London, that his body was thrown over the city wall, is another indication of a palace within the walls.120 In summary, the later tenth- and earlier eleventh-century activities at the Guildhall site suggest a revival of interest in this location in the period of Kings Æthelred II and Cnut.

Bull Wharf Despite the undoubted significance of the Bull Wharf sequence, it is important to remember that renewed interest in a part of the foreshore within the area of the walled city need not mean, as has been proposed, that there was also settlement within.121 As may have been the case with the two late ninth-century charters discussed above, these waterfront interests and activities may instead be related to preexisting activity associated with St. Paul’s. Indeed, to quote from one of the published papers on the Bull Wharf investigations: “The excavated evidence certainly suggests that until the late tenth century the settlement’s port facilities were rudimentary, with the shelving foreshore, revetted in places, utilized as a trading shore. Most of the intramural area, beyond a relatively small core to the south of Cheapside, remained largely unoccupied.”122 Again, there appears to be very little evidence for King Alfred’s development of London as a planned urban venture. Importantly, Bull Wharf lay just east of Queenhithe and those estates which we have seen were granted to Canterbury and Worcester in the late ninth century. The excavations revealed small amounts of imported pottery from as early as ca. 900, as well as finds of Northumbrian stycas of the mid-ninth century;123 these finds might just as easily be connected with the consumption of exotic commodities by the community of St. Paul’s, as with the reemergence of commercial activity in the city.

119 Sections in these annals, once attributed to Florence (Florentius), are now attributed to John, a fellow monk of Worcester: see Keynes, “Florence,” 188. 120 Whitelock, English Historical Documents, 186. 121 Burch and Treveil, Poultry and Cheapside, 170. 122 Ayre and Wroe-Brown, “Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Waterfront,” 198. 123 Ayre and Wroe-Brown, “Post-Roman Foreshore.”

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London’s Eleventh-Century Churches Besides its urban infrastructure of streets, houses, and properties, eleventh-century London and its immediate environs exhibit ecclesiastical survivals no earlier than that century, in the form of churches with either fabric characteristic of that period or dedications indicative of Scandinavian foundations (Map 1.10). All Hallows-bythe-Tower contains a doorway of tall and narrow type, its voussoirs formed of retrieved Roman tiles typical of earlier eleventh-century constructions and devoid of any Norman Romanesque features: it is the only church to exhibit standing fabric of this date in the city.124 Some 3km north of the former site of Lundenwic and 3.7km north-west of St. Paul’s is the parish church of Old St. Pancras, a small church but with an extensive parish. Though somewhat removed from our core focus, this church contains an archway comparable in many ways with All Hallows-by-the-Tower, while being surely of the same period.125

Map 1.10: Churches with fabric characteristic of the earlier eleventh century (open circles) and dedications indicative of Scandinavian foundations (after Milne with Cohen, Excavations at Medieval Cripplegate, London, fig. 144, with additions).

124 Thomas, Medieval London, 16. 125 Lovell and Marcham, “St. Pancras Old Church,” 72. Both All-Hallows-by-the-Tower and Old St. Pancras remain open to visitors.

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Excavations have also revealed much about the origins of London’s parish churches.126 Immediately west of the city and the Fleet river is St. Bride’s, where underlying the present post-war church are the still-visible remains of the eleventh-century (and later) churches that were excavated by Professor Grimes in his post-war excavation campaign.127 Grimes’s excavations showed the earliest phase of the church to be a two- or three-celled structure, with an apsidal east end which cut into an in-filled pit containing a late-tenth- or earlyeleventh-century pitcher: claims for a late Roman basilica-type church cannot stand in the light of this observation, which was in fact published twenty-five years before Warwick Rodwell’s revisionist version of the sequence.128 It might be suggested that clearance of Roman buildings in the city, to create the kind of regularized urban spaces revealed by the No 1 Poultry excavations, generated a supply of secondhand building materials which were readily employed by builders of the rapidly emerging phenomenon of local churches. These proprietary structures later became parish churches in the twelfth century. Whether, by this time, local people wished to draw upon and reemphasize a sense of Romanitas is perhaps questionable. Instead, it might be wiser to seek a more practical explanation of reuse in this setting, bearing in mind that suitable building stone must otherwise be imported from the surrounding regions. Besides the evidence of excavated and standing fabric, it is possible to view the emergence of neighbourhood churches from the perspective of church dedications. In some cases, we can place the origin of churches specifically in the context of Cnut’s capture of London and the subsequent holding of urban properties by Scandinavians, going by the churches’ dedication to saints popular in in the Viking homelands or by the incorporation in their names of Scandinavian personal names. Foremost among these churches are: five dedications to St. Olaf within the walled city and one further instance in Southwark; St. Bride’s (a corruption of the Irish St. Brigid and almost certainly an import via a Scandinavian connection with Dublin);129 St. Clement Danes further to the west on Aldwych; St. Magnus the Martyr (d. 1115) at northern end of London Bridge; and St. Nicholas Acon, which incorporates a corrupted form of the Scandinavian royal name Hákon.130 We have already noted the evidence for burials of the tenth century from St. Paul’s, but two further pieces of evidence reflecting Scandinavian influence

126 127 128 129 130

See Schofield, “Saxon and Medieval Parish Churches” for a full review. Grimes, Roman and Mediaeval London; Milne, St. Bride’s. Rodwell, “The Role of the Church.” Brooke and Kier, London 800–1216, 139–40. Brooke and Keir, London 800–1216, 138, 141–42.

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require comment here. One is the magnificent tombstone depicting a backwardfacing beast and a serpent in relief, once brightly painted with a variety of colors ranging from blue/black, brown/red, and brown/yellow, and found in St. Paul’s churchyard in 1852 (Figure 1.3 and cover). This exceptional piece is carved in the Scandinavian-influenced Ringerike Style of the first half of the eleventh century; its runic inscription, for which the English reads “Ginna and Toki caused this stone to be laid,”131 places the monument firmly in the context of Cnut’s London. Another grave marker, of late so-called Hogback-type, is also known among the collection of displaced stones from St. Paul’s, but it is apparently of the late eleventh or twelfth century, with provenance insecure;132 perhaps it marked the grave of the child or grandchild of one of Cnut’s followers. Two further fragments of grave covers of the eleventh century, one from St. Paul’s, the other found somewhere in the city before 1884 and now also in the St. Paul’s collection, provide yet further evidence for high-status burial in the city, and for the enrichment of St. Paul’s, during this period.133

Figure 1.3: The eleventh-century St. Paul’s tombstone decorated in the Ringerike style (© Museum of London).

131 Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral,” 79–80. 132 Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral,” 79. 133 Schofield, Blackmore, and Stocker, “St. Paul’s Cathedral,” 79–80.

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The Defense of London in the Second Viking Age Our final matter is the role of London as a fortified settlement in the period of Cnut’s invasion. Leaving aside the historical framework of London’s resistance under Æthelred II and its subsequent capture by Cnut, which will be considered later in this book, it remains to ask what archaeology may reveal about the direct impacts of these events on London’s urban fabric. The evidence so far reviewed shows that the main thrust of London’s urban planning and marked upturn in economic activity fits demonstrably with the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. This is particularly revealed in the coin evidence datable to the period of Cnut.134 It remains to explore the potential of archaeology to contribute to our understanding of the material evidence for the city’s civil defense up to and including the siege and conquest of 1016. Discussions of London’s defense in the face of Viking incursion tend to focus on the bridge and on the listing of Southwark as one of thirty-three fortifications which the Burghal Hidage claims were in existence by the early tenth century. Much less studied, in many ways through the paucity of evidence, is the role of London’s City wall. What state was it in by the late tenth century? How much of its fabric was lost to its civic and private buildings? One thing for certain is that the walled extent of Roman London proved more persistent than its street pattern, which, as we have seen, had very little influence on the Anglo-Saxon and medieval street pattern. As Biddle noted with regard to Winchester, the location of Roman gates remained as a constant, while streets were lost. It is significant, perhaps, that in London the outlines of the two walled encients, that of Cripplegate Fort (in part) and the later City wall, have both left an imprint on the later urban plan-form: this feature surely proves their persistence into the late Saxon period and later. Although no features datable to the Anglo-Saxon period survive in those parts of the City wall that remain above ground, a new comprehensive survey of those remains is highly desirable, for this might yet reveal evidence of the early medieval refortification of London. Careful reanalysis of Grimes’s sections through the sequence of city ditches along the outer northern side of Cripplegate fort, and of the ceramics recovered from them, reveal a ditch cut “perhaps in the tenth century, certainly by the eleventh.”135 The ditch was up to 15 m wide and measured over 1.5 m in depth. Further sections across the late Anglo-Saxon defenses have been recorded at Ludgate Hill, Old Bailey, King Edward Street, and Fore Street.136

134 Naismith, “London and its Mint c. 880–1066.” 135 Milne with Cohen, Cripplegate, 10–11. 136 Cowie, Lundenburgh, 23.

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The record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of a successful attack on the city in 994, by ninety-four ships under the command of King Sveinn Haraldsson of Denmark and Óláfr Tryggvason, later king of Norway,137 indicates that the place was much more poorly defended then than it was by 1009, when the Peterborough Chronicle, showing beyond doubt that London was stoutly defended by walls and people alike in Æthelred’s time, notes the frequency with which the citizens repulsed Viking attackers.138

London Bridge The fate of London’s Roman bridge is much debated. The most recent commentary considers several scenarios: (1) that the bridge was dismantled within the Roman period in a similar fashion to other major public edifices in the city; (2) that its piers at least survived, as the line of the first Anglo-Saxon timber bridge lay to the east of the Roman bridge, perhaps to avoid the ruinous structure; (3) that the Roman bridge piers survived into the late twelfth century when they were removed during the construction of the first stone bridge across the river, known as the Colechurch Bridge.139 Whatever happened to the Roman bridge, it is unlikely to have lasted through the Roman period as a crossing, let alone functioned as one in the sub-Roman period. The law codes issued by Æthelred II and also by Cnut incorporate specific clauses relating to the repair of bridges.140 Aside from these and some sketchy allusions in the verses of eleventh-century skalds, no explicit written evidence for the existence of a bridge at London is first found until the thirteenth-century Óláfs saga Helga (the saga of St. Óláfr) by Snorri Sturluson, in two identical versions (one from ca. 1220 and the other, embodied into the collection known as Heimskringla, from ca. 1235). Snorri here relates certain physical features of the bridge: “there was a bridge there [lit. “bridges,” i.e., jetties joined one to the other] over the river between the city and Southwark so broad that wagons could be driven across it in both directions at once”; also “fortifications, both towers and wooden breast-works on the downstream side,” while “under the bridge were posts, and

137 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 87 (s.a. 994). 138 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 67 (s.a. 1009): “7 oft hi on þa burh Lundene gefuhton, ac si Gode lof þet heo gyt gesund stent, 7 hi þær æfre yfel geferdon”; ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 139 (s.a. 1009): “and they often attacked London town, but praise be to God that it still stands sound, and they always fared badly there.” 139 Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 51. 140 See, for example, V Æthelred § 26; VI Æthelred § 32.3; and II Cnut § 10.

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these stood on the bottom beneath the river” (chap. 12).141 The following chapter says inventively that Óláfr, taking London back for King Æthelred from the Danes, rows his ships under the bridge from downstream, throws chains around the posts, and brings the bridge down by dragging the posts out of position. The earliest archaeological evidence for a built river crossing is rather sketchy. Two ex-situ timbers dated by dendrochronology to 987×1032 come both from the same tree and have been taken to represent baseplates that form part of the southern abutment of a timber bridge of “very late tenth- or early eleventh-century” date.142 It is possible of course, that the timbers were not part of a bridge at all, but elements of a large jetty: the antiquary John Stow related some folklore referring to a ferry in the late eleventh century, whose profitability apparently funded the founding of the Priory of St. Mary Overy in Southwark (now Southwark Cathedral) and the subsequent building of a timber bridge.143 Yet the weight of the evidence, both written and archaeological, reveals that a crossing over the Thames, one which itself formed a barrier to the passage of ships, had become a topographical fixture again for Londoners by the late tenth century or the early eleventh (Map 1.11). Nineteenthcentury finds of Viking axes (some with collars decorated in the Ringerike style of the St. Paul’s tombstone), a grappling hook, and a number of spearheads all at the northern end of the bridge may be related to warfare, to bridge building, or even to votive offerings, given that they appear to represent a coherent collection: John Clark considers these items later in this book.144 It is worth noting that a series of weapon finds of this date in the Thames reveals a long tradition of weapon deposits in this river.145 If the written evidence may be trusted, it was just such a bridge as described above that caused Cnut and his forces in 1016 to cut a channel south of the Southwark bridgehead, in an effort to attack the city from the upstream side.146 Southwark itself, as one of the fortifications listed in the Burghal Hidage, was

141 Heimskringla II: Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 15: “Bryggjur váru þar yfir ána milli borgarinnar ok Súðvirkis svá breiðar, at aka mátti vǫgnum á víxl”; “vígi gǫr, bæði kastalar ok borðþǫk forstreymis”; “En undir bryggjunum váru stafir, ok stóðu þeir niðr grunn í ánni.” Translation here based on Heimskringla, trans. Finlay and Faulkes, II, 15. On the reliability of this and other later narrative Scandinavian sources for this period of history, see Bolton later in this volume, pp. 464–75. 142 Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 57. 143 Survey of London by John Stow, ed. Kingford, II, 56. 144 Wheeler, London and the Saxons, 18. 145 See Reynolds and Semple, “Non-Funerary Weapon Depositions,” for a discussion of this phenomenon. 146 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 101 (s.a. 1016); (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016); (E), ed. Irvine, 73 (s.a. 1016).

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Map 1.11: The position of London Bridge in relation to the city and to the burh at Southwark (after Watson et al., London Bridge, fig. 27).

perhaps first established in the late ninth or early tenth century.147 A section recorded through a 4 m wide ditch on the western side of the southern bridge abutment in 1979, at Hibernia Wharf, is thought to represent the early-eleventhcentury defenses of the bridgehead,148 rather than Cnut’s channel of 1016, which is taken to have carved a path further south through the shallow marshy area south of the river in an attempt to avoid the bridgehead, which would have been defended by Edmund Ironside, son and successor of the recently deceased Æthelred;149 but this is far from certain. Whereas no other physical evidence for Southwark’s defenses is known, Scandinavian literary sources provide an unusually striking level of detail about the Vikings’ occupation and defense of Southwark. Chapter 23 of Óláfs saga Helga relates that (in 1014) the Vikings had “dug large ditches, and made a wall and a road on the inside of wood, stone and turf, and had a great army there.”150 The saga says that these features repelled Æthelred’s forces. An earlier source, the so-named Vikingarvísur, a group of stanzas by Sigvatr Þórðarson which is datable to 1014–1015, further claims that the same Óláfr (later St. Óláfr) Haraldsson attacked London Bridge and that “the Vikings defended the 147 148 149 150

Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 53; Dyson (1990), 110, n. 75. Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 53. See note 146. Hagland, “London Bridge,” 233.

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ditches.”151 In conclusion, it is clear that London Bridge became the focus for both Æthelred’s defense of London and the attempts of this Óláfr, and later Cnut, to take it.

Discussion Although the focus here is on London in the later tenth and earlier eleventh centuries, in the time of Æthelred II and Cnut, her development as a capital city cannot be understood without a longer-term perspective. Documented events, often with chronological accuracy to the year, rarely tally with archaeological strata or with the story that physical evidence has to tell. And yet at the end of the day, although the archaeological perspective differs from that provided by chronicles, charters, skaldic poems, and sagas, it bears strong witness to the density and nature of occupation within the walled city and so works as an additional version of events. Significantly, the war between Æthelred and Cnut is when the archaeology of London really begins to acquire the material qualities that one might expect of an urban place: dense occupation; regular plots of land; the development of street frontages; urban-type housing (buildings end-on to street frontages); latrine pits; proprietary churches for urban and sub-communities; and evidence for mercantile activity in the form of manufacturing and imports, and commercial exchange in the form of coin losses. These categories of evidence are all abundant from the late tenth century onwards, particularly from the early eleventh century. Indeed, it is known that coinage, the most powerful indicator of the rise of London as a commercial hub, reveals a sharper upturn in Cnut’s period than at any time earlier, as Rory Naismith has recently reaffirmed in his analysis of the output of the London mint.152 The finding of a unique hoard of pewter jewelry on the northern side of Cheapside in 1834, opposite the church of St. Mary-le-Bow with its oddly configured crypt of ca. 1100, confirms the existence there of a jeweler’s workshop probably in the earlier eleventh century, perhaps one of the earliest workshops of its kind; the street later became known for its jewelers, into modern times.153 The composition of the hoard is of particular interest. It contains several groups of objects: mainly brooches, finger rings, and slush-cast beads, most of them unfinished; there can

151 Hagland, “London Bridge,” 233. 152 Naismith, Citadel of the Saxons, 65 and fig. 5. 153 Clark, Saxon and Norman London, 22–23; Forsyth, Cheapside Hoard, 20–48.

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be no doubt that the collection of material belonged to a jeweler (Figure 1.4). The hoard also contained an old brooch of tenth- to early eleventh-century type, which finds an exact parallel, in fact a mold-match, with one from Dublin. The cultural influences of the objects in the Cheapside hoard reveal parallels with material from the eastern Baltic and central Europe, which, together with the presence of a brooch with an Irish parallel, strongly indicate a Scandinavian cultural milieu. The hoard may well belong to the period of Cnut’s control of the city.

Figure 1.4: The eleventh-century Cheapside jeweler’s hoard (© Museum of London).

The mapping of London’s church dedications with Scandinavian associations shown above (Map 1.10) also reflects the period during which occupation within the walled area took off on a massive scale beyond the “Alfredian” core,154 whose extent remains debatable. Jeremy Haslam has made a strident case for an unequivocal phase of urban plantation in southern England. He argues that this is attributable to a combination of the defensive and economic concerns of King Alfred in the period immediately following the Viking leader Guthrum’s submission following his defeat at Edington in Wiltshire in 878.155 Despite a distinct lack of archaeological evidence, he suggests that “the plan form of the burhs . . . [including London] . . . shows that from the start their internal spaces were largely filled with burgages or tenements occupied by the inhabitants of the burh.”156 He proposes that in 879 or 880 London “would have been created as a new community within refurbished defences manned by a garrison, in which the new burghal space was reorganised and developed to include a system of planned streets, wharves and markets.”157

154 155 156 157

Milne with Cohen, Cripplegate, 126 and fig. 144. Haslam, “Late Saxon Burhs,” 210. Haslam, “Late Saxon Burhs.” Haslam, “Late Saxon Burhs,” 208.

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However, it is only in the later tenth century that the evidence recovered from the field, the archaeology of organized space in London (and elsewhere), begins to emerge, whereas any explicit evidence for individual plots is mainly a feature of the early eleventh century. It remains difficult to understand why, if one follows Haslam, the spatial organization of his perceived ninth-century Alfredian “urban” venture should lack archaeological visibility, while that of a century later can be charted. Again, in common with many other places that became towns in the Middle Ages in southern England, it appears that urban life was not a feature of such locations, burhs included; only in a handful of exceptional places, such as Lincoln, Oxford, Winchester, and York, do we find it.158 An alternative view is to see the burghal sites as temporarily garrisoned forts, which in many cases later developed into towns during the principal period of post-Roman urban growth in England (and indeed the rest of Europe) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In many respects, the argument for widespread urban development in England in the ninth century was a product of the remarkable discoveries at Winchester, which generated a model that became widely applied in England during the 1970s and 1980s, one with an emphasis on urban morphology as an indicator of urban planning.159 As the former capital city of Wessex, however, Winchester is an exceptional town and the applicability of its findings to places elsewhere is questionable: each place must be assessed on its own terms. London instead appears to fit rather better with the picture of eleventh-century and later urban development in England as this is revealed by archaeology. London fits particularly well with the wider proliferation of towns in Scotland, Wales, and indeed continental and Scandinavian Europe, towns that made such a distinctive contribution to defining the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in those macro-regions. Archaeologists working on urban places in the later twentieth century were heavily influenced by the highly creative and pioneering work of Biddle and, later in association, by David Hill. Biddle’s work on Winchester led to the development of topographically inspired models of formal urban planning which Hill and others sought to apply more widely; these models may be related to a desire to seek origins for English towns calibrated in chronological terms, with the settlements listed in the Burghal Hidage. However, many problems with this view have since crystalised, the more understandings of the English urban sequence have been refined in the light of forty years of development-led archaeology. It also appears likely that Biddle and Hill were inspired to identify comparatively early origins for early medieval towns in England partly by the birth of

158 Reynolds, “Spatial Configurations.” 159 Biddle and Hill, “Late Saxon Planned Towns.”

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medieval archaeology as a distinct sub-discipline within its field; also by a desire to emphasize the fundamental importance of studying the post-Classical world through its material remains. Medieval archaeologists fought hard to secure their position in the intellectual landscape of academe. No more energetically did they do so than in the urban sphere, where the remains of post-Roman occupation had routinely been swept away in pursuit of Roman remains. Given the culturally negative language often used to described post-Roman occupiers – the so-called squatters of the Dark Ages – it is hardly surprising that medieval archaeologists, no less than classicists, sought the kind of “civilised” attributes for the societies they wished to understand. The “wics-to-burhs” model of the trajectory of English urban development had much to commend it; for many years it stood as an entirely workable hypothesis, in view of the information available to those scholars who formulated it. In view of contemporary understandings, however, the more plausible model is now that by the close of the ninth century England possessed only a few more locations with a claim to urbanity than it had a century earlier in the age of the wics. Importantly, the new excavations from London indicate that this town, too, was a “late developer” in terms of becoming a fully urban settlement. If we want to see when London really became a city, a truly urban center with all the attributes commonly accepted as features of such a place, we must accept that the archaeological evidence, whether structural, spatial, or material-cultural, points to the later tenth and early eleventh centuries as the major horizon and as the period when continental trading links with France, the Low Countries, and the Rhineland were revived.160 From the perspective of eleventh-century history based on written sources, this observation then forces us to engage with the “elephant in the room.” Æthelred’s period or Cnut’s? Neither or both? Many more data are required, and indeed will come, but for now, one wonders if the main thrust of urban upturn belongs to Cnut, as might be seen in church dedications and the output of the London mint. To Æthelred might go the honors of an expansion beyond the tenth-century core, refortification of the walls, and the building of the first post-Roman London Bridge.

160 Vince, Aspects of Saxo-Norman London II, 45, 420–21, 432–34.

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Conclusion: Capital of England This review of the archaeology of the city of London suggests that the later tenth century, Æthelred’s time, saw the beginning of London’s transformation into a full-blown city; and that the early eleventh century, Cnut’s time, witnessed a rapid and extensive burgeoning of activity that might be characterized as fully urban and that, moreover, was seen as urban by contemporary European townsfolk of that time and later. In this respect, the findings of archaeology place London alongside Continental, Scandinavian, and wider British developments of urban culture, rather than within an interpretive milieu that insists on an exceptional chronological trajectory for the emergence of English towns. A concept of London as Britain’s preeminent urban metropolis has arguably persisted from the Romans right to the present. While London’s forms of representation varied enormously from being a sprawling metropolis, to the capital of a provincial outpost, to an empty city, to the nation’s capital, still it continued to focus the religious and political attentions of elites across time. Notions of “King Alfred’s London” should be played down: not militarily, but as the easy shorthand for his oft-vaunted role as town planner. Despite these fluctuations in population and interest, the ancient city of London has retained its reputation over two millennia, but it was in the reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut that it truly became exceptional.

Julian M. C. Bowsher

Chapter 2 Coins of Æthelred II and Cnut the Great from London Excavations The thousandth anniversary of the death of Æthelred II and the accession of Cnut the Great in 2016 provided the opportunity for various aspects of late Saxon archaeology, history, and culture to be reexamined. This brief survey offers an interim numismatic view on the events around 1016. The excellent synthesis made by Peter Stott in 1991 of Saxon and Norman coins found in London listed single 14 coins of Æthelred and 18 of Cnut.1 Twenty-five years on we can add 37 new single finds, largely from the increased archaeological activity in the capital though a full synthesis of items lies some way off. The new material presented here comes from published reports, archive lists, and some from recent excavation notes. Indeed, many of the records utilized are brief and not all types, moneyers, or mints have been identified – or listed. This survey does not pretend to be comprehensive and there are undoubtedly many unidentified coins lurking in the archives – particularly from the riverside excavations of the 1970s and 1980s. Coins from unpublished archaeological excavations are mostly referred to by their Site Code – e.g., ARC 12 = Arundel Court 2012, listed at the end of this chapter – and Accession Numbers in < > brackets. The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) or the Early Medieval Coinage (EMC) lists published in the British Numismatic Journal (BNJ) Coin Registers have been scanned for casual coin finds. Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) is embarking on a series of synthetic numismatic approaches for the evaluation of excavated London coins and though the Roman assemblage is by far the largest we will also be looking at later, and earlier, periods.

1 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London.” App 4.1: 311–13, Catalogue of single finds. Not all legible. Acknowledgments: I am grateful to MOLA for prompting me to attend the 2016 UCL conference and for time to research the material. I am also grateful to Gareth Williams (BM) and Rory Naismith (KCL) for advice and information, and to Dan Nesbitt for providing data from the Museum of London archives. Last but not least I am grateful to Richard North (UCL) and the organisers of the 2016 conference. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-003

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London The initial seventh-century Anglo-Saxon occupation on the north bank of the Thames at Lundenwic, located around modern-day Covent Garden, was a mercantile economy dependent on beach markets. By the late ninth century, as Andrew Reynolds has shown earlier, this area had become vulnerable to attack and the community moved back east into Roman Londinium, with its defensive walls, later known as Lundenburh.2 As Reynolds says, later Anglo-Saxon London emerged “as an urban settlement within the walled area of the burh, with all of the characteristics of town life.”3 Reynolds has said that archaeological discoveries in No. 1 Poultry and Guildhall “reveal unparalleled insights into the nature of urban expansion on the one hand and daily life on the other in the city during the period of Æthelred and Cnut.”4 This late Saxon settlement occupied some 30 hectares, from Bull Wharf in the west to Leadenhall in the east and stretching back from the river to present-day Gresham Street.5 By Æthelred’s reign London had become the ipso facto capital of England and was developed as a major port, with new quays. The landing place or harbor of Queenhithe, now the modern inlet on the west side of Bull Wharf (see below), was originally known as Æthelred’s hithe and mentioned in charters of AD 889 and 898–899.6 Excavations within the City of London and along the riverfront since 1991 have produced a small but respectable corpus of Saxon material (see Map 2.1). Moreover, recent numismatic research has refined and clarified the typology and chronology of the coins themselves.7 The reform of Edgar, ca. 973, brought some uniformity to the coinage across a kingdom that had at least 50 mints. The basic coin types were to survive into, and beyond, Æthelred’s reign and the number of mints grew to about 91.8 Each mint had a number of moneyers, with 100 being recorded in London. Only York and Lincoln came near this figure. During Æthelred’s reign (978–1016), London was almost certainly the most important mint, which included the subsidiary mint of Southwark, and was probably the die

2 See Blackmore, “From Beach to Burh.” 3 See Reynolds in this volume, p. 38. 4 See Reynolds in this volume, p. 46. 5 Ayre and Wroe-Brown, “Waterfront and Settlement at Queenhithe,” 198. 6 Ayre and Wroe-Brown, “Waterfront and Settlement at Queenhithe,” 196. 7 For Ælthelred, see Naismith, “The Coinage of Æthelred II”; for Cnut, see Jonsson, “The Coinage of Cnut.” For a wider and more up to date treatment see Naismith, Medieval European Coinage, 261–68 (commentary on Æthelred), 732–56 (catalogue); 269–71 (commentary on Cnut), 758–64 (catalogue). 8 Naismith, “The Coinage of Æthelred II,” 119, 122.

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Map 2.1: Hoards and single coins from Lundenburh. Open circles denote finds listed by Stott 1991, closed circles represent finds made subsequent to 1991. Uncertain “London” or “Thames” and foreshore finds are omitted. Adapted from Ayre & Wroe-Brown “The Eleventhand Twelfth-century Waterfront and Settlement at Queenhithe.” Hoards H1 Honey Lane Market H2 Cornhill H3 St. Martin le Grand H4 Walbrook ARC12 Arundel Court C 1 – not on map) BUF90 Bull Wharf (A 6, C 5) FER97 Plantation Place (A 2) GYE92 Guildhall (C 1) SGA12 Sugar Quay Wharf (A 1) TRN08 Trinity Square (A 1) Vintry (A 8, C 5) (Foreshore / metal detected (A 5, C 2) not marked on map)

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cutting center for mints elsewhere in the country.9 Of his coins found in Scandinavia, “coins from the London mint predominate,” the number being “higher than that of any other individual mint.”10

King Æthelred II (978–1016) A huge number of Æthelred’s coins survive in England, France, Germany, and above all in Scandinavia. Æthelred’s vast coin production may be gauged by the variety of differing, well-dated types, which are made by many mints. Certainly, coin was needed to pay “Danegeld,” but trade with Europe was good and there are a number of contemporary continental coins that have been found in Britain. Within London there are two, or possibly three, hoards from the western part of the City that included coins of this period. The first hoard to be found, in 1837, was a group of eight coins of Æthelred in Honey Lane Market, which was just to the north of the western end of Cheapside. All were Long Cross types (ca. 997–1000) from various mints including two London ones. 11 A hoard found in St. Martin-le-Grand in the 1870s comprised some 60 coins, all Æthelred’s Last Small Cross types (ca. 1009–1016) with the majority coming from the London mint.12 But it has been claimed that the St. Martin’s hoard was actually part of another, much larger hoard known as the Walbrook (or Queen Victoria Street) hoard, found in 1872, albeit some 500 m away! The Walbrook hoard, thought to be in the thousands, comprised coins from around the reign of Æthelred (978–1016) to that of William I (1066–1087), but there were only four Last Small Cross types of Æthelred.13 A small hoard of eight coins found in Cornhill farther east in 1855 included a Last Small Cross of Æthelred, five coins of Cnut (1016–1035), and two of Edward the Confessor (1042–1066).14

9 Naismith, “London and Its Mint c. 880–1066,” 53, 58; Jonsson, “The Coinage of Cnut,” 197. 10 Vince, Saxon London, 115; Naismith, “London and its Mint c. 880–1066,” 57. 11 Dolley, “Three Forgotten English Finds,” 99–102: three mints were recorded in London, one in Bedford, one in Exeter, and one in Stamford. Metcalf, Atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman Coin Finds, 169. Also noted in C. R. Smith, Catalogue, 108 (no. 568). 12 Dolley, “Coin Hoards from the London Area,” 41; Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 292–94. 13 Metcalf, Atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman Coin Finds, 126. 14 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 324. Dolley, “Coin Hoards,” 41.

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In the western part of the city, an unidentified coin of Æthelred was also found in excavations at the old General Post Office site in 1979,15 but more have been found in the eastern part of the City of London. An Agnus Dei type (ca. 1009) was found in Gracechurch Street in the nineteenth century; there are thought to be only 21 examples of this rare coin.16 Just north of Eastcheap, what we would now call a “watching brief” was kept on the construction of Plantation House in the mid-1930s.17 It is clearly from here that an unidentified fragment of Æthelred, listed by Stott, derives.18 When Plantation House was finally demolished in the late 1990s, an archaeological excavation was undertaken before the construction of its replacement Plantation Place. Interestingly, this excavation found a Long Cross type (moneyer and mint unidentified) and a Helmet type (of moneyer Eadwold of London), although they appear to be residual in later deposits.19 Recent excavations at Trinity Square to the south-east have produced a very fine Long Cross type by Brihtlaf of London. Although the site is just north of All Hallows, a late Saxon church in origin, the coin was found mixed with Roman pottery.20 Many coins have been found on riverside excavations, where it was thought that they represented losses associated with busy harbor activities. However, the waterfront was not far south of the Roman riverside wall (roughly on the line of what is now Upper and Lower Thames Street). For the sites discussed below, most Saxon coins were found in later dumps associated with riverside expansion, development, and consolidation. Stott recorded an Æthelred Crux type (ca. 991–997), also by Brihtlaf of London, which was found in the mid-nineteenth century on what was then the City of London foreshore.21 In recent years, many more coins of Æthelred have been found on the modern foreshore, variously described as “London (City),” “London (Thames)” and “Thames foreshore,” mostly by metal detectorists:

15 Old General Post Office (site code POM79); Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 311 (no. 91). 16 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 311 (no. 87); Naismith, Medieval European Coinage, 266. 17 Dunwoodie, Harward and Pitt, An Early Roman Fort, 1. 18 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 311 (no. 90). 19 Clark, “Coins and Jettons,” 116. Nos. and , in Dunwoodie, Harward, and Pitt, An Early Roman Fort. 20 Trinity Square (site code TRN08, unpublished). 21 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 311 (no. 84).

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Long Cross, Æthelwerd of London, found in 199522 Long Cross, Edric of Chester, found in 200523 Last Small Cross, Osgar of Bedford, found in 201224 Last Small Cross, Leofmær of Hereford, found in 201225 Last Small Cross, Godwine of Warminster, found in 201226

The recently published 1990s excavations at Bull Wharf recovered over two hundred coins ranging from Roman to post-medieval; most were found in foreshore deposits or dumps behind timber waterfronts dated to the twelfth century. Six coins of Æthelred were found and recorded in notes by the late Geoff Egan: First Hand, Long Cross, Helmet, Last Small Cross with two unidentified, that is; “rolled up,” “fragmentary.”27 Immediately east of Bull Wharf is the Vintry, where there were partial archaeological excavations,28 but preliminary clearance of the site by machine resulted in the spoil being searched with metal detectors off-site. Although there is no stratigraphic information, there was an impressive haul of some “2,800 coins, jetons and tokens dating from the Roman to early modern periods.”29 Amongst these were six coins of Æthelred.30 Billingsgate, farther downstream, produced a number of coins, though Stott noted that most of those recovered from the “lorry park” area “were incorporated in rubbish dumped at Billingsgate after having been collected elsewhere in the City” and that even the archaeological excavations produced many residual pieces.31 Nevertheless, there were two coins of Æthelred.32 Recent excavations at Sugar Quay Wharf, next to the Tower, have produced a halved and broken Last Small Cross coin of Æthelred, but no further details are available yet.33

22 CR 1995, 243 (no.163). 23 CR 2007, 333 (no. 304; PAS LON-EBBB 44; EMC 2006.0082). 24 CR 2013, 306 (no. A.153; EMC 2012.0186). See EMC App. 25 CR 2013, 306 (no. A.154; EMC 2012.0283). See EMC App. 26 CR 2013, 306 (no. A.156; EMC 2012.0132). See EMC App. 27 Bull Wharf (A 6, C 5; site code BUF90). From Geoff Egan’s unpublished notes: no moneyers or mints recorded. 28 Vintry House, 66–69 Upper Thames Street (both VHY89 and VRY89 are used as site codes). 29 Kelleher and Leins, “Roman, Medieval and Later Coins,” 168. 30 Kelleher and Leins, “Roman, Medieval and Later Coins,” 213 (no. 677: First Small Cross (?imitation, halved); no. 678: First Hand, Brihtric of Exeter; no. 679: London, uncertain; no. 680: Helmet, Norwich?; nos. 681–84: all Last Small Cross – York, Lydford, or Taunton, ?Exeter, Uncertain). 31 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 295. 32 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 311 (no. 85: cut farthing – moneyer or and mint not present; no. 86: Helmet, Æthelm of Chichester). 33 Sugar Quay Wharf (site code SGA12, , [278], unpublished).

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Worn out by war, Æthelred died in April 1016 and was succeeded by his son Edmund Ironside, even while Cnut was chosen to be king at Southampton at about the same time. There were inevitable clashes, but after Cnut’s victory at Assandun, at a meeting at Olney (now Alney) in October, Edmund and Cnut agreed to divide England – although the status of London was uncertain. Edmund died, possibly of wounds, in November 1016 and Cnut was then elected by a war-weary population as king of England.34

Cnut the Great (1016–1035) Cnut inherited a good administration, which he gradually consolidated and stabilised; this was much further centralized on London.35 On becoming king, he promptly levied a tax of £72,000 on England as a whole, with an additional £10,500 on London specifically, possibly as a punishment for London’s hostility.36 Æthelred’s coins, particularly the prolific Last Small Cross type, were still being struck and continued to circulate for a number of years. Moreover, there is no evidence that Edmund struck any coin and Cnut’s first coin, the Quatrefoil type, was only minted about a year later.37 Cnut’s reign is represented by far fewer coin types than Æthelred’s and its output appears to be much smaller. London was clearly now the most important mint in the country and its role as a die-cutting center was emphasized by the discovery at the Thames Exchange site of a reverse die of Cnut’s last coin type, the Short Cross, although the die carried a Norwich mint mark.38 The coins of Cnut from the Walbrook hoard39 (see above) included four Pointed Helmet and three Short Cross types from a variety of mints, with two of the former from London. The remaining four coins bearing the name of Cnut were one Jewel Cross and three Arm and Scepter types thought to be struck relatively by his sons Harold (I) “Harefoot” (in 1036–1037) and Harthacnut (in 1040–1042).40 Stott recorded the five Cnut coins from the Cornhill hoard as one

34 Jonsson, “The Coinage of Cnut,” 193. 35 Jonsson, “The Coinage of Cnut,” 222–23. See also Reynolds in this volume. 36 Jonsson, “The Coinage of Cnut,” 219; Hill, “An Urban Policy for Cnut?,” 103. 37 Jonsson, “The Coinage of Cnut,” 197, 199, 201; Naismith, Medieval European Coinage, 268. 38 78 Thames Street (site code TEX88). Archibald, Lang and Milne, “Four Early Medieval Coin Dies.” 39 Museum of London Database: Nos. 96.63/25–96.63/34, 96.63/240, 96.63/241. 40 Stott listed coins of Harold I as unknown (313, nos. 115–17), but an Arm and Scepter coin of Harthacnut was found on the foreshore near Billingsgate. See Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 313 (no. 118); Naismith, Medieval European Coinage, 270 and note.

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Quatrefoil and four Pointed Helmets.41 There was a Quatrefoil coin of Cnut from the Milk Street excavations42 and later work at the Guildhall site, just to the north, provided a cut Short Cross type, by Aelfwi of Stamford.43 From the riverside area, Stott listed two issues of Cnut in the spoil from the Billingsgate lorry park.44 Later metal-detected coins of Cnut from the foreshore include: Pointed Helmet, Edwine of London, found 200445 Quatrefoil, Bruntat of Lincoln, found 200546

There were five coins of Cnut from the Bull Wharf excavations. However, they were also residual in the twelfth-century deposits, behind waterfront dumps: Pointed Helmet (Ira of York), Short Cross, Short Cross, Short Cross (crumpled), Short Cross (Eadmund of London). There were also five coins of Cnut from the metal-detected Vintry spoil.47 Another recent riverside site, although a little west of the walled city (and closer to Lundenwic), was Arundel Court, which produced Merovingian and early Saxon coins, while there was also one Short Cross of Linfinc of Lincoln.48 Concerning this find, Stott had suggested, although for an earlier period, that Lincoln’s trade may have passed through London.49 However, the Lincoln coin has a small but deep depression on the obverse as though someone was trying to punch a hole through the coin, perhaps for attachment to a necklace or bangle, suggesting that it was obsolete and residual. The Victorian numismatist Charles Roach Smith (1807–1890) is probably best known for dredging coins from the Thames in a “particular locality during the last seven years,” this being the various “London Bridges.” He continued: “Immense quantities of coins have been found in the same locality in the years preceding the period at which I commenced my researches, as well Roman as Saxon and English, both in digging the approaches to the new bridge and in sinking cofferdams for its foundations, all of which have been dispersed without notice.”50 In

41 Of these 5 coins, Stott recorded 3 minted at London, 1 at Lincoln, 1 at Norwich. See FN 14. 42 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 312 (no. 101: Aelfwi, London). 43 Egan, “The Accessioned Finds,” 457 (). 44 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 313 (no. 104; no. 108: Aelfwi, Stamford). 45 CR 2006, 382 (no. 220; PAS LON-1F8030; EMC 2006.0044). 46 CR 2007, 333 (no. 312; PAS LON-EE 2321; EMC 2006.0083). 47 Kelleher and Leins, “Roman, Medieval and Later Coins,” 213 (no. 685: Quatrefoil, Wlancthegn of Leicester; no. 686: Helmet, Crinan of York; no. 687: Helmet, uncertain / Winchester; no. 688: Helmet, Wulfric / uncertain; no. 689: Short Cross, Brihtred of London). 48 Arundel Court (site code ARC12 , [2233], unpublished). 49 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 299. 50 Smith “On the Roman Coins,” 148.

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antiquarian distribution, he noted that “No Saxon coins were mixed with Roman coins.”51 In his privately published catalogue he notes early sceattas of Alfred, Ceowulf, and Eadred, but also noted three coins of Æthelred, and three of Cnut:52 Of Æthelred Crux – Byrhtlaf, London Crux – Alfwold, ?Winchester ?First small cross – Leofnoth, Lewes Of Cnut Short cross – Lod, London Short cross – Wulfred, London Pointed helmet – Edpine (probably for “Edwine), London

This survey has presented 37 new-found coins, 23 of Æthelred and 14 of Cnut. These add to, and slightly alter, the proportions of Stott’s inventory, making a new total of 63. The geographical distribution of both coin periods is markedly similar and concentrated on the riverside sites, which have 21 of Æthelred’s and seven of Cnut’s, rather than on inland sites. However, this bias is diminished by a lack of secure stratigraphy, in that a large number of finds were incorporated in dumps behind new waterfront structures rather than representing activity and losses on the foreshore. The “new” coin finds of Æthelred’s can be broken down by type: First Small Cross First Hand Long Cross Helmet Last Small Cross Unidentified

     

Those of Cnut are Quatrefoil Pointed Helmet Short Cross

  

Interestingly for both reigns, it is the last type that dominates. It may be that they were just the last in a “series of major type changes” that appear to have been

51 Smith “On the Roman Coins,” 155. 52 Smith, Catalogue, 108 (nos. 568, 569).

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common in late Saxon coinage.53 These last types are almost exclusively found in the waterfront dumps, but they are also dominant in the hoards noted above. The hoards indicate that Æthelred’s coinage continued to circulate for many years after 1016, while the dominance of his Last Small Cross coins is universal.54 Stott noted that soon after Edgar’s reform of 973 a “large proportion of the City’s [coin] finds consist of cut fractions, with the amount increasing under Cnut.”55 Alan Vince suggested that this shows “that coins were used for small change, not just transactions”56 in the calmer years after 1016. This is not so prevalent in recent finds, although many of those from Vintry are halved or quartered. Only a couple of Æthelred’s pieces from Bull Wharf and from Plantation Place and Cnut’s coin from Guildhall are cut. Although it is too soon to create a meaningful pattern of mint distribution found in London, some indication may be seen in the meager results. Distribution within the hoards is not so useful, since the dates of deposition are often not exactly known. Nevertheless, the Walbrook hoard (as an example) contained 37 coins of Æthelred II from London and from ten other mints (with no more than four each) mostly to the north of London as well as a few from the south. The coins of Cnut from the same hoard are very different, with only four coins from London (five, if we include Southwark) and the others from six other mints, mostly from north and west of London, with only one coin each. For the new inland site finds, the pattern is largely random losses, while details are poor; two London coins of Æthelred II were found, one at FER97 and the other at TRN08, although both were residual. There were no new coins of Cnut on inland sites. The results from the waterfront excavations as well as the metal-detected pieces show a much wider mint origin, with non-London mints predominating. As waterfronts were potential trading centres, this variety of mints is not surprising, but still the unstratified or residual nature of their finds demands caution. After the traumas suffered by Londoners between 1013 and 1016, one area of stability appears to be the smooth transition of coin use, in which Æthelred’s coins appear to have circulated alongside the new coins of Cnut.57 So far, these new additions largely complement earlier studies, but with further research it is hoped to consolidate the evidence for London’s monetary economy in the late Saxon period.

53 Naismith 2016, The Coinage of Æthelred II, 125, citing the reign of Æthelred; but see ibid., 132 for Cnut. 54 Jonsson, “The Coinage of Cnut,” 199–201; Naismith 2016, The Coinage of Æthelred II, 124. 55 Stott, “Saxon and Norman Coins from London,” 295. 56 Vince, Saxon London, 35. 57 See Lavelle in this volume, pp. 170–78, for the transition.

John Clark

Chapter 3 Early-Eleventh-Century Weapons from the Site of Old London Bridge: A Reassessment In 1920 workmen on a building site at the north end of London Bridge, in the City of London, discovered a group of ancient weapons – battleaxes and spearheads – along with a grappling hook, lying in the silt on what was considered to be the old bed of the River Thames. The weapons were quickly identified as “Viking period” and acquired, in rather mysterious circumstances, by the London Museum. In 1927 they were published in a London Museum catalogue London and the Vikings, the work of the museum’s Keeper, R. E. M. (Mortimer) Wheeler.1 On grounds of typology and the presence of decoration in Scandinavian “Ringerike” style, Wheeler dated the group to the early eleventh century.2 He concluded that the finds “were clearly part of the equipment of some Viking battleship, [and] it is tempting to associate them with one or other of the attacks which, in the days of St. Olaf and King Cnut, centered around the old timber bridge.”3 The finds have been on display, as a group, in the galleries of the London Museum and its successor the Museum of London more or less continuously ever since. However, since Wheeler published his account in 1927, there has been no full discussion of the group, of the circumstances of its discovery, or of its significance. The purpose of this chapter, then, is to reassess these objects, illustrated here in Figure 3.1 from the original London Museum photograph.4 We shall set the discovery in the general context of weapon finds from the Thames and from other rivers, and in the context of its historical period, the wars of the early eleventh century and the accession and reign of King Cnut; we shall consider mechanisms by which these weapons may have found their way into the river, and potential “ritual” motives for their deposition.

1 London Museum, London and the Vikings, 18–23. See also Bjørn and Shetelig (Viking Antiquities, 77), who based their description upon Wheeler’s text. 2 London Museum, London and the Vikings, 21. 3 London Museum, London and the Vikings, 18. 4 I am grateful to Richard Stroud, Museum of London photographer, for his skill in obtaining a usable image from a glass negative that is now more than ninety years old. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-004

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Figure 3.1: Photograph of the finds from Old London Bridge, originally published as the frontispiece to the London Museum catalogue London and the Vikings (1927). The item illustrated top right (described as a pair of tongs) may not belong with the other finds. Photograph © Museum of London.

“Special Deposits in Watery Locations” In 1972 German prehistorian Walter Torbrügge published an extensive and influential study of metalwork finds from rivers in northern and north-western Europe. He concluded that the archaeological evidence indicated that in many cases the items had been deliberately thrown or placed into the river, although the purpose of such depositions could not be determined.5 Although most of the finds that he studied were prehistoric, he extended his coverage into the Roman and early medieval periods. Among his distribution maps of river finds is one showing finds of “Viking” weapons from the River Thames in the vicinity of London.6 Prominently marked on Torbrügge’s map is a “‘ship-find’ [Schiffsfund] 5 Torbrügge, “Flussfunde,” 123. 6 Torbrügge, “Flussfunde,” Beilage 20, 2: “Wikingische Waffenfunde aus der Themse bei London.” For this he drew extensively on the London Museum’s catalogue London and the Vikings.

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with weapons.” Elsewhere, Torbrügge elaborates: “a boat that was discovered in 1927, not far from the Old London Bridge. It must have sunk about the year 1000; there apparently belonged to it eight axes, six spearheads, a pair of tongs, and a boat hook.”7 Sadly, no boat had been discovered – Torbrügge misinterpreted Wheeler’s conclusion that these finds were “part of the equipment of some Viking battleship.” This is not the place in which to attempt a résumé of the debates about the significance of spectacular archaeological finds of all dates (particularly those coming from rivers, springs, marshes, or other wet places) that have in the past been identified as “ritual offerings” or “votive deposits” – although current practice may prefer a neutral term “special deposits.” Richard Bradley provided a thorough survey of the evidence and the issues in 1990, and has recently revisited the topic, setting it within an analysis of the relationships of such deposits to the wider landscape.8 Although much of the early discussion related to prehistoric finds, particularly those of the Bronze Age, as long ago as 1965 David Wilson discussed a number of river finds of late Anglo-Saxon swords, and listed in an appendix thirty-four “swords of the Viking period found in English rivers.”9 Of these he commented: “It is surely odd to interpret all these weapons as casual losses. They are present in such large numbers that it is difficult to see them in any other light than as offerings. Parallel phenomena in different periods would support this argument.”10 In Scandinavia, with great Iron Age deposits of weaponry in marshes or lakes as at Nydam, Illerup, and Vimose in Denmark, with no “Roman period” to interrupt the “Late Iron Age” cultural sequence, and with the late adoption of Christianity, one might well expect to find similarity of practice, if not continuity of purpose, in the later first millennium AD.11 It seemed a reasonable hypothesis that Scandinavian raiders or settlers might bring the practice to Britain. The English evidence for such ritual deposition in the early medieval period has been discussed by Andrew Reynolds and Sarah Semple, Julie Lund, and

7 Torbrügge, “Flussfunde,” 111: “ein Boot, das 1927 nicht weit von der Old London Bridge aufgedeckt wurde. Es muß um das Jahr 1000 gesunken sein, zu ihm gehörten allem Anschein nach acht Äxte, sechs Lanzenspitzen, eine Zange und ein Bootshaken.” 8 Bradley, Passage of Arms and Geography of Offerings; see also Testart, Les armes dans les eaux. 9 Wilson, “Some Neglected Swords,” 52. 10 Wilson, “Some Neglected Swords,” 51. Raffield (“‘River of Knives and Swords’,” 639) similarly feels that “battle detritus and casual loss” are not acceptable explanations for all such finds. 11 Lund, “At the Water’s Edge,” 51–53. John Hines (“Ritual Hoarding,” 202) notes a discontinuity between the latest finds from Scandinavian bogs and the earliest river finds, and suggests they may represent “convergent rather than connected traditions.”

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others.12 Recently Ben Raffield, in a study of the deposition of weapons in English rivers and wetlands in the Viking Age, concluded that it was indeed a ritual practice introduced by pagan Scandinavians to impose their customs upon their new land – although in the case of the River Thames “in an area never subject to Scandinavian settlement” it might represent an “adoption [by Anglo-Saxons] of foreign ritual practice or a return to ancient belief systems.”13 However, John Naylor has considered early medieval finds from the full length of the Thames, from above Oxford to the City of London, and has drawn attention to the presence of many earlier Anglo-Saxon weapons, predating the ninth century – the earlier material comprising largely spearheads, in contrast to the swords and seaxes (single-edged short swords or knives) of the later period.14 As we shall see, Naylor’s statistics are confirmed when we consider finds from the London area. Whatever process resulted in weapons entering the Thames in the early “pagan” Anglo-Saxon period did not cease or necessarily diminish with the coming of Christianity. Nor did it suddenly resume with the arrival of new pagan raiders and settlers in the ninth century. Moreover, to spread the chronological net more widely, in a study of weapon finds from the River Witham in Lincolnshire, David Stocker and Paul Everson have argued that ritual deposition of swords continued as late as the fourteenth century, into a period when one might expect (but does not find) documentary evidence of such a practice.15 Most river finds are necessarily of single objects. For the most part the “ritual deposition” explanation has been offered for those clearly recognized as weapons, although Julie Lund has noted the prevalence of finds of horse equipment, tools, and jewelry as well.16 However, “hoards” of mixed ironwork, including tools and other iron objects alongside weapons, on dry land or waterside sites, formerly often identified as blacksmiths’ collections of scrap metal, are now brought into the debates about “ritual deposition.”17 This may lead us, for example, to question the status of the early medieval carpenters’ axes that have come from the Thames, and that of the two, or perhaps three, items in the group from London Bridge that are not weapons. 12 Reynolds and Semple, “Anglo-Saxon Non-Funerary Weapon Depositions”; Lund, “At the Water’s Edge.” 13 Raffield, “‘River of Knives and Swords’,” 647. 14 Naylor, “Deposition and Hoarding,” 132. Naylor’s listing of Thames finds (139–43) is based largely upon published sources and the records of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. It thus differs to some extent from the Museum of London database from which the statistics in our next section are drawn. 15 Stocker and Everson, “The Straight and Narrow Way.” 16 Lund, “At the Water’s Edge,” 53–54. See also Naylor, “Deposition and Hoarding.” 17 Naylor, “Deposition and Hoarding,” 133–34.

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Medieval Finds from the River Thames Over the years the River Thames, which runs for some 40 miles (65 km) through the Greater London area, has produced a vast number of archaeological and antiquarian finds, from dredging, building, and embankment works, stray finds on the tidal foreshore, and more recently from foreshore searching by metal-detectorists. Most of them are metalwork; they range in date from prehistoric to modern, tend to be in an excellent state of preservation, and are often of the highest quality. Although several museums hold Thames material,18 the most extensive collection of river finds from the London area is that in the Museum of London. Opening in 1976, the Museum of London brought together the collections of the former London Museum and Guildhall Museum, both of which included Thames finds, and has since benefited from the activities of Thames “mudlarks,” the licensed metal-detectorists who report their finds to the museum, now under the terms of the national Portable Antiquities Scheme.19 As curator of the Museum of London’s medieval collection, I had long been aware of the importance of Thames material in that collection, and on my retirement from the museum in 2009 I began a study of those finds and the circumstances of their discovery. Some 2,600 objects out of approximately 15,500 in the core medieval collection of the Museum of London are recorded as coming from the River Thames, and most of them have closer findspots recorded (though these are often vague and/or unreliable).20 The existence of so many records suggested that it might be possible to derive meaningful statistics concerning the types of object, their dates, and the locations in which they were found, and to assess whether there were any patterns that might suggest that at any period or in any circumstances one was dealing with the sort of deliberate deposition recognized by prehistorians. The chronological span of the museum’s medieval collection, from the fifth century to the fifteenth, allowed the comparison of distributions of early and later medieval finds that, for example, Raffield’s period-specific study of “Deposited weapons . . . during the Viking Age” failed to address. Torbrügge and Bradley similarly seem to

18 For example, the British Museum and especially Reading Museum, which houses the Thames Water Collection, the collection of the former Thames Conservancy from dredging and other river works on the non-tidal Thames upstream of Teddington. 19 Burdon, Green, and Smith, “Portable Antiquities.” 20 These figures, and the discussion that follows, are based upon records downloaded from the museum’s central database in summer 2009. They represent a snapshot of the data held at that time, and take no account of additions to the collection or changes in identification or assigned date that may have been made since. In some cases, however, I have corrected findspots or refined the dating.

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have respected an “end-date” of around the year 1000 in their studies. However, Stocker and Everson included later medieval weapons in their study of finds from the River Witham, and suggested the continuation of traditional practices into the Christian period to account for their presence.21 As we have seen, in 1965 Wilson had commented on the prevalence of late Anglo-Saxon/Viking Age swords as river finds: “They are present in such large numbers that it is difficult to see them in any other light than as offerings.”22 One might question just how significant as proof “large numbers” alone can be. The Museum of London collection contains twice as many late medieval swords from the River Thames as it does Viking Age swords – and ten times as many late medieval and sixteenth-century daggers.23 Were there simply more people with weapons who might lose them or cast them away in the later medieval period, and simply more weapons around? Or did whatever practice may be envisaged to have been current among “pagan” Viking invaders and settlers continue into the nominally Christian, later medieval period? Table 3.1: Categories of River Thames finds by period. Category

Early Mid Late Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon (th–th C) (th–th C) (th–th C)

Early Medieval (th–th C)



building 

commerce



























games household



miscellaneous personal items

Late Medieval (th–th C)





21 Evidence from the Museum of London collections, with more weapons of even later dates coming from the Thames than from the Witham (up to and including the sixteenth century), surely justifies Stocker and Everson’s decision to consider the later medieval material from the Witham, though it may cast doubt on their conclusions. The distribution, context, and possible significance of medieval and early modern weapon finds from the Thames are discussed in Clark, “The Sword in the Stream.” 22 Wilson, “Some Neglected Swords,” 51. 23 Clark, “The Sword in the Stream.”

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Table 3.1 (continued) Category

Early Mid Late Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon (th–th C) (th–th C) (th–th C)

Early Medieval (th–th C)

Late Medieval (th–th C)

religion







river (fishing etc)



tools





transport















weaponry











Total:









,

Table 3.1 sets a functional classification of Thames finds against a breakdown of their numbers by date, from “Early Anglo-Saxon” to “Late Medieval.” The large numbers of finds attributed to the latter period, representing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, come chiefly from the area of the medieval city of London; their numbers are heavily boosted by the activities of metal-detectorists who have been searching the river foreshore, largely in this area, for the last forty and more years. Of the categories highlighted in the table, “personal items” comprise chiefly small decorative objects of brass or lead alloy such as jewelry and dress fittings; the majority of the items assigned to “religion” are lead-alloy religious badges and pilgrim souvenirs. Also highlighted is the category “weaponry,” which comprises large numbers from every date within our overall medieval period. The prevalence of weapon finds of all periods from rivers has long been recognised – but must be treated with caution. We may need to allow for a selective bias. Many of these finds come from dredging or are stray finds made on the foreshore by members of the public. Dredger crews might well be attracted to pick out of the bucket something recognisable as a sword, something that might have a resale value, rather than an unidentifiable piece of scrap iron. For example, collector Thomas Layton (1819–1911) of Brentford acquired material from the crews of Thames dredgers between Richmond and Wandsworth, who quickly learned the types of objects that interested him and for which he was willing to pay more.24 Finders, dealers, collectors, and museum curators might

24 Seaton, “Thomas Layton.” The majority of Layton’s collection of antiquities remains on long-term deposit in the Museum of London.

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all be attracted by the “glamor” of weaponry. We do not know what proportion of metalwork was not retrieved or selected for preservation – although the considerable number of non-weapon finds acquired from the City foreshore metal-detectorists since the 1970s may provide a corrective sample. Table 3.2: Medieval weaponry from the River Thames by zone. Zone:















Early Anglo-Saxon















Mid Anglo-Saxon











Late Anglo-Saxon











Early Medieval





Late Medieval













 



 









Key to zones: : Hampton/Kingston upon Thames : Richmond : Kew/Brentford : Hammersmith/Fulham/Wandsworth : Battersea/Chelsea : Lambeth/Westminster : City of London/Southwark : Bermondsey/Limehouse : Greenwich : Newham/Woolwich : Dagenham/Erith

In Table 3.2 the weaponry finds are assigned to nominal zones or stretches of the river, downstream from Hampton to Erith. The area of the medieval city of London and of Southwark (Zone 7) is, not surprisingly, rich in finds from the late Anglo-Saxon period onwards, as the urban center developed; notable, however, is the preponderance of earlier finds in the area between Kew and Wandsworth (Zones 3 and 4). Both these areas are highlighted in the table.25 The relative distribution of weapon finds of the early Anglo-Saxon period (fifth to seventh century – largely the so-called “pagan” period) and the late Anglo-Saxon period (tenth and eleventh centuries – the “Viking wars” to the

25 However, many of them are from Thomas Layton’s collection, and Layton’s interest in this area may bias the sample.

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Norman Conquest) is illustrated in Maps 3.1 and 3.2. The first of these shows only spearheads (which comprise all but a handful of the weapon finds of this date).26 The preponderance of finds from Brentford (more than sixty spearheads, most from a marshy area at the confluence of the River Brent and the Thames) is striking and deserves further exploration.27

Map 3.1: Finds of early Anglo-Saxon spearheads from the Thames in the Museum of London collection.

Map 3.2 shows the much more even spread of finds of weapons – including swords, seaxes, spears and battleaxes – belonging to the tenth and eleventh centuries. Not surprisingly, it resembles Torbrügge’s map of “Viking weapon-finds” referred to earlier.28 There is a notable cluster in the area of the City of London, but finds, usually single items, are spread along the river to Brentford and beyond. How should one interpret such scattered finds? We have noted that, given the “large numbers” of finds of weaponry, there is a temptation to interpret even isolated finds as the result of deliberate deposition,

26 Apart from spearheads, totaling well over a hundred, the only other Thames finds of weaponry in the Museum of London collection that have been dated to the early Anglo-Saxon period are three swords, a seax, two shield bosses, and a decorative shield mount. 27 On the concentration of early Anglo-Saxon finds at Brentford see Clark, “The Sword in the Stream.” 28 One might, of course, question how many of these weapons are “Viking” – that is, Scandinavian weapons wielded by warriors from Scandinavia – and how many are “English,” and at what point in the eleventh century the distinction becomes meaningless.

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Map 3.2: Finds of late Anglo-Saxon/Viking-Age weapons from the Thames in the Museum of London collection.

and to seek to explain this by some form of ritual activity. Yet single weapons could be accidental losses, particularly at crossing points. Even clusters of weapons, if recognisably of the same date, could arguably be relics of a battle at a river crossing. What is surely needed, before we can accept “deliberate deposition” as the default explanation, is confirmation by supplementary evidence. Thus, we might seek evidence of selection – the manner in which spearheads so strikingly outnumber any other weapon in the Brentford area, for example. Or evidence of choice of location and repetition in the same location – again, Brentford, where, to judge by the range of dates of the spearheads found, a similar process of disposal was repeated over more than two hundred years.29 What, then, is the significance of the group of early-eleventh-century weaponry and other ironwork from “Old London Bridge” in the Museum of London?

29 The Museum of London’s dating of Anglo-Saxon spearheads from Brentford and elsewhere was dependent largely on the work of Michael Swanton, published in the 1970s (Swanton, Corpus and Spearheads), and may be overdue for revision.

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The Place and Circumstances of the Find The group of ironwork that is the subject of this chapter was acquired by the then London Museum in 1920. The axes, spears, and grappling hook are listed in sequence in the museum’s original manuscript accessions register with numbers from A23339 to A23353, each with a very brief description, a single measurement, and a date “Viking Period.”30 The first record reads, “Found on Site of Old London Bridge”; the others repeat “Found with last.” Each is noted as “Bought Nov. 1920.” The “tongs” pictured top right in our Figure 3.1 (accession number A23506) were not acquired until several months later – together with two large iron nails. Although also “Found on Site of Old London Bridge,” there is no confirmation from the museum register that these three items were found at the same time or in the same location as the others. There is no further information in the museum’s archives about the circumstances of discovery or the manner of the museum’s acquisition of the items. This was not unusual at the time.31 In 1927 Mortimer Wheeler, then Keeper of the museum, was a little more forthcoming: Some years ago, workmen excavating in the former foreshore of the river, not far from the north end of Old London Bridge, found a number of weapons and tools, sixteen of which are now in the Museum. The implements lay in the alluvium within a narrowly restricted area, and it is all but certain that they form a group.32

Wheeler did not become Keeper until 1926. Where did this information – with the disturbing suggestion that what we have is only part of an originally larger group – come from? A possible source is revealed in another author’s reference to: an interesting find of Viking objects on the foreshore at London Bridge a few years ago, no doubt evidence of one of the raids on London by these folk in the eleventh century. Six Viking axes of iron, two others with decorated bronze tubes to receive the shaft (one of them ornamented with typical Ringerike design), five spear-heads, another with silver plating on the socket with zoomorphic decoration, a grapnel and a pair of smith’s tongs, were all found in a mass.33

This latter account, written in 1929, is by G. F. Lawrence, a London antiquities dealer who from April 1911 was paid a retaining fee to acquire archaeological

30 These register entries seem to have been intended as drafts for the production of labels when the objects went on display. As a result, they are brief and formulaic. 31 For the early history of the London Museum and expenditure on purchases from its rather secretive “Fund,” see Sheppard, Treasury of London’s Past, 69–97, esp. 90–92. 32 London Museum, London and the Vikings, 18. 33 Lawrence, “Antiquities from the Middle Thames,” 93–95.

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specimens for the new London Museum (which opened in 1912), and continued in this role until retiring in 1926, shortly before Wheeler’s appointment as Keeper. Thereafter he occasionally provided material for the London Museum, as well as supplying foreign museums and private collectors.34 Like Thomas Layton before him, he acquired material dredged from the Thames, but as the London Museum’s “Inspector of Excavations,” he also visited London building sites and came to informal (and mutually profitable) arrangements with the workmen to buy any interesting finds they might have made. What has been described as “a somewhat piratical attitude to the acquisition of specimens” unsurprisingly led to the occasional brush with the authorities, particularly over finds made in the City of London.35 The most famous of these involved the Cheapside Hoard, a hoard of seventeenth-century jewelry discovered by workmen on a building site in Cheapside and acquired from them by Lawrence for the London Museum in 1912.36 An unfriendly rivalry developed between Lawrence and staff of the City’s own Guildhall Museum. Lawrence seems not to have been averse to falsifying a findspot to avoid an inconvenient admission that he had no legal right to be on a particular site or to buy finds from the workmen – for in most cases the legal owners of such finds were the landowners. The vast majority of the archaeological finds that entered the London Museum’s collections between 1912 and 1926 passed through Lawrence’s hands, and although in his 1929 article he does not claim any personal responsibility for the Old London Bridge material, and although the relevant entries in the museum accession register are not in his handwriting (unlike many earlier archaeological finds which he entered up in the register himself, sometimes rubber-stamping the entry “Inspector of Excavations”), it is surely inconceivable that he had no involvement in the acquisition of such an important group of finds from the City in 1920. If so, Lawrence must be the ultimate source of the published information about the find. After his official retirement from the London Museum, he remained on reasonably friendly terms with the new Keeper, Mortimer Wheeler. Wheeler would no doubt have discussed the circumstances of the discovery with Lawrence. It is not difficult to guess why he felt constrained to provide a rather imprecise description of its location in his 1927 publication. Indeed, the slight differences between his account and that of Lawrence in 1929 are significant. Lawrence placed the find “on the foreshore at London Bridge.” Although the tidal foreshore was already in the 1920s the legal responsibility of the Port of London Authority, the status of archaeological finds from this area was to remain unclear even in the 1970s, and few would have

34 Macdonald, “Stony Jack.” 35 Macdonald, “Stony Jack,” 245–47. 36 Sheppard, Treasury of London’s Past, 71–72; Forsyth, London’s Lost Jewels, 7–16.

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questioned the London Museum’s right to purchase such items directly from the finders. Lawrence adopted an ambiguous euphemism (for example, was it north or south of the river?), whereas the more professional Wheeler was less circumspect in referring to “workmen excavating in the former foreshore of the river, not far from the north end of Old London Bridge.” And surely Wheeler was more accurate: the discovery was on the former foreshore (that is, on a site that was now land, reclaimed from the river), north of the river, not far from the end of Old London Bridge. And that allows us to identify the area and probably the construction site from which the group of finds came. Thanks to the major waterfront excavations carried out by Guildhall Museum and the Museum of London since the 1970s, it is clear that the strip of land in the City of London between Thames Street and the river, a hundred meters or more in width in some places, is reclaimed land: a sequence of earlier waterfronts and foreshores buried by dumping in a gradual series of encroachments on the river, beginning in the eleventh century and largely complete in the fifteenth century.37 It is in this strip south of Thames Street that we should expect to find the site of the “former foreshore” alluded to by Wheeler. His additional description takes us almost inevitably to one major site – that of Adelaide House, at the north end of modern London Bridge, on the east side of the bridge approach, and including within it the location of the northern end of the medieval bridge.38 Opened in 1925 as the company headquarters of coal-owner, steel magnate, and entrepreneur Richard Tilden Smith, Adelaide House was the first building in the City of London to be erected on a steel frame of the type already familiar in American skyscrapers. Demolition of earlier buildings, clearance of the site and groundworks had begun in 1920, and in April 1921 a complete surviving arch of the medieval stone London Bridge was revealed. A campaign to preserve it in situ or to dismantle the stonework for rebuilding elsewhere failed, and the arch was demolished in October 1922.39 Given the very public and acrimonious debate, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury took a prominent role, one should not be surprised if Wheeler, writing a few years later, did not wish to make it too obvious if he knew or suspected that the London Museum, just a few months before the London Bridge arch came to light, had acquired a major archaeological discovery from the same site – presumably without the knowledge of the site owner, Mr. Tilden Smith, or the contractor, Sir Robert MacAlpine.

37 Milne, Port of Medieval London, 18–28. 38 Bradley and Pevsner, London I, 124, 539. 39 Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 170 – although the authors did not note the first announcement of the discovery that appeared in The Times on April 22, 1921. The history of the campaign to preserve the arch can be traced through subsequent reports and letters in The Times.

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If this was the site, and if the museum register’s reference to “the Site of Old London Bridge” is meaningful, then some relationship between the find and London Bridge itself is a possibility, to which we shall return. However, as we have seen, Wheeler places the find merely “not far from the north end of Old London Bridge.” Although the Adelaide House site included the northern end of the stone bridge and land to the west as far as the approaches to the later, nineteenthcentury, bridge, it extended no further east, and the exact alignment of the wooden bridge or bridges that preceded the building of the stone bridge, begun in 1176, is unclear. Nor do Wheeler’s references to “the former foreshore” and “the alluvium” assist. We are at best seeking to interpret the words of the finders, transmitted by Lawrence and Wheeler. Unrelated as it is to any report of a waterfront structure or timber revetment, and with no hint from Wheeler that such a structure (familiar features on every one of the waterfront excavations since the 1970s) had been noticed, we have no way of knowing whether this “former foreshore” was indeed the tidal foreshore immediately in front of a contemporary waterfront, buried by later dumped deposits, or was an area of the bed of the Thames some distance away from the contemporary shoreline, similarly buried as later medieval reclamation proceeded. Were the items lost, thrown or dropped from the shore, or from the bridge, or even from a vessel some way out in the river?

The Content and Date of the Group What seems certain however, in view of both Lawrence’s and Wheeler’s statements, is that the items (plus others, according to Wheeler) were indeed a “group,” found “in the alluvium within a narrowly restricted area,” or “in a mass.” Wheeler hints that the group as originally found was larger. What happened to the other items? Did the finders decide they were not worth picking up, or retain them themselves, or dispose of them separately? It is now over a hundred years since the original discovery. Are there other items still in private hands or by now even in other museum collections? Have any other items from the original find resurfaced since in the antique arms and armor trade, bereft of any information about their findspot, and their true significance unrecognised? The present contents of the group may not necessarily represent the nature of the whole, as discovered. However, we can reasonably assume that, as with what survives, the majority of the items found were weapons. Moreover, those that survive are weapons of high quality, some of them decorated. Seven of the axe-heads in the group are war axes of Scandinavian type, of Wheeler’s type VI (= Petersen

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type M), a form which Wheeler concluded began “about the year 1000.”40 Wilson suggested that “some of the axes may well have been dropped in the river by workmen repairing or building the bridge.”41 This seems unlikely. The axes are of a form whose function as a weapon has never been doubted – they would not serve well as woodworking tools. They resemble far too closely the axes in the battle scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry to be anything other than weapons, in contrast to the obvious woodsman’s felling axes and the carpenter’s short-handled T-shaped axes portrayed in the Tapestry’s ship-building scene.42 Indeed, the eighth axe from London Bridge seems to be a felling axe, similar to those shown on the Tapestry – in form, weight, and crudity of workmanship it differs from the seven battleaxes. But if there is any doubt about the purpose of the axes, the spearheads confirm that we are dealing with what is largely a group of weapons. Although varying in size, they can all be assigned to Petersen’s type K, which he suggests began in the tenth century and continued in the eleventh.43 Two of the spears have traces of wood preserved in the sockets, but there is nothing to show whether the weapons were still fitted to their shafts when they entered the water. Two items have datable decoration. Two of the axe-heads have brass collars to protect the haft where it enters the socket, and in one case (A23346) this collar has incised decoration (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). The socket of one spear (A23353) is decorated with silver inlay (Figs. 3.4 and 3.5). In both cases the decoration reflects the familiar Scandinavian style known as Ringerike.44 This decoration, consistent with Wheeler’s and Petersen’s dating of the axes and spears, places the objects, and presumably their deposition, somewhere in the first half of the eleventh century.

Explanations The weapons are Scandinavian in both form and decoration, not Anglo-Saxon. They are foreign to the place in which they were found, and we need to consider what circumstances might have brought them to this place. The proposed dating

40 London Museum, London and the Vikings, 25; Petersen, De Norske Vikingesverd, 46–47. 41 Wilson, “Craft and Industry,” 255; repeating an observation made earlier by the same author in “Some Neglected Swords,” 50. 42 Wilson, Bayeux Tapestry, 184–45 (Plates 35, 36: woodsmen’s and shipwrights’ axes); 225 (Plates 62, 64, 65: battleaxes; and battleaxes carried as ceremonial weapons or emblems of authority, Plates 10, 28). 43 Petersen, De Norske Vikingesverd, 31–33, 183. 44 Fuglesang, Ringerike Style, 33, 43, 149–50 (Cat. No. 4), 166–7 (Cat. No. 46).

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Figure 3.2: Axe-head A23346 with decorated brass collar. Photograph © Museum of London.

Figure 3.3: Drawing of axe-head, with detail of decorated brass collar, from London Museum catalogue London and the Vikings, 1927.

to the first half of the eleventh century does not allow us, with certainty, to choose between two possible historical contexts: the period of Danish attacks on London leading up to Cnut’s accession in 1016, or alternatively later in Cnut’s reign when

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Figure 3.4: Spearhead A23353 with decorated socket. Photograph © Museum of London.

Figure 3.5: Drawing of spearhead A23353 with detail of decoration, from London Museum catalogue London and the Vikings, 1927.

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there was a strong Danish presence and influence in London45 – perhaps best illustrated archaeologically by the stone grave-marker, often cited as a classic example of Ringerike-style art, found in St. Paul’s Church Yard in 1852 and now in the Museum of London, with its runic inscription in Old Norse on one edge.46 The grappling hook – four conjoined hooks with a ring to attach a rope – is undatable in itself, but seems to suggest a maritime context, and perhaps inspired Wheeler’s identification of the group as “the equipment of some Viking battleship.” The “tongs” – an unusual form, more like fire tongs than the blacksmith’s tongs with hinged jaws familiar in other medieval contexts47 – are problematic. Lawrence, and after him Wheeler, included the tongs in his account of the group – and they were displayed together in the London Museum, as the photograph reproduced in our Figure 3.1 demonstrates. Yet, as we have seen, the tongs entered the London Museum’s collection several months later, and the two large iron nails acquired at the same time as the tongs seem never to have been thought of as part of the group. It is possible that whoever sold the tongs to the museum, presumably through Lawrence, claimed that they came from the group of weapons. Whether that claim was true is debatable. In any case, the presence of the felling axe seems to confirm that we are dealing with a mixed group, even if weapons predominate. An obvious assumption would be that the weapons represent debris from a battle, and Wheeler wrote: “it is tempting to associate them with one or other of the attacks which, in the days of St. Olaf and King Cnut, centred round the old timber bridge.”48 And, as we have noted, he identified them as “the equipment of some Viking battleship,” although neither he nor Lawrence gives any hint that their informants had seen timbers suggesting the presence of a sunken ship. It would have been tempting, but unwise, to associate the weapons with one particular battle, the famous occasion when, according to Snorri Sturluson, Óláfr Haraldsson (St. Olaf of Norway) attacked the bridge and succeeded in pulling it down, precipitating its defenders into the river (particularly unwise given doubts over the historicity of this event).49 However, it is difficult to envisage a process by which either the armaments of a Viking ship foundering near the bridge or weapons wielded by men standing on the bridge to defend

45 Discussed, for example, by Nightingale, “Court of Husting.” 46 Tweddle, Biddle, and Kjølbje-Biddle, Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, 226–28. See further the cover of this book. 47 Contrast the typical hinged tongs illustrated for example in Goodall, Ironwork in Medieval Britain, 12–13, or Arwidsson and Berg, Mästermyr Find, 14 (Plate 22). 48 London Museum, London and the Vikings, 18. 49 Heimskringla II: Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 13–18. I am grateful to Professor Alison Finlay for advice on the context and significance of Óláfr’s exploit. See further Reynolds in this volume, pp. 57–60.

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it – or falling from it – could have landed so precisely in “a narrowly restricted area” or “a mass” with no other associated equipment or debris. Nor indeed does the close association of so many items suggest accidental loss during battle or a more mundane accident at a river crossing or embarkation point – falling from the bridge or a boat, attempting to ford the river, or unwisely venturing onto the muddy foreshore as the tide was turning. The apparent association with the site of London Bridge may itself be misleading. If we are right in identifying Adelaide House as the location of the finds, then they clearly lay close to, or just upstream of, the northern end of the stone bridge (“Old London Bridge”), built between 1176 and 1209. But earlier bridges did not necessarily lie on the same alignment. It has been argued that the Roman bridge, while its northern abutment was close to that of the medieval stone bridge, reached the south bank at a point further upstream than the medieval bridge.50 On the other hand, on the south bank, timbers found during excavations at Fennings Wharf and dated by dendrochronology to the years around 1000 have been identified as part of the Anglo-Saxon bridge; both these timbers and a later timber caisson structure, probably forming part of a later wooden bridge built in the early twelfth century, lie within the footprint or the immediate area of the stone-built abutment of the 1176 bridge.51 There is no evidence where the northern end of these earlier timber bridges lay.52 Indeed, it has been suggested that a structure found during excavations at New Fresh Wharf, to the east of Adelaide House, a cluster of regularly-spaced vertical timber posts which could be dated to the late tenth or early eleventh century and which was identified by the excavators as the foundations of a jetty, was in fact the northern abutment of a bridge.53 If so, the site where our weapons were found would have been well upstream of the contemporary bridge, and, as long as the bridge was sound and was defended, not readily accessible to Danish attackers from the east and an unlikely place for them to attempt a landing. However, Watson concluded that these timbers “were too flimsy to have formed the foundations for a bridge abutment,” and argued that the stone bridge had deliberately been constructed

50 Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 28–30. 51 Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 74–78. 52 For the argument that an Anglo-Saxon bridge existed long before the earliest archaeological evidence, and on the same alignment as the medieval stone bridge, see Haslam, “The Development of London by King Alfred,” 133–37. 53 Milne, Port of Medieval London, 57–58; Steedman, Dyson, and Schofield, The Bridgehead and Billingsgate, 28–29, 101–4, and cover illustration.

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on the alignment of its timber predecessor, replacing it piecemeal, arch by arch, during a building campaign that lasted more than thirty years.54 If our group of finds was not the result of “accidental loss,” in war or in peace, we need to examine the possibility that it was thrown into the river or laid on the foreshore deliberately. And the identification of the material as “Scandinavian” – the types and forms of the weapons, the nature of the decoration – eases our task. For, as we have noted, there is a long tradition of the “ritual” depositing of weapons in watery places in Scandinavia – and there is now a long tradition among British archaeologists of accepting the reality of such a practice on British rivers in the Viking Age. Although we have doubted the reliability of a claim “river finds are numerous” as prima facie evidence of deliberate deposition, the nature and context of the London Bridge finds seems to imply the selection of good quality weapons and their deposition as a group on a single occasion. We have also seen a growing acceptance that the presence of tools or other ironwork – the felling axe, the grappling hook, and (if they belong) the tongs – alongside weapons need not debar a “hoard” from identification as “ritual deposition.” The motive or rationale of such a ritual (or, to adopt a neutral term, “ceremony”) is a matter for speculation. Here we offer just two possibilities. Julie Lund brought the London Bridge group into a discussion of weapons apparently deposited deliberately at river crossings and bridge sites in Scandinavia, and concluded: “Considering the number of weapons found at crossings in the Scandinavian area, the [London Bridge] hoard is more likely to be the remnants of a ritual deposit.”55 Elsewhere she has enlarged on the evidence for such practices in England, notably at a site at Skerne, East Yorkshire, where amid the timbers of a wooden bridge were discovered a number of iron tools, a sword (of Scandinavian type) datable to the tenth or early eleventh century, and the bones of over twenty animals: “The occurrence of a weapon and tools with the animal bones . . . indicate[s] that a religious ritual – a sacrifice – was intended.”56 No animal bones are recorded from London Bridge – such bones, if found, would probably not have been reported by the workmen. Yet the mixture of weapons and tools leads one to ponder whether we are dealing with a “foundation deposit” of the type envisaged by Lund – part of a ceremony to inaugurate the building of a new bridge, or major repairs to a bridge damaged or “broken down” during the Danish attacks on London. In the excavations at Fennings Wharf, on the south bank of the Thames, the earliest timbers identified as being part of a medieval bridge structure came from a tree that

54 Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 56. 55 Lund, “Thresholds and Passages,” 115. 56 Lund, “At the Water’s Edge,” 55–56.

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(according to tree-ring analysis) was felled between ca. 987 and ca. 1032.57 We can envisage building works taking place following the events of 1016 and the accession of Cnut, when there was a large-scale Danish presence in London. The weapons, then, would attest to the existence of a Danish garrison in or near the city – troops who donated weapons for a ritual they were familiar with in their homeland.58 Alternatively, we can take note of a hint from John Blair, who, commenting on the large number of weapons from the Thames between Oxford and Reading, queried: “Did the English learn from the Vikings a practice of dropping weapons in the river at peace-making or oath-taking ceremonies?”59 The AngloSaxon Chronicle records under the year 1016 not only the momentous agreement between Cnut and Edmund over the partition of the kingdom, but that subsequently “Lundenewaru griðede wið þone here ⁊ heom frið gebohtan, ⁊ se here gebrohton heora scipa on Lundene ⁊ heom wintersetle þærinne namon” (the inhabitants of London made a truce [grið, a Danish loanword] with the raidingarmy and bought peace from them; and the raiding-army brought their ships to London, and took winter-quarters for themselves in there).60 Surely such a truce would warrant recognition in a suitable lavish ceremony. Might it entail the sacrifice to the river by the victors of some of their weapons, close to the bridge that had been the center of so much fierce fighting?

Conclusion: A Dedication? The weapons and other ironwork that were found in 1920 close to the likely site of the eleventh-century London Bridge differ from the generality of river finds of weaponry of this date. The latter are usually single finds, and although there is currently a consensus that many may be examples of ritual deposition, this can rarely be substantiated. We must not dismiss the possibility of accidental loss. The context and nature of the London Bridge discovery, a compact group of related objects that were apparently deposited together at one time, make more acceptable the conclusion that some form of ritual or ceremony was involved. The weapons are Danish (or at least Scandinavian), and although we cannot date them more securely than the first half of the eleventh century, we may speculate about their possible relevance to the events of 1016 and the

57 Watson, Brigham, and Dyson, London Bridge, 57. 58 On the Danish garrison, see Nightingale, “Court of Husting,” 567–70. 59 Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 99. 60 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1016); trans. Swanton, 153 (s.a. 1016).

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accession of King Cnut. We have suggested two possible scenarios. Although London Bridge may not have been pulled down at exactly the time or in exactly the manner described by Snorri Sturluson, his account suggests that at some point in the conflict it was badly damaged. Extensive repairs or rebuilding would have been needed – could the works have been initiated with a Scandinavian-style foundation deposit? Alternatively, perhaps an unrecorded ceremony confirming the truce made between the Londoners and the Danish army in late 1016 involved the deliberate casting of fine weaponry into the river. Both are tempting hypotheses, but, in the absence of written sources that describe such ceremonies, archaeology can only allow us to conjecture.

Simon Keynes

Chapter 4 The Reign of King Æthelred the Unready in Multiple Maps The accompanying series of maps, which will be found at intervals in this chapter, represents an attempt to visualize a framework within which we may begin to understand the unfolding course of events during a long and complex reign, and in this way to maintain a sense of perspective.1 The purpose of any such exercise is to make it easier to follow the events on the ground (for example, when reading the annals in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle); and to be reminded at the same time where significant law codes, coin-types, charters, and other forms of evidence belong in the story as it unfolds. The maps, originally devised as teaching-aids, are unashamedly old-fashioned in appearance; needless to say, much more could be done, by way of historical mapping, with the aid of modern technology. Map 4.1 (980s), covers a period from Æthelred’s accession in 978 (aged about twelve) to the end of the 980s, by which time he would have been approaching his mid-twenties. It was a difficult period, marred by continuing resentment in certain quarters of the impact of the monastic reform movement, accompanied by abuse of church privileges. The death of Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, in 984, was regarded as a point when the young king lost his way, leading to further abuses. The period also saw the resumption of Viking raids along the coasts, which soon came to be regarded as a sign of God’s anger with the English people for their sins. Maps 4.2a (991–994), 4.2b (997–1000), and 4.2c (1001–1005), in combination, cover a complex but critical period of Viking activity in England. It began in the summer of 991, with the arrival of a large force led by Óláfr

1 The example was set by Hill, in Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, 63–71. The maps form part of a series extending from the seventh century to the eleventh, developed over several years for the purposes of university teaching, and were drawn on my behalf by the late Reginald Piggott, of whom there is an account online (Wikipedia); see also Keynes, “Mapping the AngloSaxon Past,” 167. The maps for Æthelred’s reign were deployed as a handout at the London conference “The Siege of London” in 2016 (four maps to each of three pages of an A4 handout). I am grateful to James Kirwan, Digitisation Services Manager, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, for his invaluable help in separating them into twelve. I am also indebted to Alison Finlay and Richard North for giving me the opportunity to make them more widely available. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-005

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Map 4.1: Viking raids in the 980s.

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Map 4.2a: The Viking army in England 991–994.

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Map 4.2b: The Viking army in England 997–1000.

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Map 4.2c: The Viking army in England 1001–1005.

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Tryggvason, accompanied apparently by Sveinn Forkbeard. The death of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth at the Battle of Maldon (August 10, 991) followed soon afterwards. It would appear that a substantial part of the Viking force remained at large in the kingdom for several years thereafter, as raiders, settlers, or mercenaries, and that it was not until 1005 that those who remained active as raiders were finally driven away, not so much by military might as by a serious famine. The period as a whole, however, was significant for many other reasons. Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury (990–994), and his successor Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury (995–1005), seem to have taken forward a program of reform and renewal which found expression in various ways. The business of the kingdom was conducted, and was seen to be conducted, at assemblies convened on perhaps a grander scale than before, leading directly or indirectly to significant activity in various aspects of royal government, religious learning, and literature in Latin and in the vernacular. The presence and therefore the reality of the threat posed by the Viking forces, attended also by heightened concern about the apocalypse, led to intense debate in high circles about the measures required in response, and was accompanied, unsurprisingly, by differences of opinion and the emergence of faction. When the Viking force left England in 1005, two of the king’s closest associates – Æthelmær (in effect, the head of the royal household), and Ordulf (the king’s uncle) – chose to withdraw from life at court, and to “retire” to the monasteries they had founded at Eynsham (Oxfordshire) and at Tavistock (Devon). As it happened, Archbishop Ælfric died at about the same time (November 16, 1005), much lamented by those who knew what he had contributed while in office. Map 4.3 (1006–1007), in one part, and Maps 4.4a (1009–1010), 4.4b (1010), and4.4c (1010–1012), in combination, cover two major Viking invasions which must have had a devastating impact on Æthelred’s kingdom. Map 4.3 begins with a “domestic” upheaval in circles high enough to be mentioned in the Chronicle (with an echo in the Welsh annals), perhaps an expression of faction in high places (in the aftermath of the developments towards the end of 1005). The concentration of such events has the look of a “palace revolution” – one which culminated, perhaps, in 1007 with the appointment of Eadric Streona as ealdorman of the Mercians, finding further expression a few years later in Eadric’s promotion to the primacy over all of the ealdormen. In the summer of 1006 a “great fleet” came to Sandwich, and set about its business, led conceivably by the Tostig who is named on a Swedish runestone of this period as a Viking leader active in England before Thorkell the Tall (in 1009). The Vikings received a large payment of gafol, and apparently stayed over the winter of 1006–1007 in their “sanctuary” on the Isle of Wight, counting their “Helmet” pennies; but one does not know whether they stayed there as a mercenary force, or settled

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Map 4.3: The Viking raid of 1006–1007.

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Map 4.4a: Thorkell’s army in England 1009–1010.

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Map 4.4b: Thorkell’s army in England 1010.

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Map 4.4c: Thorkell’s army in England 1011–1012.

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elsewhere, or returned to their homelands. Map 4.4a (1009–1010) incorporates, top left, two boxes (not to be overlooked) which refer to the significant measures taken by the king and his counselors in 1008, led now by Ælfheah, archbishop of Canterbury (1006–1012), and by Wulfstan, archbishop of York (1002–1023). The emphasis, however, is on the arrival of Thorkell’s army at Sandwich in August 1009, which precipitated at first a “local” peace in Kent, and soon afterwards the remarkable program of prayer devised at an assembly at Bath in the late summer of 1009, associated with the Agnus Dei coinage and the desperate appeal for God’s help. (It was arguably in 1009, rather than 1014 (as stated on the map), that Archbishop Wulfstan first preached his famous Sermo ad Anglos, recycling it thereafter on various occasions.2) The further movements of Thorkell’s army are tracked in Map 4.4b (1010) and Map 4.4c (1011–1012), including the chronicler’s detailed account of the shires which had been devastated by the Danes, and by the martyrdom of Archbishop Ælfheah at Greenwich on April 19, 1012, followed by his burial in St. Paul’s. The two chrismons reproduced on Map 4.4c appear as pictorial invocations on diplomas of King Æthelred dated 1011 and 1012, when Thorkell’s army was at large in Æthelred’s kingdom. They encourage a modern mind to be moved by the desperate appeal for the divine assistance needed to bring the Viking attacks to a close. Maps 4.5 (1013–1014), 4.6 (1014–1015), 4.7 (1015–1016) and 4.8 (1016) cover the fast-moving events and crowded annals of the closing years of Æthelred’s reign, and the short reign of his son Edmund Ironside. As before, in 1006 and 1009, the chosen point of arrival for Sveinn’s fleet, in 1013, was Sandwich in Kent, which would be used again by Cnut in 1015. It is obvious why; but it seems also to unite them all in the same enterprise. One should also notice how Sveinn, in 1013, turned north from Kent to invade the kingdom from his base at Gainsborough on the Trent (Map 4.5), and how Cnut, in 1015, headed west along the south coast to Southampton, and thus conducted a rather different campaign (Map 4.7) There is no substitute, however, for following the movements closely, on the ground, as described at considerable length in the annals for 1013–1016, observing at the same time how the sustained external pressure was only part of the problem for the English. After Sveinn’s death, as king of the English, in February 1014, the English had turned back to King Æthelred, who had taken refuge in Normandy; he soon returned to England, having come to a mutual understanding with his people (Map 4.6). Æthelred’s eldest son Æthelstan became the natural successor; but when Æthelstan died unexpectedly, on June 25, 1014, conflicting political interests were exposed as Edmund

2 For discussion of the date, see Wilcox, “Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos,” 376–83; and Keynes, “An Abbot, an Archbishop, and the Viking Raids,” 203–13.

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Map 4.5: Swein Forkbeard’s invasion 1013–1014.

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Map 4.6: England 1014–1015: Intermission.

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Map 4.7: Cnut’s invasion 1015–1016.

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Map 4.8: Edmund Ironside and Cnut 1016.

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Ironside, and others, sought to secure their own interests, thereby exposing the weaknesses of the kingdom itself (Map 4.7). The final map of the series represents the vigorous campaign waged by Edmund Ironside, as king, against Cnut in 1016; the five occasions when Edmund is said by the chronicler to have fought “with all the English nation” against the Danes stands in sharp and perhaps deliberate contrast with earlier events (Map 4.8). A colored drawing depicting Edmund’s single mounted combat with Cnut, supposed to have taken place at Olney or Alney, near Deerhurst, in Gloucestershire, may be found in Matthew Paris’s Chronica Maiora at the foot of folio 80 verso in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 26.3

3 https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/rf352tc5448.

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Chapter 5 The Æthelredian Fragment of the AngloSaxon Chronicle and the Personality of its Author The so-called Æthelredian Fragment of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, namely the set of entries for 993–1016 which is contained, with minor variations, in the Chronicle manuscripts CDEF, has been studied from different perspectives by many eminent scholars, among them Simon Keynes, Nicholas Brooks, Cecily Clark, and Jonathan Wilcox. No agreement between them has emerged as to the personality of the Fragment’s author, or of his social and political standing or local connections. Long ago Charles Plummer suggested that the entries for 993–1016 were originally written at Canterbury, although, in his words, “the indications are not very sure.”1 Sir Frank Stenton named the author of the Æthelredian Fragment the “monk of Abingdon.”2 Keynes, in his groundbreaking essay “The Declining Reputation of King Æthelred the Unready,” which ought to be the starting point for every discussion on this topic, demonstrated that the author wrote the entries not year by year, as Stenton supposed,3 but in one sitting, presumably in 1016×1023, and more probably early in this period. In Keynes’s opinion the author was a Londoner and had hardly any connections with the king’s court.4 Brooks put forward an alternative hypothesis: that the Æthelredian Fragment was written in ca. 1022 by a priest from the king’s household who was then in Cnut’s service.5 Notwithstanding the plausibility of these arguments, questions remain concerning the personality of the author of the Fragment. This chapter will draw attention to certain features of the text with a view to providing additional arguments on the question. Let us begin with the vocabulary of the text. Cecily Clark observes that the vocabulary of the Æthelredian Fragment “comes from a wider range of registers”6 than the earlier entries and that it contains some borrowings from poetic language; she also notes that “the speculative turn gives the narrative new depth.”7 Keeping 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Two of the Saxon Chronicle Parallel, ed. Plummer, I, cxvi. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 394. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 394. Keynes, “Declining Reputation,” 163–64. Brooks, “Why is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle about Kings?,” 52. Clark, “The Narrative Mode,” 227. Clark, “The Narrative Mode,” 226.-.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-006

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in mind these ideas, it would be useful to look not only at the differences, but also at the similarities between the Fragment and the earlier entries in the Chronicle. It is worth noting that the author’s vocabulary contains some borrowings from the Chronicle’s entries of the end of the ninth century. As Jacqueline Stodnick has pointed out, the text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle includes some “formulas” which were used for describing repeated situations and events.8 For example, she notes the consistent use of the formula “[name] forðferde and . . . [other name] feng to rice (or biscopdome)” to describe the succession of secular as well as of religious leaders, including kings, bishops, and archbishops.9 As might be seen from the quotations presented below (in my Appendix 1), the author of the Æthelredian Fragment used some formulas from the “Alfredian Chronicle.”10 In the entries for 998 and 1016 we find the formula “sige ahte” (had the victory) or its variant “sige nam” (took the victory), which appears eleven times in the “common stock” (that is, in annals 800, 823, 837, 845, 853, 854, 871, 872, 886, 891, 894). In the entries for 992 and 1001 we see the formula “micel wæl ofslogon” (there was great slaughter); its variant “micel wæl (ge)feol” (great slaughter befell) appears in the entries 1004 and 1016; both of them occur in the “Alfredian Chronicle” (592, 823, 833, 837, 839, 845, 853, 868, 872 (twice)). In the entries 999 and 1010 the formula “ahton wælstowe geweald” (had the possession of the place of slaughter) is used, which is present seven times in the “Alfredian Chronicle” (833, 837, 839, 845, 853 (twice), 868 and 872 (twice)). It is worth noting that in the earlier part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the formula “ahton wælstowe geweald” is used only in the descriptions of severe battles, those in which the Anglo-Saxons were defeated. It does not seem coincidental that in the Æthelredian Fragment this formula occurs only in connection with two steadfast, albeit unsuccessful, efforts of the Anglo-Saxons to withstand the enemy: in Kent in 999 and in Cambridgeshire in 1010. In the Peterborough entry for 999 we read: Her com se here eft abutan into Temese ⁊ wendon þa up andlang Medewægan ⁊ to Hrofeceastre, ⁊ com þa seo centisce fyrde þær ongean, ⁊ hi þær fæste togedere fengon, ac wala þet hi to hraðe bugon ⁊ flugon forþam þe hi næfdon fultum þhi habban sceoldan. Þa Deniscan ahton wælstowe geweald, ⁊ namon þa hors ⁊ ridan swa wider swa hi woldon sylf ⁊ fornæh ealle Weastcentingas fordydon ⁊ forheregodon.11

8 Stodnick, “Sentence to Story.” Such “formulas” and their functions in the Chronicle’s narrative formed the basis of my PhD thesis “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as the historical narrative.” 9 Stodnick, “Sentence to Story,” 102. 10 That is, the “common stock” and the entries 891–896. 11 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 63 (s.a. 999).

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[Here the raiding-army again came round into the Thames, and then turned up along the Medway to Rochester. And then the Kentish army came against them, and there they determinedly joined battle; but alas! they too quickly submitted and fled, because they did not have the help they should have had; then the Danes had possession of the place of slaughter and took horses and rode as widely as they themselves wanted, and destroyed and plundered well nigh all the men of West Kent.]12

In the entry for 1010: Þone fleam ærest astealde Þurcytel Myranheafod, ⁊ þa Dæniscan ahton wælstowe geweald ⁊ þær wurdon gehorsode ⁊ syþþan ahton Eastengle geweald, ⁊ þone eard .iii. monþas hergodon ⁊ bærndon.13 [It was Thurcytel Mare’s-Head that first started the flight, and the Danes had possession of the place of slaughter, and then were horsed and thereafter had possession of East Anglia, and for three months raided and burned that country.]14

This phrasing may be compared, for example, with the Winchester entry for 837: ⁊ þy ilcan geare gefeaht Æþelhelm dux wið deniscne here on Port mid Dornsætun ⁊ gode hwile þone here gefliemde, ⁊ þa Deniscan ahton wælstowe geweald ⁊ þone aldormon ofslogan.15 [And the same year Ealdorman Æthelhelm fought against a Danish raiding-army on Portland with the Dorset men, and for a good while they put the raiding-army to flight – and the Danes had possession of the place of slaughter and killed the ealdorman.]16

The author of the Æthelredian Fragment also uses the collocation “se here” to describe the Vikings’ army, the same appellative as was used in the “Alfredian Chronicle.” What these features probably imply is that the author of the Æthelredian Fragment was well acquainted with the previous text of the Chronicle. Moreover, he knew it well enough to manipulate quotations from the “Alfredian Chronicle” with a certain irony, in order to achieve his own aims. Thus, while describing yet another failed effort to fight the Vikings in the entry for 1009 (CD), the author takes the “positive” formula “sige nam” and inverts it: “næs se sige na betera þe eall angelcynn to hopode” (that victory which all England hoped for was never better [than this]).17 In the Peterborough manuscript (E) we read, “næs se ege na betera þe eall Angelcynn tohopode”

12 13 14 15 16 17

Based on ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 131, 133 (s.a. 999). ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 68 (s.a. 1010). ASC, trans. Swanton, 140 (s.a. 1010). ASC (A), ed. Bately, 43 (s.a. 837). ASC, trans. Swanton, 62 (s.a. 837). ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 54 (s.a. 1009).

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(that terror which all England hoped for was never better [than this]).18 This phrase seems not without sense, but it is less expressive or meaningful than the text in versions CD, presumably because the scribe of E, who copied his text in the 1120s, did not understand the irony of its contemporary author. In the Peterborough entry for 1014 the author writes of the decision of the king’s councilors to summon Æthelred, who had fled to Normandy, asking him to return: Þa geræddan þa witan ealle, ge hadode ge læwede, þet man æfter þam cyninge Æþelrede sende, ⁊ cwædon þet him nan hlaford leofra nære þonne hiora gecynda hlaford gif he hi rihtlicor healdan wolde þonne he ær dyde.19 [Then all the councilors, both ordained and lay, advised that the king Æthelred should be sent for and declared that no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would govern them more justly than he did before.]20

It is interesting that the first part of the phrase repeats almost word for word the phrase from the story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard, which, though of 786, is contained in the annal for 755. In this story, when Cynewulf’s rival and slayer addresses the followers of the murdered king with a new proposition, they reject him bravely as follows: ⁊ þa gebead he him hiera agenne dom feos ⁊ londes gif hie him þæs rices uþon, ⁊ him cyðdon þæt hiera mægas him mid wæron þa þe him from noldon, ⁊ þa cwædon hie þæt him nænig mæg leofra nære ðonne hiera hlaford ⁊ hie næfre his banan folgian noldon.21 [And then he offered them their own choice of money and land if they would grant him the kingdom, and told them that relatives of theirs were with him who did not want to leave him; and then they said that no relative was dearer to them than their lord, and they would never follow his slayer.]22

It might thus be reasonable to suppose that the author of the Æthelredian Fragment intentionally presents the address of the witan as a reminiscence of the heroic speech of the warriors of an earlier epoch. If so, his aim was surely to make an ironic contrast with the following clause, in which the warriors ask the king to govern more justly than before, since this clause is incompatible with the kingship that would justify heroic ideals of loyalty to one’s lord.

18 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 67 (s.a. 1009). 19 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 71 (s.a. 1014). 20 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 145 (s.a. 1014). 21 ASC (A), ed. Bately, 37 (s.a. 755). 22 ASC (A), trans. Swanton, 48 (s.a. 755).

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To clarify further the personality of the author of the Æthelredian Fragment, it may be instructive to examine the list of persons he mentions in different contexts (see Appendix 2). As a rule, the persons mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are identified in some way by the authors of the entries in which their names occur. The common practice is the identification through name and “office”; more rarely, this is by name and ties of kinship. Contrary to this common usage, the author of the Æthelredian Fragment cites a number of people without giving any indication of their standing or family ties. In the entry for 993, he names, without any identification, Fræna, Godwine, and Frithegist, men who have fled from battle with the Vikings. Although we can only guess who they were, it is highly likely that these were persons with northern connections, for just before the description of the battle it is said that the Vikings wrought great harm there both in Lindsey and in Northumbria.23 Here it may be supposed that Godwine is the same ealdorman Godwine whose death in the battle is reported in the entry for 1016, and who was supposedly ealdorman of Lindsey. Ulfcytel, ealdorman of East Anglia, is mentioned three times by name only, twice in 1004 and once in 1016; only once, in the report of his death in 1016, is he named Ulfcytel of the East Angles. There are also no indications of the standing of Wulfgeat, Wulfeah, and Ufegeat, who were victims of what Keynes has called the “palace revolution” of 1006.24 Another victim of these events was Ælfhelm, whom the author of the Æthelredian Fragment identifies as an ealdorman. According to Keynes, Ælfhelm was made ealdorman of Northumbria (or South Northumbria) in 993.25 According to the not wholly reliable twelfth-century evidence of John of Worcester, Wulfeah and Ufegeat were the sons of Ælfhelm.26 If so, we have a second indication that these were persons with northern connections. To these names we may add that of Wulfgeat, who, though not blinded like the others, “wæs eall his are of genumen” (was deprived of his honor).27 Keynes, on the basis of the twelfth-century Chronicle of John of Worcester, identifies Wulfgeat with the man whose unjust forfeitures of monastic lands are the subject of charters S 918 (s.a. 1008) and S 934 (s.a. 1015); as well as with the “dilectus minister” (dear retainer) of S 937 (s.a. 999?).28 However, it seems just as likely that Wulfgeat, who witnessed the king’s charters regularly from 986 to 1005, may be identified with the owner of

23 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 127 (s.a. 993). 24 Keynes, “The Diplomas,” 211. 25 Keynes, “The Diplomas,” 197, 210–11. 26 Keynes, “The Diplomas,” 211. 27 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 65 (s.a. 1006). Here the word “ar” (honor) may also refer to “estates” or “territory”: see ASC (E), ed. Swanton, 136, n. 5 (s.a. 1006). 28 Keynes, The Diplomas, 210.

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the land in Cambridgeshire to whom reference is made in S 1448 (s.a. 986).29 If this is the case, Wulfgeat was a member of the East Anglian nobility. In the story of the battle of the East Angles with the Vikings in 1010, two further people are mentioned by name only: Oswig, who fell in this battle, and Þurcytel Myranheafod (Mare’s-Head), who fled the battlefield. It may or may not be true that this Oswig was the son-in-law of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, who was killed at Maldon;30 and Þurcytel Myranheafod may or may not be identical with the Þurcytel from East Anglia who bequeathed lands to Bury St. Edmunds sometime between 1020 and 1038.31 In any case, the location of this battle in 1010 makes it highly likely that these men also belonged to the East Anglian nobility. In this way, it may be seen that almost all of the people cited without identification in the Æthelredian Fragment have some affiliations either with Northumbria, East Anglia, the East Midlands, or with the king’s court.32 There are two possible explanations for their lack of attributes. One is that the author or the source he used lacked the necessary information. The other possibility is that the author and his presumed readership or audience knew these men well enough to understand who they were without the aid of attributes. My third area of inquiry relating to the author of the Æthelredian Fragment is an apparent resemblance in attitude between the author of the Æthelredian Fragment and Archbishop Wulfstan. The Chronicler certainly shares Wulfstan’s indignation at the evils done by his countrymen, but in essence his mood is different. For Wulfstan, the situation in England is first and foremost the consequence of the people’s sins, such as their transgressions against God’s Commandments and their violation of the rights and privileges of the Church. Wulfstan views moral failure as the cause of the recent political disorder: “Understandað eac georne þæt deofol þas þeode nu fela geara dwelode to swyþe, ⁊ þæt lytle getreowþa wæran mid mannum, þeah hy wel spræcan”33 (Understand well too that the Devil has now led this nation too far astray for many years, and there has been little loyalty among men, though they might speak well).34 The misfortunes of war are due not so much to cowardice and the weakness of Englishmen as to God’s wrath:

29 For this part of my research, I am greatly indebted to the digital projects “The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE)” (http://www.pase.ac.uk/) and “The Electronic Sawyer” (http://www.esawyer.org.uk/). 30 Dickins, “The Day of Byrhtnoth’s Death,” 15–17. 31 See PASE in note 29. 32 The last unidentified person is Ælmær Deorling, who in 1016 fought for Cnut against Edmund Ironside. His identification is very problematic; here this question is put to one side. 33 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. Whitelock, 33–34. 34 “The Word of the ‘Wolf,’” trans. Liuzza, 196.

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Ful earhlice laga ⁊ scandlice nydgyld þurh Godes yrre us syn gemæne; understande se þe cunne. ⁊ fela ungelimpa gelimpð þysse þeode oft ⁊ gelome: ne dohte hit nu lange inne ne ute. Ac wæs here ⁊ hete on gewelhwilcan ende, oft ⁊ gelome, ⁊ Engle nu lange eal sigelease ⁊ to swyþe geyrigde þurh Godes yrre. ⁊ flotmen swa strange þurh Godes þafunge, þæt oft on gefeohte anfeseð tyne, ⁊ twegen oft twentig, ⁊ hwilum læs hwilum ma, eal for urum synnum.35 [Utterly shameful laws and disgraceful tributes are common among us, because of God’s anger, let him understand it who is able; and many misfortunes befall this nation time and again. For a long time now nothing has prospered at home or abroad, but there has been devastation and hatred in every region time and again, and for a long time now the English have been entirely without victory, and too much disheartened through God’s wrath, and the pirates so strong through God’s consent, that often in battle one drives away ten, and two often drive away twenty, sometimes less and sometimes more, all because of our sins.]36

In Wulfstan’s opinion the only means to improve the situation is to return to Christian morals and piety. At the end of the sermon, he calls on the English: Uton don swa us þearf is gebugan to rihte ⁊ be suman dæle unriht forlætan, ⁊ betan swyþe georne þæt we ær brecan. ⁊ utan God lufian ⁊ Godes lagum fylgean, ⁊ gelæstan swyþe georne þæt þæt we behetan þa þe fulluht underfengan, oððon þa þe æt fulluhte ure forespecan wæran, ⁊ utan word & weorc rihtlice fadian, ⁊ ure in geþanc clænsian georne, ⁊ að & wed wærlice healdan, ⁊ sume getrywða habban us betweonan butan uncræftan. ⁊ utan gelome understandan þone miclam Dom þe we ealle to sculon ⁊ beorgan us georne wið þone weallendan bryne helle wites, ⁊ geearnian us þa mærþa ⁊ þa myrhða þe God hæfð gegearwod þam þe his willan on worolde gewyrcað.37 [Let us do what is necessary for us – bow to justice and in some measure abandon injustice, and repair carefully what we have broken; and let us love God and follow God’s laws, and earnestly practice what we promised when we received baptism, or those who were our sponsors at baptism; and let us arrange our words and deeds rightly, and cleanse our conscience thoroughly, and carefully keep oaths and pledges, and have some faith between ourselves without deceit. And let us frequently consider the great judgment to which we all must come, and eagerly defend ourselves against the surging fires of the torments of hell, and earn for ourselves the glories and delights which God has prepared for those who do his will in the world.]38

In order to overcome these calamities, the Archbishop proposes the upholding of civil and religious laws, the uprooting of iniquities, the ceasing of violence, and the fear of God. What is missing from his sermon here, however, is a reference to the people’s duty to fight the Vikings and to defend their country. The author of the Æthelredian Fragment views the same situation differently. He reproaches the Anglo-Saxons not for their moral failings or for their violations of

35 36 37 38

Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. Whitelock, 44–45. “The Word of the ‘Wolf,’” trans. Liuzza, 199. Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. Whitelock, 52. “The Word of the ‘Wolf,’” trans. Liuzza, 202.

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the Church’s rights, but for their reluctance to go into battle. As we have already seen, there are some traces of irony in his text, one of which consists of the repeated reference to reflections of the king and his witan on the means of defense. In the entry for 1006 he writes: “Agan se cyng georne to smeagenne wiþ his witan hwet heom eallum rædlicost þuhte þet man þissum eared gebeorgan mihte ær he mid ealle fordon wurþe”39 (The king began to plan earnestly with his councilors as to what they all thought most advisable as to how his country might be protected, before it was entirely done for).40 And again, in the entry for 1010: “Þonne bead man ealle witan to cynge and man þonne rædan scolde hu man þisne eard werian sceolde”41 (Then all the councilors were ordered to the king, and it had then to be decided how this country should be defended).42 In this description, the king and his councilors “decide,” instead of fighting the enemy. It seems not improbable that here the author is mocking Wulfstan’s mode of thought, which was mirrored in Æthelred’s laws prescribing the same things as were proposed at the end of Sermo Lupi.43 The author observes that the ealdormen have no wish to defend the land (1006, 1009, 1012). There is a dark irony in his comment in the entry for 1012 that men of Scandinavian earl Thorkell the Tall promised the king “þet hi woldon þisne eard healdan and he hi fedan scolde and scrydan”44 (that they would guard this country, and he would feed and clothe them).45 The whole style of the narrative changes when the author begins to describe Edmund Ironside’s expeditions against the Vikings after his coronation. Here he does not repeat the same words or phrases, nor use any poetic words; his narrative is more simply and clearer, sometimes resembling the “Alfredian Chronicle.” Þa gesomnode Eadmund cyng .iiii. siþe ealle Eangla þeode and ferde ofer Temese to Brentforda and ferde innan Cent and se here him flean beforan mid hira horsa into Sceapige, and se cyng ofsloh heora swa feala swa he offran mihte.46 [Then for the fourth time King Edmund assembled the entire English nation and travelled over the Thames at Brentford, and travelled into Kent, and the raiding-army fled before him with their horses into Sheppey, and the king killed as many of them as he could overtake.]47

39 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 66 (s.a. 1006). 40 ASC, trans. Swanton, 137. 41 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 68 (s.a. 1010). 42 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 140 (s.a. 1010). 43 See, for example, Æthelred V and VI, in Die Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, 237–59. 44 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 69 (s.a. 1012). 45 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 143 (s.a. 1012). 46 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 73 (s.a. 1016). 47 ASC, trans. Swanton, 150–51.

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There are no references to God’s punishment in the Æthelredian Fragment, but three references to God’s help (994, 1009, and 1016). All three are concerned with London, and Keynes takes them as evidence of a particular interest of the annalist in the fate of this city.48 But it seems to me no less important that in all three cases the author’s descriptions imply that the Londoners stood fast against the enemy. In the annal for 994 it is said that Vikings tried to take the city or set it on fire, but “hi þar gefeordon maran hearm ⁊ yfel þonne hi æfre wendon þet heom ænig buruhwaru gedon sceolde”49 (there they suffered more harm and injury than they ever imagined that any town-dwellers would do to them).50 It is only after revealing this that the author declares that “seo halige Godes modor on þam hire mildheortnisse þære buruhware gecyðde, ⁊ hi ahredde wið heora feondum”51 (the holy Mother of God manifested her kind-heartedness to the town-dwellers and rescued them from their enemies).52 Likewise, in the entry for 1009 the annalist relates that the Scandinavians “often on þa burh Lundene gefuhton, ac si Gode lof þæt heo gyt gesund stent”53 (often attacked London town, but praise be to God that it still stands sound).54 Then, however, he adds that “hi þær æfre yfel geferdon”55 (they [i.e., the Vikings] always fared badly there).56 Finally, in the entry for 1016, the statement that “se ælmihtiga God hi ahredde”57 (the Almighty God rescued [London])58 follows two mentions of a valiant and successful defense of this city by the Londoners and King Edmund Ironside. In this way, anyone seeking analogues for the mood of the Æthelredian Chronicler may find a closer parallel in the poet of The Battle of Maldon than in Archbishop Wulfstan. As Wilcox, in his highlighting of parallels between this poet and the Æthelredian annalist, has shown, both authors represent brave and steadfast, though desperate, defense as the moral norm, and retreat (however reasonable) as a shameful and lawless act.59 Laura Ashe has recently pointed to the dramatic tension which the sermons of such churchmen as Wulfstan might

48 Keynes, “Declining Reputation,” 163. 49 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 60–61 (s.a. 994). 50 ASC (E), trans., Swanton, 129 (s.a. 994). 51 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 61–62 (s.a. 994). 52 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 127–29 (s.a. 994). 53 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 67 (s.a. 1009). 54 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 139 (s.a. 1009). 55 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 67 (s.a. 1009). 56 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 139 (s.a. 1009). 57 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 73 (s.a. 1016). 58 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 150 (s.a. 1016). 59 Wilcox, “Maldon and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” 39–45.

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produce in the minds of the laity, including lay warriors.60 Was their main task to prepare for Doomsday, to do personal penance and reconciliation, or was it to fight for their country? Choosing between these alternatives seems to present no dilemma to the author of the Æthelredian Fragment, whose judgments on the events are colored more by the traditional heroic values of the Anglo-Saxon past than by any devoutly Christian ideas of God’s punishment and of penance.61 Let us sum up the arguments of this chapter. First, it seems that the author of the Æthelredian Fragment was well acquainted with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and that he wrote his own text to a certain degree as a continuation of this. It seems thus plausible that he belonged to a circle – that is, to the king’s court or to a cathedral or monastic community, in which such work might have been done. My second conclusion is that the author of the Æthelredian Fragment was in some way affiliated with Northumbria, or more probably with the East Midlands or East Anglia. Meanwhile, it seems likely that he was familiar enough with court politics to know the deeds and standing not only of the highest elites, but also of persons of lower rank. In this way it is known that in his will Ætheling Æthelstan grants “þara landa þe ic ahte on East Englan”62 (the lands which I obtained in East Anglia)63 to his brother Edmund, and that the core of Edmund’s support in his conflict with Eadric Streona in 1015 lay in the East Midlands. For these reasons it may be concluded that the author of the Æthelredian Fragment belonged to the nobility of the North, the East Midlands, or East Anglia, and probably to the last of these regions. If he was one of Ætheling Æthelstan’s men, not only would he have witnessed the events in his regional homeland, but he would also have been familiar with the situation across the whole of England, as well as with the details of court politics; he might also have recorded some ideas about these events for himself or for his lord, if that lord were Ætheling Æthelstan. After the death of Æthelstan in 1014, the author of the Fragment would have joined many of Æthelstan’s men in transferring his loyalty to Edmund Ironside. He may have begun to compose his part of the Anglo-Saxon “Kings’ Chronicle”64 just after King Edmund’s succession, in the hope of adding to it a positive continuation, before Edmund’s death laid this hope to rest.

60 Ashe, 1000–1350: Conquest and Transformation, 22. 61 On the traditional heroic values see, for example, O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Heroic Ideals and Christian Ethics.” 62 Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. and trans. Whitelock, 58. 63 Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. and trans. Whitelock, 59. 64 Here I invoke the hypothesis of Brooks in “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or Old English Royal Annals?”.

Chapter 5 The Æthelredian Fragment

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Appendix 1: Formulas in the Æthelredian Fragment I 998C Her wende se here eft eastweard into Frommuðan ⁊ þær æghwær up eodon swa wide swa hi woldon into Dorsæton, ⁊ man oft fyrde ongean hi gaderede, ac sona swa hi togædere gan sceoldan, þonne wearð þær æfre ðuruh sum þing fleam astiht, ⁊ æfre hi æt ende sige ahton. ⁊ þonne oðre hwile lagon him on Wihtlande ⁊ æton him þa hwile of Hamtunscire ⁊ of Suðseaxum. 1016C . . . Þær ahte Cnut sige ⁊ gefeht him ealle Engla þeode. II. 992C . . . Þa sende se ealdorman Ælfric ⁊ het warnian ðone here, ⁊ þa on ðære nihte þe hy on ðone dæig togædere fon sceoldan, þa sceoc he on niht fram þære fyrde him sylfum to myclum bysmore, ⁊ se here ða ætbærst butan an scyp þær man ofsloh. ⁊ þa gemette se here ða scypu on Eastenglum ⁊ of Lundene, ⁊ hi ðær ofgeslogan micel wæl ⁊ þæt scyp genaman eall gewæpnod ⁊ gewædod þæt se ealdorman on wæs. 1001C . . . Þa gesomnede man þær ormæte fyrde Defenisces folces ⁊ Sumersætisces folces, ⁊ hi ða tosomne comon æt Peonnho, ⁊ sona swa hi togædere coman, þa beah þæt folc, ⁊ hi ðær mycel wæll ofslogan ⁊ ridon þa ofer þæt land, ⁊ wæs æfre heora æftra siþ wyrsa þonne se æra, ⁊ mid him ða micle herehuðe to scipon brohton. 1004C . . . Þa on mergen, ða hi to scipon woldon, þa Ulfcytel mid his werode þæt hi ðær togædere fon sceoldon, ⁊ hi þær togædere fæstlice fengon, ⁊ micel wæl ðær on ægðre hand gefeol. 1016C . . . Þa wæs Eadmund cyng ær ðam gewend ut ⁊ gerad þa Westsexon, ⁊ him beah eal folc to, ⁊ raðe æfter þam he gefeaht wið þone here æt Peonnan wið Gillingaham, ⁊ oþer gefeoht he gefeaht æfter middansumera æt Sceorstane, ⁊ þær mycel wæl feoll on ægðre healfe, ⁊ ða heras him sylfe toeodan, on þam gefeohte wæs Eadric ealdorman ⁊ Ælmær dyrling þam here on fultume ongean Eadmung kyning.

Appendix 2: Persons in the Æthelredian Fragment The list does not include the king or members of his family. The names of the persons whose identification seems well established are printed in bold, while the names of the persons whose identification seems dubious (if, for example, based on twelfth-century sources) are printed in italics.

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Zoya Metlitskaya

Name (Old English spelling)

Year

Identification (Old English)

Local connection

Circumstances in which mentioned

Brihtnoþ



ealdorman

of Essex

fell

Siric (Sigeric)



arcebiscop

of Canterbury, abbot of St. Augustine

advised

Oswald



eadiga arcebiscop

of York

died

Æþelwine



ealdorman

of East Anglia

died

Ælfric



ealdorman

of Hampshire (?)

betrayed

Þorod



eorl

of Northumbria (?)

led the army

Ælfstan



biscop

of Ramsbury (?), of Rochester (?), or of London (?)

led the army

Æscwige



biscop

of Dorchester-on-Thames

led the army

Ealdulf,  Eadulf abbot

abbot of Burch

of Peterborough

became bishop

Kenulf



abbot of Burch

of Peterborough

became abbot

Fræna



fled

Godwine



probably ealdoman of Lindsey fled

Friþegist



fled

Ælfgar



Ælfrices sunu ealdormannes

son of the ealdorman of was blinded Hampshire (?) or of ealdorman of Mercia (d. ) (?)

Ælfheah



biscop

of Winchester, archbishop of Canterbury

negotiated

Æþelward



ealdorman

of the Western Provinces

negotiated

Siric (Sigeric)



biscop

of Canterbury, abbot of St. Augustine

died

Sigeric (Siric)

D

abbod

= Siric

died

Ælfric



arcebiscop

of Canterbury

became

Chapter 5 The Æthelredian Fragment

125

(continued) Name (Old English spelling)

Year

Identification (Old English)

Local connection

Circumstances in which mentioned

Ordulf



(Ordulfes mynster)

maternal uncle of King Æþelred

monastery was burned

Leofsig, Leofsige



ealdorman

of Essex (?)

negotiated, killed

Æfic



heahgerefa

Ealdulf



arcebiscop

of York

died

Hugon



ceorl, gerefa

reeve of Emma

betrayed

Ælfric



ealdorman

of Hampshire (?)

betrayed

Ulfkytel



ealdorman of East Anglia

withstand Vikings

Ælfric



arcebiscop

of Canterbury

died

Ælfheah, Ælfeah



biscop

of Winchester, archbishop of Canterbury

became

Brihtwold

E biscop

of Wiltshire

became

Wulfgeate



was dispossessed

Wulfeah



was blinded

Ufegeat



was blinded

Ælfelm



ealdorman

of southern Northumbria

was killed

Kenulf



biscop

of Winchester, abbot of Peterborough,

died

Ædric



ealdorman

of Mercia

became

Brihtric



Eadrices broþor ealdormannes

brother of Eadric

accused

was killed

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(continued) Name (Old English spelling)

Year

Identification (Old English)

Wulfnoþ cild, Wulnoþ cild



Suþseaxscian

Eadric



ealdorman

Ulfcytel



Æþelstan



Oswi, Oswig



cynges aþum

Local connection

Circumstances in which mentioned was accused

of Mercia

betrayed

ealdorman (?) of East Angles

led army

son-in-law or brother-in-law of king Æþelred

fell

probably son-in-law of ealdorman Byrthtnoth

fell

son of Oswig

fell

Anon.

his (Oswies) sunu

Wulfric, Wulf 

Leofwines sunu

fell

Æfices broþor

fell

Eadwig



Þurcytel  Myranheafod

fled

Ælmer



(?)

(?)

betrayed

Ælmer



abbot

of St. Augustine monastery

was freed

Ælfheah, Ælfeah



arcebiscop

of Canterbury

was captured

Ælfword, Ælfweard



cynges gerefa

King’s reeve

was captured

Leofwine, Leofrune



abbodesse

Godwine



biscop

of Rochester

was captured

Eadric



ealdorman

of Mercia

came to witenagemot

was captured

Chapter 5 The Æthelredian Fragment

127

(continued) Name (Old English spelling)

Year

Identification (Old English)

Local connection

Circumstances in which mentioned

Eadnoþ



biscop

of Dorchester

took Ælfheah’s corpse

Ælfhun, Ælfun



biscop

bishop of London

took Ælfheah’s corpse

Lifing, Lyfinc 

biscop

of Wells

became archbishop

Uhtred



eorl

of Northumbria

accepted Swein as a king

Æþelmer



ealdorman

of the Western Provinces, son of Æþelweard (?)

accepted Swein as a king

Ælsige, Ælfsige

E abbot of Burh

of Peterborough

went to Normandy

Ælfun



bishop of London

went to Normandy

Ælfwig

D biscop

of London

became

Eadric



ealdorman

of Mercia

killed

Sigeferþ, Siferþ



yldesta þægn into Seofonburgum

chief thegn of Seven Boroughs (North-East)

was killed

Morcær



yldesta þægn into Seofonburgum

chief thegn of Seven Boroughs

was killed

Eadric



ealdorman

of Mercia

betrayed

Uhtred



eorl

of Northumbria

submitted to Cnut, was killed

Þurcytel, Þurhcytel



Nafanan sunu, Nafen

biscop

was killed

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Zoya Metlitskaya

(continued) Name (Old English spelling)

Year

Identification (Old English)

Local connection

Circumstances in which mentioned

Ælmær Deorlingc



Eadnoþ



biscop (D)

of Dorchester

fell

Wulsige



abbot

of Ramsey

fell

Ælfric



ealdorman

of Hampshire (?)

fell

Godwine



Ealdorman

of Lindsey (?)

fell

Ulfcytel



of Eastenglan

ealdorman of East Anglia

fell

Æþelward



Æþelsiges (Ælfwines, Æþelwines) sunu ealdormannes

Wulfgar

E abbot of Abbandune

abbot of Abingdon

died

Æþelsige

E

abbot of Abingdon

became

fought for Cnut

fell

Michael Treschow

Chapter 6 Æthelred’s Death and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s Tone The Æthelredian annalist, upon recording the English king’s death during the eventful year of 1016, comments that “he geheold his rice mid myclum geswince ⁊ earfoðnessum þa hwile ðe his lif wæs” (he held his kingdom amidst great affliction and tribulations all his life long).1 Some critics take this comment as an expression of sympathy for the hapless king.2 In its rhetorical context, however, it applies more forcefully to Æthelred’s traumatized kingdom. The comment is retrospective: Æthelred’s regal troubles denote his people’s troubles, as reiterated again and again in the preceding narrative. The sympathetic tone at Æthelred’s death arises in response to the preceding account of his reign. What evokes pity, then, is less the king’s sorry life than the miseries suffered by his nation for nearly three decades. Why does the annalist recollect these miseries here only obliquely, even though he invokes them frequently beforehand? Because it is enough, more than enough, merely to nod towards them. For the attuned reader they are both known and felt. Inherent in this rhetorical moment is the trauma of the atrocities it looks back to.

Varied Readings of the Æthelredian Annalist Although Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the most part is terse and laconic, the Æthelredian annalist (whose annals cover the years 983–1022 in the Chronicle’s C, D, and E texts) has a more expressive style and a distinct authorial voice. His account of those years has provoked a variety of responses. Sir Frank Stenton, in his landmark study of Anglo-Saxon history, comments upon this style with a disapproving assessment of the writer behind it. While he expresses an historian’s appreciation for this “full and contemporary narrative” of Æthelred’s reign, he lacks confidence in its author’s judgment:

1 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 101 (s.a. 1016). Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from the ASC come from this edition of the C text. 2 See, for instance, Keynes, “Declining Reputation,” 236, and The Diplomas, 227; and Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 308. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-007

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Michael Treschow

The anonymous monk of Abingdon who set down year by year his tale of war and misery, the treachery of one leader and the fruitless courage of another, has drawn a picture of life in his generation which may be criticised, but can never be ignored. No one who has followed the sequence of events in his restrained and sardonic prose can fail to receive the impression of an ancient and rich society, helpless before a derisive enemy because its leaders were incapable of government. It is unlikely that the author of these annals knew much about the world, and his criticism of public men is often short-sighted. He was too ready to impute treachery or cowardice to a leader who avoided contact with the enemy. Towards the end of his narrative he becomes querulous instead of ironical, and reckless in his allegations of treason.3

So Stenton writes in the first edition of Anglo-Saxon England, published in 1943, during World War II. The wording remains unchanged in the second edition (1947).4 However, in the third edition (published posthumously in 1971), there is one small, but telling, adjustment: instead of “has drawn” he now writes “had drawn a picture of life.”5 Stenton’s use of the present-perfect tense in the two earlier editions illustrates the immediacy of this narrative for him when he first wrote this history. This immediacy is also evident in his statement that the annalist “becomes querulous instead of ironical.” Stenton hears the anonymous monk’s plaintive voice but does not approve. He would have preferred him to remain sardonic. His privileging of irony over complaint does not acknowledge the famed melancholic tone of Old English literature at large. Stenton’s criticism might seem stereotypical of his generation: the annalist’s upper lip is not properly stiff. But there may be more at work here than modern British sensibilities. It is worth recalling the times through which Stenton was living when the the first two editions were published, during and just after World War II, with its great horrors and atrocities: not only in battle at a distant front, not only behind enemy lines in death camps, but also in the extensive bombing of civilians in both England and Germany. Cathy Caruth speaks of traumatic memory as tottering “between remembrance and erasure, producing a history that is, in its very events, a kind of inscription of the past; but also a history constituted by the erasure of its traces.”6 Stenton’s criticism of “the anonymous monk” reflects an impulse to devalue emotional memory that is perhaps born out of reaction to his own historical circumstances. The same year that Stenton’s third edition was published, Cecily Clark’s article on style in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle appeared. In her survey of the Chronicle’s different voices, she briefly singles out the Æthelredian annalist’s unusual

3 4 5 6

Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 1st ed. (1943), 386. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd ed. (1947), 388. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (1971), 394. Caruth, Literature in the Ashes of History, 210.

Chapter 6 Æthelred’s Death and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s Tone

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“literary craft,” especially in regard to affect.7 Clark has nothing against the annalist’s “emotional range,” “heightened emotion,” and “emotive rhetoric.”8 A few years later, Simon Keynes, in his reassessment of Æthelred’s poor reputation, agrees with Clark that the Æthelredian annals “discard the laconicism associated with the writing of annals . . . to adopt a more literary style than had been practised in the earlier parts of the Chronicle.”9 He adds, however, that this annalist “allows himself to indulge his literary pretensions.”10 This remark reduces the annalist’s literary affect to affectation. Not surprisingly, Keynes dismisses that to which Clark drew attention: the emotional tenor of this annalist’s work. His interest is in the mechanics of its narrative coherence, which lies in “the occurrence of certain turns of phrase time and again in successive annals, binding the whole together as if it formed a continuous narrative.”11 Like Stenton, Keynes expresses mixed feelings about the value of this narrative. He sums it up as “a personal and perhaps idiosyncratic view of events,” adding that, despite “its possible imperfections . . ., we are left with nothing better.”12 Clark, however, had summarized the annalist’s work more generously, with a moment of appreciation for its affective qualities: “the value . . . of these annals lies in rendering, with literary skill, but without intellectual sophistication, the feelings of an ordinary observer of the events recorded.”13 There is no longer a general consensus that this “ordinary observer” was a “monk of Abingdon,” though most still assume that he was a monk. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, in her edition of the Chronicle’s C text, tentatively suggests that he was from Canterbury, while allowing that Keynes “argues for London” and that David Dumville is agnostic about the annalist’s provenance.14 There is one certainty, however, about this annalist: he composed this narrative before the year 1023, in which Archbishop Ælfheah’s relics were translated from London to Canterbury.15 Hence the common understanding that this narrative was written by a witness to the troubles of Æthelred’s reign, which ended on April 23, 1016. Some have formed strong opinions about this witness’s underlying purpose in composing these annals. Alice Sheppard argues that they level blame at

7 Clark, “Narrative Mode of The Chronicle,” 14. 8 Clark, “Narrative Mode of The Chronicle,” 13–14. 9 Keynes, The Diplomas, 230. 10 Keynes, The Diplomas, 231. 11 Keynes, The Diplomas, 231. 12 Keynes, The Diplomas, 236. 13 Clark, “Narrative Mode of The Chronicle,” 15. 14 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, lxvii; see also Keynes, The Diplomas, 232. 15 Keynes, The Diplomas, 231.

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Æthelred in order to form an argument on behalf of Cnut. The annalist, she claims, made “a deliberate . . . decision to write a salvation history in which he narrates the wrongdoing for which he holds Æthelred responsible.”16 Sheppard’s reading of this salvation history operates on the simplest terms. Æthelred is a rex iniquus. On account of his wickedness he is “responsible for the loss of the kingdom.”17 This depiction of Æthelred as incompetent and abusive is, according to Sheppard, “a deliberate construction,” in effect propaganda.18 The purpose of the “ÆthelredCnut annalist” is to “legitimize Cnut” and promote his successful “performance of his lordship obligations” in contrast with Æthelred’s failure.19 Courtnay Konshuh also suggests that these annals were written on behalf of Cnut, although her reading of the annalist’s critique runs counter to Sheppard’s. According to Konshuh, these annals do not blame the king for England’s sufferings, but rather the “failed army leadership and unanrædnes (foolishness) among the nobility.”20 This annalist did not create “our negative impression of Æthelred,” which Konshuh credits to later chroniclers.21 Æthelred, unlike his advisors, gets a “rather neutral portrayal,” in parallel with “the neutral and at times even positive Viking portrayal.”22 According to Konshuh, this supposedly even-handed approach serves to promote Cnut’s project of “integrating both Anglo-Saxon and Danish cultures”; the annals “could not criticise Anglo-Saxon kingship too directly, as it was this basis which Cnut sought to build his own kingship upon.”23 These readings seem deaf to the annalist’s tone. Their varied claims about his message ignore his repetitive account of national trauma and his final comment on Æthelred’s reign: that “he geheold his rice mid myclum geswince ⁊ earfoðnessum þa hwile ðe his lif wæs.” Levi Roach’s recent study of Æthelred does indeed take note of this final comment, but not of its rhetorical import. Instead, he reflects on the ethical meaning of Æthelred’s death in an attempt to understand it as either a “good death” or a “bad death,” concluding that the annals offer no help on the question: “the chronicler, ever one to see clouds beside silver linings, has little to say about the event, which may itself be significant.”24 How the annalist’s reticence may in itself be significant, Roach does not pursue, nor does he explain

16 Sheppard, Families of the King, 85. 17 Sheppard, Families of the King, 86. 18 Sheppard, Families of the King, 86. 19 Sheppard, Families of the King, 94. 20 Konshuh, “Anræd in their Unræd,” 158. 21 Konshuh, “Anræd in their Unræd,” 158. 22 Konshuh, “Anræd in their Unræd,” 158. 23 Konshuh, “Anræd in their Unræd,” 159. 24 Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 309.

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how this amounts to “seeing the clouds” – that is, to a pessimistic outlook. Roach’s inverted cloud cliché makes for a belittling remark not at all apt to the moment. What silver linings shone when Æthelred died? Cnut and his fleet were making for London, soon to besiege it; Æthelred’s son Edmund would die before the year’s end; English resistance to the long-standing Danish invasion would collapse; and Cnut would become king and conqueror. Elaine Treharne has noted among historians of our time a tendency not to acknowledge the trauma that the English experienced around the time of Cnut’s conquest.25 For her part, she calls the annals for this period “a dramatic and intense account of the suffering of the English,”26 and wonders “why scholars do so much to erase those who were already half-erased – the silent, voiceless human hubbub behind the land-grabbers, psalm-singers and sword-wielders.”27 Treharne’s concern in Living through Conquest is with the aftermath of conquest, rather than with its prelude. Æthelred’s reign, therefore, is not her focus. Her use of the Chronicle must contend with the annalist’s more muted and restrained voice in the latter section of his annals. She argues that the sparseness of the Chronicle’s entries during Cnut’s reign, along with the general decline in literary output and book production in this period, reflects the trauma of shock and loss.28 Gaps in documentary evidence, “the literal lacunae,” make absent and silent “the sufferers themselves, particularly the faceless (noseless, earless) dispossessed and ‘wretched people.’”29 Treharne’s own concerns “insist on a consideration of the perspective of the normally silenced survivor, a ‘politics of witness,’ or ‘a representation of the unrepresentable.’”30 The muted account of what Treharne calls “continuing cultural trauma” during Cnut’s reign31 reverberates with the annalist’s earlier and more fulsome witness to the “unrepresentable” during Æthelred’s reign. Treharne herself expresses confidence in this annalist’s overall witness: “Amidst the noise of the competing voices embedded in this monastic narration is the assured statement of the historian, self-authorized to recount the formative events of the nation.”32

25 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 11–12. 26 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 54. 27 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 55. 28 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 11. 29 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 55. 30 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 55. 31 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 67. 32 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 55.

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Salvation History? This narration of formative events stands as a coherent and discrete section of the Chronicle, common to its C, D, and E texts, written in the early years of Cnut’s reign.33 When it takes up the Chronicle’s narrative at the year 983, preceding events have been fraught with forebodings of divine wrath. Not far from Edgar’s death in 975 and Edward’s martyrdom in 978, the Chronicle has reported on a severe famine in 976 and Viking raids beginning anew in the early 980s. Contextually, the two kings’ deaths are explications of divine wrath. In its entry for 975, the C text reports on the disasters of that year as “waldendes wracu” (the vengeance of the Lord). In the entry for 979, the D and E texts speak of “se uplica wrecend” (the heavenly avenger) and they pronounce, in regard to the Edward the Martyr, that “hine hafað his heofonlic fæder swyðe wrecan” (his heavenly father has greatly avenged him).34 And yet the greatest foreboding of impending wrath is the C text’s reported portent in 979: a shiny, multi-hued, bloody cloud appearing on multiple nights throughout the year of Æthelred’s coronation. It may be tempting to read the annalist’s succeeding account of the troubled times throughout Æthelred’s reign as a continuation of this salvation history, furthering the explication of divine wrath. The very manuscript context of the C text invites a theological approach to the unfolding of time. Here the Chronicle is preceded first by the Old English Orosius and then by two poems, the Menologium and Maxims II. Both poems were written in the same hand as the first sequence of the C text (Scribe 1), and they stand, according to its editor, O’Keeffe, as prefatory material to the Chronicle.35 The Menologium and the Chronicle both begin their accounts of time with Christ’s Incarnation, the central moment of divine participation in Christian history. Maxims II identifies Christ’s glory with the powers of wyrd (“fate,” or “temporal becoming”). Even though the Orosius, the first text in this manuscript, was copied earlier in the eleventh century than the three texts that follow it, its matter is related.36 The theme of the Orosius is God’s avenging governance over the rise and fall of nations. God has been “longsumlice wrecende” (long taking vengeance) upon the human race “mid monigfealdum brocum ⁊ gewinnum” (with many afflictions and conflicts).37 The understanding urged in the Orosius is that all political power and authority, even that of heathen invaders, exist “ne for nanre wyrde

33 34 35 36 37

Keynes, The Diplomas, 232. ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 47 (s.a. 979); (E), ed. Irvine, 60 (s.a. 979). ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, xv, xx. ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, xxiii. Old English Orosius, ed. Bately, 36 (II.i).

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buton fram godes stihtunge” (not because of any fate, but though God’s dispensation).38 The rise and fall of kingdoms is the expression of the divine will: “Nu we witan þaet ealle onwealdas from him sindon, we witon eac þæt ealle ricu sint from him, forþon ealle onwealdas of rice sindon” (Now we know that all political powers come from him, and we also know that all kingdoms come from him, because all political powers come from kingdoms).39 The cultural context also invites this theological view of the unfolding of time in terms of salvation history. During the last ten years of Æthelred’s reign, legislation written under the growing influence of Archbishop Wulfstan set the kingdom on a penitential course, directing it, in the face of Viking invasions, to make amends for failed piety and neglect of the divine service.40 Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi, in all its iterations, explores the nation’s widespread sinfulness under the cloud of impending doom. Similarly, Ælfric’s Sermon on the Prayer of Moses (De Oratione Moysi), in expressing nostalgia for better days (much like Alfred’s Preface to the Pastoral Care), blames abuses against the church for the disasters of the times. Ælfric draws upon the voice of God to blame the English for their woes: Hu wæs hit ða siððan ða þa man towearp munuc-lif and godes biggengas to bysmore hæfde buton us com to cwealm and hunger and siððan hæðen here us hæfde to bysmre. Be þysum cwæð se ælmihtiga god to moyse on þā wæstene . . . Gif ge þonne me forseoð and mine gesetnyssa awurpað ic eac swyðe hrædlice on eow hit gewrece.41 (How then was it otherwise, after the monastic life has been cast down and God’s worship treated with disgrace, but that we have suffered pestilence and famine, and afterwards been put to disgrace by a heathen army. About such things God almighty spoke to Moses in the wilderness . . . If you despise me and cast aside my commandments, I too will fiercely avenge it upon you.)

Although in his later writings Ælfric begins to encourage resistance to the Viking invaders, he still uses divine wrath to explain English misfortunes.42 In salvation history, justice functions on the principle of debit and credit; misfortune punishes sin and corrects waywardness. Or, as Nietzsche succinctly summarizes such logic in On the Genealogy of Morality, “Everything can be paid off, everything must be paid off.”43

38 Old English Orosius, ed. Bately, 37 (II.i). 39 Old English Orosius, ed. Bately, 36 (II.i). 40 Lemke, “Fear-Mongering?,” 749. 41 Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 294: XIII, “The Prayer of Moses” (lines 152–56, 163–64). 42 Godden, “Apocalypse and Invasion,” 142. 43 Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, ed. Ansell-Pearson, trans. Diethe, 48.

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Context aside, however, this logic finds no expression in the Æthelredian annals themselves. The only payment at work here is the infamous and everincreasing Danegeld, expended in vain to purchase safety for the Angelcynn, only to be exacted again, at an even steeper rate, once Cnut has conquered and become king. The annalist does not resort to divine wrath to account for English misfortunes; the noun wracu (vengeance) and the verb wrecan (to avenge) do not occur in his narrative. Although he levels blame at failed and foolish English leadership, he is not a homilist; he does not call for repentance or provoke an abject awareness of sin. Although he makes claims a few times about God’s intervention, his history is not theological. Nor is it philosophical, for these annals do not describe a dialectic of suffering. While Wulfstan and Ælfric sought to convict the people of their sinfulness and their deserved punishment, the narrative of this annalist makes no connection between national suffering and moral impurity. The annalist’s few references to divine power have to do with deliverance, not with judgment. These moments of deliverance might at first even look encouraging, but the grim irony of succeeding events undermines any hope of a sustained deliverance. In the entry for 994, Óláfr Tryggvason and Sveinn Forkbeard attack London with a large naval fleet and begin setting the city on fire. To their surprise, they are heavily rebuffed by the Londoners: “ac hi þær geferdon ge maran hearm ⁊ yfel þonne hi æfre wendon þæt him ænig buruhwaru gedon sceolde” (but they suffered greater injury and harm than they ever thought that any citizenry could do to them).44 The attack happens on the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and she is credited with the citizens’ successful defense of their city: “Ac seo halige Godes modor on þam dæge hire mildeheortnesse þære buruhware gecydde ⁊ hi ahredde wið heora feondum” (But the holy mother of God revealed her mercy on that day to the citizenry and delivered them from their enemies). The Viking army withdraws to the surrounding countryside, but no further displays of heavenly mercy impede their violence. On the contrary, “hi þanone ferdon ⁊ worhton þæt mæste yfel ðe æfre æni here gedon meahte on bærnette ⁊ heregunge ⁊ on manslyhtum ægðer be ðam særiman on Eastseaxum ⁊ on Centlande ⁊ on Suðseaxum ⁊ on Hamtunscire. ⁊ æt nyxtan naman heom hors ⁊ ridon swa wide swa hi woldon ⁊ unasecgendlice yfel wircende wæron” (they departed and wrought the greatest harm that every any army could perform, with burning, plundering, and slaughtering along the coast, first in Essex, then in Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire. And then they took horses and rode as far as they wanted and were inflicting unspeakable harm).

44 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 87 (s.a. 994).

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The annalist makes no further mention of divine intervention during Æthelred’s reign. However, late in the long entry for 1016, amidst the events that follow closely upon Æthelred’s death, he again declares that God gives the Londoners a local and momentary deliverance. The newly crowned King Edmund, after raising Cnut’s siege on London, has returned to Wessex to gather more forces, whereupon Cnut’s army returns to London to besiege it anew: “ac se ælmihtiga God hi ahredde” (but almighty God delivered it).45 What shape that deliverance took, the annalist does not say. He instead reports that the army withdrew into Mercia and there “slogon ⁊ bærndon swa hwæt swa hi oferforan, swa hira gewuna is, ⁊ him metes tilodon, ⁊ hi drifon ægþer ge scipu ge hyra drafa into Medwæge” (they slew and burned whatever they came upon, as is their custom, and they provided themselves with food and drove their ships and herds into the Medway). The irony here is not only that God’s deliverance of London deflects destruction upon others, as in 994, but also that Londoners do not, in the end, escape the Vikings’ oppression. Before the year ends, the soon-to-die King Edmund has withdrawn to Wessex and the Londoners must come to terms with Cnut’s army, purchase peace, and allow the Danes to bring their ships into the city for winter quarters. The annalist makes no other reference to God, except in a note of praise for London’s stalwart endurance throughout 1009 and in the hagiographic treatment of Archbishop Ælfheah’s martyrdom in the entries for 1011 and 1012.

Pain and Suffering Perhaps the annalist gestures these few times toward the divine good will as momentary signs that, amidst all these depredations, God is not heedless, as in the simple words of the children’s hymn: “God sees the little sparrow fall.” Other than that, his annals have no theology, much less a case for salvation history. As Cecily Clark puts it, there is no sophisticated argument underlying them; they are the pained recollections of the “ordinary observer.”46 This observer does not describe the afflictions and tribulations during Æthelred’s reign in detail. He does not attempt to represent them. However, he attests to them over and over again and appeals to the reality of the trauma they bring with them. His grief at English suffering becomes more palpable as his narrative gets closer to the time when he was writing. And yet already in the entry for 991, when he comes to the Battle of Maldon, he begins to warm to his theme. The

45 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 102 (s.a. 1016). 46 Clark, “Narrative Mode of The Chronicle,” 15.

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defeat at Maldon, preceded by a raid in Ipswich and a slaughter in Watchet, prompts the decision to buy off the Danes with tribute “for ðam miclan brogan þe hi worhton be ðam særiman” (because of the great terror that the Danes wrought along the coast).47 This “great terror” conveys an embodied response to sustained violence. What the Danes “wrought” in order to produce such terror, he names while leaving the contours to the imagination of his readers or to the memory of those who experienced it: the sudden attacks, the burning, the slaying, the capturing, and the looting. The succeeding years of Æthelred’s reign unfold under the cloud of this great terror, even the immediately succeeding years. In 992 there is a “micel wæl” (great slaughter); in 993 the invading army “micel yfel worhton” (wrought great harm); and in 994, as noted above, after their first departure from London, the invaders “worhton þæt mæste yfel . . . on bærnette ⁊ heregunge ⁊ on manslyhtum” (wrought the greatest harm . . . with burning, plundering, and slaying), and “unasecgendlice yfel wircende wæron” (were inflicting unspeakable harm). This annal for 994 marks a shift in style. Here the annalist becomes more rhetorically effusive and begins to use repetition of phrasing, the rhetorical strategy noted by both Clark and Keynes.48 Burning, plundering, and slaying are the terms of a formulaic phrase that the annalist repeats more than anything else – his “most constant refrain,” as Clark puts it.49 Only two other times, however, does he actually use this triplicate form to denote violence suffered at the hands of the Vikings. In 1006 a great fleet comes to Sandwich, “⁊ dydon eal swa hi ær gewuna wæron, heregodon ⁊ bærndon ⁊ slogon swa swa hi ferdon” (and did what was ever their custom, they plundered, burned, and slew wherever they went). In the fateful year of 1016 Cnut brings his army across the Thames in midwinter, “⁊ heregodon ⁊ bærndon ⁊ slogon eal þæt hi to common” (and plundered, burned, and slew all that they came upon). More frequently the phrasing is in duplicate, with either burning and plundering, or burning and slaughtering. In 997 after the invading army raids in Cornwall and Devonshire, it goes into Somerset, “⁊ þær micel yfel worhton on bærnette ⁊ on mannslihtum” (and there did great harm in burning and slaying).50 The same year they turn south down the River Tamar “⁊ ælc þing bærndon ⁊ slogon þe hi gemitton” (and they burned and slew everything they met). In 1001, after the invading army was repulsed at Exeter, “Þa wendon hi geond þæt land ⁊⁊ dydan eal swa hi bewuna wæron, slogon ⁊ bærndon” (they went throughout the land and did just as they were accustomed to do: they slew

47 48 49 50

ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 86 (s.a. 991). Clark, “Narrative Mode of The Chronicle,” 14–15; Keynes, The Diplomas, 231. Clark, “Narrative Mode of The Chronicle,” 15. ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 88 (s.a. 997).

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and burned).51 In 1003 Sveinn leads his army to Wilton, “⁊ hi þa buruh geheregodon ⁊ forbærndon” (and they plundered the town and burned it down). In 1004 Sveinn brings his fleet to Norwich, “⁊ þa buruh eall geheregode ⁊ forbærnde” (and completely plundered the town and burned it down).52 Two weeks later they come to Thetford, “⁊ þa buruh heregodon ⁊ forbærndon” (and they plundered the town and burned it down). In 1006 the annalist notes again, calling to mind the “micel broga” in 991, the great (thus constant) fear in the face of this violence: Ða wearð hit swa micel ege fram þam here þæt man ne mihte geþencan ⁊ ne asmeagan hu man hi of earde adrifan sceolde oþþe ðisne eard wið hi gehealdan, forðan þe hi hæfdon ælce scire on Wesseaxum stiðe gemearcod mid bryne ⁊ mid heregunge.53 [Such a great fear arose at that invading army that no one could conceive or comprehend how they should be driven from the land or this land defended against them, because every shire in Wessex they had harshly branded with burning and plundering.]

In 1009 the invading army went through Hampshire and Berkshire, “⁊ heregodon ⁊ bærndon swa hiora gewuna is” (and plundered and burned, as is their custom). In 1010, after a decisive victory in Cambridgeshire, with several English nobles slain, the invading army “.iii. monþas hergodon ⁊ bærndon, ge fyrðon on þa wildan fennas hi ferdon, ⁊ men ⁊ yrfe hi slogon ⁊ bærndon geond þa fennas” (plundered and burned for three months, then also journeyed into the wild fens, and throughout the fens they slew and burned men and cattle). And in 1016, as noted above, shortly after Æthelred’s death, Cnut and his army, repelled from London, departed for Mercia “⁊ slogon ⁊ bærndon swa hwæt swa hi oferforan, swa hira gewuna is” (and they slew and burned whatever they came upon, as is their custom).54 Sometimes this phrasing refers not to Danish but to English violence, as in Æthelred’s attempt at a victorious return to the throne in 1014, with his retaliatory attack on Lindsey: “⁊ man þa hergode ⁊ bærnde ⁊ sloh eal þæt mancynn þæt man ræcan mihte” (and they plundered and burned and slew all the people that they could reach).55 The strategy proves ineffective, in the annalist’s account, since Cnut simply withdraws and perpetrates his own atrocities by maiming his hostages. The episode recalls the ineffective and costly misuse of a newly raised English “scypfyrd” (fleet) in 999, and the futile expedition in 1000, where Æthelred plundered Cumberland “swiðe neah eall” (nearly entirely) and also plundered the Isle of Man, but without engaging the invading army and to no tactical

51 52 53 54 55

ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 89 (s.a. 1001). ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 90 (s.a. 1004). ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 91 (s.a. 1006). ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 94 (s.a. 1016). ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 99 (s.a. 1014).

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advantage; his army retreated to Normandy but returned the next year to attack Exeter and venture into Devon and Somerset, “⁊ wæs æfre heora æftra siþ wyrsa þonne se æra” (with their every incursion worse than the one before).56 Æthelred’s slaughter of the people of Lindsey also recalls the St. Brice’s Day Massacre in 1002, which likewise serves to provoke further destruction, plundering, and burning in 1003.57 The English, by the annalist’s account, not only experience horrific violence, but their attempts to counteract it with like violence lead only to further trauma. The annalist’s expressions of despair regularly link sustained Danish violence with English strategic failure. In the annal for 999, he laments the ineffectiveness of the Kentish “fyrd” (militia) in its battle against Danish invaders in Rochester: “ac wala þæt hi to raðe bugon ⁊ flugon” (but, alas, that they too readily retreated and fled).58 The victorious Danes go on “⁊ forneah ealle West Kentingas fordydon ⁊ forheregodon” (and destroy and ravage nearly all West Kent). More famously, in the entry for 1011, he complains, “Ealle þas ungesælða us gelumpon þuruh unrædas” (all these misfortunes came upon us because of bad policy). He then summarizes what those misfortunes entailed: “hi ferdon æghweder flocmælum ⁊ heregodon ure earme folc, ⁊ hi rypton ⁊ slogon” (they ventured everywhere in bands and plundered our poor people and captured them and slew them). This use of the verb rīpan is unique in the Æthelredian annals, whereas the preceding verb hergian (to plunder) occurs eighteen times and its intensified form, forhergian, twice. Although rīpan can much the same as hergian (to plunder), here the two verbs seem not to be used in synonymous parallelism. Here rīpan is more closely paired with slēan and suggests something distinct from hergian, some further act of violence. The poor people are not only plundered of their goods but are themselves also taken as spoil – enslaved. The complaint in the annal for 1011 does not mention burning or conflagration, even though the annalist otherwise emphasizes this Viking practice. This omission demands some attention. Thought the annalist’s account the verb bærnan occurs twelve times, its intensified form forbærnan a further nine times, the noun bærnet twice, and the noun bryne once. In that “most constant refrain” of burning, plundering, and/or slaying, the Viking action of burning is the most constant of all, paired five times with slaying (slēan) and six times with plundering (hergian / forhergian). Conflagrations function in these annals to underline the destructiveness of the invading army. In the annal for 1010,

56 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 88 (s.a. 1000). 57 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 90 (s.a. 1001). 58 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 88 (s.a. 1002, 1003).

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after the Danes plunder and burn the countryside for three months and journey into the fens to burn and slay some more, the verb forbærnan occurs a further three times to describe the many conflagrations they leave behind. In the annals for 1006, after their long summer campaign of, plundering, burning, and slaying “swa hi ær gewuna wæron” (as they were accustomed before), they journey to their winter-quarters, “⁊ hi a dydon heora ealdan gewunan, atendon hiora herebeacen swa hi ferdon. Wendon þa to Wealingaforda ⁊ þæt eall forswældon” (and they always followed their old custom and kindled their war beacons wherever they went; they came to Wallingford and burned it to the ground). Their gewuna (custom) of kindling herebēacen (war beacons) is a reiteration of their gewuna of plundering, burning, and slaying. Though the word is left out in the annal for 1011, conflagration is implicit by virtue of its otherwise regular occurrence. When the annalist, at Æthelred’s death in 1016, sums up that he “geheold his rice mid myclum geswince ⁊ earfoðnessum” (held his kingdom amidst great affliction and tribulations), his words echo with the “most constant refrain” of plundering, burning, and slaying. The preposition “mid” does not, then, set up an adverbial phrase of manner or quality (“with”), as though it spoke to Æthelred’s experience. It sets up an adverbial phrase of circumstance (“amidst”) that speaks to the experience of his kingdom. The annalist’s phrasing continues his witness to traumatic times. The annalist’s critique of English leadership during Æthelred’s reign may, pace Keynes, be flawed, partial, or personal, and may be out of line with other historical evidence, but his witness to Danish (and English) atrocity demands consideration all the same. Some critics, such as Ann Williams, discredit the annalist’s witness by treating his tone as unrepresentative (or perhaps idiosyncratic): When the account in the ‘A’ text is compared with that of the other recensions, what is striking is the difference in tone. . . . There is no loss of morale in the ‘A’ text’s account, and its existence warns against an uncritical acceptance of the lamentations found in the other recensions of the Chronicle.59

Williams’s warning is a move to dismiss this witness’s voice. She does not actually engage these lamentations with any critical response to “uncritical acceptance.” Her argument again prompts Elaine Treharne’s question as to “why scholars do so much to erase those who were already half-erased – the silent, voiceless human hubbub,” in this case, those who experienced plundering, burning, and slaying.60

59 Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 51. 60 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 55.

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The annalist’s repetition of his “most constant refrain” is formulaic, rhetorical, and short on detail. Even so, rhetoric need not be disingenuous. Leaving things to the imagination not only summons an affective response; it can also signal traumatic memory. In her early volume on trauma theory, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, Cathy Caruth calls for a “new mode of reading and of listening . . . [to] the language of trauma, and the silence of its mute repetition of suffering.”61 Repetition is a central concept in trauma theory. It may refer to an ongoing pattern of lived experience, “the shape of individual lives,”62 but more technically refers to memory that reiterates traumatic events without fully accessing them. In a recent volume, Literature in the Ashes of History, Caruth uses the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit (which she translates as “deferred action”) to explain how traumatic memory “archives its own history and in so doing, bears witness to the newness, and alterity, to the shock of a history it cannot assimilate but only repeat.”63 Such memory, she says, originates “as its own deferral and also as its later repetition, a fundamental deferral and repetition at the beginning.”64 The significance of this deferral for reading the Æthelredian annalist is that it accounts for his “mute repetition of suffering.” He names atrocity again and again but does not reveal its horrors and does not give voice to the cries that it draws forth. The atrocities remain remote. Central to Caruth’s trauma theory is the tenet that trauma is inaccessible and resists representation. It is worth noting, therefore, that the annalist, when reporting Archbishop Ælfheah’s martyrdom in 1012, closely describes the violence at his death. Here he is writing in a hagiographic mode, where the details of a violent death are called for to substantiate the meritorious qualities of the saint. But in recounting the sufferings of the people, he does not depict violence. Although violence haunts the reiterations of plundering, burning, and slaying, the annalist does not attempt to give the experience of violence itself representation. Unlike the sufferings of the saint, the sufferings of the people are not meritorious, nor in any way efficacious. They are only grievous. The compulsion to repeatedly remember them meets the compulsion to erase them, as Caruth has shown.65 A potent image of such repetition and erasure occurs in Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas visits the Sybil at Cumae who will lead him into the underworld to meet his father’s shade. Before entering the temple to Apollo at

61 62 63 64 65

Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 9. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 63. Caruth, Literature in the Ashes of History, 80. Caruth, Literature in the Ashes of History, 80 (her emphasis). Caruth, Literature in the Ashes of History, 78–79. See note 6.

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Cumae, Aeneas marvels at Daedalus’s engravings on its walls. The poet adds, in an apostrophe, that Daedalus tried, but failed, to include a depiction of his son’s tragic fall from the sky: Tu quoque Partem opere in tanto, sineret dolor, Icare, haberes. Bis conatus erat casus effingere in auro; Bis patriae cecidere manus.66 [You too, Icarus, would have had a place in so great a work of art, had grief but allowed it. Twice he tried to portray in gold how you plummeted, twice your father’s hands drooped.]

Daedalus’s enervating grief reflects the lassitude of melancholy, but as such also describes the “deferred action” of traumatic memory. Caruth uses the imagery of burning to explain this process (aptly enough in the context of the annalist’s emphasis). Appealing to Derrida’s Archive Fever, she describes the compulsion both to preserve traumatic memory and to efface it: Between the shock of the memory that effaces, and the shock of the discovery of this memory, is the event of an erasure, which is also archive fever, because it is made up of memory and is about memory, it is about the burning desire for memory and the history of its burning up.67

The annalist’s account exemplifies “literature in the ashes of history.” It documents burning and destruction across the English landscape, with town after town left in ashes. He memorializes the burning, however, as something abstract and generic, leaving unsaid (i.e., erasing) the contours of these traumatic moments. After Cnut’s conquest and coronation, the annalist makes no more mention of plundering, burning, and slaying. He does not exclaim “Wala” (as for the year 999), or express a tender regard for “ure earme folc” (as for the year 1011), not even when, two years into Cnut’s reign, his people are compelled to pay the most extortionate Danegeld of all. His entries become brief and restrained. His resignation to an oppressive regime further mutes his account of suffering but reverberates still with the lamentation and grief that he expressed for the period of invasion. This is what Treharne calls “the silence of conquest.”68 The years of trauma have yielded to heavy oppression. Although the “mute repetitions” have now become fully mute, they remain palpable.

66 Aeneid, VI, lines 30–33, in Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics of Vergil, ed. Greenough. 67 Caruth, Literature in the Ashes of History, 79. 68 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 48.

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Conclusion: Shaping Memory The annalist’s repetitions and lamentations express love, the very substance of love, for “without love, there is no grief . . . without grief, there is no love,” as Amy Hollywood writes at the beginning of “Acute Melancholia.”69 In that article, albeit in a later medieval context, Hollywood explores how the melancholic response to trauma produces the subject with its capacity for love. Personal trauma, however, does not exist isolated in the individual, as Caruth explains: “the theory of individual trauma contains within it the core of the trauma of a larger history.”70 Just so, according to Treharne, does the Æthelredian annalist’s “history of a trauma” recount “the formative events of the nation.”71 He presents this anguished love not simply as his own, but as a reaction that belongs to the “Angelcynn” (English people), shaping its memory and awareness. The annalist’s literary qualities, his affective tone and rhetoric, do not diminish or interfere with his account of history. On the contrary, they open our attention to historically embedded wounds. His annals offer a locus for what another trauma theorist, Dominick LaCapra, has proposed as a way forward in the study of historiography: “the mutual interrogation of history and literature.”72 He says that this mutual interrogation foregrounds “the relation between historical and transhistorical force,” things particular to a particular time and things that span times and cultures.73 LaCapra proposes that “the transhistorical may be exemplified at present by the Lacanian ‘real’ – the traumatic void or break that resists or even annihilates symbolization yet may provoke it as well.”74 On the death of King Æthelred, the annalist’s resigned recollections glimpse into that traumatic void and affirm the horrors and longings witnessed in his times, in kinship with other times. “The notion of historical trauma,” Caruth says, may help us “understand the full complexity of the problem of survival at the heart of the human experience.”75 The Æthelredian annalist tugs on some of the strings in that complex problem. The undertones of grief in his account of this particular, though all too human, invasion and conquest, invites readers at the very least to heed and reflect upon the sorrows that attend survival in such a world.

69 Hollywood, “Acute Melancholia,” 381. 70 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 71. 71 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 55; cf. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 60. 72 LaCapra, History, Literature, Critical Theory, 12. 73 LaCapra, History, Literature, Critical Theory, 13. 74 LaCapra, History, Literature, Critical Theory, 13. 75 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 58.

David McDermott

Chapter 7 King Edmund II Ironside and the Siege of London, 1016 In 1016, the same year that witnessed at least five battles between Edmund Ironside and Cnut of Denmark for the throne of England, the city of London was subjected to three sieges by the Danish army. The second of these sieges, relieved by Edmund, occupies a pivotal position in his at times desperate resistance to Cnut’s relentless attacks.1 How do Cnut and Edmund compare? In Timothy Bolton’s view, their “competition for the crown seems to have been that of a cunning and intelligent man versus a more straightfoward warrior.”2 Before we consider this comparison, let us study Cnut’s approach to London. Collectively, his three sieges conform to a pattern of Viking military strategy that can be traced back to the first Viking Age in the ninth century. A short sketch of this history is in order before we return to Edmund’s duel with Cnut for London in 1016.

Viking Sieges of London before Cnut The Winchester manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that an immense Viking raiding-army entered the mouth of the River Thames in 851 and “brecon” (stormed) London, putting to flight the king of Mercia and his army. After dispersing these forces, the Vikings turned south into Surrey, where they suffered a signal defeat in battle against King Æthelwulf of Wessex.3 The absence of any reference to London being taken in this year in the Chronicle, infuriatingly succinct as this is, may indicate that the city withstood the onslaught. Thereafter London appears to have escaped the attention of the Vikings until 871, when the city was occupied by a raiding-army that quartered in the city over the winter before moving its operations to Northumbria. Unfortunately,

1 The second siege of London, and the relief of the city, took place after the battles of Penselwood and Sherston but before the battles of Brentford and Assandun. John of Worcester alleges an armed encounter between Edmund Ironside and the Danes at Otford which is unlikely to have taken place. 2 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 91. 3 ASC (A), ed. Bately, 44 (s.a. 851). https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-008

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the Chronicle provides no information regarding how the occupying force came to take possession.4 London may have come under Viking control when a raiding-army settled in Mercia in 877, but within a decade King Alfred retook London and made Ealdorman Æthelred of Mercia responsible for the safety of the city.5 These early attacks on London were sporadic and of questionable effect. From the time London was returned to English control in the late ninth century, and throughout most of the tenth century, London appears to have escaped the attention of the Vikings. However, the penultimate decade of the reign of Æthelred II (978–1016) signalled the beginning of a series of renewed Viking assaults against London. These began in 994 with the arrival of Óláfr Tryggvason (later king of Norway) and King Sveinn Forkbeard of Denmark, who led a combined raiding-army comprising ninety-four ships. The Chronicle relates that the forces of “Anlaf” (Óláfr) and “Swegen” (Sveinn) “fæstlice” (determinedly) set about attacking London and attempted to raze the city by fire.6 Despite their efforts to breach London’s defenses, according to the Chronicler, the Vikings were met with a level of resistance from the Londoners that was unexpected in its ferocity and the assailants sustained the greater “hearm ⁊ yfel” (harm and injury).7 Defied and frustrated by the city’s defenders, according to the twelfth-century narrative of John of Worcester, the raiding-army withdrew from London on the same day and made good by pillaging the neighboring counties.8 When London was next attacked in 1009, the city’s assailants demonstrated they were more determined than their predecessors to take the town. The account in the Chronicle is typically sparse in detail, but it does relate that the “ungemetlice” (immense) raiding-army before London “oft . . . gefuhton” (often attacked) the town. Although the Chronicler does not disclose the duration of the Vikings’ relatively sustained assault, he does record that it proved ineffective, reporting they “æfre yfel geferdon” (always fared badly). As before, the Vikings abandoned their siege and directed their aggression elsewhere, burning down Oxford.9 London was equally resolute and successful in resisting Sveinn Forkbeard in 1013. Sveinn moved on London only after receiving the submission of the north of England and that of Oxford and Winchester. Any expectations Sveinn may have had that London would follow the example of other major towns and capitulate were dashed when the inhabitants refused to submit. The level of the

4 5 6 7 8 9

ASC (AE), trans. Swanton, 72–73 (s.a. 871 [for 870]). ASC (AE), trans. Swanton, 74–75 (s.a. 877 [for 876]); 80–81 (s.a. 886 [for 886]). ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 61–62 (s.a. 994); trans. Swanton, 127 (s.a. 994). ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 61 (s.a. 994); trans. Swanton, 129 (s.a. 994). Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 442–43. ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 67 (s.a. 1009); trans. Swanton, 139 (s.a. 1009).

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Londoners’ determination to resist Sveinn is indicated in the Chronicler’s description that London held out against him “fullan wige” (with full battle)10 and, according to John of Worcester, “illum abegit” (drove him off).11 Denied his goal, Sveinn traveled to Bath, where he received the submission of the west of England, before returning north, where the whole nation accepted him as “fulne cyning” (full king). The impression created by the Chronicle is that London was alone in its opposition to Sveinn, but finally London, fearing his retribution, also submitted.12 The Vikings’ repeated attempts to occupy London during Æthelred’s reign require some explanation. One of the consequences of the expansion of the political power of the kingdom of Wessex from the early tenth century, which culminated in the unification of England under King Æthelstan, was a shift in what Ryan Lavelle has described as the “strategic key to the kingdom” from Wessex to the area around London.13 Although the city may not have been larger than any of the other important towns in England, by the beginning of the eleventh century London had become, to quote C. N. L. Brooke, the country’s “chief port . . . the centre of communications with the Continent” and “the centre of the moneymarkets of England and north-western Europe.”14 This combination of political, economic and military factors made London a “nodal point” in Æthelred’s kingdom and an ideal southern center from which to govern the entire country.15

King Edmund II Ironside and Cnut’s First Siege of London By the time Cnut arrived for his first siege of London, its ruler was King Edmund Ironside, Æthelred’s eldest son and successor, to whom much of the organization of the resistance to Cnut must be credited. Edmund was in London when Æthelred died there on April 23, 1016.16 Edmund was aware of the king’s declining health and it is plausible that he was in the city to secure his succession, as

10 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 70 (s.a. 1013); trans. and ed. Swanton, 143 (s.a. 1013). 11 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 472–73. 12 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 58 (s.a. 1013); trans. Swanton, 144 (s.a. 1013); see also Lavelle, Æthelred II, 129, and Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 291. 13 Lavelle, Æthelred II, 120. 14 Brooke, London 800–1216, 23. 15 Lavelle, Æthelred II, 127. 16 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 148–49 (s.a. 1016).

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well as to defend the city in the sure expectation that Cnut would attack it.17 Cnut, however, according to the early-twelfth-century narrative of William of Malmesbury, waited with his ships in the west of the country until Easter was past before launching his forces against London in the second week of May.18 Edmund’s accession did not have universal support. In a telling reference to the details of his accession, the Chronicle reports that he was elected to the throne by “ealle þa witan þe on Lundene wæron” (all the councillors who were in London) and the citizens of the city.19 Although he was not chosen by a full complement of the royal council (the “witan”), his elevation to the throne, with the approval of the city’s citizenry, may be read as further proof of London’s increasing importance. Shortly after his accession, King Edmund left London sometime before Cnut, arriving with his fleet between May 7 and 9, could cut him off.20 The Chronicle does not explain Edmund’s reason for leaving the city at a time when one might reasonably expect it to be besieged, but its description of Edmund’s departure may be instructive. In deceptively simple language, it says that Edmund “gerad” (rode) to Wessex, which submitted to him.21 If this preterite is of a transitive verb gerīdan (to obtain by riding, occupy), the entry in the Chronicle may convey the sense, as suggested by Ann Williams, that Edmund forcibly took possession of Wessex.22 A demonstration of force by him might have been necessary, if, as reported in the narrative of William of Malmesbury, parts of Wessex had capitulated to Cnut. While the English were making several unsuccessful attempts to send an army against Cnut at the end of 1015 and the beginning of 1016, the Danish king, according to William, took possession of towns in Wessex.23 Although this account is only in William, the divided loyalties of the English at the battle of Sherston, in June 1016, indicate that some southern Mercian and West Saxon magnates had reached an accommodation with Cnut that may have included a formal submission.24 The partiality of Edmund’s election in London may also lend credibility to the unique account by John of Worcester that Cnut, en route from Poole Harbour 17 Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, I, 417. 18 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 314–15. 19 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016); (E), ed. Irvine, 73 (s.a. 1016); (DE), trans. Swanton, 148–49 (s.a. 1016). 20 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 149 (s.a. 1016). 21 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016). 22 Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 142–43 and n. 63, 226. 23 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 312–13. 24 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016); Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 486–87; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 38–39.

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to besiege London, stopped at Southampton, where the “episcopi, abbates, duces et quique nobiliores Anglie” (bishops, abbots, ealdormen and all the nobles of England) accepted him as king.25 Even if John of Worcester sometimes exaggerates in his record of the degree of English defection to Cnut, it is possible on this basis that Edmund was twice elected king in 1016. Ann Williams has remarked upon the similarity between the repudiation of King Æthelred and his descendants, on the one hand, which John of Worcester records as part of the promises made to Cnut at Southampton,26 and on the other, the declaration of exile on every Danish king which the Chronicle records as part of the negotiations for Æthelred’s return from Normandy.27 If Cnut had learned of the edict of outlawry against him, so Williams suggests, he may have demanded that the English kings be similarly rejected. A second election at Southampton would also explain the Chronicle’s intimation that Edmund exerted force to subdue Wessex.28 Other factors may also explain Edmund’s absence from London when it was first besieged. Although Thietmar of Merseburg, writing in the early eleventh century, is alone and probably incorrect in placing Edmund in London when Cnut arrived, there may be some validity in his explanation of Edmund’s departure from this city. Thietmar alleges that Queen Emma, whom he places in London, agreed to have Edmund and his brother Æthelstan killed in exchange for Cnut’s guarantee of her safety.29 The lack of corroboration for this claim, together with numerous factual errors, such as reporting Æthelstan to be alive one year after his death, bring Thietmar’s account into question. Nonetheless, Edmund’s death would have been politically advantageous for Emma. If, as reasonably suggested by Pauline Stafford, Emma sought to promote the interests of her sons by Æthelred over those of his first marriage, Edmund’s demise would have facilitated her ambitions.30 Thietmar’s narrative is sometimes confused and confusing, as indicated by him reporting that the ætheling Æthelstan, who predeceased Edmund, relieved the besieged city.31 However, he may be essentially accurate about a threat against Edmund from enemies inside the city of London, which Edmund may then have prudently chosen to leave to avoid being trapped by them within, as well as by enemies without.

25 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 484–85. 26 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 484–85; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 140. 27 ASC (E), trans. Swanton, 145 (s.a. 1014). 28 Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 140. 29 Thietmar, Chronicon, 335. 30 Stafford, Queeen Emma and Queen Edith, 221–22. 31 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 336.

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Cnut’s Great Ditch in Southwark The Chronicle reports that Cnut, en route to London from the south coast, stopped temporarily at Greenwich before proceeding to London. Upon arriving at the city Cnut was confronted with the obstacle of London Bridge, which he avoided by having “micle dic” (a great ditch) dug from east to west around the southern end, through which the Danes dragged their ships.32 Although neither the Chronicle, nor any of the other primary sources which record this event, explains the reason for Cnut’s tactic, one may reasonably infer that the bridge was manned by a contingent of London’s defenders which he wished to avoid. Once the Danes had secured their ships, the Chronicle records that they blockaded the city by encircling it with a greater ditch, which William of Malmesbury was probably correct to describe as surrounding only those sides of the city not adjacent to the Thames.33 The Chronicle’s closely contemporary account of a Danish-dug ditch surrounding three sides of London (on the north bank of the Thames), described by John of Worcester as “alta lataque” (deep and wide)34 might be supported by archaeological evidence. Excavations conducted in the Cripplegate area of the City of London between 1946 and 1968 revealed, beyond the remains of the Roman city wall, a medieval trench that had been dug to a minimum depth of 1.5 m and may originally have had a width of 15 m.35 Between the ditch and the Roman city wall was a 15 m wide berm, which may have been produced from the upcast from the ditch to form an earthen embankment against the wall facing.36 An examination of the pottery recovered from the ditch revealed that material had been deposited over several stages, the earliest being 950–1100. The implication of this finding is that the ditch had been cut no later than the early eleventh century.37 Subsequent excavations near the Roman wall in other areas of the City have produced possible further evidence for the existence of an early-eleventhcentury ditch around London. Similar ditches have been identified at several other sites, including the Houndsditch to the east of Cripplegate, and one to the

32 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016); (D), trans. Swanton, 149 (s.a. 1016). 33 ASC (D), trans. Swanton, 149. Marshy conditions on the South Bank seem in evidence in the Encomium, ed. Campbell, 22–23, which describes London as surrounded by a naturally occurring river which Cnut blocked with his ships to circumvallate the city. 34 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 384–85. 35 Milne, Excavations at Medieval Cripplegate, 10. 36 Milne, Excavations at Medieval Cripplegate, 35. 37 Milne, Excavations at Medieval Cripplegate, 11.

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west of Cripplegate at Aldersgate, from which eleventh-century finds were recovered.38 Gustav Milne, in his summary of the significance of these excavations, concluded there was a ditch surrounding early medieval London “at least two centuries” before the earliest extant documentary record of 1211. Milne also concluded, perhaps controversially, that the ditch was defensive.39 It is possible that the construction of the ditch is Anglo-Saxon in origin. However, when the archaeological evidence for an early-eleventh-century ditch around London is combined with the closely contemporary record of the Danes surrounding London with a ditch in 1016, it may be considered likely that the ditches discovered at various locations outside the City wall are part of the longer ditch dug on the orders of Cnut.

London’s Ally: Ulfcytel of East Anglia With the city now circumvallated and blockaded, the Danes, according to the Chronicle, “oftrædlice on þa buruh fuhton” (regularly attacked the town) but were repeatedly repulsed by the Londoners.40 In the early-twelfth-century account of William of Malmesbury, who perhaps imitates the patriotic stance of the Chronicle, the engagements beside the wall of London are described as even-handed, with the Danes receiving as much injury as they inflicted.41 Corroboration that the Danes made attacks during their first siege is provided by a closely contemporary Scandinavian source, the collectively composed Liðsmannaflokkr (Soldiers’ Song). This skaldic poem records two instances of fighting close to, or beside, London. The first instance, in stanza 5, refers to a battle waged on the bank of the Thames (“á Tempsar síðu”).42 Citing the command given by Cnut that the Danes “bíða” (wait) after the battle, before launching an assault on London, Russell Poole argues persuasively that Liðsmannaflokkr indicates the encounter took place somewhere close to the city.43 The second

38 Vince, Saxon London, 90; Butler, “1600 Years of the City Defences,” 235–44. 39 Excavations at Medieval Cripplegate, 35. 40 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016); (D), trans. Swanton, 149 (s.a. 1016). 41 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 314–15. Contrary to the majority of primary sources that report Cnut’s assaults on London, the Encomium, ed. Campbell, 22–23, records that Cnut accepted the invitation of the citizens to take the city peacefully, but suspected the loyalty of the Londoners and so left soon after to winter on Sheppey. 42 Poole, Viking Poems, 87. My translations of this poem are based on his. 43 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 288.

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instance of fighting, in stanza 7 of this poem, is more compelling. After their aforementioned engagement beside the Thames, the poem says that “vá herr við díki” (the [Danish] army fought alongside the moat).44 It is difficult to interpret this “dík” as anything other than the ditch mentioned in the Chronicle. The ferocity of the fighting indicated in the Chronicle is also supported in this source. Cnut, in the battle between the Danes and English beside the ditch, is likened to a man “sem ólmum heldi elg” (holding a maddened elk).45 The aggression of the earlier battle beside the Thames, as in “hǫrð óx hildar garða hríð” (the harsh storm of battle-forts [i.e., shields] grew; or, the fighting grew fierce), does not match the language with which the second encounter is described. Nonetheless, this verse is notable for its reference to Ulfcytel (Ulfkell) leading the English defense.46 The “Ulfkell” identified in Liðsmannaflokkr is most probably the prominent thegn Ulfcytel of East Anglia, who fought the Danes near Norwich in 1004 and again at Ringmere Heath in 1010. Ulfcytel’s ability to command an army was amply illustrated in 1004, when the Danes admitted that had Ulfcytel’s forces not been under strength they would never have returned to their ships, even though they got “East Engla folces seo yldesta ofslægen” (the chief men of the East Anglian people killed).47 Ulfcytel, whose name reveals that he was of Scandinavian origin, also appears to have proven himself to be a bold and capable general at London. Liðsmannaflokkr may imply that he had anticipated the actions of the Vikings and was lying in wait for them (“lét . . . víkinga at bíða”).48 Ulfcytel’s ability to inflict what Poole describes as “considerable damage” may be inferred from the extant poem’s reticence about the outcome of the battle. There is also evidence of dissent in the Danish ranks. The unknown authors of the poem wrote that “tveir hugir runnu” (two intentions were current) amongst the Danes with regard to fighting, following the encounter with Ulfcytel.49 It would seem that there were those who questioned Cnut’s decision to besiege London. As we have seen, however, it would also seem that they were overruled and the siege continued. Other evidence for Ulfcytel being in the London area when Cnut was attempting to take the city may be found in another contemporary source. In what may be a reference to the same engagement mentioned in Liðsmannaflokkr, the skaldic poem Eiríksdrápa (Eulogy on Eiríkr) by Þórðr Kolbeinsson,

44 45 46 47 48 49

Poole, Viking Poems, 88. Poole, Viking Poems, 88. Poole, Viking Poems, 86. ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 52 (s.a. 1004); (E), trans. Swanton, 135–36 and n. 1 (s.a. 1004). Poole, Viking Poems, 87. Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 288.

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reports that his patron, Earl Eiríkr Hákonarson of Hlaðir (Lade in Trondheim), joined battle west of London (“fyr vestan . . . Lundún”), where he was resisted by Ulfcytel, who he says received “œglig hǫgg” (frightful blows).50 Like the anonymous poets of Liðsmannaflokkr, Þórðr does not name the victor of the engagement, but rather invites the inference that the two forces were evenly matched and that the English acquitted themselves honorably under Ulfcytel’s command. The location for the battle between Ulfcytel and Eiríkr has not been identified with certainty. In the later nineteenth century Guðbrandur Vigfússon tentatively nominated Brentford,51 but his proposal has since been questioned both by Russell Poole and Ann Williams. Poole directs our attention to the Chronicle’s account which says that Edmund Ironside commanded the English at Brentford, while Williams points out that Óttarr svarti’s Knútsdrápa (Eulogy on Cnut) gives Cnut as the leader of the Danes on that occasion.52 The references to Ulfcytel in Liðsmannaflokkr (which was composed for Cnut) and the Eiríksdrápa (for Earl Eiríkr), may be seen as two separate proofs that in 1016 the activities of Ulfcytel were not restricted to East Anglia and that, as Williams believes, Ulfcytel was involved in the defense of London. Poole argues that Ulfcytel’s absence in the Chronicle’s account of this may be explained as an omission in keeping with the latter’s tendency to favor King Edmund Ironside over Ulfcytel, a commander whose status and authority remain a matter of debate.53

Queen Emma’s Whereabouts in 1013–1017 Cnut’s first siege of London in 1016 begs another contentious question: the whereabouts of Emma, King Æthelred’s widow. In the Chronicle, Emma is said to have fled Sveinn Forkbeard’s successful invasion for Normandy at the end of 1013, before reappearing in 1017, when Cnut, having become king, “het . . . feccan him Æðelredes lafe þes oðres cynges him to cwene Ricardes dohtor” (ordered the widow of the former king Æthelred, Richard’s daughter, to be fetched to him as queen).54 From where, this annal does not say, although, as Alistair Campbell suggests, the entries for 1013 and 1017 may be read in conjunction to 50 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 289. 51 Vigfusson, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, II, 107. 52 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 288; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 140; see also “Óttarr svarti: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 775. 53 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 289; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 140. 54 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1017); (E), trans. Swanton, 155 (s.a. 1017); the same in ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1017).

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imply that Emma was absent from England during the sieges of London and remained in Normandy until summoned by Cnut.55 This reading has been challenged by Sten Körner, who argues that the annals for 1013 and 1017 were written by different scribes and that one might therefore expect there to be lacunae between their accounts.56 If one accepts the involvement of at least two scribes, one of whom was not concerned to maintain an unbroken account of all the topics covered by his or her predecessor, Emma may indeed have returned from Normandy in 1014 with Æthelred, or sometime thereafter, and was later brought to Cnut from a place in England. The implication that Cnut recalled Emma from Normandy has also been questioned by Simon Keynes. He believes that Cnut was “a bit high-handed” in ordering Emma to be “fetched” from abroad and suggests the entry in the Chronicle be read with the meaning that Emma remained in England after Æthelred’s death and was detained by the Danes until summoned by Cnut.57 Support for the strong possibility that Emma was in London, at least during Cnut’s first siege, may be found in Liðsmannaflokkr, whose stanza 8 refers to an “ekkja” (widow) looking out from the walls, while stanza 9 contains a reference to a “horna Hlǫkk” (drinking-horn Valkyrie [i.e., lady]) looking over the bank of the Thames. The unnamed widow is said to watch Cnut as he “sœkir snarla borgar karla” (smartly attacks the borough’s churls [i.e., the city’s garrison]). Although the Norse word ekkja (widow) does not have to be literal in skaldic verse, Poole believes that it is here in Liðsmannaflokkr. He is also persuasive in his reasoning that the most significant widow in England at that time was Queen Emma; given that she subsequently married Cnut, it is most probably Emma whom the poem records observing Cnut from the walls of London.58 Despite the apparent disagreement in the earliest English and Scandinavian sources concerning Emma’s presence in London when it was first besieged, most of the remaining primary sources place her in the city. Although Thietmar’s account of events at London, cited briefly above, is described by Keynes as “garbled” and “beyond our powers of comprehension,” he suggests that credence be given to the claim that Emma was in London. Thietmar, Keynes reminds us, was contemporary to the events he recorded.59 By Williams we are also reminded that Thietmar received his information about England from a “reliable witness,” presumably the Sewald who informed Thietmar of

55 Encomium, ed. Campbell, xliv. 56 Körner, Battle of Hastings, 9. 57 Keynes, “Æthelings in Normandy,” 181; see also Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 23, and Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 142. 58 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 290. 59 Keynes, “Æthelings in Normandy,” 176–77.

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the death in 1012 of Archbishop Ælfheah.60 Support for Thietmar can also be found in other sources. William of Jumièges puts Emma in London when Æthelred died, and she is said to be there when Cnut, hearing of the king’s death, is reported to have removed Emma from the city (“Emmam reginam abstractam ab urbe”) and married her.61 William of Jumièges is an admittedly late source, having written his account in ca. 1070 or 1071.62 Like Thietmar, he is prone to error, and Poole describes him as a “shaky source for events early in the [eleventh] century.” However, with regard to the assertion that Emma was in London, Poole also argues that William, being a member of the entourage of Emma’s great-nephew, William of Normandy, would have been a “well-informed, if biased witness.”63 Keynes also supports William of Jumièges’s credibility here, suggesting that as Emma might not have escaped the city, William’s report of her being taken from London is compatible with the Chronicle’s account that she was “fetched” by Cnut.64 In addition to Liðsmannaflokkr, two other Scandinavian sources indicate that Emma was in England during 1016. The thirteenth-century Knýtlinga saga tells us that Emma attempted to sail to Normandy immediately after Æthelred’s death, but was prevented from doing so; with Emma forcibly taken before him, Cnut follows his counselors’ advice and promptly marries Emma.65 Another relatively reliable late source, the fourteenth-century Appendix to Jómsvíkinga saga, has a similar account in which Earl Thorkell, finding Emma on board a ship intercepted by him, returns her to England and successfully persuades Cnut to marry her.66 Unique amongst the primary sources, the Encomium Emmae Reginae claims unequivocally that Emma was in Normandy when Cnut sought her out for his wife.67 Despite this explicit declaration, James Campbell doubts the reliability of the Encomiast here, whose panegyric of Emma “completely suppresses” her marriage to Æthelred and omits her dead husband’s name from the narrative.68 The economic treatment of certain facts and the exclusion of others, it is suggested, cast doubt on the reliability of some of the Encomium’s contents. Given the circumstances in which the Encomiast was writing, Keynes suggests, the singularity of his narrative should not be treated as unexpected. Emma, having returned from exile to

60 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 336; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 141. 61 Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. van Houts, 20–21. 62 Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. van Houts, 22–23; 67. 63 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 290–91. 64 Keynes, “Æthelings in Normandy,” 183. 65 Danakonunga Sǫgur, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, 107 (chap. 9). 66 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 92–93. 67 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 32–33. 68 James Campbell, “England, France, Flanders and Germany,” 256.

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be restored to power beside her sons Harthacnut and Edward, enjoyed a “moment of glory” in the years 1041–1042 in which she commissioned the Encomiast expressly to praise her. To do this successfully, the Encomiast would have had to negotiate the complexities of Emma’s career before her restoration. One way for him to achieve this objective was to stress Emma’s connection to Cnut and ignore her earlier marriage to Æthelred. To be consistent with this omission, the Encomiast would have had to claim that Emma was in Normandy when Cnut sent for her.69 In this way, Emma was probably in London when the city was first besieged by Cnut. The majority of sources say that Emma was either in London or trying to escape England at this time. The unnamed “widow” in Liðsmannaflokkr may be Emma, and it is only the absence of references to her in the Chronicle, between her leaving for Normandy in 1013 and being brought to Cnut in 1016, that creates the impression that she was abroad in the interval. Emma’s own claim to have been out of the country is most probably untrue, a falsehood perpetrated to facilitate her acceptance by the Anglo-Danish regime.

Cnut Leaves the Siege to Face Edmund It was most probably the resolute resistance of the city’s defenders, as recorded in most sources, that persuaded Cnut to leave the siege of London to part of his army. The costly encounter with Ulfcytel’s forces somewhere near the city should also be considered a contributory factor. With the momentum of his conquest appearing to stall, with signs of discord in the ranks, and with the losses necessarily incurred during the assaults, Cnut left a contingent of his army to maintain the siege and protect the ships. According to John of Worcester, he marched into Wessex to engage with Edmund Ironside.70 Having so far failed to take London, Cnut may have thought that defeating Edmund in battle was his only way to expedite the city’s capitulation and shorten his campaign. Although it is unknown when Cnut abandoned the siege and when he encountered Edmund, the sources are consistent in locating the first battle between them at Penselwood (Somerset), which lies in western Wessex near the boundaries of Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire. The position of Penselwood makes it likely that Edmund recruited his army from all three counties,71 and that support for him was strongest in western Wessex. In relation to descriptions of Edmund’s other battles, the reference in the Chronicle to

69 Keynes, “Æthelings in Normandy,” 183–84. 70 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 486–87. 71 Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, I, 421–22.

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Penselwood is unusually brief, stating simply that a battle occurred.72 However, the historical narratives of the later Norman period are unanimous in making Edmund the victor of the engagement.73 The discrepancy between the earlier and later sources may be resolved by Stafford’s argument that writers of history in the twelfth century sought to commemorate the Anglo-Saxon past.74 For this reason, in the absence of a detailed account in the Chronicle, the twelfth-century apologists for pre-Conquest England would have been inclined to declare Edmund the victor. The Chronicle creates the impression that another battle was fought shortly after Penselwood between Cnut and Edmund at Sherston (Wiltshire) after midsummer in 1016.75 Williams suggests that the westerly location of Sherston, close to the borders of Wiltshire, Somerset, and Gloucestershire, indicates that the more easterly parts of Wessex were then under Danish control.76 This suggestion is supported by the similarly western location of Penselwood. The probability that Edmund’s power base was in the west of Wessex is also suggested by John of Worcester’s account that the English rebel, the Mercian ealdorman Eadric Streona, exhorted the men of Dorset, Devon, and Wiltshire to desert Edmund’s army.77 Other named English defectors were the otherwise unknown Ælfmær Darling and (uniquely recorded by John of Worcester) Ælfgar, son of Meaw.78 The defection of Ælfgar, a Gloucestershire magnate, is significant. Timothy Bolton has established that Ælfgar had estates in Devon and Dorset, counties also putatively represented in Edmund’s army.79 If men from these counties had been recruited by Ælfgar for the Danes, Edmund did not have support from everyone in the aforementioned areas. The possibility of political disaffection within a single county is also illustrated by John of Worcester’s assertion that a section of Cnut’s army came from Wiltshire. These defections, along with the alleged collaboration of Hampshire,80 further illustrate the profound political fragmentation of Wessex and southern Mercia.

72 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 149 (s.a. 1016). 73 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 314–15; Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 486–87; Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 356–57. 74 Stafford, Unification and Conquest, 20. 75 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 149–51 (s.a. 1016). 76 Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 143. 77 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 488–89. 78 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016); Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 486–87. 79 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 38–39. The family of Ælfgar meaw is discussed in Williams, World Before Domesday, 13–15. 80 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 486–87.

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Most sources report that the battle of Sherston ended with the two armies going different ways as if by mutual consent, with neither gaining an outright victory.81 There is evidence, however, that Edmund won both a moral and practical victory at Sherston, for William of Malmesbury, albeit uniquely, records that the West Saxons who had sided with Cnut recognized Edmund as their “dominum legitimum” (rightful lord).82 Since these sources repeatedly refer to Edmund subsequently raising several armies in Wessex, it seems likely that after Sherston his position in the region had become more secure, and William of Malmesbury’s assertion may have some basis in fact. If John of Worcester’s account may be trusted, Cnut’s decision to desert the field under the cover of darkness to resume the siege of London is also significant.83 The clandestine manner of the Danes’ departure suggests they did not want to be attacked as they left. It can also be argued, and has been by Jeffrey James, that Cnut, by leaving possession of the field to Edmund, was effectively admitting defeat: retaining the battlefield is traditionally an indicator of victory.84

Welsh Warriors with King Edmund? Edmund responded to Cnut’s abandonment of Sherston by raising another army in Wessex and pursuing him back to London.85 Perhaps the most puzzling reference to the composition of this army is made by Thietmar, who says that the force, inaccurately reported to have been led by the ætheling Æthelstan, contained a contingent of “Britanni” (Britons). Since this is unlikely to be a synonym of “Angli,” a word which, as Poole has observed, Thietmar uses for the English several times,86 it is more probable that Thietmar refers to the “British,” or Brythonic, inhabitants of this island, otherwise known as the Welsh. Although Thietmar’s inclusion of the ætheling Æthelstan in the relief force, as we have seen, illustrates his susceptibility to errors, a reference in Liðsmannaflokkr allows for the possibility that the Welsh had already participated in defending London from Cnut. Stanza 8, recounting how Cnut attacked the city’s garrison,

81 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016); Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 314–15; Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 488–89; Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 356–57. 82 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 314–15. 83 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 488–89. 84 James, An Onslaught of Spears, 175. 85 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016). 86 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 294.

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says “dynr á brezkum brynjum blóðiss” (the blood-ice [i.e., sword] rings against British mailcoats).87 In the context of the siege of London, the term “brezkar” or “Bretar,” words which denote the “Welsh,” have been explained as “poetical licence” to mean the English, as a term “belonging to all the inhabitants of Britain.”88 However, as Poole has demonstrated, other skaldic poetry does not support such an interpretation. When ascribing national names to the various peoples of the British Isles, several skaldic works use “brezkir” or “Bretar” for the Welsh with a specificity which argues against any general application to the British Isles.89 Although, as Poole indicates, the reference to Welsh coats of mail in Liðsmannaflokkr does not necessarily mean they were worn by Welshmen,90 it is more plausible that part of Edmund Ironside’s army at London was recruited in the more westerly reaches of Wessex, where the population was more Brythonic than English. Edmund can be connected to the most westerly part of England, specifically Cornwall, which in the mid-ninth century was described in the Winchester recension of the Chronicle as “Westwalas” (West Wales).91 An early diploma of Cnut confirms a grant made by Edmund in exchange for property he held in Cornwall.92 If Edmund enlisted men from this county, it is feasible that Thietmar’s “Britanni” refers to men of Cornwall. Equally enigmatic is Henry of Huntingdon’s report that Edmund brought to London a team “manu electa bellatorum” (of hand-picked warriors).93 Although neither the origin of this select group, nor the source, if any, used by Henry is disclosed, the reference to elite soldiers might allude to Thietmar’s “Britanni,” given Edmund’s starting point. Otherwise, Edmund’s professionals may have been a body of warriors similar to the Danish housecarls introduced to England in the early eleventh century.94

87 Poole, Viking Poems, 88. 88 Zachrisson, Romans, Kelts and Saxons, 47; Ashdown, English and Norse Documents, 207. 89 Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jónsson, B.I, 148–52; Heimskringla I, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 264–65 (Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, chap. 30); Orkneyinga Saga, ed. Finnbogi Guðmundsson, 59–62 (chaps. 33–34); Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 292. 90 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 294. 91 ASC (A), ed. Bately, 42 (s.a. 835); (A), trans. Swanton, 62 and n. 9 (s.a. 835 [for 838]); see also Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 432, 494, 512–13. 92 Electronic Sawyer, S 951 (s.a. 1018). 93 Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 356–57. 94 Flateyjarbók, ed. Vigfusson and Unger, I, 203, 205, and II, 22; Sveno’s “Lex Castrensis,” in Scriptores Rerum Danicarum, ed. Langebek, Suhm, Engelstoft, and Werlauff, III, 144; Larson, “The King’s Household,” 158–59.

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King Edmund’s Relief of London Most sources are silent concerning how Edmund’s army approached London, but one of the Chronicle’s recensions recounts how Edmund concealed his arrival by keeping to the north of the Thames and descended upon the besiegers by emerging through “Clæihangran” (Clayhanger), whose location (not the Clayhanger near Walsall) was reliably identified by Sir Frank Stenton as Clayhill Farm, Tottenham.95 The exact manner in which Edmund relieved London is also unknown. The account in the Chronicle is typically laconic, recording only that Edmund “buruhwaru aredde” (rescued the city’s inhabitants) and “here aflymde to scipe” (drove the [Danish] raiders to their ships).96 In stark contrast to the Chronicle’s account of fighting at Penselwood and Sherston, there is a conspicuous lack of any reference to hostilities during the liberation of London. On the other hand, it is possible that blows were not exchanged, for William of Malmesbury may be close to the truth when he says that the Danes beat a hasty retreat upon hearing of Edmund’s approach.97 The notion that Edmund won a bloodless victory is even supported by an apologist for Cnut, L. M. Larson, who argues that Cnut was unable to conduct a siege while fighting such a determined opponent as Edmund, and so prudently withdrew to his ships.98 Contrary to the other sources, the Encomium, which has probably telescoped events, says that Cnut accepted an invitation from the Londoners to occupy the city, but then, doubting the loyalty of the citizens, left London as soon as Edmund arrived. The Encomiast also asserts that Edmund challenged Cnut to single combat, which he refused, and that the Danes departed to winter on the Isle of Sheppey.99 This account is highly dubious, for it is unlikely that Edmund arrived just as Cnut was leaving, or that he would stake his crown on the outcome of a duel. Furthermore, it is implausible that Edmund would have allowed the Danes to leave without pursuing them. Instead, it is more credible that the Encomiast’s account was a fiction, made to spare Emma the embarrassment of hearing it said that Cnut failed to secure London while Edmund was still alive to oppose him. Most of the sources say that Edmund, having lifted the siege, remained in London for two days before traveling to Brentford to face the Danes in battle and

95 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 102 (s.a. 1016); Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 391; Cover, Place Names of Middlesex, 79. 96 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016). 97 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 314–15. 98 Larson, Canute the Great, 89–90. 99 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 22–25.

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dislodge them further.100 While in London, Edmund may have taken counsel with the city’s leading citizens and attended to its defenses, but Larson plausibly suggests that Edmund stayed there until that part of Cnut’s fleet that had remained had joined the rest of the Danish ships. Brentford, connected to London and the West Country by a Roman road, may have been chosen by Cnut in order to facilitate further attacks on London. Both the Chronicle and the later Latin Chronicles give victory to the English at Brentford, although a passage in the ca. 1027 Knútsdrápa of Óttarr svarti, which records a Danish victory, may also illuminate the composition of Edmund’s army. Unique to this Knútsdrápa is the statement that Cnut has taken Frisian lives at Brentford.101 If Óttarr’s account is reliable, his eulogy may tell us that Edmund employed foreign mercenaries, as his father Æthelred had – and as Sveinn and Cnut did, of course.102 The possibility that a section of Edmund’s army was motivated by greed for gain, rather than by love of country, would seem to be supported by the reference in the Chronicle to a section of the English army at Brentford drowning in pursuit of loot.103 If mercenaries were present at Brentford, they may have been with Edmund at London, which would help to explain the origin of the elite warriors alleged to have contributed to the liberation of the city.

Cnut’s Second and Third Sieges of London The Chronicle says that after Brentwood, Edmund left London and withdrew to Wessex to assemble another army. The probability of ferocious fighting at Brentford may be inferred from this account of Edmund’s move, which suggests that his forces had been severely depleted. The Chronicle also reports that Edmund put the Danes to flight, implying an English victory,104 but Poole suggests that the Londoners may have perceived the outcome of this battle differently. From their perspective, Brentford may have been only a temporary interruption of Cnut’s assault on the city.105 In Edmund’s absence, at any rate, Cnut’s Danes “sona” (immediately)

100 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016); Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 488–89; Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 356–57. William of Malmesbury says that Edmund followed the retreating Danes; Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 314–15. 101 “Óttarr svarti: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 775. 102 Abels, “Household Men, Mercenaries and Vikings,” 152, 155–57; Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, 105. 103 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016). 104 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016). 105 Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” 275.

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besieged London for the second time. There is also a suggestion that their efforts were intensified, for the Chronicle has the Danes attacking strongly “ge be wætere ge be land” (by both water and land).106 The city’s staunch resistance may once again have proved effective, for the Danes abandoned this siege and left with their ships to raid in Mercia.107 Perhaps from the fact that the sources agree about the Danes pillaging southern Mercia around London, Larson concluded, probably correctly, that they left London because the harvest had recently been gathered.108 If this is correct, the timing of the Danes’ plundering suggests that late August or early September may have been the season when Edmund relieved London a second time. There were subsequent engagements between Edmund and Cnut beyond London. In Otford in Kent, Edmund intercepted the mounted section of the Danish army taking plunder from southern Mercia to the Isle of Sheppey. It is said that Edmund “ofsloh heora swa feala swa he offeran mihte” (killed as many as he could overtake), before halting at Aylesford, where, according to the Chronicle, he was persuaded by Ealdorman Eadric to discontinue the chase.109 After his defeat the following month in Essex, however, Edmund retreated west and the Danes besieged London a third time.

Defeat and Death of King Edmund There was a decisive battle at “Assandun” in Essex on October 18, 1016: either Ashdon in north-west or Ashingdon in south-east Essex.110 Eadric Streona is said to have played a crucial role, deserting the English ranks, provoking further desertions, and contributing to Edmund’s defeat, his flight westwards and the final Danish victory over his forces which was achieved, despite possible reinforcements from Wales,111 near the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.112 In the following peace negotiations at Olney (now Alney) in the same county, the

106 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 73 (s.a. 1016); (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016). 107 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016). 108 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 150–51 (s.a. 1016); Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 316–17; Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 488–89; Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 356–57; Larson, Canute the Great, 91. 109 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 73–74 (s.a. 1016); (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016); (DE), trans. Swanton, 151. 110 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1016). 111 Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 28. 112 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 152 (s.a. 1016).

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kingdom of England was divided, with King Edmund taking Wessex and King Cnut receiving the remainder.113 London continued to be associated with Edmund and Cnut after the cessation of hostilities. Immediately following the settlement at Olney, Cnut and his army wintered in London, whose inhabitants, according to the Chronicle, arranged their own truce with the Danes and so “heom frið gebohtan” (bought peace from them).114 The Chronicle does not clarify what is meant by this phrase, but one may imagine that the city was required to make some form of payment to the Danish force lifting the siege. Edmund may have been badly wounded during his last encounter with the Danes. It might be inferred from the Chronicle’s statement “feng Eadmund cing to Weastseaxon” (King Edmund succeeded to Wessex) that he did not return to London but traveled to his political heartland at the conclusion of the peace talks.115 John of Worcester says that he was in London when he died,116 but the lack of corroboration for his claim, together with the late composition of his narrative, gives sufficient grounds to doubt John’s reliability in this matter. It seems unlikely that Edmund would have gone to London so soon after Olney; in Larson’s view it was improbable that Edmund would have been there at the same time as the city was occupied by Cnut and his fleet.117 At any rate, Edmund died on November 30, 1016.118 Although London eventually submitted and indeed hosted Cnut’s first postwar assembly towards the end of 1016,119 the repeated and successful resistance of this city through the war most probably led Cnut to take special measures. While he needed London for its economy, which was unequaled on the island, experience had taught him not to trust the loyalty of a city that might, as Matthew Townend suggests, become a “crucible” of rebellion.120 The continued antipathy of the Londoners to Danish rule, as well as Cnut’s response to this, are topics beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is worth noting that in 1018 the city suffered a tax which could be described as a punitive.121 An earlier exemplary action witnessed by London was Cnut’s execution of Ealdorman Eadric in 1017.122

113 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 153 (s.a. 1016). 114 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1006); (DE), trans. Swanton, 152–53 (s.a. 1016). 115 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1006); (DE), trans. Swanton, 152–53 (s.a. 1016). 116 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 492–93. 117 Larson, Canute the Great, 99–100. 118 Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 492–93. 119 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 93. 120 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 110. Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” 167. 121 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 154–55 (s.a. 1018); Hill, “An Urban Policy for Cnut?,” 103. 122 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 154–55 (s.a. 1017); Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 504–5.

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And then in June 1023, as we have seen, the remains of Archbishop Ælfheah, killed by Danes in 1012, were forcibly translated from London to Canterbury, depriving St. Paul’s of an important source of income.123

Conclusion: Cnut’s Reluctant Capital In the course of 1016 London was besieged three times by the Danes, although they failed to break in, while their attacks, which conformed to a pattern of Viking behavior stretching from the First Viking Age, proved ineffective. Upon the death of Æthelred, London demonstrated its support for Edmund by electing him king and remained loyal to the English cause throughout the war. While the battle for control of the city, and the greater war for the mastery of England, was fought primarily between Edmund Ironside and Cnut, other English nobles contributed to safeguarding London and during the first siege the city’s defenses were most probably organized by Ulfcytel of East Anglia. It also seems likely that Æthelred’s widow, Emma, resided in the city during the sieges. Cnut’s abandonment of the first siege, to bring Edmund to battle in Wessex, enabled Edmund to distinguish himself as a military commander and to assert his authority unchallenged throughout the region. Edmund’s relief of the second siege at Brentford may have been accomplished with the assistance of non-English troops, an elite band of Welsh extraction, or Frisian or other foreign mercenaries; possibly a combination. When Cnut abandoned his siege of London a third time, he made himself vulnerable, but the intervention of Ealdorman Eadric aided him and prevented Edmund from capitalizing on the damage he inflicted on the Danes at Aylesbury. At the conclusion of the war, London was included in that half of the kingdom ceded to Cnut. It was then that the garrison, perhaps concluding that further resistance was impracticable, finally submitted. Nonetheless, throughout Cnut’s reign, London remained a center of anti-Danish sentiment. The city’s continued patriotism may be attributed, at least in part, to its hold over the remains of King Æthelred, whose later reign suffered a resurgence of Viking activity, as well as

123 ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 142–43 (s.a. 1012), 156–57 (s.a. 1023); Rumble, Reign of Cnut, 282–315; Bolton, Cnut the Great, 112. See North and Goeres in the Prologue to this book (19–24).

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over the body of St. Ælfheah, the former archbishop of Canterbury whom the Danes had killed four years earlier. One might also consider the city’s antipathy to Cnut to have been influenced by its collective memory of Edmund Ironside, liberator of the city which had elevated him to the throne. For Cnut, the king who replaced him, London was nonetheless the jewel in the crown.

Part II: Cnut’s Kingdom

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Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017–1019 How rulers of England and their neighbours viewed their control of the lowland British polity that had been emerging during the course of the tenth and early eleventh centuries remains a contentious question, one which has been thrown into sharp relief in recent years by George Molyneaux’s valuable reassessment of tenth-century England.1 For his review of England in this century, Molyneaux takes Cnut’s assumption of power in 1017, recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as his starting point. Although, as Molyneux is quick to point out, Cnut’s division in 1017 of the kingdom into four (Wessex “him sylfan” (for himself), East Anglia for Thorkell, Mercia for Eadric, and Northumbria for Eiríkr) does not mean that the credit for a “kingdom of England” should go to him, Cnut’s big division may have meant that he was in effective control of more territory than his West Saxon royal predecessors had enjoyed: his loss of Lothian may have become a concrete reality after the battle of Carham in 1018, but much of the territory from the Tees down to the coast of the English Channel was more than superficially subordinate to him. Such control had been within the scope of the ambition of rulers after Æthelstan, who might style themselves, as Æthelred did, “Emperor of all the Peoples of Britain,” even while they did not quite manage to live up to this. What distinguished Cnut, however, was a new practical control. This was coupled with an ideological determination on the part of Archbishop Wulfstan, and of other heirs to the tenth-century religious reform movement, to drive the political manifestation of the English identity forward in a polity that could be realized as a “kingdom of England.” Formulations such as the “kingdom of England” or the “territory” or “earldom” of “Wessex” may not always have been so clearly defined, use them as we may. A town or city could be identified to contemporaries more in terms of the geographical space of the settlement than in terms of the “burhware” (town-dwellers) within, but territories, whether regnes or prouinciae, remained defined by the subjection of people within them. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle provides something approximating to an official record of Cnut’s reign, at least at the start of it: Cnut may have succeeded to a “rice” (kingdom), but it was “eallon Angelcynnes ryce” (to a kingdom of all the English people) that he did so.2 This chapter will examine how

1 Molyneaux, Formation of the English Kingdom, 1–4, referring to ASC (CDE), s.a. 1017. 2 (CDE), s.a. 1017: ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 103; (D), ed. Cubbin, 63; (E), ed. Irvine, 74; (D), trans. Swanton, 154. For the official standing of the Chronicle, see Brooks, “Why is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle about Kings?”; Konshuh, “Anræd in their Unræd.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-009

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Cnut found himself in control of that group of people and its land, an entity far larger than the Danish area with which he had previously been engaged.3

Cnut’s Assumption of Power Cnut, a young man aged not much more than twenty, was able to adapt himself to notions of English identity and the forms and structures of English power, and to make them adapt to him in turn. The possible identification of Cnut as an Englishman is not a new one. Whereas L. M. Larson’s Cnut of 1912 remained implacably an old Viking (albeit a politically agile Christian one), only remaining in England because of the dangers of its revolt,4 the view from Sir Frank Stenton in 1943 was that Cnut was one of the last of the barbarians to be converted by Christian civilization: although Stenton did not see Cnut as an “Anglo-Saxon” king, he praised his “enthusiastic devotion to the interests of the church in England.”5 It is worth noting how such assessments consider Cnut’s position in terms of his control of an agglomeration of territories (or even empire), or how historians at least assess him in the knowledge that he would come to control his brother’s Danish territory when the time came. There is good justification for a focus on that transmarine achievement: Cnut had retained a large number of ships. He reacted so rapidly to the death of his brother Haraldr in 1019 that it would be surprising if he had not had Denmark in his sights in some way. Recent books by Timothy Bolton, as well as other chapters in this volume, have done much to shift the focus back to Cnut’s interests in the North Sea and its environs.6 It has been suggested that the appearance of Cnut’s name on some early Danish coins, minted according to a design owing something to an Æthelredian coin pattern, is an indication that he

3 Darby, in Domesday England, 90, suggests a population of between 1.2 and 1.6 million south of the Tees in 1086, a number which we may assume to have been slightly smaller at the start of the century. The modern measure of the area of England is 130,279 sq km (approximately 70,000 hides south of the Tees in Domesday Book). See Abels, “English Logistics and Military Administration, 871–1066,” 262. Compare also with Denmark’s 42,931 sq km (more like 60,000 sq km when Skåne and territory in modern Sweden are taken into account; the loose hegemonic control over parts of Norway focused on the Oslo Fjord area is more difficult to define in terms of land measurements). 4 Larson, Canute the Great, 112, 162–79. 5 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 397. On this issue, see Ellis in this volume, p. 357. 6 Bolton, Empire of Cnut and Cnut the Great. In this volume, see particularly Spejlborg, pp. 337–53, and Bolton, p. 459–84.

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was recognized as a co-ruler with his brother Haraldr before 1018/1019, but the evidence is not conclusive.7 In any case, while a suggestion of joint rule might help us understand the smoothness of Danish succession in the wake of Haraldr’s death, it remains significant that by then Cnut had been recognized as king of England for two years and could only be a nominal king of Denmark. At best, he would have been in the race for the crown if we go with the idea that, in his absence, his interests there were promoted by Ælfgifu, his English wife from Northampton. The plausible but sadly unprovable assumption behind this idea is that Ælfgifu married Cnut in 1013×1014, left England in the wake of his father’s death and King Æthelred’s return from Normandy, and remained in Denmark when Cnut sailed to England in 1015.8 Cnut could not have known that his brother Haraldr would die when he did, but he did know that Haraldr would continue to rule in Denmark and that in due course he may have been expected to determine the Danish succession for his own heirs.9 When considering Cnut’s reign in England, we often reach for parallels between Cnut and William of Normandy, whose military conquest of England came almost exactly half a century after that of Cnut.10 However, William conquered and ruled England in the knowledge that he remained duke of Normandy. Sveinn Forkbeard, who embarked on conquest knowing that his patrimony was in the hands of Haraldr, his eldest son, is a closer parallel to William than Cnut in this respect. England was more than a consolation prize for losing Denmark, but for a period Cnut had to make what he could of English kingship alone.11

7 Blackburn, “Do Cnut’s First Coins?” This is discussed critically by Jonsson, “Coinage of Cnut,” 223–24, more positively by Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 155–56, and then less favourably in his Cnut the Great, 52, n. 91. I am grateful to Gareth Williams for discussion of this. 8 For Ælfgifu’s position, see Bolton, “Ælfgifu of Northampton”; however, for the suggestion that she was in England for much of Cnut’s early reign, based on a reference in the Thorney Abbey Liber Vitae and the “of Northampton” byname in ASC (D), s.a. 1035, see Lawson, Cnut, 123–24. 9 Bolton, in Cnut the Great, 130, deals with the question of Harald’s unpopularity in Denmark in the problematic Annales Ryenses, though does not countenance his deposition; a picture of unpopularity may not be a world away from the unrest in Denmark at the time of Cnut’s arrival there in the Vita Ædwardi Regis, ed. Barlow, 10–11 (chap. 1). 10 Conquests in England, ed. Ashe and Ward, the outcome of the other major conference which considered “Cnut 1016 in 2016,” relates to the parallels between Cnut and William more explicitly than the current volume. 11 Lund, however, notes Cnut’s influence in Denmark during his brother’s lifetime as a useful comment on the principle of the elder son retaining the patrimonial territory, also drawing a significant parallel with the experience of William of Normandy’s conquest in 1066, in “Cnut’s Danish Kingdom,” 28–30.

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Conquering the Kingdom: From North to South Edmund King, writing about the reign of King Stephen (1135–1154) in 1994, suggested that the idea of assessing the first hundred days of a presidency (with reference to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt) “can be taken back [to the twelfth century] without anachronism, for it says no more than that the first impressions created by a new regime are crucial in the establishment of its authority.”12 King applied this idea to the reign of Stephen with some success, and the formulation of “the first hundred days” is a useful tool: it can give a sense of the support for the incumbent, their hopes, dreams, and a sense of how they begin to respond to “Events.” Unfortunately, this tool has its limits in the case of Cnut. As we have seen, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes the point at which Cnut succeeded to the kingdom in its entry for 1017. Yet questions remain. Did this succession take place immediately after the death of Edmund Ironside on November 30, 1016 (and thus within the temporal boundaries of the year 1017)?13 Or does the annal refer to a coronation ceremony in the summer of 1017, a point at which Cnut’s regime could really be said to have established its authority? We should not forget, either, that the CDE version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to Cnut as “cyng” (king) in terms of his election by the Danish fleet in 1014, his return to Sandwich in 1015, and his campaigns in Mercia in 1016. It is possible that his kingship was accepted in the south of England in 1016, which would mean that Cnut was made king of the English three times in the course of four years – surely a record! The question of a coronation ceremony and its possible date is discussed below. However, while a precise assessment of Cnut’s first hundred days, if we interpret this by what he had achieved by March 10, 1017, escapes historical record, there is enough evidence about the start of Cnut’s reign in England to justify making this assessment over a longer timescale than one hundred days. In his 1994 biography of Cnut, the first book-length study of the ruler since 1912, M. K. Lawson emphasizes the agency of “the most successful of all preConquest rulers in Britain.”14 For all the praise, nonetheless, one cannot help but read Lawson’s Cnut as a figure enveloped by an existing system of English governance and ecclesiastical networks, rather like an incoming Prime Minister stifled by the established policies of Whitehall civil servants. Others have seen the institutions as a machine that could be used: James Campbell’s insistence on the state-driven mechanisms of Cnut’s housecarls was, for him, a validation 12 King, in “Introduction,” 9–10, notes the concept in Schlesinger, Age of Roosevelt, 1–22. This approach was not followed, however, in King’s more recent biography, King Stephen. 13 See Metlitskaya earlier in this volume, pp. 113–28. 14 Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 196–98, esp. 196.

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of the institutions of the kingdom that Cnut had inherited.15 The late Timothy Reuter provided an abiding image of the manner in which Cnut, like other political contenders in the tenth through to twelfth centuries, could step behind the controls of a car (presumably a powerful one) because of the inherent stability of the system: “like a car, it needed a driver,” he wrote, “but anyone who knew how to drive could drive it.”16 The use of these mechanisms was a choice made by Cnut, whose engagement with them was active and determined by the development of policy. The apparent ease with which Cnut slipped into forms of Anglo-Saxon kingship and then, in a winning combination with Wulfstan, has been taken to illustrate the apogee of the pre-Conquest achievement, belies just how revolutionary Cnut’s form of kingship was in contemporary English or even European terms. There was a precedent in England during this period for “Viking rulership,” a term which must be seen as a shorthand for control of a “fleet-army” and for the acquisitive features of kingship with roots in Scandinavia.17 As other chapters in this volume demonstrate, Cnut was not backward in demonstrating his kingship through war-leadership and in acquiring and distributing wealth.18 Notwithstanding the possibility that that the extant poem Beowulf was copied (or even, as Kiernan claims, composed) during the reign of Cnut (1016–1035), the maintenance of cultural links to Scandinavia was evidently not a mere political contrivance, to be picked up at will.19 If Cnut’s patronage is evident in the skaldic poem Liðsmannaflokkr (Soldiers’ Song),20 it was related to the ongoing politics of rivalry between Cnut and the man of the moment, Thorkell the Tall. Perhaps the rivalry between them stemmed from the immediate aftermath of

15 Campbell, “Some Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State,” 203–4; see also Hooper’s reading of housecarls as a private group, in “Military Developments in the Reign of Cnut”; both, admittedly, were most interested in Harthacnut’s housecarls, in ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 107 (s.a. 1041) and ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 66 (s.a. 1041). 16 Reuter, “The Making of England and Germany, 850–1050,” 58–59. 17 Viking kingship in Britain is discussed in Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland. 18 For economic and social ties see Spejlborg in this volume, pp. 337–53; a perspective on the longer-term background of Cnut’s conquest is provided by the classic paper by Wilson, “Danish Kings and England.” Assessments of Cnut’s career in England as a “Viking” leader may be seen in Bolton, Cnut the Great, 53–91, who also notes (p. 89) that a reliquary seized in battle was kept intact and later was presented to Canterbury, and in my own shorter study, Cnut: North Sea King, esp. 20–21. A military perspective (albeit one which foregrounds Thorkell and Sveinn rather than Cnut) is provided by Howard, Swein Forkbeard’s Invasions. 19 Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, 18–23, 270–78. On the dating of the manuscript, see also North in this volume, pp. 277–79. 20 Text edited in “Liðsmannaflokkr,” ed. Poole.

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their campaign of 1015–1016. Cnut’s patronage suggests that he was not unaware of the significance of presenting himself as a Viking in an English context.21 Matthew Townend and Roberta Frank have shown the significance of his patronage of skaldic poets for a Norse-speaking audience who were “enisled,” as Frank put it, “in a sea of Anglophones.”22 Nonetheless, the contextual evidence for the composition of Liðsmannaflokkr suggests that some of the other surviving poems which make frequent reference to the control of Norway may coincide with a later period of Cnut’s reign, when there was potential for crisis in an empire which encompassed Norway. The later skaldic poetry, in short, may not reflect the cultural direction of Cnut’s English court at the start of his reign.23 Cnut’s kingship was not simply “Viking rulership” in an “English” shell, however. Before the period 1017–1019, Cnut’s predecessors as Viking rulers in England included a range of rulers of York, such as his namesake Knútr (ca. 900 – ca. 905),24 Sigtryggr Cáech (ca. 920–927), Óláfr Sigtryggsson (941–944 and 949–952; d. 981), and Eiríkr Blóðøx (948–949 and 952–954); in East Anglia there was Guthrum, or “Æthelstan” as he became known, together with the anonymous rulers who may be identified through the St. Edmund currency of the late ninth century. The rule over areas of Britain and Ireland by the leaders of Viking retinues tended more generally to be based on places with access to bodies of water, particularly the Irish Sea, which gave rulers the opportunity to bring together maritime realms.25 Cnut’s eventual creation of an empire based around the North Sea had much in common with this Insular dynamic. What is noteworthy here, however, is that Cnut’s rule initially involved a shift from the traditional means by which a whole host of Anglo-Scandinavian rulers

21 Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, 86–90; the historical context and dating associated with the events of the last stages of the conquest is discussed in Poole’s “Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History,” 284–86. An alternative reading might relate Liðsmannaflokkr to a commemoration of glory days as part of the brief reconciliation of Thorkell and Cnut in 1023, following similar motives of reconciliation through the commission of artworks by quarrelling Carolingian brothers in the mid-ninth century (for which see McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms, 174). 22 Frank, “King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 108; Townend, “Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur.” 23 Townend, in “Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur,” 152–62, provides an important discussion of dating. See Lavelle, Cnut: North Sea King, 83–85; and Poole, pp. 255–76, and North, pp. 284–93, in this volume. 24 Possibly one with the Hardacnut (i.e., Hǫrða-Knútr) given as the father of Guthred (i.e., Guthfrith) in the Historia de sancto Cuthberto (chap. 13), datable to the mid to late eleventh century in Northumbria; see North in this volume, p. 298. 25 See Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland, with a consideration of the Irish Sea basis of Viking kingship in England at 97–123.

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had asserted their control on territory in Britain. While it is difficult to generalize from only a century in which there was some form of political hegemony over lowland Britain, it is at least possible to say that the territorial foci of rulers based outside Wessex naturally differed from the foci of the majority of the West Saxon dynasty. While the territorial possessions of the latter group were concentrated in a region south of the Thames, the rule that Vikings imposed on Northumbria made use of existing structures of power in the north of England in the early tenth century.26 To some extent, a consideration of the reign of Æthelstan (924–939) provides us with a sense of the way in which political power could shift from Wessex to a different region within England when circumstances permitted, even for a ruler of the West Saxon dynasty. Although Æthelstan’s presence in Wessex was not inconsiderable, he seems mostly to have moved about the midlands and north of England, as the evidence of his assemblies to the north of the Thames suggests.27 Our view of Æthelstan is determined by the exceptional survival of evidence in charters written by a scribe who was meticulous in recording places of assembly. This evidence, though restricted to charters, does seem to be commensurate with Æthelstan’s links with the Mercian nobility and his essentially “pan-British” agenda.28 More than Æthelstan, whose Mercian connections made him “something of an outsider in Wessex,”29 Cnut was self-evidently a political newcomer whose connections lay outside Wessex. It would therefore have made sense for him to think in terms of England outside Wessex. Here I wish to stress the road not taken: the opportunity existed in the middle of the second decade of the eleventh century for Cnut to rule in a manner which shifted the center of political gravity away from the Thames valley, away from the south of England. That he chose not to do this may suggest a driver slipping behind the controls of Reuter’s car. Cnut’s concentration, nonetheless, on the south of England is all the more striking in the light of the glimpse we are offered into his father’s initial intentions in the Danish conquests of 1013–1016. In these campaigns, which appear to differ from the large-scale booty-gathering of the first decade of the eleventh century in which Sveinn was closely involved, the main playing field for Sveinn (and, by extension, Cnut) was the north of England. The fact that Sveinn started to ravage England only after he crossed Watling Street in 1013 seems to be related to a policy of cultivating, as Pauline Stafford pointed out in 1985,

26 Hadley, Northern Danelaw; “‘Hamlet and the Princes of Denmark.’” On the political significance of York, see also Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100, 214–30. 27 Hill, Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, 85, 87. 28 Molyneaux, “Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings?”; Foot, Æthelstan: First King of England. The geographical significance of a deliberate link between Wessex and Mercia might be noted ca. 926 in the Grateley law code; see Lavelle, “Why Grateley?”. 29 Foot, Æthelstan: First King of England, 18.

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an ethnic “Danishness” in the “Danelaw.”30 Although, as Stafford pointed out in a later publication, Sveinn “aimed at a conquest of the English kingdom from the North, not merely a revival of the Viking kingdom of York,”31 he seems to have planned to make use of the city for his coronation in February 101432 and was initially buried there before his body was taken to Denmark.33 Cnut also had links with the social and political landscape north of Watling Street. One of these was his marriage to Ælfgifu, identified by the D recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in its 1035 entry as “þære Hamtunisca” (the woman of Northampton); presumably their marriage was celebrated in 1013 or the beginning of 1014.34 Although the possibility remains that Cnut married Ælfgifu on his return to England in 1015, or even in 1016, a political alliance with midland nobles seems to have been more pressing for him in the early part of the 1013–1016 campaign. Cnut’s marriage to Ælfgifu gave him a strong familial link to her powerful kindred.35 Cnut also made use of his father’s base in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, in the aftermath of the recall of Æthelred from Normandy in 1014: while most of the English nobility deserted him, an act for which their hostages, given in the surrenders of 1013, were mutilated, the people of “Lindesige” (“Lindsey,” the Chronicle’s use of the old kingdom’s name for Lincolnshire) remained loyal.36 Although Cnut departed the south of England in 1014, returning there in the following year, the way in which he responded to the actions of Edmund Ironside and Earl Uhtred in 1016, even when his position in Wessex was looking more secure, shows that his interests lay in the north. We see him heading there in that year, an act which gave Edmund his opening to lead the resistance from London.37

30 Stafford, East Midlands in the Early Middle Ages, 124–25, 135–43; Stafford is at pains to point out that “Danish” identity was not a monolithic feature and was subject to manipulation; see also Innes, “Danelaw Identities.” 31 Stafford, Unification and Conquest, 65–67, esp. 65. 32 Plans for a coronation in York are suggested by Wilcox, “Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi as Political Performance.” 33 For a discussion of the evidence, see Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Royal Burials in Winchester,” 234–35. 34 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 65 (s.a. 1035); probably with good reason, there is no Chronicle entry recording the marriage to Ælfgifu. 35 Bolton, “Ælfgifu of Northampton”; see also Insley, “Politics, Conflict and Kinship,” albeit Insley reads the marriage as dating to 1015×1016. 36 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 99 (s.a. 1014); (D), ed. Cubbin, 59 (s.a. 1014); (E), ed. Irvine, 71 (s.a. 1014); there is, to my knowledge, no specific study of the context of Gainsborough, but for its riverine significance, see Stafford, East Midlands in the Early Middle Ages, 13. For recent work on the strategic importance of Lincolnshire mints in the reign of Æthelred, see Gareth Williams, “Military and Non-Military Functions of the Burh,” 155–56. 37 ASC (CDE), s.a. 1016. For a view of the strategy of Edmund Ironside in this period, see McDermott in the previous chapter, pp. 147–64.

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It is difficult to determine precisely where Cnut spent his days after the death of Edmund on November 30, 1016, for although he may have been in Winchester for the assembly that led to the grant of land at New Minster in Easter 1019 (a crown-wearing?), Oxford is the only location we have for him in the period prior to 1019.38 Most of his other appearances are from after that year. The death of Earl Uhtred might be redated to 1018×1019, following a sensible revision of the evidence by A. A. M. Duncan in 1976, which, on the face of it, might have implications for the presence of Cnut in Northumbria, where the earl was killed. It is likely, as Duncan says, that Uhtred’s death owed more to political circumstances after 1016 and that the Anglo-Norman De obsessione Dunelmi (On the Siege of Durham) is a useful source in that respect, even though its tale about Cnut’s hand in it, with his troops hiding behind a curtain ready for Uhtred to meet his dramatic and treacherous end, does not seem credible evidence for personal intervention by Cnut in Northumbria in the years immediately after 1016.39 Once we look at the more reliable evidence for Cnut’s presence, we see him in the south of England for much of his reign, most often in the Thames valley.40 Even if, as Barbara Yorke notes later in this volume, the role of Winchester is overstated by historians,41 the broader significance of Wessex and the south of England in Cnut’s worldview of the English kingdom still stands. This makes sense, given that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records Cnut’s division of the kingdom into four, with Wessex going to Cnut himself: rather than taking from this that Cnut had assumed the powers of an ealdorman and that consequently his authority elsewhere was diminished, we might read this division as the de facto recognition that authority over England rested in the south of the kingdom. After all, the division of the kingdom at Olney (i.e., on the isle of Alney on the Severn) in October 1016 had made Edmund the first king of the West Saxons since the tenth century. The Chronicle’s claim that Cnut acceded “eallon Angelcynnes ryce” (“to all the kingdom of the English people,” my emphasis), while noting the different earls’ areas of authority, is thus an indication that a division was acknowledged even while it was a statement of an overarching sense of political identity. As Jay Paul Gates has

38 See, however, Yorke later in this volume, pp. 209–34. 39 Uhtred’s death, recorded in ASC (CDE), s.a. 1016, but not specifically attributed to that year. Durham sources are more circumspect about his survival past that point: Duncan, “The Battle of Carham, 1018”; see also the assessment of the evidence in Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 236–40. The narrative on Cnut’s presence at Uhtred’s death, De obsessione Dunelmi, is given in Morris, Marriage and Murder, 3. 40 Hill, Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, 91. 41 Yorke in this volume; a more maximal reading may be found, in Roffey and Lavelle, “West Saxons and Danes,” 17–25.

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recently observed, this was a shift toward a polity which was a kingdom in terms of geographical area, rather than in terms of a people “of the English” (i.e., of English “descent”): a subtle and important difference.42

Projections of Authority: Coronations and Title How was this political identity manifested in this early period? There are no charters which can be reliably dated to the first year of Cnut’s reign, whether we count that as late 1016 or 1017, and we do not even have a contemporary record, let alone an account, of the coronation itself. There is some suggestion, if John of Worcester can be trusted on the matter, that Cnut’s acceptance by the West Saxon nobles at Southampton in 1016, in the wake of the death of Æthelred, was a coronation.43 Yet it is just as likely that this ceremony may have been more along the lines of the acclamation of Sveinn Forkbeard in 1013, or indeed that of Cnut after his father’s death in 1014. It is reasonable to suppose that the late-twelfth-century dean of St. Paul’s, Ralph de Diceto, was accurate in recording that Archbishop Lyfing of Canterbury presided over Cnut’s coronation at London in 1017.44 A hint that a coronation had been performed in 1017 is provided in the legal text associated with the record of Cnut’s assembly at Oxford in 1018, recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in which “Dene 7 Engle wurdon sammæle to Eadgares lage” (Danes and English were agreed according to Edgar’s law).45 The legal text may record promises of coronation oaths in the manner of betterknown royal coronation promises declared in charters issued by Kings Henry I in 1100 and Stephen in 1135.46 If this were indeed the case, with Archbishop

42 Gates, “Ealles Englalandes Cyningc”; also noted in Beech, “The Naming of England.” The clearest statement on the political importance of the notion of the Angel-cynn remains Wormald, in “Engla Lond: Making of an Allegiance.” 43 Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 82, citing John of Worcester’s Chronicle, s.a. 1016. 44 Historical Works of Ralph de Diceto, ed. Stubbs, II, 169 (Abbreviationes Chronicorum, s.a. 1017). See Lawson, “Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element,” 157. 45 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1018). The Worcester Chronicle (D) is alone in saying this was according to Edgar’s law. The adaptation of an Old Scandinavian sammæli for a sense of “being in agreement” may be instructive, although Pons-Sanz, in “Norse-Derived Vocabulary,” 283–84, notes that an earlier eleventh-century Kentish use of this term (in S 1455) may show that it is non-specific; see also my own comments on friðmal and formæl in Æthelred’s 994 agreement with the Vikings, in Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, 329. I consider the significance of Oxford as a location below, on pp. 186–88. 46 EHD 1, 452; for Henry and Stephen, see EHD 2, 432–5; Kennedy, “Cnut’s Law Code of 1018”; see also Stafford, “Laws of Cnut and Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises.”

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Wulfstan as the author of the 1018 text, it is interesting to think of him being behind any coronation ordines of 1017. Whether he had adapted a text intended for Sveinn in 1014 we cannot know, but it would hardly be surprising if he had a role in Cnut’s coronation.47 Kingston-upon-Thames does not seem to have been used as a coronation site after the coronation of King Æthelred back in 979. The confusion generated by the Vita Ædwardi Regis (Life of King Edward), which reports that Edward the Confessor was crowned in Canterbury, rather than in Winchester as stated in the Chronicle, suggests that traditions associated with coronation could be manipulated if necessary.48 Presumably the circumstances of Cnut’s ascent to power necessitated similar manipulation. If the coronation were, as seems likely, in London, this was a bold statement, for London was the place which had offered Cnut the greatest resistance of all. There is an instructive comparison with the same use of Westminster, upstream from the City, by William the Conqueror when he had forced London into submission in 1066.49 With Æthelred’s body at St. Paul’s, Cnut’s statement would have been all the bolder if his coronation were also the occasion of his marriage to Æthelred’s widow, Emma (also known as Ælfgifu); this possibility is suggested by the circumstances of the so called “third recension” of the English royal ordo.50 As might be expected, the Chronicle emphasizes legitimacy, and this suggests that continuity was important in its presentation of Cnut. The formula, noted

47 The circumstances of 1066, recorded in the “first-draft” history of the Carmen de Hastingae proelio (Song of the Battle of Hastings), give a sense of how compromise could be reached with two prelates in a London-based coronation. Although Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury is written out of the official history of post-1066 England, the Carmen, a pro-Norman view of events, notes the significance of his presence at Westminster at a ceremony involving the Archbishop of York; see Carmen de Hastingae proelio, ed. and trans. Barlow, 46–49. For the possible use of a previous ruler’s ordo in a later ceremony (Harold’s, in the coronation of William), see Nelson, “The Rites of the Conqueror.” 48 Vita Ædwardi Regis, ed. Barlow, 14, has it at Canterbury; ASC (CDEF), s.a. 1043, at Winchester. The consensus, however, on which see Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 61, is that Winchester was the place of consecration. On Kingston-upon-Thames, see Keynes, “Burial of Æthelred the Unready,” 142–43. Here I develop observations made in Lavelle, Cnut: North Sea King, 31–32. 49 See Bates, William the Conqueror, 247–56. 50 For Æthelred’s body and his links to London, see Keynes, “Burial of Æthelred the Unready.” Stafford, in Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 174–78, addresses Emma’s role in the “Third Recension of the Second Ordo” in Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS. 44. I gratefully acknowledge Liesbeth van Houts for discussion of this issue.

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above, which relates that Cnut succeeded to “all the kingdom of the English,” is one common to records of the accession of Anglo-Saxon kings since the ninth century.51 Given that it took Æthelred just over a year to be crowned king (following the murder of his half-brother Edward in 978),52 and given the likelihood of a delay between Sveinn’s acclamation in late 1013 and the calling of the Witan in York in February 1014, it would seem appropriate to call the interval between the death of Edmund on November 30, 1016 and Cnut’s coronation in 1017 a pause – not an interregnum.53 Some cross-Channel comparison is provided by Geoffrey Koziol’s reading of late tenth-century Frankish charters. I wonder whether the first Cnut charters, from 1018 and 1019, survive (albeit sometimes just in the form of a grand title in a witness list) because they were the first charters declaring the legitimacy of a king who had recently been anointed, perhaps also because they were determined by the composition, associated with peace-making, which is implicit in the agreement at Oxford in 1018 (for which see below).54 Putting to one side the implicit reference to an early Cnut charter at Winchester, which will be discussed below, the survival of a Worcester lease of 1017 hints at the way in which land transactions took place independently of royal authority when that authority could not be present to establish itself in public performance.55

Policy Tensions Despite the upheavals and tensions evident in the immediate aftermath of 1016, there is no clear instance of governance-by-ravaging in Cnut’s England. In contrast to his son Harthacnut’s reign over England (1040–1042), Cnut, in his, does

51 An important new thesis, currently being prepared for publication, on formulas such as fengon to rice for emphasizing legitimacy is in Konshuh, “Warfare and Authority in the AngloSaxon Chronicle.” 52 Although Dumville, in “Death of Edward the Martyr,” offers an alternative chronology to the reading of 978 for the killing of Edward, the delay between the king’s death and Æthelred’s consecration is still an integral part of the reading of the chronology. For the delay in early coronations, see Garnett, “Coronation and Propaganda,” 92–93. 53 On the speed of the coronation in 1066, see generally Garnett, “Coronation and Propaganda.” 54 Koziol, Politics of Memory and Identity. Charters from this period can be problematic texts insofar as they do not represent genuine charters, but their witness lists are useful. See S 951–56: http://www.esawyer.org.uk. 55 For discussion of the 1017 lease (S 1384), see Baxter, Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power, 25–31.

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not seem to have asserted a form of authority such as Timothy Reuter characterized as “state-directed Bissonic violence,” the imposition of power by brute force.56 Every king claiming control of some form of an English kingdom since 900, arguably right through to the twelfth century, faced some opposition within a decade of assuming the throne, and all responded with violence. Within living memory of Cnut’s reign, Edgar the Peaceable had attacked the Isle of Thanet in 969, ten years after becoming king of England; according to Roger of Wendover, this was to avenge some harm committed there against merchants from York.57 Edgar’s son Æthelred, made king in 978, used violence to impose his rule on Rochester in 986.58 Back in the early tenth century, the actions of English kings were characterized by violence and retribution against territory outside Wessex, even if the broader narrative might be interpreted as one of long-term strategic foresightedness.59 After Cnut, just about the only thing we see from his son Harthacnut, made king in 1040, is an attack on Worcestershire by his housecarls in 1041.60 Cnut bucks that trend, although there are ways of seeing exceptions to this reading. An easy way to explain Cnut’s apparently non-violent record is that the violence towards potential opposition during his reign took place before he acceded to the throne as sole English ruler. The obvious issue here is the execution of English nobles in 1017, a dramatic event that was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle directly after the record of Cnut’s division of the kingdom after acceding to the throne. The record of the exile of other figures suggests that Cnut was not free from potential opposition.61 However, a charter of Cnut’s reign from early 1019 (Figure 8.1) indicates that tensions did not have to manifest themselves in warfare or “state”-directed violence for them to have meaning in a locality. Cnut gave a piece of land in Hampshire to a certain inhabitant of Winchester, “adolescens animosus et instabilis” (young, daring, and inconstant), who had evidently persuaded Cnut that this estate was free for the king to donate. As the charter records, Cnut realized the apparent mistake and took the land back, granting it once more to New Minster.62 56 Reuter, “Debate: ‘Feudal Revolution,’” 191, discussing Campbell, “Was it Infancy in England?” 6. Thomas Bisson’s reading of such violence is now best represented in Crisis of the Twelfth Century. 57 ASC (DEF), s.a. 969; Rogeri de Wendover chronica, ed. Coxe, I, 414–15 (s.a. 974), trans. EHD 1, 284. Roger’s detail of the killing of York merchants provides an explanation for the ravaging, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle emphasizes royal agency. 58 ASC (CDE), s.a. 986. 59 I discuss this issue in my paper “Representing Authority in an Early Medieval Chronicle.” 60 ASC (CD), s.a. 1041, and John of Worcester’s Chronicle, s.a. 1041. 61 ASC (CDE), s.a. 1017; (CDE), s.a. 1020. For Eadric Streona, see Parker in the following chapter, pp. 193–209. 62 S 956, in Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 162–63; translated in EHD 1, 599–601.

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Figure 8.1: Single sheet charter of Cnut granting an estate at Drayton (Hants) to New Minster, Winchester (S 956, dated Easter 1019). By permission of the Warden and Scholars of Winchester College.

As Simon Keynes has observed, Cnut may have been following in the footsteps of Æthelred, and perhaps also of Edgar, who had committed his errors while young and was making amends to an important ecclesiastical house.63 This may reveal something about Cnut’s sense of kingship; meanwhile Sean Miller, in his commentary on the Drayton charter, notes that two other charters, both probably from early in Cnut’s reign, refer to Cnut acting according to the wishes of Æthelred.64 However, we should note Barbara Yorke’s observation of Cnut’s relative parsimony

63 Keynes, Diplomas of King Æthelred, 176–86, discusses Æthelred’s period of ‘youthful indiscretions’, noting a comparison with the Drayton charter at 186, n. See also Ellis later in this volume, p. 378. 64 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 162 (S 949 (AD 1017×1032) and S 960 (AD 1023)). Miller notes the similarity of the post-witness-list blessing in S 949, a charter granted to Fécamp in Normandy, to that of S 956: S 949 is likely to be from early in the reign of Cnut rather than later, when relations with Normandy were strained; see Lavelle, Cnut: North Sea King, xx).

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towards New Minster.65 The Drayton charter shows that the “adolescens” was evidently still alive at the time of writing, had not been in exile, and was present in Winchester to contest the donation of the charter and the evident loss of his land. Cnut’s words (or rather the words of the charter’s draughtsman, who is influenced by the style of Wulfstan)66 have it that “penes prescriptum adolescentem litteras huic libertati contrarias. et calliditatis indagine adquisitas haberi comperimus” (there are, in the possession of the aforementioned youth, letters contrary to this privilege, and acquired by fraudulent investigation). The implication is that such letters be ignored under pain of anathema, although there is no specific injunction to do so, such as we see in King Alfred’s command, in the version of his will that survives, to destroy all earlier versions.67 There was certainly a dispute: a document from the abbot of New Minster recorded the lease, during the reign of Æthelred (978–1016), of a hide at nearby Barton Stacey to a certain Wulfmær and his wife, with the expectation that it, along with “another hide” at Drayton, would revert after their lifetimes to the church. Perhaps the young man of the Drayton charter was related to Wulfmær or his wife, or both, and had expected to receive the land at Drayton.68 If the earlier charter were used as evidence that both lands were to go to New Minster, the young man had a case. Only the Barton Stacey land had been explicitly leased, and Miller suggests there may have been another document which has not survived.69 The young man may have been right, too, to draw attention to the king’s right to grant him this land. The estate at Drayton bordered a royal estate which, according to Domesday Book, contributed to a render in kind known in Hampshire as the “firma unius diei” (farm of one day).70 This estate, which lay at Barton Stacey (and was distinct from the New Minster’s holding at Barton Stacey), was reorganised, presumably at some point in the eleventh century, in order to provide some economically viable render. In 1066 Barton Stacey was assessed for a “dimidia” (half) of one day’s farm, suggesting that some loss of economic value had taken place at some point from the full day’s farm. Land at Kings Worthy was noted as a “bereuuice” (“berewick,” meaning an outlier landunit) to the Barton Stacey estate; the Kings Worthy land had itself probably

65 See Yorke later in this volume, pp. 222–27. 66 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 162. 67 S 1507 (AD 872×888). 68 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 157 (S 1420 (AD 995×1005)). 69 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 158. 70 The bounds of the land are discussed in Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 163–64; Domesday Book: Hampshire, ed. Munby, fol.38c (entry 1:17). I discuss this system (known elsewhere as the firma unius noctis and its meaning for royal resources in my Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, 13–47.

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Map 8.1: The estate at Drayton (Hants) granted to New Minster, Winchester, in 1019, with places named in the text. The boundaries of the Domesday hundreds and other eleventhcentury vills are marked with regard to information in the Alecto Historical Editions Domesday Book maps. (The uncertainties of boundaries and the placement of vills have not been represented in this map, and this should only be taken as an approximate guide.)

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experienced its own loss of value, given that there were multiple claimants on the larger Worthy estate from which Kings Worthy was formed (see Map 8.1). Drayton may itself have had some importance as a piece of royal land. If the Wulfmær of the earlier lease were a thegn who witnessed “fairly low down the list of ministri between 986 and 1005,”71 we might justifiably infer that he got the sort of long-service award due to royal thegns from a royal estate. Whether or not Drayton was the sort of bookland that King Alfred famously wrote of thegns deserving, it was hardly unreasonable for a son to expect to receive it.72 It is perhaps revealing of this young man’s expectation of receiving royal land that Drayton lies on the other side of the Barton Stacey estate from a neighboring royal estate, that of Hurstbourne. The blurred lines between what a king could and could not use as he saw fit are revealed by the fact that Hurstbourne is said to have been amongst “terras ad pertinentes filios” (the lands belonging to the royal sons) which Edgar had granted to Abingdon Abbey, presumably during a time of bolstering estates at the forefront of monastic reform in the 960s.73 Early in King Æthelred’s reign, the land had been brought back under royal control. Later (we cannot be sure when, but presumably in the last decade of the tenth or first few years of the eleventh century), Æthelred, writing in a charter for Abingdon, had to make amends for the lands’ reacquisition by providing some other lands to the abbey by way of compensation. If that is not enough evidence of blurred lines, there is Cnut’s grant of land nearby, at what later became Abbots Worthy, apparently to Archbishop Lyfing in 1026.74 Evidently the Drayton dispute was far from having ended in Easter 1019, when the New Minster charter recording the transaction was drawn up. The charter provides hints that Cnut’s acquisition of power in Wessex had presumably involved negotiation, buying the favor of the local nobility, perhaps comparable with the position of Godwine, a man who rose to prominence as earl of Wessex under Cnut. Such men were characterized by Robin Fleming as “Englishmen short on family histories but long on personal loyalty.”75 Presumably this is evidence that at the start of his reign, or perhaps during the period after or shortly before the death of

71 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 158. 72 Alfred’s Version of St. Augustine’s Soliloques, ed. Carnicelli, 48. For bookland rewards from royal estates, see Baxter and Blair, “Land Tenure and Royal Patronage”; Lavelle, Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, 116–22. 73 S 937; for the charter’s significance, see Lavelle, Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, 1. 74 S 962; for this grant, see Lavelle, Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, 37. 75 Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, 48. Bolton, Cnut the Great, 91, notes the importance of English “collaborators” to Cnut at this stage in his reign.

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Æthelred, Cnut came to Winchester, or at least to a place close enough to the city for him to be subject to this kind of petitioning by figures who may have been influential locally, but who were not so important that they dominated the wider political landscape. Worth returning to here is the phrase “adolescens animosus et instabilis” (young, daring, and inconstant) which aptly echoes Cnut’s own position at this time, even if he was striving not to live up to the last of these words.76 If the aforesaid young man had been useful to Cnut prior to 1019, the charter might indicate that he was no longer in favor; perhaps Cnut now sought the favor of the New Minster and was willing to sacrifice his wishes in order to gain this. The fact that the charter records an injunction against the possession by the young man of certain “litteras” (letters), said in the Drayton charter to be fraudulent, while tacitly acknowledging the continuing existence of this youth, suggests that a dispute was still in progress to which even the charter could not give full confidence of resolution. In terms of Cnut’s early reign, it says something of the limits of Cnut’s power, and of his need for negotiation, that he appears not to have had the full power to dispose of this young man in 1019, as he had of other awkward Englishmen in 1017. The Drayton charter is a small and local issue, however. Tensions could also heighten and be defused on a larger scale and Cnut’s early reign sees a profligacy of peace-making. The agreement between Edmund and Cnut in the autumn of 1016 provides a clear example: the D manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to the “norðdæl” (north part), of the kingdom being Cnut’s in that agreement, a word echoed in the Chronicle’s use of the verb “todælde” (divided) with regard to the division of the country in 1017.77 Oxford, a location which reflected the divisions of 1016 and 1017, saw the third of these agreements, resulting in a declaration of a legal code in 1018. Given that Cnut had mutilated hostages in 1014, presumably in recognition of the breaking of a peace agreement made between English nobles and his father, the declaration of a peace with Cnut had to be taken seriously.78

76 If S 956 can be related to the milieu of the narrative charters of Æthelred’s reign, there is something to be said for the possibility that, like the play on the name of the criminal Æthelsige related in S 886 (AD 995), there was a pun in the reference to the young man of S 956 being ‘daring and inconstant’. Given that daring was among the many attributes with which wolves were associated, and the tendency for the first element of a personal name to follow a patronym, was this young man a descendant of Wulfmær? On the nature of the representation of wolf names, see Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages, 142–45. 77 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 103 (s.a. 1017); (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1017); (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1017); (D), trans. Swanton. 154 (s.a. 1017). On the division of the kingdom, see Reuter, “Making of England and Germany,” 56. 78 Hicklin, “Role of Hostages in the Danish Conquests.”

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Paul Dalton has drawn attention to the making of peace at river and island sites, and of course the agreement at Olney in 1016 has particular importance in that respect.79 Oxford, however, means something more. As a place on the interstices between Mercian and West Saxon territory, on a river with islands and a long crossing across marshy ground which was not unlike the Ravning Enge bridge at Haraldr Bluetooth’s complex at Jelling, home of Knútr’s Danish dynasty, Oxford could be read as a place of territorial liminality.80 The making of an agreement in Oxford in 1018 might be compared with another agreement there in 1035, which saw the nobility of Wessex and Mercia meeting in the wake of the death of Cnut.81 Clearly the inter-territoriality mattered. In St. Frideswide’s church in Oxford, according to a charter of Æthelred of 1004, a group of Danes had sheltered from a mob from the town and suburbs.82 The church was burnt down with the death of those inside, so presumably Oxford had a strong memory of this ethnic hostility. Oxford may therefore have been a sensible location for a statement of reconciliation, particularly as this town had been a specific target of Sveinn’s destructive campaign in the Thames Valley in 1013, when its people surrendered to him.83 There were further memories associated with the town. A tower in Oxford had seen the deaths of Sigeferth and Morcar, chief thegns of the “Seofonburgum” (“Seven Boroughs,” a chronicler’s synonym for Danelaw territory), at the instigation of Eadric in 1015. This event seems to have impelled Cnut to come back to England, perhaps because the dead thegns were kin to Ælfgifu of Northampton. In the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury read the 1004 charter of Æthelred as a record of the deaths of the followers of the thegns in 1015, confusing them with the Danes of the town who had been burnt at St. Frideswide’s on St. Brice’s Day (November 13) 1002.84 Only three years had passed between the death of Sigeferth and Morcar in 1015 and the Oxford agreement of 1018. If a tradition which explicitly confused the refuge and burning of 1002 with the 1015 events in the St. Frideswide’s charter can be posited, this is most likely to have developed at a point closer to William of Malmesbury’s own time than Cnut’s 79 Dalton, “Sites and Occasions of Peacemaking.” 80 For the topography of the crossing at Oxford, see Dodd, “Synthesis and Discussion,” 12–16. The Ravning Enge bridge is discussed in Pedersen, “Monumental Expression and Fortification,” 71–73. 81 ASC (E), s.a. 1035. 82 S 909 (AD 1004). 83 Blair, in Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 167–68, links the massacre of 1002 with Sveinn’s arrival in the town in ASC (CDE), s.a. 1013. On St. Clement’s Church near the Cherwell as the lithsmen’s garrison chapel, see Barbara Crawford in this volume, p. 452. 84 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 310–11, esp. 310, n. 1 (identification of the charter).

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(assuming, that is, that a second church-burning did not take place in 1015).85 While the traditions of transference in the episode were an important element for identifying the traditions of what C. E. Wright famously noted was the oral “saga literature” of Anglo-Saxon England, there remains something to be said about the episode for Cnut’s contemporaries. If his contemporaries were fully aware that Sigeferth and Morcar were not killed on St. Brice’s Day 1002, we should be sensitive to the manner in which events could still become linked in popular memory, often quite quickly. Oxford had been a place where people identified as Danes were burnt in the recent past, and others who were identifiably linked to Cnut’s family, who had been murdered by Eadric, who was himself executed by the new king in 1017. Surely these links gave extra weight to the choice of Oxford as a place of reconciliation under Cnut.

Conclusion: A Legitimate King Useful as it might be for Cnut to portray himself as a legitimate king of the West Saxon royal dynasty, the smoothness with which this happened should not fool us into believing that this was his only option. In the circumstances, such a portrayal was a sensible option to take. A reshaping of Cnut’s presentation of kingship was necessary between 1014 and 1017, leading to a declaration of law in 1018. Cnut’s claim to Denmark was realized in 1019 and not before, because his legitimacy as king of England remained a live issue. Despite his conquest of the English kingdom, the æthelings, young men with royal claims through kingly descent, were still at large, as noted by Simon Keynes, who cites the naming of Edward, son of Æthelred, as “king of the English” in a Ghent charter dated to 1016. Although this charter was most probably copied in the 1040s, Keynes calls it “evidence of a kind that . . . Edward had passed through Flanders shortly after his expulsion from England, in search of help at the shrine of saints.”86 One English ætheling was trouble; two were the makings of a dynasty, and Edward’s brother Alfred was also at large. Cnut could not afford to ignore Edmund Ironside’s sons,

85 Wright, in Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England, 179–82, treats this as an episode typical of transference in oral literature. It is worth noting that there are thirteen manuscripts containing the charter (see the catalogue of manuscripts under S 909), so scribal interest in the episode may also have played a part in the transmission of the story. 86 Keynes, “Æthelings in Normandy,” 177–81, esp. 181.

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either. For all that the stories of these boys turned into legend, there is evidence that they presented a longer-term danger too.87 Looking beyond this chapter’s narrow chronology by nearly a decade, we may see the context for a new dynamic in Cnut’s reign in the actions of a new duke, Robert “the Magnificent”: in power in Normandy from 1027, Robert was prepared to support his English cousins Edward and Alfred more actively after a period of relative calm across the Channel. Although trouble in Scandinavia required Cnut’s attention for much of the second half of the 1020s, the potential relocation of Edmund Ironside’s body to Winchester, from his south-western repose in or around 1032, shows a renewed attention to legitimacy at a time of potential pressure.88 Given the type of kingship that Cnut had chosen, English legitimacy mattered to him. It may be instructive to note that Cnut’s early royal policy changed around the time when Emma gave him a son, Harthacnut Cnutsson, probably in ca. 1018.89 Before an ætheling arrived who could be linked to the kinship of the West Saxon royal family through this anointed queen, Cnut could not afford to present himself as anything less than a legitimate English king.

87 For Edmund’s sons, see Ronay, Lost King of England. 88 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Royal Burials in Winchester,” 224–26. 89 According to Kiernan, in “Square Minuscule,” 65–72, Harthacnut may have been the ætheling named in the will of the noblewoman Æthelgifu, S 1497 (normally dated 990×1001). See also Bolton, “Ælfgifu of Northampton,” who makes a case for the presence of Ælfgifu and her children in eastern Denmark, a matter which would suggest that the need for a child with Emma was a specifically English one. See also Spejlborg later in this volume, pp. 341–42.

Eleanor Parker

Chapter 9 “In London, Very Justly”: Cnut’s English Reputation and the Death of Eadric Streona From legitimacy to memory, after London Cnut did not look back. Two striking features characterize his reputation in medieval English historical writing: how overwhelmingly positive it is, and how memorably it is recorded. In notable contrast to his appearances in Scandinavian historiography, Cnut was widely remembered in English tradition as a wise, just, and pious king, his wisdom illustrated by medieval historians through a variety of short and colorful narratives, including, of course, the enduringly popular story of his supposed attempt to control the waves.1 This admiring view of Cnut is all the more surprising in light of the circumstances in which he came to the English throne, as a foreign conqueror taking power after years of violent conflict. The means by which Cnut came to be remembered so favorably deserve investigation, and this chapter explores the question by considering one of the most oft-repeated stories attached to Cnut in post-Conquest sources: the killing of Eadric Streona on the orders of the king. The place of post-Conquest narrative sources of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries in the interpretation of Cnut and his reign has undergone some reassessment in recent years. The value of these sources, despite their late date, has long been recognised: in his 1993 study of Cnut, M. K. Lawson argued for their importance as a supplement to the more fragmentary contemporary evidence for Cnut’s reign, describing how “the historian of Cnut, so ill-served by contemporary records, is more fortunate in those produced after his death.”2 He goes on to demonstrate numerous ways in which the work of eleventh- and twelfth-century writers such as Goscelin, John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntingdon can provide useful insights into various aspects of Cnut’s time as king, especially where they appear to have had access to earlier sources which no longer survive.3

1 On Cnut’s reputation in English and Scandinavian historiography, see the essays in Remembering Cnut the Great, ed. Goeres. 2 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 71. 3 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 71–80; see especially the chapter on Cnut’s relations with the English church, 117–60. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-010

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This approach has often proved fruitful, but recent work on the period has adopted a more qualified attitude; as Timothy Bolton argues in his 2017 biography of Cnut, the wealth of information offered by these later English texts has perhaps led to their being over-valued by modern scholars.4 Bolton observes that historians have at times been inclined to place undue weight on the postConquest sources, uncritically adopting their interpretation of Cnut to the exclusion of other kinds of information. In discussing Cnut’s interactions with the Church, for instance, post-Conquest English sources tend to present Cnut as a Viking barbarian who required English influence to convert him into a Christian king; Bolton shows how this view has colored many modern historians’ reading of Cnut, although it is, as he argues, a misconception.5 In particular, he advocates the use of Scandinavian sources – often previously dismissed as late and unreliable evidence – to modify and balance the impression of Cnut produced by the English texts. Bolton’s arguments are especially significant in light of the current scholarly emphasis on developing a more nuanced, and less Anglocentric, understanding of the political and cultural situation in Cnut’s reign, one which gives greater consideration to the Scandinavian regions of the king’s empire and to the shifting or overlapping identities of the king and his followers. Particularly influential here have been several productive studies of the role of skaldic verse and Scandinavian elite culture during Cnut’s reign,6 as well as the work of Elaine Treharne in analyzing the status and function of the English language at Cnut’s court.7 The Encomium Emmae Reginae, one of the earliest and most valuable narrative sources for Cnut’s reign, has also been the subject of important recent work in this regard: closer examination of Emma’s role in commissioning the text, the circumstances of its production, and the author’s approach to his material have highlighted the place of the Encomium as a key source for the multilingual culture and complex political dynamics of the Anglo-Danish court in the tense period which followed Cnut’s death.8 Against this background, a more subtle understanding of the post-Conquest narrative sources has also become possible: these texts are increasingly understood not as straightforward evidence for Cnut’s activities as king, but as histories whose interpretations

4 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 1–27; see also Bolton, Empire of Cnut. 5 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 2–5. On this theme see also Ellis, later in this volume, pp. 355–78. 6 Townend, “Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur”; Frank, “King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds”; and Jesch, “Scandinavians and ‘Cultural Paganism.’”. 7 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 9–47. 8 See most recently Butler, Language and Community in Early England, 86–128, and Tyler, “Talking about History,” “Fictions of Family,” and England in Europe.

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and perspectives on Cnut are profoundly shaped by the contexts within which they were produced.9 If these texts, as Bolton argues, have seduced even the best of modern historians into accepting their interpretations as fact, it is worth paying more attention to how and why they manage to produce such attractively coherent narratives of Cnut and his reign.

Justice with a Pun The story discussed in this chapter relates an incident early in Cnut’s reign, the killing of Eadric Streona – an event usually set in London in 1017, in the immediate aftermath of the Danish conquest. Eadric, ealdorman of Mercia, had switched allegiance between the English and the Danish sides several times during the wars of 1015–1016, and is criticized in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for disloyalty to the English cause.10 He features prominently in later medieval narratives of this period, in time becoming an almost archetypal figure of treachery and deceit; in post-Conquest sources he is accused of an extensive list of further crimes – what Simon Keynes has called “an assortment of murders, base stratagems and acts of treachery” – variously including the slaughter on St. Brice’s Day in 1002, the murder of Sveinn Forkbeard’s sister Gunnhild and her family, the Viking siege of Canterbury in 1011, the murder of Uhtred of Northumbria in 1016, and the loss of multiple battles to the Danes in the last months of the Danish conquest.11 Concerning the many crimes attributed to him by later medieval historians, perhaps the most common belief was that Eadric was directly or indirectly responsible for the sudden death of Edmund Ironside on November 30, 1016. Edmund died around six weeks after he and Cnut had reached an agreement dividing the kingdom between them; the circumstances of his death are unclear, and no contemporary source sheds any light on its cause. After Edmund’s death, Cnut was accepted as sole ruler of England, and the following year he made Eadric earl of Mercia, but had him executed at some point during 1017. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives no details of Eadric’s death: the C, D, and E manuscripts of the Chronicle all have only a brief notice in 1017 that “on þisum geare wæs Eadric ealdorman ofslægen,” (in this year Eadric the ealdorman was killed),12 the first in a list of prominent men disposed of, by death or banishment, in the first months of Cnut’s

9 See, for instance, Hobson, “National-Ethnic Narratives in Representations of Cnut.” 10 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 59–62 (s.a. 1015–1016); Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 67. 11 Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred, 214. 12 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1017).

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reign. All these events are listed before the arrangement of Cnut’s marriage to Emma, which is noted as taking place before the beginning of August, but there is no other indication of the date or circumstances. Despite the Chronicle’s usual readiness to comment on Eadric’s behavior, there is also no judgment or speculation on the immediate reason for his execution. However, the bilingual F version of the Chronicle (British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A.VIII), written at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the first years of the twelfth century, adds both a location for Eadric’s death and a very brief comment upon it: here the other deaths included in the earlier versions are not mentioned, but it is said that Eadric was killed “on Lundene swyðe rihlice” (in London, very justly), while the Latin text has only one extra word, “iustissime.”13 The comment on the justice of Eadric’s execution made in this post-Conquest version of the Chronicle, seems to have encouraged the development of a narrative which grew up during the eleventh century around Eadric’s death, telling how he was killed by Cnut or one of his men as just punishment for his disloyalty to Edmund. The details of the story vary between different texts, but here we will focus chiefly on one recurring aspect which appears in several versions of the episode: a dialogue between Cnut and Eadric in which the crime is revealed, and the king, instead of being grateful for a murder which has made him sole ruler of England, unexpectedly orders that the perpetrator should be punished by death. Justice is delivered with a grim quip, and the drama of the scene hinges on some form of ambiguous statement by Cnut, which appears to promise reward for the murderer but in fact orders his death.

The Exemplum of Eadric in the Encomium Emmae Reginae A version of this ambiguous dialogue already appears in the earliest iteration of the story, in the Encomium Emmae Reginae, written less than thirty years after the event is supposed to have taken place. The Encomium, commissioned after Cnut’s death by his widow Emma, provides an account of the Danish conquest from a privileged and deeply partial perspective, shaped by the political context in which it was written: it was composed in 1040–1042, during the reign of Harthacnut and after Edward, Emma’s son by Æthelred, had returned to England from two decades of exile in Normandy to live at Harthacnut’s court. There seems to have been an uneasy truce between Edward, his mother, and his

13 ASC (F), ed. Baker, 110–11 (s.a. 1017).

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younger half-brother, and the Encomium bears evidence of the difficulties of navigating this complex situation.14 In many ways, the Encomium stands apart from the mainstream of medieval historiography about Cnut, in both the English and Scandinavian traditions, and it does not seem to have had any direct influence on later medieval interpretations of Cnut’s reign. It does, however, feature the earliest appearance of some narratives about Cnut which were to recur in sources from the later eleventh century and afterwards.15 It was written at a moment when the events of the Danish conquest were still within living memory, but were already becoming the stuff of semi-historical legend. This is especially true of the episode of Eadric’s death, which is at once a somewhat plausible anecdote, tied to the particular context of the early years of Cnut’s reign, and a neatly told story with a pithy moral lesson. It is intended to illustrate Cnut’s wisdom and glorify the king, but in its emphasis on loyalty, divided rule, and the relationship between Cnut and Edmund, it is also transparently influenced by the circumstances in which the text was composed. The Encomiast introduces the story by explaining Cnut’s attitude to those among the English army who had deceived Edmund: Erat autem adhuc primaeua aetate florens sed tamen indicibili prudentia pollens. Unde contigit, ut eos quos antea Aedmundo sine dolo fideliter militare audierat diligeret, et eos quos subdolos scierat atque tempore belli in utraque parte fraudulenta tergiuersatione pendentes odio haberet, adeo ut multos principum quadam die occidere pro huiusmodi dolo iuberet. Inter quos Edricus, qui a bello fugerat, cum praemia pro hoc ipso a rege postularet, ac si hoc pro eius uictoria fecisset, rex subtristis, “Qui dominum,” inquit, “tuum decepisti fraude, mihine poteris fidelis esse? Rependam tibi condigna premia, sed ea ne deinceps tibi placeat fallatia.” Et Erico duce suo uocato, “Huic,” ait, “quod debemus persoluito, uidelicet, ne nos decipiat, occidito.” Ille uero nil moratus bipennem extulit, eique ictu ualido caput amputauit, ut hoc exemplo discant milites regibus suis esse fideles, non infideles. [He was, however, as yet in the flower of youth, but was nevertheless master of indescribable wisdom. It was, accordingly, the case that he loved those whom he had heard to have fought previously for Eadmund faithfully without deceit, and that he so hated those whom he knew to have been deceitful, and to have hesitated between the two sides with fraudulent tergiversation, that on a certain day he ordered the execution of many chiefs for deceit of this kind. One of these was Eadric, who had fled from the war, and to whom, when he asked for a reward for this from the king, pretending to have done it to ensure his victory, the king said sadly, “Shall you, who have deceived your lord with guile, be capable of being true to me? I will return to you a worthy reward, but I will do so to the end that deception may not subsequently be your pleasure.” And summoning Eiríkr, his commander,

14 This is especially evident in the revised ending to the text, rewritten after Harthacnut’s death; see Bolton, “A Newly Emergent Mediaeval Manuscript.” 15 For some examples see Parker, “So Very Memorable a Matter.”

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he said: “Pay this man what we owe him; that is to say, kill him, lest he play us false.” He, indeed, raised his axe without delay, and cut off his head with a mighty blow, so that soldiers may learn from this example to be faithful, not faithless, to their kings.]16

There are several points to note about the role of this episode – this “exemplum,” as it is called here – within the Encomium’s narrative of Cnut’s conquest. First, it serves a useful function in the text by standing in for everything that is omitted from the Encomium’s highly selective narrative of the early years of Cnut’s reign. In striking contrast to its detailed account of the conquest itself, the Encomium has very little to say about Cnut’s earliest acts as king: there is no coronation scene, no mention of Cnut’s first law codes or royal assemblies, nor even any reference to some significant incidents mentioned in the fairly sparse account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, such as the dedication of a church at the site of the Battle of Assandun in 1020 (a particularly surprising omission in light of the prominence the Encomium gives to that battle).17 Although it seems likely that Emma herself was directly involved in some of these events, none of them features in her Encomium. Apart from the account of Cnut and Emma’s marriage – in which Cnut seeks through many kingdoms for a suitable bride before alighting on Emma – the earliest months and years of Cnut’s reign are represented in the Encomium chiefly by this episode dealing with the punishment of Eadric. As a result, it takes on particular significance, becoming emblematic of the establishment of Cnut’s power, his enacting of justice, and his respect for Edmund and desire to avenge the wrongs done to him. Those wrongs are carefully defined: in the Encomium, unlike later versions of the story, Eadric is punished for disloyalty to Edmund, but not for his murder. This is a significant difference, and it is related to the fact that the Encomium is at pains to point out that Edmund’s sudden death was not the work of treachery: it was an act of God, since it was the divine will that the country divided between Cnut and Edmund should be united through the death of the English king: Uerumtamen Deus memor suae antiquae doctrinae, scilicet omne regnum in se ipsum diuisum diu permanere non posse, non longo post tempore Aedmundum eduxit e corpore Anglorum misertus imperii, ne forte si uterque superuiueret neuter regnaret secure, et regnum diatim adnihila[re]tur renouata contentione. Defunctus autem regius iuuenis regio tumulatur sepulchro, defletus diu multumque a patriensi populo; cui Deus omne gaudium tribuat in celesti solio. Cuius rei gratia eum Deus iusserit obire, mox deinde

16 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 30–33. 17 See Parker, Dragon Lords, 37–40. The translation of St. Ælfheah from London to Canterbury in June 1023 is also a striking omission, since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that Emma and Harthacnut were both present at the conveyance of the saint’s body from Rochester to Canterbury: ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 64 (s.a. 1023).

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patuit, quia uniuersa regio ilico Cnutonem sibi regem elegit, et cui anti omni conamine restitit, tunc sponte sua se illi et omnia sua subdidit. [God, who remembered His own ancient teaching, according to which a kingdom divided against itself cannot long stand, soon afterwards, pitying the realm of the English, took away Edmund from the body, lest it should chance that if both survived neither should rule securely, and that the kingdom should be continually wasted by renewed conflict. The dead prince, however, was buried in a royal tomb, and was wept long and sorely by the native people; to him may God grant every joy in the heavenly kingdom. Soon thereafter it became evident to what end God commanded that he should die, for the entire country then chose Knútr as its king, and voluntarily submitted itself and all that was in it to the man whom previously it had resisted with every effort.]18

The Encomiast seems determined to downplay the advantages of Edmund’s death for Cnut, and to stress that if the timing of Edmund’s death was convenient, it was because of divine intervention, not the act of a traitor. Cnut is presented as Edmund’s avenger and cannot be accused of any complicity in his death. The negative light in which the division of the kingdom is presented here is typical of the Encomium’s treatment of the idea of shared rule between kings (the text also claims the division was originally Eadric’s proposal, as if further to blacken the suggestion),19 and it echoes the earlier presentation of a discussion between Cnut and his brother Harald about dividing Denmark between them in 1014–1015.20 In both cases the Encomium devotes considerable space to the negotiation of shared rule between two kings, and concludes that it is undesirable and untenable on anything more than a temporary basis. This must have been of pointed relevance at the time of the text’s composition, after Edward’s return to his half-brother’s court. Within this context, the Encomium’s story of Cnut’s punishment of Eadric appears to serve a double purpose: it may have been intended to mollify Edward and his supporters by demonstrating Cnut’s respect for Edmund, while also providing an implicit warning against any expectation of shared rule over England. The other important difference between this earliest version of the story and the later accounts is the role attributed to the Norwegian earl Eiríkr Hákonarson, who is characterized elsewhere in the Encomium as one of Cnut’s most trusted and worthy supporters.21 At the time the Encomium was written, Eiríkr had probably been dead for nearly twenty years,22 so these flattering references

18 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 30–31. 19 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 28–29. 20 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 16–19. 21 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 23. 22 Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 57–58.

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to him suggest that the Encomiast’s source was someone at the Anglo-Danish court who remembered the key players of 1016–1017. This is an instance where the Encomiast seems to be particularly well-informed about the events of the Danish conquest, and his narrative is firmly rooted in the political dynamics of the first years of Cnut’s reign. Eiríkr’s role, however, also serves to emphasize the moral lesson of the story: this episode is, as the Encomiast points out, an exemplum about loyalty – told so “that soldiers may learn to be faithful, not faithless, to their kings” – and it sets up a direct contrast between the treacherous Eadric and the loyal Eiríkr. In this section of the text Eiríkr, credited with staunch loyalty, stands in contrast not only to Eadric but also to the more complex figure of Thorkell the Tall, about whose allegiance to Cnut the Encomiast makes various contradictory assertions.23 The contrast established between Eadric and Eiríkr is particularly interesting in light of the fact that much recent work on the Encomium has demonstrated how closely attuned the text is to the politics of the Anglo-Danish court, a multilingual environment where two coexisting vernacular languages played crucial roles in negotiations of power and identity and in royal self-presentation.24 The Encomium’s story here turns precisely on a matter of linguistic misinterpretation and reinterpretation. As the Encomiast presents it, Cnut speaks in a way which is deliberately ambiguous, exploiting the double meaning of his own words even as he punishes Eadric for deceit. Eadric has come to the king attempting to deceive him, but finds himself deceived. He has misread Cnut by misinterpreting Cnut’s wishes – thinking he will be pleased by disloyalty to Edmund – and now Cnut deliberately allows him to misinterpret his words, “I will give you a worthy reward.” By contrast, Eiríkr apparently correctly understands Cnut’s ambiguous command to “pay this man what we owe him,” and becomes the instrument of the king’s justice, immediately executing his orders without hesitation or doubt. The Encomiast offers an explicit gloss on the instruction – “that is to say, kill him” – but it does not seem that Eiríkr needs a translation of his king’s words. The contrast between the disloyal English earl and the loyal Norwegian one is thus underlined by their ability or failure to interpret the king’s speech. Although the Encomium does not draw attention to the fact, this story dramatizes an interaction which – if this incident had really taken place – would conceivably have been bilingual; we might picture Cnut switching from English to Danish as he turns from Eadric to Eiríkr. At other moments in the text the Encomium is alert to linguistic difference, at least in place-names and personal names: the

23 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 10–11, 15–17. 24 See especially Tyler, “Talking about History” and “Fictions of Family.”

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author interprets and translates the meaning of the English place-names Sheppey and Assandun,25 as well as explaining that the name Harthacnut, “si ethimologia Theutonice perquiratur” (if the etymology of this is investigated in Germanic), reveals the character of the king, since “Harde” means “‘uelox’ uel ‘fortis’” (“swift” or “strong”).26 There is no such comment here, but the story nonetheless seems to exemplify the kind of linguistic negotiation Elaine Treharne has identified in her examination of the texts produced in Old English and Old Norse at Cnut’s court. She discusses the complex relationship between language and identity in a situation where distinct (but perhaps overlapping) textual and linguistic communities of Norse speakers and English speakers coexisted, with the king himself as the shared focus.27 In his public pronouncements, Treharne argues, Cnut presents himself as belonging to both communities, speaking to each in their own language and identifying himself with both; she describes, for instance, how Cnut’s letter of 1027 “magnificently manifests the inherent contradictions of the king himself” and “evinces a discursive ambivalence that reflects its owner’s voice . . . simultaneously genuine conversion narrative and Germanic boast.”28 She finds in these texts a kind of deliberate multivalence in Cnut’s presentation of himself as king, especially through his use of language. He was a figure who could be simultaneously read in different ways by his different audiences – an ambiguity which the Encomium’s story of Eadric and Eiríkr makes very literal indeed.

The Wolf Tamed: Cnut and Bury St. Edmunds Tradition When we turn to the versions of the story from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, none of which is directly dependent on the Encomium, the feature of the ambiguous dialogue does not immediately reappear. Jay Paul Gates has recently discussed the use of this episode by the Worcester historians, arguing that the presentation of Eadric in these texts reflects contemporary anxieties about a predatory aristocracy expropriating church lands, projected

25 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 24. 26 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 34–35; for discussion, see Appendix V. The encomiast also interprets the name Athala as “nobilissima” (Encomium, ed. Campbell, 46). 27 Treharne, Living Through Conquest; on multilingualism at Cnut’s court, see also Townend, “Cnut’s Poets.” 28 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 37.

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back from the Anglo-Norman present onto the Anglo-Saxon past.29 In Hemming of Worcester’s version of the story, dating from around 1096, Eadric is killed not for any act of disloyalty but for his oppressive treatment of monasteries and rapacious acquisition of Worcester’s lands; it is here that Eadric’s byname “streona,” (the “acquisitor,”) is first recorded.30 John of Worcester goes further and accuses Eadric of treachery to both Æthelred and Edmund, but neither source says he was responsible for Edmund’s death. For John of Worcester, Cnut’s decision to kill Eadric is thus a pragmatic choice rather than a judicial one: he fears that Eadric, who has betrayed Edmund, will not be loyal to him, so he has Eadric killed in the royal palace in London at Christmas 1017 and his body thrown over the city wall.31 There is no particular interest here in exploring Cnut’s behavior or motives; this is a political murder, and if it is just retribution for Eadric’s long history of oppressions, that kind of justice is not consciously a motive on Cnut’s part. The first post-Conquest source to say that that Edmund was murdered, and to take an interest in Cnut’s response to the killer, is a text written at Bury St. Edmunds around 1100. This is a revised version of Herman’s slightly earlier Miracles of St. Edmund, an anonymous rewriting which has been attributed by its most recent editor to Goscelin.32 The revised Miracles elaborates on the earlier version’s reference to Edmund Ironside’s death with a story about Cnut’s reaction:33 Cunque sancionis huius utrinque decreta inuiolabiliter tenerentur, uix euoluto unius anni circulo, a quodam magnatium suorum Eadmundus dolo peremitur. Quod cum sceleris auctor regi Cnuto nuntiare studuisset, eia inquiens, surge perambula regionem securus, non enim ulterius tuum diminuet Eadmundus imperium, iturus ad ecclesiam cuius deuotus et frequentissimus cultor erat, assistentibus sibi ait, Si mihi fidem debetis, cauete ne uiuum hunc reuertens inueniam. Nimio siquidem dolore saucius fuerat, audita uiri nece iniusta, in hoc nimirum illo famoso rege Dauid haut inferior, qui proditores Isboset filii Saul aduersarii sui morte multari iussit.

29 Gates, “The ‘Worcester’ Historians and Eadric Streona’s Execution,” 165–80, and “Imagining Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,” 125–45. 30 Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 280–81. 31 Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 504–5. 32 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, cxiv–cxxvii. 33 In the unique manuscript of the fullest surviving version of Herman’s text (British Library, Cotton MS. Tiberius B.II), the section where Herman presumably noted Edmund’s death has been erased, and a later hand of the early thirteenth century has inserted the detail that he was killed by Eadric’s treachery. The addition also gives the date and place of Edmund’s death, but does not mention Cnut’s punishment of Eadric: see Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 26–29.

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[After both parties had resolutely stuck to the treaty for almost a year, one of Edmund’s magnates treacherously killed him. When the perpetrator of this crime hurried to announce it to King Cnut, saying, “Quick! Go, and tour the country in safety, for no more shall Edmund diminish your power,” Cnut, who was heading to church, being a devout and assiduous worshipper, said to his companions: “If you are loyal to me, see that I do not return and find this man alive.” For he was sorely grieved to hear of the other man’s unjust murder, and his reaction lived up to the precedent of the famous king David, who sentenced the men who betrayed and killed Ishbosheth, son of his enemy Saul, to death.]34

This writer does not name Eadric, and the feature of the ambiguous dialogue does not appear here; Cnut’s command to punish the murderer could not be more explicit. However, there are some parallels with the Encomium’s framing of the story in the contrast between the murderer who betrays Edmund and Cnut’s command to his followers that they should punish him “if you are loyal to me,” reminiscent of the Encomium’s interpretation of the incident as a lesson to retainers to be faithful, not faithless, to their king. Cnut’s order provides a clear and definitive statement of what such loyalty to the king should mean. What is particularly interesting about this version of the story is its place within a longer narrative of Cnut’s reign which attempts to show how he became a just and pious king. The episode is in keeping with this text’s presentation of Cnut as a devout Christian ruler, “tam pius, tam benignus, tam religionis amator” (conscientious, liberal, and devoted to religion), but also with its implication that there was something surprising, even unnatural, in his becoming so.35 In post-Conquest tradition at Bury St. Edmunds, Cnut was commemorated as a generous patron and refounder of the abbey,36 and there is evidence to suggest that Cnut did indeed take a particular interest in patronizing the cult of St. Edmund, apparently even linking it to his own conquest: he supported the building of a new church there, which was consecrated on the anniversary of the Battle of Assandun.37 Post-Conquest texts from the abbey make much of the link to this royal patron, and attempt to explain it and underline its significance by drawing a sharp contrast between Cnut and his father, Sveinn. In the two versions of the Miracles of St. Edmund, Sveinn appears as an arrogant, hostile pagan, imposing unreasonable demands on the abbey as well as violently attacking the region. It is suggested that there was a particular enmity between Sveinn and St. Edmund, and Herman is the first author to tell the story of how the spirit of St. Edmund appeared to Sveinn and

34 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188–89. 35 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188–89. 36 Foot, “The Abbey’s Armoury of Charters,” 42–46, and Gransden, Legends, Tradition and History in Medieval England, 89–93. 37 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 142–43, and Marafioti, The King’s Body, 206–12.

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suddenly struck him dead. The expanded version of the Miracles adds some colorful details to this narrative, including a speech in which Edmund offers Sveinn a spear instead of the tribute demanded.38 This story was to be a highly influential one, shaping the view of Sveinn taken by John of Worcester and other twelfthcentury historians;39 it helped to establish the idea that Cnut’s behavior as a Christian king was best understood as a contrast to the paganism of his father – as a reaction to, or even an atonement for, ancestral sins. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a point on which the post-Conquest narrative sources differ considerably from those more closely associated with Cnut’s court: the Encomium presents Sveinn as a wise and much-loved king who, on his deathbed and in his last words to his son, “exhorted him much concerning the government of the kingdom and the zealous practice of Christianity, and, thanks be to God, committed the royal sceptre to him, the most worthy of men” (Cui dum multa de regni gubernaculo multaque hortaretur de Christianitatis studio, Deo gratias illi uirorum dignissimo sceptrum commisit regale.)40 Similarly, the king’s skalds, as Roberta Frank puts it, never “hesitate to observe that Cnut was his father’s son.”41 It seems, however, that post-Conquest writers at Bury St. Edmunds perceived a disparity between the behavior of Sveinn and his son, their devout patron, and saw it as something which had to be explained. Both versions of the Miracles set Cnut’s behavior in the context of his father’s wickedness, emphasizing the surprising and unnatural quality of Cnut’s success as king. “Mirantur homines quod de amara immo toxicata radice tam mellifluum germen pullulare potuerit, sed nature legibus libera conditoris nature potestas non angustatur. Iustum siquidem est, ut creatoris arbitrio creatura famuletur,” Goscelin comments; “Men were amazed that a shoot so sweet could sprout from a root that bitter, even poisonous, but the unlimited power of nature’s Creator is not bound by nature’s laws.”42 Herman makes the same point by twice using the image of the wolf: he says that Cnut did not imitate his father’s wickedness, thus proving the truth of a proverb, “nequaquam lupum sicut putatur tam magnum fore” (The wolf is not nearly so big as he is made out to be),43 and he also includes a short verse:

38 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 152–55. 39 Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 476–77. 40 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 14–15. See Sawyer, “Swein Forkbeard and the Historians,” 26–40. 41 Frank, “King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 112. 42 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188–89. 43 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 40–41.

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Que Saulum mutauit in Paulum in eodem lupum magnum, nunc habet ferum hominem in Christianissimum regem. [He who changed the great wolf Saul into Paul has now made a wild man into a most Christian king.]44

The image of a wolf acting against its nature is one found prominently in the hagiography of St. Edmund, in the form of the wolf who famously guarded the head of the saint. With this language Herman absorbs Cnut into the central imagery of Edmund’s cult, as the wild barbarian king, like the wolf, is converted to the veneration of St. Edmund. This follows on from these texts’ representation of the Danes as arrogant and hostile by nature, a point illustrated not only by Sveinn but also by two further stories of proud Danes punished by the intervention of St. Edmund.45 Such a view of the Danes is perhaps unsurprising within the hagiography of a saint killed by a Viking army, but it provides an important context for these texts’ view of Cnut as patron and as king. By nature, they suggest, Cnut might have been expected to be like his father, and so it is almost a miracle that he is not – a manifestation of the power of God and St. Edmund. The story of Cnut’s punishment of Edmund Ironside’s killer, then, serves as a turning point within the narrative, marking the difference between Cnut and the text’s other Danish characters. Cnut’s words come as a surprise to the reader, as they do to the murderer, and they set the scene for a new kind of interaction between the Danish king and the abbey.

The Twelfth Century and Beyond It is perhaps this element of surprise, as much as the justice of Eadric’s punishment, that made the story of his death so popular. It is particularly demonstrated in versions which contain the ambiguous dialogue, in which the king’s words become the focus as they reveal an unexpected meaning. The kind of dialogue found in the Encomium does not appear again until Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, and though there does not seem to be a direct connection between Henry’s version and that in the Encomium, there are other parallels between the two accounts: as Gates notes, Henry’s Historia is also the first source after the Encomium

44 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 42. 45 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, xxxvii–xxxviii (Licence’s comments on the characterization of Danes in the Miracles), 36–37, 56–59.

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to say that Eadric was beheaded, making his death a formal execution rather than the political murder described by the Worcester historians.46 This suggests that Henry may have been following a different tradition which was closer to that recorded in the Encomium, though Henry’s account also differs from the Encomium in several key respects. There is no role here for Eiríkr, and there is no room for doubt that Eadric was responsible for Edmund’s death (although in this case it is his son who carries out the murder). Eadric goes to Cnut and tells him what has happened, and they have a brief dialogue: Edricus igitur ad regem Cnut ueniens, salutauit eum dicens, “Aue, solus rex.” Cui cum rem gestam denudasset, respondit rex, “Ego te ob tanti obsequii meritum, cunctis Anglorum proceribus reddam celsiorem.” Iussit ergo eum excapitari, et caput in stipite super celsiorem Lundonie turrim figi. [Then Eadric came to King Cnut and saluted him, saying, “Hail, sole king!” When he disclosed what had happened, the king answered, “As a reward for your great service, I shall make you higher than all the English nobles.” Then he ordered him to be beheaded, and his head to be fixed on a stake on London’s highest tower.]47

This recalls the Encomium’s play on the ambiguity of Eadric’s anticipated reward, but takes it one step further in having Cnut explicitly promise to make him “higher” (celsior), exploiting the double meaning of being physically and socially “high.” Henry makes particularly effective use of stories which involve this kind of direct speech, and they cluster in the section of Book 6 dealing with the early eleventh century.48 This narrative about Cnut is one of two such episodes, placed at the beginning and end of his reign; the second is the famous story of his demonstration that he could not control the waves, and the two stories act as introduction and conclusion to a reign Henry presents as one of unparalleled success and royal splendor. From the twelfth century onwards, many elaborations begin to appear as to the manner of Edmund’s death and the punishment of his murderer.49 William of Malmesbury tells how Eadric was “iussu regis arte qua multos frequenter circumuenerat ipse quoque conuentus” (by the king’s command entrapped in his turn by the same trick that he had frequently used in the past to entrap many others.)50 Gaimar describes a complicated machine supposedly used to kill

46 Gates, “Imagining Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,” 137–38. 47 Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 360–63. 48 For other examples, see Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, cv–cvi. 49 See Wright, Cultivation of Saga, 205–12. 50 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 320–21; see Gates, “Imagining Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,” 127–34.

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Edmund, and has Cnut himself behead the traitor with an axe and throw the body in the Thames.51 Neither of these versions contains an ambiguous dialogue, although in each case Cnut has a speech explaining that he is punishing Eadric for treason. The dialogue does, however, appear in a number of twelfth- and thirteenthcentury texts, in Anglo-Norman and Middle English as well as in Latin, and it seems to have had popular appeal. In Walter Map’s account, the murderer and his motive are both very different: the murderer is not Eadric, but a servant who is angry because Edmund has refused him some property. Nevertheless, the ambiguous dialogue remains, with Cnut asking “Quis michi tam amicus extitit, ut faciam eum precelsum pre consortibus suis?” (Who has been so much my friend, that I may set him on high above all his fellows?) The murderer proudly confesses, and “rex eum sublime rapi fecit, et in altissima quercu suspendi” (the king had him caught up on high and hanged on the tallest oak.)52 In the thirteenth-century version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, which largely follows Gaimar’s telling of the story, an ambiguous dialogue, not found in Gaimar, adds the wordplay on “reward” (guerdoun) found in the Encomium and in Henry of Huntingdon.53 In English texts, the wordplay instead tends to focus on the broad range of meaning covered by Middle English “heigh,” incorporating both “lofty, elevated” and “exalted, powerful.” In Robert of Gloucester’s version of the story, for instance, Cnut’s wordplay is taken to virtuosic extremes: it is extended to include the promise that the villain will not only get his proper “mede” and be made a “hey mon,” but will also be given “auauncement” and will never again need to care for food or clothing. All these promises are fulfilled when he is executed and his head is displayed high on the Tower of London.54 Despite the multiplicity of versions of the story of Edmund’s death, Cnut is never presented as the guilty party; he is seen as Edmund’s avenger and the executor of justice. This is a remarkable contrast to the view of the incident found in Old Norse historiographical tradition, where a number of sources share the idea that Eadric was responsible for Edmund’s death, but say, as no English source does, that the murder was performed on Cnut’s orders. In Knýtlinga saga, for instance, it is said that Eadric took money from Cnut in exchange for killing Edmund.55 Knýtlinga saga was written in Iceland in the second half of the thirteenth century, and

51 Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. Short, 238–45 (lines 4399–484). 52 De Nugis Curialium, ed. James, rev. Brooke and Mynors, 430–33. 53 Prose Brut Chronicle, ed. and trans. Marvin, 216–19. 54 Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. Wright, I, 462–65. 55 Danakonunga sögur, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, 119–20 (Knýtlinga saga, chap. 16); see also Óláfs saga helga, by Snorri Sturluson, in Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 33 (chap. 26).

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may have drawn on a now-lost Knúts saga; it is possible that the detail of Eadric’s bribe derives from this source, or it may have been the author’s own inference.56 The idea that Cnut was involved in Edmund’s death might have seemed a natural conclusion to draw from the timing of events, and it is in accord with how Norse writers tend to view Cnut, as a canny political operator given to unscrupulous means of achieving his aims. The divergence between the two traditions highlights how surprisingly consistent the post-Conquest English sources are in their positive or at least neutral view of Cnut’s role, however much the other details of the story vary. Even within narratives more critical of Cnut, this act is interpreted favorably. For the author of the South English Legendary version of the life of Edward the Confessor, avenging Edmund Ironside’s death was the only good thing Cnut ever did: & þei he were luþerman an gode dede he dude do For me ne mai neuer traitors do to moche wo.57 [And though he was a wicked man, he did perform one good deed; for one can never cause traitors too much suffering.]

The widespread popularity of this episode means that it played an important role in the construction of the largely positive reputation Cnut achieved in postConquest sources. The story is usually presented as an example of his swift and decisive justice, establishing a link between the new king and his heroic predecessor, Edmund Ironside.

Conclusion: Reading Cnut What, then, was the appeal of this popular story, and what did it contribute to later interpretations of Cnut? The grim humor of the king’s pun must have attracted such widespread repetition because it seemed so neatly to underline the justice of Eadric’s punishment and its aptness for his supposed crime: in a supreme example of poetic justice, the deceiver is deceived. But it presents Cnut in a particular way, too: he appears not only as an executor of justice, but as a quick-thinking, adaptive, linguistically creative king. He is a man who can think, act, and change rapidly, and whose decisions are hard to predict.58

56 For discussion see Danakonunga sögur, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, ciii. 57 Verse Life of Edward the Confessor, ed. Moore, lxiv–lxv (comment) and 6 (lines 181–82). 58 See also Goeres and North earlier in this volume, pp. 12–17.

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In linking Cnut with interpretative ambiguity, the story may reflect some of the difficulty later historians faced as they attempted to make sense of Cnut at this moment of transition, at the point when he changes from Viking invader to Christian king of England. Cnut is not an easy king to read. Medieval historians, like modern scholars, seem to have puzzled over the question of how to connect the different aspects of his identity; they must have wondered how to explain the process by which this young Viking, after the years of Anglo-Danish warfare so plentifully recorded in their sources, swiftly established himself as a king acceptable to the English. A story which hinges on the difficulty of reading Cnut, then, serves a useful function in dramatizing that transition, rather than attempting to explain it directly. In a narrative like Henry of Huntingdon’s, the Eadric episode functions in a similar way to the conversion stories other twelfth-century historians associate with Cnut, in which some startling event reforms the king from his previous pagan barbarity into a pious Christian monarch; William of Malmesbury’s story of how Cnut was miraculously punished for his insolence to St. Edith (Eadgyth) of Wilton is probably the most famous example of this type.59 In Henry’s Historia Anglorum, Cnut is apparently not in need of moral reform, but the story of Eadric’s death, set at a crucial moment very early in Cnut’s reign, similarly bridges the narrative gap between the years of conflict between the English and the Danes before Cnut’s accession and the new state of affairs during his reign. It provides a turning point in the interpretation of Cnut, one which pivots precisely on the ambiguity to which Eadric falls victim. Until this moment Eadric, like any reader of the Historia Anglorum’s account of Cnut’s violent conquest, might justifiably interpret Cnut as a tyrant king who would rejoice in his rival’s murder. His unexpected reaction, revealed within the space of one multivalent sentence, marks the beginning of a new phase, as Cnut makes the transition from Viking raider to Christian ruler, providing a new framework within which to read the subsequent story of Cnut’s successful reign.

59 Gesta Pontificum, ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, I, 298–301; for discussion see Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 39–41, and Parker, “Pilgrim and Patron.”

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Chapter 10 Cnut’s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment This chapter will examine the surviving references to Cnut and his involvement with Winchester, finding that it was a rather less significant place for him than has often been suggested – until the very end of his reign, when it was chosen as his burial place. The development of a family mausoleum for Cnut in Old Minster, Winchester, helped convey the message that his family were the legitimate successors of West Saxon kings who were also buried there. But who carried such ideas forward? The desire of modern commentators to connect Cnut with Winchester may have led to a downplaying of the role of his queen, Emma, whose links with the city, and alliances with certain bishops of Winchester, were more deeply rooted and longer-lasting.

Introduction That Winchester was an important royal and ecclesiastical center by the time Cnut became king of England is already well established in the secondary literature. In histories of Winchester, Cnut takes his place within a succession of royal patrons of the city and its major ecclesiastical foundations.1 In studies of Cnut’s reign, his relationship with Winchester has been used to illustrate how the king negotiated his relations with the Anglo-Saxon establishment, and how he situated himself as a Christian ruler in the West Saxon tradition through gifts to major churches.2 Three factors, in particular, have made Cnut’s relationship with Winchester seem especially significant. First, there is his burial in the Anglo-Saxon cathedral known as the Old Minster (see Figure 10.1), together with members of his family, which revived a tradition of royal burial in Winchester that may stretch back to the seventh century. Second, there is the undoubted fact that Winchester has produced a greater concentration of Scandinavian sculpture and artefacts dating to the first half of

1 Turner, Winchester, 11–19; Beaumont James, Winchester, 62–64; Ottaway, Winchester, 205–10. 2 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 82–91, 133–60; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 45–52, 94–106. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-011

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Figure 10.1: The Winchester Cathedral mortuary chest bearing the names of King Cnut and Queen Emma. Photograph © John Crook.

the eleventh century than anywhere else in southern England, with the possible exception of London (see Figures 10.3 and 10.5). Extrapolating from these finds and the long history of Winchester as a city with royal connections, Matthew Townend suggested that Winchester was the main center of court culture during the reign of Cnut, the place, in other words, where the skaldic poems composed during the 1020s in praise of Cnut should be contextualised.3 Finally, the one manuscript portrait of Cnut that has survived is to be found in a Winchester manuscript. This is the famous illustration that appears as the frontispiece to the Liber Vitae of New Minster, in Winchester, of Cnut and his wife Emma (whom the English called Ælfgifu) presenting a golden cross to this monastery (Figure 10.2).4 The frequent reproduction of this illustration in books and articles relating to Cnut, together with that of the mortuary chest bearing his name from Winchester cathedral (Figure 10.1), has served to reinforce an impression of the centrality of Winchester to his reign. Is there anything that a chapter on Cnut and Winchester can add to this well-established story? Although certain “facts,” such as his burial in the city and the presence there of Scandinavian sculpture, are unassailable, there are other “facts” which have perhaps been too readily assumed rather than demonstrated. How often can Cnut be shown to have been in Winchester? Were there periods of his reign in which Winchester was more significant to him than in others? How did his patronage of Winchester’s religious houses compare with

3 Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur.” 4 British Library, London, Stowe 944; Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes.

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Figure 10.2: Cnut the Great and Queen Emma present a cross to the New Minster, Winchester. Vitae of the New Minster 1031, prefatory image, BL Stowe 944, fol 6r. Photograph: British Library.

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that of other major ecclesiastical communities? Can we distinguish Cnut’s role in Winchester from what the bishops and abbots of Winchester wished it to be, either during his reign or retrospectively? Do we need to distinguish Cnut’s role in Winchester from those of others associated with him, such as Queen Emma, their son Harthacnut, and Earl Godwine of Wessex? These are some of the issues that will be explored below, issues that must be considered before we can judge as fully as is possible the relationship between Cnut and Winchester.

Winchester before Cnut Before going further into this analysis, it is necessary to review something of Winchester’s history prior to Cnut’s succession and to consider how the city would have appeared to him. Fortunately, it is not necessary to discuss the earlier Anglo-Saxon evidence in detail because we have the excellent overviews of Martin Biddle, whose major research excavations in the city between 1961 and 1971 provide the foundation for much of what can be said about its early history.5 Equally important are surviving documents produced by Winchester’s two major male religious houses, the Old and New Minsters, though one also has to recognize that these houses were not above adjusting aspects of their history to reflect changing circumstances, or ideals, rather than reality.6 We can note the importance of Winchester in the Roman past as Venta Belgarum, and how its Roman origins are likely to have been a major reason for the choice of Winchester as the new center of the West Saxon see ca. 660, when its location at Dorchester-on-Thames was no longer tenable.7 Although the Roman street system was lost during the major retraction of settlement in the fifth and sixth centuries, its walls were a more enduring legacy and a major reason for Winchester becoming a major defensive site (“burh”) during the period of Viking attacks in the ninth century. Winchester is one of the largest burhs listed in the Burghal Hidage,8 and Martin Biddle’s excavations, combined with contemporary charter evidence, have suggested that a grid of streets was laid out at the same

5 In addition to the annual interim reports published in The Antiquaries Journal (1964–1975), see in particular Biddle, “Winchester: Development of an Early Capital” and “Study of Winchester,” and Biddle and Keene, Winchester Town Atlas; see also Ottaway, Winchester. 6 Miller, Charters of New Minster; Rumble, Property and Piety; the charters of Old Minster have not yet been published in their entirety, but have been studied in detail in Rumble, Codex Wintoniensis. 7 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Venta to Wintancaestir”; Ottaway, Winchester, 75–204. 8 Defence of Wessex, ed. Hill and Rumble.

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time as the refurbishment of defenses (Map 10.1).9 King Alfred (871–899) was the obvious choice to be credited as the progenitor of the scheme, but more recent excavations at Staple Gardens in the north-west of the walled city, and in particular a series of radio-carbon dates from the site, have suggested that the refurbishment of Winchester began earlier: around the middle of the ninth century, that is, probably during the reigns of Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf (839–858), and his elder brothers Æthelbald (855–860) and Æthelbert (860–865).10 Some of the work is likely to have been carried out during the time when Swithun was bishop of Winchester (852–862). An eleventh-century Latin poem credits Swithun with the rebuilding of the town’s east gate.11 King Alfred undoubtedly deserves credit for establishing an integrated system of burhs garrisoned from the surrounding countryside for which Winchester may have provided a blueprint.12 The family of Alfred also founded major new religious houses in the city; here the main initiator was Alfred’s son, King Edward the Elder (899–924). Edward’s mother, Ealhswith, following her husband’s death, began the foundation of a nunnery on an estate she possessed in the city. However, as Ealhswith herself died in 901, much of the work on the Nunnaminster is likely to have been carried forward by her son Edward.13 Edward was the active founder of New Minster immediately to the north of the cathedral site of Old Minster (see Map 10.1), though the new religious community may have been developed from a more modest foundation created by Alfred for his Frankish adviser Grimbald.14 New Minster seems to have been intended from the first to be the burial church of Edward and his family, and the body of Alfred was moved there from Old Minster, which had previously been used intermittently for royal burials.15 New Minster seems to have been a major basilican church of Carolingian type, while Old Minster beside it was a smaller, cruciform church built at the time of its foundation in the seventh century (although it seems to have been given a more impressive western façade soon after the foundation of New

9 Biddle, “Study of Winchester,” 119–26; Ottaway, Winchester, 205–19. 10 Ford and Teague, Winchester, A City in the Making, esp. 187–211. 11 Cult of St. Swithun, ed. Lapidge, 781–82. 12 Brooks, “Crucible of Defeat.” 13 Scobie and Qualmann, Nunnaminster; Foot, Veiled Women II, 243–52; Rumble, Property and Piety, 45–49; Ottaway, Winchester, 226–27. 14 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 1–7; Rumble, Property and Piety, 50–64; Miller, Charters of New Minster, xxv–xxviii, 12–45 (nos. 2–7). 15 The burial of Æthelwulf is uniquely described in the Annals of St. Neots as having been in Steyning in Sussex, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 855 records his burial place as Winchester. The implication can perhaps be drawn that Æthelwulf’s body had been transferred from Steyning to Winchester by the time the Chronicle annals had been compiled in early 890s.

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Map 10.1: Plan of Late Saxon Winchester (north at the top). © Martin Biddle.

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Minster).16 The major rebuilding of Old Minster occurred during the episcopate of the formidable Bishop Æthelwold (963–984), who reformed all three major religious communities in Winchester as monastic foundations and spearheaded major ecclesiastical reforms in the country as a whole.17 Kings were patrons of Æthelwold, but he was undoubtedly the main architect of the transformation of the religious quarter of Winchester. One may note here that although both kings and bishops were major patrons in Winchester, relations between them were not always harmonious. A significant factor in Edward’s foundation of New Minster may have been the poor relations of both his father and himself with Bishop Denewulf of Winchester (878×879–908).18 The support of Denewulf’s successor Frithestan (909–932×933) for the sons from King Edward’s second marriage may have been a significant reason why two sons from Edward’s first and third marriages were buried outside Winchester, at Malmesbury in Wiltshire and Glastonbury in Somerset respectively.19 One could go on, if space permitted, but it is perhaps sufficient to say that there were turbulent politics during the tenth century in which the bishops of Winchester were often closely involved, as were leading families among the nobility, for some of whom Winchester was also a major religious and political centre. Whether Cnut was aware of such undercurrents we do not know, but he could readily have been informed of them by his Anglo-Saxon advisers, not to mention his wife, Emma, who had been married previously to King Æthelred II (978–1016) and had received from him an estate in the center of Winchester in 1012.20 In appearance, Winchester would have conformed to many of Cnut’s expectations of a royal centre, having many of the main features of the royal residence of Jelling in Denmark: defenses, monumental religious structures, royal burials, service industries.21 As he traveled further within Europe, Cnut would have appreciated the architectural similarities of Winchester with other leading centres of Roman origin. He would even recognize among the dedications of Winchester’s churches some, such as St. Lawrence, St. George, St. Pantaleon, and St. Maurice and his Companions, that were also favored in Ottonian centres, which may have been a sign of the West Saxon dynasty’s

16 Ottaway, Winchester, 222–25. 17 Biddle, “Felix Urbs Winthonia”; Bishop Æthelwold, ed. Yorke. 18 Yorke, “Bishops of Winchester, Kings of Wessex.” 19 Yorke, “Æthelwold and Politics,” 70–74; Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 8–14; Marafioti, The King’s Body, 56–80. 20 Goodman, Goodbegot; Rumble, Property and Piety, 215–19; Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, esp. 220–24. 21 Kähler Holst, Dengsø Jessen, Wulf Andersen, and Pedersen, “Late Viking Royal Constructions.”

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wider family connections.22 Winchester would have been the largest town that Cnut encountered in southern England, apart from London, and the latter may not have possessed such impressive ecclesiastical architecture. Specialist craftsmen, merchants, pilgrims, and people from the linked country estates would have been part of its admixture of inhabitants, together with clerics, nuns, and those associated with the administration of the shire.23 Winchester had a number of potential uses or significances for the new Anglo-Danish regime, but how did Cnut make use of it?

Cnut in Winchester There almost certainly was a royal residence in Winchester before the time of Cnut, but its existence may only be inferred rather than demonstrated from the surviving written and archaeological evidence.24 Direct references to a royal residence come from the reigns of Edward the Confessor (1042–1066) and William I (1066–1087); records of the latter’s extensions to the Anglo-Saxon royal palace imply that it lay immediately to the west of the Old and New Minsters (see Map 10.1). The public land, for which Edward the Elder needed the permission of the witan before it could be used for the building of New Minster, may have been part of the royal palace site, and the siting of New Minster so close to Old Minster may have been due to the presence of the palace site immediately to the west.25 As Martin Biddle has argued, it is plausible that Winchester possessed a royal residence from the seventh century, when Old Minster was founded, but there has not been the opportunity to examine the putative site archaeologically; as it now lies within the cathedral cemetery, and probably partly under the war memorial, excavation seems a remote possibility. One can point to various occasions of royal assembly prior to the reign of Cnut when use of a royal residence in Winchester would have been appropriate, but one should also note the presence of royal vills within a few miles of the city, for instance, at Kings Worthy and King’s Somborne.26

22 Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, I, 106–28; Dome – Gräber – Grabungen, ed. Freund and Köster. 23 Ottaway, Winchester, 209–64. 24 Biddle and Keene, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, 289–91. See Lapidge, ed., Cult of St. Swithun, 296, n. 194, for an explanation that what was held to be a reference to a palatium in Winchester in Lantfred’s Translatio et Miracula s. Swithuni (chap. 10) might actually refer to a residence not in Winchester. Kolz, in “Kingship and Palaces,” 323, suggests that palatium in that context meant “‘the court’ as a collection of people, and not the palace as a building.” 25 Rumble, Property and Piety, 50–56. 26 Roach, Kingship and Consent.

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One apparently promising reference to Cnut using Winchester as a royal residence should probably be discarded. This is the reference in the late-twelfth-century Winchester Annals of Richard of Devizes, a monk of Winchester cathedral, to Cnut choosing Winchester as his main residence (“regni sui solium habuit in Wintonia”).27 Some of the historical entries in the Winchester Annals were taken from known sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, while others (such as the Winchester residence reference) appear plausible, but John Gillingham has demonstrated that it would be unwise to treat the unique material in the Annals as reliable.28 He has shown that Richard was heavily influenced by the pseudo-historical work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose approach he sought to blend with Winchester traditions. Although in modern times the historical sections of the Winchester Annals have been printed separately from the seemingly more fantastical earlier sections (that included, for instance, Cerdic’s rededication of a Roman temple in his “capital of Winchester” to Woden), Gillingham shows how similar preoccupations unite all parts of the work. These include locating within Winchester notable events, such as the recognition of Egbert’s bretwalda-ship in 825, that are not claimed for other places. Richard’s claim that Winchester was Cnut’s seat has verbal echoes of a comparable claim in the Encomium Emmae Reginae that refers to London.29 Putting the Winchester Annals to one side, we are left with a meager haul of references to Cnut’s presence in Winchester, although the number is greater than for some earlier kings, especially when it is borne in mind that Cnut spent a considerable part of his reign abroad and that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entries for his reign are brief. When it is noted that we possess only one direct reference to King Alfred having been in the city, it can be appreciated that the references we do possess for Cnut may well stand for more numerous unrecorded visits. Nevertheless, as they stand, they suggest that Cnut was most engaged with Winchester at the beginning and towards the end of his reign. The most significant reference to Cnut’s presence in Winchester occurs in the preface to his law code I–II Cnut, which indicates that it was issued at a council held at Christmas in Winchester.30 Patrick Wormald estimated that the year must

27 Annales Monasterii de Wintonia, ed. Luard, 15. 28 Gillingham, “Richard of Devizes.” 29 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 22–25; in addition, there are verbal echoes of the coronation ordo in which the king was installed in hoc regni solio; see further Marafioti, The King’s Body, 95. 30 Whitelock, “Laws of Wulfstan,” 444–52; Wormald, Making of English Law, 345–66; Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 61–63. See also Stafford, “Laws of Cnut,” 179, for a reading that would argue for a preceding meeting of the witan in Winchester, where Cnut might have promulgated part of II Cnut as a condition for his acceptance as king of England.

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have been either 1020 or 1021.31 The law code was in effect a codification and guarantee of existing Anglo-Saxon law, brought together by Archbishop Wulfstan of York, who had played such a major role in producing the legislation of Cnut’s Anglo-Saxon predecessor Æthelred II. The Winchester assembly may be viewed as the successor to the assembly at Oxford in 1018, at which the Danes and the English reached agreement and Cnut agreed to honor the laws of Æthelred’s father, King Edgar (957–975). Cnut’s “Letter to the English” of 1020 also promised to uphold established Anglo-Saxon law and traditions.32 The Winchester assembly of 1020 or 1021 can therefore be seen as a final stage in the normalization of Cnut’s rule in England. The timing of the assembly at a major Christian festival underscored the binding nature of the agreement between Cnut and his English subjects. It was highly appropriate that it should have been held in the premier see of the West Saxons, where both Edgar and Æthelred II as kings of the English had presided over major assemblies.33 The two other potential references to Cnut being in Winchester are of less moment and less certainty, and relate to his patronage of the Winchester minsters; this will be discussed more fully in the next section. Goscelin’s lateeleventh-century account of the translation and miracles of St. Mildrith (also known as Mildreth, or Mildred) records, as an example of Cnut’s piety, that on one occasion when celebrating Easter in Old Minster, Winchester, Cnut refused to wear his crown and placed it on a crucifix, on Christ’s head, instead.34 Goscelin appears to date the event to 1035,35 but Richard Sharpe has argued that Goscelin’s rather confused chronology would better fit the date 1030.36 Goscelin follows Cnut’s crowning of the crucifix with an account of a visit by him to Rome during which Mildrith saved Cnut from drowning.37 Cnut is known to have visited Rome in 1027, so if Goscelin’s account is to be trusted, the king must have made a second visit to Rome in 1030 or 1035 that is not otherwise recorded.38 There are records of visits by Cnut to Saint-Omer and Cologne that cannot be easily fitted with the 1027 visit to Rome, and so could support the idea of a second visit there, while the D version of the Chronicle for 1031, although it has been suggested that its record is for 1027 misplaced, records a

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Wormald, Making of English Law, 345. Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 56–64, 82–89. Roach, Kingship and Consent, 22–23. Rollason, “Goscelin’s Account of St. Mildrith,” 162–65 (chap. 6). Barlow, “Two Notes: Cnut’s Second Pilgrimage.” Sharpe, “Date of St. Mildreth’s Translation.” Rollason, “Goscelin’s Account of St. Mildrith,” 167–68 (chap. 10). Barlow, “Two Notes: Cnut’s Second Pilgrimage.”

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visit to Rome.39 One can see that Goscelin’s account is somewhat problematic, and it is not clear what his source of information was. It may have been one of the oral traditions surrounding Cnut as a pious Christian king that were picked up, and developed further, by Anglo-Norman historians such as Henry of Huntingdon, who is otherwise the main source of the story in which Cnut fails to turn the tide.40 Although it is plausible that Cnut celebrated Easter in Old Minster towards the end of his reign, the Translatio of St. Mildrith can hardly be seen as cast-iron evidence for his presence in the city. A final possible record of a visit by Cnut to Winchester is also problematic. The frontispiece of the Liber Vitae of New Minster, believed to have been produced in 1031, shows Cnut and Emma presenting a large gold cross to the admiring New Minster community with the support and approval of God, his angels, the Virgin Mary, and St. Peter (Figure 10.2). But does the illustration record an actual ceremony at which Cnut and Emma made the gift? The Liber Vitae itself provides no help with the interpretation of the image, and it can only be an inference that, as the gift of the cross is recorded in the frontispiece, it was linked directly with the production of the Liber Vitae.41 A lavish ceremony of presentation could be seen as part of a narrative of ostentatious piety that has been identified as a feature of Cnut’s kingship.42 The frontispiece presents Cnut and Emma modeled on Ottonian donor portraits, and the act of cross-giving, like the alleged crowning of the crucifix, could be seen as fitting with influences on Cnut’s performance of kingship from Ottonian imperial piety in the latter part of his reign, after his journey to Rome in 1027 and attendance at the coronation of Conrad II.43 However, both the possible performances of ostentatious piety by Cnut on visits to Winchester are plausible but not proven.

39 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 65 (s.a. 1031); Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 102–4; Hare, “Cnut and Lotharingia,” 269–77. 40 Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, VI, 17, 368–69; Bolton, Cnut the Great, Appendix 1, 214–16. See below for Cnut’s exceptionally good relations with Canterbury, which might help explain the positive cultivation of his memory there. 41 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 39–47, for a full discussion of the possibilities. 42 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 117–60; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 77–106; Treharne, “Performance of Piety.” 43 Gerchow, “Prayers for Cnut,” 222–34, Treharne, “Performance of Piety.” See further discussion of the depiction below.

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Cnut’s Patronage of the Winchester Minsters Charters provide a means of assessing how Cnut’s patronage of the Winchester minsters can be compared with his support for other major ecclesiastical communities in England, although Cnut was not especially generous in his land grants to English churches. The Winchester religious houses may have been included in the submission to Cnut at Southampton immediately after the death of King Æthelred: this submission is recorded by John of Worcester.44 Subsequently, “Wessex” submitted to Edmund Ironside, but John of Worcester believed that the men of Hampshire and Wiltshire fought on the Danish side at the battle of Assandun in 1016, in which their ealdorman Ælfric was killed.45 The Winchester religious communities do not seem to have been among those which Cnut considered had opposed him;46 no reparations are recorded, but he does not seem to have conspicuously rewarded them either. New Minster did succeed in 1019 in securing the restoration of an estate at Drayton, Hampshire, which Cnut had given to a lay claimant, probably a kinsman of the original donors, soon after he had come to power.47 Abbot Byrtmær of New Minster is attested as first or second of the listed abbots in charters of Cnut (until his death in 1030), a ranking that implies that he had a significant role in the witan,48 but New Minster received no further gifts of land. Old Minster’s only recorded gift of land from Cnut was a modest estate of three hides at Bishop’s Hull in Somerset granted in 1033.49 A renewal of Old Minster’s privileges is dated to 1035, but seemingly contained no new grants of land.50 The renewal may well have a genuine basis, but like a number of such Old Minster records of grants of privileges it seems to show signs of later improvement. Winchester seems to have fared better from gifts of treasure. The gift of the gold cross to New Minster has already been mentioned. Although the cross is shown as a plain gold object (Figure 10.2), it is usually assumed to be identical to the great jeweled cross of gold and silver that was destroyed in the siege of

44 Chronicle, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 484–85. 45 Chronicle, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 486–87; see also ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016). 46 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 86–93. 47 Charters of New Minster, ed. Miller, 159–64 (no. 33). This transaction is considered in greater detail in the chapter by Ryan Lavelle in this volume, pp. 169–89. 48 Charters of New Minster, ed. Miller, xxxiii. It may not be coincidence that the monasteries of New Minster and Glastonbury, whose abbots consistently head the lists attesting abbots, contained the greatest concentrations of recent royal burials. For the significance attached to royal burials in this period, see Marafioti, The King’s Body. 49 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 972. 50 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 976.

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Winchester in 1141.51 William of Malmesbury recorded that, after it was damaged in the siege, its remains yielded five hundred marks of silver and thirty of gold.52 Relic donations made by Cnut and Emma are also recorded in the New Minster Liber Vitae.53 A sixteenth-century manuscript records that Cnut also gave “duas imagines magnas auro argentoque bene ornatus” (two large statues beautifully decorated in gold and silver) and four fine vestments.54 It has also been suggested that the splendidly decorated Grimbald Gospels, which were certainly in the possession of New Minster in the eleventh century, were a gift from Cnut.55 They are among the de luxe manuscripts produced by Eadui Basan at Canterbury, which Sandy Heslop has suggested were commissioned by Cnut and Emma.56 Not surprisingly, Cnut and Emma were among the patrons to be remembered in the prayers of the New Minster community, as was also Cnut’s sister Santslave (Świętosława).57 Old Minster is also said to have received generous gifts from Cnut. The Winchester Annals record the gift of a richly decorated shrine for the relics of St. Birinus, the founder of the West Saxon see at Dorchester-on-Thames, whose relics had been moved to Winchester by the early eighth century, as well as a large effigy and silver candelabrum.58 Admittedly, the Winchester Annals have already been referred to as a potentially unreliable source of information, but their claim here is commensurate with the type of gifts recorded for New Minster. William of Malmesbury commented that Cnut “Wintoniae maxime munificentiae suae magnificentiam ostendit, ubi tanta intulit ut moles metallorum terreat aduenarum animos, splendor gemmarum reuerberet intuentium oculos” (exhibited especially at Winchester the munificence of his generosity, where his offerings were such that strangers were alarmed by the masses of precious metal and their eyes dazzled as they look at the flashing gems.)59 However,

51 Historia Novella, ed. King, 102–5; Chronicle, III, ed. McGurk, 302–3. 52 Historia Novella, ed. King, 102–5 (chap. 55); Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 41, citing BL Cotton MS. Vespasian D.IX, fol. 33v. 53 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 105–6; some of the relics may have been embedded in the cross. 54 BL Cotton MS. Vespasian D.IX, fol. 32rv; Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 41, n. 179. 55 Pratt, “Kings and Books,” 366–71. 56 Heslop, “Deluxe Manuscripts,” but see also Gameson, “Earliest English Royal Books,” 20, for reservations about seeing Cnut as a commissioner of books. 57 Liber Vitae, ed., Keynes, 94–95; Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 64–65; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 215–16, for the identity of Cnut’s sister, on whom see also Morawiec, pp. 419–29, and Gazzoli, pp. 399–417, later in this volume. 58 Annales Monasterii, ed. Luard, 16. 59 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 322–23.

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William goes on to say that such gifts were actually organized by Queen Emma from the treasure that was at her disposal. The Winchester minsters may have received some dazzling treasures (perhaps especially because of Emma’s links with Winchester, which are considered more fully below), but the grants of land that would have come directly from Cnut, approved by the witan, are decidedly meager. Other communities were more favored, especially those with saints in whom Cnut seems to have been particularly interested, such as St. Cuthbert at Durham and St. Edmund at Bury.60 The recipient of Cnut’s greatest ecclesiastical patronage was undoubtedly Canterbury, to which the relics of Archbishop Ælfheah, slain by the Danish army in London in 1012, were translated with much pomp and ceremony by Cnut, Emma, and their son Harthacnut in 1023.61 A major factor in Cnut’s favoritism towards Canterbury must have been his good working relationship with both Archbishop Lyfing (1013–1020) and his successor Æthelnoth (1020–1038), for all the likelihood that the latter was the brother of Ealdorman Æthelweard of western Wessex, who had been outlawed by Cnut in 1020.62 Both Lyfing and Æthelnoth were the recipients of far more generous grants of land than had been made to Winchester.63 Cnut is said to have made a visit to Christ Church sometime between 1017 and 1020, during which he laid a charter guaranteeing the archbishop’s freedoms on the altar of Christ Church.64 Æthelnoth was the recipient of even more generous gifts: five separate estates and, it would appear, substantial rights in the port of Sandwich and a royal crown.65 It would also appear that Æthelnoth acted as de facto earl in Kent.66 St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, received a coveted gift of the former royal nunnery site at Minster-in-Thanet including the relics of its premier saint Mildrith.67 Without the existing ties to the Wessex heartland of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, it must have seemed appropriate to Cnut to focus his patronage on the leader of the English church. Canterbury was undoubtedly the preeminent focus of his involvement with the Church in southern England.

60 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 121–22, 142–43. 61 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 64 (s.a. 1023); (D), trans. Swanton, 156; “Translatio Sancti Ælegi,” ed. Rumble and trans. Morris. On the initial daring of this translation, see also Goeres and North in this volume, pp. 12–17. 62 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 129–30, 147–50; Brooks, Church of Canterbury, 287–96; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 78–83. 63 Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury II, ed. Brooks and Kelly, 1052–133. 64 Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury II, ed. Brooks and Kelly, 1058–62 (no. 145). 65 Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury II, ed. Brooks and Kelly, 1079–98 (no. 151). 66 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 79–82. 67 Rollason, “Goscelin’s Account of St. Mildrith.”

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Winchester as Burial Place of Cnut and his Family There was one aspect of Winchester that does seem to have been of personal significance to Cnut, and that was its history as a place of royal burial. Winchester had been used intermittently for royal burial probably since the seventh century and certainly from the eighth, but its use had never been exclusive and a range of other religious foundations in Wessex had also been used. There was a significant concentration of royal burials at New Minster, which seems to have been founded by King Edward the Elder (899–924) to serve as a place of burial for himself, his father King Alfred (871–899), and his mother Ealhswith, plus other members of his immediate family.68 The burials appear to have been grouped in or around a tomb-structure (“sacellum”) that contained the body of Alfred.69 However, with the exception of the burial of King Eadwig (955–957), no other rulers from the dynasty had been buried at New Minster. Use of Old Minster for royal burial had been more intermittent, and the most recent king to be interred there was Eadred (946–955).70 Among Cnut’s more immediate predecessors, King Edgar (957–975) had been buried at Glastonbury, which already housed the body of his father, King Edmund I (939–946).71 In 1016 they were joined by the body of Edgar’s grandson, King Edmund II Ironside, who had ruled for a few months in that year.72 Edmund’s father, and the first husband of Emma, King Æthelred II (978–1016), had been buried in St. Paul’s, London,73 probably not from any particular connection with the foundation, but rather because he had died in London while Cnut and Edmund Ironside were disputing the throne. It was the first burial of a king of the West Saxon dynasty outside the Wessex heartlands. It seems likely that the concentration of burials of members of Cnut’s family in Old Minster was intended to emulate that of Edward the Elder’s family in New Minster. Edward may have been making a political statement through his choice of burials in New Minster, founded at a time when his cousin Æthelwold was still at large and disputing his claim to the throne.74 The new family mausoleum at New Minster can be seen as a claim that from then on, only descendants of King Alfred had the right to rule the enlarged kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons that had come

68 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 2–5; Charters of New Minster, ed. Miller, xxv–xxxi. 69 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Danish Royal Burials,” 213. 70 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 45 (s.a. 955). 71 Marafioti, The King’s Body, 65–84. 72 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 62 (s.a. 1016); (D), trans. Swanton, 113 (s.a. 1016); Marafioti, The King’s Body, 84–98. 73 Keynes, “Burial of King Æthelred at St. Paul’s.” 74 Yorke, “Bishops of Winchester”; Lavelle, “Politics of Rebellion.”

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together during his reign. The body of King Alfred was moved from the Old Minster, where it had been placed after his death in 899, to New Minster at (it would seem from a charter reference75) at the earliest opportunity. Left behind at Old Minster was King Æthelwulf (839–858), the father of Alfred and grandfather of both Edward and Æthelwold, together with some earlier representatives of the West Saxon royal house.76 The burials of the family of Cnut at Old Minster could similarly have been read as marking the start of a new dynasty, but one that was connected to earlier rulers and in lawful succession to them. Cnut was buried in Old Minster in 1035 and was subsequently joined by his son Harthacnut (d. 1042), his wife Emma (d. 1052), and nephew Beorn (d. 1049) (see Table 10.1).77 Cnut’s family burial place, like that of Edward the Elder, may also have been inaugurated by the transfer of a significant royal figure, that of the king with whom he had ruled briefly, Edmund Ironside. Burial alongside Edmund’s body would have provided a tangible demonstration that members of the Anglo-Danish dynasty were legitimate successors of the West Saxon royal house. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Edmund was buried at Glastonbury in 1016, but there was a strong medieval tradition in Winchester that Edmund was buried in the cathedral; a Purbeck marble slab within the presbytery, probably of later twelfth-century date, records that “Hic iacet Edmundus rex Eþeldredi regis filius” (Here lies King Edmund son of King Æthelred) (see Figure 10.3).78 There are similar inscriptions recording the burials of Earl Beorn (nephew of Cnut) and Duke Richard (son of William I).79 The case for the genuineness of the tradition of Edmund’s burial, or rather reburial, in Winchester has been made by Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle and need not be rehearsed in detail here. William of Malmesbury records that in 1032 Cnut visited the grave of Edmund Ironside on November 30, the anniversary of Edmund’s death, and laid a pallium decorated with peacocks on his tomb.80 This would have been a likely occasion for the remains of Edmund, or some of them, to have been transferred to Winchester. The inclusion of Edmund in Cnut’s family group recalls the claim in the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that in their meeting at Alney in 1016 Cnut and Edmund “wurdon feolagan ⁊ wedbroðra”

75 Charters of New Minster, ed. Miller, 26–30 (no. 4). 76 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker (s.a. 855); Yorke, “Burial of Kings.” 77 Crook, “‘A Worthy Antiquity’”; Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Danish Royal Burials.” 78 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Danish Royal Burials,” 224–27. 79 All manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that record the murder of Earl Beorn in 1049 also record that his body was disinterred and taken to Old Minster for burial “with Cnut his uncle.” See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker, 113–14 (s.a. 1049). 80 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 330–31 (chap. 184).

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Figure 10.3: The second half of the inscriptions of the later-twelfth-century Purbeck marble tomb-slabs for (upper) Earl Beorn and Richard, son of William I, and (lower). Edmund Ironside, son of Æthelred II. Photograph © John Crook.

(became partners and sworn brothers).81 In a charter of privileges for Glastonbury Cnut is said to have made the grant “indulgentiam criminum meorum et relaxationem peccaminum fratris mei regis Eadmundi” (for the indulgence of my transgressions and the forgiveness of the sins of my brother King Edmund).82 The charter is undoubtedly spurious, but may have a genuine basis. The claim that Cnut regarded Edmund as a brother is also made by William of Malmesbury.83 It seems likely that the burials of the family of Cnut were made originally in the eastern arm of the Old Minster. It was near there that the famous panel from a frieze was excavated. It has been interpreted by the Biddles as a scene from the legend of Sigmundr, which is elsewhere known from the Vǫlsunga Saga, and as one likely to have been linked with the family’s place of burial (see Figure 10.4).84 The connections of that legend with characters in the extended West Saxon royal genealogy (and allusions to it in the poem Beowulf) would have been another means of linking the Danish and West Saxon dynasties. The burials of the family of Cnut may then have been transferred intact from the Old Minster to the cathedral in 1093.85 The body of Richard, the second son of William I who

81 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 62 (s.a. 1016); (D), trans. Swanton, 152 (s.a. 1016: “became partners and pledged-brothers”). 82 Charters of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Kelly, 528–32 (no. 61). 83 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 330–31 (chap. 184); possibly William was drawing on the charter evidence. 84 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Excavated Sculpture from Winchester,” 314–22 (no. 88). On this see also Simon Thomson in this volume, pp. 235–53. 85 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Danish Royal Burials,” 219–28.

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Figure 10.4: Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture from Old Minster, Winchester, showing what may be the episode of Sigmund and the wolf known from Vǫlsunga saga. Photograph © John Crook.

was killed in an accident in the New Forest in ca. 1070, had probably been added to the group (see Table 10.1), and transferred with them.86 Subsequently associated with them was the body of Richard’s brother, William II Rufus (1087–1100), who was killed in the New Forest.87 In this way, the Normans in turn stressed their legitimate rights to the English throne through burial associations with their Anglo-Danish connections. The plans for a special burial place for Cnut in Old Minster would have been aided by the appointment in 1032 of Ælfwine, a former royal priest, as bishop of Winchester.88 Indeed, one might ask at this point whose idea the family burial place in Old Minster was. Was Ælfwine appointed to Winchester to carry the plan through, or was it an idea that emerged after his appointment,

86 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Danish Royal Burials,” 224. 87 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History V, ed. Chibnall, 282–83 (X.xiv); Barlow, William Rufus, 419. 88 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 149; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 101–2. In “Goscelin’s Account of St. Mildrith,” ed. Rollason, 166, Ælfwine is descibed as the amicus of King Cnut.

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Table 10.1: Genealogy showing the relationships of Edmund Ironside, the family of Cnut and the early Norman kings (with those buried in Old Minster, Winchester underlined).

Richard II d. 1026

Emma d. 1052

=

(1) Æthelred = (2) Cnut Unræd d. 1016 d. 1035 (by his first wife)

Ástríðr = Úlfr

Edmund Ironside d. 1016

Richard III d. 1027

Robert d. 1035

William d. 1087

Richard d. ca.1070

Beorn d. 1049

Edward d. 1066

Harthacnut d. 1047

William II d. 1100

perhaps at his own suggestion? Was his appointment the trigger for its inauguration through the transfer of the remains of Edmund Ironside to Winchester, or did Cnut or those around him, such as Queen Emma, already have reasons to be concerned about his health by 1032, prompting their thoughts to turn to making provision for a suitable burial place and ensuring the succession?

Cnut’s Inner Circle and Winchester As we have seen, it is not possible to demonstrate conclusively that Cnut was in Winchester between the major assembly there in 1020 or 1021 and the taking of his body there for burial in 1035, from the location of his death, Shaftesbury Abbey. However, some of Cnut’s close associates had much deeper connections with Winchester that stretched beyond his reign. His wife Emma had had links with the city since 1012, when she was given a substantial holding in the center

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of Winchester by her husband, Æthelred II; this was subsequently known as the “manor of Goodbegot” (Figure 10.5).89

Figure 10.5: The site of Queen Emma’s manor of Goodbegot in High Street, Winchester today. Photograph © Barbara Yorke.

The gift was made in 1012 at the height of the Scandinavian attacks and so may have been intended to provide the queen with a safe haven in the walled city. Situated in the High Street, it could also have made a lucrative contribution to her revenue. It is not clear whether Emma lived on this site during all her visits to Winchester, or whether we should envisage her dwelling in the elusive royal palace. After Cnut died, Emma took to Winchester not only his body, but also his treasury, as well as the housecarls who supported the succession of their son Harthacnut.90 We can be certain of the presence of a body of housecarls within Winchester at this time, and any monuments that might be associated with them from Winchester, such as the fragment of a runic inscription from a gravestone

89 Goodman, Manor of Goodbegot; Rumble, Property and Piety, 215–19. The part of the “haga” (tenement) that Emma (as Queen Ælfgifu) bequeathed to Old Minster, Winchester, is referred to in a writ of Edward the Confessor, confirming the gift as Ælfrices gode begeaton, probably meaning something like “Ælfric’s good yield”: Biddle and Keene, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, 158–59; Rumble, Property and Piety, 220–22 (no. 29; see also no. 96). Harmer renders this name “Ælfric Goodsgetter’s,” in Anglo-Saxon Writs, 383–85, 399 (no. 111), but the word be-gēate (wk. m.) is no nomen agentis; it is glossed “acquired property” in DOE (no. 269, 2): https://tapor.library.utor onto.ca/doe/; here it would have to be in the accusative plural. 90 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 65 (s.a. 1035); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker, 102–3 (s.a. 1035).

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from the church of St. Maurice (Figure 10.6), could likewise date from the period immediately after the death of Cnut rather than from his reign itself.91

Figure 10.6: Fragmentary runic inscription from church of St. Maurice, Winchester. Photograph © Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture: photographer Simon I. Hill.

Although Emma was obliged to withdraw to Flanders in 1037, after the full accession of Harthacnut in 1040 she was able to return, and may have based herself in Winchester again.92 She was certainly there in 1043, when Edward the Confessor, her son by her first husband King Æthelred II, came to her unexpectedly and together with his men, in the words of the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: bereafedan hi æt eallon þan gærsaman þe heo ahte, þa wæron unatellendlice, for þan þe heo wæs æror þam cynge hire suna swiŏe heard, þæt heo him læsse dyde þonne he wolde, ær þam þe he cyng wære. ⁊ eac syððan ⁊ leton hi þaer siððan binnan sittan.93 [deprived her of all the treasures which she owned, and which were beyond counting, because she had formerly been very hard to the king, her son, in that she did less for him

91 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Excavated Sculpture from Winchester,” 327–29. 92 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 66 (s.a. 1040); Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 246–48. 93 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 67 (s.a. 1043).

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than before he became king and afterwards as well. And they allowed her to stay there afterwards.]94

It was presumably in Winchester that she died in 1052 and then was buried with Cnut in the Old Minster (see Figure 10.1). Emma was remembered as a great patron of both the Old and New Minsters. The anniversary of her death was observed at both throughout the Middle Ages, and was commemorated in the cathedral with gifts to the poor.95 In addition to the gifts that she had made jointly with Cnut, which William of Malmesbury believed had been largely on Emma’s own initiative, she was also remembered for her own gifts, perhaps made after Cnut’s death.96 She was remembered at New Minster for the gift of her “Greek” shrine with many relics, including the head of St. Valentine, and an estate of thirty hides at Piddletrenthide in Dorset.97 Old Minster received major gifts of silver, gold, and textiles, and on her death, an estate at Hayling Island, Hampshire, and part of her tenement in the city, which became known as the “manor of Goodbegot,” a much valued and profitable donation.98 The depiction of her with Cnut in the Liber Vitae of New Minster suggests the type of support she in turn received from Winchester’s religious leaders. The donor portrait may well have been based on Ottonian models, but certain features particularly bolster the position of Emma. The veil an angel holds above her head may allude to her Christian marriage to Cnut, which Emma and her supporters would have wished to contrast with Cnut’s earlier union with Ælfgifu of Northampton, the mother of Harald Harefoot; that union may not have had the same sort of religious component.99 Although Cnut is the more prominent figure, it is Emma who is in the more privileged position on the right of Christ, the place usually given to the emperors in the Ottonian donor portraits.100 This is, of course, the position of the Virgin Mary in standard Crucifixion scenes, which may in part have provided the model for the presentation of Emma and Cnut.101 In the Liber Vitae depiction, Mary stands

94 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker, 106 (s.a. 1043). 95 Goodman, Manor of Goodbegot, 5; Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 45–47, 94–95. 96 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 322–23. 97 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 40–41; he notes that, according to ASC (F), the gift of St. Valentine’s head was made for the soul of Harthacnut; ASC, trans. Swanton, 163, n. 13 (s.a. 1041). 98 Goodman, Manor of Goodbegot; Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 399–400 (no. 111); Rumble, Property and Piety, 220–22; Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 147–48. Other possible gifts of land, as well as treasure, are recorded in Annales Monasterii de Wintonia, ed. Luard, 18, 205, but the account is complicated by its inclusion of legendary material (see below). 99 Gerchow, “Prayers for Cnut,” 220–30; Bolton, “Ælfgifu of Northampton.” 100 Karkov, Ruler Portraits of Anglo-Saxon England, 123–33. 101 Owen-Crocker, “Pomp, Piety,” 42, 48–51.

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above Emma, intervening on her behalf (Figure 10.2). Winchester had already played a significant part in developing the depiction of Mary as queen of heaven, and this has been linked with the political support provided by Bishop Æthelwold for Queen Ælfthryth in the reign of King Edgar.102 A case for the succession of Ælfthryth’s son Æthelred, instead of his elder brother Edward by a first wife, was developed at Winchester on the grounds that Ælfthryth alone was a consecrated queen. Something very similar may have been going on in Winchester towards the end of Cnut’s reign. The superior position of Emma, and consequently the right of her son Harthacnut to succeed in preference to his older half-brother Harald, seems to have been supported by the Winchester church leaders – although it is by no means certain that this was also Cnut’s view. Emma seems to have been closely associated with Bishop Ælfwine, who oversaw the creation of the special burial place for Cnut and Emma’s family in the Old Minster. Their close relations may date from before his appointment to Winchester. A letter preserved in a manuscript that may have been copied at Abingdon is addressed to a priest “Ælf.,” who is believed to be Ælfwine before his appointment as bishop. It refers to him as being privy to royal councils and in a position to request favors from the queen.103 The later gossip at Winchester, repeated by Richard of Devizes in the (unreliable) Winchester Annals, was that the relationship was scandalous, and that Emma had had to clear herself of an accusation of adultery through the ordeal of walking on hot ploughshares.104 The appointment of Ælfwine, in which Emma well have had a hand, may have been resented by the monks of Winchester because he was not one of their number and not himself a monk.105 The monks of Canterbury also reported unkind gossip about Emma, and Goscelin had heard that she had intrigued with King Magnús Óláfsson of Norway to depose her son, Edward the Confessor.106 Perhaps they resented the fact that after Cnut’s early patronage of Canterbury, the balance had shifted by the end of the reign towards Winchester as a major recipient of gifts in the name of Cnut; perhaps they attributed this to Emma’s influence.

102 Deshman, “Christus rex et magi reges,” 397–99; Deshman, Benedictional, 204–7; Yorke, “Æthelwold and Politics,” 82–85; Karkov, Ruler Portraits of Anglo-Saxon England, 111–14. 103 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 149, and 255 for identification of the source. 104 Annales Monasterii de Wintonia, ed. Luard, 20–25. 105 One also wonders whether this gossip might have originated with Ælfgifu of Northampton or her supporters in revenge for the stories, promoted presumably by Emma and her supporters, that claimed Cnut was not the father of either of her sons: Encomium, ed. Campbell, 40–41; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker, 102–3 (s.a. 1035). 106 Rollason, “Goscelin’s Account of St. Mildrith,” 176–78 (chap. 18).

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Another major figure with interests in Winchester was Godwine, earl of Wessex. Even before he was taken up by Cnut, Godwine seems to have had strong family connections in Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent.107 He was first appointed an earl, probably for these areas, in 1018 and then for the whole of Wessex after the fall of Ealdorman Æthelweard in 1020. He was brought into the family of Cnut when he married Gytha, the sister of Earl Úlfr who had married Cnut’s sister Ástríðr (see Table 10.1). Winchester would have been one of the major centres of Godwine’s earldom. A writ from King Edward the Confessor confirming his mother’s gifts to Old Minster was addressed to “Stigand bisceop ⁊ Godƿine eorl ⁊ ealle þa burhmen” (Bishop Stigand and Earl Godwine and all the citizens in Winchester).108 It is very likely that Godwine had Danes in his entourage or employ, and, when thinking about Danish influences in Winchester, Godwine should be considered as a possible patron in addition to Cnut or Harthacnut. He could, for instance, have been the earl referred to in the Old English inscription associated with the tomb of “Gunni eorles feolaga” (Gunni the eorl’s companion) from the Old Minster cemetery.109 Godwine himself died in Winchester on Easter Monday, 1053, after collapsing at a feast in the royal palace.110 He was buried in Old Minster, though not, as far as we know, as part of Cnut’s family group. One should also remember that Winchester was a focus for many noble families whose members might have positions in the minsters or roles in royal administration. Winchester had been a highly political place throughout the tenth century, and many of those who had major connections with the town were closely involved in the various crises affecting the royal house.111

Conclusion: A Paradox A detailed examination of the interactions of Cnut with Winchester not only allows those relations to come into clearer focus, but also contributes to our understanding of the reign of Cnut, as well as to the development of Winchester as an early medieval centre. Cnut’s known patronage of Winchester seems to have fallen into two distinct phases. The first occurred near the beginning of his reign, when Cnut was building his relations with the Anglo-Saxon establishment. The issuing of a

107 Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 70–74. 108 Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 399–400 (no. 111); Rumble, Property and Piety, 220–22. 109 Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Excavated Sculpture from Winchester,” 278–80 (no. 6). 110 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker, 127–28 (s.a. 1053). 111 Yorke, “Æthelwold and Politics.”

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law code in the Anglo-Saxon tradition at a council in Winchester in 1020 or 1021 was a clear demonstration of his stated aim of reconciliation with his Anglo-Saxon subjects. The restoration of an estate to New Minster enabled him to demonstrate his willingness to act as a protector of major churches if they accepted the new regime. Thereafter, as far as we can see, Cnut had little certain direct involvement with Winchester until 1032, when the royal priest Ælfwine was appointed its bishop. This is also when plans began to be put in place for a mausoleum for Cnut and his family within Old Minster, one that appears to have been inaugurated by the transfer of the body of his fictive “brother” Edmund Ironside. This marked a significant new stage in Winchester’s royal associations, whose apogee could be seen to be King Edward the Confessor’s consecration as king in Winchester in 1043.112 King Æthelwulf, his sons, and his grandson Edward the Elder may have been aiming for something similar for Winchester, and the family mausoleum devised by the same Edward at New Minster was almost certainly the model for Cnut’s in Old Minster. But the death of Edward’s son Ælfweard affected plans for the succession, and his immediate successors were not buried in the city. During the episcopate of Æthelwold (963–984), the city was more closely associated with him and with monastic reform than with the royal house. At the end of his reign, Cnut inaugurated a new phase in which Winchester had a symbolic importance for whoever was ruling England, and thus ensured that Winchester received attention from the early Norman kings. To help ensure the succession, it was desirable to stress Cnut’s links with the West Saxon dynasty; then, in turn, the Normans wished to stress their links with the Anglo-Danish house. Thus, Winchester came to be seen as synonymous with Anglo-Saxon royal power, although in reality its royal links had been more varied and intermittent. In spite of the importance of Winchester in the plans for continuity of the Danish succession within England, Cnut’s gifts of land to the Winchester minsters can only be described as ungenerous in comparison with gifts to other favored communities. The Winchester minsters did well for treasure, though, perhaps because Emma was in fact the one who was responsible for its distribution.113 Emma seems to have been more closely linked with Winchester than Cnut was; it was certainly where she was based after the death of Cnut and it became the center of her operations on behalf of Harthacnut. Arranging family commemoration was also a traditional role for women in the early Middle Ages,114 and Emma is a potential candidate for the inspiration behind the Old Minster mausoleum. These possible roles of Emma are a reminder

112 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, 107. 113 For queens as dispensers of treasure, see Stafford, Queens, Concubines, 99–114. 114 Van Houts, Memory and Gender, 65–92.

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that references to Cnut’s relations with a place could also be shorthand for those acting on his behalf. Recent studies have sought to give Cnut agency, but there is a danger that the desire to put a biographical subject center stage ends up masking the roles of others.115 Cnut himself is a shadowy figure in Winchester’s history, only known definitely to have been in the town at the great assembly that produced the law codes I and II Cnut. Danish influences that have been recognized in Winchester would almost certainly not have been there if Cnut had not become king of England, but they are not necessarily evidence for his direct involvement with the city, and do not have to date only from his reign. We are left with a paradox. Cnut’s reign was undoubtedly important in redefining Winchester as a royal city, but Cnut in his lifetime may have had only a limited interaction with the town.

115 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England; Bolton, Cnut the Great, esp. 6–9 for his biographical aims.

Simon C. Thomson

Chapter 11 Heroic Legend: Sigmundr Fáfnisbani in the Court of King Cnut It is widely recognized that Cnut’s reign in England saw a major increase in cultural, especially Church-centered, patronage, at the same time as it brought Scandinavian culture into the mainstream of southern English life. As Barbara Yorke makes clear in the chapter before this one, Winchester seems to have been one of the centres of such cultural activity: patronage and interest flowed into Winchester from multiple sources, if not often from Cnut himself, reflecting competing political and personal interests while simultaneously demonstrating the convergence of different cultural affiliations. Thanks to the archaeological excavations led by Martin Biddle, we can now see two focal points of this cultural activity in the great churches of Old and New Minsters, each of which managed and benefited from this interest in its own way. A large fragment of stone found in Winchester in 1965 epitomizes this flowering, this cultural convergence, and this focus: showing a key moment in the story of Sigmundr Vǫlsungsson, it must have been installed in the Old Minster during or after Cnut’s reign, perhaps initiated with his patronage. The sheer unlikeliness of such an idea – a non-Christian warrior with a strange and savage story decorating the inside of one of England’s oldest cathedrals – may have contributed to a dearth of discussion concerning this stone and its implications in eleventh-century English culture. But there is, this chapter argues, no reason to be afraid of this carving of a wolf and a man, for the relief merely lends a sharp focus to what we already know from other sources: Cnut’s court had a lively interest in mythic and heroic narrative – that is, in what we might call Germanic storytelling – at the same time as it invested heavily in the Church, in connections with Rome, and in the recent English past. Most people in early medieval England seem not to have seen the contradictions between the vaguely “pagan” and the broadly “Christian” that often preoccupy us, and it is usually best, I suggest below, to believe in the vibrant, productive, complicated mixture that the evidence shows, rather than to erect barriers against it in defiance of that evidence. The Sigmundr stone has much to tell us about how Cnut wanted to be perceived and indeed about the cultural tone of England in the eleventh century. It also has implications for our understanding of the stories of Sigmundr, of the Vǫlsungar, and of Beowulf. This chapter, then, aspires to wide horizons, some of which will no doubt remain hazy. But it begins with solid stone (see Figure 11.1). https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-012

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Figure 11.1: The Sigmundr stone: Photograph © Martin Biddle, “Excavations at Winchester 1965: Fourth Interim Report.” (Plate LXII).

Sigmundr on the Stone In 1965, as part of their extensive excavation of Winchester, Martin Biddle and his team found an unusually large piece of carved stone. It had been discarded during the demolition of Old Minster in 1093; unlike most comparable pieces, it was not reused in the construction of the Norman cathedral which stands today. Now on display in Winchester City Museum, the rectangle of stone is approximately 69.5 cm high, 52 cm wide, and 27 cm deep.1 Three figures are

1 The first report is in Biddle, “Excavations at Winchester 1965,” 325, with description in 329–32. Measurements here are taken from Biddle’s most recent description in Tweddle, Biddle, and Kjølbye-Biddle, Corpus IV, 314.ii–322.i (§88). See the earlier description in Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, Winchester: Saxon and Norman Art, 12–13 (§18); Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Danish Royal Burials,” 216–17. A conclusive discussion is forthcoming in Kjølbye-Biddle and Biddle, Minsters of Winchester. The piece’s museum reference number is CG62-70 WS98. I am

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carved in deep relief on its surface. To the left, a mailed warrior walks away; separate pieces showing his head and the front of his body are lost. To the right, a man’s head faces upwards. His shoulder-length hair curves tightly around his head. A rope around his neck is attached to a tree-like object beneath him. Above, its face almost pressing against his, is the pointed face of an animal. The lower part of the face is clear, but the top is heavily weathered. A raised paw passes behind its snout; the other is against the man’s chin. The shape of the muzzle and the dew-claw on the lower paw clearly show that the animal is a dog or a wolf. Most crucially, although the stone is heavily weathered, it is clear that the animal’s tongue extends towards the man’s mouth. Oddly, the wolf’s tongue seems to be visible for the length of her mouth: the carver has apparently emphasized it. Figure 11.2 shows all lines carved on the stone equally, clarifying what has now been partially worn away.

Figure 11.2: Drawing showing all lines carved on the extant fragment.

deeply indebted to Professor Biddle for permitting the use of images produced as part of his work and for his support and advice in the development of this discussion.

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Crisp grooves remain on both the right- and left-hand sides.2 This grooving is contemporary with the image, unlike a plaster-filled lewis-hole which tells us that the stone had been used before its carving. Significantly, the difference in wear between side-grooves and face suggest that most of the wearing of the image took place when it was on display rather than after being discarded. The presence of rebates shows that there were interlocking pieces on either side. These would have continued the narrative to either side, explaining the incompleteness of the representation of both soldier and wolf. From this single piece, then, we can be sure that a frieze extended in both directions, telling a longer narrative: Figure 11.3 shows what form this may have taken and demonstrates, if this reconstruction can be accepted, how extensive the scene would have been.3 Multiple shards were found around this single piece. Those with discernible carving contain fragments “derived from figures similar to those on the present piece” and therefore probably once showed surrounding events.4 It is an extraordinary piece of luck that this segment survived intact, given the clarity and significance of the moment it depicts. That the soldier’s head and foot are missing makes it probable that additional pieces completed the image above and below. From this single stone, then, we can deduce an image up to 2.6 m long – and infer the existence of a much longer frieze, telling more than this isolated incident, with a length of about 24.4 m well within the range of possibility.5 This was an imposing piece of work. At its first publication, Biddle’s report proposed that the distinctive scene of a man tied to a tree-like object, while a wolf’s tongue goes into his mouth, corresponds with that now preserved in chapter 5 of Vǫlsunga saga, in which Sigmundr Vǫlsungsson and his nine brothers suffer slow death at the jaws of a she-wolf who eats one of them each night. Sigmundr, left to the end, kills the wolf by ripping out her tongue. With his hands tied, but with honey on his face, he waits for the wolf to lick his mouth and then bites on her tongue, rips it out and kills her. Biddle’s proposed reading has been broadly, if often reluctantly, accepted.6 And yet, despite

2 Biddle’s Faces B and D, images of which are §§642–45 in Tweddle, Biddle, and KjølbyeBiddle, Corpus IV. 3 Figure 11.3 is used by kind permission from Kjølbye-Biddle and Biddle, Minsters of Winchester. 4 Tweddle, Biddle, and Kjølbye-Biddle, Corpus IV, 317.i. The shards form §§76–77, 79, 80, 81, and 84. 5 Tweddle, Biddle, and Kjølbye-Biddle, Corpus IV, 317.i and 321.i. Biddle also notes that this is far from the maximum length, because it could have run around several walls and thereby come closer to the Bayeux Tapestry’s 70.4 m. See the Biddles’ more recent discussion in “Danish Royal Burials,” 216–17. 6 A full bibliography up to 1995 is given in Tweddle, Biddle, and Kjølbye-Biddle, Corpus IV at 321.ii–322.i. For more recent discussions see Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 143; Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 122; Bailey, England’s Earliest Sculptors, 96; Thompson, Dying and Death, 165; Rowe, ‘“Quid Sigvardus cum Christo?,’” 168–69, n. 4; Townend, “Contextualising

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Figure 11.3: Suggested completion of the scenes implied by the narrative frieze, showing the degree of extension necessitated by the extant image.

the comparative clarity of the crucial elements (man tied to wood; wolf’s tongue coming to his face), a number of alternative possibilities for the incident depicted on the stone have been proposed. Perhaps it could be dogs licking blood from the floor, as in 1 Kings 21:19.7 Alternatively, it may show the king of the Garamantes and his faithful dog-soldiers; there is, after all, a similar disposition of man and dog in a thirteenth-century manuscript.8 It may even, somehow, show St. Dunstan, whose voice is said to have calmed dogs.9 The fact that so many solutions have been offered that do not work bespeaks the desperation of an attempt to reject the Sigmundr reading for its own sake.10 There is nothing in Kings, or in Dunstan’s

the Knútsdrápur,” 171; Kopár, Gods and Settlers, 47–51; Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Danish Royal Burials,” 216–17; Biddle, “Königshäuser”; Bardiès-Fronty and Dectot, Celtes et Scandinaves, 67 (§39). 7 The suggestion was made by Jolanta Zaluska and is published in Zarnecki, Holt, and Holland, English Romanesque Art, 25, n.7. 8 This suggestion is made rather tentatively in Alexander, “Sigmund or the King of the Garamantes?” The manuscript in question is London, British Library, Royal MS. 12 F. xiii, with the image fol. 30v. 9 Kopár, Gods and Settlers, 51. The scene from Dunstan’s vita is edited and translated in Lapidge and Winterbottom, Early Lives of Dunstan, 22–25 (§6.6). 10 Yorke notes how unlikely the scene would be, but tacitly accepts it in Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 143.

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story, that corresponds to the closeness between the faces, or to the man being tied down. More plausible is the indigenous North American folktale in which a young hero lies in wait for a wolf and defeats it by seizing its tongue.11 The king of the Garamantes, of whom the manuscript illustration shows a prostrate man with his face eaten by a dog, is an interesting suggestion in the English context. This scene, however, takes place in battle, the man is not tied down and wears armor, and the beast (more naturally) has its jaws opened around the man’s face rather than some distance away with extended tongue. The discussion (and rejection) of all of these proposals could be pursued at some length, were it not enough to say more simply that the continuing resistance to Biddle’s explanation is absurd. It is time to accept that this piece of stone shows what it appears to show, however surprising that may seem. The story of the Vǫlsungar is best known today through Wagner’s rendering of the complex and fatal love story of Siegfried and Brünhilde, loosely based on German sources such as the Nibelungenlied of ca. 1200 and the Old Icelandic Vǫlsunga saga of ca. 1275, which was itself based on the tenth- to twelfth-century heroic lays of the Poetic Edda. In the Icelandic sources this duo is named Sigurðr and Brynhildr, while Sigmundr, the father of Sigurðr, remains in the background. His episode with the she-wolf, preserved in Vǫlsunga saga probably on the basis of a poem now lost, precedes Sigurðr’s birth by a long way and has no equivalent in the Nibelungenlied. Aside from copies later made of it, the saga survives in one manuscript datable to ca. 1400, although it was probably composed earlier, between 1200 and 1270.12 To go over the story, Sigmundr becomes an outlaw in Gautland, kingdom of Siggeirr, when Siggeirr marries Signý, who is Sigmundr’s beloved twin sister. Treacherously Siggeirr ambushes and kills their father Vǫlsungr, capturing all his ten sons. In a desperate attempt to save her brothers, Signý begs Siggeirr to give them a slower death by being kept in stocks in the forest. Each night a huge she-wolf, later revealed to be Siggeirr’s enchantress mother, eats one of the brothers. Signý saves Sigmundr by sending a trusted man to smear honey over his face and into his mouth. The wolf’s interest in the honey enables Sigmundr to destroy her, allowing her own strength to pull her tongue out before she flees to her death. The saga continues with Signý’s two sons and the failure of each of them to survive the first stage of training with their uncle Sigmundr, who now lives as an outlaw in the woods. Signý breaks the pattern by conceiving a third son by her own brother,

11 As recorded by Curtis, Salishan Tribes of the Coast, 159–61. 12 The manuscript is Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliothek, Ny kgl. Saml. MS. 1824 b 4o, briefly described in Vǫlsunga saga, ed. and trans. Grimstad, 68–69, with a fuller account (in Danish) in Völsunga saga, ed. Olsen. The Old Norse text is edited with a facing-page English translation by Finch, Saga of the Volsungs; a more recent translation is Byock, Saga of the Volsungs.

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unbeknownst to him. The boy, named Sinfjǫtli, grows up in the care of Sigmundr. Neither knows his kinship with the other, but he and Sinfjǫtli have a wild time as outlaws together, including a period as werewolves, before finally taking revenge on Siggeirr by murdering his and Signý’s children and setting fire to their hall. Signý, having accomplished vengeance for her father, stays behind to burn with her husband, while Sigmundr and Sinfjǫtli leave Gautland for further adventures. As the saga tells it, this dark episode in Gautland is a prelude to Sigmundr’s marriage to Borghildr, with whom he begets Helgi, and then to Hjǫrdis, mother of his third son, Sigurðr, who is the hero the saga has been waiting for. Sigurðr goes on to slay the dragon Fáfnir and take his treasure, falling thereafter in love with Brynhildr, marrying Guðrún, and initiating some more famous, and equally appalling, storms of vengeance and cruelty. A number of ninth- to tenth-century representations of incidents from the Vǫlsung cycle survive from northern England.13 These almost all show the defeat of the dragon Fáfnir and sometimes the following story in which Sigurðr acquires the language of birds from tasting the dragon’s blood. Had the Winchester stone shown Fáfnir rather than the wolf, there would have been no challenging its identification, for the dragon fight, also known in Saints’ Lives, was appropriate to Christian communities.14 Today, moreover, it is accepted that the Vǫlsungar as well as the dragon-slaying hero were regarded by Christians as historical figures, great heroes of the past who happened to have been pagan, rather than icons of pre-Christian religion.15 In the later Icelandic texts, Sigurðr is sometimes represented as a noble heathen: he is, like Beowulf, constructed as a halfway-house between fiercely pagan figures and true Christian heroes.16 Such applicability in Christian contexts is best shown by the Nunburnholme cross-shaft. This seems to have originally shown the Eucharist and later had a Sigurðr scene carved on top, mostly obliterating the explicitly religious moment and demonstrating that “the tradition of a real or fictitious past could be meaningfully

13 The so-called Sigurðr-stones are frequently discussed. Probably the most authoritative (and cynical) account of which carvings should be accepted as depicting the legend, and which should not be, is in Margeson, “Vǫlsung Legend”; a more recent consideration of the key elements is in Stern, “Sigurðr Fáfnisbani,” 899–900. The most recent full discussion is Kopár, Gods and Settlers, 23–56. See also Lang, “Sigurd and Weland”; Düwel, “Sigurd Representations”; Byock, “Sigurðr Fáfnisbani”; and Wilson, Vikings in the Isle of Man. 14 See, for instance, Bailey, England’s Earliest Sculptors, 93. 15 As Biddle notes, “it is the heroic and not the pagan which matters here” (“Danish Royal Burials,” 216). 16 As discussed in detail by Rowe, “‘Quid Sigvardus cum Christo?’,” esp. 172–85, with her findings summarized at 186–88.

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yoked to Christian ideas.”17 There is no doubt that figures and narratives from preChristian mythology decorated Viking-Age churches in northern England, as they did in Scandinavian Christian contexts.18 All of these stone carvings are found in the Isle of Man and Northumbria, areas of Celtic or English Britain with strong Norse connections. Many are in the Scandinavian Ringerike style, and none show the rounded forms of the Winchester piece. Aside from the Winchester carving, all predate the Benedictine Reform of the later tenth century, which saw the English church move towards more regularity and orthodoxy. The northern stones are more closely related to Scandinavian carvings, which Birgit Sawyer suggests could have “answered religious and social needs in a period of transition” from one mythological system to another.19 They are, therefore, relatively easily explained as cultural interactions, part of the Viking Age realignment of Nordic tradition with Christian mythography. The Winchester fragment – showing a different incident, in a different place, and carved in a different style – seems to come from another world entirely: both the story it suggests and the style in which the story is told require explanation.20 The scene with the she-wolf does not seem to have been used in other extant stonework.21 That such an unusual scene has been found in one of England’s oldest cathedrals has subjected the material evidence to almost as much pressure as the narrative identification, making it necessary to restate briefly some of the main findings. The site and context of discovery show that the carving must have been produced before 1093, when the Old Minster was demolished and the construction of the current cathedral began. There is no good reason why it could have been produced after 1066, in some sort of abortive restoration of Old Minster, to be discarded less than thirty years later. Nor can this find have been produced before ca. 980, given its location in the eastern extremity of Old Minster, which was not

17 See Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture, 125, followed by Thompson, Dying and Death, 167; see also Sawyer, Viking Age Rune-Stones, esp. 125–26. The Gosforth Cross and Gosforth Fishing Stone provide further examples of Eddic mythology being used in Christian contexts; the latter may even have been from a line of narrative sculpture like the Winchester carving (Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture, 128–32). 18 See, for instance, Stern, “Sigurðr Fáfnisbani,” 898. 19 Sawyer, Viking Age Rune-Stones, 124; see also 147 and 152. 20 Bailey emphasizes its Scandinavian attributes and finds the location in Winchester more surprising than its form, England’s Earliest Sculptors, 96. See Yorke’s discussion of the probable importing of Scandinavian style under Cnut, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 143. 21 There are, however, some difficult-to-explain four-legged animals on hogbacks; a tenthcentury example from Heysham in Lancashire has been interpreted as alluding to Sigmundr and the wolf. Kopár dismisses this interpretation, without providing an alternative, in Gods and Settlers, 44–45, 48, 52. See Thompson, Dying and Death, 165.

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begun until after that year.22 Weathering shows that it was on display for some time before being discarded, dating its creation closer to 1000 than to 1066. Despite older arguments against this (that the style of the carving means it cannot have been produced so early), the relative certainty of the archaeological evidence for its age has in turn moved the theoretical bounds of Romanesque, pushing the inception of proto-Romanesque style, with its “solid round forms,” back to an earlier time.23 It appears in this way that the carving was made under either King Æthelred (978–1013 and 1014–1016) or King Cnut (1016–1035). There are two records of work on Winchester minsters under Æthelred: improvements to Old Minster under Æthelwold, described in Cantor Wulfstan’s Vita Sancti Æthelwoldi (ca. 996–1005),24 and improvements to the New Minster’s tower.25 Neither record refers to this work, while there are few indications that Æthelred favored Old Minster.26 Although there are fewer sources for the bulk of Cnut’s reign, it is clear that both he and Emma patronized Old Minster to at least some degree; their gifts to New Minster are all well known.27 Cnut is known to have pursued a policy of

22 The fullest review of the finding and the conclusions to be drawn from it are in Tweddle, Biddle, and Kjølbye-Biddle, Corpus IV, 319.i–ii. A wider discussion of the minsters at Winchester is in Biddle, “Winchester: Development,” 254–61; detailed comment on the carving and its relationship to Old Minster is in Biddle “Excavations at Winchester 1965,” 39–41, with specific notes on the general aspect of the Minster in “Excavations at Winchester 1965,” 51. 23 Zarnecki, Holt, and Holland, Romanesque Art, 151 (§97; see also §22); Biddle observes that this finding should influence our understanding of Romanesque art rather than defying the archaeological evidence, in Backhouse, Turner, and Webster, Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 135 (§140); Kopár also points out the implications of the dating of the fragment as potentially changing our understanding of the development of Romanesque in England, and on that basis seeks to reject the archaeological evidence (Gods and Settlers, 50); Bailey accepts the archaeological dating and compromises by identifying the carving as an “anticipation, in its solid round forms, of Romanesque art” (England’s Earliest Sculptors, 96); see also his comments on the Rothbury Cross, “Anglo-Saxon Art,” 28. Biddle now sees “nothing Romanesque about it at all” (pers. corr. September 11, 2017). 24 Most recently edited by Lapidge and Winterbottom as Wulfstan of Winchester, Life of Æthelwold. 25 Discussed by Quirk, “Winchester New Minster.” See also Biddle, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, 315; Biddle “Excavations at Winchester 1965,” 41; Cramp, “Tradition and Innovation,” 145; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 122. 26 For example, S 889 and S 836 record gifts of land as a restoration and in return for a gold bracelet respectively, hardly indications of a close relationship. References to Anglo-Saxon charters are by Sawyer number as listed in Electronic Sawyer. 27 Gifts to Old Minster are recorded in S 970, S 972, S 976, in the Annals of Old Minster, and by Henry of Huntingdon. Compare, however, Yorke’s comments in “Cnut and Winchester,” in this volume, pp. 232–34, on the lack of certain evidence of Cnut’s personal engagement with Old Minster, and indeed with Winchester more broadly, beyond the creation of a site of burial. See also Lyon, Constitutional and Legal History, 92; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 143; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 95; Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” 168–72; Roffey and Lavelle,

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ostentatious gift-giving to promote his regime.28 His gift-giving also seems to have followed a pattern of imitating gifts given by earlier English kings; he consistently sought to show that he was part of the same tradition, effectively part of the same family.29 However unlikely it may seem that this frieze could have been displayed in Old Minster, it demonstrably was; its content is more likely to have been appreciated under a new king from Denmark, with his followers invested in the stories of their past, than under King Æthelred.30 As Yorke points out in this volume, such a dating does not tie it to Cnut personally, since both Emma and Godwine, who were active patrons of Winchester, had Scandinavian retinues.31 And yet the sheer ostentation of the carving as it would have been seen at its original size, together with the possibility that it was placed near the tombs of kings, makes a royal involvement rather more likely.32 While the moment and mindset of its origin cannot be established with the same degree of certainty as the story it represents, the strong balance of probability is that the stone was carved during Cnut’s reign and with his knowledge.

Sigmundr Fáfnisbani in the Eleventh Century It is widely accepted that at some point Sigmundr occupied a more central position in the Vǫlsung narrative than he does in the extant saga version.33 Vǫlsunga saga

“West Saxons and Danes,” 25. The couple’s most famous gift to New Minster was a great golden cross, shown on the first side of the community’s Liber Vitae, now London, British Library, Stowe MS. 944. 28 The deliberately English identity of Cnut’s court is widely commented on. See for instance Loyn, Governance, 81; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 144–45; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 69, 202; for his reliance on the English, see Lund, “Cnut’s Danish Kingdom,” 30; Lawson comments on the necessity of such Englishness, in Cnut: Danes in England, 122. 29 The strongest instance is the construction of a relationship with Edmund, described by William of Malmesbury in chap. 184 of his Gesta Regum Anglorum, I, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, and discussed in this volume by Yorke, pp. 224–25. See also Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 129, 135; Kennedy, “Cnut’s Law Code,” 70; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 95; Thomson, “Configuring Stasis,” esp. 188. Biddle, in Backhouse, Turner, and Webster, Golden Age, 133 (§140), followed by Bardiès-Fronty, Celtes et Scandinaves, 67 (§39), has suggested that the carving may have commemorated the marriage of Cnut and Emma, marking the union of his family with that of Æthelred, Emma’s first husband. 30 On the influx of Scandinavians and the cultural and linguistic impact, see Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 144–45; Townend, Language and History, 193; Roffey and Lavelle, “West Saxons and Danes,” 18–23. 31 See Yorke in this volume, pp. 227–32. 32 See Yorke in this volume, pp. 225–26. 33 See, for example, Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture, 116; Byock, Saga of the Volsungs, 21.

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shows that by the thirteenth century Sigurðr had become the dominant hero at the expense of his (still heroic) father, Sigmundr, whose role was probably reduced. It is worth noting that Sigurðr’s status as the primary figure in the later sequence may also be a later feature: it is plausible that the relationship between Sigmundr’s son and Brynhildr was opportunistically deployed to connect an ancient Vǫlsung narrative with the Brynhildr cycle, which ultimately resulted in Sigurðr taking the central role in both, diminishing the prowess of his father and of his wife.34 It is not clear when Sigmundr’s status started to fade. In Sigurðardrápa (Eulogy on Sigurðr), which was probably composed in tenth-century Norway, perhaps in ca. 960, for Earl Sigurðr Hákonarson of Hlaðir, the skald Kormákr Ǫgmundarson refers to the sword Gramr. The saga has Sigmundr using Gramr, a gift from Óðinn, before passing it on to Sigurðr. That Gramr is invoked in a text composed for a Sigurðr implies that tenth-century Norway had Sigurðr Sigmundsson at least wielding such a sword, and this makes it possible that he could have become the primary hero by that early date. A contrary implication comes from the flyting between Guðmundr and Sinfjǫtli in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I (first lay of Helgi the Slayer of Hundingr), in which Guðmundr, a coast watchman, taunts Sinfjǫtli, Helgi’s older halfbrother and one of the invaders, with having been “brúðr Grana á Brávelli” (a mare for Grani on Brávǫllr plain).35 In the extant saga narrative, the stallion Grani is given to Sigurðr, who is not born until after the death of Sinfjǫtli. Unless the poet lets Guðmundr refer to Grani as a generic stallion for a níð (slander) of this kind, it is plausible that he worked with an earlier version of the legend in which Grani was owned by Sigmundr or Sinfjǫtli rather than by Sigurðr. Whenever the shift from father to son occurred, echoes of the earlier disposition are clearly visible. A stanza from Eiríksmál tells of the arrival of Eiríkr Blóðøx in Valhǫll: Sigmundr ok Sinfjǫtli, rísið snarliga ok gangið í gǫgn grami. Inn þú bjóð, ef Eirekr séi; hans es mér nú ván vituð.

34 Andersson, in Legend of Brynhild, 80, argues that Brynhildr seems more likely to have been the original central figure and that “we may more easily imagine that Sigurðr’s adventures were expanded because of a flattering association with such a powerful heroine.” See also Byock, Volsungs, 21–22; and North, “Metre and Meaning,” 44. 35 Cited as Helgakviða Hundingsbana hin fyrri, stanza 42, in Edda, ed. Neckel, 136. The Poetic Edda was perhaps compiled in the twelfth century, but it is impossible to know how early its elements were composed.

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[Sigmundr and Sinfjǫtli, rise quickly and go to meet the prince. Invite (him) in, if it is Eiríkr; it is he I am expecting now.]36

Whether or not this lay was commissioned in honor of Eiríkr Bloodaxe after his death in Stainmoor in 954, it may be dated to the tenth century. As a mighty warrior in this poem, Eiríkr is greeted by the greatest warriors Óðinn can send him: Sigmundr and his first son Sinfjǫtli, with Sigurðr not even mentioned.37 Similar and more specific evidence is provided by Beowulf, lines 874b–902a.38 Here, Sigemund (the Old English cognate of Sigmundr) is found worthy of comparison with Beowulf because he killed a dragon and was “wreccena wide mærost / ofer werþeode” (“the exile most widely famed throughout all peoples,” lines 898–99a). Again, no version of Sigurðr is mentioned, although – as in Eiríksmál – Fitela (the English counterpart of Sinfjǫtli), a well-known companion of Sigemund, does appear. Bertha Phillpotts, referring to a nineteenth-century discovery of tales from Telemark in which Sigmund fulfils the role of Sigurd, considers Sigmundr to have been the older dragon-slayer, as do the editors of Klaeber’s “Beowulf.”39 Because in this poem it is Sigemund who kills a dragon, analogue to Fáfnir, I have taken the liberty of referring to his Norse namesake, Sigmundr, as “Fáfnisbani” in the title to this chapter. The poet’s allusion to Sigemund seems to put the dragon-slaying before the time in which he and Fitela share many adventures in the outlaw style of Sigmundr and Sinfjǫtli, who live as wolves in the forest. The werewolf episode is implicit in Sinfjǫtli’s name, which means “cinder-fetlock” – that is, “wrist of grey hair,” an allusion to wolfish looks;40 the name “Fitela,” which appears to be of the same origin, may point to (a suppression of) lycanthropy in the Beowulfian tale. Beowulf’s evidence makes it likely that this was just one element in the adventures of “Wælses eafera” (“Wæls’ offspring,” line 897) – that is, the English version of a dragonslaying Sigmundr and later Vǫlsungar, in the legendary world. Regardless of the date of Beowulf’s composition, the date of BL Cotton MS. Vitellius A.XV, the only

36 “Eiríksmál,” ed. Fulk, 1010 (stanza 5). 37 Noted and discussed in this context by Byock, Saga of the Volsungs, 22. See also Phillpotts, The Elder Edda, 90–91; Klaeber’s “Beowulf,” ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, 168. 38 References to Beowulf are to Klaeber’s “Beowulf,” ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, by line number. 39 Phillpotts, The Elder Edda, 49–50, 161; Klaeber’s “Beowulf,” ed. Fulk, Bjork and Niles, 167–68. 40 North, “Metre and Meaning,” 46–47. OE fitel-fōt (cognate with Old Saxon fitelfôt) glosses “petilus” (perhaps “white-footed”), for a horse’s fetlock, in MS. Plantin-Moretus and BL, MS. Add. 32246: see DOE: https://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/. The meaning here, as in the case of Sigemund’s (son and) sister’s son appears to indicate a wrist color at variance with the surrounding color.

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extant manuscript to contain the poem, falls most probably in the early eleventh century, in the same period as the carving of Winchester’s narrative frieze.41 It is worth noting that if the eleventh-century Sigmundr was a dragonslayer and the eleventh-century Sigurðr merely one of his sons who married a continental heroine, the proliferation of Viking Age carvings of the Vǫlsung story discussed above may have been misnamed. What the nineteenth century would call Siegfried-stones and the thirteenth Sigurðr-stones, the eleventh century may well have assumed to be Sigmundr-stones.42

Sigmundr as an Ancestral Figure By the twelfth century, the reason for Cnut wanting to have Sigmundr’s story decorating Old Minster would have been perfectly clear: he was a direct ancestor. The heroes of the Vǫlsung cycle and indeed many other figures with shadowy historical bases, such as Ragnarr loðbrók, had long been brought into the historiographical narrative to provide powerful ancestor figures for royal families. The Icelandic genealogical text Langfeðgatal has Cnut’s historical great-grandfather, Gormr inn gamli (“the Old”), also known as Hǫrðaknútr (Harthacnut), as the son of Sigurðr ormr-í-auga (“Snake-in-the-eye”).43 As shown in Table 11.1, this is a potent connection: the latter Sigurðr was the son of Ragnarr loðbrók and Áslaug, herself the daughter of Sigurðr Sigmundsson and Brynhildr. In this way, Sigurðr ormr-í-auga provides Cnut’s line with descent from both Ragnarr and the Vǫlsungar. It is clear that Cnut and his family were engaged with the process of establishing genealogical connections. Both Cnut’s father, Sveinn tjúguskegg (“Forkbeard”), and his grandfather, Haraldr blátǫnn (“Bluetooth”), marked their connection with Gormr / Harðaknútr, whom they regarded as the founder of their dynasty and after whom Cnut was probably named, on the great runestones erected at Jelling.44

41 There is an extensive literature on both poem and manuscript; for a full overview, and a discussion of the dating, see Thomson, Communal Creativity, 1–4, 30–32, 70–77; see also North’s discussion in this volume, pp. 279–281. 42 Thompson, Dying and Death, 163–64, notes this difficulty and decides to refer to all representations as Sigurðr “for the sake of simplicity.” 43 Later genealogies (such as that in Ragnarssona þáttr) separate these two figures, making Gormr the son of Harthacnut, while there is a probably more reliable twelfth-century version in Skjǫldunga saga. Langfeðgatal is in Scriptores rerum Danicarum ed. Langebek, Suhm, Engelstoft, and Werlauff, 1; it is more readily available and translated in Bruce, Scyld and Scef, 115–17. 44 See, for instance, Sawyer, Viking Age Rune-Stones, 147.

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Table 11.1: The twelfth-century connection between Cnut and Sigmundr.

Cnut named his children Sveinn, Haraldr, and Harthacnut in turn,45 and it appears that there was an effort to establish his connection, through “Skjǫldr,” with the Scyld whose place as the ancestor of West Saxon kings was long established in genealogy.46 The connection with the sons of Ragnarr Loðbrók was certainly made in Cnut’s lifetime.47 Sigvatr Þórðarson celebrates Cnut’s conquest of England by equating it with the execution in 867 of Ælle of Northumbria by Ragnarr’s sons, carried out in vengeance for Ælle’s cruel execution of their father in a snake-pit: Ok Ellu bak, at, lét, hinns sat, Ívarr ara, Jórvik skorit. [And Ívarr, who resided at York, had Ælla’s back cut with an eagle.] Ok senn sonu sló, hvern ok þó, Aðalráðs eða út flæmði Knútr.

45 Noted by Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 109. See also Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” 177. 46 Frank, “King Cnut,” esp. 111–13; see also Thomson, “Configuring Stasis,” 186–88, and North in this volume, pp. 281, 290–93. On the performative and semi-official nature of skaldic verse, see also Carroll, “Concepts of Power,” 221. 47 Frank sees it as a fully established “official party line” by 1030, in “King Cnut,” 112.

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[And Knútr soon defeated or drove out the sons of Æthelred, and indeed, each one.]48

Similarly, Hallvarðr háreksblesi, in his Knútsdrápa, describes the England Cnut conquered as “ættleifð Ellu” (Ælle’s patrimony).49 That is, with both skalds Cnut’s invasion is represented as equal to the historic defeat of Ælle by those Scandinavians who became known as Ragnarr’s sons.50 The story of Ragnarr’s death at Ælle’s hands justified his sons’ invasion as a matter of family vengeance and, to some degree, the deposition of a tyrannical king. The verses cited above offer evidence of the use of this narrative in early eleventh-century England; it was probably an innovation of Cnut’s reign.51 This could have been intended to give Cnut’s subjects a parallel for his own activities: the portrayal of Æthelred as incompetent and unjust is well-known;52 so too is the St. Brice’s Day massacre of 1002, in which Cnut’s aunt, Gunnhild the sister of Sveinn, may have been murdered.53 Clear in the skaldic eulogies is Cnut’s self-representation as an invader with just cause who brings peace and order to an unstable England.54 Although Cnut, in this way, probably considered himself to be Ragnarr’s descendant, it is less certain that he took Sigmundr for his ancestor.55 The key question lying beneath these tangled skeins is whether, in the eleventh century, Áslaug was believed to have been both Ragnarr’s wife and Sigurðr ormr-í-auga’s mother. Áslaug’s story seems to have developed and spread in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Her absence from Fagrskinna, a history of the kings of Norway dating from around 1225, suggests that she may have been unknown there, although it is possible that a story for her there was suppressed.56 It is not absolutely clear, but she seems likely to have been known to Saxo Grammaticus in Denmark

48 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 651–52 (stanzas 1–2). 49 “Hallvarðr háreksblesi: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 233 (stanza 3). 50 Whaley, in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1, 652, notes the “framing” of Cnut’s conquest with Ívarr’s defeat of Ælle in this verse. See North later in this volume, pp. 296–97. 51 McTurk, Studies in Ragnars saga, 228–34; Rowe, Vikings in the West, 179–80. I follow both, particularly Rowe, closely here. The relevant parts of most texts noted are included and translated in Rowe, Vikings in the West. 52 Keynes, “Declining Reputation of Æthelred”; see, however, Dennis, “Image Making,” 46–48. 53 Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 54. 54 Thomson, “Configuring Stasis.” 55 Contrast with Rowe, in ‘“Quid Sigvardus cum Christo?’,” who finds that “Genealogies mentioning Sigurðr [Sigmundsson] . . . always had the option of including Ragnarr as well” (182) and dates an interest in such ancestry to the late tenth century (188). 56 Rowe, in Vikings in the West, 197, argues that she is suppressed in this history. See also Larrington, in whose view the connection between the Vǫlsungar and Ragnarr’s family was made “as early as a mid-thirteenth-century Norwegian context,” in “Völsunga saga, Ragnars saga and Romance,” 15.

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at around the same time.57 At any rate, the tradition of Skjǫldunga saga shows that Áslaug was known in connection with Sigmundr in Iceland in around 1200, perhaps as a consequence of an older association between them in the English Danelaw, whence Páll Jónsson, the saga’s likely compiler, is believed to have gathered much of his information.58 By 1230 she had become a key figure in Ragnars saga with a fairly complex narrative of her own.59 The basis of this was probably a story about some of Ragnarr’s children having a magical mother: in the Gesta Normannorum ducum (Deeds of the Norman Dukes), initiated by William of Jumièges in ca. 1060, Bjǫrn Ragnarsson protects himself in battle using magic learned from his mother.60 His nickname, “costae ferreae” (“ironsides”; ON járnsíða) is reminiscent of Edmund Ironside, son of Æthelred II, who earned his own soubriquet in a sequence of battles against Cnut in 1015–1016; William’s account may have followed a written Anglo-Scandinavian source.61 What matters here, however, is that there is nothing to make this anonymous woman into Áslaug, valkyrie daughter of Brynhildr, until rather later.62 Her absence from Langfeðgatal implies that she was not known to Pall Jónsson’s great-grandfather, Sæmundr Sigfússon, when he produced that text based on English sources in the twelfth century. It is plausible that the development of Áslaug, like that of Ælle’s story, took place during Cnut’s reign, but this cannot be demonstrated conclusively.63 It is not generally safe to

57 McTurk in Studies in Ragnars saga loðbrókar, 146–47, notes her absence from Saxo’s account in the Gesta Danorum. Rowe shows that her story is echoed so frequently that Saxo must have known of and sought to suppress her, perhaps because of her pagan connotations, Vikings in the West, 103–5. Compare her suggestion, in Vikings in the West, 189–90, that Ragnarr is suppressed and Sigurðr promoted in Fóstbrœðra saga’s version of the genealogy, because Ragnarr was known as a monstrous pirate and Sigurðr the dragon-slayer had semi-Christian associations. 58 Páll Jónsson studied in England, probably in the school of Lincoln Cathedral, in 1175–1180: see Bjarni Guðnason, “Icelandic Sources of Saxo Grammaticus,” 89, and Danakonunga Sǫgur, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, xvi–xvii. 59 She is a disguised noble girl kept by peasant parents and known as Kráka, who goes on to impress Ragnarr’s men with her beauty and him with her intelligence. A mother to his bestknown sons, she manages to stave off the threat of being replaced by a new wife. As stepmother to his first two sons, she leads the vengeance for their deaths. As valkyrie, she provides protection for her sons, advises Ragnarr against his fatal voyage, and makes him a magic shirt to protect him from snake venom. Larrington, in “Þóra and Áslaug,” 66, agrees with Bjarni Guðnason that she is the central figure in the narrative. 60 Rowe, Vikings in the West, 66–67; see also McTurk, Studies in Ragnars saga, 40. 61 Van Houts, “Scandinavian Influences,” 114, 117–18. 62 Rowe dates her full role to the twelfth century, Vikings in the West, 67; van Houts assumes Áslaug to have been a part of the eleventh-century narrative, in “Scandinavian Influences,” 116. 63 For the similarities between the elaboration of the Ælle and Áslaug narratives, see McTurk, Studies in Ragnars saga, 234–35; see also 175–82.

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argue ex silentio, but the fact that Áslaug is mentioned neither in Sæmundr’s genealogy, nor in the skaldic verse produced as part of Cnut’s dynastic program, makes it, in my view, unlikely that her significance was recognized at Cnut’s court. This means that, although the connection was theoretically available in stories that circulated at the time and although Cnut’s court was actively developing his genealogical connections, it is not likely that he saw Sigmundr as a direct ancestor.64

Heroic Narrative at Cnut’s Court The lack of an ancestral connection does not, however, make the construction of the narrative frieze any less interesting. Indeed, it makes the choice to use this story in this place more surprising and intriguing. Rather than reflecting Cnut’s construction of his authority and royal heritage, the Sigmundr stone draws our attention to the cultural climate at his court in a more general way. Several different cultural productions actively celebrate Cnut’s behavior as analogous to the achievements of the heroes of the past, just as Beowulf’s monster-slaying is compared with Sigemund’s in the eponymous epic. Along with those discussed above are Hallvarðr háreksblesi’s verses that invoke numerous figures from preChristian myth, including a remarkable image of Cnut as Freyr, the old god who “hefr þrungit und sik Nóregi” (has forced Norway under him).65 As Roberta Frank has shown, the same poet finds ways to use a “startling blend” of traditional skaldic forms as part of celebrating Cnut’s Christianity, such as describing God as “valdr munka” (master ruler of monks).66 Taken together, the skaldic texts, the Winchester carving, the genealogical activity, and the revisions to the story of Ívarr Ragnarsson and his brothers all show an interest in reviving and renewing heroic and semi-historical narrative at Cnut’s court.67 As far as may be established, this does not appear to have been the cultural climate in England before Cnut’s arrival. Leonard Neidorf has argued, primarily on the basis of onomastic data, that there was a decline in interest in pre-Christian

64 Contrast with Biddle, in “Danish Royal Burials,” 216, who makes the most recent restatement of the thesis that the stone was intended to invoke dynastic ties. 65 “Hallvarðr háreksblesi: Knútsdrápur,” ed. Townend, 237 (stanza 6, in prose word order). 66 “Hallvarðr háreksblesi: Knútsdrápur,” ed. Townend, 238 (stanza 7). On the use of Christian imagery see Frank, “King Cnut,” whom I follow closely here. Quotation is from 121; see also 116–17 and 124. 67 Bardiès-Fronty, in Celtes et Scandinaves, 67 (§39), notes that, if Biddle’s interpretation holds, it implies the existence of a “grand cycle poétique” on Sigmundr’s story circulating in England in this period.

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narrative from the ninth century onwards.68 It is, then, conceivable that Cnut’s reign saw a renaissance of sorts in northern culture. Bailey, indeed, sees the sculpture alone as offering evidence of a possible “temporary ascendance of ‘Scandinavian’ tastes in southern England at the time of Cnut.”69 This even provides a conceivable context for the interest in reproducing Beowulf, a poem which Neidorf and others have sought to demonstrate as old and strange by the time of its only extant copy.70 It would have been entirely logical for Cnut to have demonstrated an interest in legendary heroes as part of both his Danish and English lordship for propaganda purposes; the placing of the carving would have been close to the tombs intended for himself and his family.71 What are usually (probably anachronistically) called Sigurðr carvings are frequently associated with burials, and this frieze may have been deliberately located close to, or even around, the royal tombs at Old Minster; certainly it provides a heroic model fit for emulation by both former marauders and civilized noblemen.72 We are indeed fortunate that the fragment which survived in Winchester is from this specific moment in Sigmundr’s story. Had it simply shown an interaction between humans, it could have been entirely opaque; had it shown a dragon fight, this would surely have been recorded as Sigurðr’s fight with Fáfnir. If the evidence of this single stone is treated with the circumspection it calls for, we must acknowledge that the narrative frieze around Winchester Old Minster probably depicted not only a she-wolf having her tongue torn out, but also a dragon fight, two werewolves, a hero gaining wisdom from birds, and scenes of incest, kin-slaying, and infanticide. Even if this frieze, in its original form, featured only some of the less disturbing elements, it is unlikely that

68 Neidorf, “Germanic Legend,” 53–56. See also Chetwood, “Re-Evaluating English Personal Naming,” 544–46, who shows that the same evidence of a decrease in name variation, in an increasingly rigid system, is in line with contemporary shifts across Europe in naming patterns: a result of changing social conditions. 69 Bailey, England’s Earliest Sculptors, 96. On the presence of Scandinavian taste under Cnut and in Wessex more broadly, see also Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 143; Townend, Language and History, 193; Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” esp. 171–72 and 175; Roffey and Lavelle, “West Saxons and Danes,” 18–23. 70 Most comprehensively in Transmission of “Beowulf”. 71 Rowe thinks that “interest in Sigurðr as an ancestor may date from as early as the second half of the tenth century” (‘“Quid Sigvardus cum Christo?’,” 188). On the significance of Old Minster and Cnut’s use of burials see Yorke in this volume, p. 223; Marafioti, The King’s Body, 98, 112. 72 Biddle, “Danish Royal Burials,” 216–17; Kopár, Gods and Settlers, 49; Stern, “Sigurðr Fáfnisbani,” 904; Rowe, ‘“Quid Sigvardus cum Christo?’,” 169; Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture, 123; and 92–93 and 96 for the heroic ideals of Sigmundr and sons.

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these were absent from the minds of those who viewed it. The lack of any dynastic associations between the story and Cnut and his family makes the carving of the legend, and the stories around that, in such a site more, not less, extraordinary. It reminds us that pre-Christian narrative does not necessarily indicate un-Christian thought, and it suggests that a Romanesque narrative frieze probably prompted sophisticated readings, with multiple meanings simultaneously present but held in shape by a single narrative, as in the case of Viking Age cross shafts, or indeed Beowulf itself.73 The Sigmundr stone offers us a rich, honey-sweet flavour of the complicatedly convergent, multimedial, and multicultural storytelling at the heart of Cnut’s empire.

73 See also Bailey, “Anglo-Saxon Art.”

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Chapter 12 An Icelander in Cnut’s Court: The Case of Sigvatr Þórðarson One skald amongst those who composed poetry about Cnut, namely Sigvatr Þórðarson, furnishes a notable exception to the heathen style which, in Richard North’s view in the next chapter, characterizes most of the skalds in this volume.1 For some of Sigvatr’s output this characterization is admittedly justified, so long as we reword to “the macho swagger of Christendom.” His Nesjavísur (“Verses about [the Battle of] Nesjar ‘Headlands’”) is an example. In this chapter, nonetheless, it is my intention to point out Christian elements within the Sigvatr corpus that suggest the impress of a more morally inflected discourse. My focus will be on Sigvatr’s role as a king’s agent and intermediary between Cnut and Cnut’s great rival, Óláfr Haraldsson of Norway. I will try to show that Sigvatr acted as a medium in the vernacular communication to a Norwegian audience of Christian precepts with proximate origins in the circles of Æthelred and Cnut. That he performed these roles with some degree of independence is indicated by his intermittent censure of both Óláfr and Cnut, the latter in particular. The verses I will discuss are excerpted from Vestrfararvísur (Verses on a Journey to the West), Nesjavísur, the postulated Flokkr about Erlingr Skjálgsson, and his lausavísur (free-standing individual verses).

Career of Sigvatr Þórðarson Sigvatr Þórðarson lived and worked in the first half of the eleventh century, and thus in the Late Viking Period.2 With more than 160 stanzas and half-stanzas, his oeuvre is the most fully attested of all the skalds.3 It is remarkably diverse, encompassing different kinds of encomia not only on King Óláfr Haraldsson,4 but also on King Cnut (Knútr) Sveinsson5 and the Norwegian nobleman Erlingr Skjálgsson.6 1 See North in this volume, “Behold the Front Page,” p. 280. 2 Jesch, “Some Viking Weapons,” 242. 3 Poole, “Sighvatr Þórðarson,” 580. 4 Víkingavísur “Verses about Viking Voyages,” Nesjavísur “Verses about [the Battle of] Nesjar ‘Headlands,’” and Erfidrápa Óláfs helga “Memorial Eulogy for Óláfr inn helgi ‘St. Óláfr’.” 5 Knútsdrápa “Eulogy on Knútr.” 6 Poem about Erlingr Skjálgsson, Flokkr [informal stanza sequence] about Erlingr Skjálgsson. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-013

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Where Cnut is concerned, the caveat has to be entered that Sigvatr’s principal attested poem about this king, Knútsdrápa (Eulogy on Knútr), is difficult to date and may have been composed after the king’s death.7 Other partially extant works include Sigvatr’s poem of counsel to his godson King Magnús inn góði (“the Good”) Óláfsson8 and poems on the Norwegian pretender Tryggvi Óláfsson9 and on Óláfr Haraldsson’s widow, Ástríðr Óláfsdóttir.10 Sigvatr is also credited with having composed for the Swedish king Ǫnundr Jakob Óláfsson and the Norwegian chieftain Ívarr inn hvíti (“the White”), but in these cases there is no surviving text to corroborate the testimony of Skáldatal (Enumeration of Poets). Several of Sigvatr’s poems encompass both travelogue and political commentary (Vestrfararvísur and Austrfararvísur [Verses on a Journey to the East]); the latter genre is also well represented in Bersǫglisvísur and his lausavísur.11 Although no saga centering on Sigvatr can be shown to have existed, his career is hinted at by numerous episodes in the various redactions of Óláfs saga helga.12 According to these in general unreliable sources, Sigvatr was brought up by his foster-father, a certain Þorkell, at Apavatn in south-west Iceland, and first sailed to Niðarós (now Trondheim) in Norway as a late adolescent or young adult. Here he is said to have met his father Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld, a poet (as implied by his nickname, “Sigvaldi’s poet”) whose primary attested affiliations were with Þorkell inn hávi (“the Tall”).13 Sigvatr joined Óláfr’s retinue in advance of the latter’s campaign for dominance in Norway and commemorated it in Nesjavísur, which he composed as a participant. Norway was his base from then onwards and there is no evidence that he ever returned to Iceland.14 Consistent with his affiliation with Óláfr, both his own poetry and the prose narratives emphasize his solidarity with the missionary king’s Christianity. Tradition has it that he was instrumental in the naming of King Óláfr’s son as Magnús, reminiscent of Karolus Magnus (i.e., Charlemagne). Tradition also has it that in return, as testified to in his lausavísa 19, the king sponsored Sigvatr’s daughter Tófa at baptism.15 A pilgrimage to Rome (1029–1030) precluded, as he states in

7 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 650–51; see also Jesch, “Skaldic verse in Scandinavian England,” 318, and North in this volume, p. 291. 8 Bersǫglisvísur “Plain-Speaking Verses.” 9 Tryggvaflokkr “Flokkr about Tryggvi.” 10 Poem about Queen Ástríðr. 11 Jesch, “Sigvatr Þórðarson, Biography,” 532 and references there given. 12 Poole, “Sighvatr Þórðarson,” 580. 13 On Thorkell, see also Bolton in this volume, pp. 476–81. 14 Jesch, “Sigvatr Þórðarson, Biography,” 532. 15 Poole, “Sighvatr Þórðarson,” 580.

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his verses, his participation in the king’s final and fatal battle.16 According to the anecdote in which his lausavísa 11 is preserved, Sigvatr died on Selja, an island in north-western Norway traditionally associated with the earliest incursions of Christianity into Norway, and was buried at Kristskirkja (Kristkirken) in Niðarós, the same church to which Óláfr’s earthly remains were translated.17 Sigvatr is said to have held the high rank of stallari under Óláfr.18 Unfortunately, the functions of this office in early eleventh-century Norway remain obscure,19 but the evidence internal to Sigvatr’s own poetry suggests that at least in his case it incorporated a role as king’s agent and emissary. For the part he played in this capacity as an intermediary between Óláfr and Cnut, the poem Vestrfararvísur is our crucial source. This fragmentary and sparsely attested work narrates a diplomatic embassy made by the poet and a colleague on behalf of Óláfr to Cnut, probably in the mid-1020s, in the context of Cnut’s attempt to subvert followers of Óláfr and thus support Cnut’s nephew, the Norwegian earl Hákon Eiríksson.20 The authenticity of the title Vestrfararvísur, presupposing a journey to see Cnut in England rather than in Denmark, is assumed by all scholars. England is also the destination stated in Óláfs saga helga and Heimskringla, in a passage to be discussed presently. The specific location within England is not specified in the few stanzas extant, although the available evidence for Cnut’s English residences suggests London, Canterbury, or Winchester as the obvious possible locales for the visit.21 The embassy could also, however, have occurred elsewhere in England at one of Cnut’s manors, for instance Nassington in Northamptonshire, perhaps especially if discreet diplomacy was required. Strangely, it seems the one place specified in Vestrfararvísur is not in England but in Normandy, namely Rouen: Bergr, hǫfum minnzk, hvé, margan morgun, Rúðu borgar bǫrð létk í fǫr fyrða fest við arm inn vestra.22

16 Poole, “Sighvatr Þórðarson,” 580. 17 Jesch, “Sigvatr Þórðarson, Biography,” 532. 18 Poole, “Sighvatr Þórðarson,” 580. 19 Poulsen, Vogt, and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Nordic Elites, 224. 20 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 615–16. 21 Winchester seems less likely than London or Canterbury at this time: see Yorke in this volume, p. 217. 22 Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jónsson, B.I, 226; Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 271 (chap. 146); Jón Skaptason, “Material for an Edition,” 104, 247.

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[Bergr, we have remembered many a morning how I caused the stem to be moored to the western rampart of Rouen’s fortifications in the company of men.]23

The reference here to Rouen is unmistakable, but before we can investigate its significance within a poem about an embassy to England, we have to take account of a difficulty in the interpretation of the lines quoted above. I have cited them as construed by Finnur Jónsson (an edition followed by a majority of other scholars). To this traditional interpretation Judith Jesch, in her recent edition for Skaldic Poetry, objects that it “leaves the conj[unction] hvé ‘how’ separated from the clause it introduces.”24 This syntactic feature is marked editorially in the text cited above by the commas on either side of the words “margan morgun.” Jesch removes the commas and interprets as follows: “Bergr, we have remembered how, many a morning, I caused the stem to be moored to the western rampart of Rouen’s fortifications in the company of men.”25 Jesch’s interpretation therefore presupposes that Sigvatr and Bergr have paid numerous visits to Rouen, evidently mooring their ship each time. There is otherwise no evidence, however, for multiple visits. It seems preferable to construe “hǫfum minnzk margan morgun” as a single verb phrase (verb plus adverbial phrase) despite the intercalation of the relative conjunction hvé, which in prose usage would be expected to stand at the head of the dependent clause “bǫrð létk fest.” Contrary to Jesch, there is nothing objectionable about this use of hvé. Although the separation of a conjunction from the clause it introduces might seem radical, it is not without parallel in Sigvatr’s work26 and more generally in the skaldic corpus.27 A second complication is that Óláfs saga helga and Heimskringla, within which the stanzas of the poem are preserved in an intercalated form, state that Sigvatr and Bergr had been in Rouen on a “kaupferð” (trading voyage) the previous summer.28 As Heimskringla has it, and Óláfs saga helga has essentially the same account, “Sigvatr skáld kom þat sumar til Englands vestan ór Rúðu af Vallandi ok sá maðr með honum, er Bergr hét. Þeir hǫfðu þangat farit kaupferð it fyrra sumar” (Sigvatr skald came west that summer from Rouen in France to England and that man with him, who was called Bergr. They had made a trading voyage there the preceding summer).29 This statement about the trading

23 My translation, modifying Jesch, in “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 617. Subsequent translations will be my own, unless stated. 24 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 617. 25 Text and translation are from “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 617. 26 See also “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Lausavísur,” ed. Fulk, 722 (v. 18, line 1), to be cited below. 27 For a partial parallel see “Einarr skálaglamm Helgason: Vellekla,” ed. Marold, 292–93 (v. 8 line 1). 28 Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 271 (chap. 146). 29 Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 271 (chap. 146).

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voyage is not corroborated by any other source. While it might be historically based, it might also be a purely ad hoc explanation of the verse on the part of the redactor, arising from the reputation of Rouen as a trading centre.30 This reputation, already considerable by the beginning of the eleventh century,31 had greatly increased by the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when Heimskringla and its antecedent synoptic histories were being compiled. My conclusion is that, despite the interpretations discussed above, Sigvatr and Bergr made just the one visit to Rouen, performed as part of the itinerary of their embassy to Cnut, and it proved memorable for them for some reason. The readiest inference from their landfall at Rouen being so memorable is that their visit was marked by some significant step or development in the diplomatic mission recorded in Vestrfararvísur. What could that have been? We can start by considering the possible date of the mission. Vestrfararvísur is difficult to date, although the direct address to King Óláfr, who died in 1030, in verses 6 and 8 presupposes that the poem was delivered to him in his lifetime. Finnur Jónsson suggests 1025–1026,32 Jesch ca. 1027.33 Following the chronology implicit in Óláfs saga helga and Heimskringla, Jesch proposes that the visit itself occurred in about 1024.34 The verse singles out new defensive works on the river for mention, as if to signal the city’s strategic importance and status as a power base.35 Certainly from well before this time the city had become an accepted venue for diplomacy. In 990–991 a papal envoy on a mission to reconcile Æthelred II and Richard I, the third duke of Normandy, was escorted to Rouen by English officials on the last stage of his itinerary.36 In 1003, according to William of Jumièges, Sveinn tjúguskegg (“Forkbeard”) visited Richard I’s successor Richard II in Rouen to form a pact of mutual assistance.37 Part of the city’s importance came from its status as a seat of an archbishop. Report has it that the Norman founder Rollo was baptized there in 912.38 Richard I instigated an enlargement of the cathedral at the end of the tenth century, and his son Robert, brother of Richard II, reigned as Archbishop of Rouen from 989 to 1037; indeed, it is argued that the city’s transformation into a center of political,

30 For comparable examples, see Fulk, “Sigvatr Þórðarson, Austrfararvísur.” 31 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 540. 32 Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jónsson, B.I, 226. 33 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 616. 34 Jesch, Ships and Men, 86. 35 Jesch, in Ships and Men and “Vikings on the European Continent,” discusses these works. 36 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 376. 37 Jesch, Ships and Men, 85. 38 Haskins, Normans in European History, 45.

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cultural, and religious significance around the turn of the first millennium was achieved during and as a direct result of Robert’s lengthy episcopate.39 In another noteworthy baptism, William of Jumièges states that Óláfr Haraldsson, along with a number of his following, underwent this culminating entrée into Christianity in Rouen, overseen by Archbishop Robert himself, just before the Norwegian leader’s return to claim the throne of Norway,40 although an alternative account places his baptism in England.41 Robert advised three generations of dukes – Richard I, Richard II, and the brothers Richard III and Robert the Magnificent.42 His authority was also recognized by Queen Emma, his sister and the wife of Cnut, as signalled by the gift she made him of an illuminated psalter of English origin.43 These considerations, put together, raise the possibility that the visit of Sigvatr and Bergr to Rouen was undertaken in order to secure diplomatic support at the highest level for their embassy to Cnut in England, relying on the influence exerted by Emma and her family. Embattled in Norway by Cnut’s agents and recalcitrant members of the elite, Óláfr Haraldsson would have needed all the backing of that kind that could be mustered.

The Lexical Impress on Sigvatr’s Poetic Corpus from Contacts outside Scandinavia Another indication of Sigvatr’s role as an intermediary or bridge person lies in the marked incidence of foreign words in the Sigvatr corpus. Most of these lexical features have been canvassed in previous scholarship and can just be briefly noted here. A number of them, perhaps the majority by a small margin, are Anglo-Saxonisms.44 Nesjavísur verse 2 contains the earliest attestation of the institutional word “hirð” (war-band), derived from Old English hīred (household, band of retainers)45 and most probably brought to Norway by Óláfr.46 Sigvatr 39 Allen, “‘Praesul praecipue, atque venerande.’” 40 Johnsen, Olav Haraldssons ungdom, 20; see also Jesch, Ships and Men, 86. 41 Downham, Viking Kings, 133, n. 159. 42 Van Houts, The Normans in Europe, 57. 43 Van Houts, “Normandy’s View of the Anglo-Saxon Past,” 129. 44 For discussion of these and other possible instances, see Frank, “Viking Atrocity and Skaldic Verse,” 339; Hofmann, Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen, 93; Poole, “Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History,” 268; Poole, “Crossing the Language Divide,” 593, 596–97, 600–601. 45 De Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 228–29. 46 Hofmann, Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen, 57, 83.

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uses it again in his lausavísa 15. Similar in Nesjavísur verse 2 may be the case of “þjóðkonungs” (of the nation’s king); although this word occurs in purportedly earlier skaldic poetry, Sigvatr’s usage, seen also in Erfidrápa Óláfs helga (Memorial Eulogy for Óláfr inn helgi, “St. Óláfr”) verse 20, is likely to have been reinforced by Old English “þēodcyning.”47 Knútsdrápa contains several pointers to English influence. The circumlocution “Dana hlífskjǫldr” (protective shield of the Danes)48 is of a type that occurs frequently in Old English but not in Old NorseIcelandic.49 The sense of “meta” (measure [one’s way]), as a variation on ordinary words equating to “go,”50 is characteristic of Old English poetry but does not otherwise occur in Old Norse-Icelandic.51 Old Norse-Icelandic “slá” in the sense “kill, slay”52 may reflect semantic influence from cognate Old English slēan.53 In lausavísa 16 the religious term “helvíti” (hell torment, or simply hell) is clearly influenced by Old English helle wīte, of the same meaning.54 In Erfidrápa Óláfs helga the verb “efsa” (cut, trim), attested for Old Norse-Icelandic only here, is evidently adapted from Old English efesian (clip, shear, cut).55 Finally, in the probably early Víkingarvísur Sigvatr’s apparent use of the rare adjective “baldr” (second element of the compound *ógnbaldr, “battle-bold”) in the still rarer affirmative sense “bold” signals influence from Old English, where an affirmative sense for beald (bold) is standard.56 The origins of two words in Víkingarvísur verse 8, namely “prúðum” and “portgreifar,” are less straightforward to determine.57 The adjective “prúðr” (proud) could come from Old English but might instead have been adopted directly from Old French;58 Sigvatr uses it again in Austrfararvísur59 and elsewhere. The compound “portgreifi” (town reeve) must represent an adaptation from the 47 Hofmann, Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen, 83. See also North in this volume, p. 287. 48 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 660 (v. 9). 49 Hofmann, Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen, 92. See also North in this volume, p. 291. 50 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 663 (v. 11). 51 Hofmann, Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen, 93. 52 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 652–53 (v. 2). 53 Hofmann, Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen, 88. 54 Halldór Halldórsson, “Determining the Lending Language”; see below for citation of this word in its verse context. 55 Kock, Notationes Norrœnæ, §658 (discussion of v. 4). 56 The element baldr here rests upon an emendation; see Poole, “Skaldic Verse and AngloSaxon History,” 268. Jesch, in “Sigvatr Þórðarson, Víkingarvísur,” 548, opts for ógnvaldr, without considering -baldr, but this choice does not adequately account for the paradosis, where the attested readings are -dvalþ̄(r), djarfr, djarfs, valdr, and valds. 57 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Víkingarvísur,” ed. Jesch, 546 (v. 8). 58 De Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 428, sv. prúðr. 59 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Austrfararvísur,” ed. Fulk, 600 (v. 12).

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frequently attested Old English compound of the same meaning, port-gerēfa, but the lack of precise correspondence between the vowels ē and ei precludes direct transfer from Old English to Old West Norse, prompting suggestions of phonological influence from Middle Saxon.60 A more straightforward explanation, however, is to posit an Old East Norse intermediary *portgrēfa. Etymological ē and ei had already fallen together in Danish,61 opening the way for an Old West Norse speaker who had the word from East Norse speakers to make an incorrect soundsubstitution. The apparent simplex, greifi, occurs in Bersǫglisvísur (Verses of Plain-Speaking) verse 14, this being its earliest attestation,62 but Sigvatr’s use of it to refer to the counts of King Magnús suggests that a medieval form of German Graf (count), perhaps Middle Low German grāve, has been conflated with the Anglo-Saxon term gerēfa (reeve).63 In the case of some other lexis, we can reckon with European origins. The compound word “járnstúkur” in Vestrfararvísur verse 2, denoting either chainmail or protective metal plates,64 contains the element stúka, which probably stems from Middle High German.65 Knútsdrápa verse 10 contains a virtuoso example in the shape of three adopted words collocated within a single couplet, where Cnut is praised as “kærr keisara / klúss Pétrúsi” (dear to the emperor, close to Peter). Of these, “kærr” (dear) is from a northern dialect of French; “keisari” (emperor), referring to Conrad II, is from Latin via Old English or German; and “klúss” (close) is probably also from Latin via Old English or German, while the fourth word, “Pétrús(i),” referring to Pope John XIX (1024–1032), is a biblical name in Latinate form.66 In this connection we recall the tradition that Sigvatr chose the Latinate name Magnús for the son of Óláfr. For all four words, this is their first recorded occurrence in skaldic verse.67 Bersǫglisvísur verse 18 additionally features the honorific “sinjórr” (seigneur, lord), an adaptation of Old French seignor of the same meaning that also occurs, in the form “synjórr,” in Erfidrápa Óláfs helga verse 8. Gade suggests that Sigvatr was personally responsible for introducing the term into

60 See also Jesch, in “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Víkingarvísur,” ed. Jesch, 546; Hofmann, Nordischenglische Lehnbeziehungen, 82; De Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 186, sv. greifi. 61 Brøndum-Nielsen, Gammeldansk Grammatik, I, 315–16. 62 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Bersǫglisvísur,” ed. Gade, 26. 63 See also de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, sv. greifi, and “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Bersǫglisvísur,” ed. Gade, 26. 64 Jesch “Some Viking Weapons,” 355 and references there given. 65 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 619. 66 Frank, “King Cnut in the Verse,” 118 and references there given. 67 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 661 (v. 10).

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Old Norse,68 which is conceivable, although in principle we might also contemplate the possible cultivation of a Europeanizing court lexis in King Óláfr’s circle. I conclude this survey of lexis with a problematic instance, the form “melld” found in Vestrfararvísur verse 2. Jesch explains it as “locked,” following earlier editors, who have regarded the verb mella as having its etymology in Old French mail(l)er (to form a net). She construes the first half-stanza thus: Útan varðk, áðr Jóta andspilli fekk’k stillis, – melld sák hús fyr hauldi – húsdyrr fyrir spyrjask. [I had to make enquiries from outside the main door before I got an audience with the ruler of the Jótar [DANISH KING = Cnut]; I saw a locked building in front of the man [me].]69

The gloss of “locked” proposed by Jesch on the basis of previous scholarship is hard to extrapolate from the idea of “net,” as she acknowledges. It also entails an emendation of the manuscript reading, from “her(r),” abbreviated in transcriptions of the lost Kringla manuscript (our best witness) and some other witnesses but still clearly representing “her(r),” to “hús” (building). On the other hand, an origin of “melld” in Old French is likely to be correct, given that no etymon in Old Norse-Icelandic supplies any contextually possible meaning. I therefore propose an alternative solution, where “melld” is traced back to Old French mailer (to hammer, knock [with a mallet]).70 Útan varðk, áðr Jóta andspilli fekk’k stillis, – melld sák hér fyr hauldi – húsdyrr fyrir spyrjask. [I had to make inquiries from outside the main door before I got an audience with the ruler of the Jótar; I saw [it] hammered [= knocked] here in front of the man [me].]

The adverb “hér” here is not an emendation, simply a different interpretation of the manuscript evidence.71 The past participle “meld” can be construed as used impersonally, with suppression of both object and agent. A loud and 68 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Bersǫglisvísur,” ed. Gade, 30. 69 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 618–19. 70 Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500), sv. mailler 1: http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/defini tion/mailler1. See also Anglo-Norman Dictionary, sv. mailler: http://www.anglo-norman.net/ gate/; and Middle English Dictionary s. mal(le (n.): https://quod.lib.umich.edu/. 71 For this word carrying alliteration and metrical rise, see Sigvatr, Lausavísa 6/2, also in the context of a meeting at a hall, in “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Lausavísur,” ed. Fulk, 707.

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insistent door-knock, announcing the arrival of Sigvatr the stallari and king’s emissary, along with his colleague Bergr, would be a natural occurrence. All the adaptations from French and German identified above, along with some of those from English, can be described as cultural adoptions from the courtly world, with its special officers, accoutrements and customs. Semiotically, they carry the same prestige as Sigvatr’s “hjalm inn valska” (Frankish helmet) and “peitneskum hjalmi” (helmet from Poitou), which are mentioned in Nesjavísur verses 5 and 15 respectively. This prestige inheres in both the poet himself and the broader following of Óláfr and is conferred in part by their openness to the new world of Christian Europe, to which Cnut had recently secured his own entrée.

Sigvatr’s Use of Sententiae I now move from lexis to larger-scale indicators of Sigvatr’s role as intermediary and bridge-person in channeling key Christian precepts for a Norwegian audience reliant on the vernacular. Once again, some of my examples have been canvassed in previous publications and can be handled in summary form here. Sigvatr’s use of sententiae72 is of key significance. The surviving fragments of Vestrfararvísur are remarkable for their richness of sententiae, which far outdoes the norm in skaldic poetry in general and, for that matter, the rest of the Sigvatr corpus, with a few exceptions. I start with two key instances: Knútr hefr okkr enn ítri alldáðgǫfugr báðum hendr, es hilmi fundum, Húnn, skrautliga búnar. Þér gaf hann mǫrk eða meira margvitr ok hjǫr bitran golls (ræðr gǫrva ǫllu goð sjalfr), en mér halfa. (Vestrfararvísur 5) [The glorious Cnut, all-noble in deeds, has adorned the arms of both of us finely, Bersi, when we met the king. Wise in many matters, he gave you a mark of gold or more and a sharp sword, and to me half [a mark]: God himself entirely determines all things.]73

72 The structure and incidence of the various sententiae (proverbs, gnomes, admonitions) are analysed more fully in my essay “The Sentential Turn in Sigvatr.” 73 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 622. Emphasis mine.

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The parenthetic sentence emphasized above is a sententia broadly similar in content and manner to various maxims in Beowulf that declare God’s omnipotence: Wundor is to secganne hu mihtig god manna cynne þurh sidne sefan snyttru bryttað, eard ond eorlscipe; he ah ealra geweald. [It is marvellous to state how mighty God distributes wisdom, land, and nobility to mankind through his magnanimity; he has power over all.]74

The gist is similar in the lines, “Metod eallum weold / gumena cynnes, swa he nu git deð” (The Lord ruled all of mankind, as he still does now).75 A complementary sententia occurs in the same position in a further stanza from Vestrfararvísur: Knútr spurði mik, mætra mildr, ef hánum vildak hendilangr sem, hringa, hugreifum Áleifi. Einn kvaðk senn, en sǫnnu svara þóttumk ek, dróttinn (gǫr eru gumna hverjum gnóg dœmi) mér sœma. (Vestrfararvísur 7)76 [Cnut, generous with fine rings, asked me if I would be serviceable to him as to the gracious Óláfr. I said one lord at a time was fitting for me, and I felt that I made a truthful answer. To each of men sufficient examples are ready [to hand].]

Jesch suggests that Vestrfararvísur could be seen as Sigvatr’s self-justification for having served Cnut, and indeed Hákon, while still remaining essentially loyal to Óláfr Haraldsson, and certainly there is a self-serving tone about the poem.77 The reflections in these two stanzas may, however, not be simply personal but apply more broadly to Cnut’s initiative in offering chieftains and other influential Norwegians gold in return for their support against Óláfr.78 The thinking behind Sigvatr’s advocacy derives first and foremost from Matthew 6:24:79 “Nemo potest

74 Beowulf, ed. Mitchell and Robinson, 105 (lines 1724–27). Translations are my own except where stated otherwise. 75 Beowulf, ed. Mitchell and Robinson, 83 (lines 1057–58). 76 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 625. Emphasis mine. 77 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 619. 78 Fidjestøl, “Kongetruskap og gullets makt,” 4. 79 Poole, “Cyningas sigefæste mid gode,” 277.

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duobus dominis servire. Aut enim unum odio habebit et alterum diliget aut unum sustinebit et alterum contemnet. Non potestis Deo servire et mamonae” (No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon).80 The idea that follows in the verse concerning a sufficiency of examples (i.e., of people who faithfully follow one lord) can be compared with Ælfric’s general homily “Memory of the Saints” (Lives of the Saints, XVI), which explains the importance of Saints’ Lives in precisely those terms: “We magon niman gode bysne ærest be ðam halgum heahfæderum hu hi on heora life gode gecwemdon and eac æt þam halgum þe þam hælende folgodon” (We may take good examples, first from the holy patriarchs, how they pleased God in their lives, and also from the saints who followed the Savior).81 This notion of the provision of abundant good examples pervades Ælfric’s collection of Saints’ Lives.82 In his preface he likens God to a king of this world surrounded by his retainers and stewards, who serve him obediently.83 Sigvatr’s two sententiae in the two stanzas quoted above fit well with Paul Cavill’s observation that Old English maxims “tend to encapsulate what might be called the ‘trade rules’ of the retainer”;84 Cavill also observes that this principle is extended to other vocations in Ælfric’s Colloquy,85 as if their general usefulness towards social cohesion was compelling renewed attention at the turn of the eleventh century. That Sigvatr was deploying sententiae like these quite deliberately and programmatically can be seen in a stanza from his Flokkr about Erlingr Skjálgsson, a Norwegian chieftain who was killed by King Óláfr’s forces around the year 1027: Áslákr hefr aukit (es vǫrðr drepinn Hǫrða) (fáir skyldu svá) (foldar) frændsekju (styr vekja). Ættvígi má eigi (á líti þeir) níta – frændr skyli bræði bindask bornir – (mál in fornu). (Flokkr about Erlingr Skjálgsson 7) [Áslákr has increased crime against kindred; the guardian of the land of the Hǫrðar [= Hordaland > = Erlingr] has been killed; few should cause conflict in such a way. Kin-

80 The Holy Bible: The Douay-Rheims Version. 81 Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 336–37. 82 Ælfric’s Prefaces, ed. Wilcox, 46. 83 Ælfric’s Prefaces, ed. Wilcox, 121. 84 Cavill, Maxims, 14. 85 Cavill, Maxims, 14–16.

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killing cannot be denied; those born as kinsmen should refrain from violence; let them look to the old sayings.]86

The immediate target of this volley of admonitions is Áslákr Fitjaskalli, who stands accused of the crime of kin-slaying, inasmuch as Áskell, his father, and Skjálgr, Erlingr’s father, were cousins. Sigvatr’s censure is couched in the form of “old sayings” about the evil of such deeds amongst kindred; he does not leave the cogency of such sayings implicit but instead issues an express injunction to his audience to heed them. This is the most explicit meta-sententia in his extant oeuvre, reinforcing the pair of more routine sententiae elsewhere in the stanza. With those we can compare a very similar expression in Beowulf: Swa sceal mæg don, nealles inwitnet oðrum bregdon dyrnum cræfte, deað renian hondgesteallan. Hygelace wæs, niða heardum, nefa swyðe hold, ond gehwæðer oðrum hroþra gemyndig.87 [Thus shall a kinsman act, in no way fashion a net of malice with furtive cunning, engineer death for his comrade. To Hygelac, stern in attacks, his nephew was most loyal, and each of them mindful of the other’s welfare.]

The Theme of Loyalty in Sigvatr As we have already seen, Sigvatr’s material in these verses has comparabilia in Old English sources, not merely in terms of its sententiousness, but also in its emphasis upon loyalty – or in other words not merely rhetorically but also thematically. The thematic commonalities can be further illustrated with a verse that focuses on the alleged perjury or treachery of Óláfr’s rivals: Né hœfilig, hreifa, hykk dróttinsvik þóttu, elds, þeims allvel heldu orð sín, viðir, forðum.88 [Men (trees of the fire of the hand), I think that betrayal of the lord did not seem becoming to those who had in the past kept their word very well.]

86 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Flokkr about Erlingr Skjálgsson,” ed. Jesch, 639. Emphases mine. 87 Beowulf, ed. Mitchell and Robinson, 122 (lines 2166–71). 88 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Nesjavísur,” ed. Poole, 575 (v. 13).

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In a further series of three verses that seems to have been composed for some specific occasion, Sigvatr literally demonizes those who use their wealth so as to buy away and subvert support for Óláfr:89 Fjandr ganga þar þengils, þjóð býðr opt, með sjóða, hǫfgan malm fyr hilmis haus ófalan, lausa; sitt veit hverr, ef harra hollan selr við golli (vert es slíks) í svǫrtu, sinn, helvíti innan.90 [The enemies of the king go there with loose purses; people often offer heavy metal for the head of the leader, which is not for sale; each knows his [reward] inside in black hellpunishment, if he sells his faithful lord in exchange for gold. It is deserving of such.] Kaup varð daprt, þars djúpan, dróttinrœkð, of sóttu þeir es, heim, á himnum, hás elds, svikum beldu.91 [The reward in heaven was dismal, where they who ventured on betrayal of a lord with acts of treachery sought the deep home of high flame.] Gerðisk hilmis Hǫrða húskarlar þá jarli, es við Áleifs fjǫrvi, ofvægir, fé þægi. Hirð esa hans at verða háligt fyr því máli; dælla es oss, ef allir erum vír of svik skírir.92 [Then the household retinue of the leader of the Hǫrðar (King Óláfr) would prove overweighted towards the earl (Hákon Eiríksson), when (= if) they accepted money in exchange for Óláfr’s life. It is not edifying for his court to come under this accusation. It is easier for us if we are all clean from deceit.]

89 Fidjestøl, “Kongetruskap og gullets makt,” 6. 90 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Lausavísur,” ed. Fulk, 715–16 (v. 13). 91 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Lausavísur,” ed. Fulk, 716–17 (v. 14). 92 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Lausavísur,” ed. Fulk, 718–19 (v. 15). Emphasis mine. For the identification of vír “we” as a Danish form, and its significance, see my forthcoming essay “The Danish Tongue on Skaldic Lips.”

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These three verses are tentatively dated within the range 1020–1027 by Finnur Jónsson.93 The compositional process in all three exhibits a conflation of biblical texts.94 From the New Testament we have the allusion to Judas’s betrayal of Christ for thirty silver pennies.95 Ælfric comments on it thus in his Homily for Palm Sunday (second series): “Forwel fela manna onscuniað Iudan belæwinge, and swaðeah nellað forwandian þæt hi ne syllon soðfæstnysse wið sceattum. Se Hælend sylf is eal soðfæstnys, and se ðe soðfæstnysse beceapað wið feo, he bið Iudan gefera on fyrenum witum, seðe Crist belæwde for lyðrum sceatte” (Very many men shun the treachery of Judas, and yet fear not to betray [literally, “sell”] truth for money. Jesus himself is all truth, and he who sells truth for money will be the companion of Judas in fiery torments, who betrayed Christ for vile pelf).96 Ælfric’s use of the commercial terms sellan and (be)ceapian, in “syllon” and “beceapað,” corresponds exactly to Sigvatr’s “selr” and “kaup” respectively. Alongside this reference is one to Matthew 5:12: “gaudete et exultate quoniam merces vestra copiosa est in caelis” (be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven).97 The corresponding verse in Luke (6:23) reads: “gaudete in illa die et exultate ecce enim merces vestra multa in caelo” (be glad in that day and rejoice; for behold, your reward is great in heaven).98 Sigvatr’s adjective “daprt” (dismal) is evidently an irony based on the notion of “gaudete” or its Old English translation “gefagniað.”99 Complementarily, from the Old Testament and its apocrypha we have an allusion to the story of Lucifer’s rebellion.100

Possible English Influences on Sigvatr The evidence presented above leads to the question whether Sigvatr might be channeling a contemporary English predilection for aphoristic statements and

93 Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jónsson, A.1, 270. 94 Bedingfield, “Reinventing the Gospel,” 14–15, 23–24; Remley, Old English Biblical Verse, 33, 49–50, 59–61. 95 Fidjestøl, “Kongetruskap og gullets makt,” 9. 96 Homilies, ed. Thorpe, II, 244–45. The translation is Thorpe’s. 97 Old English Version of the Gospels, ed. Liuzza, I, 9: “Geblissiað and gefægniað forþam þe eower med ys mycel on heofonum” (West Saxon Gospels). 98 Old English Version of the Gospels, ed. Liuzza, I, 111: “Geblissiað and gefagniað on þam dagum, nu eower med is mycel on heofonum” (West Saxon Gospels). 99 Fidjestøl, “Kongetruskap og gullets makt,” 7. 100 Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 293 (n. to v. 105).

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their ideological freight of values of duty and loyalty.101 Loyalty had long been a topic of homilies and scriptural poems in England. The rebellion of the angels, for instance, held an acknowledged place in the education and spiritual guidance of both clergy and laymen.102 Genesis B graphically depicts Satan’s disloyalty to God and its repercussions in words that correspond quite closely to those we have seen used by Sigvatr: Forþon he sceolde grund gesecan heardes hellewites, þæs þe he wann wið heofnes waldend. Acwæð hine þa fram his hyldo and hine on helle wearp, on þa deopan dala.103 [Therefore he had to seek the bottom of cruel hell-torment, because he contended against the ruler of Heaven. He [God] rejected him from his favor then and cast him into Hell, into those deep valleys.]

Ælfric’s sermon De initio creaturae describes Lucifer’s descent into “helle wite” after he rebels against God’s lordship; Ælfric goes on to complement it with a lengthy discussion of idolatry – as a betrayal of God – and a mention of the betrayal of Christ.104 Similarly, around the year 1000, Archbishop Wulfstan added topicality to Ælfric’s account of Old Testament history by fulminating that the people had brought estrangement from God, the invasion of a heathen army and ultimately the Babylonian captivity upon themselves through their sinfulness.105 Closest to Sigvatr’s time, Wulfstan, in his Sermo Lupi (1014; although possibly as early as 1009: see Keynes in this volume, p. 107), deplores what he identifies as pervasive failures of loyalty.106 In the peroration his call for a purification of conscience and for truth and loyalty is immediately followed by an evocation of the Last Judgment, much as we see in Sigvatr’s verses: utan word and weorc rihtlice fadian, and ure ingeþanc clænsian georne, ond að ond wed wærlice healdan, and sume getrywða habban us betweonan butan uncræftan; ond utan gelome understandan þone miclan dom þe we ealle to sculon, and beorgan us georne wið þone weallendan bryne helle wites.107

101 Poole, “Crossing the Language Divide,” 600–601. 102 Fox, “Ælfric on the Creation and Fall of Angels,” 199; see also Day, “The Influence of the Catechetical Narratio,” 59. 103 The Junius Manuscript, ed. Krapp, 12 (lines 302–5). 104 Fox, “Ælfric on the Creation and Fall of Angels,” 177. 105 Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, 149–50; Godden, “Biblical Literature,” 218. 106 Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, 30, 31–32, 42; see also Robinson, “God, Death, and Loyalty.” 107 Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, 42.

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[and let us order our words and deeds rightfully, and cleanse our inward thoughts earnestly, and faithfully keep to oath and pledge, and have some loyalty between us without deceit; and let us constantly bear in mind the great judgement that we must all come before, and save ourselves earnestly from the surging fire of hell-torment.]

Earlier in the homily, there is specific condemnation of “hlafordswice” (treachery/treason against one’s lord),108 again in terms, lexical and thematic, that we recognize from Sigvatr. As to sententiousness, I have already noted analogues to the Sigvatr examples in Beowulf, a poem replete with sententiae.109 Its original date of composition notoriously resists definitive determination, but what matters in the present discussion is that the text is thought to have been copied into the one extant manuscript in the first quarter of the eleventh century.110 Presumably this copying came about in response to somebody’s sense of the poem’s topicality and congruence with certain shades of contemporary taste and opinion.111 Similarly in the case of the Durham Proverbs, the first half of the eleventh century marks an apparent focal point in their collection or compilation, with a bringing together of some individual sententiae that appear to date from much earlier.112 For instance, Cavill compares statements to the effect that “when the leader is brave the army is brave” in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle s.a. 1003 (E) and Durham Proverb 31 with the much earlier analogues in a letter by Alcuin and the Alfredian translation of the Regula Pastoralis.113 Thomas D. Hill suggests that apparent eleventh-century reworkings like these might have been prompted by contemporary politics and a national sense of crisis amid faltering leadership.114 The Battle of Maldon, a poem most plausibly from the late tenth century or early eleventh,115 contains what Cavill has termed “quite a high proportion of maxims for narrative verse.”116 Many of these maxims famously center on a follower’s duty to his lord: for example, “Ne mæg na wandian se þe wrecan þenceð / frean

108 Sermo Lupi, ed. Whitelock, 31–32. 109 For a book-length study, see Deskis, Beowulf and the Medieval Proverb Tradition. 110 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 281. 111 See North, p. 278, and also Thomson, p. 252, in this volume. 112 Arngart, “The Durham Proverbs,” 289, 300; Arngart, “Durham Proverb 23”; Arngart, “Durham Proverbs 17, 30, and 42.” 113 Cavill, Maxims, 65. 114 Hill, “‘When the Leader Is Brave’,” 236. I am grateful to Professor Hill for sending me a copy of this article. 115 Cecily Clark, “On Dating The Battle of Maldon,” 22; see also George Clark, “The Battle of Maldon,” 54–56. 116 Cavill, Maxims, 117.

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on folce, ne for feore murnan” (The man who intends to avenge his lord in the army can never flinch or care about his life).117 Sententiousness is very much in Wulfstan’s style. Most of Wulfstan’s sermons resist association with specific liturgical occasions and are rather to be regarded as “public discourses on religious topics.”118 Notable not merely in his sermons but perhaps more remarkably in his law codes is the pervasively exhortatory tone.119 The following passage in I Cnut 20 is characteristic: utan beon á urum hlaforde holde ⁊ getrywe ⁊ æfre eallum mihtum his wurðscipe ræran ⁊ his willan gewyrcan. Forðam eal þæt we æfre for rihthlafordhelde doð, eall we hit doð us sylfum to mycelre þearfe; forþam byð witodlice God hold, þe byð his hlaforde rihtlice hold.120 [Let us be true to our lord and faithful and always with all our might exalt his worship and do his will. For all that we ever do out of rightful allegiance to the lord, we do all of it out of great need for ourselves; for assuredly God will be true to him who is rightfully true to his lord.]

The tone and expression of Sigvatr’s reflections on allegiance to one lord could easily bear the impress of the archbishop’s style as evinced in a passage like this. Equally, Sigvatr’s exhortatory use of the first-person plural and his focus on the topic of deceit in the admonition “dælla es oss, ef allir / erum vír of svik skírir” cited above fits well with Wulfstan: as an instance from a Wulfstan homily addressed to a mixed Anglo-Scandinavian audience, we can cite “uton we ealle don swa us þearf is, beorgan us georne wið Godes yrre” (let us all act as is needful for us, earnestly protect ourselves against God’s anger).121 With Sigvatr’s concept of cleanness or purity, we can compare Wulfstan’s “Ðonne is micel þearf . . . þæt gehwa his heortan geclænsige” (Then is great need . . . that each person cleanse his heart).122 In Cnut’s Letter to the English of 1019–1020, which M. K. Lawson has suggested represents “an oral message from the King, put into written form by an ecclesiastic for circulation to the shire courts, and then redrafted into its present state by Wulfstan,”123 passages such as the following exhibit a comparably exhortatory tone: “we sceolon eallan magene ⁊ eallon myhton þone ecan mildan God inlice secan, lufian ⁊ weorðian ⁊ ælc unriht ascunian”124 (we must with all our might and all our main inwardly seek

117 Cavill, Maxims, 124. 118 Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England, 19. 119 Davis-Secord, “Rhetoric and Politics,” 75–76; Wormald, The Making of English Law, 345. 120 Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, 300. 121 Bethurum, Homilies, 244. 122 Bethurum, Homilies, 248. 123 Lawson, “Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element,” 162. 124 Liebermann, Gesetze, 273.

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the eternal merciful God, love and worship [him], and eschew all wrong). As to Cnut’s Letter of 1027, which postdates Wulfstan’s death by four years and comes closest in time to the probable date-range of the embassy associated with the composition of Vestrfararvísur, Lawson notes that the exhortations it embodies are strongly reminiscent of Wulfstan,125 who left his sentential impress upon the discourse. From the above discussion it is clear that comparabilia exist between the Sigvatr corpus and some elements of roughly contemporary English discourse within the circle of Cnut. The most outstanding embodiment of this discourse was in the person of Archbishop Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester (1002–1016) and archbishop of York (1002–1023), a powerful political figure and national spokesman and commentator. Having managed to survive and even thrive as a member of the “witan” (counselors) during the turbulent transition between the reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut, Wulfstan became one of Cnut’s trusted advisors and legislators.126 Ryan Lavelle speaks in his chapter in this volume of “an ideological determination on the part of Archbishop Wulfstan and those about him who were heirs to the tenth-century religious reform movement to drive the political manifestation of the English identity forward in a polity that could be realized as a ‘kingdom of England’.”127 Such an imposing orator and homilist is likely to have been an ultimate influence upon Sigvatr, through a mode of discourse that is distinctively doctrine-based, admonitory, moralistic, and sententious. At the same time, Wulfstan may not have been the proximate influence. The discussion by Zoya Metlitskaya in this volume is a reminder that many voices existed and therefore notions of a unitary linkage can be no more than an approximation.128 The complex conflations and interweavings of scriptural and doctrinal texts seen in some of Sigvatr’s verses can be better likened to the structure of Ælfric’s sermons than those of Wulfstan. The question that remains is the precise point of contact and influence upon Sigvatr. One possible ambience to be taken into account, as posited by Matthew Townend, is a late Anglo-Norse courtly culture in England, at Winchester, or London, or conceivably Canterbury, that had room for skaldic recitation as well as English oration: “In such a society, in which two vernaculars were being spoken, and literary works in those two vernaculars being recited, one may reasonably postulate a variety of different audiences, correlating, in some degree,

125 126 127 128

Lawson, “Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element,” 163. Orchard, “Wulfstan as Reader,” 311; Davis-Secord, “Rhetoric and Politics,” 91. Lavelle in this volume, p. 169. Metlitskaya in this volume, p. 121.

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with different court-groupings.”129 The work of Townend and Frank has shown the significance of Cnut’s patronage of skaldic poets for a Norse-speaking audience.130 On the English side, it has been suggested that Wulfstan recited the law codes I and II Cnut at a Christmas court in Winchester.131 More than this, a close parallel between Sigvatr’s Knútsdrápa verse 2 and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 1017, pointed out by Dietrich Hofmann,132 suggests that identical stories were being told across the language divide, perhaps in a form of official record: Ok senn sonu sló, hvern ok þó, Aðalráðs eða út flæmði Knútr.133 [And Cnut soon defeated or drove out the sons of Æthelred – and each one [of them], though.] ⁊ Cnut cyning aflyde ut Eadwig æþeling ⁊ eft hine het ofslean. [And King Cnut expelled Eadwig the prince and then ordered that he be killed.]134

Lavelle, however, introduces the important qualifier that the surviving Norse poetry in praise of Cnut coincides with a later period of his reign and may not reflect the cultural direction of his English court at the start of his reign.135 This being the case, it is more plausible to posit a mediation of English discourse that reached Sigvatr principally in his adopted homeland of Norway and some years prior to his Cnut-related compositions. Christianity in eleventh-century Norway appears to have emanated chiefly from England, albeit with some contribution from Hamburg-Bremen.136 The Norwegian missionary kings benefited in a variety of ways from English support in these proselytizing endeavours.137 Óláfr Tryggvason had Æthelred’s sponsorship at confirmation and possibly also benefited 129 Townend, “Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur,” 174–75; see also Poole, “Crossing the Language Divide,” 605–6. 130 Townend, “Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur”; Frank, “King Cnut in the Verse,” 108. 131 Lawson, “Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element,” 161; Kennedy, “Cnut’s Law Code of 1018,” 74–75. 132 Hofmann, Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen, 88–90. 133 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 652–53 (v. 2). 134 ASC, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe (C), 103 (s.a. 1017). 135 Lavelle, Cnut: North Sea King, 83–85. 136 Abrams, “Anglo-Saxons and Christianization”; Halldór Halldórsson, “Synd”; Halldór Halldórsson, “Some Old Saxon Loanwords”; Halldór Halldórsson, “Determining the Lending Language”; Hellberg, “Tysk eller Engelsk mission?”. 137 Abrams, “Anglo-Saxons and Christianization,” 221.

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from the English king’s provision of English clergy.138 In the next phase, Óláfr Haraldsson, having assisted Æthelred’s return to England from exile, then himself returned to Norway accompanied by English missionary bishops, among them Grimkell and Rudolf (or Rodulf), the latter of whom ended his career as abbot at Abingdon.139 In 1030 Grimkell supported Óláfr’s second return to Norway after his brief exile. When this initiative ended in the king’s death at the battle of Stiklastaðir, Grimkell lost little time in certifying Óláfr’s sanctity. Contemporary English styles of preaching and teaching would have been not unsuited to the needs of a newly Christianized Norway. For some decades, English preachers had devoted considerable attention to educating the laity at all levels of Anglo-Saxon society. Hagiography, revived by the Benedictine reformers, had become “part of a remarkable movement to provide sermons for the common people,”140 and if Ælfric’s hagiographical writings represent “a kind of managed popularization of the cult of saints,”141 similar comments could be made about his exegesis of Scripture and the liturgy. Old English homilies were remarkable for their “mixed and all-encompassing audience” and “democratic stamp.”142 In these efforts of outreach, the vernacular enjoyed an accepted place, as witness the West Saxon Gospels and other early translations of Scripture into English. Ælfric possessed an outstanding ability to use his native language in order to explain “issues in ways which his audience will most readily understand.”143 Additionally, he enjoyed “strong connections to court through his primary patrons Æthelmær and Æthelweard” and placed “increasing emphasis in his later works on using Biblical texts to provide political guidance for the king and his counselors.”144 Wulfstan, for his part, incorporated homiletic material into his political and legislative statements, with evident effectiveness.145 The missionary corps in Norway might have extended this policy by using the skills of Danish or Norse native speakers from England.146 Grimkell, with his Norse name, was possibly an instance.147 On this hypothesis,

138 Andersson, “Viking Policy of Ethelred,” 1, 4. 139 Abrams, “Anglo-Saxons and Christianization,” 223; Graham, “A Runic Entry and Abbot Rodulf.” 140 Geoffrey Shepherd, “Scriptural Poetry,” 29; Magennis, “Warrior Saints,” 49. 141 Magennis, “Warrior Saints,” 50. 142 Ælfric’s Prefaces, ed. Wilcox, 21. 143 Ælfric’s Prefaces, ed. Wilcox, 20. 144 Klein, “Beauty and the Banquet,” 79–80. 145 Lawson, “Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element,” 16, and references there given. 146 Abrams, “Anglo-Saxons and Christianization,” 216. 147 Hellberg, “Glælognskviða,” 44; Abrams, “Anglo-Saxons and Christianization,” 223.

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Sigvatr’s adoptions and adaptations of English discourse, discussed above, would reflect the manner and ideological objectives of Grimkell and his following, who in turn mediated Ælfric and Wulfstan. Sigvatr’s Erfidrápa Óláfs helga may hint at kindred processes to those postulated here. As Anne Holtsmark points out, the Erfidrápa, which Jesch dates around 1035,148 late in the poet’s floruit, mentions a “messa” (feast day) as having been established for Óláfr. Holtsmark takes this as suggesting that the Erfidrápa existed in relation to a set of ecclesiastical texts, specifically an officium or “office” for the saint but probably also a vita and an account of his miracles.149 The officium would have supplied a communication of the saint’s merits in Latin, complemented by Sigvatr’s eulogy in the vernacular. This case provides a further indication that Sigvatr served as the vernacular spokesperson for key items of ideology espoused by the English-influenced ruling class and church in Norway. Although this Icelander was perhaps only a fleeting and even an uneasy visitor to Cnut’s court, ultimately his rhetoric can be seen as responsive to developments in the England of Cnut and his predecessor, King Æthelred II.

148 “Sigvatr Þórðarson: Erfidrápa Óláfs helga,” ed. Jesch, 664–65. 149 Holtsmark, “Sankt Olavs liv og mirakler,” 122 (reprinted: 16).

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Chapter 13 Behold the Front Page: Cnut and the Scyldings in Beowulf Did Cnut, while he first sat at Winchester, hear tell of Beowulf or even see it in a manuscript? This question is not as strange as it sounds. In his quest for West Saxon legitimacy, Cnut could have been directed to a version of this poem. Beowulf’s sole surviving manuscript, most of what we have in the Nowell Codex in London, BL Cotton MS. Vitellius A.XV, was present in England in his reign (1016–1035), whether or not it was copied during this time.1 Until David Dumville interpreted N. R. Ker’s dating of this codex, “s. x/xi,” to mean 997 to 1013 with 1016 as the non plus ultra, Cnut’s reign was included as a possible date for this manuscript, even as late as ca. 1025.2 Since Dumville’s study, however, most scholars date the Nowell codex to the reign of Æthelred II (978–1016).3 The bone of contention is the meaning of Ker’s compromise in relation to the date of Scribe B, the second and older of the two scribes, whose hand is Late Old English (or Late Anglo-Saxon) Square Minuscule.4 Whereas Scribe A seems young enough for Cnut’s reign, Scribe B’s style is old enough to predate this by a couple of generations. However, scribal characteristics have been found to vary between scriptoria and earlier characteristics of Square Minuscule sometimes reappear in later phases.5 The years 1013–1023 were a period of scribal transition in which there was greater variation between hands than before.6 The combination of apparently young and old scribes in the Nowell Beowulf is

1 For arguments that Beowulf was composed at this time, see Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, 18–23, 270–78; Damico, Beowulf and the Grendel-Kin. For the work of skalds, please note that all skaldic verse in this chapter will be set out in long-line format, by which it is more easily read. Translations are mine. My thanks to Alison Finlay, Erin Goeres, and Kevin Kiernan for their comments on earlier drafts. 2 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 281 (no. 216); Dumville, “Beowulf Come Lately,” 52–54, 63. 3 For a summary of the debate, see Orchard, Critical Companion to Beowulf, 19–20. For a modern appraisal of Ker’s system, see Leneghan, “Making Sense of Ker’s Dates,” 5–8, and 11: “There is no compelling reason why a poem such as Beowulf . . . could not have been copied during the reign of Æthelred.” 4 Dumville, “Beowulf Come Lately,” 55–56. 5 Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, 120–63. 6 Kiernan, “Square Minuscule in the Age of Cnut,” 34–41; Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, 94–95, 201–4. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-014

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accordingly less likely to be exceptional. Neither hand is found elsewhere in the extant manuscripts. More particularly, since Dumville and Stokes have both shown that Scribe B’s style is lacking in manuscripts at this later time from the major royal and other West Saxon scriptoria that produced Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies and the works of other reformers, it seems likely that both scribes were employed in a provincial backwater.7 This would be one of the blank spaces on the map of scriptoria with attributable manuscripts, one in which an older hand might continue. Looking into this heart of darkness, we might ask whether Beowulf was copied not in Wessex, or in the south, or even in London, but in a house with fewer resources in a region of central Mercia between Watling Street and York. Lichfield was suggested by Kenneth Sisam in 1916 and still looks viable now.8 This essay will propose that the Nowell codex, or most of it, was copied in Mercia for the new regime, and that another text of Beowulf was shown to Cnut, who used its ideology to win the east of Denmark in 1019–1027.

Aim of the Codex Lately it has been proposed by Leonard Neidorf that the Nowell text of Beowulf was copied near to the end of Æthelred’s reign, when he was losing the war, and in response to VII Æthelred, which is a legislative homily edited by Archbishop Wulfstan from an edict issued in Bath in 1009.9 This text urges the tormented English to pray, fast, and give alms for deliverance. Such principles of valor and loyalty as appear in the poem have been quoted as apposite to the propaganda that was part of this desperate effort: for example, Wealhtheow’s warning to Beowulf about her governance of Heorot, or the poet’s praise of Beowulf’s loyalty to Hygelac, or Wiglaf’s rebuke to the cowards.10 And yet this alleged motive for copying Beowulf is not without with its problems. One is the potential irony of using a poem which glorifies Danes, Geats, Swedes, and their kings as a means of arousing patriotic opposition to a prince of Denmark invading England with armies from Scandinavia. Another is the poem’s insistence that Grendel and his mother are destroyed not by the people whose territory they have invaded, but

7 Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, 268 (fig. 1). 8 Sisam, Studies, 61–64, esp. 62. See further Kiernan, “Reformed Nowell Codex and Beowulf Manuscript.” 9 Neidorf, “Genesis of the Beowulf Manuscript,” 120–22. On the code, see Keynes, “An Abbot, an Archbishop,” 179–89; Wormald, Making of English Law, 330–33, 343. 10 Neidorf, “Genesis of the Beowulf Manuscript,” 122–25.

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by the leader of a band of foreigners. A third is that the requirement to foster hope against the invader is not easily met by a poem which ends with a mass desertion, the king’s death and likely damnation, and the prospect of invasion and civil war. A fourth problem with Neidorf’s argument is that he has nothing to say about what the other texts in this codex might have done for the cause. In this way, we have at least four reasons to doubt the importance of King Æthelred’s war effort to the scriptorium that copied Beowulf after texts on eastern monsters and marvels and the correspondence of Alexander the Great. The reason for this misalignment is all too obvious, that the manuscript was copied when the war was over. Let us try for a reading which aligns Beowulf with the post-war start of Cnut’s reign. Scribe A’s hand, an example of English vernacular minuscule, is related to Anglo-Caroline hands of Winchester.11 Where Scribe B’s style is concerned, there is a type of Late Old English Square Minuscule in two Devon diplomas of Cnut as late as 1031.12 The persistence of this and other older styles in scriptoria removed from the old centres of government allows for Scribe B’s hand, if provincial, to have continued into the 1020s.13 Attempts so far to claim 1016 as his later limit refer to royal-related centres in southern regions, and might as well come with the time of day in which Cnut was crowned king. Of course, no claim that the poem was meant for entertainment rather than admonition would of itself preclude the copying of the codex in the Danish zone before Cnut’s father won England in early 1014, or Cnut again in late 1016. But perhaps Cotton Vitellius A.XV was copied later and combines such young and old hands because the scribes in between had been killed in the war.14 Even with some money for illustrations, the ambition of this manuscript exceeds its resources. If we assume that its intended recipient lived in central Mercia and was either Danish, Anglo-Danish, or an English ally of Danes, it may at first be argued more broadly that the two great texts of this codex, on non-Christian warlords who explore new lands (more in Alexander’s case), and fight with monsters (in his and Beowulf’s), were copied with the same hopeful purpose as that assigned to the pagan monsters and marvels in St. Christopher and Wonders of the East – to amuse a Danish earl, or his ally, or even the king.

11 Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, 95 (Table 8). 12 Kiernan, Kevin. “Late Square Old English Minuscule,” 51–54 (figures 8 and 9: Exeter Cathedral Library, Dean and Chapter, MS 2525). These charters are discussed in Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 57, 59–60. 13 Kiernan, Kevin. “Late Square Old English Minuscule” 55–71. 14 Suggestion of Vicky Symons (pers. comm.).

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By 1016 the Danes had been Christian for half a century; Cnut’s skalds from Iceland, nominally Christian for a generation. Despite signs of English influence, most of Cnut’s skalds retain the macho swagger of heathendom. Some poems from his entourage have kennings as monstrous as any in the eulogies for the arch-heathen Earl Hákon Sigurðarson of Hlaðir (Lade) in Trøndelag (ca. 975–995).15 Foremost is a poem from ca. 1029, the Knútsdrápa (Eulogy on Cnut) of Hallvarðr háreksblesi (high-achievement blower), who says that his patron has weakened “haukum odda Leiknar hungr” (hunger in hawks of the Leikn of barbs): Leikn is a troll-wife; one of these with spears is a valkyrie, whose “hawks” are ravens, whose “hunger,” when sated, means that thousands are dead.16 Cnut here is also called “bǫrr hólmfjǫturs leiðar” (pinetree of the islandchain’s path), which is to say that the “chain around the island” is the World Serpent; whose “path,” like the serpent Fáfnir’s, is gold; whose “pinetree” is a tall (and generous) king.17 At the same time Hallvarðr’s word “hólmr” (island) for Cnut’s dominion shows that he probably performed his eulogy in England, Christian for four centuries.18 There are also monsters in, or rather all over, Cotton Vitellius A.XV, both in and near Beowulf and especially in Wonders of the East, which has a brace of serpents painted across the top half of folio 99 (95) verso (BL 102 verso).19 If these monsters serve a purpose, it is not that of VII Æthelred.20 In the light of this common interest, the Nowell Codex looks more suitable for Cnut or his earls in the early post-war period than it does for their victims a decade earlier.

Beowulf of the Scyldings More narrowly, there is also evidence internal to Beowulf of an alignment with eleventh-century Danish concerns. The first words, “Hwæt, we Gar-Dena” might be taken as “Listen, we [who are] of the Spear-Danes,” as Kevin Kiernan has

15 Frank, “Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 119–22. Jesch, “Scandinavians and ‘Cultural Paganism,’” 57–67. Longman Anthology, ed. and trans. North, Allard and Gillies, 558–63 (Einarr’s Vellekla (Gold-Shortage)), 573–82 (Eilífr’s Þórsdrápa (Eulogy on Þórr)), 588–90 (Hallfreðr’s Hákonardrápa (Eulogy on Hákon)). 16 Jesch, “Knútr in Poetry and History,” 247 (stanza 6b). 17 Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, 86 (no. 311); Jesch, “Knútr in Poetry and History,” 246 (stanza 4). 18 Jesch, “Scandinavians and ‘Cultural Paganism,’” 59. 19 Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, 1–57; Kevin Kiernan, Electronic Beowulf: http://ebeowulf. uky.edu/ebeo4.0/CD/main.html. 20 See also Sisam, Studies, 65–67, 96 (“Liber de diversis monstris, anglice”).

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supposed, like an appeal to Danes in an English audience.21 Not long after, “Beowulf” is twice written for *Beow, son of Scyld Scefing, in lines 18 and 53. In the first case we are told that Scyld gets a son in the far east of Denmark: “Beowulf wæs breme . . . Scedelandum in” (lines 18–19; Beowulf was renowned . . . in Scanian lands). By cross-reference with “Beaw” in the annal for 855 in versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and in the derived genealogy in Asser’s Life of Alfred (ca. 893), it has long been accepted that the poet’s form was probably “Beow.”22 The same annal, in its genealogy for King Æthelwulf, who died in 858, includes Beaw’s father as Scealdwa and, in some versions, Scealdwa’s father as Sceaf. In the earliest version, Æthelweard’s Chronicon of ca. 978 (which is based on an Old English text before the writing in 891 which gave rise to the Chronicle in versions A–F), the names resemble Beowulf’s more closely in that they are spelt “Beo,” “Scyld,” and “Scef” in line with later West Saxon.23 These names are in older spelling in the Abingdon texts: “Scyldwa” (B) or “Scealdwa” (C), as well as “Beaw” and “Scef” for annal 856; “Scealdwa” and “Scealdhwa” in the Worcester text (D); and “Beauu” and “Sceldwea” in Asser’s Life of King Alfred (ca. 893, chap. 1).24 On this basis it may be deduced, firstly, that the annal’s genealogical names were quarried in 855 from a text of Beowulf, probably on Æthelwulf’s instruction;25 and secondly, that a name *Beow, son of Scyld, was written as “Beowulf” in the text that survives. In respect of the latter deduction, this change may not be a mistake.26 There appear to be many scribal errors in Beowulf, but what if “Beowulf the Dane” was the scribe’s contrivance?27 The second occurrence is metrically out of place,28 and yet to enter Scyld’s son as “Beowulf” after 1016 might be appropriate in a different way: it claims the hero of the greater poem as a Dane by insinuating his kinship with Danes, whether through a sibling of the Danish

21 All quotations from Beowulf, ed. Mitchell and Robinson. Kevin Kiernan (pers. comm.) 22 Chambers, Beowulf, 42; Orchard, Critical Companion, 100–103. 23 Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. Campbell, 33; Meaney, “Scyld Scefing,” 13. 24 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 57 (s.a. 856); Asser’s Life of Alfred, ed. Stevenson, 3 (chap. 1); Sisam, “Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies,” 314–22; Klaeber’s “Beowulf,” ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, 291–92. 25 North, Origins of “Beowulf”, 316–17, and n. 73 (“de cuius prosapia ordinem trahit Æðulf rex”). 26 Neidorf, “Scribal Errors of Proper Names,” 252, 268. The MS form is defended, however, in Earl, Thinking about Beowulf, 22–25. 27 On the scribal errors, Orchard, Critical Companion, 49–56; see also Klaeber’s “Beowulf,” ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, 117: “That the name Bēow should have been altered to Bēowulf by a scribe familiar with the substance of the poem is plausible enough.” 28 Klaeber’s “Beowulf,” ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, 117.

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Beowulf, or through a child of the latter other than Healfdene. If the two opening Beowulf-forms are errors, they are ingrained, in that the second appears declaratively at the head of the poem’s second (though first-numbered) fitt: I Ða wæs on burgum Beowulf Scyldinga leof leodcyning longe þrage folcum gefræge. (lines 53–55) [Then in the townships was Beowulf of the Scyldings, king beloved to his tribe, for long duration renowned among peoples.]

This fitt numeration (as if the first fitt, not being numbered, was intended to be a preface) gives a license to read this poem in a way which aligns it with a contemporary Danish empire – and not only in the opening pages. The Danes are the poet’s leading subject for the first two thirds of Beowulf, up to verse line 2200. Later on in the poem, having been advised of his Danish connection, we may see the Geatish Beowulf going to Heorot to make good on an older association with Denmark. We may also put new meaning into Hrothgar’s words that Ecgtheow took his boy Beowulf there earlier in order to win the king’s protection for both of them (lines 372–73, 463). Hrothgar says that Ecgtheow gave him his oath (line 472). Later still, Hrothgar’s offer to love Beowulf as a father, and his command to Beowulf to keep a new kinship (lines 946–49), are both reinforced by this grand opening insinuation of a shared family background. The tension about whether Beowulf or Hrothulf should be the next king of Denmark, in Beowulf’s case by marriage to Freawaru, becomes more substantial if he is taken to be kin to the Scyldings already. Even outside the poem’s long Danish preamble to King Beowulf’s reign, we have another scribal oddity towards the end of the Geatish messenger’s speech about Geatland’s future: “Þæt ys sio fæhðo ond se feondscipe, wælnið wera, ðæs ðe ic hafo, þe us seceað to Sweona leoda, syððan hie gefricgeað frean userne ealdorleasne, þone ðe ær geheold wið hettendum hord ond rice æfter hæleða hryre, hwate Scildingas, folcred fremede oððe furður gen eorlscipe efnde.” (lines 2999–3007a)

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[“This is the feud and this the enmity, the murderous hostility of men for which I Sweden’s tribesmen will seek us out, once they find out that our lord is lifeless, he who in former times kept hoard and kingdom against attackers after the fall of heroes, keen Scyldings, advanced people’s good or yet further performed nobility.”]

Neidorf seems right to suggest that “Scildingas” in line 3005 was miscopied from *Scilfingas.29 The poet would have produced “hwate Scilfingas” (keen Scylfings; that is, Swedes) in delayed apposition to the invading “Sweona leoda” (Sweden’s tribesmen), as the subject of the verb “gefricgeað” (line 3001; find out) three lines earlier. Indeed, line 3005 has a match further back in line 2052, when Beowulf, hoping for the failure of Freawaru’s marriage to Ingeld, enacts the part of a stirrer at her wedding (lines 2047–52). In each case the line is written by Scribe B (who takes over from Scribe A, before “moste,” in Beowulf line 1939).30 The editors of Klaeber’s “Beowulf” find it not unlikely “that a scribe should thoughtlessly have written scildingas for scilfingas in a poem in which the former are mentioned so often and the latter, by comparison, so rarely.”31 The change seems deliberate, however, if we consider how the poem might then be read, especially in the the context of Cnut’s victory in 1016. The unwarranted repetition of “Scyldingas” in the Geatish part of Beowulf, nearly a thousand lines later, speaks for Scribe B maintaining a preoccupation with Denmark. A pro-Danish reading could have made “hwate Scildingas” into the accusative object of Beowulf’s action: the king who “ær geheold” (line 3003; in former times kept) hoard, kingdom, and all the Scyldings safe “wið hettendum” (line 3004; against attackers). That is, King Beowulf of the Geats may be represented not only as kin to the Danes, but also as a vassal of Denmark who keeps Skåne safe from the Swedes. These reinterpretations, willful though they may seem and with nothing to say for Beowulf as it was first composed, fit nonetheless with the notion that the Nowell text (bar Judith) was copied within a few years of 1016.32 Let us now turn

29 Neidorf, “Scribal Errors of Proper Names,” 256, 269. 30 On folio MS. 172 verso (BL 175 verso). See Kiernan, Electronic Beowulf: http://ebeowulf.uky. edu/ebeo4.0/CD/main.html. 31 Klaeber’s “Beowulf,” ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, 262. 32 On the case for Judith’s provenance in another codex: Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, 150–68; and Kiernan, “Reformed Nowell Codex and Beowulf Manuscript.”

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from seeing the manuscript as compiled in order to appease the new regime, to an argument that Cnut saw another copy of Beowulf and used it as propaganda.

Cnut and the “Skjǫldungar” Roberta Frank was the first to draw attention to the special use of ON skjǫldungr (shield-man, king) and skjǫldr (shield) in the royal eulogies composed for King Cnut and associates in the first third of the eleventh century.33 This first epithet appears to work there as a substitute for konungr (king), a word which is rare in extant Cnut-related poems.34 Frank’s observation matters for Beowulf because OE Scylding, cognate of skjǫldungr, appears only in this poem, in which it denotes only Danes. After the arrival of Scyld Scefing, the Danes’ dynastic founder, in the first four lines, the ensuing first two thirds of Beowulf call the kings, their thegns, and by extension all Danes “Scyldingas” from Scyld’s epithet “wine Scyldinga” (Scyldings’ associate) on line 30 onwards. If we look more closely, it seems that the usage predates the poem. The poet calls Danes “Scyldingas” before “Scyld” arrives to name them: his summary of a bard’s panegyric on Beowulf allows him to call the kingdom of Heremod, Scyld’s forerunner, “eþel Scyldinga” (line 913; Scyldings’ homeland); and King Hrothgar refers similarly to Heremod’s abused subjects as “eaforum Ecgwelan, ar-Scyldingum” (line 1710; the heirs of Ecgwela, favor-giving Scyldings). In this light it appears to have been the poet of Beowulf who back-formed Scyld from “Scylding,” a tribal name, in order to create a myth for the leading dynasty.35 In Norse poems, ON skjǫldungr is usually found without marked meaning, whether in the Poetic Edda or the skaldic corpus.36 The Brot af Sigurðarkviðu 14, probably of the tenth century, has “Vacnaði Brynhildr, Buðladóttir, / dís sciǫldunga, fyr dag lítlo” (Brynhildr wakened, Buðli’s daughter, / lady of kings, a little before day). Here Brynhildr is a Hun, sister of King Atli. Doubtless in the eleventh century, her lover Sigurðr is called “sciǫldunga niðr” (kinsman of kings) in Fáfnismál 44; he is probably Frankish. Likewise, without being Danish, in the same century Sigrún the valkyrie is another “dís sciǫldunga,” in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, 51. The “scǫp sciǫldunga” (destiny of kings) in stanza 33 Frank, “Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf,” 126–28; “Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 110–12. In the following I shall translate “skjǫldungr” as “shielding,” its direct cognate. 34 Óttarr svarti uses the word in the fragment surviving from a longer praise poem on Cnut, in “Óttarr svarti: Lausavísur,” ed. Townend, 786 (v. 2); see Prologue in this volume, p. 1. 35 Perhaps on Vergilian lines: North, Origins of “Beowulf”, 36–39. 36 Edda, ed. Neckel, 161 (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II), 188 (Fáfnismál), 200 (Brot), 248 (Atlamál).

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2 of the Greenlandic Atlamál of the thirteenth century refers to Burgundians. Nowhere in the Niflung poems, in this way, does “skjǫldungr” refer to Danes. As for its roles in skaldic verse, skjǫldungr is potentially so general there that it may be used for God, as in Einarr Skúlason’s Geisli (ray) of ca. 1153: “hæstr Skjǫldungr býðr hauldum / himinvistar til” (stanza 6; the highest Prince invites captains / to banquet in heaven).37 Nonetheless, this term can be found marked. A certain “Hálfdan fyrri” (HalfDane the first) is listed as “hæstr Sciǫldunga” (highest of the Skjǫldungs) in Hyndluljóð 14, whose extant text is in Flateyjarbók (ca. 1390); this poem may be as old as the eleventh or twelfth century and its Hálfdan may correspond to Healfdene in Beowulf.38 Moreover, in Skjǫldunga saga (history of the Skjǫldungs), the meaning of the titular name is fixed as “kings of Denmark.” This saga is thought to have been compiled in Oddi, Iceland, in the 1180s or 1190s by Bishop Páll Jónsson of Skálholt (1195–1211). Founder of the line is a certain Skjǫldr, whose name was probably back-formed from the stem by Páll’s great-grandfather, the scholar-priest and chieftain Sæmundr Sigfússon, for his own genealogy before ca. 1120.39 Sæmundr doubtless got his license for the name from a poetic text before him, such as the Eiríksdrápa (Eulogy on Erik), which had been composed in 1104 by Lawspeaker Markús Skeggjason in memory of King Erik Ejegod of Denmark (d. 1103).40 In this poem Markús calls Erik “bróðir hǫfuð-Skjǫldunga fimm” (brother of five top-Shieldings), calling him also the “Skjǫldungr” whose word created the archdiocese of Lund (in 1104).41 Erik and his brothers were sons of Cnut’s sister’s son, King Sveinn Ástríðarson (or Svend Estridsen). Thus, it seems likely that Markús marked his skjǫldungmeaning as Danish in imitation of Cnut’s skalds three generations earlier. Before we take up “Skjǫldungr” with Cnut’s skalds, whose words and meter have revealed Anglo-Saxon influence,42 let us note that each case for Danish meaning there must be made individually. Our first case is datable to a few years after 1016, probably in the time of Cotton Vitellius A.XV, when the Icelander Þórðr Kolbeinsson performed his own Eiríksdrápa before Eiríkr of Norway, son of Earl Hákon Sigurðarson. Eiríkr, now earl of Northumbria, was Cnut’s older brother-in-law who had joined him in reinvading England in 1015, having sailed from Norway for a

37 Einarr’s Geisli, ed. Chase, 56 (text only). 38 Edda, ed. Neckel, 290 (Hyndluljóð). 39 Bjarni Guðnason, Um Skjöldungasögu, 158–61. 40 Foote, “Aachen, Lund, Hólar,” 113–14. 41 Skjaldedigtning B.I, ed. Finnur Jónsson, 416 (stanzas 11 and 13); Danakonunga sǫgur, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, 218–19 (vv. 38 and 40). 42 Hofmann, Lehnbeziehungen, 71–103 (§§ 62–113); Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” 155–56. See further Poole in this volume, pp. 260–61, 264–67, 269–76.

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meeting probably near the Humber. In the stanza which describes their meeting, all four manuscripts have the reading “skjǫldungum”:43 Enn at eyrar grunni endr skjǫldungum renndi sás kjǫlslóðir kníði Knútr langskipum útan. Varð þars vildu fyrðar varrláð koma báðir hjalmaðs jarls ok hilmis hœgr fundr á því dœgri. [And back again on to land-spit shallows did he pour Shieldings, Did Knútr, who pressed the keel-tracks, pour longships from the sea. Where both campaigners would cross oar-puddle meadow, there passed Between helmeted Earl and Protector propitious meeting on that day.]

If we emend this form, as Jayne Carroll does, to “Skjǫldung” with “um” or “of” as a particle, the noun means properly “king” and also distinguishes Cnut as Danish. However, there is better reason to leave it as an unemended plural, as a term for the nobility of all Danes unloaded on English beaches. Another plural for this term is found in the Hǫfuðlausn (Head-ransom) which was performed by the Icelander Óttarr svarti for his new patron, King Óláfr Haraldsson of Norway, probably in the early 1020s. Back in 1015, before Cnut’s victory and taking advantage of Eiríkr’s presence in England, Óláfr is said to have steered two cargo vessels to Norway, where he defeated Earl Sveinn, Eiríkr’s brother, in the battle of Nesjar. His initial gamble is given as follows: Valfasta bjóttu vestan veðrǫrr tváa knǫrru; hætt hafið ér í ótta opt Skjǫldunga þopti. Næði straumr (ef stœði) strangr kaupskipum angra (innan borðs á unnum erringar lið verra).44 [From west you readied, quick in storm of death-fire, two merchantmen; Ventured into danger have you often, bench-mate of Shieldings. Strong current might have grieved the cargo-ships (if the boat’s Crew on board upon the waves had turned out worse in vigour).]

Whereas the “death-fire” is the patron’s sword, whose “storm” is battle, the “Shielding” designation, which cannot refer to mercenaries in his crew, begs a less formulaic question about Óláfr’s employers in the 1009–1012 invasion of England. Initially Óláfr had joined Earl Thorkell the Tall, whose own country, Skåne, was vassal to Denmark, but in 1012 Thorkell hired himself out to King

43 “Þórðr: Eiríksdrápa,” ed. Carroll, 507. My convention in the following quotations is to present skaldic verses in long-line format. 44 “Óttarr: Hǫfuðlausn,” ed. Townend, 759 (v. 14).

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Æthelred. At the end of 1013, the invasion of King Sveinn Forkbeard, Cnut’s father, forced Æthelred into a year’s exile in Normandy, whence Óláfr (says Óttarr) helped to restore him.45 In this way it has been suggested that Óláfr’s “skjǫldung” allies in this poem were Æthelred and his son Edmund Ironside.46 In short, the designation of skjǫldungar in this kenning is marked, but ambiguous: the meaning covers kings of either Wessex or Denmark or both. Later in his Hǫfuðlausn, however, Óttarr uses this heroic plural to peculiarly Danish effect. In this part of the poem, Óláfr, now established as king of Norway, has just made peace between two warring earls of the Orkney-Shetland domain, whom he summoned to Norway:47 Gegn (eru þér at þegnum) þjóð-Skjǫldunga góðra haldið hœft á veldi (Hjaltlendingar kenndir). Engi varð á jǫrðu ógnbráðr, áðr þér náðum, austr sás eyjum vestan Ynglingr und sik þryngvi.48 [O honest one, fittingly you wield the empire (as thegns to you) Of worthy nation-Shieldings (Shetlanders are known). No man threat-sudden was born on earth, before we got you, No eastern Ingvi-prince to crush beneath him western isles.]

Because Óláfr is now king over the Norwegians, it might seem unlikely that “þjóðSkjǫldungar” refers to Danes. And yet it does, because when Óláfr took over in 1015 the kings of Denmark had been overlords of Norway for nearly seventy years: Óttarr links the “Skjǫldungar” with Norwegians, not with their new king. He also exalts Óláfr over the Swedes, for whom the term “Ynglingr,” normally “king,” is made to connote “Swedish king” by “austr” (east). So, with “þjóð-Skjǫldungar” Óttarr refers to the Danes. As for a correlation with Beowulf, this unique Norse epithet recalls an ironic hapax for King Hrothgar and his nephew Hrothulf at their revels in Heorot: “nalles facenstafas / þeod-Scyldingas þenden fremedon” (lines 1018–19; not at all were criminal acts as yet practised by great Scyldings).49 Had Óttarr heard or heard tell of Beowulf?50

45 “Óttarr: Hǫfuðlausn,” ed. Townend, 766–67 (v. 13); Encomium Emmae, ed. Campbell, 77–82. 46 Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 35 (chap. 29) and n. (for v. 30). 47 Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 172–73 (chap. 102). 48 “Óttarr: Hǫfuðlausn,” ed. Townend, 766 (v. 20). 49 Frank, “Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf,” 127. Note, however, that “ynglingr” is marked for Swedish kings in the name Ynglingatal (Tally of the Ynglings) for the dynastic poem attributed to Þjóðólfr of Hvinir (ca. 890): Heimskringla I, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 4 (Prologus). 50 However, Townend (“Óttarr: Hǫfuðlausn,” ed., p. 767) takes this word to be a variant of “þjóðkonungr” (king of the people; mighty king), “a particular favourite of Sigvatr.”

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With a complexity like Óttarr’s some thirty years later, Arnórr jarlaskáld (“Earls’-Poet”) compares, but does not identify, Óláfr’s departed son Magnús with a singular “skjǫldungr” at the end of his Magnúsdrápa (Eulogy on Magnús): Ungr Skjǫldungr stígr aldri jafnmildr á við skjaldar (þess var grams) und gǫmlum (gnóg rausn) Ymis hausi.51 [No young Shielding will ever climb so generous on wood of shield (That prince’s liberality was enough) beneath Ymir’s old skull.]

This poem was performed shortly after Magnús’s death in 1047. If we look more closely, Arnórr uses “Skjǫldungr” to advise Magnús’s family and supporters that no Danish king in the future will equal him in steering ships (the “wood of shield”) under the sky (“Ymir’s skull”). A Danish skjǫldung-meaning is inevitable, because the greater of Magnús’s two rivals was still Sveinn Ástríðarson (1042–1076), Cnut’s sister’s son (also known as Svend Estridsen or Sven Estrithson).52 If it is thought that this “Skjǫldungr” refers to Magnús’s other rival, his uncle Haraldr Sigurðarson, we might recall that Haraldr was now sole king of Norway (1047–1066) and a risk for Arnórr if he made him appear weaker than his nephew in this lay. From here we move to Cnut’s reign a decade after his victory in England in October 1016. Following his campaigns in Denmark and Pomerania in 1023–1024 and Holy River in Skåne in late 1026, Cnut’s court in England filled up with skalds.53 These included Óttarr, who had joined him from Norway. Óttarr would have performed his Knútsdrápa (Eulogy on King Knútr) in ca. 1027. Reliving the old glories, he reserves skjǫldungr for Cnut’s defeat of Edmund Ironside (in 1016): Skjǫldungr vannt und skildi skœru verk inn sterki, fekk blóðtrani bráðir brúnar Assatúnum. Vátt, en valfall þótti verðung, jǫfurr sverði nær fyr norðan stóru nafn gnógt Danaskóga.54 [Shielding the Strong, under shield you did deeds of conflict, The blood-crane got dark-red morsels at Asses’ Homefields. By slaying, Prince, and slaughter the troops thought it, with big Sword, you won name enough near north of Forest of Danes.]

51 Poetry of Arnórr, ed. Whaley, 118–23, esp. 123 (stanza 19: with variant reading á við skildan (aboard a shield-hung bark), however, for á við skjaldar); and 219 (note to 19/2). 52 Sonne, “Svend Estridsens Politiske Liv,” 19–26. 53 Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” 162–63. 54 “Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 779 (v. 10).

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And now this name seems to come with a program. Óttarr Danicizes two English place-names, so that OE Assandun (Ashingdon in NW Essex or Ashdon in SE Essex), now “Assatúnum” (Asses’ Homefields), mocks the English as asnar (ON “donkeys”), while OE Dene or Dena (the Forest of Dean, possibly from Old Welsh din [“fort”]), becomes “Forest of Danes.”55 The latter name at the stanza’s end, a tribute not only to Cnut’s conquest but also to his tribe, shows that “Skjǫldungr,” at the head of this stanza, refers to Cnut as “king of the Danes.” At the same time, in ca. 1027, Óttarr enlarges on the root of “Skjǫldungr” with the words “undir skildi” (under shield). Cnut has other skalds who show that there is more to this other word than the finding of an alliterative halfrhyme. Hallvarðr háreksblesi, in ca. 1029, likewise draws attention to a shield in his Knútsdrápa, in which he first addresses Cnut by name: Knútr, lézt framm til Fljóta (frægr leið vǫrðr of ægi heiptsnarr hildar leiptra) harðbrynjuð skip dynja. Ullar lézt við Ellu ættleifð ok má reifðir sverðmans snyrtiherðir sundviggs flota bundit.56 [Knútr, you let onwards to the Fleets (famed guardian crossed the ocean, Quick to wrath of war-lightnings) the hard-mailed ships resound. Of Ullr’s strait-steed the elegant hardener, you had a fleet moored To Ælle’s patrimony and the sword-mistress’s gulls you delighted.]

As in its thirteenth-century context in Knýtlinga saga, this scene may describe the first year of Cnut’s invasion in 1015, when, after raiding Wessex, his ships sailed north to the “fljót” (“Fleets,” i.e., “rivers”), possibly Humber, Trent, and Ouse.57 The diction is more characteristically skaldic than that of the relatively untangled verses of Hallvarðr’s contemporaries, Þórðr and Óttarr. Aside from depicting swords as “war-lightnings,” he delivers two non-Christian kennings, one for a valkyrie and another for a king. The readings are disputed: the manuscripts have “Ullar,” which has been emended to nominative “Ullr” with the addition of a syllable to “lézt” to make “léztu”; they have also “gerðar” (of Gerðr); one text has “sverðmans” (of the sword-mistress), another “sverðmanns” (of the swordsman).58 If we take the last form, we end up with ravens as “a valkyrie’s gulls,” in the elaborate kenning “má sverðmanns snyrti-Gerðar” (gulls of the swordsman’s

55 Poole, “Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History,” 275–76. 56 Frank, “Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 120 (v. 2); Skjaldedigtning B.I, ed. Finnur Jónsson (v. 3). 57 Knýtlinga saga, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, 100–106 (chap. 8). 58 Knýtlinga saga, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, 104 (v. 4); Jesch, “Knútr in Poetry and History,” 246 (v. 3b).

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elegant Gerðr); and with Cnut as “ship’s god” or “captain,” more simply in the emended “Ullr sundviggs” (Ullr of the strait-steed). However, if we follow Finnur Jónsson in keeping “Ullar” and “má sverðmans” (of the sword-mistress’s gulls) for “ravens” and emending “gerðar” to “herðir,” Cnut gets the longer kenning, appropriately enough for the king. Addressing Cnut, in this case, as “Ullar sundviggs snyrtiherðir” (of Ullr’s strait-steed the elegant hardener), for “hardener of Ullr’s ship” or “upholder of a shield in battle,” would have been Hallvarðr’s way of calling him a skjǫldungr (shield-man) inside a riddle for “shield.” His kenning may thus be read as a baroque version of Óttarr’s line from a year or two earlier, “Skjǫldungr vannt und skildi.”

King Cnut as “Skjǫldr” In this way Cnut’s skalds make his skjǫldr (shield) into a symbol of power. Óttarr does this himself not long after the start of his Knútsdrápa, when he celebrates Cnut’s English beachhead of 1015, saying “Herskjǫld bart ok helduð / hilmir, ríkr af slíku” (A raiding-shield you bore and upheld, Protector, by such means mighty).59 Although shield-raising is a topos for a challenge in battle (as in The Battle of Maldon, lines 130–31, ca. 991 or Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, 33, probably of the eleventh century), Óttarr’s opening draws attention to the stem of Skjǫldungr. His “her-skjǫldr” is no kenning, because the elements converge: a “shield” is part of “war.” If his compound is not a poor tautology, its skjǫldelement may be counted as a name, like “Scealdwa” from whom King Æthelred traced his line.60 Æthelred’s father Edgar, cited as “Játgeirr” in the stanza by Óttarr, was the grandson of Edward the Elder, grandson of Æthelwulf whose line goes back to Sceaf, Scealdwa, and Beaw. King Æthelred kept the Chronicle in Winchester (version A) and minsters elsewhere as the title deed of power. A convergence between skjǫldr and Scealdwa may have started in 1017, when Cnut married Emma, the king’s still young widow, and reissued Edgar’s laws with the help of Wulfstan. At this time it seems that he took not only King Æthelred’s queen and mantle but also his ancestors.61 The conclusions reached earlier by Lavelle, that Cnut assimilated the West Saxon royal ideology in the south of England

59 “Óttarr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 771 (v. 3). 60 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 57 (s.a. 855). 61 Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 59–65, 83–86; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 94–98; Cnut the Great, 100–101; Wormald, Making of English Law, 345–66.

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before being crowned in 1017 (pp. 177–81), and by Yorke, that his first interaction with Winchester culminated with a council there in 1020 or 1021 (pp. 217–18), support the possibility that Cnut’s descent from Scealdwa started life in Winchester in the years 1017–1020. That is, he and his entourage could have been shown Scealdwa’s name in the opening folio of a manuscript of Beowulf on the same occasion they saw it in another manuscript (perhaps Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 173) that contained Æthelred’s genealogy in the A-text of the AngloSaxon Chronicle (s.a. 855). Composed no earlier than ca. 1029 are two skaldic verses that make a skaldic knowledge of Scealdwa even more likely. Both poems, Sigvatr Þórðarson’s Knútsdrápa and the Tøgdrápa (“Knot-lay”) of Þórarinn loftunga (“PraiseTongue”), are in an English-influenced meter. In his eulogy, Sigvatr goes so far as to cite a Skjǫldr by name. The date of his poem is disputed: possibly within Cnut’s lifetime, by virtue of its Anglo-Saxon influences, which are greater than those of other Cnutonian poems;62 possibly after Cnut’s death, by dint of a “var” (was) varying “er” (is) in the refrain.63 At any rate, Sigvatr’s meter in his Knútsdrápa is tøglag, which is syllabically a stricter form of kviðuháttr but with elements of dróttkvætt. Because tøglag can also be relatively lucid, it is thought to have been devised as a concession to Cnut’s English followers, for whom skaldic kennings would have been alien.64 Sigvatr here refers to Cnut’s campaign by Holy River, probably in late 1026 on the north-eastern border of Skåne, against Kings Óláfr of Norway and Ǫnundr Jakob of Sweden.65 Of Cnut’s role there he says that “vildi foldar / fæst rán Dana hlífskjǫldr hafa” (the Shield who protects Danes would have the least robbery of their earth).66 Sigvatr’s compound “hlífskjǫldr” might be read as tautologous, like his nephew’s “herskjǫldr,” but his “Skjǫldr” is more obviously a name: he identifies it with Cnut. This name is concealed within a kenning in Þórarinn’s Tøgdrápa, which is datable to 1029, after Cnut took power over Norway but probably before the death in that year of his sister’s son, the young Hákon Eiríksson, whom he had left in charge there.67 In the first half of one stanza, Þórarinn relates this transfer of command; in the second, Cnut’s gift of Denmark to Harthacnut (in 1023), his little son by Emma:

62 Hofmann, Lehnbeziehungen, 91 (§ 95). 63 Hofmann, Lehnbeziehungen, 87–93 (§§ 86–97); Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” 155–57. 64 Frank, “Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 109. 65 “Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 650–51 (“ca. 1027”). 66 “Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 660–61 (v. 9/5–7). 67 “Þórarinn loftunga,” ed. Townend, 851; Bolton, Cnut the Great, 153–54.

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Þá gaf sínum snjallr gǫrvallan Nóreg nefa njótr veg-Jóta, ok gaf sínum (segik þat) megi (dals døkk- salar) Danmǫrk (-svana).68 [Then, bold beneficiary of road-Jutes, He gave his nephew the entirety of Norway, And gave to his own (this I say) boy Denmark (of the hall of a bow’s dark-swans).]

Þórarinn makes us strain harder at the tøg (knot) than Sigvatr does within the new meter they have in common. The four syllables of its half-line offer less room for internal rhymes and kennings than the six in a half-line of dróttkvætt.69 Þórarinn meets the challenge partly by imitating such Old English constructions as “suð-Dene” (south-Danes) in his “veg-Jóta” compound. He also extends the meaning with puns, so that “eloquent” is also suitable for “snjallr” (bold) and “honor” for “veg” in Cnut’s epithet “snjallr njótr veg-Jóta,” as in “eloquent beneficiary of honored-Jutes.” With “road” for vegr, Þórarinn’s tribal compound may allude to the Limfjord channel near Viborg, but “honor” is also part of this, with Cnut’s family being from Jutland: most of his tribal epithets reflect this.70 In the second half of this stanza, Þórarinn offers a more rewarding tangle in the long genitive “dals døkksalar svana.” This form of the kenning prevails over the less frequent variants “dags,” “døggsala,” and “djúpsvala,” but its obscurity stands in contrast to the clarity of Þórarinn’s main clause. Although the words in his kenning are simple, their meanings are not, either individually or together. The difficulties are which element comes first; whether “dal-” means “dale” or “bow”; and whether it is the “sal” (hall) which is “døkk” (dark), as the compound recommends, or, by transferred epithet, the “svana” (swans), or even the “dalr” (dale, bow). Matthew Townend reads “dals døkksali svana” “the dark halls of the dale of swans,” in which the “swans’ dale” is the sea, whose “dark halls” are the islands of Denmark. A complication in this, however, is the fact that Denmark is cited by name in the same line. Another reading is more rewarding. If we take the kenning’s second element first, read “dalr” as “bow” and transfer “døkk-” to “svana,” we end up with “of the hall of a bow’s dark-swans,” in which “dark-swans” are ravens and a “bow’s ravens”

68 “Þórarinn loftunga,” ed. Townend, 860–61, n. 3 (Tøgdrápa, stanza 6: textual discussion based on these pages). 69 Hofmann, Lehnbeziehungen, 93 (§ 97): “besonders schwierig, fast zu schwierig.” 70 Frank, “Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 112–13.

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are arrows, whose “hall” is a shield. So Þórarinn calls his king a “shield.” And the last line of his stanza may be opened up further, if we confine the parenthesis to “segik þat” (this I say). In this case Þórarinn calls the old homeland “Danmǫrk dals døkksalar svana,” “the Denmark of Shield,” in order to say that the land belongs to Skjǫldr, Cnut’s ancestor. So far we have seen that Cnut’s skalds found it in their interest to allude to Danish kings and their followers as “Skjǫldungar,” and referred at least twice to Cnut as a descendant and hypostasis of “Skjǫldr.” It has already been argued that this ideology came from England in 1017–1020, where, long before, Scealdwa or Scyld had been back-formed from Scylding.71 What I now propose is that Cnut got this name from Beowulf.

Cnut and the First Folio of Beowulf Beowulf is the only surviving Old English text to refer to “Scyldingas,” to identify them with “Danes,” royal or otherwise, and to trace their descent from “Scyld.” At first it might be thought that Cnut would need no source other than the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Its earliest text, one which predated the Chronicle’s versions all of 891, survives in the form of a Latin translation by Ealdorman Æthelweard in ca. 978. This text expands King Æthelwulf’s genealogy in the annal for 855 with a narrative that is probably indebted to the first fitt of Beowulf. This is because Æthelweard, after naming Beo, son of Scyld, son of Scef, says that Scef cum uno dromone advectus est in insulam oceani qui dicitur Scani, armis circundatis, eratque valde recens puer, et ab incolis illius terrae ignotus. Attamen abeis suscipitur, et ut familiarem diligenti animo eum custodierunt, et post in regem eligunt; de cuius prosapia ordinem trahit Athulf rex.72 [was carried in a ship to an ocean island which is called Scani, with weapons put about him, and he was a boy awfully young, and unknown by the inhabitants of this land. But then he is raised by them, and they took care of him with loving intention as one of their household, and afterwards chose him for a king, from whose stock King Æthelwulf takes his line.]

Because Æthelweard’s subject is Scef (the missing father), not his son Scyld (the one to arrive in Skåne as a baby with a future as a warrior dynast in

71 See note 29 above. Anderson, “Scyld Scyldinga,” 470–72. 72 Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. Campbell, 33.

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Beowulf), it appears that Beowulf is the source of the genealogy which was rationalized before it entered Æthelwulf’s annal for 855; and because Scylding is not found elsewhere, it seems likely that Beowulf, together with the Chronicle, was the source of the Skjǫldung-ideology we have seen. The ultimate expression of this ideology survives in the aforesaid “hlífskjǫldr” stanza in Sigvatr’s Knútsdrápa. As Sigvatr reels off a list of victories in England and Scandinavia, this most English of Cnut’s skalds gives his king the Shield-name at the climax of his Holy River campaign. This is just as Cnut is said to rout Kings Óláfr and Ǫnundr Jakob as they invade Skåne: Létat af jǫfurr (ætt manna fannsk) Jótlands etask ílendr (at því). Vildi foldar fæst rán Dana hlíf-Skjǫldr hafa, hǫfuðfremstr jǫfurr.73 [The prince of Jutland (a lineage of men was found), Let not himself, come to land, be eaten up (in this). The least robbery of Danes’ earth would their Towering-Skjǫldr have, head-foremost prince.]

In an earlier stanza the endangered part of Denmark is named as “Skáney” (Skåne).74 From the Norwegian side, moreover, Cnut is called “Skánunga gramr” (lord of Scanians) in a stanza about Holy River which Þórðr Særeksson composed in memory of King Óláfr in the early 1030s.75 Sigvatr, with “ætt manna” as “lineage of men” rather than “mankind,” says that Cnut shows the power of his kindred in thus saving Skåne. It seems better to read “fannsk” as “was found” in his stanza, comparable to the passive use of the verb in “meirr fannsk þinn an þeira / þrekr” (your strength was found greater than theirs) in Óttarr’s Hǫfuðlausn.76 Primarily the word “ílendr” means “indigenous,” in contrast with “útlagi” (outlaw); its use may derive from, or allude to, OE “inlende” which glosses Latin “incola” (inhabitant).77 Its literal meaning here, “in land” or “coming to land,” gives “Skjǫldr” as an early type of plantagenet, whereby Cnut plants himself in Skåne as if he were Scyld the seedling in the first folio of Beowulf. On Sigvatr’s last line, which is also a refrain, the element “hǫfuð” (head) may be transferred to “jǫfurr” (prince), as in “top-prince,” in order to avoid a tautology in “hǫfuðfremstr.” As with “hlífskjǫldr,” however, the tautology is an

73 74 75 76 77

“Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 660–61 (v. 9). “Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 657 (v. 6). Fagrskinna, ed. Bjarni Einarsson, 187 (chap. 32). “Óttarr: Hǫfuðlausn,” ed. Townend, 763 (v. 18). Hofmann, Lehnbeziehungen, 103 (§ 113).

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invitation to dig deeper. With the image “af etask” (to be eaten up), we see Skjǫldr identified with the harvest, whose theft he will not tolerate. If “hǫfuðfremstr” is read intact as “head-foremost” and “hlíf” as “towering,” as in OE hlīfian (“to loom”; also in Beowulf, lines 1799, 1898, and 2805), Sigvatr turns Skjǫldr into full-grown wheat. This image resembles that of the barley which, on the level of monastic mythology, is personified at the start of Beowulf,78 where it is said that Scyld grew up to terrorize the other tribes syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah. (lines 6–8) [since first he was found small of shaft; he experienced solace for that, grew under the clouds, received honors.]

In this literal translation, the seedling, head of a new dynasty, is “funden” (found), as with Cnut’s dynasty in “ætt manna fannsk.” All tribes round about pay tribute to Scyld, a good king, whom the Lord, having pitied the Danes for their anarchy earlier, rewards with an heir: Him þæs lif-Frea, wuldres wealdend, woroldare forgeaf; Beow wæs breme (blæd wide sprang), Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in. (lines 16–19) [To them for that did life-Lord, Wielder of Glory, give worldly bounty; Barley was renowned (the leaf sprang wide), offspring of Shield within Scanian lands.]

It is worth noting that the word “jǫfurr” for “hlíf-Skjǫldr” echoes “eafera” in “Scyldes eafera” on line 19. Sigvatr’s crop imagery suggests that he knew or heard (of) this passage from a copy of Beowulf, from one whose reference to beow (barley), with its pun on blæd (blade, i.e., leaf) and blǣd (glory), would define it as other than Cotton Vitellius A.XV.79

78 Two centuries earlier; see North, Heathen Gods, 189–95, and Origins of “Beowulf,” 38–39. 79 On the pun, see North, Heathen Gods, 194.

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Having excelled in war, at the end of his life Scyld is carried, as if he were now full-grown barley, “felahror” (line 27; very vigorous), to the shore to be shoved on the deep, destination unknown: Nalæs hi hine læssan lacum teodan þeodgestreonum þon þa dydon þe hine æt frumsceafte forð onsendon ænne ofer yðe umborwesende. (lines 43–46) [In no way with lesser offerings, lesser tribal treasures, did they adorn him than those did who sent him forth in the first shaft of his creation alone over waves as an infant child.]

An image of crops, such as in “Scefing,” was still obvious a century after the writing of the manuscript: William of Malmesbury, expanding the name Sceaf in the West Saxon regnal list in De gestis Anglorum (ca. 1125), says that Sceaf, when he arrived, was “posito ad caput frumenti manipulo, dormiens, ideoque Sceaf nuncupatus” (sleeping with a maniple of corn placed by his head and thus named Sheaf).80 In these ways, Sigvatr’s praise of Cnut as Skjǫldr appears to allude deliberately to the genealogy in the opening page of Beowulf, in which “Scyld Scefing” (shield of the sheaf) grows up to engender “Beow” (barley) in “Scedeland” (Scanian lands). As we have seen, the battle of Holy River was fought to keep the Swedes out of Skåne, which was furthest out from Cnut’s base in Jutland and least friendly to his rule.81 Finally, when Sigvatr makes Skjǫldr one with the Scanian harvest which he also protects, he alludes also to Cnut’s genealogy. Right at the beginning of his Knútsdrápa, he portrays this from an English point of view: Ok Ellu bak at lét hinns sat Ívarr ara Jórvík skorit.82 [And Ívarr let the back of King Ælle, Who sat at York, be cut by the eagle.]

80 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 176–77; II, 88–90. 81 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 201–10; Cnut the Great, 144–51. 82 “Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 651 (v. 1: punctuated as “at, lét, hinns sat”).

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Ok senn sonu sló, hvern ok þó, Aðalráðs eða út flæmði Knútr.83 [And at once Knútr slew the sons of Æthelred, Or drove them out, and that was each one of them.]

Thus he compares Cnut with Ívarr the Boneless, who here is said to have killed King Ælle of Northumbria (whether or not this is in revenge for the death of his father, Ragnarr Loðbrók, we cannot tell).84 To English readers of the Life of St. Edmund (ca. 992, which Ælfric translated from the Passio Beati Eadmundi of Abbo of Fleury), Ívarr was already known as the cruel Dane Hinguar; he and his associate Hubba, “geanlæhte þurh deofol” (united by the devil), campaign in England until Hubba invades Northumbria, while Hinguar turns east to East Anglia.85 Sigvatr appears to open his Knútsdrápa with Ívarr in order to present Cnut’s conquest of England as a recovery of what the Danes had won earlier. The tale of Ívarr lay behind other Norse references to England as the kingdom of Ella, or Ælle of Northumbria.86 Hallvarðr alludes to (northern) England as “Ellu ættleifð” (Ælle’s patrimony) in his Knútsdrápa (ca. 1029). Eilífr Goðrúnarson, at the end of his Þórsdrápa (Eulogy on Þórr, ca. 990), a paean for Earl Hákon, reinforces the idea that Þórr has killed all giants in Geirrøðr’s cave by calling them “ǫld Ellu steins” (stanza 20; men of the rock-Ælle, i.e., giants), as if Þórr were sacking York. Even Egill Skallagrímsson, in what remains of his Aðalsteinsdrápa (Eulogy on Æthelstan, ca. 940), if this is truly from nearly a century earlier, names Æthelred’s great-uncle (wrongly) “nið Ellu” (kinsman of Ælle): after the Battle of Brunanburh (probably Bromborough on the Wirral) in 937, his kenning would have referred to York as the failed objective of Norse-Irish invaders. Back in Sigvatr’s Knútsdrápa (ca. 1030 × 1035) of nearly a century later, the second half of his Ella-stanza, if these halves go together, turns Æthelred into a latter-day Ælle, adding in his sons, whom Cnut has killed (i.e., Edmund, of wounds) or exiled (i.e., Edward and Alfred, to Normandy). These lines by Sigvatr recall one by his nephew Óttarr, near the

83 “Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 652–53 (v. 2). 84 For a more detailed discussion of this complex of stories in Anglo-Scandinavian England, see Thomson elsewhere in this volume, pp. 236–44, as well as Elisabeth van Houts, “Scandinavian Influences,” 116–18. 85 Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, II, 314–35: XXXII, “St. Edmund, King and Martyr,” esp. 316 (line 30). 86 Frank, “Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 110–11, 120 (v. 2); Longman Anthology, ed. North and Allard, 478, 580 (v. 20).

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start of his Knútsdrápa (ca. 1027), “ætt drap Jóta dróttinn Játgeirs” (the lord of Jutes whacked Edgar’s kin).87 An English version of Cnut’s Ivar-precedent may be read in the Historia de sancto Cuthberto, datable to the mid- to late eleventh century in Northumbria.88 The charter-augmented story in this Saint’s Life shows Cuthbert influencing the ninth-century Danish invasions well after his death. Sometime after York has fallen to Ivar (in 866), Cuthbert appears in a vision to Abbot Eadred of Carlisle, announcing that a slave, of noble birth, “nomine Guthred filium Hardacnut” (chap. 13; Guthred by name, son of Harthacnut), will become king of the Danes if only they turn to Christianity. In due course a certain Guthred appears and when King Halfdan (another Dane) leaves with part of the army, Guthred is elected king of Northumbria. “Hardacnut,” Guthred’s father’s name, has been identified as the birth-name of Gormr the Old, Cnut’s great-grandfather, on the basis of names in the Gesta Hammburgensis of Adam of Bremen of the later eleventh century.89 Sigvatr calls Cnut “Gorms áttungr” (scion of Gormr’s kin) in his Vestrfararvísur (verses on the western journey), when knocking on the door of Cnut’s palace in England (possibly in Winchester).90 Cnut gave Gormr’s more official name to his son by Emma, to whom, as we have seen, he gives Denmark later in Sigvatr’s Knútsdrápa. The etymology of ON Hǫrða-Knútr, apparently “Hordalander-Cnut,” identifies Cnut’s family as immigrants to Jutland from that part of western Norway, some sixty years before he was born; Adam says they come from “Nortmannia,” probably “Norway.”91 Although the English legend, like Sigvatr, assigns the invasion to Ívarr (and possibly to Ragnarr’s family), its allusion to Guthred, son of Harthacnut, shares the rule of England with Cnut’s Norwegian ancestors. This legend also embodies a conflation of two ideas, the river Scalda (Scheldt) and the Skjǫldungar, when it also refers to the “Dani” (Danes) three times as “Scaldingi.”92 The first reference comes apropos of King Ecgfrith’s grants to Cuthbert in the eighth century, “donec eo defuncto uenerunt Scaldingi et Eboracam fregerunt et terram uastauerunt” (chap. 7; until after his death the Scaldings came and 87 “Óttarr svarti: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 771 (v. 3). 88 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. South, 25–36, esp. 35–36. 89 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 187–88; Cnut the Great, 41–44. 90 “Sigvatr: Vestrfararvísur,” ed. Jesch, 618 (v. 2). 91 The readings for Haraldr’s father’s name are “Hardecnudth Vurm,” “Hardewigh Gorm,” “Hardewigh Gorem,” and “Hardewich Gwrm.” See Bolton, Cnut the Great, 44–45; Adam Bremensis Gesta, ed. Schmeidler, 52 (I.lii); Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 47 (“Normandy”). The explanation harðr (hard), given as an etymon in the Encomium, is opportunistic; see Encomium, ed. Campbell, 34 (II.18). 92 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. South, 48, 50, 52.

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crushed York and devastated the land). The second starts with God’s dispatch of Ubba, “dux Fresciorum” (duke of the Frisians), to sack York with an army of Danes against whom Ælle falls in battle (chap. 10); after which we learn of further land-grants to St. Cuthbert’s “priusquam Scaldingi uenirent in Anglicam terram” (chap. 11; before the Scaldings came to England). The third reference claims that Cuthbert succeeded in persuading God to end Ælle’s line, “quia Scaldingi omnes prope Anglos in meridiana et aquilonari parte occiderunt, ecclesias fregerunt et spoliauerunt” (chap. 12; for the Scaldings slew nearly all the English in the southern and northern part, demolished and despoiled the churches). This term has been derived from Low German *skalda (punt), or read more persuasively as “men of the Scheldt” (OE Scald) in the far south of Frisia in keeping with Ubba’s title.93 The late ninth century saw Danish pirates hiding out in Frisia, some of whose attacks, according to sources which include the Lindisfarne Annals and Adam of Bremen, came from the Scheldt.94 In the Historia de sancto Cuthberto, in this way, the form Scaldingi appears to be a blend of two words, a neologism for ‘men of the Scalda’ formed under the influence of Cnut’s Skjǫldungar.95 Ultimately, the name would have come from the skalds, who got it from Cnut, who built it on Beowulf.

Conclusion: Cnut and Beowulf This discussion deduces that Cnut, taking Beowulf for his genealogy, had established an ideology of Skjǫldr at his court by the late 1020s. While the king’s skalds seem to use Skjǫldungar for his Danish forebears, kin and followers, Þórarinn and Sigvatr appear to go further in identifying Cnut with Skjǫldr, personified stem of this term. Sigvatr, in particular, gives Cnut a “hlíf-Skjǫldr” incarnation which comes to land in Skåne and becomes one with the wheat, keeping both it and himself safe from devourers. For each of these poetic liberties the only extant analogue is Beowulf, for whose sole surviving witness, Cotton Vitellius A.XV, a copying in Cnut’s early reign may not be excluded and indeed looks like the best solution. Only in Beowulf do we find “Scyldingas,” who are Danes; and only on the opening folio of Beowulf does “Scyld” arrive in “Scedeland” to become father 93 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 63 (s.a. 884); Anderson, “Scyld Scyldinga,” 470 (for Scheldt). 94 Lund, “Frisia – a Viking Nest?” Annales Lindisfarnenses, ed. Pertz, 506 (s.a. 911: “Scaldi,” for “men of the Scheldt”). Adam Bremensis Gesta, ed. Schmeidler, 43 (I.xxxix(41): “Scaldam”); Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 39. 95 So Townend, though without the influence of Scalda, in Language and History, 141 (Skjǫldungar); see also, in his p. 81, the placename Skellingthorpe (Lincs.), spelt Scheldinghop (1141), Skeldinghop (1238) and Scheldinchope (Domesday Book).

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of the barley and kings of Denmark. Although there is some correlation between these skalds and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, no version of the latter has either a Scylding or Scealdwa as the foundling or any clear alignment between Scealdwa and the Danes. From this it may be inferred that in 1017–1020 King Cnut, perhaps through the royal archive in Winchester, was shown a different, older and no longer extant manuscript of Beowulf, in whose first folio “Beow” was copied where the Nowell Codex has (deliberately) “Beowulf” (in verse lines 18 and 53). As we shall see in the following chapters, King Cnut sailed to Denmark with nine ships in the winter of 1019, upon the death of King Haraldr, his probably older brother with whom he shared the rule.96 Although he received his family’s royal title probably in Viborg and also on Fyn, further east his position was less secure. Not until the middle of the century would Cnut’s family hold full power in Sjælland, despite the fact that King Sveinn, as suggested by Bolton, probably in order “to maintain a visible presence,” is said to have been interred in Roskilde “in monasterio in honore Sanctae Trinitatis ab eodem rege constructo, in sepulchro quod sibi parauerat” (in the monastery which the same king had built in honour of the Holy Trinity, in the sepulchre which he had prepared for himself).97 For Cnut there may also have been the matter of a conflict among Western Slavs, which, if we accept Gazzoli’s conclusions later in this volume (pp. 411–13), posed a threat to his southern borders. At any rate, starting with his homecoming in 1019–1020, Cnut aimed to consolidate his power over Denmark east of Jutland. He settled English clergy, craftsmen and moneyers in Viborg and then in Roskilde, as well as even further east in the new ecclesiastical province of Lund, in Skåne, where his influence was weakest.98 It is also clear from the letter to the English which he sent from Denmark in 1020 that he took English priests with him on this long trip east. That is, Cnut dictated a message which one priest wrote down and another in England, and then Archbishop Wulfstan, polished up on arrival.99 So it might be imagined that King Cnut of England, shield of the Danes, had a copy of Beowulf carried with him to Roskilde and Skåne, seats of Hrothgar and Scyld, like a charter that fixed his right to rule there on the opening page. Whether or not the poem was with him in this way, its ideology of Scyld, father of the Scyldings, would define the royal house of Denmark.

96 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 104 (s.a. 1019; also in versions D and E); Bolton, Cnut the Great, 130–31. 97 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.3); Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 156–59, esp. 157. 98 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 159–75, 220–32. 99 Lawson, “Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element,” 162; Lawson, England’s Viking King, 88–89; Wormald, Making of English Law, 347.

Part III: Cnut’s Empire

Map A: The empire of Cnut the Great (1016–1035).

Jesper Hjermind

Chapter 14 “Vuiberg Hic Coronatur Rex Dacie”: The Crowning of King Cnut in Viborg, 1019 The material evidence shows a connection between Cnut and Viborg in Jutland. Archaeologists from Viborg Museum have carried out excavations along the northern bank of Viborg’s Lake Søndersø on a number of occasions: in 1981; in 1984–1985, when test trenches were dug in the context of the planned construction of a hotel; and in 2001, when the museum excavated a 100 sq m area that was essential to a major interdisciplinary research project. The location is exceptional, as both the structures and the finds found in the waterlogged deposits are extremely well preserved. Not only are the conditions for preservation here among the very best compared to sites in northern Europe, the quality of some of the finds is also very fine. For these reasons, the excavators were eager to know what kind of site this was, and who lived there. The first excavations in the 1980s (published in 1998) resulted in a clear interpretation: this was an artisan quarter where shoemakers, blacksmiths, and founders lived and produced wares for the town of Viborg. However, since the last excavation in 2001 (published in 2005), this has been replaced by a new interpretation, based on a detailed, multidisciplinary investigation in which every context, sample, and artefact has been closely scrutinised. The site did indeed contain various workshops. They were producing goods and equipment not for the town, however, but for the king, his housecarls, and their peers. Archaeologists see this lively activity, which can be dated precisely to 1018, as directly linked to Cnut the Great, who probably came to Viborg the following year to be crowned king of Denmark. We must say “probably” because no existing written sources mention this coronation. The earliest written reference to a coronation in Denmark is to 1027, when Harthacnut was crowned at Viborg.1 Instead, we must rely on the archaeological record and the finds which indicate the existence of a seasonal warrior and magnate milieu that surrounded itself with luxury. Craftsmen, both local and of English origin, manufactured everything from shoes to steel for swords to magnificent gold ornaments. Their workshops stood close to a small mound called

1 1027 is the only year in which, on Cnut’s last visit, his son by this name could have been crowned in Denmark. See Suhm, Historier af Danmark, 143; Fagrskinna, ed. Finnur Jónsson, 184 (chap. 36); Fagrskinna, ed. Bjarni Einarsson, 202 (chap. 36). https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-015

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Borgvold, at the foot of which was a marked boundary in the form of some kind of fence, enclosing what was possibly the Thingstead and coronation area.2

Topography of Viborg Viborg differs from most Danish medieval towns in having an inland location, without direct access to a waterway. The southernmost branch of the Limfjord lies 10 km away, where what is now Hjarbæk was named as the port of Viborg in 1499.3 The extensive network of roads that fanned out from Viborg compensated for the lack of access to waterborne transportation. The Army Road or Ox Road, the great road running north to south through the Jutland peninsula, begins at Viborg (Map 14.1a–b).4 Viborg itself is situated on the western side of a tunnel valley and is bordered to the east by the two lakes Viborg Søndersø (southern lake) and Viborg Nørresø (northern lake). Erosion gullies and valleys traverse the high-lying plateau on which the modern city stands. The oldest streets follow these natural routes, connecting the lakeside area with the upper town, running up and over the steep slope.5 The town plateau is divided into several smaller, independent, plateaus (Map 14.2). On one of these, at Store Sct. Peder Stræde (Great St. Peter Lane), we find the oldest traces of settlement. On the flat foreland below the slopes leading up to the plateau lies the Søndersø area, and close by stands the 12 m high earthen Borgvold mound just mentioned, which rises from an island on the western side of the tunnel valley containing the two lakes. The Borgvold mound plays a central part in the oldest history of the city.6

2 The article is based on, and in places reproduces material from, my earlier articles: “Theatrum Urbis Vibergensis”; “With a Hawk on the Hand”; and “Keramik.” 3 Krongaard Kristensen, Middelalderbyen Viborg, 19, 32. 4 Krongaard Kristensen, Middelalderbyen Viborg, 30. 5 Krongaard Kristensen, Middelalderbyen Viborg, 23–26. 6 Hjermind, “With a Hawk on the Hand.”

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Map 14.1a: The great North–South route running down through the Jutland peninsula – the Military Road or Ox Road begins in Viborg. After Matthiessen, Hærvejen, 1930.

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Map 14.1b: All roads lead to Viborg, meeting in a fan-shape north and south of the town. After Matthiessen, Viborg-Veje, 1933. Drawing Svend Kaae 2004.

Map 14.2: On the flat foreland below the slopes leading up to the plateau lies the Søndersø area, and close by stands a pronounced 12 m high earthen bank, Borgvold, which rises up from an island in the tunnel valley. Drawing Lars Agersnap Larsen 2016.

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The Store Sct. Peder Stræde Settlement The oldest area of activity in Viborg for which we have evidence is in the presentday Store Sct. Peder Stræde part of the city. Here Viborg Museum has excavated a number of phases of a village-like farm site of late tenth-century date. Most of the buildings at Store Sct. Peder Stræde are simple storage buildings, with wattle walls, without daub or fireplaces; they could well have been related to the economic management of a farm.7 The best-built structure, house V, was a 90 sq m structure with wooden wall planks and curved outer walls (Figure 14.1).8 The uncovered remains of the farm were right on the northernmost edge of the farm site, as there were clear traces of plowing just 10 m to the north, which continued right up to the modern day town square, Hjultorvet. In the medieval period this square was the churchyard of the parish church of St. Mathias.9 The oldest dates for these settlement traces are uncertain. There is a single find of a ninth-century plate fibula brooch,10 but otherwise the general impression from both the buildings and the limited number of finds is that of a late Viking Age site. Some of the finds are older than those from the Søndersø excavation, including the semi-circular vessels,11 which were not present at all in the finds from Søndersø and so must be older than 1018.12 A rough overview of the total number of finds made in 2006 shows no other indicators of a ninth-century date (there are for instance no examples of stamped ceramics or spindles, except the fibula which might be interpreted as an heirloom from an earlier date). This means that some the buildings along Store Sct. Peder Stræde must be older than the lakeside activities, which are dated to around 1018, but these buildings hardly go back as far as the ninth century.13 The end of the dating sequence at this site lies at around 1050.14

7 Levin Nielsen, “Pederstræde i Viborg,” 28–30. 8 Levin Nielsen, “Pederstræde i Viborg,” 39. 9 Krongaard Kristensen, Middelalderbyen Viborg, 39–40; Hjermind, “På sporet af Viborgs middelalderlige sognekirker.” 10 Levin Nielsen, “Pederstræde i Viborg,” 44. 11 Levin Nielsen, “Pederstræde i Viborg,” figs. 13.1 and 13.3. 12 Hjermind, “Keramik,” 421. 13 Hjermind, “Theatrum Urbis Vibergensis,” 187–88. 14 Dendrochronological dating of posts from the oldest street facing house in Store Sct. Pederstræde (VSM 990C) was carried out in 2002 by the dating laboratory Wormianum– Moesgård Museum.

Figure 14.1: Overview of the excavated house structures at the Sct. Peder Stræde settlement 1966–1967. Notice house V, the most well-built house with wooden wall planks and curved outer walls. After Levin Nielsen, “Pederstræde i Viborg,” 25, Figure 2.

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The Settlement at Viborg Søndersø In 1016 the area between Viborg Søndersø and the steep slopes to the west consisted of damp, marshy meadows, with patches of more solid ground where tongues of sand broke through the surface, and with flushes where water fanned out from springs in the slopes. Dendrochronological analyses of timber recovered from the excavations in the 1980s gave felling dates predating 1018 by a few years. Similarly, there is a small amount of craft waste consisting of antler, leather, and slag, suggesting that some form of minor activity had existed in 1018, and that during the winter of 1018–1019 oak trees had been felled to provide timber for building work in the area along the edge of the lake.15 The earliest building, excavated in 2001, dates from this time. This is a workshop measuring 3 m by 5 m, with oak posts and wattle walls of hazel (Figure 14.2a–b). About the same time, a drainage ditch was dug and then filled with branches and marked with a fence. The following year a latrine was built to the west of the ditch and the workshop building was equipped with a hearth, bellows, and anvil. The workshop was apparently in use in the autumn, winter, and possibly spring of the years 1020–1021, 1021–1022, and 1022–1023,16 standing unused during summer, with the result that seeds germinated and plants grew on the surface of its floor.17 However, the presence in the latrine-fill of bones from smelt, a fish which can only be caught at the end of April,18 along with strawberry pips and other plant remains, shows that people were also present at the site in some of the spring and summer months.19 The botanical, entomological, and, not least, parasitological analyses show the presence of both animal dung and human feces. However, it seems that no animals were kept at the site on a long-term basis. There may just have been the occasional presence of livestock from the hinterland, or perhaps this material represents the gut contents of slaughtered animals, which, judging by the nature

15 From the previous excavations there are several dendrochronological dates prior to 1030: 1981 excavation, Trench B 1018±1 and 1018; 1984–1945 excavation, Trench B 1015, Trench L 1020 and 1028, Trench S 1018 (two dates), Trench U 1015 and 1017. Re-excavation of area 881D Trench B in 1998: 1010 (1 date) and 1018 (3 dates) from the same context. 16 There are no dendrochronological dates to confirm use in 1022–1023, but this seems very likely on the basis of the archaeobotanical and stratigraphical evidence. 17 Daly, “Dendrochronological Dating,” 153–55; Jouttijärvi, Thomsen, and Moltsen, “Værkstedets function,” 300–301; Moltsen, “Lag- og makrofossilanalyser,” 175–76; Thomsen, “Værkstedet – en bygningsarkæologisk redegørelse,” 294. 18 Enghoff, “Dyreknogler fra vikingetidens Viborg,” 245. 19 Fruergaard and Moltsen, “Latrinen,” 121–23.

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Figure 14.2a: The workshop seen from the south. In the background, the anvil pit and the forge.

of the fodder, were killed in winter or early spring.20 The site also contains large numbers of bones of domesticated animals (cattle, pigs, and sheep) alongside fishbones – in other words, ordinary butchering and domestic waste. In addition to this, there are the more exotic remains of fur-bearing animals (cat, polecat, fox, hare, and even dog) as well as birds of prey (goshawk and kestrel) which

20 Kenward, “Insect and Other Invertebrate Remains,” 220–21; Moltsen, “Dyrefækalier,” 201; Roepstorff and Pearman, “Parasitter,” 208.

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Figure 14.2b: Overview of the area excavated in 2001.

were probably used for falconry or kept as status symbols.21 In short, there is clear evidence of some kind of settlement in the vicinity. The workshop was maintained throughout the period of its use, and in 1025 it was completely rebuilt from the ground up, but activity and waste layers relating to the new building are not preserved. Perhaps the rebuilt workshop stood ready in case it should be needed, but was never actually put to use (Figure 14.3a–b).

Crafts at Viborg Iron blooms were refined in the workshop and the specialized manufacturing of steel for sword production took place. Silver and bronze casting also occurred, but silver was not refined here, even though the waste layers were found to contain crucibles and large quantities of lead, both of which are used in the refining process. The refinement of silver is thought to have taken place in a workshop nearby.22 Goldsmiths also worked in the area and the finds include a lead patrix or die, in which some of the finest gold ornaments of the early eleventh century – namely the Hornelunde hoard – were formed. Goldsmiths’ tools were also found in the form of a little anvil with traces of gold. This had been used to stamp out small gold discs, which were then melted to produce the gold beads that were

21 Enghoff, “Dyreknogler fra vikingetidens Viborg,” 255–56. 22 Jouttijärvi and Andersen, “Affald fra metalforarbejdning,” 361–62.

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Figure 14.3a: Reconstructions of the earliest smithy from 1018.

soldered on to the ornaments (Figure 14.4a–b).23 Production waste from a combmaker and a shoemaker, together with both local and “English” potsherds made of local clay, reveal that there were other workshops nearby.24 Insect remains, along with traces of oak bark, suggest that the shoemaker may also have tanned his own leather.25 At first glance, these remains resemble traces from an early urban centre, but there is something that does not quite fit. The craftsmen’s products are few and select. The comb-maker produced only combs with a length of 20 cm, while the

23 Krongaard Kristensen, “Patrice,” 215–16. Christensen, “Genstande af knogle og tak” 141–42. 24 Linaa Larsen, “Takmaterialet fra Viborg Søndersø”; Petersen, “Læder og pelsværk”; Rasmussen and Hjermind, “Bestemmelse af proveniens,” 429. 25 Kenward, “Insect and Other Invertebrate Remains,” 224.

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Figure 14.3b: The altered building from ca. 1020 from the Søndersø area. Drawing Sara Heil Jensen (2001).

Figure 14.4: (a) Gold brooch found near Hornelund. (b) Its lead patrice found at Viborg Søndersø. Photo: Lennart Larsen and Arne Vindum.

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shoemaker only produced shoes and not sword- or dagger-sheaths or other leatherwork. The products from the metalworking workshop were steel and metal castings. Additionally, if this had been a typical artisans’ quarter, there would have been activity all year round. Analyses of the plant macro remains and, in particular, of the insect remains, demonstrate the absence of many of the species typically associated with human activity, which usually occur in great numbers in urban layers of this date. This must therefore have been a seasonal site or a very specialized form of settlement, one which was established around 1018 and existed only for a very few years.26 Similarly, the pattern of deposition does not correspond to that seen in contemporary Scandinavian urban sites such as Bergen, Lund, and Sigtuna,27 where the waste from each individual craftsman lies separately, and within its own lot or property. At Søndersø, the waste from at least three different crafts (and workshops) lies intermixed around the workshop building. If the fence acted a property boundary, it separated an activity area with several different workshops from the actual settlement area. There is remarkably little craft waste to the west of the fence. The same cannot be said of the domestic waste, which is present everywhere.28 This is not a picture of an organized and structured artisans’ quarter, where one would not, of course, mix one’s own refuse with that of the neighbors.

Luxury and High-Status Imports In addition to the items produced locally in the workshops, the Søndersø area has also yielded a number of unique and rare imported finds, such as a fragment of painted Middle Eastern glass;29 a turned boxwood bowl;30 numerous sherds of green-glazed white ceramic of the Stamford type, possibly from a form of watering-can rare even in England (Figure 14.5);31 and gaming pieces either from hnefatafl (a board game) or chess and other games, which we traditionally associate with the homes of magnates.32

26 Daly, “Dendrochronological Dating,” 154; Kenward, “Insect and Other Invertebrate Remains,” 223; Moltsen, “Lag- og makrofossilanalyser,” 175–76. 27 Hansen, “Konger og byfolk”; Bergen ca. 800–ca. 1170; Roslund, “På drift i tid och rum?”. 28 Linaa Larsen and Hjermind, “Analyse af fundmaterialet.” 29 Näsman, “Glas,” 282. 30 Callesen, Hjermind, and Søvsø, “Genstande af træ,” 448–49. 31 Hjermind, “Keramik,” 420. 32 Iversen, “Perler, rav og spillebrikker,” 482; Carelli, “Schack.”

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Figure 14.5: Sherds from a watering pot made in Stamford, England from the early eleventh century. The pot of whitish clay with a green glaze had holes in the bottom. It could have been used to water rush covered earthen floors – thus keeping down the dust. Photograph: Lars Guldager.

With a Hawk on his Hand – On the Trail of Eleventh-Century Magnates A small handful of the finds from Viborg Søndersø can be linked to a warriors’ and magnates’ milieu – a milieu that is illustrated repeatedly, for instance, on the Bayeux Tapestry. Weapons and related finds from Viborg Søndersø include a lover hilt and a chape from a scabbard (Figure 14.6a–b). The lover hilt is made of iron and arched slightly down towards the blade. The bottom side reveals a hollow, which would have held the tang of the sword blade.33 From the sword itself, we have only found a possible fragment of the sword tip.34 The iron chape was attached to the sword scabbard by two rivets in order to strengthen the point of the scabbard.35 A small fragment of ring mail was uncovered, consisting of a total of seven rings riveted together (Figure 14.6a–c).36

33 34 35 36

Jantzen, “Genstande af metal,” 208. Jantzen, “Genstande af metal,” 208. Jantzen, “Genstande af metal,” 208. Jantzen, “Genstande af metal,” 202.

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(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 14.6a–c: A cross-guard from a sword hilt, a chape from a scabbard together with a piece of ring mail. Drawing Mohan Subramaniam Arulanadam.

From Viborg Søndersø, apart from the find of two complete horse skulls, we also found a nearly complete skeleton of a four-year-old stallion,37 the Harley Davidson of its time. There were also finds of horse tack in the form of a spur38 and a snaffle-bit (Figure 14.7).39 To read the finding of a metal spur as a link to a chivalrous lifestyle may seem something of an exaggeration, but it does indirectly identify a person with the means to own and keep a horse.

37 Hatting, “Dyreknogler,” 304. 38 Jantzen, “Genstande af metal,” 207. 39 Jantzen, “Genstande af metal,” 185.

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Figure 14.7a–b: Spurs and bridle fittings from Viborg Søndersø. Drawing Mohan Subramaniam Arulanadam.

In the course of the latest excavation in 2001, a number of bones identifiable as goshawk and kestrel were recovered. These finds could, of course, be accidental, but the zoologist Inge Bødker Enghoff, who examined all the animal bones from the excavation, concludes with certainty that we are dealing with the remains of hawks used for hunting. This conclusion is based on the preference of falconers for goshawks, in particular, since these birds achieved the best results. It is said that goshawks were used primarily by high-status groups, lesser nobility, and the wealthy, while the kestrel was considered more appropriate for young boys.40 A further indication that we are dealing with hunting birds is the fact that all the bones are from females. Being larger than the males, these were preferred for hunting (Figure 14.8).41 It is one thing to recover bones of a hunting bird, another to recover the bones of their prey, which are a more reliable indicator of a falconry environment. At Søndersø, bones from hares, partridges, and black grouse were recovered, though not in overwhelming numbers: these comprised six leg- and foot-bones from hares,42 and single bones from a partridge and a black grouse.43 A further indication of falconry could be the recovery of dog bones, as dogs are an integral part of

40 Enghoff, “Dyreknogler fra vikingetidens Viborg,” 245–46. 41 Enghoff, “Dyreknogler fra vikingetidens Viborg,” 246. 42 Hatting, “Dyreknogler,” 306; Enghoff, “Dyreknogler fra vikingetidens Viborg,” 255. 43 Hatting, “Dyreknogler,” 308; Enghoff, “Dyreknogler fra vikingetidens Viborg,” 246.

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Figure 14.8: Bones of a goshawk and a kestrel, recovered from the excavations in 2001. Photograph: Geert Brovad.

falconry. The dog-bone finds from Viborg Søndersø are not very numerous and belonged to dogs with a stature varying from that of a small modern-day spitz-type dog up to that of a large Irish setter.44 Unfortunately, no lance pennons have been unearthed in Viborg, but we do have the probable remains of the pennon lance or shaft. During the 1981 excavation of a site around a building, the remains of an ash pole 33 cm long were recovered.45 The end where the lance head would have been attached was sharpened. Further down the pole was a brass mount. Under the polished mount were two nails, which held the lance pennant in place. It seems likely that there would have been yet more fastening nails on the remaining part of the pole, which was not recovered (Figure 14.9).

The English Connection There are several finds from Søndersø of English origin, directly or indirectly. There are great similarities in the decoration on some of the small lead pieces to the design of the coins (Figure 14.10) minted in the reign of King Cnut. Perhaps the English moneyer produced cheap lead ornaments as a sideline.46 Some of the shoemakers were English, as is shown by the design on some of 44 Hatting, “Dyreknogler,” 302; Enghoff, “Dyreknogler fra vikingetidens Viborg,” 253. 45 Hjermind and Jantzen, “Genstande af træ,” 238. 46 Hjermind, Iversen, and Roesdahl, “Genstande af metal,” 471–72; Iversen and Roesdahl, “Genstande af knogle,” 485–86.

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Figure 14.9: The point of the lance pole found at Viborg Søndersø. Photograph: Viborg Museum.

the half-boots (Figure 14.11).47 The finding of English imported pottery from Stamford is mentioned,48 but there is also evidence that an English potter worked in Viborg, producing pottery of the English Torksey type using the local clay.49 In addition to the potsherds of Stamford type, there is an even more direct connection between Stamford and Viborg. One of the moneyer’s dies has been used in striking coins in both towns, as well as in the towns of Leicester and Southwark.50 One of the more curious examples of the possible English connection is the multi-horned sheep, which may similarly have had links with England.51 Moreover, in the smith’s workshop there was a stave from a wooden tub or vat made of English oak.52 Was the smith perhaps also an Englishman? The

47 Petersen, “Læder og pelsværk,” 404. 48 Hjermind, “Keramik,” 420. 49 Rasmussen and Hjermind, “Bestemmelse af proveniens.” 50 Jensen, Tusindtallets Danske Mønter, 44. 51 Enghoff, “Dyreknogler fra vikingetidens Viborg,” 252. 52 Callesen, Hjermind, and Søvsø, “Genstande af træ,” 447–48.

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Figure 14.10: Two small lead pieces. The piece to the right shows great similarities with some of the coins minted in the reign of Cnut the Great. Photograph: Lars Guldager.

Figure 14.11: An eleventh-century shoe from Viborg Søndersø displaying possible English style influences, possibly of English origin or alternatively made by an English shoemaker in Viborg. Photograph: Lars Guldager.

hearth was, at least, an extremely early example of a type that a Danish village smith is unlikely to have known at the time.53

Who Were the Inhabitants? Some features suggest that there must have been one person or organization responsible for both the workshops and the accommodation. For example,

53 Jouttijärvi, Thomsen, and Moltsen, “Værkstedets funktion,” 297.

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the workshop was used by several different artisans during the course of the same season. The building must, therefore, have been part of a structure in which individual craftsmen did not own their workshops. The selective range of the products, the deposition pattern for the waste and the very nature of the waste itself are all remarkable. The comb-maker discarded large pieces of antler, which could easily have been exploited further in production. Similarly, there were great quantities of lead all around the silver-refining workshop, as shown by its presence in the reused floor sand. Could this be an indication that the craftsmen were not working with their own raw materials, but had them provided by someone else and therefore did not care how much they wasted? It is clear that this was not “domestic production” for personal consumption and was probably not “production for sale” in the usual sense. Similarly, the results of the scientific analyses exclude the possibility that these were settled craftsmen producing wares for an existing market.54 Perhaps an explanation should be sought in a very special combination of place, time, and person.

The Historical Background The location of the workshop in such a damp area is astonishing, not least because the area on dry land directly to the west was probably not built upon at the time. The background for the location of the building at this very spot could lie in the political events which took place around 1018. In that year, King Cnut sent a large part of his army home from England, having distributed 82,500 pounds of silver among them. It was probably in the same year that Cnut’s brother Haraldr died, and in the following winter, 1019–1020, that Cnut was in Denmark to secure the throne.55 One can imagine that allegiance was sworn to him at the Thing in Viborg, just as was the case with his successors.56 We know from other sources that Cnut had coins minted in Viborg and Lund from around 1018 (Figure 14.12).57 As yet, none of the Søndersø excavations has provided direct evidence of this; the only finds of contemporaneous coins comprise two German examples from the 2001 excavation58 and an Æthelred II coin dating to the early 990s from the previous excavations.59

54 55 56 57 58 59

Christophersen, Håndverket i forandring. Bolton, “An Historical Perspective,” 499–501; Lund, “Cnut’s Danish Kingdom.” Fenger, Notarius Publicus, 40. Jensen, Tusindtallets Danske Mønter, 46. Moesgård Museum, 2005. Jensen, “Mønter,” 88.

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Figure 14.12: Coins of Cnut the Great, minted in Viborg. Photograph: Lennart Larsen.

Why Viborg? Viborg was the main Thingstead in Northern Jutland in the Middle Ages and had perhaps been so for many centuries. No trace has ever been found, however, either in or around the town, of a “central site” from the Late Iron Age or Viking Age which could have been the first administrative, political, or religious center from which everything else developed, such as we see in Lejre near Roskilde and Uppäkra near Lund. Does this mean that the roots of the Viborg Assembly lie in a different kind of gathering-place that had cultic functions and also those associated with a Thing, functions that would leave behind such slight material traces, lacking trade and crafts, that we are unable to recognize them? Or are there no roots? Was the site chosen because there was nothing there, because within the balance of power, Viborg was a locus vacui where all could meet as equals on neutral ground? Regardless of which of these scenarios approaches the truth, there seems little doubt that the Mammen grave and the rune stones at Skjern and Asmild (from the end of the tenth century) signify important individuals in

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the landscape of power that framed Viborg in the preceding one to two generations. In the Mammen grave was buried a magnate in the winter of 970–971, clothed in an expensive costume and accompanied by a ceremonial axe with inlaid silver decoration and a large wax candle. It is not improbable that the Mammen axe, with silver inlays showing the ash tree Yggdrasill, or the Christian Tree of Life, and the cock Gullinkambi, or the Phoenix, was produced in Haraldr Bluetooth’s workshop. These inlays suggest strong associations with a tenth-century court environment, in which the axe was most likely a badge of honor or sign of rank bestowed by the king (Figure 14.13).60

Figure 14.13: The Mammen axe with silver inlays is found in a grave dated to 970/971. Photograph: Lennart Larsen.

The Skjern 1 stone (incomplete) was erected concerning a certain “ . . . usbiaur . . . | . . . | . . . ur : si(n) | . . . harals : h . . . ” (Osbjørn . . . ..his . . . . Harald’s).61 On Skjern 2 the inscription reads, on Side A, “sąskiriþr : risþi : stin : finulfs : tutiR : at : uþinkaur : usbiarnaR : sun : þąh : tura : uk : hin : turutin : fasta :” and on Side B “siþi : sa : mąnr : is:” (Sasgerd, Finulv’s daughter, set up the stone in memory of Odinkar Osbjørn’s son the eminent and lord-loyal. A warlock that man who this monument breaks).62 The stone is unusually finely ornamented and Sasgerd and Odinkar were clearly people of importance; it seems likely that Odinkar’s lord was the king, and that the Haraldr mentioned on Osbjørn’s stone was Haraldr Bluetooth Gormsson, Cnut’s grandfather. The Asmild stone was erected by a woman even more conscious of her family origins (Figure 14.14).

60 Iversen and Näsman, “Mammen gravens indhold,” 61. 61 Moltke, Runerne i Danmark, 424. 62 Moltke, Runerne i Danmark, 191.

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Figure 14.14: The Asmild rune stone. Photograph: Lars Guldager.

Here, three generations are named: “þurkutr : þurkus : tutiR : þkuþulfs : sunaR (:) sati : stin : þąsi : iftiR : busauir sin : tiþita : mąn : muaR : h- . . . : tutur:” (Thorgund, Thorgot’s daughter, Thjodulv’s son, placed this stone in memory of Bose, her husband, “tidings’ man” . . . daughter).63 We do not know what a “tidings’ man” was, but once again a link to a royal office seems obvious. Eriks Sjællandske Lov (The law of Zealand), dated to the mid-thirteenth century, states three conditions for a lawful Thing: the place, the time and the people: Lij cap. Thett skall mandt wide att rett thing skall haffue thry wiilqour: Som er stæden, thymen og folck: Stheden er ther som koningen haffuer tiill giffuett og alle herritz mendt haffuer sagtt ia till oc thett maa icke anden stedtz fran thett stedt forskiudis wden alle herretz mendtzs welie och konings ja: Thumen er then dag som skal the haffue laaulige wedt tagett att søge thing som the haffue aff arylde tiidt søgtt Oc then dag som thing skall settis Schall thett begyndis halff gangen myddag oc maa icke lenger holdis endt tiill medaftfthen och icke maa thing holdis mett fære endt mett xij mendt.64 [Ch. 48. On a lawful Thing. It should also be known that three Conditions must be fulfilled for a (legal) Thing: the Place, the Time and the People. The Place is lawful if determined by the King and all in the District have given their consent: neither may it be moved to

63 Moltke, Runerne i Danmark, 253. 64 Lebech, Danmarks Landskabslovgivning, 86.

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another Place without the will of all the Lords and Consent of the King. The Time is their lawful Thing Day, such as they have had through all the Ages, and on this day, it shall be held from mid in the Morning and must not continue past mid in the Evening. And the Thing may not consist of less than twelve Men.]65

So a “tidings’ man,” who was buried just opposite, on the other side of the Viborg lakes, could have been the man responsible for the Viborg Thing. Presumably, in this case, the assembly had been established prior to Cnut’s time. In any case, Viborg lies at the center of Jutland and was easily accessible to travelers. When asked to point out the central place in the town, that which is indicated in the Vi-prefix (Old Norse vé “temple sanctuary”), as in “viet” (the temple or the High Place) or holy mound, scholars have tended to start with the cathedral plateau, making the direct or indirect suggestion that cults have continued here in some form. There are not many traces of this, however, just an east–west system of ditches with a handful of potsherds from semicircular pots,66 and with a single potsherd of Pingsdorf type which is perhaps from the eleventh century, but could be much more recent.67 There again, could the central focus not have been situated elsewhere? The oldest reference to the Thingstead is found within the Vita of Knud the Holy – that is, King Knud IV (1080–1086) – which was written in the 1120s by Ælnoth, an English-born monk from the monastery of St. Knud in Odense. Along with it is a long passage about Viborg: Locus igitur celeberrimus medio fere Iucię orbe consistit, qui seu ob sui eminentiam, siue ob antiquorum inibi sacrificiorum uel preliorum frequentiam uel ob idoli ibidem quondam opinatissimi, qui Wig dicebatur, memoriam Wigbergis (ueluti “Wigi excelsum” aut “belli mons” seu “sacrificationis”) lingua Danica nuncupatur, ubi ex totis Iucię partibus quamsepius non minima multitudo tam de causis communibus tractatura quam et de legum ueritate siue firmitate discutienda simul et stabilienda conuenit; et quod ibi communi consensu aggregatę multitudinis statutum fuerit, non impune uspiam in Iucię partibus irritum fieri ualebit.68 [There, in what is nearly the middle of Jutland, is a place of renown which, partly due to its height and prominence, partly because, in times of old, sacrificial offerings were made here, or perhaps just as a remembrance of a highly held local deity named Vig, or because it marked the site of a battle, is called Viberg (as in “Viges mound” or “battle hill” or “sacrifice hill”) in the Danish tongue. Great hordes regularly gather there from the whole of Jutland, partly to negotiate common issues or to discuss the truth and validity of their

65 Kroman, Danmarks gamle love, 47–48. 66 Hjermind, “Bygninger og begivenheder,” 149. 67 Krongaard Kristensen, Middelalderbyen Viborg, 78, fig. 65; Vellev, “Domkirken, Vor Frue,” 44–45. 68 Gertz, Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, 23.

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laws and give them substance. And that which has been put forward and agreed to by the assembled masses cannot be overruled or ignored in any part of Jutland without fear of punishment.]69

Ælnoth uses the term “thingstead” in a singular form: “Vig mound,” “battle hill,” or “sacrifice hill.” These terms could just as well be applied to the Borgvold mound as to the cathedral plateau. In such a case, it may well have been the location of Borgvold that governed the choice of marshy ground for the building site. The layout we find at Søndersø would then have had its origins in relation to the Thing and to royal coronation. Its ongoing development after 1018 could be connected with King Cnut’s need not only to promote himself, but also to stamp his authority on Viborg during his reign in Denmark. The craftsmen produced combs, shoes, furs, steel (perhaps for swords and other weapons), silver (presumably from the many coins paid out when the army was demobilized and which were refined to give silver of a particular quality), and jewelry, as evidenced by the patrix for the production of expensive gold jewelry and the little anvil with traces of gold found during the excavations in the 1980s.70 These products are best understood in the context of a gift-based and self-sufficient economy for the king’s housecarls and entourage, rather than as ordinary wares to be traded at a market or in an artisans’ quarter. At times when those people were not gathered there, the workshops were closed, and from late spring, over summer, and until the beginning of autumn, the site was only occupied by a small staff of watchmen under the leadership of a royal officer – perhaps Bose’s successor. Apparently the need for Cnut’s presence in Viborg quickly disappeared. After 1023 there are no traces of craft activities in this building, and in the years around 1030 the workshop was abandoned and then demolished, and the site became overgrown. The assemblages of finds in the layers formed at the time are dominated by bones and a little domestic refuse. The sporadic craft waste which is present appears largely (but not exclusively) to belong to the previous workshop activity.71

69 Olrik, Danske Helgeners Levned, 73. 70 Krongaard Kristensen, “Patrice,” 215–16; Christensen, “Knogle og tak,” 141–42. 71 Jouttijärvi, Thomsen, and Moltsen, “Værkstedets funktion,” 318; Linaa Larsen, “Takmaterialet fra Viborg,” 387.

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Map 14.3: Overview of all areas excavated at Viborg Søndersø 1981, 1984–1985 and 2001. Drawing Svend Kaae and Louise Hilmar.

The Site’s Physical Structure in the Early Eleventh Century The area of workshop buildings could have been quite large, covering perhaps as much as 5,000 sq m. Only the trench B/881D shows signs of continuous occupation, from 1018 until the fourteenth century. It is striking that both the quality and quantity of finds from this trench are greater than those from all the other trenches. The “Main Building” itself could have been positioned with several other houses on the solid ground a little further to the west, where the present Brænderigården now lies. From here, there would have been easy access to the latrine and for depositing domestic waste over the entire area of the 2001 excavation (Map 14.3). Another possibility is that the main building stood on a sandy bank extending out from the foot of Borgvold. Along the edge of this bank were the remains of a planked causeway running north–south; to the east of this were traces of a fence. Behind the fence were eight postholes measuring 50 cm by 60 cm. They were 1.5 m apart, forming a 17 m long row, and probably extended further at both ends. Do these represent the remains of

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some kind of solid fence, which, in this case, could have been part of the royal residence or perhaps the Thingstead or coronation area at the foot of Borgvold? Was this formerly the location of a fenced vi, or sacred grove? (Figure 14.15)

Figure 14.15: A row at least 15 m long of oblong postholes from trench S. It is probably much longer from trench S. Could it be a part of an extremely visible and impressive demarcation of the Thingstead area at the foot of the Thingstead itself – Borgvold? Drawing Hans Krongaard Kristensen.

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This open palisade could also have been part of a visible and extremely impressive demarcation of the Thingstead area at the foot of the Thingstead itself – that is, Borgvold (settlement plain).72 The defining fence could have represented a strong visual manifestation of power and sovereignty, along the lines of the palisades around Jelling, dated to the period 960–985.73 At Jelling the entire monument, with its rune stones, is centred on two man-made mounds, one of which does not contain a grave. A huge ship-setting and a palisade surround the entire complex. Perhaps a similar situation existed at Viborg, where the Borgvold mound also occupied a central location in a structure that was possibly royal. The construction of a conspicuous boundary around the foot of a piece of high ground – a mound – could have been motivated by a desire to demonstrate and mark Cnut’s royal status, and perhaps also make an overt reference to royal history further back in time. Neither the plank causeway nor the fences around the animal enclosures excavated in 1985 shows signs of having been renewed, and many of the workshop buildings, though maintained for some years, were not altered or rebuilt. The building in the area excavated in 2001 was abandoned in around 1030, and this also seems to have been the case for buildings located by the other excavation trenches. From this time onwards, there was no longer any need for the extended structure comprising many workshop buildings, animal enclosures, roads, and so on; activity became concentrated around the central buildings on the site of Brænderigården or at the foot of Borgvold (Map 14.4a–c). For these reasons, there was probably no proto-urban settlement on the land above Søndersø. There was apparently just the agrarian hinterland,74 which contributed to supplying the people by Søndersø and at the Thingstead with food, drink, and other necessities. It was not until the middle of the eleventh century that a town began to form, perhaps in conjunction with the bishopric, which is first mentioned in about 1059–1060.75

72 Krongaard Kristensen, “Udgravningerne 1981 og 1984–1985”; “Bebyggelsen,” 48, fig. 43 and 79, fig. 38. 73 Kähler Holst, Dengsø Jessen, and Pedersen, “Runestenens Jelling,” 59. 74 Krongaard Kristensen, Middelalderbyen Viborg, 39–40. 75 Gelting, “Viborg Stifts grundlæggelse,” 11, 26.

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(a)

(b)

(c)

Map 14.4a–c: The probable extent of the Søndersø settlement around a: 1020; b: 1050; c: 1100, superimposed onto a contour map, where modern earthworks have disturbed the historical landscape – the dam and roadway running down through the center of the illustration and back-fill under the Golf Hotel´s south-eastern corner. A: Brænderigården; B: Golf Hotel, Viborg; C: Borgvold. Drawing Sara Heil Jensen.

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Conclusion: King Cnut and the Thing at Viborg Søndersø We know that there was building activity over a large area of the shore of Viborg Søndersø during a short period in the early eleventh century. Some substantial parts of it then lay open and without buildings until the present day, whereas others, especially those immediately to the east of Brænderigården, were again built on during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In its own time the great publication Viborg Søndersø 1000–1300. Byarkæologiske undersøgelser 1981 og 1984–1985 concluded that the area was an organized part of the town, housing many different craftsmen.76 At the present time it is probably more correct to regard the area as a single large unit with a wide range of activities. It could have been a royal residence, perhaps with a kind of “armory” function, where living quarters and workshops were constructed, wooden roadways laid, wells dug, and animal pens established in one operation. Craft production also took place and jewelry was manufactured. Most of these things should be seen as components of a self-sufficient economy, but some products would, of course, have progressed to exchange or sale. There would, for example, have been a great demand for high-status artefacts at times when the Thing was assembled, and especially in 1019, which is when Cnut is thought to have been crowned king of Denmark in Viborg (Map 14.5). In the years following 1026 activities waned, but the location of a settlement close to, or directly on, the solid ground at Riddergade probably remained unchanged. In trench B/881D, to the south-west of Brænderigården, there are traces of buildings forming an unbroken sequence from 1018 to 1300. If the main building (a royal farmstead or residence) lay at the foot of Borgvold, then it must have been abandoned at the latest in connection with the damming up and raising of the water level in the lake in 1313. Cnut’s apparent need to visit Viborg quickly disappeared again, because after 1023 there are no traces of craft activities at the site, and in the years around 1030 the workshop was totally abandoned; it was demolished and the site became overgrown. However, it is not possible to establish whether the workshop was moved to the site of Brænderigården, or to a site much further up in the medieval town around the cathedral, where, together with the bishopric, it could have constituted a new center of power.

76 Viborg Søndersø 1000–1300, ed. Hjermind, Iversen, and Krongaard Kristensen.

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Map 14.5: Venetian portolan chart from 1339 with the Latin text, “vuiberge hic coronatur rex dacie” – Viborg here the Danish king is crowned.

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Epilogue: A Later English Connection The English-Danish connection and the joint minting of coins under Cnut the Great also played a role at the end of the Second World War. In 1944 the Viborg Tourist Association had a copy made of one of Cnut the Great’s coins, which was then used as a basis for a series of ornaments. The end of the war was approaching and there was a clear expectation in all towns in Jutland that their people would be liberated by General Montgomery’s troops; the Tourist Association wanted to give these ornaments to the English soldiers. That is almost how it happened. On May 12 a small armored force of 145 soldiers rolled into Viborg under the command not of General Montgomery, but of Major Francis Fischer. On Nytorv, Major Fischer was presented with a pair of cufflinks, a tie pin, and a necklace for his wife. The soldiers were each given an emblem. These ornaments were accompanied by a card bearing the following text: “A true copy of the oldest existing Danish coin struck in Viborg, when Cnut the Dane was king of England and Denmark” (Figure 14.16).

Figure 14.16: Ornaments like this in the fashion of a coin struck in Viborg under Cnut the Great was presented to the English troops who rolled into Viborg on May 12, 1945. Photograph: Jesper Hjermind.

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Chapter 15 King Cnut of England and the Danish Homelands In the catalogue for the 1981–1982 exhibition in Copenhagen and York, The Vikings in England and in their Danish Homeland, the Keeper of the National Antiquities of Denmark, Olaf Olsen, discussed the evidence for an English presence and influence in Denmark during the Viking period: If we look towards Denmark, to see the effects of events in England on the home country, we are confronted by a profound darkness . . . Yet – when the eye accustoms itself to the gloom, we can begin to discern some misty contours of events, which, in their time, must have been of the greatest significance to the entire Danish community.1

With the exception of some runic and numismatic material, and a few archaeological finds of Anglo-Saxon origin, Olsen notes that the rich historical and linguistic evidence available for the study of the Vikings in England is not reflected, or at least not significantly so, in the Viking homelands; indeed, the archaeological traces of connections with England were so few that it caused him to question the ability of archaeology to afford insights into historical events.2 Much research has gone into the question of Scandinavian influence in Viking Age England, demonstrating the great impact that Scandinavian activities had on many areas and levels of English society, from the raids of the great army in the late ninth century, through to the Scandinavian settlements, the Danish conquests of the eleventh century, and the reign of Cnut the Great.3 The situation is markedly different when we turn our attention towards Scandinavia and the question of English influence there. The evidence attesting English connections within Scandinavia in the early and middle Viking period is highly fragmented and almost exclusively takes the form of archaeological artefacts. Most are found in Norway, though evidence of contact is present in Denmark as well.4 As to the

1 Olsen, “The English in Denmark,” 171. 2 Olsen, “The English in Denmark,” 171–75. 3 See, for example, Hadley and Richards, Cultures in Contact; Richards, Viking Age England; Graham-Campbell, Vikings and the Danelaw; Hadley, The Vikings in England; Rumble, The Reign of Cnut; Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King; Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great. 4 Wamers, “Insular Finds in Viking Age Scandinavia”; Heen-Pettersen, “Insular Artefacts from Viking-Age Burials from Mid-Norway”; Sawyer, “English Influence on the Development of the Norwegian Kingdom”; Pedersen, “Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea,” 44–47. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-016

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question of an English presence and influence in Denmark during the reigns of Cnut the Great and his sons, a little more is known. This chapter seeks to provide an overview of existing research and evidence relating to this question, whilst offering new perspectives and insight.

Early English Influence on Denmark: Research Overview The first definitive historical study of early English influence on Denmark remains Ellen Jørgensen’s pioneering work on foreign influences on the medieval Danish church, published in 1908.5 The greatest scholarly interest has been drawn to the study of English influence in the process of Christianization, from mission to church organization.6 Although Jørgensen’s work is an invaluable resource and includes a diversity of foreign influences, it is very much the result of a generation of historical writings rather too concerned with national narratives and the position of nations within the world.7 Since then, English material in the Danish context has been treated primarily by Niels Lund in various studies of the later Viking period.8 His focus is often on Danish activities in England, whereas the situation in Denmark receives little attention; however, Lund has repeatedly demonstrated that significant contacts traversed the North Sea into the late eleventh century.9 More recently, the interests and perspectives of global history have brought a renewed interest in networks, migration, and cultural exchange. Of central significance here is a study by Timothy Bolton on English political refugees in mid-eleventh-century Denmark. Bolton convincingly demonstrates the value of tracing the movements of individuals,

5 Jørgensen, Fremmed Indflydelse. 6 Abrams, “The Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia.” See also Abrams, “Eleventh-Century Missions”; Abrams, “England, Normandy, and Scandinavia”; Brink, “The Formation of the Scandinavian Parish”; Brink, “New Perspectives on the Christianization of Scandinavia and the Organisation of the Early Church”; King, “English Influence on the Church at Odense in the Early Middle Ages”; King, “The Cathedral Priory of Odense in the Middle Ages”; Bergsagel, “Songs for St. Knud the King.” 7 See also Jørgensen, Helgendyrkelse i Danmark, 175; Jørgensen, “Bidrag til ældre nordisk Kirke- og Litteraturhistorie.” See also Bolton in this volume, pp. 459–84. 8 See for example Niels Lund, “The Danish Perspective”; Lund, “Ville Knud den Store gøre Roskilde til Ærkesæde?”; Lund, “Cnut the Great and His Empire.” 9 See, for example, Lund, De hærger og de brænder; Lund, “Cnut’s Danish Kingdom.”

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as well as how English written material can highlight events that had an impact on Denmark, even when we cannot determine the exact nature of that impact.10 In this way, the archaeological record of English connections in Viking Age Denmark has improved significantly, and especially for the eleventh century, since Olsen wrote his chapter on “The English in Denmark.”11 The evidence now includes not only indications of the bonds between royalty, aristocracy, and the Church, but also humbler objects that tell a story of connections otherwise unknown. In contrast to Olsen’s rather bleak conclusion from the 1980s, Else Roesdahl argued in 2007 “that there is ample evidence for contact across the North Sea during the eleventh century and that such contacts affected all levels of society.”12 Examples of this include coins, warrior equipment, metalwork, and urban development, all of which will be discussed in further detail below. The improved picture of Anglo-Danish material culture merits a new look at the historical sources. From there it is possible to identify some of the people, both groups and individuals, who were active in bringing about the imports and influences demonstrated by the material evidence. It is face-to-face meetings between people that form the basis for cultural exchange – and for change.

Danish Connections with England before 1016 If archaeologists working on the 1981–1982 exhibition The Vikings in England were frustrated with the lack of evidence for the effects in Denmark of the Danish conquests in England, the historians were, for their part, practically silent. Written sources illuminating the effects of Danish activities in England back on the homelands are extremely fragmentary. There is no Danish annalistic material to link activities at home to those abroad, and the English sources show little or no interest in Denmark before the year 1000. There are no sources similar to the letters of Alcuin or sermons of Wulfstan that can tell of the Danish response to the Viking activities and conquests, nothing to inform us of the thoughts, motivations, or even actions of those who fought in the English campaigns – or of those who returned home. What is available are a few runic 10 Bolton, “English Political Refugees at the Court of King Sveinn Ástríðarson.” See also MünsterSwendsen, “Educating the Danes.” For studies of linguistic influence see Gammeltoft and Holck, “Gemstēn and Other Old English Pearls”; Gammeltoft and Holck, “Regionalitet og sproglig kontakt i vikingetid og middelalder.” 11 For an overview see Roesdahl, “Denmark-England in the Eleventh Century”; Pedersen, Anglo-Danish Contact Across the North Sea. 12 Roesdahl, “Denmark-England in the Eleventh Century,” 27.

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inscriptions, most of them from outside the area of medieval Denmark, recording the death of men who fought in England and the fortunes of some of those who returned from there.13 Coin legends list the names of English moneyers working in Denmark, and some English and Continental sources show an occasional interest in the Danes, but always from a non-Danish and often critical perspective.14 While the dearth of evidence is certainly a challenge for anyone working on the history of early medieval Scandinavia, close readings and the careful analysis of written sources do afford some information. Admittedly, only very few sources provide direct and unequivocal evidence for an English influence on Denmark. A study of English contact with and influence on Denmark must rely instead on occasional references to people who moved between the two countries. Periods of high Anglo-Danish interaction, such as the reign of Cnut the Great, are well-attested, as are references to the most prominent travelers between England and Denmark, especially kings and bishops. Written material also attests to a network of Anglo-Danish contacts throughout the late Viking period and spanning several layers of society. This material also enables a closer dating of some sets of connections than most of the archaeological finds can provide. On the whole, English influence on Denmark can be explained by King Cnut’s access to various English markets and institutions as king of England. Written sources, however, clearly state that numerous connections were already in place before his reign (1016–1035). The late Viking Age saw significant imports of foreign silver coinage to Scandinavia. German coins make up the larger part, but of central interest here is the influx of Anglo-Saxon coins during the first half of the eleventh century, evidenced in Scandinavian hoards. Although it is difficult to connect any one hoard found within the boundaries of medieval Denmark with the payments of Danegeld extorted by Viking war leaders and kings, there can be no doubt that the high proportion of Anglo-Saxon coins in Denmark at this time is connected to these activities – that is to say, to people returning to Denmark after engaging in raiding (and trading) across the North Sea. Nevertheless, it is evident that the period of Viking attacks prior to the establishment of Anglo-Danish rule did not form a barrier for the import of trained English personnel to Denmark. Just before the year 1000, while Danish fleets were engaged in several raids in England, the Danish king, Sveinn Forkbeard, imported an English moneyer, Godwine, and an English bishop, Gotebald, to Denmark.15

13 Jesch, Ships and Men, 69–77; Jansson, Swedish Vikings in England. 14 Hauberg, Myntforhold og udmyntninger i Danmark indtil 1146; Spejlborg, “There and Back Again.” 15 Steen Jensen, Tusindtallets danske mønter, 22–23.

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Adam of Bremen’s entries on Gotebald, whose name does not, however, appear to be English, state only that he arrived from England and was appointed to teach in Skåne.16 Nothing further is revealed about his function or which church he entered, if indeed there was one. The relatively early date of Gotebald’s appointment, as well as Adam’s mention of teaching, makes it likely that his duties were mainly missionary and itinerant and that he may have been joined by other English clerics. Church-building was underway in Denmark already in the early years of the 1000s, and English contacts (both elite and ecclesiastical) were an active part in this process.17 Sveinn’s earliest coinage, bearing the king’s name, was struck in Lund ca. 995 and adopted from the English crux type. The legend on the obverse reads, “+ ZVEN REX AD DENER” (Sven king of the Danes), and on the reverse, + GODǷINE M-AN DNER (Godwine moneyer of the Danes) – clearly an English name.18 Sveinn Forkbeard died on February 3, 1014, barely weeks after his conquest of England. The appointment of English bishops and moneyers in Denmark before his victory indicates that he was nonetheless able to make contacts with well-developed English institutions. As argued later in this volume by Caitlin Ellis (p. 365), neither Sveinn nor Cnut after him was concerned by the apparent conflict in establishing a church at home while attacking Christians abroad. Additional early connections to England are evident in the story of Sveinn’s death and burial in the Encomium Emmae Reginae. The anonymous author relates how the body of Sveinn was taken to Denmark for reburial by “quaedam matronarum Anglicarum” (a certain English matron).19 It is tempting to identify this unknown woman as Ælfgifu of Northampton, whom Cnut had married during his father’s English campaign.20 Ælfgifu would have had the right connections in both England and Denmark to carry out this act, but the evidence is no more than circumstantial. Whether she traveled with Sveinn’s body or not, she is likely to have left England, most likely for Denmark, soon after Sveinn’s death and its aftermath, the return of the English King Æthelred and the departure of

16 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 101 (II.xxxix, schol. 26 [27]). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 82. There are no entries for “Gotebald” (nor any for “Godb(e)ald,” “Geatb(e)ald,” “Geot(b(e)ald”) in the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England: http://pase.ac. uk/jsp/index.jsp. 17 Roesdahl, “Hvornår Blev Kirkerne Bygget?”; Cinthio, “Trinitatiskyrkan i Lund”; Carelli, “Lunds äldsta kyrkogård”; Spejlborg, “Anglo-Danish Connections and the Organisation of the Early Danish Church.” 18 Steen Jensen, Tusindtallets danske mønter, 22. 19 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.3). 20 Howard, Swein Forkbeard’s Invasions, 137, n. 75; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, 127; Bolton, “Ælfgifu of Northampton,” 259.

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the Danish fleet under the command of Cnut. At this point Ælfgifu would have been pregnant with Cnut’s child and may not have been safe in England.21 The Encomium Emmae further relates: Mittens ergo utrisque fratribus nuntium mandate corpus adresse paternum, ut hoc maturent suscipere, tumuloque quod sibi parauerat locare. Illi hilares adsunt, honorifice corpus suscipiunt, honor-ificentiusque illud in monasterio in honore Sanctae Trinitatis ab eodem rege constructo, in sepulchro quod sibi parauerat, recondunt. [Sending a messenger to the two brothers, she [the English matron] indicated that the body of their father was there, in order that they might hasten to receive it, and place it in the tomb which he had prepared for himself. They came gladly, and received the body with honour, and with yet more honour placed it in the monastery which the same king had built in honour of the Holy Trinity, in the sepulchre which he had prepared for himself.]22

Parts of this story correspond neatly with archaeological evidence from Lund. The first wooden church in town was the church of the Holy Trinity (also known as St. Drotten). This dedication, as well as the dedication of the likenamed church in Roskilde, mirrors the dedication of the royal church in Winchester.23 The successor of the wooden church in Lund, a stone church with signs of Anglo-Saxon influence, has been dated to the 1020s and linked to Cnut the Great and to his English bishop Bernhard.24 The burials associated with Lund’s church of the Holy Trinity have been dated to the period 994–1053 (±5 years).25 Adam of Bremen’s note on the appointment of an English bishop to Skåne,26 the evidence of an English moneyer in Lund,27 and the account of Sveinn’s burial given by the Encomiast, cast some light on the identity of others, besides the king, who may have been involved in these developments.

Contacts Around the Time of Cnut’s Conquest The event which would have had the most profound consequences for the Danish homelands, after the Danish conquest of England and Cnut Sveinsson’s

21 Bolton, “Ælfgifu of Northampton,” 260. 22 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.3). 23 See Ellis in this volume, p. 364. 24 Cinthio, “Trinitatiskyrkan i Lund,” 122. 25 Carelli, “Lunds äldsta kyrkogård,” 61. 26 The Chronicon Roskildense also contains a story of Sveinn appointing bishops and building churches in Skåne, although details differ: “Chronicon Roskildense,” VI. 27 See below, p. 347.

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accession to the English throne, was the disbanding of the Danish fleet in 1018. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that On þisum geare wæs þæt gafol gelæst ofer eall Angelcynn―þæt wæs ealles twa ⁊ hundseofonti þusend punda, butan þam þe seo burhwaru on Lundene geald, endlifte healf þusend punda. ⁊ se here þa ferde sum to Denmarcon, 7.xl. scypa belifon mid þam cynge Cnute.28 [In this year tribute was paid over all England, namely 72,000 pounds in all, apart from what the citizens of London paid, namely ten and a half thousand pounds. Then some of the army went to Denmark, and forty ships remained with King Cnut.]

As the Chronicle does not say how many ships left, nor how many ships had made up the original fleet, it is impossible to ascertain how large an influx of ships and men from England arrived in Denmark in the aftermath of 1018.29 Nevertheless, taking into account the size of Viking Age ships dating from this period and the general consensus that late Viking Age fleets would have been considerably larger than those of the earlier period, it is reasonable to suppose that Cnut’s fleet must have sailed with a significant number of people.30 Here the evidence of the runestones offers a rare insight into the deeds and minds of those who journeyed with the Danish kings to England and later returned home. Only four runestones mentioning England are located within the boundaries of medieval Denmark.31 One stands in Norway,32 the rest in Sweden (especially Uppland).33 This paucity can be partly explained by the differing practices of erecting runic monuments across Scandinavia, while it seems

28 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1018). 29 Various uncertainties have led to different estimates as to the size of late Viking Age ships and crews. Peter Sawyer has argued that the ships of Sveinn and Cnut could have been manned by a crew of at least sixty men. Simon Keynes has arrived at a figure of sixty-five men per ship and M. K. Lawson has assessed the ships to have carried approximately eighty rowers and one steersman Naval historian N. A. M. Rodger has arrived at a figure of approximately one hundred men on average per ship. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings, 131–32; Lawson, “The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld,” 721–38; Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred “the Unready,” 225; Rodger, “Cnut’s Geld and the Size of Danish Ships,” 401–2. 30 Williams, The Viking Ship, 63; Bill, “Roskilde 6”; Crumlin-Pedersen and Olsen, The Skuldelev Ships; Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings, 131–32. 31 Jacobsen and Moltke, Danmarks Runeindskrifter, DR 3, DR 6, DR 266, DR 337. 32 Olsen, Norges Innskrifter med de yngre Runer, N 184. 33 Söderberg, Sveriges Runinskrifter, U 194, U 241, U 344, U 504, U 539, U 616, U 668, U 812, U 978, U 1181, Sö 14, Sö 46, Sö 53, Sö 55, Sö 62, Sö 83, Sö 106, Sö 137, Sö 159, Sö 160, Sö 164, Sö 166, Sö 173, Sö 207, Sö 260, Sö 319, Vs 5, Vs 9, Vs 18, Gs 8, Ög 68, Ög 83, Ög 104, Ög 111, Ög Fv1950;341, Ög Fv1970;310, Vg 20, Vg 61, Vg 187, Vg 197, Sm 5, Sm 27, Sm 29, Sm 51, Sm 77, Sm 101, Sm 104, G 370.

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plausible that people did travel from and return to Denmark, and that their experiences must have been similar to those commemorated in runic inscriptions from Sweden.34 It is generally agreed that runic monuments were a sign of social and economic status, and that both the sponsors and the commemorated were economically independent landholders.35 As such, they were in an excellent position to bring elements of their English experience home to influence life at the homestead. The most famous of the English runestones is located in Yttergärde, Uppland, in Sweden. The inscription reads: “in ulfr hafiR o| |onklati ‘ þru kialt| | takat þit uas fursta þis tusti ka-t ‘ þ(a) – – (þ)urktil ‘ þa kalt knutr” (And Ulf has taken three payments in England. That was the first that Tosti paid. Then Thorkell paid. Then Cnut paid).36 Wherever a warrior like Ulf went and settled, the payment he took must have had an impact, otherwise the impetus for leaving home in the first place disappears. The arrival of an individual, most often a young man, with a large amount of silver is likely to have shifted the social and economic balance in a given area ― either through purchases of land, through increased trading activity, or through marriage contracts that demanded a sizable dowry or bride price. It is likely that, for many of the people who traveled to England with Cnut or other leaders, the journey became a mark of their identity. A good example of this is found on a stone raised by and for Alli in Väsby, Uppland: “al|i| |l|it raisa stain þino| |oftiR sik sialfan ‘ hon tuk| |knuts kialt a| |anklanti ‘ kuþ hialbi hons ant” (Alli had this stone raised in memory of himself. He took Cnut’s payment in England. May God help his spirit).37 It is clear that Alli wanted to be remembered as a man who had traveled to England with Cnut the Great. If those who returned home from the English campaigns wanted to be remembered in death for their participation there, it is reasonable to argue that they may also have wished to mark themselves in life.

Contacts Linked to the Travels of Cnut It is important, however, to keep in mind that not all of those who joined Cnut’s fleet returned to Scandinavia. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that forty ships

34 35 36 37

Moltke, Runes and their Origin, 184. Sawyer, The Viking-Age Rune-Stones, 69, 92. U 344. U 194.

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stayed with the king, and more men are likely to have stayed in England and received land there.38 These people do not, on the face of it, appear to have made an impact in Denmark, but it is evident that Anglo-Danish settlers in England are likely to have kept in close contact with people and places at home.39 Most prominent of the people who traveled back and forth is, of course, Cnut himself. Although he spent most of his time in England, Cnut visited Denmark on at least three occasions during his reign in England, usually at times of unrest. The first was in 1019, when he was presumably elected king. It was on this occasion that he traveled to Viborg with what appears to have been a large Anglo-Danish retinue.40 Cnut may also have returned to Denmark in 1022–1023, to deal with a threat from his most prominent earl, Thorkell the Tall,41 and again in 1026 on a visit which concluded with the Battle of Holy River, from where he went straight to Rome. Having returned to England from Rome in 1027, King Cnut visited Denmark a third time in 1028 in connection with the campaign against Óláfr Haraldsson. With the exception of the 1022–1023 visit, these journeys are recorded in letters sent by Cnut to his English subjects.42 Despite their political importance, it is difficult to assess whether Cnut’s visits to Denmark had any lasting impact on a cultural level. The king would have arrived with a retinue and an army, and thus it is possible that the splendor of the great Anglo-Danish king and his people influenced the style and tastes of the local elite; it may be argued, indeed, that the taste for Anglo-Saxon styles evident in the archaeological material could be linked to these movements. Most important here are a number of swords and various pieces of riding gear, which have been ascribed to an Anglo-Scandinavian warrior milieu. Whereas most riding equipment of previous centuries was made of iron, harness-fittings of cast copper alloy appear from ca. 1000. This is a development observed on both sides of the North Sea, and the decorated stirrups, cheek-pieces, and strap mounts suggests a shared Anglo-Scandinavian warrior culture. Most finds are located in the Limfjord area, the first stop for fleets arriving in Denmark from England, with further distribution along the sea route to Sjælland and Skåne. Further examples are known from Sweden and Norway and a few from northern Germany. The very high proportion and density of finds around the Limfjord may be the result of a

38 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, s.a. 1018. 39 For a similar argument in the earlier Viking period see Abrams, “Diaspora and Identity in the Viking Age.” 40 See Jesper Hjermind in this volume, pp. 321–31, “Vuiberg hic coronatur rex dacie.” 41 It is possible that it was on this journey that Cnut brought along his most prominent England earl, Godwine. Vita Ædwardi Regis (I.i.); Simon Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 72–73. 42 Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, 273–77 (Cnut, 1020, and Cnut, 1027).

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particularly active modern metal detecting community in that region. On the other hand, the general distribution of finds along the major sea routes between east and west appears to reflect actual patterns of transmission. While some of the pieces are finely made, on many the details seem poorly executed, and the numbers in which they have been found in England suggest that these were not exclusively elite items. Instead of communicating a specific socioeconomic status, it is more likely that they signalled the ownership of a specific group with connections and activities on both sides of the North Sea.43 It is a reasonable assumption that this was a group of warriors associated with King Cnut, especially as the style of many of these objects points to southern England, an area closely connected with Cnut.44 The finer artefacts might then be associated with the men closest to the Anglo-Danish king, such as his earls and housecarls, while the lesser pieces may well have belonged to people who had joined the king’s fleets and subsequently settled in England or returned home.45 The number and relative short duration of Cnut’s visits to Denmark should not mask the fact that the king was highly involved with Denmark and played an active role in bringing English experts, customs, and techniques to his homeland, including in the fields of Church and economy.46 The appointment by Sveinn of the bishop Gotebald in ca. 999 has already been mentioned. Sveinn’s ecclesiastical policies were continued by Cnut, whose reign provided new conditions for the transfer of ecclesiastical personnel from England to Denmark. According to Adam of Bremen, Cnut appointed three English bishops to Denmark in around 1020–1022: Victor Chnut ab Anglia rediens, in ditione sua per multos annos regnum Daniae possedit et Angliae. Quo tempore episcopos ab Anglia multos adduxit in Daniam. De quibus Bernardum posuit in Sconiam, Gerbrandum in Seland, Reginbertum in Fune. [Cnut returned victorious from England and for many years held in his power the kingdoms of Denmark and England. At that time, he introduced many bishops from England into Denmark. Of these he placed Bernhard over Skåne, Gerbrand over Sjælland, Reginbert over Fyn.]47

43 Pedersen, “Riding Gear from late Viking-Age Denmark.” 44 Pedersen, “Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea,” 47–55. 45 Pedersen, “Riding Gear from Late Viking-Age Denmark,” 133–60. 46 Abrams, “The Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia,” 226–27; Jørgensen, Fremmed Indflydelse. 47 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 115 (II.lv). Translation after Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 93.

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From the way Adam phrases this episode, it seems that Bernhard, Gerbrand, and Reginbert were not the only bishops brought from England by Cnut, but rather three among many. As it was not in Adam’s interest to exaggerate the interference of other powers in what he saw as the rightful province of the Hamburg-Bremen see, we might trust his word on this. It is also possible to identify at least one other bishop who was trained in England and appointed to a Danish see in the time of Cnut, namely Odinkar in the see of Ribe.48 Outside the Church, and in addition to Anglo-Saxon coins making their way across the North Sea as the result of Danegeld or trade, Scandinavians in the late Viking period took to the minting of Anglo-Saxon imitative coinages (that is, coins struck in Scandinavia but closely imitating English models, and sometimes including the names of English kings). From the tenth century onwards, coindies were transported from England to Scandinavia and a number of extensive die-chains link English and Scandinavian mints into large networks.49 With the dies came English moneyers, and Danish coins dated to the period ca. 995–1085 name close to ninety moneyers whose names are English or can in some way be linked to England.50 A pen-case lid ornamented in Winchester style found in Lund and featuring the inscription “Leofwine me fecit” (Leofwine made me) has been interpreted as the possession of one such moneyer.51 The moneyers were largely associated with the emerging urban centres of Denmark and the development of some of these towns themselves appears to be closely linked to the reign of Cnut and the connections across the North Sea. Most notable are Viborg, Roskilde, and Lund: all were church centres with strong royal connections and well-established trading links.52 In Lund, Viborg, Lejre, and Roskilde, archaeologists have found pottery of the Torksey and Stamford-ware types.53 Petrological analysis of the fragments found in Lund and Lejre has shown that these were not imports from England, but pots produced

48 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 96–97 (II.xxxvi and schol. 25). 49 Gunnarsson, “Myntstamp från Lincoln”; Malmer, The Anglo-Scandinavian Coinage ca. 995–1020; Blackburn, “English Dies Used in the Scandinavian Imitative Coinages”; Steen Jensen, Tusindtallets danske mønter. 50 Hauberg, Myntforhold og Udmyntninger i Danmark indtil 1146; Spejlborg, “There and Back Again,” 182–97. 51 Okasha, “An Inscribed Anglo-Saxon Lid from Lund,” 181–83; Pedersen, “Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea,” 59. 52 Viborg is a special case with significant links to Cnut the Great and his journey to Denmark ca. 1019. See Iversen, Robinson, Hjermind, and Christensen, Viborg Søndersø 1018–1030; Roesdahl, “English Connections in the Time of Knut the Great”; Hjermind, “Vuiberg hic coronatur rex dacie,” in this volume. 53 Ulriksen, “Fremmed indflydelse i vikingetid og tidlig middelalder,” 107–8.

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from local clay, which must therefore have been produced in Denmark.54 In Viborg, local ware with Torksey style decorations has been identified.55 Whether the craftsmen were English settlers in Denmark or Danes who had learned the craft in England and brought it back home is unknown, but the Stamford-ware of early medieval Denmark is clear evidence for the movement of people from England to Denmark at the lower levels of society. These may have traveled as part of the households of members of the elite (possibly English bishops and moneyers), or made their way to Denmark of their own accord. Lund, Roskilde, and Viborg housed a significantly higher number of parish churches than other early Danish towns: Viborg had thirteen, Roskilde fourteen, and Lund twenty-two. In comparison, Ribe and Schleswig had between six and eight, while Aarhus, Odense, and Aalborg each had only three. This disparity has been ascribed to a higher degree of English influence in Lund, Roskilde, and Viborg, and has been compared to the case of York, Norwich, and London, towns which had forty-seven, fifty-six, and more than one hundred churches respectively.56 This hypothesis is supported by the case of St. Clement’s Church (now Skt. Jørgensbjerg) in Roskilde. Below the present-day church, dated to ca. 1070–1120, archaeologists have excavated the remains of the foundations of an older church.57 A small coin hoard found in the foundations has been dated to the period 1029–1035.58 The building consequently falls firmly within the reign of Cnut the Great, and is the earliest example of masonry found in Denmark. The church, moreover, exhibits clear architectural links with Anglo-Saxon England; the building techniques and decorations are so close to contemporary English styles that the church must have been built by English masons.59

Anglo-Danish Settlers Returning Home As demonstrated above, while the presence and actions of an Anglo-Danish king were certainly important for the transfer of English influence to Denmark, other actors were involved as well. At the highest level of society, just below the king,

54 Christensen, “Early Glazed Ware from Medieval Denmark,” 67–76; Roesdahl, “English Connections in the Time of Knut the Great.” 55 Rasmussen and Hjermind, “Bestemmelse af proveniens,” 429. 56 Nyborg, “Kirke og sogn i højmiddelalderens by,” 124–46. 57 Olsen, St. Jørgensbjærg Kirke, 34. 58 Steen Jensen, Tusindtallets danske mønter, 38. 59 Olsen, St. Jørgensbjærg Kirke, 1–31. On the range and importance of St. Clement in Cnut’s dominions, see Crawford in this volume, pp. 431–57.

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the written material reveals cases in which men with significant experience in England were appointed as earls in Denmark. In 1023 Cnut entrusted Denmark to Thorkell the Tall, a man who had been a significant player in English politics for more than ten years.60 It is generally assumed that Thorkell was married to an Englishwoman of high birth, perhaps even of royal blood, who was the widow either of Ulfcytel of East Anglia, or of Eadric Streona.61 Thorkell must also have been in possession of a large household, perhaps including a household priest, as well as a military following. Many of these may have followed him to Denmark. In addition, one of Cnut’s sons was at least promised to Thorkell’s care.62 Thorkell is thus an example of a powerful magnate with significant English experience who settled in Denmark with an Anglo-Danish following. Thorkell’s place of settlement in Denmark is unknown, although his family probably came from Skåne. As the regent of Denmark he is likely, in any case, to have traveled widely within the kingdom. However, it is possible to speculate that some of the strong English influence which is evident in the early Danish towns could be related to Thorkell, just as aspects of the English influence in Roskilde have been connected to the presence there of Úlfr, who had replaced Thorkell by 1026. Úlfr was married to Cnut’s sister Ástríðr or Estrith, and before his appointment in Denmark Úlfr had been in England: Adam of Bremen names him “dux Angliae.”63 It seems as though Úlfr had some English experience, and his place in the Anglo-Danish network is likely to have been similar to Thorkell’s. In 1026 Úlfr was killed on the orders of Cnut for his role in a plot against the king at the battle of Holy River.64 The Chronicon Roskildense recounts that the murder took place in the church in Roskilde when Úlfr was attending matins, adding that Estrith gave her husband an honorable funeral and then had the old wooden church replaced with a new one built in stone.65 For this job she is likely to have called on English masons;

60 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 104 (s.a. 1023). 61 “Supplement to Jómsvíkinga Saga (Appendix IV),” in Encomium, ed. Campbell, 92–93; Chronicon ex chronicis, by John of Worcester, II, ed. Darlington and McGurk, s.a. 1009. See also Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 56, n. 57. 62 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 104 (s.a. 1023). See further Bolton in this volume, pp. 477–81. 63 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 114 (II.liv). Ulf witnessed at least one Charter of Cnut in England: see Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 984. He is also listed among the attestations of S 980 (dated 1021×1023) and S 981 (no date), but both of these are of questionable authenticity. Indeed, S 980 may have been modeled on S 984. 64 Lund, “Cnut’s Danish Kingdom,” 37. 65 “Chronicon Roskildense,” VII.

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her church must have been – or must have been closely connected to – St. Clement’s Church (now Skt. Jørgensbjerg) in Roskilde.66 Alongside the movements of king, earls, and their respective retinues from England to Denmark, other members of the Anglo-Danish elite moved independently. Some of these were Danes who had settled in England but were unsuccessful as landholders there and decided to return home. Two such unfortunates are encountered in the Ramsey Chronicle, compiled ca. 1170: on at least two occasions, Bishop Æthelric of Dorchester was able to buy land back from Danes who had received it from Cnut after the conquest. According to the chronicle, these Danes left England out of fear, and in one case the background story is provided. The Danish landholder, who had previously married an English widow of property, treated his English workers so badly that they opposed him and he became afraid for his life.67 The Ramsey Chronicle does not specify the destination of the exile, but given that all the events described took place before Bishop Æthelric’s death in 1034, and given that the man in question is called a Dane, it seems likely that he returned to his homeland. Whether he brought his English wife and (part of) his Anglo-Danish household home with him is more uncertain, but he, and others like him, are likely to have carried new knowledge, technology, customs, and materials from England to Denmark. One of the areas in which people arriving in Denmark from England during the eleventh century could have been active was as founders of early proprietary churches in Denmark, in rural as well as urban environments. They and their networks would have been excellent channels for English influence on Denmark, in such areas as church foundations and the cults of saints.68 The returned settlers, from the earls to the middle- and lower-ranking landholders, together with their households, may also account for some of the personal ornaments of AngloSaxon and Anglo-Danish style of varying quality found in Denmark. The larger part of Cnut’s men who were granted land in England had settled in the south and east of the country, which corresponds well with the source distribution patterns for the Anglo-Danish jewelry finds in Denmark.69 The fact that these finds include not only a number of fine enamel brooches, but much simpler dress ornaments as well, some in the form of hooked-tags of copper-alloy, demonstrates that connections to England were not entirely limited to the warrior class.70 These artefacts may be connected to similar examples from East Anglia and the

66 Olsen, St. Jørgensbjærg Kirke. See further Crawford in this volume, pp. 445–47, 453–54. 67 Chronicon abbatiae Rameseiensis, ed. Macray, 75–77 (III). 68 Spejlborg, “Anglo-Danish Connections and the Organisation of the Early Danish Church”; Spejlborg, “There and Back Again.” 69 See above and Pedersen, “Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea,” 56–59. 70 Roesdahl, “Denmark-England in the Eleventh Century,” 18.

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south-east of England.71 The enamel brooches may have been trade objects catering for the taste of the Anglo-Danish elite in Denmark. They are unlikely to have been locally produced. The detailed knowledge, intensive workmanship, and specialized skills needed for this type of work means that late Viking Age cloisonné enamel brooches in Denmark are all considered to be imports.72 As in the case of Scandinavian brooches found in England, it is worth contemplating whether these were objects of trade or whether they arrived in Denmark on the garments of a traveler.73 While the enamel brooches are evidence of elite exchange, the humbler copper-, tin-, and lead-alloy ornaments relate to lower socioeconomic strata, and thus mirror the finds of riding gear.

Conclusion: Anglo-Danes in Denmark For a time during the first half of the eleventh century, Anglo-Saxon objects, styles, and technologies entered Denmark. This influence was linked to the elite, and most likely to people connected with King Cnut. The potters working in Viborg, Roskilde, and Lund are the obvious exception, but lead-glazed pottery was not for everyone; the contacts that brought these people to Denmark must have been controlled by the higher levels of society. Similarly, the lower-standard jewelry was most likely either the result of a trickle-down effect affecting fashion in certain areas of Denmark, or they were the possessions of lower-status people who had arrived with those of higher status. The fact that much of the archaeological evidence found in Denmark has counterparts in England and is interpreted as belonging to one group points to an active network spanning the North Sea, whose actors displayed a specific Anglo-Danish (or Anglo-Scandinavian) culture. The textual evidence for the impact of Cnut’s English reign in Denmark is scanty and fragmented. Nevertheless, when compared with the growing quantity of archaeological evidence, it does afford us some insights into how the English elements found on Danish soil ended up where they did. To paraphrase Olsen, there is a light in the darkness that catches the eye of anyone trying to gauge the impact of the Viking activities in England on the Danish homelands. The period surrounding Cnut’s conquest of England was the most intense for English contacts in Denmark. This is evident in the number and variety of people who traveled

71 Pedersen, “Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea,” 56–58. 72 Pedersen, “Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea,” 56–58. 73 On Scandinavian metalwork in England, see Kershaw, Viking Identities; Kershaw, “Culture and Gender in the Danelaw,” 299.

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across the North Sea: the members of Cnut’s army who returned to Scandinavia after the successful campaign; the earls who had interests and positions on both sides in both England and Denmark; and the people who initially settled in England but later returned home. The travels of many of these individuals would have led to the movement of other people, including wives, retinues, servants, and more. Through the written sources, it is possible to follow the movements of people, some named, others unknown, back and forth across the North Sea. Just as the policies of Cnut drew on the traditions of both Denmark and England,74 the links between these people created a network of Anglo-Danish contacts which formed the channels through which goods, ideas, and technologies moved freely across the North Sea. Although the network centered around Cnut, who was instrumental in its manifestation, the developments seen in Denmark at this time, and reflected in the archaeological record, cannot be explained by the king alone. This was a collective effort. In addition, his period saw the intensification, and perhaps formalization, of some of the connections which had been initiated by his father Sveinn Forkbeard, such as the employment of English moneyers and ecclesiastics in Denmark. Similarly, the reign of Cnut laid the foundation for Anglo-Danish contact during later periods. It was at this time that many families of Danish and English origin were joined through intermarriage. A number of Danish settlers who had received land from Cnut were later to return home, and the forty ships which had remained with Cnut in England formed a force which would continue to diminish across the following decades, as ships and crews slowly returned to Denmark. These were people with considerable English experience and connections that helped to extend the English presence and influence in Denmark long beyond the reign of Cnut the Great.

74 See Ellis in this volume, 355–78.

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Map B: Denmark, Norway, Sweden in Cnut’s reign (1016–1035).

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Chapter 16 Cnut’s Ecclesiastical Policy in the Context of His English and Danish Predecessors The abiding stereotype of the Vikings has been of pagan warriors who were ignorant of, and hostile to, Christianity.1 This simplistic view, influenced by the rhetoric of writings from those being attacked by raiders, does not take into account developments over time or the fact that Christianity could be attractive or useful to some Scandinavians, particularly rulers. There has been increasing scholarly recognition that the Christianization of Scandinavia was a long process, involving the gradual build-up of familiarity with Christianity – which resonates with some of the arguments below – through general contact and trade with Christians as well as through missionary activity. The focus has usually been on the conversion itself rather than on the establishment of church institutions. Debate has centered on the different influences on Christianization, whether from the continent, especially the see of Hamburg-Bremen, or from England, or from native impetus. The reality was that all these influences and factors played a role. Overall, as scholarship on the kingship of Cnut has traditionally either been somewhat Anglocentric or somewhat Scandinavia-centric, some increased communication between the two fields is desirable – the same can also be said of scholarship on his relations with the Church specifically. Some of the major works are discussed below. This chapter aims to view this aspect of Cnut’s reign holistically, since national biases can give us only a partial, incomplete, picture. Such a divide can also be detected in the surviving sources, since the AngloSaxon Chronicle and the Encomium Emmae Reginae emphasize Cnut’s model Christian kingship, whereas Norse sources, particularly skaldic verse, depict him as a traditional Scandinavian ruler. There has also been an understandable trend in the scholarship for biographies of individual kings; this chapter will place Cnut in the broader context of his predecessors. It will also provide an overview of his relations with the Church, where others have focused on individual aspects (for example, Cnut’s patronage of manuscript production).

1 The author would like to thank Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli, Fraser McNair, Levi Roach, Simon Keynes, and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-017

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Cnut and the Church: Research Overview The reputation of Cnut, king of England and Denmark, as an ecclesiastical patron in England, following the West Saxon model, is vividly exemplified by the image of him in the Liber Vitae of the New Minster at Winchester, which echoes that of King Edgar in the earlier New Minster Charter (see Figure 10.2). According to Timothy Bolton, “more evidence of Cnut’s interaction with the English Church survives than for any other King of Anglo-Saxon England,” and historians have had to account for this somehow.2 These historians generally fall into two camps, as will be discussed below. Both camps have largely focused on Cnut’s gifts to the Church and his symbolic gestures towards Christianity. He also displayed an interest in church organization in both England and Denmark.3 I will consider Cnut’s forays into ecclesiastical matters, beginning with the roots of his own Christianity, and proceeding to discuss three key points that structured the Church in his domains. These are, first, Cnut’s relations with bishops, which partly continued his father’s policy, with a case study on Orkney and a particular bishop; second, the patronage and manipulation of saints’ cults; and third and last, the discourse of Christian kingship in terms of Cnut’s apparent lack of engagement with the penitential tradition, which was so visible in Æthelred’s reign. Perhaps understandably, studies focusing on pre-Conquest England have rarely delved into Scandinavian matters and sources in depth, whereas, likewise, studies on Scandinavia that encompass Cnut have seldom fully appreciated the English dimension to his reign.4 This division of interest can impede scholarly attempts to assess the influences on Cnut’s kingship and his Christianity. In the following, I shall contextualize aspects of Cnut’s reign more fully by drawing comparisons with previous kings of both Denmark and England. In so doing, I will correct some perhaps old-fashioned views of Cnut.

2 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 77. 3 Abrams, “Conversion of the Scandinavians of Dublin,” 27–28. 4 Lawson’s Cnut: The Danes in England is strong on England, but less so on the Scandinavian context. Indeed, as Jesch notes, the very subtitle (The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century) of (the first edition of) this book implies that “Cnut’s reign was merely a blip in the otherwise orderly progress of English history” (Jesch, Review of The Reign of Cnut, by Rumble, 272). (The book’s subtitle in its later edition, England’s Viking King, seems to wish to alleviate this impression.) Jesch laments further that Rumble’s edited volume The Reign of Cnut (1994) did not include a contribution by a saga specialist and more broadly emphasizes that Norse texts have a contribution to make to the Anglo-Scandinavian field (Review of The Reign of Cnut, by Rumble, 274). In response to Jesch’s review, the next major study of the Anglo-Danish king, Bolton’s Empire of Cnut, was stronger on the Scandinavian side. Bolton’s chapter in this volume, especially pp. 463–71, surveys the historiographical traditions, as well as the history of Scandinavian source criticism on Cnut.

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Some scholarship in the twentieth century, now outdated, viewed Cnut as a king who was not far from being a hapless heathen and allowed himself to be molded by others into an acceptable Christian monarch. According to Frank Stenton, Cnut’s “relations with his bishop and abbots were those of a pupil towards the teachers who had introduced him to the mysteries of a civilization higher than his own.”5 He alleges further that “[a]s a reward for his obedience to their teaching, [Cnut’s] rule in England came to be regarded through a haze of kindly tradition.”6 Many scholars have attributed Cnut’s Christian kingship to the influence of Wulfstan, archbishop of York. For example, Dorothy Bethurum claimed that the “young barbarian . . . put himself under Wulfstan’s tutelage.”7 Frank Barlow even argued that the level of Cnut’s gift-giving decreased after the death of Wulfstan in 1023,8 although Bolton has robustly and convincingly denied this.9 Some have claimed that Lyfing, archbishop of Canterbury at the start of Cnut’s reign, was as influential as Wulfstan.10 The credit for Cnut’s patronage has gone not only to churchmen, however. Cnut’s wife, Emma of Normandy, has also been seen to have guided him in this area.11 In considering gifts of de luxe manuscripts to churches, Heslop suggests that Cnut would have understood the benefit of showy munificence, “since distribution of treasure among adherents was a common enough practice in the Viking world,” but that the “religious dimension is more likely to have been his wife’s contribution to the policy.”12 Emma’s Norman descent is apparently considered to imbue her automatically with the appropriate Christian credentials. These figures certainly played their parts in Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy, and notably Wulfstan, who shaped Cnut’s law codes. However, one might find it difficult to imagine the hardened warrior Cnut – the man who had eliminated untrustworthy figures such as Eadric Streona – being cowed by clerics, or indeed by his wife, into compliance. In more recent scholarship an alternative view of the background to Cnut’s ecclesiastical patronage has emerged. In 1993 M. K. Lawson initiated the case that church patronage was useful to Cnut for political ends.13 Bolton, in 2009, drew attention to ways in which Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy reinforced his authority on a regional basis, undercut his enemies or curried favor

5 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 411. 6 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 412. 7 Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, 63–64. 8 Barlow, English Church, 41. 9 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 77–80. 10 Brooks, Church of Canterbury, 287–88; Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 128–29. 11 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 128–29. 12 Heslop, “Production of de luxe Manuscripts,” 180. 13 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 117–60.

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where appropriate.14 It is notable, though, that a certain extra degree of cynicism is applied by some to Cnut’s church patronage, who imply that his belief was not genuine and his gifts to the Church were motivated only by cunning in order to secure his own position. While we can never look directly into the mind of a medieval person and in so doing accurately assess the sincerity of their faith, the same cynicism is not so often applied to Cnut’s West Saxon predecessors, such as Edgar. If we assume that Cnut’s only motivation for church patronage was political scheming, we should perhaps also extend this assumption to other English monarchs. A prime example of this is King Edgar (r. 957–975), famously a patron of monastic reform, whose reign witnessed a proliferation of Benedictine houses. The reform in England had a particularly strong royal involvement, in comparison to the contemporary Continent, where there was a greater degree of aristocratic participation.15 The Regularis Concordia, composed during Edgar’s reign, states that royal approval should be sought in abbatial elections and that prayers for the king and queen should be offered frequently.16 The Fens, the marshlands of eastern England, was one of the areas with the largest number of Benedictine monasteries during Edgar’s reign;17 it seems likely that the king wanted to extend his own influence into the fenland area where his dynasty held little land. Religious foundations looked to the king for gifts and wealth as well as for protection, and the king might expect them to take heed of his wishes in return. As George Molyneaux observes, in the latter half of the tenth century large tracts of land had been taken from powerful lay individuals and given to institutions which were often connected to the West Saxon royal house, strengthening royal control in particular areas.18 Although it might not have been his primary motivation, in the process of promoting the monastic reform movement Edgar was definitely strengthening his allies financially. With the kingdom of England newly coalescing, English reform was also more concerned with standardizing practice than its Continental counterpart at the time. In the words of Levi Roach, English reform offered “a blueprint for unity; it

14 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 106. Since then, and since the research for this chapter was carried out, Bolton has argued that Cnut was “most probably a devout Christian” who also made use of relics in England, including on the battlefield (Bolton, Cnut the Great, 209; for relics see 87–89, 108–9). 15 Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 39. 16 Regularis Concordia, ed. and trans. Symons, viii, ix, x, xvii, xix, xxi, xxiv, xxv, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxvii, 74–76, 81–82, 83, 84, 86, 90, 91–92, 93. 17 Molyneaux, Formation of the English Kingdom, 175. 18 Molyneaux, Formation of the English Kingdom, 175.

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provided an ideological underpinning for administrative centralization.”19 A monarch steeped in a centuries-long tradition of Christianity, such as Edgar, could be just as likely to benefit from aspects of his ecclesiastical policy as a new conqueror, such as Cnut, from a less Christianized land. Thus, although these two views of Cnut in his religious dealings – the clueless pagan steered by others or the skillful politician feigning piety to further his own goals – are at extremes, they both, maybe unconsciously, owe something to the implicit perception of Cnut, and perhaps of Scandinavians more generally, as heathens. Indeed, in an otherwise excellent book, produced after the turn of the second millennium, Mary Frances Giandrea repeatedly and inexplicably makes this assumption. Referring to Cnut as “the former pagan,” she claims that, “as a recent convert to Christianity, Cnut was starting from scratch.”20 Furthermore, she asserts somewhat dramatically that “[a]s an outsider, and more importantly, a recently converted pagan, Cnut could have been a disaster.”21 It is unclear upon what evidence she is basing this assumption of Cnut’s previous paganism. Admittedly, at least one of Cnut’s contemporaries had apparently assumed him to be a pagan. In the 1020s, Fulbert of Chartres wrote to the king that “te quem paganorum principem audieramus, non modo Christianum, uerum etiam erga ecclesias atque Dei seruos benignissmum largitorem agnoscimus” (you, whom we had heard to be a pagan prince, we now know to be not only a Christian, but also a most generous donor to churches and God’s servants).22 Cnut had proved his piety through his donation to Chartres and other institutions. Modern historians should likewise weigh up the evidence for Cnut’s commitment to Christianity. Given the decades of Christianity in Denmark, there may be a note of humor in Fulbert here, but whether it is humor or a genuine misapprehension, his statement surely derives from the stereotype of pagan Northmen.

Haraldr Bluetooth, Sveinn Forkbeard, and Cnut’s Christian Roots Cnut was in fact a third-generation Christian. The details of his matrilineal heritage are uncertain, due to the terseness of the historical record on the subject,

19 Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 40. 20 Giandrea, Episcopal Culture, 53 and 58. 21 Giandrea, Episcopal Culture, 58. 22 Letters and Poems of Fulbert, ed. Behrends, 66–69 (no. 37). See Gelting, “Un Évêque danois,” for further discussion, also on the letter’s date.

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but Cnut’s mother, a Polish princess, was presumably a Christian. She is mentioned briefly by the author of the Encomium Emmae Reginae, by Adam of Bremen in his Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum and by Thietmar of Merseburg in his Chronicon (see later Morawiec, pp. 419–24, and Gazzoli, pp. 410–11). Although we have little reliable information about Cnut’s mother, and cannot even be certain of her name, there is general agreement that she was a daughter of Mieszko I (ca. 960–992), founder of the Piast dynasty.23 Mieszko’s own baptism, along with that of much of his court, probably in 966, is seen as a major turning point in the Christianization of Poland.24 There is more evidence for Christianity on the patrilineal side. Cnut’s grandfather, Haraldr blátǫnn (“Bluetooth”) Gormsson, had been the first ruling Danish king to be converted to Christianity, in the 960s.25 He famously claimed to have converted his people on the Jelling stone, referring to himself as “sa | haraltr [:] ias: sąʀ · uan · tanmaurk ala · auknuruiakaukt(a)ni(karþi)kristną” (that Haraldr who won the whole of Denmark for himself, and Norway, and made the Danes Christian).26 This inscription was not his only symbolically Christian gesture. Haraldr moved his father Gormr’s remains to the new and impressive 30 m by 14 m wooden church constructed at Jelling to give him a Christian rather than pagan burial. Haraldr also minted Cross pennies – the first overtly Christian Danish coinage – most likely at the emporium of Haithabu (or Hedeby) in ca. 975/980.27 This short-lived issue represents a clear effort to proclaim Denmark’s status as an independent, Christian land. Given the brief appearance of this coinage, it might seem that it was issued in reaction to the German invasion of Otto II in 973. Such an impetus to reaffirm Christianity and political sovereignty might be seen to take its inspiration from the maxim provided by St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:17: “and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”28 Conversion had previously been used as an excuse for invasion, for example by Charlemagne when converting Saxons and Frisians. However, the threat of invasion facing the Danes has often been overestimated: Thietmar’s account of Otto’s invasion seems to describe something more like a border 23 Morawiec, “Liðsmannaflokkr,” 107. 24 See Urbańczyk and Rosik, “Poland,” 263 and 275–76. 25 In 826 the Danish Harald “Klak,” while in exile for a second time, had been baptized at Mainz, prompted by Louis the Pious, who became his godfather. Despite support from Louis, Harald did not succeed in regaining the Danish throne, but was expelled by the sons of Godfrid the following year. 26 Moltke, Runes and their Origin, 207. 27 Moesgaard, King Harold’s Coinage, 101–5. 28 Discussed with reference to Old Norse literature by Weber, in “Irreligiosität und Heldenzeitalter” and “Intellegere historiam,” and extended to Flateyjarbók by Rowe, in Development of Flateyjarbók, 188–99.

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skirmish, while Denmark seems to have been low on the list of foreign-policy priorities for the Ottonian emperors.29 Jens Christian Moesgaard suggests that the purpose behind the production of Haraldr’s Cross coinage was to pay the troops and secure the support of magnates across the country; perhaps this accounts for the widespread distribution of the coinage during his construction program to create a new, stronger military infrastructure.30 For the present discussion, it is more significant that Haraldr chose to embrace the Christian imagery and ideology of kingship. There is thus tangible evidence of Cnut’s Christian heritage. However, even if he had been born a pagan of pagan ancestors, he would not have been as unfamiliar with Christianity as is implied by some of the interpretations cited above, which suggest that other people had to steer him towards proper Christian kingship. Before he gained the throne in 1016, Cnut had already spent some time in England; on his first appearance in English history he was left in command of the fleet and hostages at Gainsborough in the absence of his father Sveinn tjúguskegg (“Forkbeard”) Haraldsson.31 Furthermore, England had had a notable influence on Christianity in Scandinavia itself from the outset.32 For over two centuries Scandinavians themselves had been traveling back and forth between Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland, Frankia, Normandy, and Brittany. Thereby they could not have failed to amass a basic knowledge of the Christian church, regardless of whether they were converted or not. Adam of Bremen’s account of Sveinn Forkbeard’s accession, by which he takes the throne from his father Haraldr as part of a pagan uprising, may have influenced this misperception of both Sveinn and, by extension, his son Cnut. Adam relates that Sveinn led a great persecution of the Christians in Denmark.33 His account is prejudiced throughout against Sveinn, referring to this king’s “crudelitate ac perfidia” (cruelty and perfidy).34 It was influential in the portrayal of Sveinn in later sources too, particularly Sven Aggesen’s Brevis historia regum Dacie and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum, which drew on Adam for information. While Sveinn may have succeeded his father as a result of a rebellion, the motivations for such a rebellion were highly unlikely to have been theological. There is no other evidence for a pagan reaction resulting in an official end to Christianity in Denmark.35 Furthermore, even Adam has to admit that Sveinn did become a Christian later in his reign, when

29 Gazzoli, Review of King Harold’s Cross Coinage, edited by Moesgaard, 7. 30 Moesgaard, King Harold’s Coinage, 102–3. 31 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 70 (s.a. 1013); (E), trans. Swanton, 143 (s.a. 1013). 32 See Abrams, “Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia.” 33 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 91 (II.xxvii). 34 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 91 (II.xxvii). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 75. 35 Gelting, “Kingdom of Denmark,” 83.

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“reversus in semetipsum peccata sua pre oculis habuit penitensque oravit ad Dominum” (returning to himself, he considered his sins and in contrition prayed to the Lord.)36 Adam attributes Sveinn’s change of heart to his suffering a series of defeats at the hands of the Swedes, events for which there is no corroborating evidence; at the time that Adam claims Sveinn was vanquished and in exile, he was leading Viking attacks on England, and was thus strong enough to entrust his Danish kingdom to others. It seems that Adam is forced to acknowledge Sveinn’s (renewed) Christianity in his narrative just when he is about to relate Sveinn’s victory at the Battle of Svǫlðr in 1000. Here Sveinn’s defeat of the missionary king of Norway, Óláfr Tryggvason, surely meant that God was on his side. Adam’s account continues by suggesting that Sveinn actively promoted Christianity in Norway afterwards.37 The Encomium Emmae Reginae describes Sveinn Forkbeard in a more uniformly positive light, although it can be seen as equally problematic in its efforts to give the best possible spin to the Anglo-Danish hegemony. It portrays Sveinn as a religious man loved by his people: “Tantam deinde illi gratiam diuina concessit uirtus, ut etiam puerulus intimo affectu diligeretur ab omnibus” (The divine power granted him such great favour, that even as a boy he was held by all in close affection).38 In reality, Sveinn was the first Scandinavian king to be born into the Christian faith. Sveinn minted a coinage in around 995; like that of his father it employed Christian imagery. The obverse has the slightly incorrect ZVEN REX AD DENER (“Sveinn king of the Danes” or “Sveinn king of Denmark”).39 Apart from the runic inscriptions at Jelling, the legend on these coins represents the only surviving use of “Danes” or “Denmark” in a Danish source from the tenth century.40 The reverse has C-R-U-X set in the arms of a cross. These coins are modeled closely on Æthelred’s CRUX type coinage, struck between ca. 991 and ca. 997.41 Only a limited number of Sveinn’s coins were produced, so their production cannot have had a purely economic motivation.42 It seems therefore that Sveinn was keen to assert his kingship and his Christianity together. Adam’s negative portrayal of an irreligious Sveinn seems to have had two motivations. Firstly, it is possible that Sveinn Ástríðarson (or Svend Estridsen), the 36 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 99–100 (II.xxxviii). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 81. 37 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 100 (II.xxxix). 38 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 8–9. 39 Jensen, Tusindtallets Danske Mønter, 22. Marie Bønløkke Spejlborg in this volume considers this coinage in the light of Sveinn’s English connections, including bishops and moneyers, pp. 340–41. 40 Jensen, Tusindtallets Danske Mønter, 22. 41 Jensen, Tusindtallets Danske Mønter, 22. 42 Jensen, Tusindtallets Danske Mønter, 22.

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Danish king who was one of Adam’s sources, hoped that Haraldr Bluetooth, his great-grandfather, would be made a saint, and so was prepared to downplay or vilify his namesake, the son who had exiled Haraldr and replaced him.43 Secondly, Sveinn Forkbeard did refute Hamburg-Bremen’s claims to jurisdiction over the Danish church. Following a devastating Viking raid on Hamburg in 845, the noted missionary Anskar (or Ansgar), bishop of Hamburg, received the additional see of Bremen, presumably in an effort to restore its fortunes, and so formed a joint archbishopric, Hamburg-Bremen. Based on apparent imperial and papal privileges, this archbishopric claimed jurisdiction over Scandinavia and the Slavic lands, but the documentary evidence for this is contested.44 Hamburg-Bremen’s assertions in this regard were also connected to its rivalry with Mainz and Cologne, two archbishoprics on the Rhine.45 In 948, bishops had been appointed to the three new Danish sees of Schleswig, Ribe, and Aarhus, presumably by Hamburg-Bremen in an attempt to swell the ranks of its suffragans.46 It is likely that they were not able to take up physical residence in these sees until Haraldr Bluetooth’s conversion, when a fourth bishopric in Odense was created.47 Sveinn Forkbeard must have expelled these four bishops early in his reign, and at any rate no later than 988, since Otto III provided for their maintenance outside Denmark by a privilege of March 18, 988; Michael Gelting concludes from this provision that their exile was not seen as temporary.48 Although the privilege itself does not specify exile, it does seem likely that they were often absent from Denmark.49 According to Adam, only a few of Hamburg-Bremen’s missionary bishops were able to operate in Denmark; perhaps, in fact, only one, Odinkar the Elder, who was a member of a wealthy and aristocratic Danish family and therefore a special case.50 While Sveinn bypassed Hamburg-Bremen in sourcing his

43 See Demidoff, “Poppo Legend”; Lund, “Baptism”; Lund, “Harald Bluetooth.” 44 Adam refers to these privileges in Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 24–25 (I.xviii) and Rimbert in his Vita Anskarii, ed. Waitz, 34–35 (chap. 13). Knibbs, in Ansgar, Rimbert and the Forged Foundations, 78–88 (his discussion of the crucial privilege of Gregory IV), argues that significant parts of the papal privileges in their extant state were forged and misused by Hamburg-Bremen. 45 Johnson, “Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen,” 149. 46 Although we do not know for certain which party pushed for the appointment of these bishops who appear at the Synod of Ingelheim, Hamburg-Bremen seems the most likely candidate. 47 Gelting, “Elusive Bishops,” 172. 48 Gelting, “Kingdom of Denmark,” 83. 49 Ottonis II. et III. diplomata, ed. Sickel, 441 (D O III 41). There are some corruptions in the text, much of which is taken from Otto’s I privilege of 965. 50 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 94–95 (II.xxxiv), 106–7 (II.xlvi–vii). Gelting, “Elusive Bishops,” 174–77; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 192.

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bishops, it appears from a recent case by Bolton that the Danish court had court chaplains from Sveinn’s reign onwards, even before he invaded England.51 There is further evidence of Sveinn’s Christian kingship in that his ecclesiastical policy extended to endowments. The two church buildings that the missionary Anskar had consecrated in Denmark during the ninth century were dedicated to the Virgin Mary, thus imitating the dedication of the archbishopric’s main church in Hamburg.52 This is not surprising, given that Anskar was an archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen.53 However, during the reign of Sveinn, new churches at Roskilde and Lund were dedicated to the Holy Trinity in imitation of the royal church in Winchester. The Encomium Emmae Reginae relates that Sveinn’s body was placed “in monasterio in honore Sanctae Trinitatis ab eodem rege constructo, in sepulchro quod sibi parauerat” (in the monastery which the same king had built in honour of the Holy Trinity, in the sepulchre which he had prepared for himself).54 Admittedly, the scale of such endowments by rulers in Scandinavia does not compare with the scale of those by English and Continental rulers. Lesley Abrams has observed that, in comparison to the rule of English kings, the kingship of tenth- and eleventh-century Scandinavia was institutionally weaker and lacked royally owned estates which could have been granted to churches.55 Cnut’s showy patronage, compared with that of his Danish predecessors, was enabled during his rule of England by that kingdom’s wealth. While the evidence for Christianity in Denmark is more limited than in England, and while Denmark’s conversion did not lead to immediate and complete Christianization,56 it is possible to trace a Danish royal tradition of Christianity. During the reigns of Cnut and his predecessors, the fact that Christianity was newer and less established in Denmark made its connections to kingship stronger.57

51 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 3, 36–37. 52 Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 358. 53 Knibbs, in Ansgar, Rimbert, has questioned Anskar’s archiepiscopal status on the basis of forgeries within the papal privileges for Hamburg-Bremen, but this argument has not been accepted by Jansson, in “Ansgar,” or by Goetz, in “Archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen.” 54 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18–19. Spejlborg in this volume, p. 342, compares this account to the archaeological evidence at Lund. 55 Abrams, “Eleventh-Century Missions,” 35–36. 56 Pagan furnished burials continued after Harald’s conversion, even at his own ring fortresses: see Roesdahl, “En Gravplads,” 158. 57 Although Wickham observes that Christianity and the church had a greater role in solidifying the power of kings in Norway than it did in Denmark (Medieval Europe, 93 and 96), conversion was still associated with kings (89–91 and 94). Indeed, the fact that Denmark had a stronger monarchy may have made them less reliant on the church administration and therefore better able to interfere at an early date.

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Conversion was largely top-down; the turning point was Haraldr Bluetooth’s official acceptance of Christianity. Since church organization was less established here than in England and other parts of Europe, Danish kings may have had ample opportunity for control.

The Episcopal Policy of Sveinn and Cnut Much to the chagrin of Adam of Bremen, Sveinn did not turn to HamburgBremen for new bishops but brought in his own from England. This happened at the time of Sveinn’s recurrent raids there, even before he had conquered the kingdom. Sveinn and Cnut presumably did not see it as a disjuncture that their rule involved raiding, attacking, and impoverishing Christians abroad even while they were active in establishing their own church. Christian kings were no less prone to attacking one another throughout this period.58 During Sveinn’s reign in Denmark, Adam refers in particular to a bishop named Gotebald, who had been sent to Skåne from England.59 Gotebald, whose name seems more Continental than English, has sometimes been considered the first bishop of Lund because he is named in the necrology of Lund Cathedral, but he and another early cleric are referred to simply as bishops, whereas Henry, whom we shall hear more of later, is dubbed “primus nostrę ęcclesię episcopus” (the first bishop of our church).60 From this and Adam’s account it seems likely that Gotebald, trained in England, became an itinerant missionary bishop based in Skåne.61 The fact that Christianity was recently established in Scandinavia meant that it was more closely associated with royalty than in England, which already had a sophisticated church organization and administration.62 The missionary bishops who had come from outside Denmark in Sveinn’s reign seem to have lacked fixed dioceses. They may have been itinerant along with the royal court, especially if Christianity was the preserve of the aristocracy.63 Thus these bishops were reliant on the king; this state of affairs largely continued even later in

58 See also Reuter, “Plunder and Tribute”; and Stone, “Waltharius and Carolingian Morality.” 59 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 101 (II.xl, schol. 26 [27]). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 82. 60 Necrologium Lundense, ed. Weibull, 88. 61 Gelting, “Elusive Bishops,” 175. For further discussion of Gotebald, see Spejlborg, “AngloDanish Connections,” 78. 62 Spejlborg observes that the “earliest phase of church building in Denmark was directed by kings and bishops,” in “Anglo-Danish Connections,” 86. 63 Gelting, “Kingdom of Denmark,” 83.

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the eleventh century and into the twelfth century, when they had amassed greater resources and estates.64 Like Sveinn before him, Cnut brought clerics into Denmark from England. Adam of Bremen records that “episcopos ab Anglia multos adduxit in Daniam” (he introduced many bishops from England into Denmark) and appointed three of them to Fyn (Funen), Roskilde, and Skåne.65 In addition, Odinkar the Younger, bishop of Ribe and a native Dane, had been educated in England at Cnut’s suggestion.66 It was perhaps only natural for Cnut to make use of the English church, which was both long-standing and under his dominion, while the Scandinavian church was still in its relative infancy. Similarly, Cnut drew on the resources of the church of other regions, as some of the bishops he sent to Denmark seem to have been Lotharingian.67 The main influence seems to have been English, however. A new diocesan structure for Denmark was probably established early in Cnut’s reign. Four bishoprics were put in place, one for each of the main provinces: Jylland, Fyn, Sjælland, and Skåne.68 This was perhaps following the English pattern of regional archbishoprics, which gave Canterbury jurisdiction over the south of England and York over the north. At least one bishop for Denmark, Gerbrand, had been consecrated by Archbishop Æthelnoth of Canterbury under the authority of Cnut. Attending an English royal assembly in 1022, Gerbrand witnessed a charter as “Gerbrandus Roscylde parochie Danorum gente” (Gerbrand of Roskilde parish of the Danish people).69 Indeed, excluding the king and queen, this Danish bishop takes third place in the witness-list, preceded only by the archbishops of York and Canterbury, in that order. This is a remarkable position for someone who had presumably not been active in the English court for any great period of time. L. M. Larson postulated that it was Cnut’s intention for Æthelnoth of Canterbury to be archbishop not only of the English, but also of the Danish church.70 Noting that the building of a stone church was begun in Roskilde during Cnut’s lifetime, Niels Lund has suggested that Cnut hoped to elevate Roskilde to an archbishopric.71 There is not enough available evidence to confirm this suggestion, but it seems certain that Cnut hoped to increase 64 Gelting, “Kingdom of Denmark,” 110. 65 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 115 (II.liii). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 93. 66 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 97 (II.xxxvi, schol. 25 [26]). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 79. 67 Hare, “Cnut and Lotharingia”; Keynes, “Giso, Bishop of Wells.” 68 Gelting, “Kingdom of Denmark,” 83. 69 Sawyer, Electronic Sawyer (S 958). 70 Larson, Canute the Great, 190. 71 Lund, “Cnut’s Danish Kingdom,” 35, 42.

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ties between the Danish and English churches. The timing of Gerbrand’s consecration is particularly significant as well: he appears in the charter two years after the new archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelnoth, had been appointed in 1020, but before he received his pallium from Rome.72 Bolton has observed that Cnut, for all that he inherited from Æthelred elderly incumbent archbishops of Canterbury and York whose backing he won for the remainder of their time in office, used their deaths as opportunities to intervene directly and install his own supporters.73 Æthelnoth, the new archbishop of Canterbury, might have been more amenable to Cnut’s ambitions for Denmark. Whatever the truth of the matter, Adam, if he is to be believed, tells us that Hamburg-Bremen considered Canterbury’s consecration of Gerbrand enough of a threat to intervene. Adam says that Unwan, archbishop of HamburgBremen, had Bishop Gerbrand captured, whereupon Gerbrand, “quod necessitas persuasit” (persuaded by necessity), gave him a promise of loyalty.74 Later, Gerbrand’s successor in Roskilde, Bishop Avoco, was consecrated by Archbishop Libentius of Hamburg-Bremen (1029–1032), Unwan’s successor. Towards the end of Cnut’s reign there seems to have been a change in policy. As has often been recognised, Cnut’s dealings with Emperor Conrad were probably the primary reason that Cnut came to terms with Hamburg-Bremen. Whatever Cnut’s previous plans for linking the churches under his rule, for him an alliance with Germany was a higher ambition. Following the coronation of Emperor Conrad II in Rome on March 26, 1027, Cnut walked next to the emperor and Rudolph of Burgundy in the procession.75 As Cnut’s Letter of 1027 relates, he secured reductions in tolls for merchants and pilgrims from England and Scandinavia traveling to Rome.76 He also set in motion a powerful alliance, with an agreement that, once both were old enough, Cnut’s daughter would marry Conrad’s son. Adam claims that Archbishop Unwan was central to instigating the rapprochement between the Anglo-Danish king and the emperor. The precise nature of the presumed agreement on ecclesiastical matters is unclear, but Cnut presumably agreed to acknowledge Hamburg-Bremen in some way, while Hamburg-Bremen agreed to accept Cnut’s English-consecrated bishops. Perhaps Cnut’s international standing made him secure enough to make this concession. Unlike his father and grandfather before him, Cnut was too powerful

72 Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 49, n. 38. 73 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 83. 74 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 116 (II.lv). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 93. 75 For a discussion of the background in European politics to the imperial coronation and speculations on Cnut’s involvement, see Bolton, Cnut the Great, 163–71. 76 EHD I, ed. Whitelock, 476 (no. 53: Cnut’s Letter of 1027).

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to be concerned that recognizing the ecclesiastical authority of the imperial see of Hamburg-Bremen might amount to recognizing the political authority of the German emperor.77

Orkney and the Bursting Bishop Henry As well as having a bearing on his wider policies of episcopal organization and relations with European churches, Cnut’s international standing may have had a smaller-scale impact in bringing more marginal areas of Britain into the orbit of the English archbishops. Cnut’s rule of England alongside his position in Scandinavia might have brought the earldom of Orkney to the attention of the English church. Authority over Orkney, which was Norse-speaking, had long been claimed by kings of Norway and so, in theory, Cnut’s claims to be overlord of Norway may have included an assumption that he ruled Orkney as well. While it is arguable that the English church was seeking to expand into this traditionally Scandinavian area under Cnut’s rule specifically, its position may have needed shoring up at home. A comparison can be drawn here with a trend detectable in Æthelred’s reign, during which bishoprics were strengthened in response to the escalation of Viking activities. In 995 Æthelred approved the relocation of the bishopric of Norham to Durham (see Map III.1);78 the previous year there had been a Viking raid on Lindisfarne which may have encouraged the community of St. Cuthbert to transfer to a place of greater safety further inland. There was a Viking army at large in the country throughout the period 991–1005 and this threat must have been felt by contemporary ecclesiastics.79 Whereas Æthelred was on the defensive during his reign,

77 Niblaeus has shown that the back-projected idea of constant hostility between Denmark and the supposedly imperialist German church, particularly Hamburg-Bremen, is simplistic and potentially unhelpful: German influence can be seen on the Scandinavian church in a variety of ways (“German Influence,” 261–63; on Adam’s account specifically, 111–13). While this is instructive and the German threat has sometimes been over-emphasised, Niblaeus’s thesis focuses on the mid-eleventh to twelfth centuries. When the Danish kingdom was in its infancy, tensions with the Franks were greater, and it seems that these extended into the Ottonian period as well. Wickham notes that for ninth-century Danish kings, “Christian conversion was closely connected to acceptance of Frankish hegemony” and that Haraldr Bluetooth’s conversion was tied to Emperor Otto I, in that Haraldr was trying “to use him as a political model and to neutralise him as a threat” (Medieval Europe, 90, 91). 78 Traditionally believed to be located at Chester-le-Street. McGuigan, in “Neither Scotland,” esp. 81, argues that the community of Cuthbert was actually at Norham. 79 Besides the Cuthbert relocation, King Æthelred issued a charter in 994, S 880, which assured the bishop of Cornwall that he had all the same rights as other bishops. This assurance

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including with regard to his ecclesiastical policy, Cnut was often on the offensive and sought to expand his influence. Although they were more difficult to control politically and militarily, geographically outlying or independently ruled regions such as Orkney provided opportunities for expansionist metropolitans to increase their own power and influence. The official establishment of a bishopric in Orkney is usually attributed to Earl Þorfinnr Sigurðarson of Orkney, datable to his pilgrimage to Rome in around 1050. However, a missionary bishop appears to have been in Orkney even earlier: Henricus or Henry, who, according to Adam of Bremen, was treasurer to King Cnut and ended his days as bishop of Lund by exploding at a feast.80 Henry is usually supposed to have been in Orkney in around 1035, although Haki Antonsson observes that this dating “cannot be established with any certainty.”81 Although his name seems French or German, Henry has been assumed to be a man “of Anglo-Danish provenance.”82 If Cnut and the English church had been trying to interfere in ecclesiastical matters, Þorfinnr may have had this as one of his incentives for taking ecclesiastical matters into his own hands. There is more information about Henry when he later served as bishop of Lund. According to Adam of Bremen, Henry was appointed there in around 1060 at the behest of King Sveinn Ástríðarson of Denmark.83 Gelting argues that Henry’s transfer from Orkney to Lund probably took place in the reign of Magnús inn góði (“the Good”) Óláfsson, king of Norway and Denmark (1035/1042–1047), rather than in that of Sveinn (1047–1076).84 Magnús seems to have made a concerted effort to increase his control over Orkney and backed one party in the disputed succession to the earldom, although his favored candidate was killed towards the end of his reign. According to Gelting, it was this “event which may

seems connected to the raid on Padstow (ASC (CD), s.a. 981) and to the fact that the whole south-west was vulnerable to attack from Viking ships making for the Irish Sea (Simon Keynes, pers. comm.). The fact that the Cuthbert relocation and S 880, would provide, respectively, one instance from within the province of York and one from within the province of Canterbury suggests that both archbishops were involved in this policy. The long-standing conflicts between the sees of Crediton and St. Germans, however, may have been more significant for S 880, whose wording borrows very heavily from the longer S 876, issued the previous year. See Electronic Sawyer. 80 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 236 (IV.viii). 81 Haki Antonsson, St. Magnús, 86 (and references therein). 82 Cant, “Church in Orkney and Shetland,” 2. 83 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 235 (IV.viii). On the dating, which takes Bishop Avoco’s death in 1057 as its terminus a quo, see Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 191, n. 15. 84 Gelting, “Elusive Bishops,” 190–91.

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have led the Norwegian-Danish king to find a safer see for a loyal Orcadian bishop.”85 A significant overhaul of the Danish diocesan structure occurred in 1059. New Danish bishops loyal to Adalbert, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, were appointed to each see after the previous bishops, loyal to the Danish king, had died or been removed on the grounds of uncanonical consecration. Adalbert, archbishop from 1043 to 1072, was particularly active in this way in attempting to extend the sway of his see. Although he met with only mixed success, in 1047 he did manage to obtain a letter of privilege from Pope Clement II, granting him authority over the lands of the North and the Baltic. Two subsequent popes, Leo IX and Victor II, confirmed these privileges in 1053 and 1055 respectively.86 The one obstacle to Adalbert’s plan was Henry of Lund, who, according to Gelting, “not only was alive, but was also canonically unimpeachable, for as former bishop of Orkney he had a proper ordination, probably from the AngloSaxon church.”87 Egino was made bishop of Dalby, only 11 km away; on Henry’s death (possibly as early as 1060), Egino moved to Lund, while Dalby ceased to be a bishopric and became a college of canons instead. It seems that Egino was either an auxiliary bishop at the chapel of the royal residence of Dalby, or a missionary bishop who was based at Dalby. Either way, it is probable that he was expected to succeed to the see of Lund after Henry. Gelting concludes that the most likely explanation for this curious situation is that “there never was, nor was intended to be, any diocese of Dalby.”88 Adam’s vividly negative depiction of Henry’s death in his Gesta is contextualized if we see that the bishop’s very existence was an obstacle to the ambitions of Hamburg-Bremen: Henry, says Adam, brought Cnut’s “tesauros” (treasure) over to Denmark and “luxuriose vitam peregit. De quo narrant etiam, quod pestifera consuetudine delectatus inebriandi ventris tandem suffocatus crepuit” (spent his life in voluptuousness. About him it is even stated that, revelling in the pestiferous practice of drinking his belly full, he at last suffocated and burst).89 Henry had Anglo-Danish ties, nor does Adam locate his origin in HamburgBremen, so it seems probable that he was sent to Lund by the English church. It has been assumed that earlier he was sent to Orkney by the archbishop of York.90

85 Gelting, “Elusive Bishops,” 191. 86 Regesta Norvegica I, ed. Gunnes, 35–36. 87 Gelting, “Elusive Bishops,” 190. 88 Gelting, “Elusive Bishops,” 190. 89 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 236 (IV.viii). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 192. See also Acts 1:18. 90 Haki Antonsson, St. Magnús, 86.

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As a provenance for Henry, this northern English archbishopric is geographically closer to Orkney than is Canterbury, relatively speaking. However, if we associate Henry with Cnut, as Adam permits, this king’s efforts in connecting the Danish church to Canterbury make it plausible that Canterbury, not York, was Henry’s point of origin. Alternatively, York might have been responding to Cnut’s ecclesiastical impetus by adding Henry to its own suffragans. Although Wulfstan of York was influential in his day, York could never truly rival Canterbury’s jurisdiction. In the eleventh century Canterbury possessed twelve or thirteen English sees, placing it among the most extensive metropolitans in the Christian world. In comparison, York’s domain north of the Humber only included the see of Durham, placing it among the smallest metropolitans.91 Worcester was occasionally brought into York’s orbit: several archbishops of York held this see in plurality until the Pope ended the practice in 1061.92 This practice may have had an economic motivation, since Canterbury was far wealthier than its northern counterpart, while York needed reconstruction. York did consecrate bishops for Orkney in the 1070s, a period in which she claimed metropolitan status over mainland Scotland too; this claim was officially recognized in 1072, seemingly as a consolation prize for the concurrent reinforcement of Canterbury’s superiority. It remains unclear, however, whether these efforts by York had a precedent so early as the person of Henry. Additionally, it is possible that Bishop Henry is identifiable with a “Heinrekr” named in Icelandic sources, who stayed in Iceland for two years, according to Ari Þorgilsson’s Íslendingabók (1122×1133).93 Heinrekr is also listed in Hungrvaka, the history of the Icelandic see of Skálholt, as one of the bishops who visited Iceland during the episcopacy of Ísleifr Gizurarson (1055/1056–1080).94 In Íslendingabók the list of foreign bishops appears just after the death of Óláfr Tryggvason in 1000 and before the episcopacy of Ísleifr more than fifty years later; directly after the list, Íslendingabók turns to the appointment of Skapti Þóroddsson as lawspeaker, an office he held from 1004 to 1030. It seems, therefore, that the thirteenth-century author of Hungrvaka dated Heinrekr’s stay in Iceland in the second half of the eleventh century, because he misplaced Ari’s list of foreign bishops in his reconstruction of the sequence of events in Iceland. In view of the long-standing connections between Iceland and Orkney, including the fairly frequent maritime traffic for trade, it is possible that a missionary bishop named Henry, who was probably sent from York or Canterbury and later served in Lund, spent time in both these Scandinavian settlements in the North Atlantic.

91 92 93 94

Barlow, English Church, 232. Giandrea, Episcopal Culture, 99. Íslendingabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 18. Hungrvaka, ed. Kahle, 95.

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Cnut and the Cults of Saints Another prominent feature of Christianity in this period was saints’ cults, which, like episcopal matters, could provide kings with the opportunity to become involved in ecclesiastical affairs. I will consider Cnut’s actions with regards to these cults, in comparison with Æthelred’s involvement with the cult of his murdered half-brother King Edward the Martyr (975–978). Although blame for Edward’s assassination would later fall on Æthelred and then, especially in the writings of Anglo-Norman historians, on his mother, Æthelthryth, no contemporary evidence clearly incriminates either of them.95 By the time we have any evidence of this cult, it was associated with royal patronage.96 This need not be surprising, since Edward had been an anointed king, a status that made his murder in 978 all the more shocking. Roach has noted that it was “no accident” that the cult should grow in popularity in proportion to Viking activity, since “such signs of divine displeasure must have made Edward’s death appear in a new light.”97 Cnut continued to patronize the cult of Edward, perhaps hoping to emphasize some continuity of the West Saxon royal line into his own reign. The same impulse may be detected in Cnut’s foundation in 1020 of a minster at Assandun, the site of his defeat of Edmund Ironside in 1016.98 This may seem incongruous, like Cnut’s patronage of the cult of St. Ælfheah, the archbishop of Canterbury whom a Viking army had martyred in 1012. It has already been noted that Sveinn and Cnut saw no problem with attacking Christians while being Christian themselves. The same would be true of a Danish king patronizing the cult of a saint killed by Viking raiders; this perhaps is an irony more apparent to modern scholars than to contemporary commentators. Cnut may not have associated himself with Ælfheah’s killers any more than a given English person would identify with the actions of any other group or faction within the realm. Nevertheless, the translation of Ælfheah’s relics from London, the cult’s centre, to Canterbury in 1023 was a shrewd political move by Cnut (see the Prologue, pp. 12–17). According to Nicole Marafioti, the translation helped “to defuse the impact” of these relics.99 Cnut’s patronage of Bury St. Edmunds reflects a similar attitude on his part to the cult of King Edmund of East

95 Keynes, “Cult of Edward the Martyr,” 116–17; Roach, Æthelred, 75–77. 96 Cubitt, in “Sites and Sanctity,” argues that the cult swept to popularity as part of general opposition to Æthelred, but Keynes, in “Cult of Edward the Martyr,” has established that the cult was an official, not a popular one, and that Canterbury was involved from the outset. 97 Roach, Æthelred, 169. 98 For the battle, see ASC (DE), trans. Swanton, 152 (s.a. 1016). 99 Marafioti, The King’s Body, 195.

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Anglia, killed in around 870 by Vikings and rapidly proclaimed a martyr.100 St. Edmund’s was another instance of the sensitive management of a potentially embarrassing cult, although the chronological remove from his martyrdom presumably decreased its association with the Anglo-Danish regime; more generally, however, it was part of Cnut’s overall approach to Christian kingship. Cnut had a particularly interesting relationship with another and, on the surface, perhaps similarly surprising, cult: that of St. Óláfr Haraldsson, king of Norway. Although Adam’s claim, that between the two kings “continuum fuit bellum, nec cessavit omnibus diebus vitae eorum” (there was continual war, and it did not cease all the days of their lives),101 is exaggerated, they certainly came into conflict. Cnut hoped to add Norway to the realms under his dominion. In his description of this conflict between the Danes and the Norwegians, Adam of Bremen sides with Óláfr against Cnut on the basis that Óláfr’s case was more justified, since he was fighting “pro libertate” (for freedom), whereas Cnut was fighting “pro imperio” (for dominion).102 The reality was more complicated. Óláfr Haraldsson had fought in England under Cnut, but began his reign in Norway in 1015, during the Danish invasion of England, with political backing from Æthelred, king of England, and with English ecclesiastical connections. Meanwhile, Cnut would not have been unjustified in believing that he had a right to the overlordship of Norway: it has been argued that his family originated there, as Adam may mean,103 while we have seen that his grandfather Haraldr Bluetooth Gormsson proclaimed his hold over Norway on the Jelling Stone; moreover, Hákon inn ríki (“the Mighty”) Sigurðarson, earl of Hlaðir and ruler of Norway, had fought alongside Haraldr against the Germans. Cnut’s father Sveinn Forkbeard continued Haraldr’s policy, organized the downfall of Óláfr Tryggvason, and continued to rule Norway through the earls of Hlaðir. One generation later, Cnut bribed Norwegian magnates away from King Óláfr Haraldsson, thus squeezing his power ever more, until the internal opposition to Óláfr became insurmountable and he fled Norway for Kyiv in 1028 (see Crawford, pp. 435–36). The importance of Norway to Cnut is particularly apparent in his takeover of this realm: it was Cnut’s only self-generated conquest and the great effort

100 See Marafioti, The King’s Body, 207–9 for discussion of the extent of this patronage. 101 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 117 (II.lv). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 94. 102 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 117 (II.lv). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 94. 103 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 44–45; Adam Bremensis Gesta, ed. Schmeidler, 52 (I.lii: “Nortmannia”); Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 47 (“Normandy”).

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he expended indicates its importance to him. The accumulated cost of bribes to the Norwegian aristocracy in 1026–1028, the repeated military campaigns, and the propaganda campaign of 1028–1029 all suggest strongly that, as Bolton says, “Norway was won at a substantial financial loss.”104 Cnut was not directly involved in the death of Óláfr Haraldsson at the Battle of Stiklastaðir in 1030; as a result of his apparent unpopularity, Óláfr was killed by his fellow Norwegians. Although Óláfr’s cult had arisen in Trondheim quite rapidly after his death, we should also remember that the martyr-king’s development into a national symbol and the patron saint of Norway was much more gradual.105 In particular, the saint’s son, Magnús the Good (1035–1047), and his half-brother, Haraldr “harðráði” (harsh ruler) Sigurðarson (1046–1066), actively promoted the cult during their reigns. It was Eysteinn Erlendsson, archbishop of Nidaros (1161–1188) and compiler of the Passio Olavi, who established Óláfr as national protector and eternal king of Norway, a figurehead of church and monarchy both.106 We have perhaps been unduly influenced by the positioning of St. Óláfr as central to the account of Norwegian history in Heimskringla and other kings’ saga texts. If St. Óláfr did not yet represent Norway at large, the spread of his cult elsewhere was not necessarily emblematic of pro-Norwegian sentiment, contrary to Benjamin Hudson’s claim that “sympathy for the Norse among the colonists round Britain and Ireland can be gauged by the rapidity of the spread of the cult of St. Olaf throughout the Irish Sea after the saint’s death.”107 Hudson places this in the context of Cnut’s political actions in Britain and Ireland, implying that the popularity of St. Óláfr’s cult was perceived as some sort of threat to Cnut. As is often the case with the medieval period, loyalties and associations were not so clearly defined along national lines, especially in Scandinavia, whose three constituent countries coalesced comparatively late. Furthermore, it has been established by Matthew Townend that Cnut patronized and popularized the cult of St. Óláfr for his own ends: “to view the early cult of Óláfr predominantly as a focus for anti-Danish hostility, or for popular piety, is to miss the drama of contesting patronage.”108 This was not only true of the cult in Scandinavia, for it also seems likely that Cnut had a hand in its spread in England, too. A church to St. Óláfr still standing in York is the oldest church in town after

104 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 288. 105 Mortensen, “Writing and Speaking of St. Olaf,” 208. 106 Imsen, “The Nidaros Church,” 23. 107 Hudson, “Dublin,” 333. Hudson may also overstate the speed and extent of the cult’s spread in the area; for example, there are only three dedications to Óláfr known from the Western Isles: see Abrams, “Hebrides,” 177. 108 Townend, “Knútr and the Cult of St. Óláfr,” 273.

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the minster.109 According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, this church in York was founded by Siward, earl of Northumbria, a Scandinavian appointee of Cnut.110 In London, where perhaps as many as half a dozen churches were dedicated to St. Óláfr, it seems likely that these dedications are connected to the long-term presence of Cnut’s troops and followers.111 The church of St. Óláfr in Exeter received patronage from Earl Godwine, whose rise to power was ushered in by Cnut and by Godwine’s wife Gyða, whose brother, Úlfr, had the honor of being married to Cnut’s sister. Like the cult of St. Edward the Martyr in Æthelred’s reign, the cult of St. Óláfr clearly had royal backing and approval.

Cnut and Penitential Kingship A further ecclesiastical comparison to draw between Æthelred and Cnut is in the degree to which both kings espoused the penitential tradition. This was taken up enthusiastically during Æthelred’s monarchy, particularly under the influence of Wulfstan, and is seen as a response to the concentrated period of damaging Viking attacks in the latter decades of his reign.112 The minting of the “Agnus Dei” (lamb of God) coin, a break from the traditional design, is a vivid demonstration of this impetus to ask for God’s forgiveness. Still, Cnut’s reign (1016–1035) witnessed fewer external signs of divine displeasure in the form of defeats and famines than had beset Æthelred’s reign (978–1016), and this may have decreased the degree of his emphasis on the penitential. Roach has observed that “Æthelred’s Anglo-Danish successors . . . did not embrace such ideas about sin and repentance to the same degree.”113 Comparisons may be drawn in this regard with the Frankish kingdom after the reign of Louis the Pious (813–840), in which public penance had become more prominent.114 Mayke de Jong observes in the writings following the rebellions against Louis a “deeply felt wish to put a distance between the present and that turbulent past.”115 A similar wish would have been understandable in post-Æthelredian England. Indeed, the fact that penance had demonstrably proved ineffective against Scandinavian invasion may have hastened the decline of this discourse in England under Anglo-Danish rule. 109 Clarke, “Christian Cults and Cult Centres,” 144. 110 EHD II, ed. Douglas and Greenaway, 133 (no. 1, ASC, s.a. 1055). 111 Townend, “Knútr and the Cult of St. Óláfr,” 266–68. 112 See Roach, “Public Rites and Public Wrongs.” 113 Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 324. 114 See de Jong, The Penitential State, 260–70. 115 De Jong, The Penitential State, 262.

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Nevertheless, during Cnut’s kingship “the penitent ruler was not consigned to oblivion.”116 In one charter to the New Minster at Winchester, dating to 1019, Cnut restores five hides to the church, having bestowed them on a young man of Winchester after having been wrongly informed that they were royal property.117 Cnut expresses remorse for this error, invoking a less marked form of the discourse that we see in Æthelred’s reign: that his repentance is not quite so rhetorical here, in a charter exceptional for its reflection of the penitential tradition, is perhaps due in part to its early date, closer to Æthelred’s reign. A continuity was established by archbishops Lyfing (1013–1020) and Wulfstan (1002–1023), both of whom were still in office and served as the charter’s second and third witnesses. Other possibilities are that this charter relates directly to church matters, making the penitential discourse more readily applicable, or that the situation reflects the same land-grabbing anti-monastic reaction that followed the death of Edgar.118 Crucially in this instance, it also seems that Cnut has made a clear and distinct mistake, but a small one, in the scheme of things; he can be repentant without admitting to wrongdoing on a scale that might taint his whole rule. Catherine Cubitt comments that “royal admission of wrongdoing and atonement can be a high-risk strategy,” arguing that churchmen were able to take advantage of Æthelred’s acknowledgment of past wrongs to religious establishments.119 More dramatically, the fact that Frankish bishops had forced Louis the Pious to do public penance in 833 had led to his removal from power, albeit temporarily, in association with his sons’ rebellions. Given the risks and diminished relevance of royal penance in England after the Danish wars, it was perhaps natural that this was one aspect of Christian kingship with which Cnut did not much engage. And yet the penitent monarch reappears in the Letter of 1027, in which Cnut declares that he has been to Rome “oratum pro redemptione peccaminum meorum” (to pray for the remission of my sins), claiming that “si quid per mee iuuentutis intemperantiam aut neglegentiam hactenus preter id quod iustum erat actum est” (if anything hitherto contrary to what is right has been done through the intemperance of my youth or through negligence), he will put it right.120 This letter is reminiscent of some of Æthelred’s restitutive charters in the 990s, which refer to the king’s previous youthful indiscretions and ignorance:121 a convenient excuse,

116 Roach, Æthelred the Unready, 324. 117 Sawyer, Electronic Sawyer (S 956). 118 See Jayakumar, “Reform and Retribution.” 119 Cubitt, “Politics of Remorse,” 190. 120 Cnut’s Letter of 1027, in Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, 276–77; EHD I, trans. Whitelock, 476–77 (no. 53). 121 See Stafford, “Political Ideas.”

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once one has reached maturity. For Cnut’s letter, the context of his pilgrimage to Rome, which was always a chance for an established ruler to repent, is also significant. The Encomium’s vivid description of Cnut visiting the monasteries of St. Omer on his way to Rome emphasizes that his prayers and gifts were accompanied by shedding tears, beating his breast, and kissing the pavement.122 This parallels earlier descriptions of the Carolingian rulers Charlemagne and Louis the Pious with precise verbal echoes.123 Elaine Treharne notes the “theatricality of Cnut’s piety” and calls his penitential pilgrimage and its textual depictions a “masterpiece of self-promotion.”124 Cnut was at the pinnacle of his personal hegemony and international standing at this time: he could present himself as both powerful and pious. To sum up, Cnut used the Church for political ends, as did his English predecessors. Occupying a throne gained by conquest as Cnut did, and therefore needing to appease his new subjects, was not the only unstable situation in which a king might need to shore up his rule. Edgar (957–975), for instance, although he did not face the challenges of a conqueror, had gained the throne after a troubled period following Æthelstan’s reign (924–939). Moreover, Cnut’s church patronage outside England and his gifts to establishments on the Continent cannot be explained away as having quite the same motivation; instead, he may have wished to present himself as a good Christian ruler on the European stage. He could also have been motivated by genuine religious conviction. Æthelred’s penitence, particular to the personal legacy of his own indiscreet youth, may be exceptional; it is not surprising that this did not feature so prominently in Cnut’s reign.

Conclusions: The Church as an Arm of Power In short, the Danish as well as the English influence on Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy should be acknowledged. Cnut was raised a Christian, with Christian parents. We can postulate some continuity from his grandfather Haraldr Bluetooth’s confident assertion of Christianity to Cnut’s kingship. Cnut certainly made use of the apparatus of pre-Conquest England in displaying his association with Christianity, but the impetus for this may not have been purely English; whereas Haraldr had a runic monument, Cnut had his law codes and his

122 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 36–37. 123 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 37, n. 3; Treharne, “Performance of Piety,” 349–50. 124 Treharne, “Performance of Piety,” 349, 356.

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two Letters to the English people. The fact that Christianity was a more recent development in Denmark did make a difference, but actually it meant greater royal involvement and for Cnut, a more immediate model for Christian kingship. His father, Sveinn, had set an example of vigorous interference in the Church and of control over bishops in Denmark.125 Since Cnut actively arranged for bishops for Denmark to be consecrated in England and for Danish clerics to be sent to England for further education, we can expect him to have been equally engaged with the English church, whose support was necessary for these developments. Cnut might have been more careful in his dealings with them, but he was not passive or a pawn. This can be seen in his promotion of politically useful cults such as that of St. Edward the Martyr and St. Óláfr Haraldsson. Through cults such as these, Cnut connected himself with previous rulers of both England and Norway. Cnut thus drew on the traditions of both Denmark and England. To some extent he might be considered to have synthesized them, but they were already closely linked.126 In some ways the situation under Cnut was that a single political authority now connected these transnational ecclesiastical traditions, which meant that he was able to employ effective tactics utilizing bishops and parallel saints’ cults. While there is more evidence for Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy in England than in Denmark, it is clear that he was operating on a truly international level.

125 Sveinn’s control of bishops accords with the Scandinavian situation more generally: Abrams notes that “the bishop’s primary relationship was with the king,” in “EleventhCentury Missions,” 34. 126 It should be noted that the Danish church was not simply a replica of the English church. Abrams, in “Eleventh-Century Missions,” 33, discusses the differences between the Christianization of England and Denmark and the differences between their churches. For a survey of the strong ecclesiastical links between England and Denmark, both before and after Cnut, see Spejlborg, “Anglo-Danish Connections.”

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Chapter 17 Cnut’s Gift of a Swithun-relic to “Dacia”: A Gift to Denmark or Norway? Whereas the previous chapter has dealt with King Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy generally, this chapter will study his relationship with the cult of St. Swithun in Scandinavia and particularly Norway.1 My point of departure is a statement from the Vita S. Swithuni episcopi et confessoris (Life of St. Swithun the bishop and confessor) in the Latin legendary in the manuscript known as British Library, Lansdowne 436, according to which it is “immo in Dacia quo pars reliquiarium eius a rege Cnutone est translata” (indeed in Denmark whither some of his relics were translated by King Cnut).2 Michael Lapidge considered the statement to be “a crucial piece of evidence for the cult of St. Swithun in Denmark.”3 However, there are no other written sources to corroborate or falsify the information in this Vita. The aim of this chapter is therefore to see if we can trust this record of Cnut bringing a relic of St. Swithun to Denmark. In general, there is reason to be critical of a narrative whose focus is on miracles connected to the cult of a saint. Stories of this kind lie beyond empirical method and source criticism. On the other hand, the statement itself may be corroborated if we take into consideration all relevant sources for the cult of St. Swithun in medieval Denmark and its tributary lands.

1 Acknowledgments: I have over the years received important information and discussed several topics of relevance to this chapter with colleagues and friends, some of whom have passed away. I extend my thanks, in alphabetical order, to Haki Antonsson, Roberta Baranowski, Timothy Bolton, Jan Brendalsmo, Margaret Cormack, Øystein Ekroll, Alison Finlay, Astrid Forland, Clas Gejrot, Ildar Garipzanov, Erin Goeres, Trine Haaland, Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen, Anne-Marit Hamre, Lars Ivar Hansen, Hallvard Haug, Alf Tore Hommedal, Steinar Imsen, Torstein Jørgensen, Espen Karlsen, Halvor Kjellberg, Lars Løberg, Anne-Hilde Nagel, Jinty Nelson, Richard North, Paula Utigard Sandvik, Daniel Sheerin, and Steinunn J. Kristjánsdóttir. 2 BL, MS. Lansdowne 436, fols. 91v–95r (including Vita, chap. 6) is published in Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 701–3; see pp. 58, 613, 680–83. 3 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 58, 701, 791. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-018

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Cnut and St. Swithun in England Cnut’s background as a Viking conqueror supports his image as a mighty monarch and successful politician.4 He had an important relationship with the English church. His role as legislator, his interaction with Winchester, and his generosity to the church are particularly interesting. Archbishop Wulfstan of York issued extensive legal codes during the reigns of both Æthelred and Cnut, in which both kings appear in a favorable light. It has been argued that Cnut’s legislation was mostly a confirmation of older laws, but continuity was important in a society that was exhausted by war and faced a new dynasty.5 Cnut was cautious in his approach to the clergy and to the people of Wessex, for whom Winchester was the political centre. His visit to the tomb of Edmund Ironside in Glastonbury Abbey at the beginning of his reign seems to have been a gesture of reconciliation.6 The same, at least where his archbishop of Canterbury was concerned, can be said of his part in the translation of the relics of St. Ælfheah from London to Canterbury; Cnut seems to have been in his father’s retinue when this archbishop was killed in the presence of several of the men who later became close to Cnut.7 Timothy Bolton has observed that Cnut’s interaction with the church of Wessex after 1020 “is marked by his benevolence.”8 Cnut’s interest in saints and their relics lies at the heart of this chapter. He gave a precious reliquary to the Old Minster’s relic of St. Birinus.9 Evesham got the relics of St. Wigstan.10 Abingdon received a gold and silver reliquary for the remains of St. Vincent, valued at sixty pounds of silver.11 The relics of St. Ælfheah were translated to the Old Minster and Christ Church in Canterbury, which also received relics of St. Bartholomew and perhaps the relics of St. Wendreda.12 Westminster received a finger of St. Ælfheah, an arm of St. Ciriacus, a relic of St. Edward, king and martyr, and some bones of St. George.13 St. Mildred’s relics were translated from Thanet to St.

4 See for example the conclusion in Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 193–202. 5 Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 59–65; Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 83–86. 6 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 95. 7 ASC (DEF), s.a. 1023; Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 33; “Translatio Sancti Ælfegi,” ed. Rumble and Morris, 285, 294–315. 8 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 95. 9 Annales Monasterii de Wintonia, ed. Luard, 16. 10 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 243. 11 Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, I, 433; II, 291. 12 ASC (D), trans. Swanton (s.a. 1023); “Translatio Sancti Ælfegi,” ed. Rumble and Morris, 287; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 78–79 and n. 9, 80. 13 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 87–88.

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Augustine’s in Canterbury.14 Cnut also gave his consent to the relics of St. Felix being transferred from the royal manor of Soham to Ramsey Abbey.15 Let us take a closer look at the statement, in folios 91v–95r of BL, Lansdowne 436, that a relic of St. Swithun was translated to Denmark. In full, chapter 6 of the Vita reads: Tanta deinde illuc miraculorum copia in omni genere ualitudinum exhibita est, quantam nulla memoria hominis ante illud tempus alibi factam attingere potest. Nec solum ibi ob sancti sui merita diuina fiebant miracula, immo in Dacia quo pars reliquiarum eius a rege Cnutone est translata, et in Schirburnia ubi ymago eius extitit erecta – ubicumque etiam eius suffragia pie fuerunt innotata, optata sequebantur remedia. De quibus – quamuis multa in libro translacionis et miraculorum eius contineantur – breuitatis causa pauca hic subnectantur.16 [So great the supply of miracles was shown for all sorts of illnesses that no man’s memory can treat of the like being accomplished anywhere else before this time. Not only did miracles take place there, where their saint had done his divine service, but also indeed in Denmark where some of his relics were translated by King Cnut, and in Sherborne, where a statue of him was raised – and in all places also, where supplications to him have piously been indicated, the hoped-for remedies have followed. Of which – however many of his translation and miracles be kept in the book – for brevity’s sake only a few are subjoined here.]17

The narrative about Swithun in Lansdowne 436 is one of ten accounts in as many preserved manuscripts to include a Vita s. Swithuni. This anonymous vita enjoyed the widest circulation of any saints’ vitae up to the invention of printing. All ten manuscripts of St. Swithun’s Vita are copied from unidentified exemplars now lost. There are only broad and occasional affiliations between the surviving manuscripts, a divergence which, according to Lapidge, suggests that many more have existed. A stemma to St. Swithun’s Vita is for this reason impossible.18 BL, Lansdowne 436 is a collection of some 27 lives of Anglo-Saxon saints that have not survived in any earlier form.19 This is a beautifully illuminated manuscript from the mid-fourteenth century, probably a transcript of the original 14 “Translatio Sancti Ælfegi,” ed. Rumble and Morris, 287. 15 “Translatio Sancti Ælfegi,” ed. Rumble and Morris; Cnut: England’s Viking King, 32–33, 65, 111–47; Bolton, The Empire of Cnut, 79–80 and n. 9, 82–83, 87–88, 90, 95–98. 16 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 701–3. 17 I extend my thanks to Espen Karlsen for helping me in the translation from Latin of this passage. 18 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 623, 626. 19 The author did not have the opportunity to study BL MS. Lansdowne 436, and the description of the manuscript is based on Ellis, Douce, and Petty, Catalogue of the Lansdowne Manuscripts, 121; Grosjean, “Vita S. Roberti,” 335–43; Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 622–27 and 699–701.

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collection. Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom used this manuscript in their edition of Wulfstan’s Life of Æthelwold of Winchester. Rosalind Love used it in her edition of the Vita S. Birini, whose author was the same as the anonymous author of Vita S. Swithuni and Miracula S. Swithuni; St. Birinus was also connected to Winchester.20 A characteristic feature of the text is that the compiler frequently took considerable liberties with the texts he copied. The saints’ vitae are abbreviated and redacted in various ways, and most of the texts in the collection are best described as redactions rather than copies of the vitae they represent. Lansdowne 436 may represent the work of one single redactor.21 It is worth noting that the manuscript was written in or for the Benedictine nunnery of Romsey in Hampshire, which belonged to the diocese of Winchester. Presumably the compiler was either a nun in Romsey, or a monk writing for this house. At any rate, a pertinent hypothesis is that he or she had access to manuscripts from Winchester which are now lost. A full investigation of the manuscript might provide more clues as to what and how old those now lost sources, including the original Vita s. Swithuni, may have been, but nothing more seems to have been done since 2003.22 The first three chapters of Swithun’s Vita in Lansdowne 436 are taken almost verbatim from the Gesta pontificum Anglorum (Deeds of the bishops of England), which was written by William of Malmesbury in ca. 1125. Most of the remainder, chapters 4–5 and 7–14, is an abbreviated version of the Miracula S. Swithuni, which was compiled in the very last years of the eleventh century. Since the Lansdowne 436 Vita s. Swithuni cannot be older than William of Malmesbury’s Gesta, it is clear that the original Vita was written after 1125. The compiler mentions that he or she had access to a book on saints’ translations and St. Swithun’s miracles. This fits with the Miracula S. Swithuni and the possibility should not be excluded that the compiler may have had other sources now unknown to us. Concerning the saint, we know very little of Swithun, except that he was consecrated as bishop of Winchester on October 30, 852 and died on July 2, 863. His cult started on July 15, 971, which was the day his relics were translated by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester (963–984) into the Old Minster from the prominent stone sarcophagus lying outside the building’s west door.23 It is significant that the translation took place during Æthelwold’s reform of the

20 Wulfstan: Life of St. Æthelwold, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, clxxxi; Three Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, ed. Love, liv–lx, lxxxii; Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 611–12 and 624. 21 Wulfstan: Life of St. Æthelwold, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, clxxxi; Three Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, ed. Love, liv–lx, lxxxii; Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 623. 22 Wulfstan: Life of St. Æthelwold, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, clxxxi; Three Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, ed. Love, liv–lx, lxxxii; Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 611–12 and 624. 23 For the historical Swithun and the translation, see Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 3–24.

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English church in ca. 975. Swithun was the central saint in Winchester during Cnut’s reign in 1016–1035, and so the king must have considered the cult to be important, even if nothing is known of any veneration of St. Swithun by King Cnut. It has been suggested that he was buried not far from this saint’s tomb in the Old Minster.24 The statement on Cnut’s translation of Swithun to “Dacia” in Lansdowne 435 can be neither corroborated nor disproved. Let us then turn to the receiving end of the gift and start with “Dacia,” or Denmark, to see if we can find any traces of the relic there.

A Cult of St. Swithun in Denmark? Some traces survive of a Danish cult of St. Swithun during the Middle Ages. Unlike the situation in England, no Danish annals or chronicles mention the saint.25 Out of the liturgical material, John Toy has registered two calendars in Danish archives that mention the saint, but neither is of Danish origin. One of them is Thott 143 2°, the “Folkunga-Psalter,” a treasure of the Royal Library in Copenhagen, which consists of the calendar in which St. Swithun’s mass is cited, a cycle of full-page illuminations from the life of Christ, and the Book of Psalms. The Psalter is one of more than 4,000 manuscripts bequeathed by Otto Thott (1703–1785) to the Royal Library in Copenhagen. It was produced in England during the latter part of the twelfth century. Two added notes indicate that it was used by Dowager Queen Mechtilde of Holstein (ca. 1220–1288) in her second marriage (to the Swedish earl Birger Magnusson, ca. 1210–1266), and that it followed her when she returned to Denmark as a widow.26 The other calendar with St. Swithun, AM 733 4° Kal, presently in the Arnamagnaean Institute in Copenhagen, was made for Apostelkirken (the Church of the Apostles), in Bergen, which was the main royal chapel in Norway as opposed to Mariakirken (St. Mary’s Church), which was the royal chapel in Oslo.27 It was formerly part of the large codex AM 322 fol. which was used in Norway up to 1604. In 1714 it was registered in the catalogue of Christian Worm’s collection of books. He offered the codex to the Icelandic

24 Crook, “‘A Worthy Antiquity,’” 173–176. 25 Roskildekrøniken, ed. Gelting, 42–43, 48–49, 50–51. 26 English Saints in Liturgies, ed. Toy, 4; http://www2.kb.dk/elib/mss/treasures/midal/thott_ 143.htm. 27 For another view, see English Saints in Liturgies, ed. Toy, 167, who holds that it was used in Mariakirken (St. Mary’s Church) in Oslo.

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antiquarian Árni Magnússon who broke it into two parts and gave the calendar its present signature.28 None of these calendars was used in Denmark in the Middle Ages. However, Swithun’s deposition on July 2, his translation on July 15 and, most astonishingly, his ordination as bishop on October 30, are recorded in the Ribe martyrology.29 The manuscript which contains this text, KB, Gl. Kgl. Saml. 849 fol., was written in the winter 1284–1285 and was a copy of the second edition of Usuard’s martyrology. Although it cannot have been imported during the reign of Cnut, the fact that St. Swithun’s mass days are written into the martyrology in the manuscript could point to the Danes’ having a cult of this saint. The Ribe martyrology was also used as a necrology to ensure that annual masses were sung for those listed on their proper day of death. This is the reason why there are some additions to Usuard’s martyrology of saints, and probably also why St. Swithun’s three days of masses and commemoration were written into the manuscript. Although Swithun is mentioned among the confessors in as many as three litanies in Denmark, two of them were never used in the Danish church,30 while there is only one preserved manuscripts of Danish use in the archives. The Reformation cleared the churches of altars and relics. Some of them are remembered in medieval inventories or in the names of medieval churches, but no such sources on Swithun are known from Denmark.31 The Reformation made the liturgical books obsolete and it was mainly the good-looking ones that were preserved. Nonetheless, the pages of the less interesting books were widely used by bookbinders in the post-Reformation era, in which respect the accounts of royal income are particularly worthy of study.32 So far, chapter 6 of BL Lansdowne 436, folios 91v–95r, cannot be corroborated by the known evidence from Denmark, but the Danish fragments have hardly been investigated and we should not exclude the possibility that some of them may yet reveal traces of a cult of St. Swithun. At the same time, there is another interpretation of “immo in Dacia quo pars reliquiarium eius a rege Cnutone est translata,” the crucial sentence in

28 AM 733 4° Kal. is a part of the manuscript AM 322 fol., but was given a separate signature by Árni Magnússon. Gustav Storm described it as “d) Calendarium Romanum” of AM 322 fol., in Norges Gamle Love, IV, 506–9. The text is printed in the footnote across 507–9. 29 See Andersen, “Missale- og martyrologietraditioner,” 79–89; English Saints in Liturgies, ed. Toy, 168. 30 KB, NKS 133 4° Lit, and Thott 143 2°. Manuale Norvegicum, ed. Fæhn, 162, 171; English Saints in Liturgies, ed. Toy, 4, 168. Was KB, Thott 143 2o originally used in Norway?. 31 An example from Denmark is Odense Cathedral, which owned a relic of St. Alban. 32 Pettersen, “From Parchment Books to Fragments,” 48–49. For an interesting example of how the parchments were used, see Gottskálk Jensson, Kjeldsen, and Stegmann, “A Fragment of Norwegian Royal Charters,” 3, 6, and figs. 1 and 2.

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Lansdowne 436. The Latin name of Denmark was Dania, whereas Dacia was the name of a province that the Roman emperor Trajan established in Transylvania, now in present-day Romania. In AD 271, the original Dacia was discontinued by Emperor Aurelian, who divided it into the provinces “Dacia ripensis” and “Dacia mediterranea.” The capital of the latter is now Sofia. These changes gave room for misunderstanding concerning Dacia’s geographical borders, as may be seen in Orosius’s Historia adversus paganos, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, and Jordanes’s De origine actibusque Getarum, in which Dacia is identified with “Gothia.”33 All three works were well known in England, with the Anglo-Saxon rewriting of Orosius being perhaps the most popular, through its extensive description of the Germanic world. By the Middle Ages the term “Dacia” had come to mean “Denmark” in continental ecclesiastical circles, even while the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, fully aware of the greatness of the legendary Denmark, still used “Dania.”34 The Annales Ryenses from ca. 1300 is the first Danish chronicle to write “Dacia” as a synonym for “Dania” in its description of Denmark as “Dani . . . regnum, quod nunc Dania uel Dacia dicitur” (the kingdom of Dan . . . which is now called Dania or Dacia).35 In 1228 the general chapter of the Dominican Friars in Paris established “Dacia” as one of four new provinces.36 This “Dacia” covered not just Denmark but all Scandinavian church provinces, because most convents when it was established were held to be Danish.37 The Scandinavian Franciscan Friars also used the term “Dacia” for their Scandinavian province.38 Later, the pope called the region of the Scandinavian minor papal penitentiaries “Dacia” in spite of the fact that this region also covered Sweden and Norway.39 The reason was probably linguistic, that the Old Norse, Old Swedish, and Old Danish languages were all known as dǫnsk tunga (the Danish tongue). These examples, however, show that the church often used “Dacia” in a wider sense, both geographically and politically, reflecting more than just the similarities between the Scandinavian languages. The political borders of Scandinavia in the early Middle Ages were not fixed. The historical Denmark comprised the landscapes of Skåne, Halland, and 33 Gallén, “Dacia”; Halvorsen, Dominikus, 224–25 and 290 (nn. 508–10). 34 Halvorsen, Dominikus, 226. 35 Danmarks middelalderlige annaler, ed. Kroman, 150 (line 7). 36 Monumenta ordinis fratrum, ed. Reichert and Frühwirth, III, 3, 18; Handlingar rörande Dacia, ed. Karlsson, 5; Gallén, La Province de Dacie, 12–15. 37 Halvorsen, Dominikus, 179. 38 Gallén, “Franciskanorden,” columns 563–67. 39 Vatican Archives: Introitus et exitus. Camera Apostolica Nr. 2, fols. 7v–8v, and Registrum avinionense 198, fol. 485v. See Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, 140–41; Brilioth, Den påfliga beskattningen af Sverige, 113; Gallén, “De skandinaviska penitentiarierna,” 58–69; Haug, “Penitentiaries, Scandinavian.”

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Blekinge, which have been part of Sweden since 1645, and Southern Jutland, which became a German possession after the Dano-Prussian war in 1864. Until the thirteenth century Danish kings controlled or attempted to control Viken, the south-eastern part of Norway, which was easy to reach by sea from Denmark. After ca. 1000, King Sveinn Forkbeard, Cnut’s father, controlled all Norway through the earls of Hlaðir, and Cnut did the same from 1028 until his death in 1035 through his English wife Ælfgifu and their son Sveinn. For a European cleric, the term “Dacia,” meaning Denmark, could cover all of Cnut’s lands in Scandinavia and more. So, my interpretation of “Dacia” in Lansdowne 436 is that this name refers to Cnut the Great’s Scandinavian “thalassocracy,” his vast sea-connected empire which, from 1028 to 1035, also covered Norway.

The Relic in Stavanger There are good reasons to look to Norway to study the cult of Swithun outside England. Our question is whether the Norwegian cult of this saint may be connected to Cnut. To answer this, let us first take a brief overview of his cult in Norway. Stavanger Cathedral possessed the only known relic of the saint in Scandinavia. Moreover, outside England this was the only church to have Swithun as its patron saint. St. Swithun is mentioned many times in Norwegian diplomas, but mainly as a synonym for this cathedral. The cathedral’s Day of Dedication was July 2, the Day of Swithun’s Deposition, which was the main mass and was celebrated with an octave. This was also a day of popular celebration, often combined with a market day.40 Swithun’s Day of Translation on July 15 was also celebrated. Elsewhere, after the “Divisio apostolorum” and the Annunciation of Virgin Mary were introduced in the late Middle Ages, the cult of Swithun was reduced to commemorations in litanies, the only exceptions being Winchester, Évreux, and Stavanger. Winchester Cathedral, which held the main relics of the saint, was, of course, the main site of the cult, but Évreux is also significant, because it possessed St. Swithun’s head from the fifteenth century onwards.41

40 Andrén, Otto, Gjerløw, Magnus Már Lárusson, and Maliniemi, “Kyrkmässa,” columns 677–79. 41 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 60; John Crook, “Rediscovery of St. Swithun’s Head at Evreux,” 61–62.

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The Swithun office shows that the saint was venerated in Norway up to the Reformation in 1537.42 The most recent evidence of the relic itself is an inventory of Stavanger Cathedral’s holy relics which, since it was dated in 1517 “widh sancte Swytwns tidh” (around the time of St. Swithun),43 was written in that year between July 2 and 22 perhaps in one of the five days (July 9–14) between the two feasts. The document tells us that Bishop Hoskold (1513–1537) asked specially for the relic of St. Swithun and examined his shrine. In the inventory, the first relic listed is an “armlegh” (upper arm) of St. Swithun.44 To examine the relic, the bishop must have opened the reliquary. Most likely, it was carried in a procession on July 2.45 The commemoration of Swithun on October 30, was well known in Norway. The evidence is the record of a sale of property in the cartulary of Munkeliv, a Benedictine monastery in Bergen, “er gort var Suitunar messo aftan om haustit a xiiij are rikis vars vyrdhuligs herra Magnusar Noregs Swia oc Gota konungs” (which was written on the mass of Swithun in the autumn of the fourteenth year of our honoured lord Magnús, king of Norway, the Swedes and the Goths [i.e., 1332]). This is published with records from the cartulary in volume XII of Diplomatarium Norvegicum. The editors, C. R. Unger and H. J. Huitfeldt-Kaas, were puzzled by the autumnal dating, as the main Swithun masses occurred at midsummer. As they were not aware of the feast on October 30, they dated the document to July 14(?), 1333.46 With knowledge of the third feast, the dating is intelligible: it must refer to October 30. Moreover, this dating shows that St. Swithun’s third feast was commemorated not only in Stavanger, but also in Bergen, and presumably in the whole church province. Nobody would date the document of a property transaction to the day of a saint who was hardly known. October 30 fell two days before All Saints’ Day, if another reference was needed.47 The Norwegian historian Lilly Gjerløw presumed that the cult in Norway was not older than the list of saints in the Gulathing law, which dates from the middle of the twelfth century. This is the oldest source to mention a Swithun cult in Norway,

42 Breviarium Nidrosiense, ed. Valkendorf, 894–98 (calendar: fol. v recto; litany: fol. h.vr, officii: fol. pp. Iijr and fol. ccc. ijv–iiijv); Hohler, “Remarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,” 23–25. See Ordo Nidrosiensis Ecclesiae, ed. Gjerløw, 361–62, 367. 43 DN, IV, no. 1074 (2 July 1517): https://www.dokpro.uio.no/perl/middelalder/diplom_vise_ tekst.prl?b=4545&s=n&str=. 44 DN, IV no. 1074 (2 July 1517). Although Hohler, in “Remarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,” 24, maintained that the relic was only part of an arm bone, it was the upper arm: see Heggstad, Hødnebø, and Simensen, Norrøn ordbok, 33, s.v. “armleggr.” 45 A parallel is the translations in Winchester cathedral during the episcopate of Henry of Blois (1129–1171). See Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 37–38. 46 DN XII, ed. Unger and Huitfeldt-Kaas, 62 (no. 81; July 14?, 1333). 47 Halvor Kjellberg (pers. comm.).

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which, it is assumed, would have started when the first permanent see in Stavanger was established in ca. 1125.48 Gjerløw based her date for the establishment of the episcopal see on comments by Orderic Vitalis (1075–1142) concerning King Sigurðr Jórsalafari (“the Crusader”) Magnússon (ca. 1090–1130), “Qui defunctis fratribus superstes diu regnavit, et episcopatus ac cænobia monachorum, quæ antecessores ejus non noverant in regno Nordico constituit” (who survived his two brothers to reign for many years [after 1123], and who established bishoprics and monasteries, which had been unknown to his ancestors, in the kingdom of Norway).49 What do we know about how and when the Swithun relic was acquired? In 2003, when Lapidge summed it up, the prevailing view was that the see of Stavanger was established in the 1120s by a Bishop Reinald (or Reginald), who was an English Benedictine.50 From a rhymed office, which links the communities of Winchester and Stavanger and may be from the twelfth century, it can be inferred that Bishop Reinald came from Winchester and that he brought the relic of St. Swithun with him from there to Stavanger.51 Lapidge took note of a Winchester canon named “Reinnaldus” who appears in a list of monks in Hyde Abbey during the time of Abbot Osbert (1124–1135). Reinnaldus, who was described as a “conuersus,” meaning a newcomer, may be identical with the later bishop of Stavanger.52 In 1964 the English historian Christopher Hohler objected to this inference that Bishop Reinald, formerly a monk of Winchester, brought the relic of St. Swithun to Stavanger: “Winchester cathedral priory was a distinguished and well-conducted house at relevant dates [i.e., ca. 1125], and no monk from there would have been allowed simply to wander off to Norway.”53 Hohler found it inconceivable that Reinald had received an arm-bone from St. Swithun’s relics, because there are no parallels with any other high-profile prelates from the beginning of the twelfth century ever having received anything similar for their churches.54 Furthermore, if Reinald had originated from Winchester, he would have been venerated as a martyr and saint,

48 Norges Gamle Love, ed. Keyser and Munch, I, 10–11 (§§17–18). Gjerløw, “Kalendarium II,” column 99. 49 Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis: Vol. 5, ed. Chibnall, 220–21 (Book X). 50 Reinald was the first bishop of Stavanger, according to all lists of the province’s bishops: see Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 186–88, 231. Reinald appears unnamed in Saga Magnús Blinda ok Haralds Gilla (chap. 8), for which see note 53 below. For the English translation, see: Snorri Sturluson: Heimskringla, trans. Finlay and Faulkes, III, 176. Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 56. 51 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 56, 128–34. 52 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 56–57. The first Norwegian studies on this are in Brøgger, Stavangers historie i middelalderen, 27, and Daae, “Om Stavanger stift i middelalderen,” 293. 53 Hohler, “Remarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,” 24. 54 Hohler, “Remarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,” 48–52, at 50 (Norwegian summary).

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because later he had the misfortune to be hanged by King Haraldr gilli.55 There were no recorded openings of the saint’s shrine in Winchester between 1093 and 1150. Hohler therefore suggested that the Romanesque basilica was consecrated between 1125 and 1150 and received its relic of St. Swithun when the Norwegian church province was founded in 1152–53, with the bishop of Stavanger as the first archbishop. Lapidge took issue with Hohler’s rejection of the prevailing view. During the episcopate of Henry of Blois (1129–1171), the relics of Swithun were displayed within Winchester Cathedral, a decision which probably gave more than one opportunity for the shrine to be opened and a relic acquired.56 Lapidge, however, was not aware that Hohler, a long time before (on which more below), had reconsidered his view.57 Moreover, there is a chronological problem with Lapidge’s reasoning, for if Bishop Reinald became bishop of Stavanger during the Winchester episcopate of Henry of Blois, the earliest he could have come there would have been 1129, one year before the death of King Sigurðr. This is rather late if we are to believe the chronology of the king’s last years, for according to the lost *Hryggjarstykki, which was a source for both Heimskringla and Morkinskinna for this period, Bishop Reinald had been in Stavanger for some time by the time the king divorced the queen and remarried in 1128.58 One might imagine that Reinald visited Winchester and acquired the relic before he was hanged in Stavanger in 1135, but this seems highly improbable.

The Archaeological Evidence of Stavanger Cathedral The history of Stavanger Cathedral, based on archaeological excavations and art history, indicates an explanation other than the prevailing view of the origin of St. Swithun’s cult in Norway. The church as seen today dates from the last years of the thirteenth century. After a devastating fire in 1272, Bishop Arne of Stavanger (1277–1303) decided to pull down its west tower and replace it with a porch with a monumental entrance, and to replace the old choir with a larger

55 There is more on this in Morkinskinna II, ed. Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, 161–66, at 162 and n. 2 (chap. 90), and Saga Magnúss blinda ok Haralds gilla, in Heimskringla III, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 279–302, at 287–88 (chap. 8). 56 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 37–38 and 56, n. 199. 57 Hohler, “Remarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,” 25. 58 Morkinskinna II, ed. Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, 150–51, at 151 (chap. 87); Heimskringla III, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 287–88 (chap. 8).

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one. Since then, the cathedral has been restored many times, most radically as a Gothic cathedral in 1869, when the Romanesque chancel arch was pulled down. The architect Gerhard Fischer, who founded medieval archaeology as a discipline in Norway, began a thorough investigation of the building in the 1930s. Under the vestibule he found the foundation of the tower, which is mentioned in Bǫglungasǫgur as a refuge for the sheriff of Stavanger, when he had to flee his king’s enemies in 1205. Moreover, this is the first time the relic of St. Swithun is explicitly mentioned: when the sheriff had to surrender and was promised mercy on condition that he would never fight against the enemy king again, he took an oath on the shrine of St. Swithun.59 Fischer’s discovery of the tower’s foundation sustained this narrative. The cathedral was then and still is missing a transept between the choir and the nave, and Fischer pointed to this absence as its most unusual feature. Fischer’s main impression was that its walls were stylistically Anglo-Norman, and that the work had started before 1100.60 Originally, the cathedral was a Romanesque basilica. Fischer presented his results in 1964, the same year Hohler published the aforesaid treatise on Stavanger Cathedral that he had written for an English-speaking audience.61 He and Fischer had discussed several points concerning the basilica, but neither of them read the other’s manuscript before publishing his own study.62 In general they agreed, but Hohler compared details in the capitals of the pillars with three Anglo-Norman churches. He established that the best and apparently the only parallels to Stavanger Cathedral are the cathedrals of Norwich and Ely, together with Castle Acre Priory. The building of Castle Acre started in 1089, Norwich in 1086, and Ely in 1081: The first Stavanger mason presumably learned his craft on a building designed in the 1080’s at the latest. The second mason would seem to have learned his at a date not earlier than the building of the nave of Norwich . . . c. 1115. . . . the first and second Stavanger masons were clearly for a time working side by side.63

Hohler explicitly maintained that Stavanger Cathedral’s architecture had nothing to do with Winchester. The similarities between the pillars of the different churches led him to conclude that Stavanger was consecrated as the last church of this kind, well into the twelfth century.

59 Soga om birkebeinar og baglar, ed. Magerøy, 37. 60 Fischer, Domkirken i Stavanger, 20–43. 61 Hohler, “The Cathedral of St. Swithun at Stavanger.” 62 For acknowledgments, see Hohler, “The Cathedral of St. Swithun at Stavanger,” 92, n. 1. 63 Hohler, “The Cathedral of St. Swithun at Stavanger,” 115.

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Church-building masons, however, always started by building the choir with the main altar, which always turns to the east. This was the oldest part of the Stavanger basilica.64 When the choir was finished, and the altar consecrated, the church could be used for mass. Thus, in Stavanger the building of the basilica did not start with the Romanesque pillars at the west end of the church. After reading Fischer’s monograph, Hohler reconsidered his results in a new article and dated its basilica to ca. 1105.65 The Norwegian art historian Marit Nybø has supported these results. In her doctoral thesis she demonstrated that the cathedral of St. Alban at Selja, situated at the northernmost part of the west coast of Norway, was built as a basilica; it is usually dated to ca. 1100. Christ Church in Bergen, which was destroyed in 1531, was also a basilica, and the three churches used masons from the same workshop.66 From what we know of the monumental buildings of the last decades of the eleventh century, she suggested that King Óláfr kyrri (the Quiet) Haraldsson (r. 1067–1093), was not only famous for initiating the construction of Christ Church in Bergen, but also started building the basilicas in Stavanger and Selja. In this way it is reasonable to suppose that the basilica of Stavanger was built in around 1100, to be used by the bishop of Selja when he visited what became the diocese of Stavanger, the southernmost part of his bishopric.67 When the choir was finished, the cathedral was probably consecrated in the reign of Magnús berfœttr (“Barelegs,” 1093–1103), whereby it might seem clear that Cnut had nothing to do with its dedication to St. Swithun. In spite of this, there is more archaeological evidence which may date the dedication to before the time the basilica was consecrated. An excavation under the late-thirteenth-century Gothic choir has uncovered holes from pillars of a wooden structure. Over the holes was a layer of charcoal from a fire, probably from the structure. The charcoal is dated to ca. 700–ca. 1100. Moreover, the excavation uncovered Christian graves (i.e., oriented west–east, without worldly goods) above the charcoal. The two oldest remains have been dated to 680–890 and are counted among the oldest Christian graves in Norway.68 The most recent

64 Fischer, Domkirken i Stavanger, 30. 65 Hohler, “Remarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,” 37. 66 See Nybø, Albanuskirken på Selja. 67 From the chronology, Bjarnvarðr, Swegen and Magne are the only bishops who celebrated mass in the Romanesque basilica before Bishop Reinald. See Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 219. 68 Perry Magnor Rolfsen, Arkeologisk undersøkelse 1967–68; Denham, “Commingled Human Remains From Stavanger Cathedral,” 132; Høgestøl and Sandvik, “Skjeletta frå Stavanger domkyrkje,” 170, 172, 174–75.

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remains date to the end of the twelfth century. In other words, this excavation uncovered a Christian churchyard which was in use for a century or more before, as well as after, the building of the Romanesque basilica of Stavanger.69 Next to the basilica was a memorial cross raised to commemorate the mighty “landed man” or baron Erlingr Skjálgsson (ca. 960/975–1027), on whom I shall say more below. It is reasonable to suppose that Erlingr was buried in the churchyard and that his memorial cross was linked with an altar. Old and recent diggings in Stavanger indicate that the locality was far more than an ordinary farm in the Viking Period and early Middle Ages. It has been tentatively suggested that Stavanger was a regional nodal point for ships in naval defense, with a þing assembly held in the churchyard, and that it was most probably also a seasonal port of call and a marketplace.70 Although there is no archaeological evidence of a church in the Christian graveyard before the raising of the Romanesque basilica, it seems likely that Stavanger had a church during the late lifetime of Erlingr Skjálgsson. A final indication of its translation to Stavanger at an early stage is St. Swithun’s relic itself. The earliest recorded dispersal of a Swithun relic in Winchester was in 1006, when Bishop Ælfheah of Winchester became archbishop and left for Canterbury Cathedral, for he took Swithun’s skull with him there. Lapidge finds it hard to believe that he had the permission of the monks of the Old Minster to do so, and thus “his act must count as one of the great furta sacra of the English Middle Ages.”71 In my view this theft, holy or not, sets the terminus post quem for the transfer of this relic from Winchester to Stavanger. Nonetheless, Archbishop Ælfheah’s furtum sacrum may have opened a Pandora’s box: there are many bones in a human skeleton and at least fourteen English churches claimed to have a relic of St. Swithun by the fifteenth century. The relic in Stavanger was an “armleg” (upper arm),72 a large bone which would be very different in size from a small bone from a toe, finger, hand, or foot; any of these could more easily go missing when the reliquary in Winchester was opened. It is hard to believe that Reinald or any other bishop could remove a relic as big as an upper arm in around 1125: such an act would have required a man of real political power. Hohler admitted that a bishop “might have been sent as a matter of high policy, Malchus bishop of Waterford was in fact trained at Winchester. But he is not known to have been given a relic of St. Swithun.”73 Could St. Swithun of

69 Høgestøl and Sandvik, “Skjelett frå Stavanger domkyrkje,” 172. 70 Brendalsmo and Paasche, “Stavanger – før det ble en by.” 71 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 38, 40. 72 DN, IV, no. 1074 (2 July 1517). 73 Hohler, “Remarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,” 24.

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Stavanger, in this case, be connected with the Anglo-Saxon mission to Norway after 1006? Let us consider the liturgical evidence.

The Swithun Masses In 1519 Archbishop Erik Valkendorf of Nidaros issued Missale Nidrosiense, the Nidaros ordo, to be used in all churches in the Norwegian province. It was the first printed book in Norway, and the archbishop’s aim was to replace all old handwritten liturgical books with a modern liturgy.74 Although Missale Nidrosiense does not contain any office of St. Swithun, the office of the Translation of St. Swithun, July 15, was retained in the Breviarium Nidrosiense, which was also printed in 1519.75 In the late Middle Ages, Swithun’s Day of Deposition was superseded by the Visitation of Our Lady, but in Stavanger, it was retained until the Norwegian reformation in 1537 and used for the deposition as well as the translation throughout the Middle Ages.76 Hohler was the first to take note of the printed liturgy having the characteristic collect “Deus qui iubar.” The prayer was in use before the Norman Conquest and must have been written after ca. 1000 when a different office was used in Winchester.77 The collect is otherwise known only from Winchester Cathedral. With the “Decreta Lanfranca,” Archbishop Lanfranc’s liturgical reform ca. 1085, the Swithun liturgy of Winchester left out “Deus qui iubar.” On the other hand, Archbishop Øystein Erlendsson retained this old hymn when he reformed the liturgy of the Norwegian province in the 1170s, and it remained in use in Stavanger and in the Norwegian church generally throughout the Middle Ages.78 The possibility may not be excluded that the Swithun-office was written in 1006, when the saint’s skull was translated to Canterbury, or shortly thereafter. The printed breviary of Nidaros was not the only liturgical evidence for the cult of Swithun in the Norwegian church province. Once more Iceland has given proof for what was lost in Norway, in that Swithun’s office has been found in a Reykjavík fragment of the “Pater Noster Psalter” from the late thirteenth century, one which is “probably the oldest extant Icelandic antiphoner written according 74 Missale pro usu toti[us] regni Noruegie, ed. Valkendorf, Engelbrektsson, and Sigurdsson. 75 Breviarium Nidrosiense, ed. Valkendorf, 894–98; aee also Ordo Nidrosiensis, ed. Gjerløw, 361–62, 367. 76 Ordo Nidrosiensis, ed. Gjerløw, 361 and n. 2. 77 Hohler, “Remarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,” 23–25; see also Toni Schmid, “Om Sankt Swithunmässan i Sverige,” 25–34; “Problemata,” 184–86. 78 Ordo Nidrosiensis, ed. Gjerløw, 29–30, 87–90.

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to the use of the Nidaros Ordinary.”79 Swithun’s Day of Deposition is recorded in a calendar from ca. 1200.80 One fragment of “Missale Scardense,” which was written ca. 1470, gives the collect “Deus qui electi confessoris tui et episcopi suithuni” for July 2.81 Moreover, a notice in the annals of Skálholt (ca. 1300) has added the saint’s death for the year 863, which is interesting when compared to the silence on Swithun in the Danish annals.82 From the veneration of St. Swithun in Stavanger and Iceland, the liturgical evidence of Norwegian provenance in Denmark,83 and also from the appropriateness of October 30, Swithun’s Day of Consecration, for dating a document in Bergen, we can conclude that the saint was venerated all over the Nidaros archbishopric. It is improbable that the relic was obtained in Stavanger when the basilica was consecrated around 1100. It seems more likely that it ended up in Norway before Lanfranc reformed the liturgy.

Who Brought the Relic of St. Swithun to Stavanger? This conclusion makes it reasonable to suppose that the cult of Swithun in Stavanger and Norway started with Cnut’s translation of the relic, according to the claim in Lansdowne 436. It may have arrived in Stavanger via Denmark, but Occam’s razor tells us to seek simpler explanations. Hohler ruled out the possibility of a relatively unknown bishop bringing the relic to Norway ca. 1125, but the situation was different for the missionaries from Wessex who went to Norway from 1006 to 1066. The first of these was Gotebald, who died in 1021 at the latest. Gotebald was called to work in Denmark by King Sveinn, Cnut’s father, but he was also active in Sweden and particularly in Norway.84 On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Gotebald brought the relic of an Anglo-Saxon saint to Stavanger: Lund or Roskilde were better suited for such a gift. King Óláfr Haraldsson (r. 1015–1030), the later saint, brought four English bishops to Norway on his arrival in 1015: Sigurd, Grímkell, Rudolf, and Bernhard. The last of these was immediately sent to Iceland, for which reason he may be excluded. In 1030 Rudolf also went to Iceland, to Bœr in

79 Liturgica Islandica, ed. Gjerløw, 112. 80 Liturgica Islandica, ed. Gjerløw, 58, 70–71; see also 98–100 and 191–208, at 207; Gottskálk Jensson, “Latin Hagiography in Medieval Iceland,” 902–29. 81 Ordo Nidrosiensis, ed. Gjerløw, 361, n. 2. Liturgica Islandica, ed. Gjerløw, 60. 82 Islandske Annaler indtil 1578, ed. Storm, 174. 83 A calendar from St. Mary’s Church in Oslo (AM, MS. 733 4° Kal) and one litany (KB NKS 133 4° Lit, Thott 143 2°); see note 30 above. 84 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 191.

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Borgarfjǫrðr, where he lived for nineteen years probably as a missionary bishop.85 He then returned to England and became the abbot of Abingdon.86 It has been suggested that Rudolf was a relative of the English royal family.87 Grímkell is the best known of King Óláfr’s bishops. In 1024 he was the brain behind the assembly in Moster in which the king issued ecclesiastical laws for all Norway. Bishop Fridtjov Birkeli identified him with the “Grimcytel” who became bishop of Selsey in 1038 and was a relative of Archbishop Æthelnoth of Canterbury (1020–1038); they both belonged to the local aristocracy of Devon, although, as the Norse form of his name would indicate, Bishop Grímkell had kin in Norway as well. Birkeli presumed that he was a Benedictine in Canterbury before he went to Norway.88 He seems to have been lower in rank than Rudolf when they were in England.89 Neither man should be considered as “relatively unknown,” but only Rudolf, a bishop, could have had access to the relic of Swithun in Winchester. Still, there are no sources which connect him to the relic. The only bishop with both a known connection to King Cnut and a history of service in Norway was a certain Sigurd or Sigfrid. He is recorded as Cnut’s bishop in the autumn of 1015.90 In 1028, when Cnut arrived in Norway, Sigurd was in his retinue and became bishop of the personal guard of the king’s sister’s son, Earl Hákon Eiríksson, who was to rule Norway on behalf of his uncle.91 However, Hákon died soon after, and Bishop Sigurd continued in the same position under young King Swegen (or Sveinn) Cnutsson and his mother, Ælfgifu. Shortly after King Óláfr fell at the battle of Stiklastaðir (Stiklestad in Verdal in Trøndelag) on July 29, 1030, Bishop Sigurd fled to England.92 It may have been he, earlier in his career, who had the opportunity to commit a furtum sacrum from Winchester before going to Norway. When considering the kings of Norway who could have purloined a relic of St. Swithun in this way, we may rule out King Magnús inn góði, who was king of Denmark from 1042 but never went to England, as far as is known. We may also exclude his uncle and co-ruler from 1044, Haraldr harðráði Sigurðarson. Although Haraldr tried to conquer England in 1066, he fell in battle at Stamford

85 There is no evidence that he founded a monastery: see Haki Antonsson, and Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, Review of Leitin að Klaustrunum, by Steinunn J. Kristjánsdóttir, 204–5. 86 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 192. 87 Birkeli, Tolv vintrer, 159–61. 88 Birkeli, “The Earliest Missionary Activities,” NMS 15 (1971): 27–37; Tolv vintrer, 159–61. On Archbishop Æthelnoth’s relations with Cnut, see also Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 80–82. 89 Birkeli, Tolv vintrer, 159–61. 90 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 193. 91 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 193. Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 98. 92 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 193.

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Bridge and never ruled in Winchester. Norway’s best-known missionary king, Óláfr II inn helgi Haraldsson, presents a more complex picture. He participated in the Viking attacks on England in 1009–1012. When Sveinn Forkbeard died in 1014, the English recalled King Æthelred, and Óláfr served him.93 The old Danish king had dominated Norway as the overlord of the Norwegians, in alliance with the earls of Hlaðir and other Norwegian magnates; insofar as the large estate at Hlaðir (Lade) was the sea-port of Nidaros, the earls controlled the first urban settlement of Trondheim. When Óláfr Haraldsson sailed to Norway in 1014 or 1015, won the battle of Nesjar in 1015 and became king of Norway, it was with the blessing of King Æthelred that he did so. The question is whether Óláfr brought a relic of St. Swithun with him to Stavanger from England. It is hard to imagine. The magnate Erlingr Skjálgsson (d. 1027) was married to the daughter of King Óláfr Tryggvason (r. 995–1000). From his estate at Sóli (where Stavanger’s Sola airport is today), Erlingr controlled the west coast of Norway on behalf of the king and was himself called king of the hryggjar. The coastal regions up to Trøndelag had been Christianized since the second half of the tenth century. Erlingr was a former supporter of Sveinn Forkbeard, but after Nesjar he accepted Óláfr Haraldsson as his king. Óláfr, however, tried to reduce Erlingr’s authority and power and the two men became hostile to each other. Erlingr once more joined forces with Cnut, but was killed in battle against Óláfr on Christmas Eve 1027.94 The memorial cross next to Stavanger Cathedral, which has been mentioned above, is significant in this context. It was raised by a priest who carved runes in memory of his lord by the name of Erlingr, “es einn vas úr arni véltr” (who alone was driven from his hearth by deception).95 The runes are now blurred and partly erased, but Aslak Liestøl identified the priest as Erlingr Skjálgsson’s chaplain Alfgeirr. He found the meaning of the wider runic inscription to be “Skjalgr’s nimble son who was without deceit, remained for a long time alone on the deck in the stern of his empty ship.”96 Liestøl associated the inscription with the famous half stanza in the skaldic poem of Sigvatr Þórðarson in memory of Erlingr Skjálgsson: “einn stóð sonr á sínu / snarr Skjalgs, vinum fjarri, / í lyptingu

93 Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 93–94; Williams, “Thorkell and the Bubble Reputation,” 145. 94 Sawyer, “Cnut’s Scandinavian Empire,” 17–18. Bolton, Cnut the Great, 155. 95 Liestøl, “252 Stavanger III,” 253, 257. 96 Liestøl, “252 Stavanger III,” 253, 257. The memorial stone is now in Stavanger museum. The inscriptions are interpreted by Oluf Rygh, Carl Johan Sverdrup Marstrander, and Aslak Liestøl.

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lengi / lætrauðr skipi auðu” (Alone stood Skjalgr’s bold son, far from friends, guileless, long on the after-deck of his empty ship).97

Conclusion: Cnut’s Gift to Stavanger Taking into consideration that new sources might cast more light over Cnut’s gift, I will not rule out the possibility that a church in Denmark received the relic of St. Swithun, but Stavanger seems more likely. Erlingr Skjálgsson was allied with Cnut the Great and remained loyal to him. His death by treachery is significant. The memorial cross points to resentment, which for a shrewd politician provided a situation in which a relic to the church of the deceased would honor his memory and benefit the donor. The archaeological evidence points to an early, wooden church at the same place as Stavanger Cathedral, in which the only known relic of St. Swithun in Scandinavia was placed. The liturgical evidence shows a cult of St. Swithun in Norway which was older than 1066. “Dacia” in BL Lansdowne 436 refers to Cnut the Great’s Scandinavian thalassocracy, not only Denmark. The evidence presented in this chapter tends to show that the relic of St. Swithun was translated by Cnut, and that political considerations were behind the act. Cnut had access to the shrine of St. Swithun. My conclusion is that he had both the power and the authority to remove a large relic of the saint, perhaps with the help of Bishop Sigurd, and to present it to the church in Stavanger as a gesture of respect to Erlingr Skjálgsson, the great chieftain who had lost his life to a common enemy.

97 “Sigvatr, Flokkr about Erlingr Skjálgsson,” ed. Jesch, 633. See also Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age, 264.

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Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs The Danes enter written medieval history in earnest in the ninth century, long before the appearance of Cnut’s ancestors at Jelling in Jutland. In the first decade of this century, the Royal Frankish Annals tell of border conflicts between Charlemagne and a king from another Danish family, Godfrid or Godofrid. One cannot read this account without also encountering two Slavic peoples, the Abodrites (or Obodrites: see Morawiec in the following chapter) and the Wilzi. The Abodrites had been allies of Charlemagne in his war against the Saxons and in 808, Godofrid led a Danish army south against them, putting one of their rulers, Drasco, to flight, and executing another, Godelaib. Godofrid made two thirds of the Abodrites tributary to the Danes; on his way back to Denmark he destroyed a trading-place in Abodrite territory on the Baltic coast called Reric, now identified with a site near Groß Strömkendorf, to the north-east of Wismar.1 In this expedition Godofrid had with him Slavic allies of his own, namely the Wilzi, who, according to the Annals, joined Godofrid voluntarily “propter antiquas inimicitias” (because of their ancient enmities) with the Abodrites.2 This chapter will show that such relationships with these westernmost Slavic peoples continued to play an important role in Danish affairs in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and especially in the politics of the Jelling dynasty, whose area of authority grew into the Christian, medieval kingdom of Denmark. Cnut – who had a Polish mother and an Abodrite grandmother – was no exception to this rule.3

1 Kempke, “Skandinavisch-slawisch Kontakte,” 18–19. See the Map of Abodrites and Wilzi. 2 Annales regni Francorum, ed. Pertz and Kurze, 125–26 (s.a. 808). 3 Versions of the paper on which this chapter is based were presented on several occasions at conferences and seminars in Cambridge and London in 2015 and 2016. I would like to thank those who invited me to present at these, namely Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Richard North, and Fraser McNair. I would also like to thank Michael H. Gelting, who very generously read a draft of this chapter and offered his comments, and Jakub Morawiec and Timothy Bolton for their feedback at the London and Cambridge conferences in 2016. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-019

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The Elbe-Slavs To refer to all the Slavic peoples between the rivers Elbe and Oder, or between the Saxons in the west and the Poles in the east, I will use the term “Elbe-Slavs,” which represents the standard term in German research. More precisely, “Baltic Slavs” is used to refer to the northernmost of these tribes bordering the Baltic Sea, who will be the focus of this chapter. The term “Polabians” is also used with the same meaning as “Elbe-Slavs,” but is a Slavic formation (Labe being the Slavic name for Elbe). Vinðr (Wends) is a generic term for Slavs used in Old Norse and other Germanic languages. Most contemporary sources simply call them “Slavs,” or refer to them by a specific name, such as “Abodrites.” These peoples have received relatively little attention from historians of Scandinavia and especially from those in the English-speaking world, even though they were the immediate neighbours of the Danes. Why is this? First, they no longer exist: their territory is in modern Germany,4 and their languages died out in the Middle Ages with only a couple of exceptions: these include a pocket in the Hanoverian Wendland, just south of the Elbe in the east of Lower Saxony, which survived into the eighteenth century,5 and a small community, known as Sorbs, in the south-east of Saxony, where a Slavic language is still spoken by a minority. Second, there is still something of a mental Iron Curtain in operation in scholarship: medievalists who work on western Europe tend not to read Polish and Russian; this limits our access to scholarship on Slavic matters, although much is written in German and the sources themselves are in Latin. Finally, Scandinavian historians have been accustomed to looking in two directions: either northwards in search of the purely Scandinavian, or to the south-west in search of Insular and Continental Christian influences. When we look east, we tend to look very far – often all the way to Byzantium and Baghdad, sometimes stopping in Novgorod or Kyiv on the way – but the southern shore of the Baltic tends to be a blind spot. Needless to say, it was not so for the Scandinavians of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Adam of Bremen’s description of the area between the Elbe and Oder and its inhabitants can strike one as overwhelming, owing to the number of peoples named.6 These, however, fell largely into three confederacies, of whom the Abodrites were the furthest to the north and west; to their south and east were

4 Although Lübke, “Die Elbslawen,” 66, notes that the research in the DDR focused on an area bounded to the east by the modern boundary of the Oder-Neiße line, and that such a fixed boundary cannot properly be projected onto the region at earlier points in history. 5 Witkowski, “Sprachen und Dialekte,” 51–54. 6 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 75–81 (II.xxi–ii).

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the Liutizi, alternatively known as the Wilzi, which was an earlier name, used in the annal for 808; and further south were the Sorbs. The main sources for the Abodrites and Liutizi in this chapter will be tenth- and eleventh-century German chronicles, such as those of Widukind of Corvey, Thietmar of Merseburg, and Adam of Bremen, as well as various annals, and Helmold of Bosau’s twelfth-century Chronicle of the Slavs. In addition to the Abodrites proper, with their center in Mecklenburg, there were at least three other peoples associated with the Abodrite “confederacy,” which expanded to the east and south in the eleventh century.7 There were two main centres of power, with their own dynasties, which often rivaled one another: one was Michelenburg, the other Oldenburg in Holstein. Mecklenburg, formerly Michelenburg, which means “large fortress,” was the center of the Abodrites proper, but it is clear that the rulers of Oldenburg in Holstein (or in Slavic, Starigard, “old fortress”), the center of the Wagrians, often opposed them.8 In the tenth century, the Mecklenburg dynasty established its preeminence, and in around 965 the Cordoban Spanish Jew Ibrāhīm ibn Ya’qūb (or Abraham ben Jacob) described the Abodrite ruler Nakon as one of the four great kings of the Slavs, alongside the rulers of the Poles, Czechs, and Bulgars.9 Nakon’s father may have been the unnamed Abodrite ruler who was defeated by the German King Henry the Fowler in 931 and forced to accept Christianity.10 His dynasty, the Nakonids, largely maintained their Christian faith through the frequent Slavic pagan reactions, while they cultivated strong links with the Saxon dukes of the Billung family.11 This Abodrite-Saxon closeness can be traced back to 967, when Duke Hermann Billung helped establish the preeminence of the Mecklenburg dynasty under Mstivoi, presumed to be Nakon’s son, over the other Elbe-Slav dynasty based in Wagria at Oldenburg.12 According to the twelfth-century chronicler Helmold, Mstivoi was also known as Billung or

7 On the eastern boundary of the Abodrite confederacy, see Friedmann, Untersuchungen, 26–29. 8 Lübke, “Die Elbslawen,” 70; for example, see Widukind, Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 142–43 (III.lxviii). This is possibly also reflected in the two duces, mentioned by the Annales regni Francorum, s.a. 808 (see note 2 above). 9 On the transmission of Ibrāhīm ibn Ya’qūb’s text and for a translation of the relevant section, see Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadlān, 162–68 (at 164). 10 Lübke, Regesten, 2.51–2 (no. 33); e.g., Annales Einsidlenses, ed. von Planta, 184 (s.a. 931). For a complete list of annals, see Lübke. 11 Lübke, “Die Elbslawen,” 70–71. 12 Friedmann, Untersuchungen, 241; Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 142–43 (III.lxviii).

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Billug: this has been interpreted as a reference to the Billung family, and may have been taken as a baptismal name.13

Map 18.1: Western Slavonic territories in Cnut’s reign (1016–1035).

Abodrite and Danish Dynastic Politics Mstivoi also cultivated links with the Danes. According to a runestone at Sønder Vissing in Jutland, he gave his daughter, who bore the Norse name Tufa or Tófa, in marriage to one Haraldr, a Danish king who can only be Haraldr Bluetooth (see Table 18.1), Cnut’s grandfather. According to a claim on the famous Jelling stone, Halraldr “uan tanmaurk ala auk nuruiak auk tąni karþi kristną” (won all Denmark for himself and Norway and made the Danes Christian).14 The text of the Sønder Vissing stone is: “tufa | lEt kaurua | kubl | mistiuis | tutiR | uft | muþur | 13 Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 142–43 (III.lxviii); Friedmann, Untersuchungen, 243–44. The taking of baptismal names was common practice for Scandinavians and Slavs in this period. 14 Jakobsen and Moltke, Danmarks Runeindskrifter, no. 42 (Jelling).

Dates show time of reign a

Mieszko II Lambert*, 1025–1034

Boleslaw I Chrobry, 992– 1025

Piast (Polish) dynasty Mieszko I, d. 992

Salian (German) dynasty Henry III, Roman Emperor 1039–1056

Harald, 1013–1019

Daughter

Gunnhild

Cnut Lambert*, 1013–1035

Svend Otto* Forkbeard, c. 986–1013

Kund Lavard, King of the Abodrites 1129–31

Erik Ejegod

Daughter (Sigrid?)

Świętosława (same as? → ) (Santslaue)

Knut

* Marks a baptismal name

Gunnhild

Lade Pribignev (Norwegian) Udo*, 1020–1028 dynasty Daughter Håkon 1028–1030 Gottschalk, 1043–1066

Sventipolk

Heinrich of Alt-Lübeck 1093–1127

Daughter

Mstislav, c. 990–1018

Mstivoi Billung*, c. 967–c. 990

Harald Bluetooth, c. 963–c. 986 Tufa

Nakonid (Abodrite) dynasty

Jelling (Danish) dynasty

Many other children, including four Danish kings including

Svend Estridsen, 1042–1076

Estrid

Table 18.1: Dynasties of the Piast, Jelling, and Nakonid kindreds.

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sina | kuna | harats | hins | kuþa | kurms | sunaR” (Tufa, Mstivoi’s daughter, wife of Haraldr the Good, Gormr’s son, had these monuments made for her mother).15 The questions to ask here are when Tufa’s marriage took place, and whether Haraldr’s son and successor, Sveinn Forkbeard, was the offspring of this union. If we can trust the skaldic poem Vellekla,16 attributed to the Icelandic poet Einarr skálaglamm in ca. 985, “Vinðr” (Wends) fought alongside Franks and Frisians in a battle at what seems to be the Danevirke against the Norwegian Earl Hákon of Hlaðir. In all likelihood this refers to Abodrites fighting on the side of Otto II (973–983) against Hákon’s overlord, Haraldr Bluetooth Gormsson, in 974.17 We might then presume that Tufa’s marriage took place either some years before 974, or some years after. However, it must be stressed that we cannot be sure that this line from Vellekla refers to an official Abodrite presence backed by Mstivoi. My own suspicion, therefore, is that the marriage must have taken place early, most probably shortly after 967, when the Saxons helped establish Mstivoi as overall ruler by resolving the quarrel between the Mecklenburg-Abodrites and the Wagrians of Starigard (i.e., Oldenburg in Holstein: see Map 18.1).18 In these circumstances, a Jelling-Mecklenburg alliance that would have surrounded the Wagrians to the north, south, and east would be particularly valuable to Mstivoi. Haraldr would have appreciated support on the south coast of the Baltic while he expanded the influence of his dynasty eastwards across the Great Belt and Øresund, probably in the 970s.19 An early date for the marriage makes it entirely

15 Jakobsen and Moltke, Danmarks Runeindskrifter, no. 55 (Sønder Vissing). 16 “Einarr skálaglamm Helgason: Vellekla,” ed. Marold, 315–18 (vv. 26–27). Note that the order of these verses cannot be certain, given their scattered disposition in the sources. 17 “Einarr skálaglamm Helgason: Vellekla,” ed. Marold, 315–18 (vv. 26–27); Lübke, Regesten, 2.250–51 (no. 178); Annales Altahenses maiores, ed. Giesebrecht and von Oefele, 12 (s.a. 974); Lampert, Annals, ed. Holder-Egger, 42 (s.a. 974), who places it at Schleswig; Annales Ottenburiani, ed. Pertz, 4 (s.a. 974). See also Friedmann, Untersuchungen, 243. It is tempting to look for other candidates than the Abodrites proper: the Wagrians come to mind, but they were not on the best of terms with the Saxons. 18 Given that in the aftermath of the quarrel of 967, the Saxon rebel Wichmann was able to hold out the prospect of getting Danish aid as a reasonable pretext from slipping away from the Wagrians, who had taken up arms (with Wichmann’s support) against the Saxon dukes, this Danish-Abodrite marriage had probably not taken place by this point: Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 142–43 (III.lxviii). Widukind says that in 968 the Saxons thought a war with the Danes was looming (quod tunc bellum adversum Danos urgeret): see ibid., 147 (III.lxx). 19 Intermarriage at the top levels of Danish and Abodrite society was probably nothing new: at the start of this chapter I have mentioned the Abodrite leader named Godelaib, which appears to be the Old Norse name Guðleifr – which, although it is far from proof, is at least a possible indication of some Norse ancestry. It is worth exploring the possibility that Harald’s Abodrite wife Tufa

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possible that Haraldr’s successor, Sveinn Forkbeard, was the child of Haraldr and Tufa: if this is true, Sveinn would have been in his early twenties or perhaps late teens in the 980s when he rebelled against his father. This rebellion is another event in which the Slavic context is essential. Since the days of King Henry I the Fowler (919–936), the Saxons had been establishing their authority over areas to the east. The Elbe-Slavs were forced to pay tribute to the Saxons, and in 931 various sources record that Henry defeated the king of the Abodrites and forced him to accept Christianity.20 The amounts exacted in tribute were often extortionate, and on top of this the Elbe-Slavs were expected to pay church tithes as well;21 thus it is hardly surprising that there were frequent revolts against Saxon overlordship and Christianity. Indeed, in the 1070s, the Danish King Sveinn Ástríðarson (or Svend Estridsen) remarked to Adam of Bremen that the Slavs would have been Christianized long ago if the Saxons had not been so avaricious.22 The Danes were also defeated by Henry the Fowler in 931, when their king, “Chnuba,” was forced to accept baptism and tributary status.23 The Danes, however, do not seem to have been subject to the same structures that were established

or Tófa herself may also have been half-Danish: her name at least is Norse and not Slavic, and although again this is not decisive proof (some individuals may have had both Norse and Slavic names for different contexts), the fact that she raised a memorial to her mother in Denmark might suggest that her mother was Danish – presumably from a dynasty other than Harald’s; thus the marriage would have not only had a Slavic component but could have fed into Harald’s domination of Denmark through alliances with other Danish elite groups. However, rune-stones are often memorials rather than grave-markers, although they can be associated with graves – but no grave is known in connection with this stone, which was found in the nineteenth century, having been reused as part of a gate (see Jacobsen and Moltke, Danmarks Runeindskrifter, no. 55). It is noteworthy that the mother is not named, perhaps indicating she bore a Slavic name that the carver found difficult to render (although he did manage Mstivoi), which would cast doubt on her being Danish or having lived in Denmark (as then, presumably, she would have had a Norse, or at least somewhat Nordicised, name as well as a Slavic one). The lack of a name suggests that her name would not have been familiar enough for locals to recognize it on a stone. On balance, it is thus better to interpret the stone as a memorial, rather than a burial-marker, and to conclude that Tufa’s mother was not part-Danish and was actually buried in Abodrite territory. 20 Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 59 (I.xl); Lübke, Regesten, nos. 33, 43. 21 Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 178. 22 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 166 (III.xxiii). Tribute seems to have been one of the driving concerns, rather than any programmatic push to territorial expansion: Althoff, “Saxony and the Elbe Slavs,” 278. 23 See note 19 above.

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over the Slavs, although these varied in different areas:24 the Billungs, whom Henry set over the northern areas (modern Holstein and Mecklenburg), tended to rely on the local elites to control the area, whereas Markgraf Gero in the central and southern areas (modern Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Sachsen) seems to have preferred to eliminate the elites.25 When Henry’s son, Otto I (“the Great”), died in 973, Haraldr Bluetooth seized the occasion to prepare for attacks to the south, which he launched in the following year, but the new emperor, Otto II, defeated him and may have forced him to accept some kind of tributary status.26 Nevertheless, when Otto II died in 983, not only Haraldr but also the Elbe-Slavs rose up again.

Slavs, Danes, and the Turmoil of the 980s The driving force behind their revolt was the confederation of Slavic peoples to the east and south of the Abodrites, known no longer as Wilzi but as Liutizi. The confederation of the Liutizi was based on a fierce paganism that centered on the temple at Rethra, where they worshipped a god called Redigost, whose name is probably connected to that of the chief people of the confederation, the Redarii;27 the name Liutizi itself comes from the Slavic root ljut-, whose meanings include “fierce,” “cruel,” and “steadfast.”28 Unlike the Abodrite confederacy, in which the peoples were (theoretically) subject to the Abodrite kings, the Liutizi had no overall ruler and were governed by assemblies in which, according to Thietmar of Merseburg, those who spoke against the will of the majority were beaten with cudgels and risked fines or the destruction of their property if they failed to comply with any decision.29 Their rebellion was directed not only at the Church and the authority of the Saxons, but also more broadly at rule by princes: thus the Abodrites and

24 See note 20 above. The date is sometimes given as 934, on which see Friedmann, Untersuchungen, 183–85. 25 Fritze, “Der slawische Aufstand,” 14. 26 Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 103–4 (III.vi). Otto did almost certainly not (as is often claimed) conquer Hedeby and annex the south of Jutland: this is reading far too much into Thietmar’s text, in which sounds more like a border-skirmish than anything else, and recent interpretations of the numismatic evidence have also made this view increasingly untenable: Moesgaard, Guerra, Tarnow Ingvardson, Ilisch, Pentz, and Skov, King Harold’s Cross Coinage, 50. 27 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 79 (II.xxi); Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 8 (I.ii); Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 302–4 (VI.xxiii–iv), who calls the city Riedegost. 28 Witkowski, “Namen,” 14. 29 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 304 (VI.xxv).

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Hevellians, a Slavic tribe by the Havel to the south in Brandenburg, were also potential targets.30 The Liutizi were not, however, proto-socialists resisting the expansion of a feudalist system of economic exploitation, as scholarship in the former East Germany sometimes implied, but were dominated by their own landholding class, referred to as “priores” in Latin, whose interests were threatened by the growth of power at a higher level as well as by the establishment of the Church.31 Thus, Mstivoi does not at first seem to have participated in the revolt, and in 984, according to Thietmar, he was at the court of Quedlinburg in support of Duke Henry the Quarrelsome of Bavaria’s claim to the throne.32 The revolt spread to the Wagrians, and Adam of Bremen reports that sixty priests were killed in the church at Oldenburg in Holstein (Starigard), including the Cathedral Provost Oddar, a relative of the later Danish king, Sveinn Ástríðarson.33 The rebellion grew in popularity, and in the end Mstivoi does seem to have also taken part in it, although he remained Christian: Thietmar reports that he burnt the cathedral in Hamburg, giving as his source for this none other than Mstivoi’s chaplain.34

30 Lübke, “Die Elbslawen,” 73–74. 31 Fritze, “Der slawische Aufstand,” 35–38. For an example of this view in the DDR, see Epperlein, “Voraussetzungen,” 333–34. In the post-war Bundesrepublik, where most pre-war Ostforscher found jobs after the war (some despite their Nazi past, e.g., Walter Kuhn, Hermann Aubin), the discourse focused more on the expansion of Western Civilization (Abendland), and this expansion as a form of defense against a threat beyond: Lübke, “Germania Slavica,” 387. This provided some continuity with the pre-1945 narrative of an expansion of Deutschtum, which was justified as a protective bulwark against an eastern threat and fit in well with the context of the Cold War; it could also ultimately flow into the pan-European stream of “the Europeanization of Europe.” 32 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 132 (IV.ii); Lübke, Regesten, 3.19–21 (nos. 223) and 3.66–70 (256–56b). 33 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 102–5 (II.xlii–iv); see also Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 33–36 (I.xvi). 34 Lübke, Regesten, 3.19–21 (no. 223) notes problems with the chronology – the year is normally given as around 983, but Mstivoi’s presence at the Hoftag in Quedlinburg in 984 suggests it must be later than this. Thietmar, in Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 120 (III.xviii), reports that he burnt Hamburg, where a golden hand emerged from the sky, entered into the fire, and returned holding something, which Thietmar and his source conclude was the relics of the saints. He names his source as Avico, Mstivoi’s chaplain, and adds that later Mstivoi died in a fit of madness saying St. Laurence was burning him. Adam, in Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 103 (II.xliii, schol. 30), says that Mstivoi refused to abandon Christanity and thus was expelled from his realm and lived out his days in the Bardengau; but Adam seems to have confused Mistui here with his son, Mstislav, whose flight following a pagan reaction is described in Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 498 (VIII.v).

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To turn to the situation in Denmark, both Haraldr and his Abodrite in-laws had been drawn into the revolt of the Liutizi against the Saxons, with Haraldr, like Mstivoi, remaining Christian.35 In 985 and 986, various annals record Saxon expeditions against the Elbe-Slavs;36 in at least the first of these Duke Mieszko I of Poland was also involved on the Saxon side. As Mieszko was a Christian ruler amassing a tributary empire not unlike that of the Ottonian emperors, the Liutizi were no friends to him either; moreover, he had excellent relations with the emperor.37 It is around this time that Sveinn Forkbeard rebelled against his father, Haraldr Bluetooth, who, according to both Adam of Bremen and to the eleventhcentury Encomium Emmae, fled to the Slavs after his defeat.38 Adam names the place of his flight as “Iumne,” usually identified with the city of Wolin, situated on an island of the same name at the mouth of the Oder (Iumne is also thought to be Jómsborg, seat of the legendary Jómsvikings). Wolin lay in the border-region between the Liutizi and the kingdom of Poland. Although Widukind records Mieszko I of Poland defeating the “Vuloini” around 967,39 there is nothing to suggest that this led to any lasting Polish control of the area.40 Rather, in the 980s Wolin was pagan and linked to the Liutizi confederation. Wolin probably maintained this independence, for over the course of the next century, it would develop a reputation as a base for pirates.41

35 The comparative angle provided by the case of Mstivoi is revealing: Adam depicts Svend’s rebellion (see below) as a pagan reaction, but Harald is clearly the one who initiates Danish involvement in what was largely a pagan reaction. The case of Mstivoi shows that rulers could remain Christian while their people were more pagan and attacked Christianity: this divide continued among the Slavs into the twelfth century (see Lübke, “Beziehungen,” 28), but does not appear to have continued among the Danes. 36 E.g., Annales Altahenses maiores, ed. de Giesebrecht and von Oefele, 15 (s.a. 985); Annales Hildesheimenses, ed. Waitz, 24 (s.a. 985); for other annals, see Lübke, Regesten, 2.36–37 (no. 236). Which group of Slavs is not stated, but presumably it must be the Liutizi and others in rebellion. 37 Widukind, in Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 143–44 (III. lxix), describes him as amicus imperatoris. 38 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 87–88 (II.xxvii–iii); Encomium Emmae, ed. Campbell, 8 (I.i). 39 Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 143–45 (III.lxix). 40 Filipowiak, in “Some Aspects,” 68, suggests that new fortifications at Wolin in the last quarter of the tenth century might be connected to the period of Mieszko’s rule, but I am not aware of any reason why this must be so. 41 Lübke, “Beziehungen,” 29–31.

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Sveinn’s Marriage(s) It is in this context that I set the early career and marriage of Sveinn Forkbeard, and thus Cnut’s parentage. My conclusions differ from those of Jakub Morawiec in his discussion of this in the next chapter (pp. 419–24). Thietmar records that Sveinn was captured after his father’s death by “Northmanni” (“Northmannis insurgentibus captus”), from whom he had to be ransomed;42 Adam, on the other hand, says that he made war on the Slavs and was captured twice and taken to “Sclavania,” after which he had to be ransomed.43 Moreover, a skaldic verse attributed to the late-eleventh-century Icelandic poet Markús Skeggjason claims that the Wends were subject to a Sveinn – possibly Sveinn Forkbeard, but also possibly his grandson, Sveinn Ástríðarson.44 To my mind, the variety of this detail suggests that hostilities between Sveinn Haraldsson and his father’s supporters dragged on even after Haraldr’s flight to Wolin and his death there. The confusion over whether Sveinn’s captors were Norse or Slavic would fit well with the idea that his enemies were a group made up of Haraldr’s Danish supporters and Slavic allies, particularly ones based on Wolin.45 A recent and controversial artefact, a medallion called the “Curmsun disc,” whose authenticity has not been universally accepted, was discovered allegedly at Wiejkowo near Wolin. If genuine, its inscription, bearing the name Haraldr Gormsson, may show that it was originally associated with Haraldr’s grave. If that is the case, the object bears archaeological witness to Haraldr’s having enough support in the area for it to have been commissioned.46 This object has also, however, been dated to the eleventh or twelfth century.47 Faced with this continuing difficulty from Wolin, the most rational place for Sveinn to look to for help would have been Poland. The Saxons and the

42 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 442 (VII.xxxvi). 43 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 91 (II.xxix). 44 “Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa,” ed. Carroll, 450 (v. 21). 45 Filipowiak, in “Some Aspects,” 67–68, identifies Scandinavian influence in the material evidence from Wolin during this period, though defining “Scandinavian influence” when Slavs and Scandinavians were interacting on both sides of the Baltic is no straightforward matter. Wolin, however, would not have been unique in this mingling, as the present chapter has been arguing. See, for example, the presence of priests related to the Danish royal family in Oldenburg in 983 (see note 32 above). 46 For discussion, see Rosborn, “A unique object.” The inscription “+ARALD | CVRMSVN | REX AD TAN | ER+SCON+J | VMN+CIV | ALDIN+” seems to represent “Harald Gormsson, King of the Danes, Skåne, Jumne and the civitas of Oldenburg” or “King of the Danes and Skåne, (at?) Jumne in the bishopric of Oldenburg.” 47 Harpsøe, “Haraldsguldet,” 25–27.

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emperor were separated from Wolin by the rest of the Liutizi. Moreover, they seem to have had little interest in Denmark in this period, whereas the Polish rulers were very keen to expand to the west.48 Adam and Thietmar both record that Sveinn’s wife was of the Polish royal dynasty,49 and the naming of Cnut’s sister as “Santslave” in the Liber vitae of New Minster, Winchester, for Świętosława, seems to confirm this.50 For these reasons it would make perfect sense for Sveinn to have contracted this marriage in the 980s, when Mieszko’s daughter would probably have been in her mid-teens and thus perfectly marriageable by the standards of the day. We are not told what her own name was, but it is often assumed that it was also Świętosława.51 If this marriage took place, Adam of Bremen’s claim, that Sveinn’s revolt against his father was a pagan one, would be the wrong way round – in fact, it was the Wolin-allied Haraldr who was taking part in (or at least, taking advantage of) a pagan revolt, and Sveinn who, I would suggest, fought against him alongside Christian allies. There is nothing in the material record to suggest that Sveinn Forkbeard rejected Christianity. The diploma of 988 giving Danish bishops rights in Germany, which is often advanced as evidence that Sveinn expelled the bishops sent by Hamburg-Bremen,52 nowhere states that the bishops were in exile. This document can be explained easily enough by the turmoil of the times and by what would have seemed a very real fear that the pagan reaction that had begun among the Slavs would spread to the Danes. The bishops, far from being expelled, may well have fled of their own accord (or at least spent less time in Denmark). To return to Sveinn’s marriage, however, the picture I have painted here is complicated by Adam’s report that Sveinn’s queen was the widow of Eiríkr the Victorious of Sweden, whose death is normally placed around 995.53 There are several ways of dealing with this complication. In one way, it does all seem to add up to

48 Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 255. 49 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 95–96 (II.xxxv, schol. 24) and 99 (II.xxxix); Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 446 (VII.xxxix). 50 Uspenskii, in “Dynastic Names,” 20, identifies it as a typical female name of the dynasty. 51 Adam (see above, note 48) records that it was either the sister of Bolesław (hence daughter of Mieszko) or daughter. In the latter case, she could not have been older than eight in 992, which is the earliest she could have married Erik (as according to Adam, the union was created by Bolesław, who became king in 992). Thus it is unlikely that she bore Erik a son before his death in 995: see Lund, “Svend Estridsens blodskam,” 43, n. 13. For a different view, see Morawiec in this volume, pp. 419–24. 52 Ottonis II. et III. diplomata, ed. Sickel, 441 (D O III 41); as argued by (among others) Gelting, “The Kingdom of Denmark,” 83. 53 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 95 (II.xxxv, schol. 24 [25]): Erik’s marriage of a sister or daughter of Bolesław) and 99 (II.xxxix: Sveinn’s marriage with Eiríkr’s widow).

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one person: we know from Thietmar that Sveinn’s wife was a Polish princess, while from Adam we know that Mieszko’s son, Duke Bolesław Chrobry (“the Brave”) of Poland (992–1025) gave his sister (or daughter, Adam is not sure) to Eiríkr as part of a Swedish-Polish alliance, and that Sveinn married Eiríkr’s widow. In another way, if one is to suggest that Sveinn took a Polish wife in the 980s, it is worth noting that Adam nowhere says that the Polish princess who married Eiríkr was the same person as the widow of Eiríkr, whom Sveinn then married. The virtue of treating these brides, Eiríkr’s and then Sveinn’s, as two different women is that it involves the least meddling with the documentary record. The two-women reading solves the problem neatly, because it fits with Thietmar’s account from ca. 1018 that Sveinn had rejected his Polish wife at some point long ago: this would have left him free to marry Eiríkr’s widow in ca. 995.54 If Eiríkr’s widow was Duke Mieszko’s daughter, the same Polish princess whom Adam records Bolesław giving him in marriage, she could have been a sister or niece of Sveinn’s previous Polish wife: this might seem unusual, but it is not impossible. Whether Sveinn had two marriages or only one, we should consider at what point he might have sent away his (second?) wife. The most likely time would probably have been between the years 1002–1005. After the death of Otto III on January 23, 1002, Bolesław of Poland (992–1025) took the opportunity to seize territory among the southern Elbe-Slavs as well as in Bohemia and Moravia, for which he refused to do homage to Otto’s successor, King Henry of the Romans (son of Duke Henry the Quarrelsome of Bavaria and crowned as emperor in 1014). In response, King Henry allied himself with the Liutizi against the Poles; given the steadfast paganism of the Liutizi, this was an alliance many contemporaries found objectionable.55 Since Sveinn was focused on England from 1002 onwards, it is likely that he had no wish to return to hostilities with the Liutizi.

Cnut and the Slavs This brings us to Sveinn’s son, Cnut. The Encomium reports that on Sveinn’s death on February 3, 1014, Cnut and his brother Haraldr retrieved their mother from

54 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 446 (VII.xxxix). 55 Strzelczyk, “Bohemia and Poland,” 525–26.

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“Sclavonia.”56 Although this does not necessarily imply the renewal of any Danish-Polish alliance, the peace of Merseburg in 1013 between the Poles and King Henry (later Emperor Henry II, 1014–1024) meant that one year later Cnut and Haraldr would not have been under any obligation to fight for the Poles against the Liutizi and Saxons.57 However, fighting the Liutizi seems to have been precisely what Cnut did a few years later. The twelfth-century Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon records that, in the third year of his reign, hence in 1019, Cnut went to Denmark to attack the “Wandali,” that is, the “Wends.”58 Timothy Bolton has argued that this expedition should be redated to 1022 and connected with Thorkell the Tall.59 I would like to propose, however, that the Slavic context makes 1019, the year we know Cnut did travel to Denmark, a more likely year for this expedition.60 In 1018 the peace of Bautzen finally brought an end to the conflict between Emperor Henry II and Bolesław. The Liutizi, who had been Henry’s allies in this war, took the opportunity to attack the Abodrites, who were then ruled by Mstislav, the son of Mstivoi. Like his father, Mstislav was a Christian, but his people were largely pagan and joined with the Liutizi in driving him out and rejecting Christianity and the rule of princes for what Thietmar called “libertas more Liuticico” (freedom, Liutizi-style).61 Bishop Benno of Oldenburg in Holstein informed Emperor Henry about these events, but Henry took no immediate action and put off a decision until Easter.62 He clearly had no wish to entangle himself in the affairs of his former Liutizi allies. The Abodrite dynasty was, however, still connected to the Danes (see Table 18.1): Cnut’s grandmother had been Mstislav’s sister, while, according to the Chronicle of St. Michael’s in Lüneburg, Mstislav’s own son Pribignev Uto was married to a Dane. Although we do not know if she was of royal stock, it

56 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.ii). 57 Strzelczyk, “Bohemia and Poland,” 526. 58 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, 362–64 (VI.xv). 59 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 213. His argument is based on the following notice that “hoc circa tempus” (around this time), Æthelnoth went to Rome, which occurred in 1022. However, this is hardly an exact formulation, and the next dated event is not until the eighth year of Cnut’s reign; Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, 364 (VI.xvi). This gives ample space for the event to have occurred. The connection to Thorkell the Tall relies on the later, problematic evidence surrounding the Jómsvikings, which should be treated with suspicion; See also Morawiec in the next chapter, pp. 426–29. 60 ASC (D) ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1019; CE as well). 61 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 498 (VIII.v); Lübke, Regesten, 4.89–92 (nos. 536–37) argues that the Liutizi could not have undertaken such a step (i.e., attacking the establishment of Christianity among the Abodrites) while allied with Henry II. 62 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 498–500 (VIII.vi); Lübke, Regesten, 4.92–93 (no. 538).

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is not out of the question, as St. Michael’s was where Pribignev’s son, Gottschalk, was brought up; this lends credibility to the source.63 Moreover, Cnut and his brother Haraldr could not have liked the prospect of “libertas more Liuticico” spreading to Denmark as well. By 1020, the Abodrite dynasty seems to have been restored, with Pribignev in charge. A Danish expedition led by Cnut to help them against the Liutizi and the Abodrite rebels in 1019 would fit perfectly with these events. The Billung dukes of Saxony seem to have assisted in the endeavour as well, as the tributary status of the Abodrites to the Saxons was restored.64

A Slavic Prince in England: A New Suggestion The years that followed seem to have largely seen a cooperation between the Danes, the Billungs, the Abodrite dynasty, and the Poles in containing the Liutizi. Emperor Henry II was not always an enemy, but he was no friend at least to the Billungs or the Poles. According to John of Worcester, a sister of Cnut had married a “king of the Wends” called “Wyrtgeorn.”65 This man might be identical with the “Wrytsleof dux” who attests one of Cnut’s charters in 1026;66 we know of no king with this name, which looks like the Slavic name Vartislav (Warcisław), but he could have been an important Abodrite, Pole, or perhaps Pomeranian.67 I have a new and different suggestion, however, that the name “Wyrtgeorn” (the Old English name for the legendary Vortigern) is a garbling of Pribignev, a name which would normally have been Latinized as “Pribigneus.” Not only would such an Abodrite name have looked incomprehensibly alien to AngloSaxon eyes, but the letter P could have been mistaken for the Old English letter wynn (ƿ) at some point during the manuscript transmission.68 Thus, I would 63 Chronicon S. Michaelis, ed. Weiland, 395; Uspenskii, in “Dynastic Names,” 22, n. 17 notes this, though he misses out a generation, making Gottschalk a grandson, rather than a greatgrandson of Mstivoi. Neither Adam nor Helmold know of this union. Strictly speaking, the annal only reports that Gottschalk’s mother was Danish, not that she was Pribignev’s wife. 64 Lübke, Regesten, 4.99–103 (nos. 547–49). 65 Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 62; Lübke argues, wrongly, that this is a Welsh king, in Regesten, 3.288–89 (no. 436); John of Worcester, Chronicon, ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 510–11 (s.a. 1029) and 540–41 (s.a. 1044). 66 Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 64–65. 67 Lübke, Regesten, 4.133–34 (no. 578). Also discussed by Morawiec in the next chapter, p. 429. 68 The name Pribignev is not attested before Saxo, in Gesta Danorum, ed. Friis-Jensen, II, 750 (X.xvii.3); Adam and Helmold call him by the baptismal name Uto/Udo. Adam, in Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 125–26 (II.lxvi), does mention three princes of the Slavs:

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suggest that Cnut’s unnamed sister could have been the unnamed Danish wife of Pribignev who is mentioned in the Chronicle of St. Michael’s as the mother of Gottschalk (king of the Abodrites 1043–1066; see Table 18.1).69 Given that John of Worcester records a daughter being born of this union, who was married to Cnut’s earl and nephew Hákon Eiríksson in 1029, and given that Gottschalk took part in a pagan revolt around the same year before returning to Christianity,70 this postulated union of Pribignev and Cnut’s sister could not have taken place much later than ca. 1015; probably it would have taken place a few years earlier. In this period the Danes, Abodrites, Poles, and Saxons collaborated in containing the Liutizi. The ties between the Danish and Polish royal houses must also still have been strong. Not only have we heard about Cnut and Haraldr retrieving their mother from the Poles, and about Cnut’s sister “Santslaua” (a name matching the Polish Świętosława) in England, but it is also worth noting that Cnut and Mieszko II both bore the same baptismal name: Lambert.71 This web of relationships is important to bear in mind, in light of what happened after Emperor Henry’s death in 1025. In that year, it began to break down, and to take a new form.72 With Henry gone, Duke Bolesław had himself crowned king of Poland, a title that did not have the permission of the new emperor Conrad II (1027–1039). Although Bolesław died shortly after, his successor, Mieszko II (1025–1031), continued this policy of independence.73 Emperor Conrad needed friends when this renewal of differences with the Poles broke out into open warfare three years later in 1028. Allying with the pagan Liutizi, as Henry II had done before him, would have been a bad move: it would have scandalized Christian opinion; moreover, the Liutizi could be

Anatrog, Gneus, and Uto; the first two are unknown and Gneus is only a second element of a name (Trillmich, Quellen, 307, n. 259); it could be a mangling of Pribignev. The name Udo could refer to Luder-Udo I, Count of Stade, who died in 994, as a baptismal patron: Stoob, Helmolds Slawenchronik, 97, n. 4. 69 It is also tempting to identify her with Świętosława. John of Worcester, in Chronicon, ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 510–11 (s.a. 1029) and 540–41 (s.a. 1044), records that her daughter’s name was Gunnhild, which was also Cnut’s daughter’s name and possibly his mother’s name; this might imply that this sister of Cnut was also called Gunnhild: see also Uspenskii, “Dynastic Names,” 19. 70 This activity in the revolt may be linked to why Cnut chose to send Hákon away from his court – especially as a representative of the dynasty of Hlaðir (Lade), whose power had been anchored in Norwegian paganism. 71 Uspenskii, “Dynastic Names,” 20–21. See also Morawiec in the following chapter, pp. 424–25. 72 Lübke, Regesten, 4.131–2 (no. 577). 73 Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II, ed. Bresslau, 31–32 (IX).

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unpredictable. So Conrad instead looked to the north and attempted to lure Cnut away from his Polish kin. In 1027 Cnut came to Rome to attend Conrad’s coronation, ceremonially walking at the emperor’s side as they left after the mass.74 Probably a year or so after that, Cnut betrothed his daughter, Gunnhild, to Conrad’s son Henry, the future emperor Henry III (1046–1056).75 As a result of this realignment, the Poles and the Liutizi seem to have reached a rapprochement.76 Cnut cooperated with the Saxons, the emperor, and the Abodrite dynasty both in securing peace north of the Elbe and in fighting the Liutizi and the pagan reaction among the Abodrites.77 Moreover, Cnut’s close relationship with the emperor set a precedent for the reign of his sister’s son and ultimate successor, Sveinn Ástríðarson, who continued the tradition of Abodrite connections by giving his daughter in marriage to Gottschalk, son of Pribignev.78 Gottschalk reportedly remained for a long time at Cnut’s court.79 After the death of Harthacnut and the end of Danish rule in England, he returned to take up power in his Abodrite homeland in ca. 1043. By then King Magnús Óláfsson of Norway had taken the opportunity to seize control of Denmark. His rival for power there was Cnut’s nephew, Sveinn Ástríðarson, who, as we have seen, was also Gottschalk’s father-in-law. During this period, Magnús not only warred with Sveinn but

74 Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II, ed. Bresslau, 36 (XVI). 75 The marriage is recorded by Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II, ed. Bresslau, 35 (LIV). Gelting, in “Elusive Bishops,” 178, however (following Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 109), argues that this alliance would have been unlikely before the death of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VIII in November 1028. Conrad had initially hoped to marry Henry to one of Constantine’s daughters. 76 Lübke, Regesten, 4.131–32 (no. 577). 77 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 125–26 (II.lxvi). 78 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 162 (III.xix) and 194 (III.li). This alliance would have been very useful to Svend in gaining control of Denmark and establishing his rule; a connection to Abodrite royalty might have even bolstered his legitimacy in Danish eyes (something he might have needed as he was not descended from a direct male line of kings), given the connections between the two dynasties. By the relationship I have proposed, Gottschalk and Svend would be first cousins, admittedly making the marriage incestuous; but given the reports of Svend’s own incestuous marriage, it is hardly inconceivable that such a union would take place. Given the prevalence of polygamy and lack of primogeniture in Scandinavia at this time, the genetic consequences of one incestuous union would have been no great matter of concern as a king had very many other opportunities to procreate. 79 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 125–26 (II.lxvi). If it was his father Pribignev who attested Cnut’s charter in 1026, there would be every precedent for his being at the court too. Given his revolt after Pribignev’s death in 1028, his time in England probably dated from around 1030.

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fought several notable battles against the Slavs.80 Adam of Bremen does not draw a connection between Gottschalk and Sveinn, Magnús’s opponents here, but one might suspect that the Norwegian king’s venture had something to do with their marriage alliance and, indeed, with the closeness of their families. When Gottschalk was killed in 1066 in the wake of another Abodrite pagan reaction,81 his son Heinrich found refuge in Denmark;82 he returned and took power in 1093.83 After Heinrich’s death in 1127, his sons Sventipolk and Knut (see Table 18.1, and note the choice of a Danish royal name) fought a civil war,84 bringing not only widespread destruction but also, according to Helmold, the extinction of the Nakonid line.85 In 1129, after this, the Abodrite crown passed to Knud Lavard, son of the former Danish king Erik “Ejegod” (“Hericus bonus,” “Egoth,” “inn góði”) and nephew of the reigning King Niels (and the first cousin of Heinrich, son of Gottschalk; see Table 18.1). Knud was the father of Valdemar the Great, who ushered in a new era of Danish history, in which Denmark expanded its power in the Baltic – as I have argued, this is not entirely a new development, although it is often framed as one. When the Danish kings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took the title “King of the Wends,” it was not only their conquests or ambitions they were reflecting, but a deeply ingrained part of their family history.

Conclusion: Cnut’s Slavic Background By putting together the history of the Danes and the Elbe-Slavs, I have tried to fill a gap, and hope I have shown that there is much to be gained from the new perspectives that result. The Slavic context is essential for understanding the relationship between Haraldr Bluetooth and his son, Sveinn Forkbeard: Adam of Bremen’s depiction of Sveinn as a pagan rebel ends up looking highly ironic, as it was Haraldr who took part in a revolt initiated and dominated by pagan Slavs, whereas it was Sveinn, who, in the reinterpretation I have argued for here, allied with the Christian Poles against them, possibly through a marriagealliance as early as the 980s. Moreover, Slavic connections continued to be important even after Sveinn’s and Cnut’s conquests of England. It was probably in 80 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 137–38 (II.lxxviii, schol. 56 [57]). 81 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 193 (III.l). 82 Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 47 (I.xxv). 83 Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 66–67 (I.xxxiv). 84 Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 91–92 (I.xlvi). 85 Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 94–96 (I.xlviii).

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ca. 1015 that Cnut’s sister married a Slavic king, who, I have argued, is identical with Pribignev Uto, ruler of the Abodrites in the 1020s. These relationships, as well as the later ones between the Abodrite ruler Gottschalk and his father-inlaw, Sveinn Ástríðarson, up through Knud Lavard, played a vital part in defining not only Denmark’s relationship with her closest neighbours to the south, but also those relationships further afield, as well as the identity of Denmark’s own ruling dynasty.

Jakub Morawiec

Chapter 19 Cnut’s Reign in England and Denmark: The Western Slavonic Perspective The fact that an anonymous daughter of Duke Mieszko I (ca. 960–992) was the mother of Cnut the Great, as we have seen discussed in the previous chapter, raises questions about the nature and importance of political contacts in the Baltic zone during the tenth and eleventh centuries, and those especially between Poland and the Scandinavian kingdoms. It is important to investigate the circumstances that led to the Piast princess marrying into the Nordic royal families, first with Eiríkr inn sigrsæli (“the Victorious”), King of the Swedes, and then with Sveinn tjúguskegg (“Forkbeard”) Haraldsson, King of Denmark. However, it is even more intriguing to consider if these connections affected Cnut’s policy as king of both England and Denmark, and to explore what place the Baltic zone occupied in the king’s plans and his interactions with other countries. This chapter will analyse these issues, which have so far failed to attract significant scholarly attention.

Cnut’s Unnamed Mother Reliable information about Cnut’s mother is limited. Several more or less contemporary sources provide us with scanty pieces of data. The Chronicon of Thietmar, Bishop of Merseburg, is the most important: omitto et de geniminis viperarum, id est filiis Suenni persecutoris, pauca edissero. Hos peperit ei Miseconis filia ducis, soror Bolizlavi successoris ejus et nati; quae a viro suimet diu depulsa, non minimam cum caeteris perpessa est controversiam.1 [in only a few words I will refer now to this offspring of a lizard, namely the sons of this Sveinn the oppressor. They were born of the daughter of Duke Mieszko, and sister of Bolesław, his successor. Driven away by her husband for a long time, she suffered much, together with others. Her sons resembled their father in every respect.]

Other references to Cnut’s mother are found in Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. In the main text, referring to Sveinn Forkbeard and his endeavours, Adam writes:

1 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 446 (VII.xxxix). My translation. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-020

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post mortem diu optatam Herici Suein ab exilio regressus optinuit regnum patrum suorum, anno depulsionis suae vel peregrinationis XIIII. Et accepit uxorem Herici relictam, matrem Olaph, quae peperit ei Chnut. [after the long-wished-for death of Eiríkr, Sveinn returned from exile and regained the kingdom of his fathers in the fourteenth year of his deposition and wanderings. And he married Eiríkr’s widow, the mother of Óláfr, and she bore him Cnut.]2

Then, in one of the scholia attached to the main text, there is an additional account of Eiríkr, King of the Swedes: Hericus, rex Sueonum, cum potentissimo rege Polanorum Bolizlao foedus iniit. Bolizlaus filiam vel sororem Herico dedit. Cuius gratia societatis Dani a Sclavis et Sueonibus iuxta impugnati sunt. [Eiríkr, king of the Swedes, entered into alliance with Bolesław, the most powerful king of Poles. Bolesław gave his daughter or sister in marriage to Eiríkr. Because of this league the Danes were jointly attacked by the Slavs and the Swedes.]3

A further marginal note about Cnut’s mother is found in the Encomium Emmae Reginae. She is mentioned when the Encomiast describes the political situation in Denmark after Sveinn’s death, when his sons, Cnut and Haraldr, “pariter uero Sclauoniam adierunt, et matrem suam, quae illic morabatur, reduxerunt” (went to the land of the Slavs and brought back their mother who resided there).4 Due to the ambiguity in them, these accounts cannot fully satisfy historians nowadays. The case of Cnut’s mother and her marriages is not central to any of these texts. Rather, one can assume that both Thietmar and Adam felt obliged to refer to this matter in order to explain and elaborate on other, more important, aspects of Danish history. In the case of Thietmar it was the desire to draw as negative as possible a picture of Sveinn Forkbeard. In the case of Adam, the variability of political alliances in the North was at issue.5 Neither these authors nor the Encomiast even found it necessary to give Cnut’s mother a name, while the scope of the information to be found in their accounts also raises questions and doubts about the life and career of this Polish princess. Scholars who have previously been interested in reconstructing the life of Cnut’s mother nearly all agree that these medieval writers were referring to the

2 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 99 (II.xxxix). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 81. 3 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 95 (II.xxxv, schol. 24 [25]). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 78. 4 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.ii). 5 Both Thietmar and Adam of Bremen were motivated to provide negative images of Sveinn Forkbeard by the Danish king’s resistance to accepting the claims of the German church (and

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same person.6 Thus, it has been concluded that a Piast princess, hypothetically but wrongly called Świętosława (Santslaua), was married to the Swedish king, Eiríkr the Victorious, between 983 and 984. Eiríkr and his Polish wife are said to have had a son, Óláfr. This Swedish king died in 994 or 995, and his widow is then said to have become the wife of Sveinn Forkbeard, who managed to regain power in Denmark after Eiríkr’s death.7 They had five children together, including two sons, Cnut and Haraldr, and at least two daughters, Świętosława and Ástríðr. Following Thietmar’s account, scholars assume that sometime later, shortly before or after the year 1000, she was driven off by Sveinn, but the reason for this remains unknown. The Encomiast’s note leads us to believe that she found shelter in Poland and stayed at the court of her brother until 1014. In that year Cnut’s mother returned to Denmark, accompanied by her sons. Her subsequent fate is unknown.8 We do not know how long she lived, nor exactly when she died. Neither do we know if she spent the rest of her life in Denmark. Some years ago, Kazimierz Jasiński, studying Thietmar’s account, gave us good grounds to believe that she was still alive in 1016–1017.9 I have argued elsewhere that Liðsmannaflokkr, an anonymous skaldic poem composed around 1016–1017, may throw additional light on the fate of Cnut’s mother.10 In my opinion, one may identify her with the “Syn” or “Ilmr” (lady) whom the skald, referring to her great interest in Cnut’s achievements during the conquest, addresses in the second part of the poem.11 Such an identification supports Jasiński’s argument and points to her potential role not only as a witness to Cnut’s campaign in England in 1015–1016, but also as a crucial supporter or adviser of the young monarch during the initial stage of his reign. Duke Mieszko I was particularly concerned with his relationship with the Ottonian Empire, Bohemia, and the Polabian Slavs (or the Elbe-Slavs); an alliance with the the Swedes, concluded by his daughter’s marriage to King Eiríkr, might therefore seem surprising. A laconic note on the alliance by Adam of Bremen, however, points clearly to the anti-Danish character of this union. There

especially of the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen) for control over Denmark’s ecclesiastical institutions. See Sawyer, “Swein Forkbeard and the Historians,” 27–40. 6 For another view, see Gazzoli in the previous chapter, pp. 409–11. 7 This Polish princess’ Swedish marriage is dismissed as Adam’s invention in Lund, “Why did Cnut conquer England?,” 39. 8 Jasiński, Rodowód, 99; Duczko, “A. D. 1000,” 374–75; Waśko, “Świętosława-Sygryda,” 34–35; Uspenskii, “Dynastic Names,” 18. 9 Jasiński, Rodowód, 98. 10 “Liðsmannaflokkr,” ed. Poole, 1014–28; Morawiec, “Liðsmannaflokkr,” 93–115. 11 A contrary view is presented by Russell Poole, who identifies this “lady” with queen Emma in his Viking Poems, 113.

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is no reason, in my opinion, to disregard Adam’s statement. Tensions between the rulers of Denmark and Sweden, reaching a zenith in Eiríkr’s attack on Denmark in 991/994, were serious enough to make the Swedish king look for new allies. Mieszko could have been considered an appropriate candidate, as he was also forced to face Danish ambitions in the Polabian Slavs’ territories, especially in the Oder estuary where both parties sought to control long-distance trade in Wolin. Although it is difficult today to estimate how effective this alliance was, the political turbulence in Denmark, along with rebellions against Haraldr, some Swedish attacks on Denmark, and Sveinn Forkbeard’s exile, all suggest that Mieszko and Eiríkr had many incentives to join forces against the Danes, now their common enemy. Mieszko’s daughter’s second marriage, with Sveinn Forkbeard, was a part of the bigger political changes that took place in Scandinavia in 995. As Adam of Bremen’s account indicates, the death of Eiríkr the Victorious allowed Sveinn to return to Denmark and regain power there.12 Perhaps the marriage with Eiríkr’s widow was part of this process. Again, the circumstances remain unclear, but it is obvious from these sources that Sveinn quickly managed not only to consolidate his position at home but also to become the protector of his stepson, young Óláfr “sœnski” (the Swede).13 Undoubtedly, Sveinn’s betrothal to a new wife comprised a key element of this role. The princess’s second marriage resulted in numerous offspring.14 Inspite of all this, so we learn from Thietmar, Sveinn decided to drive her away.15 Although the reasons for the king’s decision remain unclear, one can speculate either that Sveinn felt strong enough not to need Eiríkr’s widow anymore, or that she was too ambitious to refrain from trying to influence her husband’s policy. In fact, these alternatives do not contradict each other, although the latter characterization is based mainly on a later source, the profile of Sigríðr “stórráða” (the haughty), which is the name provided for this woman by the sagas. Whatever the reason, Mieszko’s daughter was deprived of her status as royal wife and mother. Significantly, Mieszko’s daughter did not return to Sweden after she was driven out of Denmark, but instead moved to “Sclavonia,” as the Encomiast

12 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 99–100 (II.xxxix). 13 Duczko, “The Fateful Hundred Years,” 11–28. 14 Their two sons, Cnut and Haraldr, are mentioned by both the Encomiast and Adam of Bremen. The latter notes also Ástriðr, one of their daughters. A different set of sources records two other daughters: “Saintslaua” is mentioned only in the Liber Vitae of New Minster in Winchester, whereas Gyða is known only to authors of Icelandic kings’ sagas. See Morawiec, Knut Wielki, 88–89. 15 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 446 (VII.xxxix).

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implies with his note of her sons’ retrieval of her there; this term most probably denoted Poland.16 One can only wonder about the reaction of Duke Bolesław Chrobry (“the Brave”) to the dramatic breakdown of his sister’s marriage. Did he try to intervene on her behalf? Did he try to marry her off again? The answer to the first question is probably negative, for cases similar to that of Cnut’s mother were frequent during the period; Bolesław himself had driven out his first two spouses when his own political alliances shifted.17 He could have treated his sister’s situation in the same way, finding her a burden, but one with potential future benefits. This would accord with the second question. However, the sources we have at our disposal remain silent on this matter. One can only regret that the author of the Encomium Emmae Reginae did not elaborate on the circumstances of Cnut’s mother in Denmark, nor on her role in the political decisions that were then reached concerning the future of her sons. It is possible to limit the discussion to the purely symbolic aspects connected with her status as the king’s widow and mother.18 It seems, however, that she could have been active in settling terms between the brothers and making decisions about the organization of the expedition to England in 1015. Perhaps, as mother to both of them, she also played a role in the agreement between Cnut and his half-brother, Óláfr the Swede, who, according to Adam of Bremen, supported Cnut with a contingent of warriors.19 The identification of the “lady” from Liðsmannaflokkr as the mother of Cnut points not only to the importance of the success of the English campaign from the point of view of the Danish political elite, but also to the young king’s personal abilities in leading such an enterprise, at least formally. Later sources such as the Knútsdrápur, a group of skaldic poems dedicated to Cnut and composed at his court,20 as well as the Encomium Emmae Reginae, suggest that the king himself paid great attention to the ways in which an appropriate vision of the Conquest was promoted, with Cnut portrayed as the sole leader and victor of the campaign.21 Liðsmannaflokkr, with its clear tendency to level the military achievements of Cnut and his fellow leader Earl “Þorkell inn hávi” (Thorkell the Tall), seems to reveal the especially high degree of risk encountered on this expedition. If one assumes that, at some point, Cnut’s mother joined her son in England, this was perhaps dictated by the need to counterbalance the influence

16 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.ii). 17 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 225 (IV.lviii); Jasiński, Rodowód, 83–85. 18 See Enright, Lady with a Mead Cup, 1–68. 19 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 113 (II.lii). 20 Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” 145–79. 21 Morawiec, Między poezją a polityką, 413–46.

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of Earl Thorkell, whose potential and ambitions were certainly known to the king and his followers.22 However certain they may be, all pieces of information we have about the mother of Cnut point to a person who was distinguished, ambitious, and charismatic. The Polish princess seems to have been aware of her position as a royal widow and mother, especially during moments of political transition in 995 and 1014. This self-awareness is most likely to have resulted in a willingness to take an active part in decision-making processes, something that marked her life with both success and failure. Such a profile could have inspired saga authors to create Sigríðr the Haughty, one of the most exceptional women of Old Norse literature.23 Since Sigríðr follows the same political and matrimonial path, with Eiríkr the Victorious and then Sveinn Forkbeard becoming her husbands, one can only wonder if her literary character is also based on Cnut’s mother.

Cnut’s Policy in the Baltic In this way it seems even more appropriate to investigate whether Cnut’s Baltic policy, and especially his dealings with the Western Slavs, were in any way affected by his kinship with the Piast dynasty. It is striking that the sources we have at our disposal record no contact of any kind between Cnut and his uncle, Bolesław the Brave. Nevertheless, the relationship between them might have been stimulated not only by the issue of the return of Cnut’s mother to Denmark, but also, initially, by their likely shared enmity towards Emperor Henry II ((1002–)1014–1025).24 Such contacts between Cnut and Bolesław would have become even more relevant when Cnut took control of Denmark in 1019. Unfortunately, our main informant, Thietmar, died in 1018, so the final years of King Bolesław, who died in 1025, remain almost totally unknown to historians. According to Adam of Bremen, Cnut was named “Lambert” at his baptism.25 This is perhaps the only remaining trace of contact between the dynasties. Fyodor Uspenskii has suggested that the name

22 Poole, Viking Poems, 99–103; Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur,” 151. 23 Sigríðr is mentioned in several Old Norse texts, mainly in connection with a plot against Óláfr Tryggvason that results in the defeat and death of the Norwegian king. Sigríðr feels dishonored by Óláfr, who has rejected marriage with her because of her pagan beliefs; this also motivates her new husband, Sveinn Forkbeard, to make war on Óláfr. See Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson, 179–84; Fagrskinna, ed. Bjarni Einarsson, 115; Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 343–49. 24 See Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 104, 118. 25 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 112 (II.lii, schol. 37 [38]).

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Lambert, which was popular within the Polish dynasty at the time and was given to a son of Mieszko and Oda, was chosen on the initiative of Cnut’s Polish mother.26 Lambert was also the baptismal name of Mieszko II (1025–1031), son of Bolesław the Brave (992–1025) and so Cnut’s first cousin. One cannot exclude the possibility of a more or less direct influence from the Polish court on the Danish royal dynasty via Cnut’s mother. However, it is also possible that we are dealing with the result of an independent influx of imperial and Saxon fashions. Some scholars have suggested that Cnut and his cousin Mieszko II cooperated during the latter’s conflict with Emperor Conrad II (1027–1039).27 This Polish king, well educated and already experienced in international politics, was ambitious in trying to continue the policy of his father. Although Mieszko allied himself with Ernest of Swabia, who rebelled against Conrad, his raids in Saxony (1027–1028) did not bring the expected results,28 and the emperor was forced to act. Creating an alliance with Jaroslav (Jarizleifr) the Wise of Russia in support of Mieszko’s younger brothers, Conrad organized military expeditions against Poland in 1030 and 1031, which quickly resulted in the weakening of the Polish king’s position in his own country. Moreover, Emperor Conrad regained Saxon lands such as Lusatia and Meissen, which had previously been controlled by Bolesław the Brave. Finally, he took advantage of a conflict between Mieszko and his wife, Richeza of Lotharingia, who was a niece of Emperor Otto III (996–1002). Richeza found refuge in Saxony in 1031, bringing with her Mieszko’s crown. Mieszko, desolate and humiliated, was forced to seek reconciliation with Conrad. The conditions of the agreement reached in Merseburg in 1032 were hard on Mieszko, who had to resign his royal title and accept the division of his country.29 German and Anglo-Saxon sources are silent about Mieszko’s potential attempts to secure Cnut’s support during his encounters with Conrad. It seems likely that even if the Polish king did so, his case would have been hopeless, for it was in Cnut’s best interest to cooperate with Conrad. Imperial recognition, as demonstrated by Cnut’s visit to Rome and his participation in the emperor’s coronation in 1027,30 was more important to this young king of England and Denmark than any blood ties with a Polish ruler too weak to keep the position won by his father.

26 Uspenskii, “Dynastic Names,” 21. 27 Sochacki, Stosunki publicznoprawne, 68. 28 Mieszko’s raiding is recorded in several German accounts, for example in the Annales Hildesheimenses and Annales Magdeburgenses. On Mieszko’s conflict with Emperor Conrad II, see Labuda, Mieszko II, 56–59, 65–74; Wolfram, Conrad II, 213–20, 235–36. 29 Labuda, Mieszko II, 65–96; Sochacki, “Kontakty,” 373–90; Delimata, “Ucieczka z Polski,” 79–84. 30 See also Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 103, 181–82.

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The lack of direct evidence for any contact between Cnut and Poland does not mean that he was uninterested in political encounters with the Western Slavs. Rather, one may assume that this was a vital element of his policy as the king of Denmark. It can be clearly seen in the conflict between Cnut and Earl Thorkell the Tall. In 1021 the king outlawed the earl.31 Presumably Thorkell returned to Denmark, because a year later his challenge to Cnut’s position forced the king to go there on a military expedition, albeit the destination of this is variously recorded: in 1022, according to the Abingdon (C) and Peterborough (E) Chronicles, “Cnut kyning for ut mid his scypum to Wiht”; according to the Worcester (D) Chronicle, this was “to Wihtlande.”32 Most sources treat “Wight” or “Wightland” as the Isle of Wight, although explaining why Cnut, on his way east to deal with Thorkell in Denmark, would have moved his fleet first here does raise some difficulties. The Chronicle’s statement is further developed and complicated by Henry of Huntingdon, according to whom Cnut, in the third year of his reign (thus in 1019), led an army consisting of Danes and Englishmen through Denmark to fight the “Wandali.”33 This statement would refer to King Cnut’s first expedition to Denmark in that year. Henry relates a story, however, in which Earl Godwine, leading Cnut’s English army, made a surprise night attack on the enemy’s camp and won a superb victory. The problem here is that Godwine’s presence in the king’s retinue dates from 1023, in the context of King Cnut’s second expedition to Denmark. Although one cannot exclude the possibility that Earl Godwine took part in the 1019 expedition, Henry of Huntingdon aligns his exploit with the following events, which took place in 1022 and 1023: Hoc circa tempus Leving archiepiscopo defuncto, Athelnod successor ejus Romam petiit . . . Archiepiscopus vero Roma rediens, corpus S. Alfei a Londonia transtulit Cantuariam. [At that time [1022] Æthelnoth, who came after archbishop Lyfing, came to Rome. . . . On his return [1023], the archbishop decided about the translation of St. Ælfheah’s body from London to Canterbury.]34

It seems likely, in this way, that Henry conflated information about two separate expeditions into his account of the first, and that Cnut’s campaign against the Wandali took place in the second expedition.35

31 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 104 (s.a. 1021); (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1021); (E), ed. Irvine, 75 (s.a. 1021); trans. Swanton (D), 154 (s.a. 1021). For the synoptic view: ASC (CDE), ed. Plummer, I, 154–55. 32 ASC (C), ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, 104 (s.a. 1022); (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1022); (E), ed. Irvine, 75 (s.a. 1022); trans. Swanton, 154–55 (s.a. 1022): “to (the Isle of) Wight.” 33 Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, 362–63. 34 Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 362–63. 35 See Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 213; Morawiec, Knut Wielki, 209. For the view that Cnut’s expedition against the Wandali took place in 1019, see Gazzoli in the previous chapter, pp. 411–13.

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There is no doubt that the Wandali mentioned by the chronicler, “Wends” as they have been named by historians, should be identified with the Slavs. Henry does not mention Thorkell’s rebellion, but if his account is to be treated as reliable, one must ask about possible connections between Cnut’s raid on the Slavs and his dealings with the outlawed Thorkell. For this reason, Johanes Steenstrup proposed identifying the Worcester Chronicle’s “Wihtland” not with the Isle of Wight, but with the Slavonic coast of the south-eastern Baltic. According to Steenstrup, Cnut would have made an expedition to the Baltic in 1022, aiming to take control of the territories of the Slavs and the Prussians.36 Responses to Steenstrup’s proposals have been varied. Niels Lund found the suggestion tempting, in contrast to Michael Lawson, who considered it unreliable.37 A view similar to Lawson’s prevails in Polish scholarship. Gerard Labuda and Adam Turasiewicz prefer to identify “Wiht” with the Isle of Wight.38 Such an identification seems to be confirmed by a record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 998, in which “Wihtland” is unequivocally the name for the Isle of Wight.39 Moreover, Steenstrup’s theory points to territories, namely the marches of the Slavonic-Prussian border, that are barely represented in Cnut’s political agenda as we know it. Perhaps the most reasonable solution to this problem is to follow the sources as they are and to say that in 1022 Cnut moved his fleet to the Isle of Wight, even though the reason for such a move at this time is another knotty problem. Assumptions about Cnut’s undertaking an expedition to Normandy should be rejected, as there is nothing in the sources that could indicate the king’s military plans against Duke Richard II (996–1026).40 Nonetheless, it seems to me that the most probable explanation for this Wightbound movement of the royal fleet is to see it as part of a defensive manoeuvre by Cnut to secure England from an attack by Thorkell directed from Denmark. I do, however, agree with Lawson that the area around Sandwich, not Wight, would have been a more probable destination in that case.41 The rejection of Steenstrup’s proposals does not mean we must discredit Henry of Huntingdon’s account. Rather, it is worth investigating the possibility of a link between Cnut’s expedition against the Wandali and the case of Thorkell. This also means rejecting older theories that date Cnut’s encounters with the Slavs

36 Steenstrup, Venderne og Danske, 66. 37 Lund, “Cnut’s Danish Kingdom,” 36; Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 94. 38 Labuda, Fragmenty, 139; Turasiewicz, Dzieje polityczne, 128. 39 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 63 (s.a. 998). 40 Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 92–93. 41 Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 92.

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to 1019 and see these as an attempt to conquer part of the Slavonic territories.42 By the same token, we must reject attempts to see these encounters as the result of a degree of cooperation between Cnut and Emperor Henry II or Bolesław the Brave. If we look at the evidence in this way, Timothy Bolton is absolutely right: in 1022–1023 King Cnut’s main concern was the potential risk that Earl Thorkell’s army posed.43 The king’s encounters with Slavs should be treated as part of the same military political strategy that aimed to eliminate this threat. Some English accounts, such as the Vita Edwardi Regis and the Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, indicate that the outlawed Thorkell returned to Denmark and continued to plot against Cnut there.44 It seems probable that the earl also decided to look for support from the Slavs, and in particular the Obodrites, a confederation of Western Slavonic tribes that occupied the territories now Mecklenburg and Holstein in northern Germany. Of course, it is difficult either to confirm or discount an arrangement of this kind between Thorkell and the Slavs. However, the conflict between Magnús inn góði (“the Good”) and Sveinn Úlfsson in the 1040s provides us with a good analogy here. Earl Sveinn allied with the Slavs when he tried, unsuccessfully, to drive this Norwegian king out of Denmark.45 Perhaps a similar situation arose in 1023. Cnut’s campaign against the Slavs, as we see it in the account of Henry of Huntingdon, could have resulted from an alliance between them and Thorkell in his own bid for military power. Such a threat was most probably too serious to ignore and prompted Cnut to intervene. Direct clashes with the Slavs could have taken place in Denmark, and there is no need to argue, with Herwig Wolfram, that the king subdued the Obodrites, forcing them to pay tribute.46 Unfortunately, the course of these events remains unknown to us, except its conclusion, in which Cnut and Thorkell decided to reconcile. Their mutual exchange of sons was to guarantee this peace, even though afterwards it appears that the earl’s position was weaker. We do not know whether this reconciliation affected Cnut’s relations with the Slavs. It seems likely that he had priorities elsewhere and merely wished to eliminate an Obodritian threat in the interests of securing his Danish dominion. In this way, despite being heavily engaged in English affairs, Cnut kept his eye on the Western Slavs and their lands, trying to maintain Danish influence there just as his father and grandfather had done before him. This may explain the presence of Slavonic noblemen at the king’s court, of whom two are named.

42 Labuda, Fragmenty, 182–84; Turasiewicz, Dzieje polityczne, 125–28 (see further references there). 43 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 213–15. 44 See further Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 213. 45 Morawiec, Vikings among the Slavs, 321–49. 46 Wolfram, Conrad II, 212.

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The first of these, named “Wrytsleof” and titled dux, attested one of Cnut’s charters from 1026 (S 962).47 The form Wrytsleof is presumably an Anglo-Saxon variant of the Slavonic name Vartislav. Apart from the name, the dux in question remains unknown to us, just as the reason for his stay in England, or where this was, or for how long it lasted. The date of Wrytsleof’s attestation gives some clue, however, for it followed Cnut’s expedition to Denmark in 1023 and his likely military encounter with the Slavs, particularly the Obodrites. As I have already mentioned the possibility of the Slavs supporting the rebellious Earl Thorkell, one cannot exclude the possibility of Wrytsleof being a hostage to guarantee the loyalty of the Obodritian dynasty towards the Danish ruler. On the other hand, accounts of the turbulence that affected the Obodritian dynasty in the early 1020s could suggest that “Vartislav” was a refugee in England applying for Cnut’s protection. King Cnut could have found such a situation advantageous, for it would have given him a reason for intervening in Polabian affairs when necessary.48 A second Slav in Cnut’s court may be inferred from John of Worcester, who mentions a marriage between an anonymous daughter of Sveinn Forkbeard and “Wyrtgeorn,” called “rex Winidorum” (king of the Wends [i.e., Slavs]).49 Although John’s account lacks confirmation in other sources, scholarly opinion supports its reliability.50 The incident may refer to “Santslaua,” the sister of Cnut referenced in the Liber Vitae of the Winchester New Minster. On the other hand, the identification of the Slavonic king is more problematic. Perhaps John was referring to the same person who, as Wrytsleof, attested Cnut’s charter. These remain for the most part speculations; taken together, however, they suggest that the territories of the Polabian Slavs, and of the Obodrites in particular, remained important in Cnut’s plans to preserve Danish influence in this strategic region, following the policies of his predecessors.

Conclusion: Interests, not Friends In conclusion, one must observe that Cnut’s kinship with the Piasts did not determine or even influence his Baltic and Western Slavonic policy, which was guided solely by his interests as king of Denmark. Cnut strictly followed his

47 48 49 50

Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 64–65. Morawiec, Knut Wielki, 213. Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 511. Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 215–16. See also Gazzoli in this volume, pp. 413–14.

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predecessors in this respect. One of his policy’s key elements – to maintain his influence among the Polabian Slavs, particularly the Obodrites – was dictated by the need both to secure the borders between the Danes, Saxons, and Slavs, and to withstand the ambitions of the Empire and other political partners, including Poland. This policy of Cnut’s explains the presence of Slavonic nobles such as Wrytsleof (Vartislav) at his court, who might already have proved useful to him in these areas. Despite Cnut’s blood ties with the rulers of Poland, it is hard to say anything specific about their mutual relations. Either they simply passed unnoticed in the record, or, as seems more likely, there was no particular reason to record them. This matter also concerns Polish relations with the Empire, in which one can see clearly the opposing interests of both sides. It is therefore not surprising that Mieszko II received no help from his cousin, King Cnut of England and Denmark, during his conflict with Emperor Conrad, even during the hardest times of failure, exile, and humiliation. For all his kinship with the kings of Poland, Cnut was his own man.

Barbara E. Crawford

Chapter 20 St. Clement of Rome: Patron Saint of Cnut and the Dynasty of Denmark This chapter firms up the notion that St. Clement had a significant association with the Anglo-Danish dynasty of Cnut, by way of showing the relevance of St. Clement to the political, religious, and cultural circumstances of eleventhcentury northern Europe,. I shall first focus on the development of St. Clement’s cult in the principality of Rus’, taking note of the authoritative standing of this prestigious papal martyr in Kyiv (Kiev) and of his relevance for the newly Christianized dynasty of Rus’, at the time it was looking for a protective patron.1 As we shall see, that example may have served as a model for the rulers of the Norwegian kingdom, some of whom knew Kyiv well. How, when, and why the cult of Clement then spread to Denmark and England are questions which will be considered towards the end of this chapter. It is well known that St. Clement of Rome was a popular saint with the Danes.2 The spread of the cult of St. Clement in Denmark and Norway can be explained in part as a reflection of the need of polities and communities (which were new to Christianity) for a saintly figure who they hoped might help them realize their spiritual and political aspirations. In attempting to trace the growth of the cult in these countries and in England, primarily from the evidence of church dedications, my studies have examined the way in which several groups – namely political leaders, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the mercantile/trading classes, and fishing communities – looked to Clement as an apostolic patron with useful protective functions and impeccable credentials.3 The variable locations of churches dedicated to Clement suggest that this saint appealed to different populations for different reasons, so that, while the spread of the cult received an impetus from royal promotion, his

1 This aspect was explored at a conference commemorating Clement’s martyrdom in Cherson (Sebastopol) in Crawford, “Cult of St. Clement in North Europe.” 2 The study of the cult of Clement in Scandinavia was initiated by Erik Cinthio’s seminal “The Churches of St. Clemens” (1968). His researches were broadened by my own project on the cult in Scandinavia and England, in Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England. 3 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, Section 1.3.2. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-021

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appeal resonated more widely than could be explained had his cult simply been promulgated in royal circles (see Map 20.1).4

Map 20.1: Clement dedications in Northern Europe.

Nonetheless, Clement’s appeal to the royal dynasties of northern Europe is an important aspect of our understanding of the spread of his popularity, and Erik Cinthio has alerted historians and archaeologists to the special character of churches dedicated to Clement in Scandinavia and their possible link with Cnut the Great (1016–1035),

4 Cinthio’s study of the Clement churches stresses their significance in relation to centers of political power, in “The Churches of St. Clemens,” 112, 113. See my summary of this aspect of his study, in Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, Introduction, 1.2.

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king of England, Denmark, and Norway.5 To see how these dedications became coterminous with Cnut’s empire, let us begin with the cult in the principality of Rus’.

The Cult of St. Clement in Kyiv First, we need to summarize the circumstances of the martyrdom of Pope Clement I (88–99), a successor to St. Peter, in order to understand why he might have appealed to the newly Christianized dynasties in Scandinavia.6 Clement was believed to have earned his martyr’s crown as a result of his death by drowning in the vicinity of Cherson in the Crimea, where he had been exiled during the Trajanic persecutions (100–117 CE) because of his success in converting some powerful members of the Roman administration. According to the later legends, he was forced to work in the marble quarries. However, he was so effective at converting his fellow quarry workers that he was condemned to death by drowning with an anchor round his neck.7 The anchor became the symbol of his martyrdom in localities where the saint was popular (see Figure 20.1).

Figure 20.1: Martyrdom of St. Clement by Bernardino Fungai (ca. 1500). © York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery).

5 Cinthio, “The Churches of St. Clemens.” 6 Clement was the fourth bishop of Rome, although sometimes regarded as the direct successor to Peter in the apostolic succession, as it was claimed he had been consecrated pope by Peter himself. See Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 29. 7 Traditions about his supposed martyrdom arose in the late fourth and fifth centuries and are recorded in the apocryphal “Clementine literature,” as well as the sixth-century Latin passio. For the sources, see Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 30.

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The development of these traditions meant that Clement was considered to have protective powers for those whose lives exposed them to danger of drowning. Such protective powers were particularly relevant for rulers like the Norwegian and Danish kings, whose authority rested on domination of the northern waterways. Cnut was a “thalassocrat,” the historical “sea-king,” whose northern empire consisted of three joint kingdoms separated by wide stretches of turbulent sea: he had a fleet of sixty ships at his disposal, and a naval force of between two and three thousand. Clement, appropriately, could have been regarded as a suitable protector for him and his retinue and their ships when voyaging around the North Sea. The martyred pope’s success in mission provided a further useful model for aspirational missionary kings, particularly Óláfr Tryggvason (r. ca. 995–1000) and Óláfr (later St. Óláfr) Haraldsson of Norway (ca. 1016–1030).8 Cnut’s aspirations to be ranked among the foremost leaders of Christian Europe also follow his program for Christianizing the Danes and establishing a Christian kingdom by building churches and appointing bishops. Clement’s reputation as a successful missionary has been seen to be reflected in the Homily written for the Feast of St. Clement by Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham (ca. 1000). This text has been interpreted by Joyce Hill as an attempt to strengthen Clement’s reputation as an “effective converter to the faith.”9 It affords good contemporary evidence that Clement was regarded as a model for those missionary kings who aimed to convert the pagans of their own day. How the cult of St. Clement reached Europe and in what circumstances it was adopted are questions which have been discussed many times. The bringing of Clement’s relics to Rome in 867–868 by Constantine (later Cyril) and Methodius must have been an important causal factor in the growth and development of the cult in western Europe.10 As far as Scandinavia is concerned, however, the eastern route to the Black Sea and including Kyiv is likely to have been the route by which knowledge of the cult was transferred north. Because of the supposed location of Clement’s martyrdom in the Black Sea (or in the Sea of Azov), his cult became well established in the principality of Rus’. In 988, Prince Vladimir of Kyiv (r. 980–1015) was converted and received relics from the priests of Cherson, including the head of Clement. These helped in the mass baptism of the population of Kyiv, and they gave status to the young Christianized principality.11

8 Haki Antonsson, “Early Cult of Saints,” 21. 9 Hill, “Ælfric’s Homily,” 105. 10 Hofmann, Die Legende von Sankt Clemens, 144–49. 11 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 35, citing Cinthio, “The Churches of St. Clemens,” 112; Hofmann, Die Legende von Sankt Clemens, 173; Shchapov, “The Assimilation,” 59.

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Map 20.2: Route to Kyiv from Scandinavia via the Baltic.

There is a strong likelihood that the Norwegians Óláfr Tryggvason and Óláfr Haraldsson became very aware of the cult of this papal martyr when they visited Kyiv in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries, respectively. Kyiv was doubtless the source of their interest in the cult of Clement that each of them then took back north with him. The Óláfrs are two examples of the widely traveled Viking adventurers who sailed down the rivers of Russia to the Byzantine empire and stopped off at the Kyivan court, or so their sagas tell us.12 The first Óláfr was brought up at the court of Prince Vladimir from the age of nine,

12 There were other instances of close ties between the Norwegian royal dynasty and the princes of Kyivan Rus’ in the eleventh century. See Haki Antonsson, “The Cult of St. Olaf,” 150).

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and he stayed there for nine years. According to Snorri Sturluson’s account in Heimskringla, Óláfr “hafði þar it mesta yfirlát” (had the best treatment there) from the king and “kærleik af dróttningu” (affection from the queen), while his role as chieftain of a well-equipped military force is also mentioned.13 The saga of Óláfr Tryggvason by Oddr Snorrason, written in a (now-lost) Latin original in the late twelfth century and translated into Icelandic in the thirteenth, says that Óláfr requested baptism in Greece, where he was then “prímsignaðr” (primesigned).14 The composite Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta of ca. 1300 says of Óláfr that on returning to Norway from the British Isles in 997, “lét hann ok reisa Clemens kirk[iu]” (he had a church built for Clemens) at the royal residence in Trondheim, the main power base of the kingdom at this time (in Heimskringla his residence is named “Skipakrókr”).15 We do not know whether Óláfr took some relics of Clement back north with him from Kyiv, but he can hardly have failed to see the importance of the apostolic saint’s cult in the capital of Kyivan Rus’. Two generations later, the connection between the Norwegian kings and the court at Kyiv was continued when Óláfr Haraldsson sought refuge there after he was driven from Norway in 1028. This Óláfr is also credited with having founded a church in Trondheim which was dedicated to St. Clement.16 However, since this is said to have taken place immediately on his arrival in Norway to claim the kingdom there, from Normandy in 1016, perhaps he only refounded Óláfr Tryggvason’s church. Óláfr Haraldsson could have been influenced also by the veneration accorded to Clement in Rouen, where some accounts claim that he was baptized.17 The association of both these kings with the church dedicated to Clement in Trondheim, although it is found only in later saga accounts, suggests that each had a personal commitment to the saint as a powerful advocate of his own claim to power in Norway. The source of their belief in the effectiveness of Clement could have been the experience of the status of his cult: in the Kyivan

13 Heimskringla I, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 251. English translation from Heimskringla, trans. Finlay and Faulkes, I, 155. 14 Óláfs Saga eptir Odd Munk, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson, 164 (chap. 13). 15 Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson, I, 369. 16 Heimskringla II: Óláfs Saga Helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 70 (chap. 53). Heimskringla: Óláfr Haraldsson, trans. Finlay and Faulkes, II, 43. 17 For evidence of the importance of St. Clement’s status at the ducal court, and for Óláfr’s close connections with the ducal power centre, and for his baptism in Rouen, see Crawford, “Churches to St. Clement in Norway,” 113–14, and Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 18, 193–95, 196.

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principality, in the case of Óláfr Tryggvason; and in Normandy and England, in the case of Óláfr Haraldsson.18 The close association of the Norwegian dynasty with the Clement church in Trondheim is absolutely confirmed by its choice as the burial place of both Óláfr Haraldsson (d. 1030) and his son Magnús (d. 1047).19 In this respect it is important to note that Prince Vladimir and his wife were buried in 1015 in the Tithe Church in Kyiv, which Thietmar of Merseburg says was the church of Christ’s martyr, Pope Clement, where Clement’s head was enshrined. This head relic was an exceedingly important symbol of the Kyivan state’s independence from both Byzantium and Rome, and it was used later (in 1147) for the consecration of the metropolitan of Kyiv. On this occasion, with the head representing the required authority, Prince Izjaslav wanted the Kyivan bishops, rather than the patriarch of Constantinople, to officiate.20 Whether there were any relics in the church of St. Clement in Trondheim is unknown, but the parallel use of this saint’s church as a royal burial place is most probably modeled on the Kyivan example.

Map 20.3: Map of Kyiv (Kiev) in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries.

18 See Garipzanov, “The Journey of St. Clement’s Cult,” 372: “it is possible that the dissemination of this cult in early Christian Scandinavia was influenced by different regions simultaneously.” 19 Heimskringla II: Óláfs Saga Helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 270 (chap. 244). Heimskringla III, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 107 (chap. 30). 20 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 35.

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Furthermore, the sarcophagi of Vladimir and his wife were said by Thietmar to be “palam stantibus” (displayed openly) in the Tithe Church. It has been suggested that this situation can be compared with the 1031 translation of Óláfr Haraldsson in Trondheim after his death at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030: “Var þá líkami konungs borinn inn í Clemenskirkju ok veittr umbúnaðr yfir háaltari. Var kistan sveipð pelli ok tjaldat allt guðvefjum” (Then the king’s body was carried in into Clemenskirkja and set up before the high altar. The coffin was wrapped in precious cloth and all hung with velvet).21 The bodies of both rulers, Vladimir and St. Óláfr, were apparently made accessible and visible to visitors.22 The similar patterns of display for both revered, deceased rulers may suggest a connection, indicating some knowledge in Norway of the ritual observed in Kyiv. The church of St. Clement in this city was the burial place of Prince Vladimir and his wife, and the cult of St. Clement was a powerful adjunct to the prestige and status of their princely house. It is worth noting that Cnut’s half-English son Sveinn (for Swegen) was in authority in Norway at the time, and that both he and his mother, Ælfgifu (or Alfiva), were present at the translation ceremony of St. Óláfr’s remains to St. Clement’s Church in Trondheim.23

The St. Clement Churches in Trondheim and Oslo The location of the churches dedicated to St. Clement in northern Europe is usually an important indicator of their significance. The location of such a church in a power centre, or close to the ruler’s residence, is a strong indication that it was founded by the ruler, who used the cult of the papal martyr as an adjunct to his own power.24 If the church is at the heart of the commercial quarter, we can assume that it was the church of sailors or merchant-traders. In many cases such locations are close to harbours or rivers, which were the main highways of the period.25 The former location of St. Clement’s, Trondheim, is therefore significant. Although the church no longer exists, the site is known to have been close to the royal estate which was established at the trading center founded on the banks of

21 Heimskringla II: Óláfs Saga Helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 270 (chap. 244). Heimskringla: Óláfr Haraldsson, trans. Finlay and Faulkes, II, 270. 22 Garipzanov, “The Journey of St. Clements Cult,” 373. 23 Haki Antonsson, “The Cult of St. Olaf,” 143. 24 Cinthio called these “royal estate churches,” in “The Churches of St. Clemens,” 111. 25 This is a feature of the later development of the cult, according to the subjective choice of a protector-saint. See Cinthio, who follows German “patrozinien-research,” in “The Churches of St. Clemens,” 111.

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Map 20.4: Map of Trondheim, Norway, showing the location of St. Clement’s Church (KLEMENS KIRKE) close by the royal residence and warf (Kongs Gaard og Brygge) at the time of Olafr Haraldsson (1016–28). Based on Blom (1956), 228.

the River Nid. This river leads out into the seaways of the inner sailing route along the Norwegian coast.26 St. Clement’s was the very first church in Óláfr Tryggvason’s newly founded trading centre, and the saint’s protective powers for those sailing on the northern European seas certainly became an important basis of the cult. Protecting the royal dynasty, however, was probably the prime purpose behind the transmission of the cult and the founding of this church. Its location near the royal residence clearly indicates the importance of the cult to the ruling dynasty. Another important early Clement church in Norway was in the medieval town of Oslo. This trading center in the south-eastern part of the country is believed to have been founded by Óláfr Haraldsson’s younger half-brother, King Haraldr harðráði (“harsh ruler”) Sigurðarson (r. 1046–1066), in ca. 1050. The surviving remains of the twelfth-century stone church are still very impressive, and also impressive is the archaeological evidence for a burial ground around St. Clements, which has been dated to the early eleventh century.27 These earliest burials are on a different alignment from those of the twelfth century and were perhaps associated with a timber church which predated the stone one. As finds, the burials and the traces of the timber church are very significant for the earliest urban settlement in the locality, and they are

26 Lunde, Trondheims Fortid, fig. 136. Recent excavations have uncovered the remains of four churches on the site, the earliest of which dates back to the late tenth or early eleventh century. See: www.niku.no/projeskter/Klemenskirken/. 27 Recent calibration of the skeletal material has given a more precise estimation of the burial dates to 995–1000/1028. See Nordeide and Gulliksen, “First Generation Christians,” 22–23.

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evidence for the earliest Christianization of the population in the district round Oslofjord, the fjord which connects southern Norway with Denmark. However, this Clement church is 150 m away from the royal residence at Kongsgården in Oslo, so its association with the political authority is not as clearly suggested by physical proximity as is the case in Trondheim. One suggestion is that the church might have been founded by

Map 20.5: Site of St. Clements in Gamlebyen, Oslo, ca. 1300.

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King Haraldr Bluetooth of the neighboring Danish kingdom to the south.28 He had brought Viken under his control in the 970s and 980s and is also said to have imposed Christianity. This suggestion is not completely implausible, since Haraldr’s was the first generation of Danish rulers to be converted and to impose the new religion in the Danish kingdom. On the other hand, the revised dates established by carbon-14 analysis of skeletal material do not indicate that this was a church founded by Haraldr Bluetooth. Nor is it likely in any case that Haraldr Bluetooth would have dedicated his foundation church to St. Clement. As we will see, there is no evidence that any church dedicated to Clement was in existence in Denmark until the 1030s. The early Danish kings are unlikely to have been influenced by the cult in Kyiv, where they never ventured. It is more likely that the St. Clement’s church in Oslo was another early foundation by one of the Norwegian kings, albeit by one unknown, since the archaeological evidence indicates no more than an approximate date of its foundation in the very late tenth or early eleventh century.

St. Clement’s Cult in Denmark The Danish kingdom consisted of a cluster of islands on the eastern side of the North Sea and the peninsula of Skåne, controlling access to the Baltic. As the map shows, the concentration of churches dedicated to St. Clement in Denmark is quite dense (at least twenty-six churches, from Slesvig east to the province of Skåne in modern-day Sweden), whereas there are only five such churches, and one chapel, in Norway, and only one possible medieval example in Sweden. This list does not include the island of Gotland, which was an independent commonwealth until taken by the Danes in the twelfth century, which is probably when the Clement church in Visby was founded as a merchants’ church close to the harbour. The disparity between Denmark and rest of Scandinavia in numbers of St. Clement churches requires an explanation. It shows that the cult spread to Denmark (from Norway or England or both) and took firm root there in the early Danish urban settlements where Clement became a popular saint. Urban development was a marked feature of Denmark in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whereas there was little in Norway apart from in Trondheim and Oslo, at least before Bergen was founded at the end of the eleventh century. Sweden came late in the history of Christianization in the north, and conversion proceeded slowly. By the time churches were being built there, the

28 Schia, Oslo innerst i Viken. Crawford, “Churches to St. Clement in Norway,” 109.

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cult of Clement had passed the peak of its popularity and St. Nicholas of Myra was taking over the saintly role of the seamen’s protector.

Map 20.6: Early urban centres in Denmark with Clement churches.

Churches Dedicated to St. Clement in Denmark The main problem in associating the churches dedicated to St. Clement with either a political or a mercantile initiative is that we can rarely establish the date at which these churches were founded. For our study of the cult of Clement in northern Europe, Denmark is very important, for the number of dedications is striking, as noted above. There is, fortunately, one church in Denmark for

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which the date of foundation can be established by evidence, and that is St. Jørgensbjerg church in Roskilde (on Sjælland or Zealand), originally dedicated to St. Clement. Its date indicates an association with the period of Cnut’s rule. At this point, we should provide some political background to the relationship of the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and England in the early eleventh century, as the spread of the cult of Clement can perhaps be seen to be linked with the political situation of the time. The most notable feature of the period was the success of Cnut in conquering England in 1015–1016, followed some years later by his conquest of the kingdom of Norway in 1028. This made him the most powerful ruler of a North Sea “Empire,” and the fostering of the cult of Clement in his homeland was probably an adjunct to Cnut’s “imperial” authority. Denmark was a newly converted Christian kingdom, and the cults of the established saints of the Christian church may have been introduced by the clerical advisers whom the king brought with him from England, which he ruled as a model Christian king after his conquest in 1016. We certainly know that some other saints were introduced from England.29 It is likely that St. Clement was regarded as a desirable protector for the newly converted Danish dynasty. There are three aspects to his cult which help to provide an explanation for his popularity with Cnut. The first was the inestimable value of papal authority for a newly Christianized dynasty seeking to enhance its status in the wider world of Christian kings and princes. The transfer of Clement’s relics to Rome in the late ninth century brought his physical presence to western Europe, with the result that his cult was widely publicized. He was the only pontiff, with Peter, who could be claimed as apostolic, with the added enhancement of martyrdom. Second, we know that Cnut had imperial pretensions, particularly after his participation in the coronation of Emperor Conrad in Rome in 1027, when he also visited Pope John XIX. As a result, the northern king achieved a new, elevated status in the world of Christian rulers, stimulating his desire to adopt a prestigious saint as protector of his dynasty. Unfortunately, we do not know whether Cnut was given, or whether he acquired, any relics of Clement during this visit, although he does write in his letter to the English people that he was honored “donis pretiosis” (with precious gifts) from the pope and the emperor.30 It is fairly certain that the church of San Clemente, where the relics were enshrined, would have been one of the sacred places he visited. Once he had returned north, the

29 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 15, 25, 57. See also Haug in this volume, pp. 383–92. 30 Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, I, 276 (Cn 1027, 5). EHD 1, no. 53.

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adoption of this papal martyr as an especially prestigious patron would fit well with the enhanced conception of his authority which certain factors indicate he promoted.31 The third aspect of the cult is the element of competition that may have played a part in the adoption of Clement’s cult by the Danish dynasty as a result of the enmity between Kings Cnut and Óláfr Haraldsson of Norway. As we have seen, the cult had already been established, or reestablished, by this Óláfr after Óláfr Tryggvason’s initial foundation of the Clement church in Trondheim. It would be very difficult to reject the saga evidence for the founding of the church in Trondheim by these kings, just as there is no doubting the founding of churches dedicated to Clement in many more places in Denmark, one of which, at Roskilde, dates from the reign of Cnut. Yet the two dynasties were rivals, and Óláfr Haraldsson was defeated and killed at the battle of Stiklestad by Danish forces and disaffected Norwegians. Cnut presented himself successfully as a triumphant alternative to the Norwegian dynasty, and his son Sveinn (along with Ælfgifu, Sveinn’s English mother) was given power in Norway. So how did it happen that Clement, the favorite saint of the Norwegian kings (the two Óláfrs), was adopted as a saint by the rival Danes? The answer may lie in “contesting patronage,” the phenomenon of competing factions each striving to control a cult for its own purpose.32 It has been shown that the Anglo-Danish dynasty actually took up and promoted the cult of the martyred Óláfr Haraldsson, despite the fact that he was killed in battle against Cnut’s Danish forces in Norway in 1030.33 The same phenomenon may be at work in the adoption of the cult of the Norwegian kings’ protective saint by their enemies and conquerors. This phenomenon could explain the apparently contradictory situation in which the dominant political power does not suppress the cult of a saint which had been promoted by its victim, but actually takes over as the promoter of that cult. Danish success in the contest with Óláfr Haraldsson may have been taken as an indication that Clement had transferred his support from the Norwegian to the Danish dynasty, so that he could justifiably be regarded as the protector saint of the Danes. The date of the founding of the church in Roskilde, 1030–1035,

31 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 296–303. 32 This explanation of the circumstances of the adoption of Clement’s cult in Denmark is explored in Crawford, “The Cult of Clement in Denmark,” 274, and Churches to St. Clement in Medieval England, 25–28. 33 Townend, in “Like Father, like Son?,” 476, also demonstrates how “one of Cnut’s strategies in the establishment of his rule in England was to patronize the cults of English saints.” In “Knútr and the Cult of St. Óláfr,” 264, he shows how competing factions each try to control a cult “for their own political purposes.”

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corresponds so closely with the date of Olaf’s defeat at Stiklestad, and with the Danish victory over the Norwegians, that it is tempting to propose a causal link between the victory in battle and the foundation of St. Clement’s church in Roskilde. This place was the seat of power of Danish kings, according to Adam of Bremen, who calls it “sedes regum Danorum” (seat of the kings of the Danes).34

Map 20.7: Map of Roskilde Showing Site of St. Clement’s Church.

34 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 50 (I.l). See also North in this volume, p. 282.

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Nonetheless, the location of the church in Roskilde at a distance from the royal estate (in contrast to the Clement church in Trondheim, which was close to the royal estate in that city) suggests that this church may have been founded primarily for the retinues of the Anglo-Danish king, and moreover, close to the harbor where the royal fleet would be berthed. There were many groups of professional warriors, minters, craftsmen, and ecclesiastical personnel, who were accustomed to accompanying their king to and fro across the North Sea in the period of combined rule of his three kingdoms, and who would need their own place of worship. Perhaps St. Clement’s in Roskilde was founded with their interests in mind. Certainly, the style of architecture and the stone construction of this church point to English influence.35 Whatever the purpose of the founding of this church, there are many reasons to see it as a royal foundation reflecting the political and military contacts across the North Sea, which were such an important part of Cnut’s maintenance of power at this time.

Figure 20.2: View of St. Clement’s from Roskilde Harbour, and North Doorway.

Maritime Links: Churches in England The geographical situation of all these politically important Clement churches in Norway and Denmark both points to the maritime lifestyles of the powerful and indicates how important the sea routes were in the maintenance of power. All the urban churches in Scandinavia are located by harbours, with the exception of Lund, in Skåne, which, although an important power center in this period, is found in an inland location. Clement’s proximity to sea-routes raises the important issue of his

35 Crawford, “The Cult of Clement in Denmark,” 249.

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Map 20.8: Urban churches dedicated to St. Clement in England.

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association with seafarers, for whom his protective powers became the most enduring aspect of his cult in northern Europe. This may be one reason why his cult became so popular in Denmark, whose political and commercial life revolved around sea voyages. If we turn to England, it is notable that most of the urban churches dedicated to Clement in that country are also in locations close to sea routes and waterways. There is no doubt that Clement’s cult was already well established in England by the eighth century, as his feast is included in the Martyrology of Bede (ca. 673–735), with details about his martyrdom and the discovery of his body in a stone coffin, with his anchor nearby, when the sea receded.36 The date of his feast is listed in late eighth- and ninth-century calendars, which mention miraculous legends associated with his burial place, and the miracle of the fountain of spring water which Clement caused to gush forth from a rock for the benefit of the workers in the Cherson marble quarries. The Old English Martyrology, of a late ninthcentury date, gives an account of his martyrdom under the date of his feast day (November 23), as well as details of the miracle of the child who was trapped at the saint’s tomb when the sea flooded around the island, but who was restored alive to his mother the next year when the waters receded.37 A verse Menologium of ca. 1000 gives an explicit reference to Clement’s death by drowning, implying that he provided protection from drowning for those who prayed to him.38 It is noticeable that the preponderance of the Clement dedications in England, no fewer than thirty-four, were located north of the River Thames, and in close association with the area settled by the Danish immigrants in the ninth and tenth centuries. Unfortunately, it is very difficult indeed to pin down the date of the foundation of most of these churches. In some cases, notwithstanding, there is an explicit link with the Danes, such as the name “St. Clement Danes” (“ecclesia Dacorum”) in London, a term which can be traced back to the twelfth century. There is also a remarkable association with the major boroughs (or burhs, Anglo-Saxon urban foundations) in the Danelaw. Every one of the major Danelaw boroughs has a St. Clement church, which is often in close association with waterways, either harbours, rivers, or estuaries, and sometimes located close by a major bridge or river crossing. This association tells us that these churches were founded by, and for, those who voyaged overseas. Since these churches are all on the east-coast rivers, or on the east coast, it also tells us that those journeys would have been across the North Sea, above all to Denmark and Norway. On the one hand, it is not possible to define whether these churches date to the period of Danish settlement of the first Viking Age in the ninth and tenth

36 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 38–39. 37 Old English Martyrology, ed. and trans. Rauer, 219. 38 Lapidge, “The Saintly Life,” 249.

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centuries, or to the period of Cnut’s conquest of England and the creation of the Anglo-Danish North-Sea empire in the early eleventh century. Only excavation will prove the date of the foundation of these churches; so far there have been no excavations conducted at any of the English sites of Clement churches. On the other hand, the Scandinavian association with St. Clement is strong. It is likely not only that some of his churches at least date to the period before Cnut’s conquest, but also that his reign increased the popularity of this saint whose special property was the protection of seafarers from the danger of drowning. One striking feature of the distribution of churches dedicated to Clement in the British Isles is that there are very few in Scotland, and none in Wales or Ireland, apart from one in Dublin. Other examples exist in the south and west of England, but of the overall number of his churches in England, which stands at fifty-two, as many as thirty-four were founded or dedicated north of the River Thames and predominantly in the southern Danelaw region. The absence of churches in the Celtic countries certainly suggests that Clement’s cult was not deeply embedded in these communities (although his name appears in some of the early Irish martyrologies).39 This disparity in the location of churches in the different parts of Britain is reflected in the Scandinavian distribution (already referred to), where the churches are predominantly located in Denmark (or former Danish territory), but sparse in Norway and almost absent from medieval Sweden. The link with the Danes on both sides of the North Sea is striking. In general terms, one can be sure that the cult existed in England before the Viking Age and was taken up with enthusiasm by the Danes once they had been converted. One can likewise be sure that this was the period when St. Clement’s cult spread among the urban communities of eastern England, because of the close contact with Denmark across the North Sea. As already discussed, the attraction of the cult of St. Clement to Cnut’s dynasty suggests that there was a political element in the choice of this papal martyr as a saint worth cultivating – and worth taking over from the defeated Norwegians. In the eleventh century, when connections across the North Sea between the three kingdoms of England, Denmark, and Norway were constant, and the knowledge of Clement’s significance was transferred with the political regimes, it seems that this saint’s effectiveness extended to protection for those who voyaged across the seas. Eventually this became the most significant aspect of the cult for the populations who lived in coastal communities, whose circumstances exposed them to the danger of drowning. Exactly when and where this aspect of the cult developed is an issue which needs further exploration, for it does not appear to be a feature of

39 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 43–44.

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Clement’s cult in the principality of Kyiv. Nonetheless, it is true of Scandinavia. Some of the Clement churches in Denmark were closely associated with royal estates and their significance was particularly political.40 Cinthio argued that if they were also near the harbours, this was because of the lifestyle of the politically important. Once the Anglo-Danish world of Cnut’s dynasty collapsed and England and Denmark went in separate political directions, the churches which had possibly been founded in strategic situations for the sea voyages of the rulers and their retinues became more closely associated with the merchant communities and seafarers in general. Clement’s popularity remained high among the coastal urban communities and spread into rural areas in both England and Denmark.

St. Clement Danes and Other Churches in England In England, as already noted, it is very difficult to know when the Clement churches were founded, and particularly so to know whether they date from before the Norman Conquest or after it.41 However, with regard to the famous church of St. Clement Danes on the Strand in London, we have some evidence that it did indeed exist in the time of Anglo-Danish rule. Located west of the City of London on the main route to Westminster, the strategic position of this church may be an indication of its military significance. The early association with the Danish community is quite clear, as we have seen, from the name “ecclesia Dacorum” (church of the Danes) recorded in the twelfth century. There is also the interesting story that it became the burial place of Harold Harefoot, second son of Cnut by Ælfgifu, who took power in England on his father’s death in 1035. Harold reigned for only five years; after his death and burial at Westminster, according to John of Worcester, his half-brother Harthacnut had his body disinterred and thrown into the River Thames, from where it was recovered and taken for burial to the Danes’ cemetery.42 This record of the burial of Harold Harefoot, in what is presumed to be the burial ground of St. Clement’s on the Strand, is rather important for our understanding of the saint’s association with the AngloDanish dynasty.

40 Cinthio (“The Churches of St. Clemens”) examines the location of churches dedicated to St. Clement in Scandinavia and the political significance of their location close to royal power centres in many instances. 41 Clement was well known to the Normans, and a chapel in Rouen, close to the ducal Donjon, on the River Seine can be dated certainly no later than 1025 and possibly as early as 1006. See Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 194–95. 42 EHD 1, 317. The Danes’ burial ground was said by Ralph of Diceto in the late twelfth century to be “apud Sanctum Clementem” (by St. Clement’s). See Works of Ralph de Diceto, ed. Stubbs, I, 185 (Abbreviationes chronicorum, s.a. 1040).

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The possible military or naval connection needs to be explored further when seeking to understand the significance of Clement’s association with the Danish dynasty. This raises the issue of “garrison churches” which, it has been postulated, were connected with the churches dedicated to Scandinavian saints in London, and particularly with churches dedicated to St. Olave or Óláfr Haraldsson.43 Of course, these churches must postdate 1030, when Óláfr died at the battle of Stiklastaðir (Stiklestad), after which his fame as a martyr spread quickly, resulting in the remarkable number of six churches dedicated to him in London. These churches are linked to strategic positions near the walls and gates, as well as the waterfront. In addition, Pamela Nightingale suggested that St. Clement Danes and St. Bride’s, on the road to Westminster and near the River Thames, may also have been associated with encampments of troops close to their ships, in the years after Cnut’s conquest when London was a city under military occupation. There is no doubt that London was used as an important naval base during the reign of Æthelred II, and also by the Danish kings who continued to use London as the chief base for their hired fleet of Scandinavian mercenaries, the liðsmenn (lithsmen) paid for by the heavy gelds which were exacted.44 It was a mobile, naval force, originating in the forty ships’ crews which Cnut retained in 1017 as a force for conquering the rest of England and securing his authority over his North Sea empire. Such a force would need its own base, and a band of liðsmenn was based in London; “þa liðsmen on Lunden” (the men of the fleet in London) are said to have supported Harold Harefoot to be Cnut’s successor in 1035.45 The association of these troops with St. Clement’s is evident from the report that Harald’s body, having been recovered from the Thames in 1040, was taken to the Danes and buried in their cemetery. These would have been Danes who had been his supporters in the succession crisis of 1035, and who can therefore be seen to have had St. Clement’s church as their religious centre. This is circumstantial evidence for St. Clement Danes having functioned as a “garrison church” for the period of the Danish rule, until the naval force was dismissed by Edward the Confessor in 1049–1050 and the heregeld (army-tax) abolished in 1051. For more than thirty years this naval force would have needed a riverine base in London for

43 Crawford, in Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 60–61, discusses Nightingale’s theories of garrison churches in London in the period of Danish rule, in Nightingale, “Origin of the Court of Husting,” 578. Recently the garrison theory has been reconsidered in connection with the churches and chapels dedicated to St. Clement and St. Olave in South Conesford, Norwich. See Shelley, “South Conesford, Norwich.” See also Reynolds in this volume, pp. 53–55, 61. 44 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 64–65. 45 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 76 (s.a. 1036 [for 1035]).

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the security of its fleet, along with its own church. The location of St. Clement’s church on the Strand provided them with an anchoring place and a supply base, as well as access to the interior of England via the Thames, especially to Oxford, which was an important meeting-place for the regulation of the conquered country. There was also a St. Clement’s Church in Oxford, one located by the River Cherwell, which flows into the Thames. The important assemblies which were held in Oxford in 1015, 1018, and 1035 would have been attended by the liðsmenn, particularly in 1035 when the succession dispute was settled, and when Harold Harefoot was elected as “regent” by all the councilors and the liðsmenn of London. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that these liðsmenn also had their own “garrison church” as part of their naval base on the river in Oxford; if so, that church might be identified with St. Clement’s.46 There are many other St. Clement churches in England, located in important maritime or riverine locations suitably placed for naval establishments, such as the ports on the south coast, or in Kent, like Rochester and Sandwich. The latter port (the battle station for the Anglo-Saxon fleet) was where Edward the Confessor attended mass in St. Clement’s Church when reviewing the fleet in 1042.47 London, Oxford, and Sandwich are the most likely locations for “garrison churches” and the founding of a St. Clement church in all three ports points to the possible role of these churches in the military strategies of both the Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Danish regimes.48 There are other important strategic urban locations in East Anglia, like Norwich, where St. Olave and St. Clement churches coexist on the River Wensum. There were two St. Clement churches in Norwich, as also in Lincoln.

46 However, the earliest historical evidence for the existence of the St. Clement’s church in Oxford dates from the early twelfth century. Archaeological material recovered on an island in the river in the late nineteenth century, during dredging works on the River Cherwell, includes metal objects with cavalry connections which date from the late tenth or early eleventh century and hint at a military establishment in this location or possibly at a late pagan equestrian burial. See Blair and Crawford, “A Late-Viking Burial at Oxford?,” 135–42, and Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 88–89. 47 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 72: Gatch, “Miracles in Architectural Settings,” 229. The recent study of Sandwich by Clarke, Sweetinburgh, and Jones (Sandwich, 25–29) discusses the significance of St. Clement’s Church in the early development of the port (late tenth or early eleventh century). 48 The possibility that Æthelred had been the founder of some of the St. Clement churches, as part of his naval strategy, is suggested in Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 74, 205.

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Cnut’s Church of St. Clement’s in Roskilde and “the Machinery of Control” It has already been noted that St. Jørgensbjerg church in Roskilde, originally dedicated to St. Clement, was located by the harbor in a way that suggests its function as the church founded for the use of seafarers, or for members of the royal AngloDanish retinue. These would be constantly voyaging between Denmark and England from the period of Cnut’s invasion and conquest of England through the reigns of his sons, until the demise of the dynasty in 1042. There were also soldiers, craftsmen, and clergy, as we have seen, in whose interests St. Clement’s in Roskilde may have been founded: the style of architecture and the stone construction of St. Clement’s points to English influence, even if the church was not constructed by an Anglo-Saxon master builder and his masons.49 Its stone construction indicates “that it was prestigious, and had extremely wealthy patrons.”50 One could extrapolate from this assessment to make similar comments about the dedication to Clement. Whatever the purpose of the founding of this church, there are many reasons to see it as a royal foundation reflecting the political and military contacts across the North Sea which were such an important part of Cnut’s maintenance of his power at this time. Cnut’s ships’ crews formed a mobile fleet which could be deployed anywhere in his maritime empire, and they would have needed bases in both of his kingdoms. The church of St. Clement’s could have been founded in the Danish half of his empire with their interests in mind. Clement’s powers of protection for those engaged in frequently traversing the North Sea would be a very relevant consideration in the choice of patron saint for this church, located at the dynasty’s Danish power base. Fortunately, we are able to pinpoint its foundation date closely, as a hoard of coins was discovered during excavations in the 1950s, located in the foundations of the tower. It was probably deposited as a foundation offering and can be assigned to the years 1030–1035.51 This date links the church’s foundation with the reign of Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England, and Norway in those years. We can less confidently assign the term “garrison church” to this St. Clement’s foundation, considering that it was constructed close to the dynastic power base in Cnut’s home country. But we can probably regard it as one element of Cnut’s “machinery of control” which, it has been suggested, was put

49 Crawford, “The Cult of Clement in Denmark,” 249, citing Andersen and Nielsen, “En Stormannsgård”; Roesdahl, Viking Age Denmark; and Ulriksen, “Sct Jørgensbjerg Kirke.” 50 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 171. 51 For details and references, see Crawford, “The Cult of Clement in Denmark,” 248.

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into operation by the Anglo-Danish king in western and central Denmark.52 This would be the date of the incorporation of Clement as a saintly protector of the dynasty and its naval storm-troopers following the defeat of Óláfr Haraldsson and the conquest of Norway in 1030. As has already been elaborated, it seems logical to see the adoption of Clement at Roskilde at this date as a result of contesting the patronage of this prestigious papal martyr with the defeated Norwegian royal dynasty which had imported the cult from Kyiv, and which had already built churches dedicated to him in their own urban power centres. Such a politically ambitious move may have been encouraged, if not initiated, by the English churchmen who were active in Cnut’s power structures. With regard to Roskilde, Gerbrand, consecrated bishop of Roskilde before 1022, was one of these powerful ecclesiastics who operated on both sides of the North Sea.53 The English churchmen would have been familiar with Clement’s role as protector of seamen, as his cult was long-established in England. In conclusion, the evidence for Roskilde’s importance in Cnut’s political control of his own kingdom is undoubted, and the role of Clement as protector at the harbor church in this royal power center is surely significant. We can still see the situation as comparable in some way with that of St. Clement’s in the Strand in London.54 The latter church was, of course, in a country governed by an alien dynasty which needed to maintain its position with military and naval forces. The use of a somewhat anachronistic term like “garrison chapel” to define the role of these churches is unnecessary, and in the case of Roskilde probably inappropriate, but it does focus attention on their possible function in Cnut’s maritime empire and in his “machinery of control.” Disparate though the bits of evidence are, it cannot be denied that the evidence for the burial of Cnut’s son Harold Harefoot in St. Clement’s in the Strand provides support for the hypothesis that this Clement church was significant among the Anglo-Danish dynasty’s ritual locations. It suggests that St. Clement may have had a role as the skytshelgen, the “protective saint” of members of the dynasty and its entourages, military and administrative.

52 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, chap. 7. 53 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 178. 54 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 67.

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General Popularity of the Cult in the Twelfth Century From this high point in the eleventh century, when the cult of St. Clement was patronized by the powerful elites in Norway, England, and Denmark, we move forward into an era when the saint became popular with the wider population, for his churches are found in rural areas in eastern and central England and throughout Denmark. In many cases it is apparent that his popularity spread out from a particular urban power center with a Clement church into the surrounding countryside. The continuing close link with waterways, fishing communities, and locations prone to flooding gives a strong impression that it was Clement’s protective powers where the danger of drowning was a concern that made him so popular. The symbol of his death by drowning – the anchor – which was the means by which he gained a martyr’s crown, is a well-established attribute in northern Europe. The anchor’s firm association with safety for mariners in danger of drowning tells us clearly that Clement was regarded as the patron saint of seafarers.55

Figure 20.3: Altar panel from Skjærvøy, Troms, Norway (after 1500), showing St. Clement with his papal tiara, holding papal cross and anchor (Oslo Universitets Oldsaksamling).

55 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 52–53.

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Another aspect of Clement’s cult associates his name with wells or springs. This reflects the story in the Acta about the miracle when he caused a fountain or spring to pour out of a rock to quench the thirst of his converts in the Crimea.56 Other associations developed in England do not seem to have a direct connection with any of the legends; these are with blacksmiths, wiremongers, and ironfounders, which have lasted up to recent times. It is possible that the association with ironworking may reflect the blacksmith’s craft and the production of the metal anchor which was Clement’s attribute. The company of ironfounders had Clement as their patron. Blacksmiths, in particular, held celebrations on St. Clement’s Day, when they “fired” their anvils with gunpowder, and it may be this practice which led to his being considered a protector from thunderstorms in Germany. In this way, the cult of St. Clement was many-sided, and we have to see him as a saint who met the need of different sectors of medieval society at different times. But he particularly supplied the aspiring newly-Christianized rulers of Norway and Denmark with valuable strength and support. Cnut and his sons were undoubtedly aware of this aspect of the cult.

Conclusion: Patron of an Empire Can it be concluded that Clement was also the skytshelgen (protecting saint) of Cnut and his dynasty? In a general sense, probably yes, in that this apostolic martyr provided powerful support for dynasties engaged in power struggles, whose especial concern was for those involved in sea travel. Erik Cinthio’s study of the cult of Cnut shows that some of the Danish churches can be shown to date to the reign of Cnut, and that their specific location in the towns sometimes indicates an association with royal estate. Accepting Cinthio’s conclusion about the “political significance” of the cult does not mean, however, that we should downplay Clement’s effectiveness as a protector for all members of these societies who had maritime lifestyles exposing them to danger in their watery worlds.57 From being associated with the elites of the newly converted Scandinavian world in Norway and Denmark, Clement’s cult spread to a wider section of the population in Denmark and in England, but did not spread so far in Norway. The

56 Crawford, Churches dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England, 54–55. 57 Cinthio was seemingly unaware of the significance of the position of Clement churches in locations prone to flooding. Hofmann, Die Legende von Sankt Clemens, 171, mentions this geographically important aspect of Clement’s role as protector.

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saint’s long-standing association with coastal communities and with seafarers meant that his churches became indelibly linked with seamen and fishermen, and their geographical location at harbours gave continuity to this association. This aspect is the one which is familiar today, while the earlier political significance of Clement’s cult is little known. He was rivaled in his role as the seafarer’s saint by Nicholas, whose cult rose to prominence in the twelfth century after his relics were brought to Bari in Southern Italy from Myra in 1079. Indeed, Clement was overtaken by Nicholas, who became very popular indeed – and whose cult was patronized by the kings and aristocratic members of Scandinavian society.58 Knowledge of Clement’s cult has suffered from the poorly documented situation regarding almost all his churches, and the lack of historical sources from the late tenth and early eleventh century. The far-reaching contacts of the Vikings and Varangians with the center of Clement’s cult in Kyiv and the links with Cherson are only dimly recorded in the sagas, and the sagas have suffered from too much skeptical criticism in the past century. It is time that we recognized the value of this information and listened to what the saga-writers are telling us.59 The maritime empire of Cnut’s dynasty did not last long and the important political role of Clement’s cult in that Anglo-Danish world was fleeting. The evidence that we have suggests that his cult was an important adjunct to the power of that dynasty, difficult though this is to prove. Further research – in particular, more archaeological research – will help to firm up our knowledge of the significant role of the cult of St. Clement in northern Europe in the early eleventh century.

58 Crawford, Northern Earldoms, 212–13. A reference in the lai of Eliduc, dating from the midto late twelfth century, shows the equivalence of Clement and Nicholas at that time as protectors in stormy seas. They are both invoked during Eliduc’s sea voyage with his lady Guilliadun from Totnes to France, when the ship’s mast breaks and splits and the sail is completely torn. However, they reach harbor safely. See The Lais of Marie de France, trans. and ed. Burgess and Busby, 121. 59 See Bolton in the Epilogue.

Timothy Bolton

Epilogue Cnut and the Potential Uses and Abuses of the Late Narrative Sources from Northern Scandinavia That element of research on Cnut the Great which still seems to raise the greatest number of eyebrows is the use of late North Scandinavian narrative sources for parts of the history of Scandinavia during the reign of Cnut. These sources are: the synoptic Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium of Theodoricus monachus (ca. 1177–1178 and certainly before 1188) and its Old Norse vernacular sister text Ágrip af Nóregskonungasǫgum (probably soon after 1180); the later Norwegian and Icelandic sagas and saga-compilations: Fagrskinna, Morkinskinna (both ca. 1220), the so-called Oldest saga of St. Óláfr (ca. 1200), and its part-descendant, the Legendary Saga of St. Óláfr (early thirteenth century), as well as the surviving fragments of Styrmir Kárason’s Lífssaga (probably from the early decades of the thirteenth century) and lastly Heimskringla (ca. 1230) and Knýtlinga saga (probably 1250s). Other more contemporary sources that shed light on these do exist for Cnut’s reign, including his letter of 1027 and fragments of skaldic verse, but these are brief and few. The study of Cnut both as an English and a Scandinavian ruler, together with the totality of his dominions, forces us to consider as many of the Scandinavian sources of evidence as possible. An examination of how historians have engaged with, or avoided, late Scandinavian narratives in the last one and half centuries, reveals much, not only about the changing fortunes of these texts in that time, but also about some of the problems that followed the rejection of these sources or attempts to continue to work with them. It is the uses and abuses of this material by modern historians that I shall attempt to set out here, followed by some observations about how and where we might appropriately use this material in future.1 In keeping with the theme of this book, I shall restrict myself to studies relevant to Cnut.

1 Much of this discussion can be found in practical examples in Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, see esp. 251–59 and 275–87, and explained more fully in Bolton, Cnut the Great, 22–26. The present paper as presented at the conference formed the basis of what was written in the latter book. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-022

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The Source-Critical Approach: its Arrival and Effects on the Uses of these Late Scandinavian Narratives In a short span of years following 1910, there was a sea-change in Scandinavian historiography and its critical approach to late narrative sources. This was initiated by two Swedes – the brothers and medieval historians Lauritz and Curt Weibull – closely followed by the Norwegian Halvdan Koht. Such events are well known in Scandinavian circles, but perhaps need a little rehearsing for an English readership.2 The earliest indications of the new source-critical approach by one of these authors may be found in two articles by Lauritz Weibull printed side-by-side in Historisk tidskrift för Skåneland (Historical Journal for Skåne) in 1910.3 The same author then set out his new approach in more systematic detail in 1911 with his Kritiska undersökningar i Nordens historia omkring år 1000 (Critical Studies in Nordic History around the year 1000). This was closely followed in 1913–1914 by Halvdan Koht’s “Sagaernes opfatning av vor gamle historie” (The Sagas’ Perception of Our Old History), which he initially gave as an address to the Norske Historiske Forening (Norwegian Historical Association) on November 24, 1913 and then published in the following year. In 1915 Lauritz Weibull’s brother Curt joined the charge, with his Saxo: Kritiska undersökningar i Danmarks historia från Sven Estridsens död till Knut VI (Critical Studies on the History of Denmark from the Death of Sven Estrithsson to Knut IV). Only one of these lengthy studies even mentioned Cnut the Great, but they were to have a great influence on his historiography in the years to come.4 Their important legacy in our subject was to bring vigorous source criticism into this region of medieval history. Primarily, they exposed the central problem in using late-twelfth- and thirteenth-century narratives for the study of the

2 An excellent survey can be found in Lindqvist, “Early Political Organisation,” 161–63. 3 These are “Dråpen i Roskilde i Knut den stores och Sven Estridsens tid” (The Murders in Roskilde in the Time of Cnut the Great and Sven Estrithsson) and “Knut den stores skånska krig” (Cnut the Great’s Scanian War), published together in Historisk tidskrift för Skåneland, 4 (1910–1913). I owe this reference to Søren Balle, “Ulf Jarl og drabet i Roskilde” (Earl Úlfr and the Murder in Roskilde), 35–36. 4 Lauritz Weibull’s study stops just short of Cnut’s reign, whereas Curt Weibull’s is on Saxo Grammaticus, an author of the twelfth century. Much of Halvdan Koht’s concern is focused on St. Óláfr as a central figure of Norwegian history, and in “Sagaernes Opfatning,” 391, he notes that ruler was as important to the Norwegians as “Karl den Store var for de tyske og de franske” (Charlemagne was for the Germans and the French). Thus, Cnut, the great enemy of St. Óláfr, is mentioned briefly at 392.

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late Viking Age. In Cnut’s case, such sources were separated by a century or so from the events they describe, and were thus suspect in their record of events and especially so in their interpretations of those events.5 This consideration naturally leads to another: the question of where writers in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries could have turned for the basis of their narratives, and to what extent they used pure invention to fill the gaps in such narratives.6 Notwithstanding these developments, earlier doubts about the veracity of such sources had appeared throughout the last decades of the nineteenth century and in the years leading up to 1910–1911. The Danish historian Kristian Erslev, while never mentioning the eleventh century, let alone Cnut, published writings through the 1880s which contained the beginnings of a critical approach to medieval sources.7 These works led to his “Erik Plovpennings Strid med Abel. Studier over ægte og uægte Kilder til Danmarks Historie” (Erik Plovpenning’s Fight with Abel: Studies of Genuine and Illegitimate Sources of Danish History) in 1890, an essay which contained a definitive statement about the value of primary sources over later materials.8 Only a few years before, in 1877, the English historian E. A. Freeman had recorded doubts about the late Scandinavian sources.9 Of Cnut’s northern wars, Freeman stated that “the Norwegian sagas and the rhetorical Latin of the Danish historian help us to abundance of detail, if only we could accept them as authentic.” Attached to these words is a footnote to which he relegated a statement on a work he read through the 1844 translation of Samuel Laing, namely Heimskringla: “I use it freely, though with caution, for Northern affairs.”10 His relief is palpable, when, incidentally quite at odds with my own approach, he concludes: “Happily, to unravel the difficulties and contradictions of their various statements is no part of the business of an English historian.” A similarly dawning awareness of source problems appeared in King Cnut’s first biography, which was written by Laurence M. Larson, a Norwegian-born émigré to America. Larson notes that Knýtlinga saga’s description of

5 For an excellent survey of the problems associated with such texts see Sawyer and Sawyer, “Adam and Eve of Scandinavian History.” 6 Koht himself asks openly, in “Sagaernes Opfatning,” 391: “hvorledes er denne historienopfatning opstaat? Er den fri speculation, eller har den røtter i almene historiske vilkaar?” (How did this perception of history come about? Is it free speculation, or does it have roots in general historical conditions?). 7 See his “Studier til Dronning Margrethes Historie” (“Studies for the History of Queen Margrethe”), for the earliest version of these ideas. 8 Erslev, “Erik Plovpennings Strid med Abel.” 9 Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, I, 452. 10 Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, I, 452–54, as well as his notes ZZ, BBB, EEE, GGG, MMM and QQQ at the end of the volume, for examples of such use.

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Cnut’s outward appearance and abilities was “[i]dealistic . . . [due to being] composed two centuries or more after his time” and that the speeches in these accounts “are doubtless the historian’s own.”11 Probably due to these doubts, Larson was quick to cite skaldic verse, which he called “fragments of contemporary verse” and “court poetry of the scalds,” as supporting evidence in preference to saga-material – this was decades before Finnur Jónsson collected and edited the skaldic corpus.12 This source-critical approach was very necessary to the scholarship, from which it cleared out much dead wood. Larson’s biography is a case in point. Despite the statements of doubt noted above, his use of such material is naive and clearly of the period before the revelations of the Weibull brothers and Koht.13 Larson uses Heimskringla for the marriage of Sveinn Forkbeard without any discussion of the problems of this source;14 Knýtlinga saga he uses for the supposed late arrival of Eírikr Hákonarson and his forces in 1015;15 Heimskringla, again, for the erroneous embassy between Cnut and St. Óláfr in the mid-1020s, and for the pact between Magnús “the Good” and Harthacnut;16 Fagrskinna, for Cnut’s meeting with Emperor Conrad II outside of Rome;17 and he was completely taken in by the literary exaggerations of Jómsvíkinga saga.18 Indeed, the new sourcecritical approach to these texts came at probably the worst moment for Larson, and did great damage to his biography within months of its release. Since his preface to the biography is dated 1911, his book was almost certainly in preparation at the same time as Lauritz Weibull’s own study, and most probably in press while the latter’s conclusions were making themselves felt in Scandinavian scholarship. In 1912, perhaps as a consequence of this, Larson withdrew almost entirely from publications on medieval history and confined his research to

11 Larson, Canute the Great, 323 and ix–x. 12 Larson, Canute the Great, 206 and 122. In fact, the only editions of such material available were those fossilized within the individual editions of the larger saga narratives and the material in Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale. In this early extensive use of this material he mirrors Lauritz Weibull’s “Knut den stores skånska krig” of 1910. 13 As an aside intended only to amuse, Larson is also badly served by the passage of time in his insistence on translating Scandinavian bynames into modern English. Due to this, the Norwegian magnate Einarr Þambarskelfir becomes “Einar Thongshaker,” shifting the meaning of his byname from a martial one involving trembling bowstrings (or paunches) to something far more in the lingerie line. 14 Larson, Canute the Great, 31. 15 Larson, Canute the Great, 72. 16 Larson, Canute the Great, 204–6 and 98–99 and 336. 17 Larson, Canute the Great, 226. 18 See Larson, Canute the Great, 156–57 for one example among many.

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works on American-Scandinavian history, the British Empire, and World War I, with the exception of his two modern English translations of Old Norse sources: The King’s Mirror in 1917 and The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the Gulathing Law and the Frostathing Law in 1935.

Reactions to the Emergence of this SourceCritical Approach From our perspective, a little over a century later, the emergence of these critical approaches to later medieval Scandinavian sources seems an inevitable part of the similar European trends sweeping medieval studies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For Scandinavian medieval studies in the Englishspeaking world and Scandinavia, however, the consequences of this sourcecritical approach were anything but straightforward or uniform. Historians in both these regions began to withdraw from such sources. In Scandinavia many scholars withdrew from the fields associated with these sources almost entirely, shifting their attention to the mid-twelfth century or later, periods for which primary sources are more abundant. Historical commentary on the eleventh century, especially on Cnut’s reign, either confined itself in the main to English or German primary or near-primary sources where these covered events relevant to Scandinavia, or took refuge in other disciplines, such as numismatics, archaeology, and art history, which boasted more abundant and trustworthy material. The three Scandinavian nations which were principally engaged in studies of Cnut seem to have reacted according to the availability of source material for their own histories. Denmark, though not served well by late Scandinavian narratives, was better served than its northerly neighbours by the more contemporary sources from England and Germany. Denmark thus had the least to lose from an outright rejection of the late Scandinavian narratives wherever these could not be corroborated by more reliable sources. The source-critical approach had profound effects in Denmark, in which only a small amount of historical scholarship engaging with Cnut, in any form other than historical survey, exists for much of the twentieth century.19 One exception is Søren Balle’s “Ulf Jarl og drabet i Roskilde” (Earl Úlfr and the Murder in Roskilde), published in 1983. This essay

19 This is not to diminish, however, the excellent archaeological and numismatic scholarship produced in Denmark in this period, or to ignore the historical research on individual aspects of eleventh-century Danish history and military organization.

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returned to the subject matter of the 1910 article on the same subject by Lauritz Weibull, and in so doing had to engage with saga accounts of this apparent political murder on Cnut’s orders. It includes sections on the “Fortællingerne om drabet på Ulf” (Narratives about the Murder of Úlfr) and “Dateringen af drabet” (Dating of the Murder), each of which rehearses much saga material, assessing this against itself and other sources.20 Lauritz Weibull’s doubt about these sources is examined and for the most part agreed with; what is absent from Balle’s essay, however, is anything like a conclusion regarding their worth. We are offered the saga narratives one after the other and warned of their pitfalls, but without much attempt to assess their worth beyond where they find support in other more reliable English or numismatic evidence. The reader might be forgiven for suspecting that these narratives are there because the subject forces their inclusion, and that they are repeated at length for the sake of completeness rather than as an integral part of the building blocks of the analysis. Likewise, Niels Lund had to engage with some saga material in his contribution to The Reign of Cnut volume, which was published in 1994. Here, towards the end of his paper, his comments turn to Cnut’s actions elsewhere in Scandinavia, which are of course intrinsically linked to those in Denmark. As he does so, his words “[a]ccording to later Old Norse sources” signal a shift away from the more reliable sources used previously, to the late Scandinavian narratives, which he classifies as “suggestions.”21 Norway, though it had some occasional notices in the English and German historical sources, was the principal subject of the late Scandinavian narrative sources and so had the most to lose from any rejection of these. Thus the new source-critical approach made its presence strongly felt in historical studies throughout the half-century following the years 1910–1915. Saga sources were allowed back in, but only in cases where they had support from other more contemporary sources.22 Nonetheless, a new approach emerged in 1977 with the publication of Per Sveaas Andersen’s seminal study, Samlingen av Norge og Kristningen av Landet 800–1130 (The Unification of Norway and the Christianization of the country in 800–1130). In this work the author sought to take a long and wide view of history across three and a half centuries; doubtless he was

20 Balle, “Ulf Jarl og drabet i Roskilde,” 31–39. 21 Lund, “Cnut’s Danish Kingdom,” 38–39. 22 For an example of this approach, see the collection of essays in Harald Hardråde, edited by Arno Berg in 1966. Much of the book is occupied by numismatic and archaeological studies, with historical contributions on Harald and Byzantium, Harald’s queen, and Norwegian relations with Denmark and England. In these, where late Scandinavian narrative material might have been used in studies before Koht’s work, we find in general that these are cited only when they have the support of a non-Scandinavian primary source.

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influenced by the longue durée approach of the Annales school, which examined grand themes of the centralization of society and, within that, the roles of the major power structures of society. This approach to Norway’s history necessitated the use of late Scandinavian narratives. While there is no direct comment on methodology in Sveaas Andersen’s work, it is clear that he sought to address the inherent problems of his sources by drawing attention to advances in literary studies on this material and by employing only the barest of details from such sources in an effort to eliminate as many later accretions as possible. In his introduction, Sveaas Andersen rehearses and endorses the same doubts raised by the Weibulls and Koht, but follows this up with a lengthy quotation from Anne Holtsmark on the sources that were employed by the thirteenth-century saga authors.23 When his study arrives at the reign of Cnut’s contemporaries, we are reminded again of the textual relationships which created the sagas we have today. Citing the work of the literary scholars Sigurður Nordal (whose groundbreaking work on the interrelation of the narrative sources appeared in 1914, during the same period as the Weibulls’ and Koht’s studies), O. A. Johnsen (1916), Johan Schreiner (1926), Jón Helgason (1941), and Anne Holtsmark (1967), Sveaas Andersen does expend some effort to define an “eldre sagatradisjon” (older saga tradition), whose positive and negative qualities he attempts to weigh.24 His bare narrative is mostly established by these sources, backed up by any relevant skaldic verse, numismatic, legal, or runic material or by relevant non-Scandinavian sources where available. Thus, allowing for some brief speculation on the potential interpretations of the latter sources, he creates a sparse thumbnail sketch of a historical narrative.25 More often than not, somewhat worryingly, he introduces such details without footnotes, reducing our ability to approach the supporting sources critically as readers and giving the impression of a consensus-agreed base narrative. This position has prevailed in Norwegian scholarship that touches on Cnut, more or less until the present day. The same focus on larger social themes rather than detail can be found in Claus Krag’s survey Norges historie fram til 1319 (Norwegian History up to 1319), published in 2000. This book produces a thumbnail sketch of the period relevant to Cnut with barely a reference to individual sources beyond phrases such as “I skaldekvadene hører vi at” (We hear from the

23 Sveaas Andersen, Samlingen av Norge, 25, citing Holtsmark, “Sankt Olavs liv og mirakler.” 24 Sveaas Andersen, Samlingen av Norge, 109–11 and 115, citing Sigurður Nordal, Om Olaf den helliges saga, O. A. Johnsen, Olavsagaens genesis, Johan Schreiner, Tradisjon og saga, Jón Helgason, Den store saga om Olav den hellige, and Holtsmark’s study, which is cited above. His suggested reading adds the further literary study of Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Om de norske kongers sagaer. 25 Sveaas Andersen, Samlingen av Norge, 115–39.

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skaldic verses that).26 This sketch is augmented by some brief general comments later in the book on the problems commonly associated with later Scandinavian sources, and there are assessments individual to each chapter alongside lists of sources and published collections of sources.27 The situation is much the same in Jón Viðar Sigurðsson’s Det Norrøne Samfunnet, Vikingen, Kongen, Erkebiskopen og Bonden (‘Old Norse’ Society: Viking, King, Archbishop and Farmer), published in 2008, albeit this work refers to the sources more accurately. This Norwegian approach has its merits. While it comes with wider margins of potential error in its findings, due to the dearth of source material, it does seem likely that true “kings’ sagas” (that is, those sagas not framed in such literary style as Jómsvíkinga saga) relate, more or less correctly, the major political events of the eleventh century and perhaps some from the last decades of the tenth.28 These were events that occurred less than a century or two before they were put to parchment. While such accounts of events most probably suffer from erosion of detail (especially of the detail which played no further part in future events), and from a telescoping of the narrative, the general audience was probably prevented by mutual scrutiny from making wanton inventions; and at least some of that audience must have continued to recite and enjoy contemporary skaldic verse about many of these events. What such accounts do badly, however, is interpret why events happened, for the interpretations within these accounts frequently reveal concerns of the writer’s own time rather than the events as they happened.29 With the exception of statements in skaldic verse, if these are introduced in the prose as the works of named poets or from named poems, direct speech in saga prose is never to be trusted. In addition, from the eleventh century onwards, genealogy does seem to have had an important social role in Scandinavia. As long as it relates to contemporary links (and not to a far distant and legendary past) and as long as it relates to geographically close relationships, genealogy may perhaps be trusted. The check on wanton invention that the medieval audience might give such material does not apply if such relationships are set either in a distant past or outside of Scandinavia (or perhaps even

26 Krag, Norges historie, 65. 27 Krag, Norges historie, 218–27 and 279–80. 28 It bears stating here that I would not advocate the use of such material further back than the last decade or so of the tenth century. Before this the deviation of such material from the few other sources we have, and the potential level of invention, is sufficiently high to prevent such use. 29 Here again, for fuller discussion of this serious concern with such sources, I direct the reader to Sawyer and Sawyer, “Adam and Eve of Scandinavian History.”

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outside of northern Scandinavia). Examples of this last potential error are probably the isolated and clearly erroneous statements of the so-called “Supplement” to Jómsvíkinga saga, that Eadric Streona was Queen Emma’s brother and had fostered Edmund Ironside.30 In these cases, the geographical borders and distances ensured that the text’s audience knew less and that the writer was freer to embellish for literary effect, here turning eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon politics into the form of drama that one finds in thirteenth-century Icelandic family sagas. That said, this approach cannot be proved so valid that the above “rules” may be applied without significant caution and careful qualification. Early medieval Sweden has few notices in the contemporary or nearcontemporary English or German historical sources, nor is it comprehensively served by the late Scandinavian narrative sources, which give but little coverage. The one exception is the Battle of Helgeå, in which Cnut appears to have defeated a number of his most powerful Scandinavian enemies, cementing his supremacy in the region. Most probably the site of the battle was in Skåne, now the southernmost part of modern Sweden, then a region in medieval Denmark. In the twentieth century, debates about this battle were few and far between and driven by the research of a single Swedish scholar, Ove Moberg, from 1941 until 2008, when Bo Gräslund wrote a single article in response to research that Moberg had carried out a generation earlier in 1986.31 Moberg, while partly studying under Lauritz Weibull himself, received guidance in his later studies from a skaldic scholar, E. A. Kock, as well as from the literary scholars Eilert Ekwall and Jón Helgason. This literary aspect of Moberg’s training most probably lies behind his unconventional historical approach.32 English-language scholarship on Cnut in this period has been in much the same boat as the Danish studies, for it can afford to set the late Scandinavian narratives aside. Where these do have a part to play is in surveys of Cnut’s whole life or dominions, and here some interesting solutions emerge. One need look no further than Sir Frank M. Stenton’s seminal Anglo-Saxon England, which

30 Edited in Encomium, ed. Campbell, 92–93. 31 Moberg, Olav Haraldsson, Knut den Store och Sverige (Olaf Haraldsson, Cnut the Great and Sweden), 148–78 (chap. 4); see also Campbell’s critical assessment of Moberg’s work as a postscript to his Encomium Emmae. Moberg returned to this subject in “Knut den stores motståndare i slaget vid Helgeå” (Cnut the Great’s Opponents in the Battle of Helgeå), and again in “Slaget vid Helgeå och dess följder” (The Battle of Helgeå and its consequences). He then reargued it in English in his “The Battle of Helgeå.” Bo Gräslund’s response to Moberg appeared in 1986 as “Knut den store och sveariket. Slaget vid Helgeå i ny belysing” (Cnut the Great and Sweden: the Battle of Helgeå in a new light). 32 For these relationships, see the introduction to his Olav Haraldsson.

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was published in 1943 with a second edition in 1947 and a third in 1971. When Stenton had to comment on Cnut’s activities in Scandinavia, he cited the AngloSaxon Chronicle’s report that Cnut went to Norway and seized control there in 1028, otherwise merely noting that “[l]ater Old Norse authorities amplify this outline.”33 Further comment on these “authorities” is given in his sources section and restricted to their “bearing on English history.”34 He notes their literary merit and the role they play in bringing out the importance of certain Scandinavians. However, he also says that they are hampered by “their innumerable mistakes on points of fact [that] show the weakness of a tradition which is uncontrolled by written record.” Nonetheless, he goes on to follow (or perhaps reinvent) the Norwegian approach, deploying the same sources over two densely packed, eventfilled paragraphs in a representation denuded of any potentially worrying detail. The late Peter Sawyer follows suit, offering the most recent English-language survey of the field in his “Cnut’s Scandinavian Empire,” published in The Reign of Cnut volume in 1994. His is a thorough survey, but what he does not cite in evidence is revealing. In his discussion of northern Scandinavia, Sawyer notes skaldic verse often, as well as the late-twelfth-century Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum, but not the later sources.35 While there is no explicit comment in this essay, other publications by Sawyer make clear his acceptance of the problems of using later Scandinavian sources for the study of the eleventh century.36 However, when his narrative in “Cnut’s Scandinavian Empire” must enter territory for which there is no source other than late sagas, this is done without comment on the nature of these sources and the citations in the footnotes are to Sveaas Andersen’s survey (which, as noted above, is largely based on the sagas and bereft of footnotes of its own).37 Sawyer’s choice of source here was doubtless informed by his years teaching and living in Norway. I do not include these examples to point fingers at individual historians, but instead to show the inherently problematic nature of the current way in which such late Scandinavian sources are handled. That is, the source-critical approaches of the early twentieth century dictate that such texts must be set aside as untrustworthy, but then if one is to say anything about northern Scandinavia in the period, one is forced to use these same sources in some fashion, often in a convoluted or less-than-fullyacknowledged form.

33 34 35 36 37

Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 404–5. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 700–701. Sawyer, “Cnut’s Scandinavian Empire,” 20–22. See Sawyer and Sawyer, “Adam and Eve of Scandinavian History.” See Sawyer and Sawyer, “Adam and Eve of Scandinavian History,” 21–22.

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An alternative approach in English-language scholarship is to be found in the appendices attached to Alistair Campbell’s edition of the Encomium Emmae Reginae in 1949. Here, however, we have what appears to be a mixed approach, perhaps even a confused approach, one suggesting that Campbell was torn between literary and historical camps. These disciplines had over the previous four decades drifted far apart from each other on the subject of these late Scandinavian narratives. Campbell came from a literary and linguistic background and was well versed in Scandinavian languages. He was clearly aware of the saga material and the criticisms directed at it. However, despite a lengthy discussion of this material in his edition of the Encomium, he offers the reader no open statement of his position on such sources.38 We might discern some hints that he does not intend to cast out all such material, in his introductory address to “those who wish to use Scandinavian sources for the history of the eleventh century,” and in his direction of these users to “Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson’s excellent work Om de norske kongers sagaer [“On the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings”] (Oslo, 1937) and to the enduring value of Sigurður Nordal’s Om Olaf den helliges saga [“On the Saga of Saint Óláfr”] (Copenhagen, 1914).” Another hint may be taken from from Campbell’s later rehearsal of Nordal’s views on the interrelation and relative antiquity of the various saga materials.39 At first sight, the reader might even be forgiven for thinking that Campbell is in support of the cautious use of such materials. The thought appears to be confirmed when we turn to the lengthy biographies of Cnut’s Scandinavian followers in Campbell’s Appendix III, which weigh up the various sources for them one against each other, resting in some substantial part on saga material.40 Nonetheless, despite rehearsing such material and assessing it at length, Campbell goes on to state, in a few throwaway but fundamentally important lines, that Heimskringla and Fagrskinna are “[h]istorically worthless,” while he observes that the so-called “Supplement” to Jómsvíkinga saga, which he includes in the biography of Thorkell the Tall and edits in full in his monograph, is of historical value only

38 Indeed, he fails to note or include in his bibliography the work of either the Weibulls or Koht. I assume his direction to that of Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson (see below) is meant to implicitly contain this recommendation. 39 Encomium, ed. Campbell, v and 80–81. 40 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 66–91. Much of what he discusses there had already been discussed in a more naive fashion by A. S. Napier and W. H. Stevenson in their The Crawford Collection of Early Charters and Documents, 139–49. Campbell must owe some debt to this earlier publication; he did know of it, for he cites it at 82 and 86–87 of his Appendix III.

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where its facts are confirmed by other earlier sources.41 The reader could be forgiven for being confused, or at least could be left questioning why nearly thirty pages of a forty-four-page appendix have been given over to a thorough rehearsal of material that is then announced to add nothing other than late confirmation to our other more reliable sources.42 Recently another English version of the robustly source-critical approach has appeared in a 2016 article by Ann Williams on Thorkell the Tall, who, as we have seen in earlier chapters in this volume, was a powerful associate and sometime enemy of Cnut.43 The main thrust of Williams’s paper makes the quite reasonable assertion to “pay more attention to contemporary sources and to mistrust anything which cannot be corroborated,” but she goes on to question the connection between the Thorkell who is described in our contemporary and near-contemporary English sources (augmented by a brief appearance in the skaldic poem Liðsmannaflokkr) with the figure by this name in the late Scandinavian narrative sources. These late Scandinavian narratives identify him as a member of a dynasty which ruled over Skåne at the southern end of what is now Sweden. Urging caution, she notes the lack of prominence of Thorkell in the narratives of the earliest saga sources, in which he is only ever a supporting actor in the drama there, using this to suggest that, in Scandinavia, “while Thorkell’s name survived, little was known of his actual deeds”; and that, “[a]s Thorkell’s historical career faded into the mists of time, his legendary life began to develop,” by which she means that subsequent Scandinavian writers merely invented these details in their accounts.44 She continues in this vein, and turns her attention to the appearance of potential family members with similar groups of names in both sets of sources, as first noted by Freeman in 1877 and since supported by Campbell and then tentatively by Simon Keynes, among others.45 These similarities, however, she sweeps aside with the line: “[i]t is on

41 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 81, 90–91; with edition in Appendix IV, 92–93. 42 Campbell appears to have taken a similar line with what to do with skaldic verse. His paper, Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History (1970) is full of suggestions of material to use, but then undermines the potential use of these. See his section on the verse composed for Cnut (13–15), where he takes the differences of detail between such witnesses and the traditional English historical record to indicate that the poets were ill-informed and vague. Compare to this the conclusions reached in Poole, “Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History,” Bolton, Cnut the Great, and the account of such verse set out in Townend, “Contextualising the Knútsdrápur.” 43 Williams, “Thorkell the Tall.” 44 Williams, “Thorkell the Tall,” 151–52. 45 See Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, I, 655–56; Encomium, ed. Campbell, 84–85, where he concludes “[i]t would be a remarkable coincidence” if these names did not correctly

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coincidences like these that historians pounce like leopards, lifting juicy titbits out of their contexts and stringing them together into a plausible story – what does not fit . . . is ignored or explained away as the inevitable confusion of oral tradition.” A further late Scandinavian source, the so-called “Supplement” to Jómsvíkinga saga edited by Campbell, is written off by Williams with a flourish: “the less said the better.”46 It is a difficult source, but as Campbell noted, it contains a surprising amount of accurate material which we must account for in some way.47 A view entirely focused on primary sources is an excellent thing, but, as noted above, unachievable for the scholar who wishes to look at much of Cnut’s activities in Scandinavia as well as those in England. As Cnut had an equal presence in both of those regions during his lifetime, I believe we have a responsibility to take in as many sources as possible and to see what can be done with them. To ignore our Scandinavian sources risks confining our attention to only the English part of his realms and weighting our view of him in that direction. A crucial part of Williams’s argument rests on the assumption that medieval Scandinavian authors invented details of the life of Thorkell the Tall to fill a void created by an absence of sources between the contemporary skaldic verse and the subsequent thirteenth-century sagas. To borrow a term from modern forensic science, this would be a “break in the chain of evidence.” When seen in the light of a century of literary studies of the texts involved,48 this assumption does not bear much scrutiny. The more closely we look at this perceived void, the more it shrinks. The complex meter and linguistic intricacy of skaldic verse, which are features ensuring that it has been, in the most part, transmitted without substantial tampering, are well known and I will not rehearse them here.49 Equally well

identify this kin relationship, concluding that this was “reasonably certain”; and Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 62, n. 97, and 66. 46 Williams, “Thorkell the Tall,” 151–52. 47 Campbell, Encomium, 89. See also Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 211–12, esp. n. 28. 48 The most important of these studies are listed above in n. 24. 49 For comment on this and a discussion of the various editions of such material see Bolton, Cnut the Great, 18–21. Ghosh, in King’s Sagas and Norwegian History, has recently raised some doubt about the use of skaldic poems as historical sources. He questions the oft-noted stability of this kind of verse by pointing towards certain conclusions concerning a number of literary and textual studies of various skaldic verses. These studies show verses with variants which were most probably inserted by later poets repeating the material, and perhaps also by scribes copying parts of the works into the extant saga material (see 46–48 and the references therein). The conclusion of Ghosh is that if we can observe changes occurring in such verses, then all skaldic verses must be suspect. Although this subject deserves fuller attention elsewhere, it is enough now not only to agree with Ghosh that there are problems, but also to wish

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discussed by others are the forms of introduction used by later saga-authors, which signal the difference between, on the one hand, the more reliable verses, which are being quoted from poems that were already in existence and often named and ascribed to known poets, and on the other, the lausavísur (looseverses), which come without such indications that they existed before the sagawriter put pen to parchment.50 As has long been noted, much of the narrative of late Scandinavian sources is directly based on such verse.51 This is true of the sagas produced in Norway and Iceland in the heyday of such writing, the thirteenth century, as well as of the so-called synoptic histories composed in Norway in the second half of the twelfth. Two of these synoptic histories are of interest here: one is Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium, which is a Latin account of the history of Norway from the mid-ninth century until 1130, written by “Theodoricus Monachus”;52 the other is a closely related sister text, the vernacular Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum. The Ágrip, though fragmentary at its beginning and end, covers the period from the late ninth to the early twelfth century.53 The monk Theodoricus’s opening address to Eysteinn, archbishop of Nidaros

that his study had discussed them in more detail. He does not note Russell Poole’s use of just such variants to deduce probable English loan words behind some of the poems for Cnut, loanwords which argue powerfully for authenticity; see Poole’s “Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History,” 284–86, and also in this volume, pp. 260–69. Moreover, all the studies cited by Ghosh as underpinning the existence of such variants concern the textual traditions of extremely early verses from the ninth century or from more literary skald’s sagas. Since his foundations thus lie outside the main corpus of material usually employed for historical purposes, we might wish that he had repeated such studies for eleventh-century “historical” verses. Indeed, one of the authors cited by Ghosh (Poole, in “Variants and Variability in Egill’s Hǫfuðlausn,” 101) notes that there is greater and lesser flexibility in different verses, fixed in part by the fact that the flexible poem “tells no real story.” Certainly, we must accept Ghosh’s criticisms and be mindful of them when using such verse as historical evidence in the future. Also note, however, that changes to individual words and in some cases entire lines do not in themselves necessarily give reason to reject this source. Narrative rather than expression is harder to shift in the complex meanings of such verses, and it is narrative that has been principally of interest to the majority of historians. In addition, where such expressions of power, or echoes of such, have been employed by historians such as myself, this is usually within the context of other examples from multiple poems which are evidently unconnected; that argues for, rather than against, veracity. 50 Note, however, that Williams’s endorsement of such verse, in her “Thorkell the Tall,” 144, is lukewarm and rests on Eric Christiansen’s general survey volume, The Norsemen in the Viking Age, rather than on the numerous detailed studies available. 51 See Ghosh, King’s Sagas and Norwegian History, 70–94, and references there. 52 Text edited by Storm, Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, 1–68. 53 Text edited most recently by Driscoll, Ágrip, 2–80.

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(Trondheim), fixes his work within Norwegian writing of the period between his consecration in 1161 and death in 1188.54 He knew of events of September 1176, while the lack of any definitive statement about Eysteinn being away from his see suggests a date for this work in 1177–1178.55 Theodoricus makes frequent mention of Icelanders as separate from him and his audience, refers to Óláfr Tryggvason as “our king,” and shows a knowledge of Nidaros and its immediate region, all of which strongly indicates that he was Norwegian and lived in that urban site.56 Consensus places Ágrip after Theodoricus’s work, as one that was composed in ca. 1190 and most probably before Oddr Snorrason began work on his Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar in ca. 1200, with which it appears to share similar passages.57 Again, the author reveals himself to be Norwegian, but this time through morphological “Norwegianisms,” through nicknames not otherwise found in Icelandic writing, and through the fact that the action and local knowledge is firmly based in Nidaros (often referred to as kaupangr, “the town,” implying familiarity).58 Both of these short synoptic histories were clearly produced by a historical school there. Theodoricus’s Historia makes its debt to skaldic verse explicit in its prologue, stating that it sets down these few details concerning the ancient history of the Norwegian kings, “et prout sagaciter perquirere potuimus ab eis, penes quos horum memoria praecipue vigere creditor, quos nos Islendinga vocamus, qui haec in suis antiquis carminibus percelebrata recolunt” (as I have been able to learn by assiduous inquiry from the people among whom in particular the remembrance of these matters is believed to thrive – Icelanders, who preserve them as much celebrated themes in their ancient poems).59 Ágrip acts out this statement, enclosing seven complete stanzas and two half-stanzas within the body of its narrative, as well as including references to the late-tenth-century poet Eyvindr skáldaspillir and his poem Háleygjatal.60 Nor do these authors’ internal references to their sources stop there. Theodoricus’s prologue, when listing its sources, goes on to state that “[v]eritatis vero sinceritas in hac nostra narratione ad illos omnimodo referenda est, quorum relatione haec annotavimus, quia nos non visa sed audita conscripsimus”

54 Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall, xi–xiii. 55 Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall. 56 Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall, ix–xi. 57 Ágrip, ed. Driscoll, xii, and references there. 58 Ágrip, ed. Driscoll, x–xi, and references there. 59 Theodoricus’s Historia, ed. Storm, in Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, 3 (Prologue). Translation based on Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall, 1. 60 Ágrip, ed. Driscoll, 12 (chap. 6) and 26 (chap. 15). The latter of these refers the reader to the poem, naming both it and its poet, as support for the details in the narrative.

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(the degree of pure truth in my narrative must be placed entirely at the door of those by whose report I have written these things down, because I have recorded things not seen but heard).61 The interpretation of this phrase “audita non visa” (here “not seen but heard”) has caused its share of trouble. A superficial interpretation might take these things to be the spoken accounts of eyewitnesses, rather than written sources. Jens Hanssen, however, pointed out as long ago as 1945 that this common Latin phrase does not preclude the use of written sources, and that it should be read as an opposition between chronicling the events of one’s own time against those of the past compiled from other sources, either written or oral; David and Ian McDougall returned to this argument in 1998.62 The McDougalls observe that this interpretation was in keeping with the author’s citation of at least one now-lost written text of great relevance for our purpose here: a catalogus of Norwegian kings, cited in reference to Cnut the Great and to those who ruled Norway in his stead.63 It is also of relevance that Theodoricus declines to describe the accounts of the miracles of St. Óláfr and Bishop Grímkell’s exhumation of his body, with the words “quia haec omnia a nonnullis memoriae tradita sunt, nos notis immorari superfluum duximus” (because all these things have been recorded by several, I regard it as unnecessary to dwell on matters which are already known).64 The McDougalls note that the Latin idiom chosen by Theodoricus, a variant of memoriae tradere, normally means “to record in writing.”65 Thus it seems clear that the writers of the last decades of the twelfth century did not work exclusively from skaldic verse and oral accounts, but also had access to some written material. I have suggested before that at least the material relating to the details of St. Óláfr’s martyrdom and beatification may have been hagiographic in content, but this is where we hit a wall, for the composition of the Passio Olavi in the mid-twelfth century appears to have swept away almost all earlier material.66 A few extant scraps suggest that such material did exist then, and perhaps was of some age already in the mid-twelfth century. A single leaf from an

61 Theodoricus’s Historia, ed., Storm, in Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, 4 (Prologue). Translation based on Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall, 2. 62 Hanssen, “Observations on Theodoricus,” and Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall, xiv and 56–57, n. 11. 63 Theodoricus’s Historia, ed., Storm, in Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, 44 (chap. 20). See also Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall, xiv and 92–93, n. 214. 64 Theodoricus’s Historia, ed., Storm, in Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, 44 (chap. 20). Translation based on Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall, 33; see also xiv and 92, n. 213. 65 Theodoricus: Historia, ed. McDougall and McDougall, 92. 66 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 254–55.

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Old Norse hagiographical collection, one which dates to ca. 1155×1165 and includes material on St. Óláfr’s miracles, survives now in Copenhagen, A.M. MS. 325 v α 4to. Furthermore, knowledge of organized votive masses for St. Óláfr are witnessed in Exeter by the Leofric Collectar (British Library, Harley MS. 2961) in the 1050s, and in Sherborne by the Red Book of Darley (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 422) in or after the early 1060s, while John of Worcester knew of some form of hagiographic tradition surrounding him in the 1130s.67 These last three references to hagiographic materials for St. Óláfr predate the foundation of Norwegian monasteries, which are the most likely candidates for a storehouse of historical writing. In Norway the earliest monasteries were Lyse (1146), Hovedøya (1147), Munkeby (1150–1180), Halsnøy (1163), and Tønsberg in the second half of the twelfth century. It seems inconceivable that liturgical and hagiographic materials should be developed in England for a Norwegian saint such as Óláfr. The skaldic poem Glælognskviða, by Þórarinn Loftunga, makes it clear that some part of his worship was promulgated from within the Norwegian royal court,68 while such bishops as existed in Norway at that time were missionaries looking to the king as their immediate patron. In this context, we should probably locate the origin of these materials and their now-lost written records in this court. In this way, we can only perceive this potential “chain of evidence” imperfectly. On the other hand, it is clear that there was not a two-century-wide gap in the sources between the composition of terse skaldic verse in the eleventh century and the flowing prose of the fully-fledged Icelandic sagas in the thirteenth, which had to be filled by fertile imaginations. There are solid steppingstones in the middle to late twelfth century, and suggestions of other written sources even earlier. Even if we ignore the flimsier of these suggestions, we come to within decades of living memory of the events of the 1030s, and within the period in which someone who had met and discussed such events with an eyewitness might have lived. It remains true that a person aged twenty years in 1030, who might have lived to be eighty in 1090, could comfortably have met and discussed events of the past with someone still alive in 1150.

67 Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 510 (s.a. 1027) and 543 (s.a. 1046). 68 Townend, “Knútr and the Cult of St. Óláfr,” and Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 271–75.

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A Potential Alternative Approach to These Sources This shift of perception of the “chain of evidence” allows us not only to see our sources in a slightly different light, but also to entertain and test the notion that there may be some veracity in them that we might be able to detect. I shall now turn to describing how I have approached these late Scandinavian narratives, and how occasionally I have attempted to employ them in my own work. I don’t think I have ever advocated, nor do I here, treating such a shift in perceptions as the license to take any report in these sources at face value. When dealing with such material, I think we must presume all such sources guilty until proven to be reasonably innocent. My approach differs greatly from the modern Norwegian model, in that I would prefer to focus on hard-fought-for details, rather than make general thumbnail sketches in a longue durée tradition. The scholar who attempts to use these must strive to gather as many Scandinavian sources as can be found; I hope to show below how greatly sources such as lists of poets and their patrons and amendments to medieval law codes can add to our trust in parts of the late Scandinavian narratives. Just as importantly, the same scholar must try to understand such sources within their individual and generic contexts, in order to identify their potential weaknesses and strengths. The rewards may be numerically small, but each point in which it is reasonable to root the given details more plausibly in an eleventh-century reality than in some later literary invention, shines new light into a very dark period of history, and every secure foothold established there potentially changes our understanding of the entire period. Let me offer two short examples, which are already laid out in my 2009 and 2017 books on Cnut and will suffice to show how this methodology works, perhaps inspiring some confidence in its results. Firstly, since Ann Williams has called the links between Thorkell the Tall and the dynasty of the earls of Skåne into question in the paper discussed above, we might first turn our attention to these. The assertion of Williams that is relevant here is that the slightness of Thorkell’s part in the saga narratives gives such reason to doubt the historicity of his part there that we may sweep it away as potentially a later invention.69 One sizeable problem with Williams’s assessment lies in her choice of saga material to illustrate her arguments. This choice reveals either her lack of familiarity with these sources, or her debt to Campbell’s appendices – documents nearly seventy years old when she turned 69 I have discussed this briefly in my Cnut the Great, 23 and 59–62.

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to the subject. The main Scandinavian source that she names is the literary and late Jómsvíkinga saga. Indeed, while she does not directly charge any modern scholar with the errors she outlines, Williams’s choice of this saga suggests that she was thinking of Campbell (who is cited elsewhere) or perhaps of Keynes (who utilized much of the material in Campbell’s appendix for the Scandinavian figures in his essay on “Cnut’s Earls”) as she wrote.70 Williams is quite right to point out the problems of Jómsvíkinga saga that should eliminate it from use as a historical witness; I think that no one would now claim that this saga is free of erroneous accretions, and elsewhere I have set it aside. However, both she and Campbell miss a number of sources which identify Thorkell (or to play devil’s advocate, at least someone of his name who was understood by writers in the thirteenth century to be Thorkell the Tall) as a member of a dynasty who ruled Skåne in the late tenth and eleventh centuries. A list of these sources, even after noting their potential links to each other, argues against such a presumption of later invention. Both Williams and Campbell also acknowledge the so-called “Supplement” to Jómsvíkinga saga, albeit Williams does so very briefly. To this source we might add Heimskringla, which includes some brief comments on this ruling dynasty, including Thorkell’s part in it.71 It must be admitted, however, that Heimskringla might be taken to depend on the traditions set out in Jómsvíkinga saga and so cannot be held independent of that work. There again, we should also note that there is information in Heimskringla, not found in any other extant source, about the career of the skaldic poet Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld, which claims that Þórðr served the Skåne dynasty and Thorkell in particular.72 There Þórðr is

70 Indeed, one suspects that certain phrases in Campbell’s discussion of Thorkell and his son Haraldr might be the genesis of Williams’s thesis in her “Thorkell the Tall.” This is despite the fact that Campbell (Encomium Emmae, 84) supports the connection between the Thorkell in the English sources and his namesake in the late Scandinavian ones. Note Campbell’s accompanying assertion, with which he resolves which Scandinavian nobles fought at Helgeå and held jarldoms in Scandinavia: “Now in this Snorri is falling into a practice in which he is very apt to indulge. When he has to find a person for some purpose, he seizes upon one who had some reality, however shadowy, rather than invent one.” Campbell directs us to his war-time “The Opponents of Haraldr Hárfagri” for other examples of the same, but does not mention that these are all related to a single battle of the late ninth century, a period so early that it is more likely to contain inventions and legendary accretions than eleventh-century events. 71 Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 272–74 (chap. 34–35). Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 54 (chap. 43). 72 Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 54 (chap. 43). Williams appears not to know of this, given her statement that “no skald seems to have felt moved to compose eulogies for Thorkell,” in “Thorkell the Tall,” 149.

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identified as the permanent court-poet of Earl Sigvaldi, while it is stated that he was later in the train of Thorkell the Tall, Sigvaldi’s brother, and “eptir fall jarls þá var Þórðr kaupmaðr” (after the fall of the earl, Þórðr became a merchant).73 Þórðr was the father of perhaps the most celebrated and prolific skald of the whole period, Sigvatr Þórðarson, who served both St. Óláfr and Cnut. Consequently, he is an improbable (but not impossible) candidate to choose if one wished to fabricate parts of his life a century after his death. Finally, another often overlooked source, the Skáldatal, also indirectly links Thorkell to this dynasty.74 This list of Scandinavian rulers and the poets who served them was compiled in the early thirteenth century, most probably as part of the research materials which stood behind the composition of Heimskringla.75 The so-called Kringla manuscript (of ca. 1260), which included Skáldatal, was destroyed in the Copenhagen fire of 1728 (with the exception of a single leaf not relevant to our purposes here). However, early modern manuscript witnesses that descend from Kringla put a patron, Haraldr Þórkelsson, who is presumably the son of Thorkell the Tall, and his poet Þjóðólfr Arnórsson immediately after Sigvaldi at the end of the list of the earls of Skåne.76 Heimskringla claims that this Haraldr was the son of Thorkell, who was taken under Cnut’s wing, and that he was the earl named in the skaldic poem Glælognskiða as part of the Danish government sent by Cnut to Norway in the last years of the 1020s.77 This does not amount to an enormity of extra material, and its component parts are all loosely related to each other, but does it reduce the efficacy of Williams’s suggestion that a later writer invented Thorkell’s link to the Skåne dynasty. Crucially, the link between them is not founded simply on the note in Jómsvíkinga saga that Thorkell and Sigvaldi were brothers, on which Williams focuses as a potential later invention. That such an invention could have been made becomes increasingly far-fetched the more we

73 Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 54 (chap. 43). 74 The edition of Skáldatal by Finnur Jónsson, in his Snorra Edda (on which see 259, 268, and 284) is now superseded. A facsimile of the Uppsala manuscript (De la Gardie 11) has been published in Snorre Sturlassons Edda, ed. Grape, Kallstenius, and Thorell, and a modern edition and English translation may be found in Snorri Sturluson: The Uppsala Edda, ed. Heimir Pálsson and trans. Faulkes, 100–117, esp. 112, 114. 75 On this see Guðrún Nordal, “Skáldatal and its Manuscript Context” and Tools of Literacy. 76 The relevant parts of the manuscripts are Reykjavík, A.M. MS. 761a 4to, fols. 16v–17r (paper transcript of ca. 1700) and Uppsala, Universitetsbibliothek, MS. R. 685, fol. 25v (early eighteenth-century paper transcript of the Swedish antiquary Peter Salan); I have given their readings in Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 206–7. See Guðrún Nordal, “Skáldatal and its Manuscript Context,” for discussion of this source. On Haraldr Þórkelsson see Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 66. 77 Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 399 (chap. 239).

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fit each piece of evidence into the puzzle. If we play devil’s advocate and date the potential invention of the fraternal bond between Sigvaldi and Thorkell to the very late twelfth century, when Jómsvíkinga saga probably was composed, we must also presume that, by the time Snorri Sturluson began to research Heimskringla a few decades later, the forger(s) had gone to the trouble of creating a back story for Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld that linked him to Thorkell; as well as to the trouble of composing a poem on Thorkell’s son Haraldr that could be represented as a stillremembered legacy in the early thirteenth century. Forgers might invent direct individual links, but creating whole new chapters in the lives of the courtiers of those nobles they are concerned with, and making up formal laudatory poems for the nobles’ children, seems a step too far. Also worth noting, slight though it may seem, is the plausibility of the chronologies of the poets named for Thorkell and his son Haraldr, which further suggests that here we are not dealing with outright invention. The chronology of the poet Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, who is also recorded as composing for Magnús Óláfsson (king of Norway in ca. 1035–1047), suggests that his composition in this period for this dynasty is possible; just as Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld’s for Thorkell would be, if we give it credence.78 One potential solution, that would allow Williams’s arguments to stand, although she does not advance it, would be to suggest that there was another Thorkell in the dynasty of the Skåne earls who had a son named Haraldr, and that these two separate Thorkells were mistakenly conflated by later sagawriters. However, there are a few snippets of evidence which support the idea that the Haraldr concerned here had a career in England as well as in Scandinavia. Williams takes exception to the apparent link between two records: one is John of Worcester’s record of a noble lady Gunnhild, the sister of King Cnut, who married Earl Hákon and then Earl Haraldr and had children named Hemming and Thorkell; the other is the record in the late “Supplement” to Jómsvíkinga saga that these same names were employed by members of Thorkell the Tall’s proposed dynasty in Scandinavia.79 Yet as Keynes notes, an Earl Harold also appears in the English charter evidence in a spurious charter for Folkestone purportedly of Cnut’s reign, which has a witness list that does seem to have been composed from other contemporary documents.80 The same earl perhaps appears with the title minister immediately after the earls in another

78 Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 333 (chap. 183) and 399 (chap. 239). 79 Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 540 (s.a. 1044). For previous discussion of this, see Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, I, 655–56, and Encomium Emmae, ed. Campbell, 84, 89–90. 80 S. 981. See Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 66.

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charter of 1032, and certainly in a lease dated 1042, but then disappears from the English diplomatic material.81 These findings support an identification of him with the Haraldr who was identified by Adam of Bremen as a Danish prince murdered in Germany while on his way back to Denmark after a visit to Rome, in a series of events dateable to the period immediately after 1042.82 Adam notes that this murder was politically motivated and directed by King Magnús of Norway, for the victim Harald was “de regali stirpe Danorum genitus propior sceptro videbatur quam Magnus” (of the royal Danish stock . . . [and] appeared to stand nearer the scepter than did Magnus).83 John of Worcester’s note about the exile of Earl Haraldr’s wife and sons is dated to 1044, and implies that Haraldr was already dead. There is no definitive statement here that this Haraldr was a son of Thorkell the Tall. On the other hand, the surviving scraps of evidence hold together quite well, and they fit in

81 S. 1396. See Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 66. The charter of 1032 is S. 964; although Keynes notes a Harald in S. 968 and in the spurious S. 965, his lowlier position in these charters may indicate that this Harald is another figure. 82 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 75 (II. lxxix). Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 66. Two identifications of this assassinated Haraldr have been advanced by scholarship. Strangely, both can be traced to a single publication in 1834: Johann Lappenberg’s Geschichte von England, I, 451, 473, 498 and genealogical table ‘H’. On the first of these occasions Haraldr’s father is stated to have been one “Thurkill,” who is not identified further. However, Thorgils Sprakalegg, who was the father of Jarl Úlfr, does appear in the other references in the two forms of “Thorgils Sprakaleg” and “Thurchill Sprakalaeg,” despite the fact that the two first names are quite distinct from each other. These small errors come together in Lappenberg’s edition of Adam of Bremen’s text (printed in G. H. Pertz, MGH, Scriptores in Folio VII, in 1846), specifically where he states (333, n. 57), that the Haraldr assassinated in 1042 was the “filius Thurkilli Sprakaloeg.” These errors are repeated in Schmeidler’s edition of Adam’s text in 1917 (Gesta Hammburgensis, 137, n. 1), and enhanced when Schmeidler directs readers to the Encomium Emmae to read more on the exploits of this “Thorkell.” Although Thorgils Sprakalegg is not mentioned in the Encomium Emmae, Thorkell the Tall features heavily in that narrative, and it is apparent that they have been conflated here, creating dynastic confusion. This error reappears in Tschan’s translation of Adam’s Gesta, History of the Archbishops, 109, n. 274, and most recently in Williams, “Thorkell the Tall,” 157, n. 82: “this was Harold, son of King Cnut’s brother in law, Jarl Ulfr.” The first full discussion of the other identification is in Encomium, ed. Campbell, 85, with a later discussion in Stenton, Anglo Saxon England, 423–24 and Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 66: it has the support of the English charter evidence and the implication of John of Worcester’s note for the year 1044. Lasse C. A. Sonne, in his “Svend Estridsens politiske liv” [“Svend Estrithsson’s Political Life”], 20–21, takes a more cautious line and suggests that this Haraldr might be a child or a grandchild of Cnut’s elder brother, on the evidence of the similarity of their names. The present author and C. Sagemoen have a forthcoming article on these various identifications and the assassinated Haraldr. 83 Translation after Tschan, History of the Archbishops, 109.

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with what the saga material states of Haraldr’s career after the death of Thorkell. The scraps of evidence we have suggest that we are dealing with a single Haraldr (and thus also a single Thorkell). My second example involves the record of Cnut’s legal exactions from the Norwegian population, which are found variously in an episode in Ágrip, the Legendary Saga, and Heimskringla.84 Each of these sources sets out a series of exactions and royal rights, and details an agricultural tax that was to be systematically rendered from all households at Christmas.85 We might set these accounts aside, if it were not for some short legal amendments added to the earliest Norwegian regional law codes of the Gulathing region and the Frostathing region, with content and specific legal terminology that indicates that successive kings in Norway after Cnut repealed such exactions. The Gulathing amendments fall in the reign of Magnús Óláfsson, in 1034–1047, and in that of his kinsman Hákon, in 1093–1094; the Frostathing amendments, in the joint reign of Sigurðr Jórsalafari with his two brothers Eysteinn and Óláfr in 1125–1130.86 The oldest manuscript of either of these two regional codes dates to significantly later, to the last decade of the twelfth century, but there are grounds for identifying the late eleventh century or the opening years of the twelfth as the point in which these Gulathing and Frostathing laws were codified in writing. Most of the legal clauses in the law codes state that St. Óláfr began the formulation and codification of written law, presumably before his expulsion in 1028. However, this is most probably in error, and while they may have been codified in an oral form earlier, the most likely period for a written codification of these Norwegian law codes is the last few decades of the eleventh century. The presence of St. Hallvard at the head of the saints listed in the Christian section of the Gulathing law indicates a date after 1050, before which time he seems not to have held such prominence.87 In addition, details of ecclesiastical organization, such as the requirement of the bishop to have a fixed seat from which he dispensed justice, suggest that the earliest written form of the law predates the reorganization of the Norwegian church in 1111.88 84 See Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 275–87, and Cnut the Great, 187–88. 85 Ágrip, ed. Driscoll, 40–42 (chap. 29); Legendary Saga of St. Óláfr, ed. Heinrichs, Janshen, Radicke, and Röhn, 172–74 (chap. 71); and Óláfs saga helga, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 399–401 (chap. 239). 86 These amendments are edited separately from the main law codes in Norske middelalderdokumenter, ed. Bagge, Holstad Smedsdal, and Helle, 18–23; with modern Norwegian translation. Some brief scholarly comment can be found in Indrebø, “Aagrip,” 43–45. 87 Hertzberg, “Vore Ældste Lovtexters,” 112. 88 Hertzberg, “Vore Ældste Lovtexters,” 107–8; endorsed and discussed further in Den eldre Gulatingslova, ed. Eithun, Rindal, and Ulset, 10–12.

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Returning to the legal amendments fossilized within these law codes, we note that textual comparison of the clauses, in the narratives and in the legal amendments, reveals a markedly close relationship between them. Most importantly, such legal terminology as we find here is novel and found nowhere else in the conservative and highly repetitive corpus of Norwegian medieval law. The first statement of the Gulathing amendments, that the “Iola giaver” (Christmas tax) shall cease to be collected, gives a term reminiscent of Ágrip’s statement that Cnut’s tax should be collected “at Jólum” (at Christmas). These are the only occurrences of Christmas as a tax-collection point in extant Norwegian legal sources. The Frostathing amendments supply us with more details of this tax, again in legal terminology similar to that used by Ágrip. Where Ágrip specifies the payment of “vinar toddi” (translated as “a piece of the meadow”), we find in the amendment the repealing of the king’s demands for “viniar sponn” (meaning “a measure of the meadow”).89 Furthermore, a match for the term “rykkjarto” (translated as “a lady’s tow”) from Ágrip, may be found in the amendments to the Frostathing law as “rygiar tó.”90 Additionally, the term “spann smjörs” (a “measure of butter”) found in Ágrip, may lie behind an error in some manuscripts of the Frostathing law, where “viniar spönn” may represent both “viniar toddi” and “spann smjörs,” whereby the scribe has accidentally removed two words.91 As the Frostathing amendments fail to specify the specific weights and measures behind these terms, we are unable to know if the amounts specified in Ágrip are accurate renditions of “vinar toddi” or “rykkjarto,” but they do seem to bear witness to the existence of taxes with these names. Again, these terms appear nowhere else in Norwegian legal sources, and they appear in the narrative sources only in the context of Cnut’s legislation. The remaining clauses in this law code relate to royal rights, and again, they appear to be directly repealed by the legal amendments. The legal amendment detailing that a man in peacetime may travel where and when he wishes, may be a response to the ban we find in Ágrip’s statement that no one could leave the country without the king’s permission at risk of forfeiture of his estates.92 Ágrip details that the farmers were collectively responsible for the construction of royal buildings and work on royal estates, whereas an amendment in the Frostathing-law states emphatically that only the royal official (the “ármaðr”), and not the landowners, were obliged to erect buildings for the king. Finally, the clause in Ágrip which states that the land and chattels of outlaws

89 See Ágrip, ed. Driscoll, 99, n. 90, for translation. 90 See Ágrip, ed. Driscoll, 99, n. 91, for translation. 91 This is certainly the conclusion in Norges Gamle Love, ed. Keyser and Munch, I, 124 (Frostathing Law, 16:2). 92 Ágrip, ed. Driscoll, 40.

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were to pass to the king, and not to the heirs of an outlaw, is repealed in the amendments to both the Gulathing and Frostathing laws, stating in the latter that “scal hinn nánasti niðr sá er í erfðum er taldr taca arf þann. en eigi konungr” (the nearest relative in hereditary count from the outlaw shall take the inheritance, but not the king).93 In all, there is a plausibility to these clauses being the innovations of a foreign invader. In Norway in the early medieval period there was comparatively little royal power, and the laws there are more concerned with social regulation at the regional level. In essence, the Norwegian king endorsed and enforced the law, but he was not in a position to make many demands for payment through it, or to milk it for profits in same way that some of the rulers in more highly organized neighboring states could. Thus, royal demands such as those specified by Ágrip are virtually unprecedented in the extant Norwegian legal collections. It is extremely unlikely that these amendments in the law codes do not refer to the same exactions set out in the late narrative sources. However, whereas such sources are connected to Cnut’s reign in the narratives, the amendments are not connected to him in the law codes and are introduced as the repealing acts of Norwegian kings who followed him in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. For this reason, the two groups of sources most probably share a common ancestor without having a direct textual relationship. On this basis, it is reasonable to suppose that the story of these exactions by Cnut in the late narrative sources is more likely to have a basis in fact than to be an invention of one or more saga-authors.

Conclusions The source-critical approaches that attacked the use of these late narrative sources in the last decades of the nineteenth century and opening decades of the twentieth century were much needed and rightly swept away the naive scholarship that came before. However, this approach to the these sources has created a climate of fear around them which still to this day not only keeps scholars from looking at them, but also ensures that few with any historical background even know the rudiments of such texts and their nuances. Thus, the common options open to the modern historian when faced with having to use such material appear to have been: (1) avoidance, leaving such texts alone unless they receive confirmation from more reliable sources, and consigning

93 Norske middelalderdokumenter, ed. Bagge, Holstad Smedsdal, and Helle, 21.

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the period they purport to discuss to a historical vacuum; (2) using them in a reduced capacity, with as many potential later accretions as possible removed; or (3) a confused (and confusing) approach in which these sources are included and assessed, but without substantial attempts to discuss their potential veracity, consigning them to the status of, at best, suggestions. As a scholar with a literary as well as historical background (like Campbell and Moberg before me), I have tried to find another path through the problems here, and have focused on individual facets in the narratives where these can be shown to have a substantial probability of reflecting an eleventh-century reality. The light shone by such studies is a tightly focused beam in a sea of darkness. However, in such a void as we have for eleventh-century Scandinavia, any points in which we can place some trust add greatly to our knowledge and often completely change our understanding of the period. Such studies may come littered with the words “perhaps” and “probably,” but the benefits they promise will be significant. I remain convinced that Cnut the Great, spanning two distinct English and Scandinavian worlds, each with vastly different types of evidence in various states of survival to bear him witness, demands more of us than an approach that restricts itself to some disciplines or sources while shutting out others. Just as numismatics, archaeology, and skaldic literary studies now hold a firm place in the picture of the man we construct, careful and painstaking work will ensure that parts of the Scandinavian narrative sources may be added to this pantheon. These need to be carefully sifted and assessed to see what else remains to be discovered.

Notes on Contributors Timothy Bolton, Fellow of the University of Bristol, and Head of Western Manuscripts Department, Bloomsbury Auctions, London Julian M.C. Bowsher, Senior Archaeologist and Numismatist Emeritus, Museum of London Archaeology John Clark, Curator Emeritus, Museum of London, and Honorary Associate Professor, Institute of Archaeology, University College London Barbara E. Crawford, Honorary Reader in History, University of St Andrews, and Member of the Norwegian Academy Caitlin Ellis, O'Donovan Scholar, School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin Alison Finlay, Professor Emeritus, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, London Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli, Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Erin Goeres, Associate Professor of Old Norse Language and Literature, School of European Languages and Cultures, University College London Eldbjørg Haug, Professor Emeritus, Department of Archaeology, History, Culture and Religious Studies, University of Bergen Jesper Hjermind, Museum Inspector and Medieval Archaeologist, Viborg Museum, Viborg Simon D. Keynes, Elrington and Bosworth Professor Emeritus of Anglo-Saxon, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge Ryan Lavelle, Professor of Early Medieval History, University of Winchester David McDermott, Visiting Lecturer, Department of History, University of Winchester Zoya Metlitskaya, Associate Professor, Department of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow Jakub Morawiec, Professor of History, Institute of History, Centre for Nordic and Old English Studies, University of Silesia at Katowice Richard North, Professor of English, Department of English, University College London

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Eleanor Parker, Lecturer in Medieval English Literature, Brasenose College, Oxford Russell Poole, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, Department of English, The University of Western Ontario Andrew Reynolds, Professor of Medieval Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University College London Marie Bønløkke Spejlborg, First Conservator, Ryfylke Museum, Sand, Ryfylke Simon Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Old and Middle English, Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf Michael Treschow, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English and Cultural Studies, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Okanagan Campus Barbara Yorke, Professor Emeritus of Early Medieval History, University of Winchester and Honorary Professor, Institute of Archaeology, University College London

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Index Abbo of Fleury, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Adam of Bremen, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Ælfgifu of Northampton – wife to Cnut 2, 6–7, 171, 176, 341–42, 438, 444 Ælfheah (Elphege), St., Archbishop of Canterbury (1006–1012) 107, 124, 125, 127, 392 – martyred 3, 51, 107, 137, 142, 155 – interred in London 164–65 – cult 372 – translated to Canterbury 12, 13–17, 131, 164, 196n, 222, 372, 380, 426 Ælfthryth, Edgar’s queen (ca. 945–ca. 1000) 231 Ælnoth of Canterbury, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Ælfric, abbot of Eynsham (ca. 955–ca. 1010) 275 – his efforts against the Danes 136 – his influence on missionaries 276 – Catholic Homilies 278 – Colloquy 266 – Homily for the Feast of St. Clement 434 – Homily for Palm Sunday 269 – The Life of St. Edmund 297 – Memory of the Saints 266 – On the Beginning of Creation 270 – Saints’ Lives 266 – Sermon on the Prayer of Moses 135 – literary style reflected in Sigvatr Þórðarson 273 Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury (995–1005) 102, 124, 125 Ælfric, ealdorman of Hampshire (d. 1016) 123, 124, 125, 128, 220 Ælfric, erstwhile owner of the Manor of Goodbegot 228n Ælfweard, briefly king of Wessex (d. 924) 233 Ælfweard the Tall, monk of Canterbury (1023) 16

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513336-025

Ælfweard, king’s reeve (1011) 126 Ælle, king of Northumbria (862–867) 248–49 (Ella) 250, 289 (Ella) 296–97 (Ella) 299 Æthelbald, king of Wessex (855–860) 213 Æthelberht, king of Kent (d. 616) 29 Æthelberht, king of Wessex (860–865) 213 Æthelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury (1020–1038) 13–17, 222, 366–67, 395, 412n, 426 Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia (d. 911) 146 Æthelred II, king of England (978–1016) 8, 21, 200, 224, 225, 244, 255, 273, 276, 367 – genealogy 290, 291, 297 – coronation 134, 179, 180, 181, 188 – reign 113, 137, 138, 161, 169, 182, 185, 186n, 187, 259, 274–75, 278, 356, 368–69, 372, 373, 375, 376–77, 451, 452n – and St. Brice’s Day 2, 249 – in war against Thorkell and Sveinn 97–112, 115, 129, 139–40, 146, 286–87, 341, 396 – exile in Normandy 3, 149, 171, 176, 275, 287 – in war against Knútr (Cnut) 3–4, 8, 60, 97–112, 131–33, 135, 146, 248–49, 279, 296–97 – death and burial 4, 5, 9, 17, 129, 137, 141, 144, 146, 155, 164, 178, 179, 186–87, 220, 223 – queen Emma 149, 153–54, 156, 164, 194, 215, 227, 228, 229 – widow Emma marries Cnut 7, 9, 17, 153, 155, 179, 227, 290 – coins 8, 65–71, 73–74, 170, 176n, 323, 362 – law codes 57, 120, 218, 278, 280, 380 Æthelstan ætheling, Æthelred II’s eldest son (d. 1014) 107, 122, 149, 158 Æthelstan, first king of England ((924–)927–939) 147, 169, 175, 297, 377 Æthelstan, see Guthrum Æthelweard’s Chronicon, see Chronicles, annals, and histories

536

Index

Æthelwold, Alfred’s rebel nephew (d. 901) 223, 224 Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester (963–984) 215 – supporter of Queen Ælfthryth 231 – as reformer 215, 233, 382–83 – as renovator of Old and New Minsters 243 – death 97 – relics of 282 Æthelwulf, king of Wessex (839–858) 213 Ágrip af Nóregskonungasǫgum, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Alcuin of York (ca. 735–804) 271, 339 Aldermanbury (London) 28, 36–37, 50–51 Aldwych (London) 22, 29, 30, 54 Alfred the Great, king of Wessex (871–899) 21 – and London 38, 40–41, 47, 52, 61–62, 64, 73, 146 – and Winchester 213–14, 217, 223–24 – Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written in time 114–15 – Old English translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care (Rule) by, with or for 271 – Preface to the Old English translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care 135 – Asser’s Life of Alfred written for 281 – St. Augustine’s Soliloquies by, for or after 185 – will 183 – burial 213, 223–24 Alfred ætheling (ca. 1005–1036), Æthelred II’s son 188, 189, 297 Alney, see Olney Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 3, 8, 13, 31, 57, 97, 102, 107, 112, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156–57, 160–63, 169, 172, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 186, 187, 193–94, 196, 213n, 217, 224–25, 233, 290, 300, 344–45, 355, 375 – Discussions of text – 755 (A) 116 – 837 (A) 115 – 855 281, 291, 293–94 – 993–1016 (CDE) (“Æthelredian Fragment”) 8, 9, 113–28, 130–44 – 999 114–15

– 1003 (E) 271 – 1010 115 – 1014 (E) 116 – 1016 5, 95, 120, 129, 224 – 1017 (CD) 178, 186, 274 – 1018 (D) 343 – 1022 (CDE) 426–27 – 1023 (D) 13, 17n – 1028 (CDE) 468 – 1031 (D) 218–19 – 1043 (D) 229–30 Annales Ryenses, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Árni Magnússon, antiquarian (1663–1730) 384 Arnórr jarlaskáld, see Skalds Ashdon (Essex), see Assandun Ashingdon (Essex), see Assandun Assandun, battle of (1016) 5, 71, 145n, 162, 196, 199, 201, 220, 289, 372 Asser, bishop, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Áslaug Sigurðardóttir Fáfnisbana 247, 249–51 Ástríðr (Estrith) Sveinsdóttir, sister to Cnut (d. 1057x1073) 7, 227, 232, 288, 349, 421, 422n Ástríðr Óláfsdóttir, queen to St. Óláfr Haraldsson 256 Axe-head A23346 (London) 90 Bede, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Beowulf, Old English heroic poem 10, 173, 225, 246, 252, 253, 265, 267, 271 – hero 235, 241, 246, 251 – manuscript 173n, 246–47, 271, 277–79, 282, 283n – importance in Cnut’s reign 279–84, 293–300 Bernhard, English-trained bishop in Skåne 242, 346–47, 394 Birger Magnusson, Swedish earl (ca. 1210–1266) 383 BL, MS. Stowe 944, see Manuscripts Bołeslaw I the Brave, duke (992–1025) and king (1025) of Poland 403, 411, 414

Index

Brentford 81, 82, 83, 84, battle (1016) 5, 120, 145n, 153, 161–62, 164 Brut (Anglo-Norman Prose), see Chronicles, annals, and histories Brynhildr, heroine 240, 241, 245, 247, 250, 284 Bull Wharf (London) 45, 46, 52, 66–67, 70, 72, 74 Burgred, king of Mercia (852–874) 35 Canterbury, archdiocese of southern England 2 – archbishops 3, 12–17, 29, 32, 87, 102, 107, 124, 125, 126, 178, 179n, 357, 392 – axis with York 11 – acquisition of St. Mildred’s relics from Thanet 380–81 – as home of “Æthelredian Fragment” 113 – home of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (F) 194 – home of manuscripts by Eadui Basan 221 – Ælfheah brings St. Swithun’s skull with him to 392, 393 – siege of (1011) 2, 193 – loss of Archbishop Ælfheah (1012) 3, 372 – endowed with reliquary by Cnut 173n – Cnut’s patronage of 219n, 222 – recovery of Archbishop Ælfheah (1023) 12–17, 131, 164, 196n, 380, 426 – bishops for Scandinavia consecrated at 366, 371, 395 – Sigvatr and other skalds possibly at 257, 273 – gossip about Emma at 231 – Edward the Confessor said to be crowned at 179 Cenwulf, king of Mercia (796–821) 32 Ceolnoth, archbishop of Canterbury (ca. 833–870) 32 Charlemagne, emperor (768–814) 256, 360, 377, 399, 460n Charters 10, 29, 34, 60, 66, 97, 175, 178, 180 (Frankish), 188 (1016, of Ghent), 201, 212–13 (of Old Minster), 222, 224, 225 (Glastonbury), 279, 298 (of St Cuthbert’s), 300, 356 (New Minster Figure 10.2), 376, 384n, 413 – By Sawyer no.

537

– S 168 32 – S 346 35, 52 – S 670 30 – S 836 243n – S 880 368n – S 889 243n – S 909 187, 188n – S 918 117 – S 934 117 – S 937 117, 185 – S 949 182n – S 956 (Drayton) 181–88, 220, 376 – S 958 366–67 – S 959 1n, 222 – S 960 182n – S 962 185, 413, 415n, 429 – S 963 1n, 279 – S 964 480n – S 970 243n – S 971 279 – S 972 220, 243n – S 976 220, 243n – S 980 349n – S 981 479–80 – S 984 349n – S 985 222 – S 1384 180 – S 1396 480 – S 1448 118 – S 1465 51 – S 1507 183 – S 1628 35, 52 Cheapside hoard (London) 60–61, 68, 86 Chronicles, annals, and histories – Abbo of Fleury’s Passio beati Eadmundi 297 – Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum 298, 299, 341, 346–47, 349, 360, 361, 362, 363, 365, 366, 367, 369–70, 373, 400, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409–10, 413n, 415, 416, 419–20, 422, 423, 424, 445, 480n – Ælnoth’s Vita s. Canuti 327–28 – Æthelweard’s Chronicon 281, 293–94 – Ágrip af Nóregskonungasǫgum 459, 472, 481, 482, 483 – Annales Ryenses 171, 385

538

Index

– Asser’s Vita Alfredi 281 – Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 29, 32, 34 – Bede’s Martyrologium 448 – Brut (Anglo-Norman Prose) 205 – Chronicon Ramseiense 350 – Chronicon Roskildense 300, 342, 349, 351, 383n – De obsessione Dunelmi 177 – Encomium Emmae reginae 4n, 5, 150n, 151n, 154, 155–56, 160, 192, 194–99, 201–05, 217, 231n, 287n, 298n, 300n, 341–42, 355, 360, 362, 364, 377, 408, 411–12, 420, 423, 467n, 469, 470n, 471n, 477n, 479n, 480n – Fagrskinna 249, 294n, 305n, 424n, 459, 463, 469 – Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis 204–05 – Goscelin of Canterbury’s Account of St Mildrith 218–19, 222, 226, 231 – Goscelin of Canterbury’s De miraculis s. Eadmundi 200–03 – Hemming’s Chartularium 200 – Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum 159, 191, 202–03, 205, 207, 219, 243n, 412, 426–28 – Historia de sancto Cuthberto 174, 298–99 – John of Worcester’s Chronicon 2n, 14, 51–52, 117, 145n, 146–47, 148–49, 150, 156–58, 163, 178, 181n, 191, 200, 202, 203, 220, 349n, 413–14, 429, 450, 475, 479, 480 – Jómsvíkinga saga 462, 466, 477, 479 – Jómsvíkinga saga (Appendix) 4, 155, 349, 467, 469, 471, 477, 479 – Jordanes’s De origine actibusque Getarum 385 – *Knúts saga 206 – Knýtlinga saga 155, 205–06, 289, 459, 461–62 – Lantfred’s Translatio et miracula s. Swithuni 216 – Morkinskinna 389, 459 – Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History 226n, 388 – Orosius’s Historia adversus paganos 385 – Osbern of Canterbury’s Passio s. Ælfegi 13

– Osbern of Canterbury’s Translatio s. Ælfegi 12–17 – Rimbert’s Vita Anskarii 363n, 364n – Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle 205 – Roger of Wendover’s Chronica 181 – Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum 249–50, 361, 385, 413n – Skjǫldunga saga 247n, 250, 285 – Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla 57–58, 92, 159, 205n, 257, 258, 259, 269, 287n, 374, 388, 389, 424n, 436, 437, 438, 461, 462, 467, 469, 477–79, 481 – South English Legendary 206 – Sven Aggesen’s Brevis historia regum Dacie 361 – Theodericus Monachus’s Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium 459, 472–74 – Thietmar of Merseburg’s Chronicon 149, 154–55, 158–59, 360–61, 401, 406, 407, 409, 410–11, 412, 419–20, 421, 422, 424, 437, 438 – Vita Ædwardi Regis 171n, 179, 345n – Vita s. Swithuni episcopi et confessoris 379, 381–82 – Walter Map’s De nugis curialium 205 – Widukind’s Res gestae Saxonicae 401, 402, 404, 405, 408 – William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum Ducum 155, 250, 259, 260 – William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum Anglorum 207, 382 – William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum 148, 150, 151, 158, 160, 161n, 187, 191, 204, 207, 221, 224, 225, 230, 244n, 296, 382 – William of Malmesbury’s Historia Novella 220–21 – Winchester Annals 217, 380 – Wipo’s Gesta Chuonradi II 414–15 – Wulfstan Cantor’s Vita s. Æthelwoldi 243, 382 – See also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Skalds, Wulfstan archbishop of York Clement, St. 433 – cult in Kyiv 433–38, 441, 449–50, 454, 457 – cult in London 6, 15, 24, 448

Index

– cult in Oslo 436–41 – cult in Oxford 452 – cult in Roskilde 350, 443–46, 453–55 – cult in Trondheim 436–41, 444, 446 – churches in England 450–52 Cnut the Great, king of England and Denmark (1016–1035) 46, 55, 60, 64, 66, 75, 92, 96, 113, 128, 132, 145 – mother 1, 399, 419–24, 425 – birth 1 – and his brother Haraldr 3, 7, 170–71, 414 – sisters 232, 413–14, 479 – forebears 247–51, 399 – children 8, 17, 438, 444, 450, 456 – wife Ælfgifu 2, 6–7, 171, 176, 341–42, 438, 444 – queen Emma 7, 17, 153–56 – first campaign in England 3, 56, 58–60 – sieges of London 147–53, 161–62 – conquest of England 4–6, 8, 110–12, 133, 136, 137, 143, 156–58, 162–65, 172–78, 337, 361 – coronation 178–80 – and law codes 10, 57, 481–83 – West Saxon government 8, 180–89, 227–33 – and Winchester 9–10, 209–12, 215–19, 277 – and his skalds 10, 17–18, 153, 251, 255, 257, 261, 263–66, 269–76, 280, 284, 285–93, 294–95, 296–98, 459 – his atrocities 3, 139, 176, 186 – execution of Uhtred 4, 128, 177, 193 – execution of Eadric Streona 9, 191–207 – execution of Úlfr 349, 460n, 463–64, 480n – Letter of 1020 300, 377 – Letter of 1027 377, 459 – translation of St Ælfheah 12–17 – crowning in Viborg 10–11, 305–06, 323, 331–33, 345 – Baltic campaign (1023–1024) 7, 345, 412, 426–28 – rebellion (1025–26) against 7, 345, 349, 467 – conquest of Norway (1028) 7, 345, 468 – ecclesiastical policy 11, 346–48, 355–59, 365–68, 377–78 – and saints 372–75, 379–86, 394–97, 431–33, 443–46, 451–54, 456

539

– and Emperor Conrad II 7, 414–15, 425 – and Poland 11, 411–14, 416–17, 424–30 – as benefactor 220–22, 235, 243–44, 357, 376 – as patron of manuscripts 355, 357 – imperial styles 1, 169 – death and burial 7, 223–27 – historiography 459–84 – See also Coins Coins 38n, 340, 347 – Edgar’s reform (973) 66, 74 – in 1945 Viborg 345 – Hoards 282–83, 340 – Cornhill (London) 67, 68 – Honey Lane Market (London) 67, 68 – Hornelunde (Denmark) 313 – Roskilde, St. Jørgensbjerg (Denmark) 348, 453 – St. Martin le Grand (London) 67, 68 – Walbrook (London) 67, 68, 74 – Kings – Alfred 73 – Æthelred II 8, 66, 68, 69, 74, 323 – Cnut 8, 56, 68, 71–74 – Cenwulf 32 – Edgar 56 – Edward the Confessor 68 – Haraldr Gormsson 360 – Harold Harefoot 71 – Sveinn Forkbeard 362 – Legends 340 – on Cenwulf’s 32 – on Sveinn Forkbeard’s 341, 362 – Moneyers – Aelfwi of Stamford 72 – Æthelwerd of London 70 – Alfwald of (?) Winchester 73 – Brihtlaf of London 69 – Byrhtlaf of London 73 – Eadmund of London 72 – Eadwold of London 69 – Edric of Chester 70 – Edwine of London 72, 73 – Englishman at Viborg 320–21 – Englishmen in Denmark 300, 340, 347, 348, 352, 362n – Godwine in Denmark 340, 341

540

Index

– Godwine of Warminster 70 – Leofmær of Hereford 70 – Leofwine in Lund 342n, 347 – Linfinc of Lincoln 72 – Lod of London 73 – Osgar of Bedford 70 – Wulfred of London 73 – Types – Agnus Dei 375 – Crux 69, 73, 362 – Danish 170 – Danish imitation of English 347 – Early Saxon 72 – English type in Denmark 320–22 – First Hand 73 – First Small Cross 73 – Helmet 69 – Last Small Cross 70 – Long Cross 68, 69 – Merovingian 72 – Northumbrian stycas 52 – Pointed Helmet 71, 72 – Quatrefoil 70, 72 – Sceattas 73 – Short Cross 72, 73 – Unidentified 73 Conrad II, emperor of Germany (1027–1039) 7, 414–15, 425 Cripplegate fort (London) 25–26, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 42, 51, 53, 56, 61, 150–51 Danegeld, see Geld Denmark 1–3, 4, 7, 12, 57, 145, 146, 244, 257 – extent 170n, 343, 385–86, 432 – iron-age weapon deposits in 77 – King Sveinn’s burial in 176 – Ælfgifu’s presence in 189n, 341–42 – Cnut’s coronation in 7, 10, 305, 333 – Cnut’s slow winning of 170, 171, 188, 197, 215, 278, 292–93, 300, 323, 345 – rebellion against Cnut in 288 – Harthacnut as king of 291–92, 298, 305n – early Christianity in 359–65 – ecclesiastical policy in 11, 348, 356, 365–68, 369–70, 377–78, 379, 395, 453–54 – cult of St. Swithun in 383–86, 394, 397

– cult of St. Clement in 431, 441–46, 448, 449–50, 455–57 – place of Skåne in 287, 294, 467 – overlordship of Norway 287 – links with Western Slavs 399, 402–08, 412, 414–15, 416–17, 425–29 – links with Poland 409–15, 419–25, 429–30 – Danish soldiers return to 6, 343–44 – Anglo-Danes return to 348–52 – English settlement in 300, 321–23, 338–39, 340, 343–46, 453 – growth of towns in 323–34, 347–51, 453 – foreign coins in 340 – mints of 323–24, 340–41, 348 – kings in Beowulf 10, 278, 281–84, 300 – Saxo Grammaticus in 249–50 – historiography 460–64, 476–81 – Kings. see Gorm the Old, Harald Bluetooth Gormsson, Sveinn Forkbeard Haraldsson, Haraldr Sveinsson, Cnut the Great, Harthacnut Cnutsson, Magnús the Good Óláfsson, Sveinn II Ástríðarson, Erik I Ejegod, Niels I Svendsen, Erik IV Plovpenning De obsessione Dunelmi, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Drayton Charter, see Charters Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury (959–988) 16 Eadric Streona, ealdorman of Mercia (1007–1017) 5, 123, 125, 126, 127, 164, 187 – meaning of byname 4 – raised to ealdorman 102, 169 – conflict with Edmund Ironside 122 – role in murders at Oxford 187, 188 – fighting for Edmund 162 – deserting Edmund 157, 162 – execution 9, 52, 163, 191–207, 357 – widow 349 – in Appendix to Jómsvíkinga saga 467 Eadwig, Æfic’s brother (d. 1010) 126 Eadwig ætheling, Æthelred II’s son (d. 1017) 274 Eadwig, king of England (946–957) 223 Edgar the Peaceable, king of England (957–975)

Index

– troubled accession to throne 377 – queen Ælfthryth 231 – attack on Thanet (969) 181–82 – grant of Hurstbourne lands to Abingdon (S 962) 185 – patron of monastic reform 356, 358–59 – coin reform (ca. 973) 66, 74 – laws cited in Oxford (1018) 178, 218 – cited by Óttarr svarti (Játgeirr) 290, 298 – death and burial place 134, 223 – anti-monastic reaction following his death 376 Edmund, St., king of East Anglia (d. 869) 174, 201–03, 222, 297, 373–73 Edmund I, king of England (939–946) 223 Edmund II Ironside, king of England (1016) 4, 17, 21, 107, 122, 223, 227, 467 – byname 250 – coronation 71, 120, 137 – rift with Æthelred II 4, 107, 112, 223 – supporters 8, 122, 194, 195, 205 – sons 188–89, 189n – relief of London 59, 121, 160–61, 165 – war with Cnut 4–5, 9, 112, 118n, 145–62, 164, 176, 220, 372 – treaty with Cnut 95, 137, 162–63, 177, 186, 224–25, 233, 244n, 287, 288, 380 – death and burial 5, 9, 71, 122, 133, 163, 172, 177, 180, 189, 193, 194, 196–97, 200–01, 204–05, 206, 297, 380 – reburial in Winchester 224 Edward the Elder, king of Wessex (899–924) 213–15 – family 290 – and Winchester 213, 216, 223, 233 – burial 224 Edward the Martyr, St. (975–978) 134, 180, 231, 372, 375, 378 – relics 380 Edward the Confessor, king of England (1042–1066) 68, 156, 227, 231 – exile (1016) 188, 189 – return from exile 194–95, 197, 297 – coronation 179, 233 – mass in St. Clement’s 452 – disbanding of navy 451

541

– despoliation of Emma 229–30 – and London 35, 51 – and Winchester 216 – writ 228, 232 – Lives 206, 428 Egill Skallagrímsson, see Skalds Eilífr Goðrúnarson, see Skalds Einarr skálaglamm Helgason, see Skalds Einarr Skúlason, see Skalds Eiríkr Bloodaxe Haraldsson, king of Norway (ca. 933–ca.945) and York (948–49, 952–54) 174, 245–46 Eiríkr Hákonarson, earl of Norway and Northumbria (d. 1023) 4 – campaign in England 153, 285–86, 462 – Northumbrian earldom 169 – as patron of Þórðr Kolbeinsson 152–53 – as executioner of Eadric Streona 195–99, 204 Eiríkr the Victorious, king of Sweden (d. 995) 410–11, 419–22, 424 Eiríksmál, Old Norse poem 245–46 Elphege, St., see Ælfheah Emma of Normandy (ca. 984–1052), queen of England 125, 227 – Norman family 153, 155, 260, 357 – as spectator in Liðsmannaflokkr 154, 156 – as addressee of Liðsmannaflokkr 421n – as Æthelred’s widow 7, 153, 164, 179 (called Ælfgifu), 215, 223 – as mother of Edward 194 – as wicked stepmother 149 – whereabouts (1013–1017) 153–56, 164 – marriage with Cnut 7, 17, 154, 194, 196, 244n, 290 – as mother of Harthacnut 189, 196n, 222, 231, 291, 298 – Scandinavian retinue 244 – links with Winchester 209, 210–12, 215, 219, 221, 227–34 – as benefactor 219, 221–22, 230, 233, 243, 357 – gossip about 231, 467 – as power behind Encomium Emmae 192, 194 – burial 224, 231 – See also Encomium Emmae reginae

542

Index

Encomium Emmae reginae, see Chronicles, annals, and histories England 169–70 – East Anglia in 2, 117–18, 122, 124, 125, 151–53, 164, 169, 174, 349, 350, 452 – Essex in 5, 124, 125, 136, 162, 289 – Mercia (midlands) in 5, 32, 35, 36, 38, 102, 117–18, 124, 125, 126, 127, 137, 139, 145–46, 148, 157, 162, 169, 172, 175–76, 187, 193, 278, 279 – Northumbria (north) in 5, 52, 117–18, 122, 124, 125, 127, 145, 169, 174n, 175, 177, 193, 242, 248, 297–98, 375 – Wessex in 62, 137, 139, 146, 147–49, 156–59, 161, 163–65, 169, 175–77, 181–87, 188, 212, 220, 222, 223, 232, 278, 287, 289, 380, 394 – the Church in 11, 53–55, 97, 135, 170, 199–200, 222, 231, 242, 276, 346, 355, 358–60, 365, 368, 369, 377–78, 380–83, 446 – First Viking Age in 38–41, 61, 66, 78, 79–80, 114, 146, 297–99 – Second Viking Age in 2–7, 56–63, 82–85, 89–95, 97–112, 113, 115–22, 129–43, 145–64, 241–42, 247, 253, 257–60, 278–79, 286–88, 296–97, 362, 380 – Danelaw 2, 176, 187, 250, 448, 449 – Cnut’s earldoms in 169, 285 – links with Denmark 338–52 – links with Normandy 1, 3, 7, 65, 107, 116, 127, 149, 153–57, 171, 176, 179n, 189, 194, 226, 227, 233, 236, 257, 259, 287, 297, 357, 361, 427, 437, 450 – links with Norway 1, 4, 10, 11–12, 261–62, 274, 275–76, 285–86, 288, 337, 343, 345, 368, 373, 378, 383–97, 443, 446–50, 455, 456 – links with Poland 413–16, 425–26, 428–29 – links with Ukraine 10, 436, 438 – historiography 194–206 – Kings see Offa, Cenwulf, Ælle of Northumbria, Edmund (St.) of East Anglia, Æthelwulf, Burgred, Æthelbald, Æthelberht, Alfred the Great, Edward

the Elder, Ælfweard, Æthelstan, Edmund I, Eadwig, Edgar the Peaceable, Edward the Martyr, Æthelred II, Edmund II Ironside, Cnut, Harold I Harefoot, Harthacnut, Edward the Confessor, Harold II, William I, William II Rufus, Henry I, Stephen of Blois – See also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and Chronicles, annals, and histories Eorconwald, bishop of London (675–693) 29 Epigraphy; see also Coins – Inscriptions in Roman letters – Lund (Leofwine’s Winchester-style pen-lid) 347 – Old Minster (Winchester) 224–25, 232 – Runic inscriptions 339–40, 343, 344n – Asmild (Denmark) 324, 325–26 – Jelling (Denmark) 247, 331, 360, 362, 402–04 – Skjern (Denmark) 324–25 – Stavanger (Norway) 396 – St. Paul’s churchyard (London) 55, 92 – Sønder Vissing (Denmark) 402 – Väsby (Sweden) 344 – Wiejkowo (Poland) 409 (“Curmsun disc”) – Winchester 228–29 – Yttergärde (Sweden) 102, 344 Erik I Ejegod Svendsen, king of Denmark (1095–1103) 285, 403, 416 Erik IV Plovpenning, king of Denmark (1232–1250) 461 Erik the Victorious, see Eiríkr the Victorious Erlingr Skjálgsson, magnate in Norway (d. 1027) 11, 255, 266–67, 392, 396–97 – See also Sigvatr Þórðarson Estrid, see Ástríðr Estrith, see Ástríðr Eysteinn Erlendsson, archbishop of Trondheim (Niðarós) (1161–1188) 374, 472–73 Eysteinn Magnússon, king of Norway (1103–1123) 481 Fagrskinna, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Freyr, Norse god 251

Index

Gaimar, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Gainsborough (Lincs.) 2, 3, 107, 176, 361 Gamlebyen (Oslo), see Oslo Geld 2n, 5–6, 68, 71, 136, 143, 340, 343n, 347, 451 Genesis B, West Saxon poem 270 Gerbrand, English-trained bishop of Roskilde (1022–1030) 346–47, 366–67, 454 Godric, monk and dean of Canterbury (1023) 13, 15 Godwine, (probably) ealdorman of Lindsey (d. 1016) 117, 124, 126, 128 Godwine, earl of Wessex (d. 1053) 4, 185, 212, 232, 244, 345n, 375 – Baltic service 426 Godwine, English moneyer in Denmark 340, 341 Godwine, moneyer 70 Gorm the Old, king of Denmark 298, 325, 360, 373, 404, 409 – identical with, or son of, Hǫrða-Knútr 247 Goscelin of Canterbury; see also Chronicles, annals, and histories Gotebald, missionary bishop in Denmark 340–41, 346, 365, 394 Gottschalk, prince of Obodrites (1043–1066) 403, 413–17 Greenwich 12, 14, 51, 82, 107, 150 Grímkell, English bishop in Norway 275, 276, 394, 395, 474 Guildhall Yard (London) 28, 36, 37, 45, 46, 49–52, 66–67, 72, 74, 79, 86, 87 Guthrum, Alfred’s adversary (s. ix) 61, baptized ‘Æthelstan’ 174 Hákon Eiríksson, Cnut’s nephew, governor of Norway (1028–1030) 257, 265, 268, 291, 395, 403, 414, 479 Hákon Magnússon, king of Norway (1093–1094) 481 Hákon Sigurðarson, earl of Lade (Hlaðir) and Norway (ca. 975–995) 280, 285, 297, 373, 404 Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld, see Skalds Hallvarðr háreksblesi, see Skalds

543

Hamburg-Bremen, archdiocese of 274, 347, 355, 363–65, 367–68, 370, 407, 410, 421n Haraldr Bluetooth Gormsson, king of Denmark (d. 986) 11, 187, 247, 298n, 325, 359–62, 363, 365, 368n, 373, 377, 402, 404, 405, 406, 408, 409, 410, 416, 422, 441 Haraldr Fairhair, king of Norway (d. ca. 933) 477 Haraldr Gilli, king of Norway (1130–1136) 389 Haraldr Harsh-Ruler Sigurðarson, king of Norway (1042–1066) 288, 374, 395, 439 Haraldr Sveinsson, Cnut’s elder brother (d. 1019) 2, 7, 11, 170–71, 300, 323, 411, 412, 413, 414, 420, 421, 422n – See also Cnut the Great Haraldr, earl, son of Thorkell the Tall 477n, 478–81 Harold II Godwineson, king of England (1066) 179n Harold I Harefoot Cnutsson, king of England (1035–1040) 71, 248, 450, 451, 452, 454 Harthacnut Cnutsson, king of Denmark (1035–1042) and England (1040–1042) 227 – birth 9, 189, 248, 291 – boyhood 17, 196n, 222 – right to reign 229, 230n, 231 – reign 156, 173n, 180, 181, 194, 212, 224, 227, 228, 232, 233, 450, 462 – gloss for name in Encomium Emmae 199 – coronation in Viborg (1026) 305 – coins 71 – death and burial 195n, 224, 415 Harthacnut, legendary king of York (s. ix) 298 Heðinn, lover of Hildr 6 Heinrekr, bishop, see Henry, bishop of Lund Heinrich of Alt-Lübeck, prince of Obodrites (1093–1127) 403, 416 Helgeå, see Holy River Helmstan, bishop of Winchester (d. latest 853) 32

544

Index

Hemming, brother of Thorkell the Tall 2, 479 Hemming of Worcester, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Henry I, king of England (1100–1135) 178 Henry I the Fowler, king of Saxony (919–936) 401, 405 Henry II the Quarrelsome, duke of Bavaria (955–975, 985–995) 407 Henry II, emperor of Germany and son of the above (1014–1024) 411, 412, 413, 414, 424, 428 Henry III, emperor of Germany (1046–1056) 403, 415 Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (1129–1171) 387n, 389 Henry, exploding bishop of Lund (?ca. 1045–? ca. 1060) 365, 368–71 Henry of Huntingdon, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Heregeld, see Geld Herman’s De miraculis s. Eadmundi, see Goscelin of Canterbury Hildr Hǫgnadóttir, reviving princess 6 Hinguar, see Ívarr Historia de sancto Cuthberto, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Hoards, see Coins Holy River, battle of (1026) 7, 288, 291, 294, 296, 345, 349, 467, 477n Hǫrða-Knútr (Harthacnut), see Gorm the Old Huggin Hill (London) 14, 25, 35 Iceland 205, 250, 371, 393, 472 Inscriptions, see Epigraphy Ívarr Ragnarsson, Viking in England and Ireland (s. ix) 248–49, 251, 296–98 – identifiable with Hinguar 297 Ívarr the White, Norwegian chieftain 256 Jaroslav the Wise, king of Russia (1019–1054) 425 John of Worcester, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Jómsvíkinga saga (and/or Appendix), see Chronicles, annals, and histories Jordanes, see Chronicles, annals, and histories

Kiev, see Kyiv Knútr, Norse king of York (ca. 900–ca. 905) 174 Knútr inn ríki Sveinsson, see Cnut the Great Knúts saga, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Knýtlinga saga, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Kormákr Ǫgmundarson, see Skalds Kyiv (Ukraine) 11, 373, 400, 431, 435, 437, cult of St Clement in, 433–38, 441, 449–50, 454, 457 Lantfred, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Law codes 10, 97, 119, 120, 196, 380, 395, 476 – English – “God’s” 119, 202 – “Edgar’s” 178, 218, 290 – IV Æthelred 51 – V and VI Æthelred 57n – VII Æthelred 278 – I and II Cnut 57n, 178, 188, 217–18, 232–33, 234, 244n, 272, 274, 357, 377 – Grateley 175n – Danish – Eriks Sjællandske Lov (King Erik’s laws of Zealand) 326 – Norwegian – Gulathing and Frostathing 387, 463, 481–83 lawspeakers of Iceland 285, 371 Lawrence, George Fabian (1861–1939) 85–88, 92 Liber Vitae (New Minster) 11, 210, 211, 219, 221, 356, 410, 422n, 429 Liber Vitae, see BL, Stowe MS. 944 Liðsmannaflokkr 6, 151–53, 154, 159, 173, 174, 421, 423, 468 London 21; see also Aldermanbury, Aldwych, Bull Wharf, Cheapside hoard, Cripplegate fort, Guildhall Yard, Huggin Hill, Lawrence, Number 1 Poultry, Southwark, St. Paul’s, Wheeler, Wren

Index

– archaeology 23–25 – as Londinium 25–27 – in post-Roman times 27–29 – and Lundenwic 22, 25, 29–31, 32, 34 – as Lundenburg 32–55 – parish churches 54–55 – and King Alfred 21, 38–43, 47, 52, 61–62 – “Agas” map 40 – under King Æthelred 35, 38, 40, 41, 46, 48, 51, 52, 56, 57, 58–60, 63–64, 66, 146, 451 – defenses against Vikings 56–60 – and Old London Bridge 75–96 – and London Bridge 5, 15, 54, 57–60, 63, 72, 150–51 – and river weapon-deposits 75–96 – sieges 147–53, 161–62 Lyfing, archbishop of Canterbury (1013–1020) 178, 185, 222, 357, 376, 426 Magnús Barefoot Óláfsson, king of Norway (1093–1103) 391 Magnus IV Eriksson, king of Sweden and Norway (1319–1364) 387 Magnús the Good Óláfsson, king of Norway (1035–) and Denmark (1042–1047) 262, 395 – naming 256, 262 – cult of St. Óláfr 374 – as patron of Sigvatr Þórðarson 256 – as patron of Þjóðólfr Arnórsson 479 – pact with King Harthacnut 462 – as murderer of Earl Haraldr (?Thorkelsson) 480 – as conspirator with Emma 231 – war with King Sveinn II over Denmark 415–16, 428 – control over Orkney 369 – law code 481 – death and burial 288, 437 Magnús the Martyr, St. (d. 1115) 54, 369n, 370n Maldon, battle of (991) 2, 102, 118, 137, 138 – See also The Battle of Maldon Manuscripts – of London Museum 85

545

– of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 113, 115, 134, 145, 186, 193, 224n, 291 – of Eadui Basan 221 – of the Encomium Emmae Reginae 195 – of Gulathing and Frostathing law codes 481, 482 – of (lost) Kringla manuscript 263, 478 – of Alfredian Orosius 134 – of Otto Thott (1703–1785) 383 – of Vita s. Swithuni 381–82 – By shelf mark – BL, MS. Add. 32246 246n – BL, Cotton MS. Domitian A.VIII 194 – BL, Cotton MS. Tiberius B.II 200n – BL, Cotton MS. Vespasian D.IX 221n – BL, Cotton MS. Vitellius A.XV 173n, 246–47, 271, 277–79, 282, 283n – BL, Harley MS. 2961 475 – BL, Lansdowne 436 379, 381–82, 384 – BL, Royal MS. 12 F.XIII 239n, 240 – BL, Stowe MS. 944 (Liber Vitae) XI, 210, 211, 243–44n – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 26 112 – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 44 179n – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 173 291 – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 422 475 – Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliothek, Den gamle kongelige Samling, MS. 849 fol. 384 – Copenhagen, Den nye kongelige Samling, MS. 1824 b 4to 240 – Copenhagen, NKS 133 4to Lit, Thott. 143 2o 394n – Copenhagen, AM, MS. 733 4to Kal 394n – Copenhagen, AM MS. 325 v α 4to 475 – Reykjavík, AM 761a 4to 478n – Uppsala, Universitetsbibliothek, MS. R. 685 478n – Uppsala, MS. De la Gardie 11 478n Markús Skeggjason, see Skalds Mieszko I, duke of Poland (ca. 960–992) 11, 360, 403, 408, 410, 411, 419–22, 425, 430

546

Index

– daughter (possibly named Świętosława) 410, 411, 419–24 Mieszko II Lambert, king of Poland (1025–1031) 11, 403, 414, 425 Mints 65–74, 446 – London 60, 63, 65, 66 (and Southwark), 68, 72, 74 – Norwich 72n – Lincoln 72n, 176n – Lund 323 – Viborg 323, 324, 335 (1945) Morkinskinna, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Mstislav, prince of Obodrites (990–1018) 403, 407n, 412 Mstivoi, prince of Obodrites and father of the above (ca. 967–ca.990) 401–05, 407–08, 412, 413n Nesjar, battle (1015) of 256, 286, 353, 396 Niels I Svendsen, king of Denmark (1104–1134) 416 Normandy, see England; see also Emma of Normandy Number 1 Poultry (London) 27, 35, 39, 40, 45, 46–49 Odinkar, retainer of Haraldr Bluetooth in Skjern (Jutland) 325 Odinkar the Elder, Danish missionary bishop 363 Odinkar the Younger, English-trained Danish bishop of Ribe (ca. 1000–1043) 347, 366 Offa, king of Mercia (757–796) 36 Óláfr Eiríksson, king of Sweden (994/995) 421, 422, 423 Óláfr Magnússon, king of Norway (1103–1115) 481 Óláfr Sigtryggsson, king of York (941–44, 949–52) 174 Óláfr the Quiet Haraldsson, king of Norway (1067–1093) 391 Óláfr the Stout Haraldsson, St., king of Norway (1015–28) 4, 288, 434, 439 – and London Bridge 58–60, 92

– campaign in England 286–87, 373, 396 – conversion in Rouen 260 – arrival in Norway 260, 275, 286, 394, 396 – reign 287, 395, 462 – law code 481 – Holy River campaign 281, 294, 345 – exile from Norway 7, 373, 435, 436 – as patron of Sigvatr Þórðarson 255, 256–66, 276, 478 – death at Stiklestad and sanctity 275, 373, 374–75, 378, 395, 474, 475 – burial 437–38 – widow 256 – and St. Clement 436–41, 444, 446, 454 – churches in England 451 – sagas about 57, 92, 459, 469, 474 Óláfr Tryggvason, king of Norway (995–1000) 57, 97–98, 434 – in Kyiv 435–36 – with Sveinn Forkbeard in England 136, 146 – confirmation by Æthelred II 274 – death 362, 371, 373, 424n – sagas about 436, 473 Óláfs saga helga, see Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla Olney, treaty of (1016) 5, 71, 112, 162–63, 177, 187, 224 Orderic Vitalis, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Orkney 1n, 287, 356, 368–71 Orosius, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Osbern of Canterbury, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Oslo 170n, 383, 394n, 455 – cult of St Clement in Gamlebyen in 436–41 Óttarr svarti, see Skalds Otto II, emperor of Germany (973–983) 360, 404, 406 Otto III, emperor of Germany (996–1002) 363, 411, 425 Oxford (Oxon.) 3, 12, 62, 78, 95, 146 – assembly (1018) 177, 178, 180, 186–88, 218 – cult of St Clement in 452

Index

Pribignev Uto, prince of Obodrites 414, 417 – identifiable with Wyrtgeorn 413 Purbeck marble tomb slabs 224–25 Ragnarr Hairy-Breeks, legendary Viking 247–51, 297, 298 Ralph of Diceto, dean of St. Paul’s (ca. 1120–ca. 1202) 178, 450n Ramsey Chronicle, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Reginbert, English-trained bishop of Fyn (appointed 1020) 346–47 Richard I, duke of Normandy (942–996) 259, 260 Richard II, duke of Normandy (996–1026) 7, 153, 259, 260, 427 Richard III, duke of Normandy (1026–1027) 260 Richard, son of William I and duke of Normandy (d. ca. 1070) 224, 225–26, 227 Richeza of Lotharingia, wife of Mieszko II 425 Rimbert, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Ringerike style 55, 58, 75, 85, 89, 92, 242 see also St. Paul’s Robert I the Magnificent, duke or count of Normandy (1027–1035) 7, 189, 227, 260 Robert of Gloucester, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Robert, archbishop of Rouen (989–1037) 259 Roger of Wendover, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Roskilde 300, 324, 347, 348, 349, 351, 364, 394, 463–64 – burial of Sveinn Forkbeard in 300, 342 – diocese of 366–67, 394 – cult of St Clement in 350, 443–46, 453–55 – See also Chronicon Roskildense Rudolf, missionary bishop, abbot of Abingdon (d. 1052) 275, 394–95 Runestones, see Epigraphy Sæberht, king of Essex (604–616) 29 Sæmundr Sigfússon 250–51, 285

547

Santslave (Świętosława) Sveinsdóttir, sister of Cnut 403, 410, 414, 421 Saxo Grammaticus, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Scealdwa, West Saxon forebear 281, 290–91, 293, 300 see also Scyld Scefing, Skjǫldr Sculpture, Scandinavian – in Winchester 209–10, 229 – “Sigmundr stone” 10, 226, 236–40, 242–44, 252–53 – St. Paul’s churchyard slab 55, 92 – Stavanger Cathedral memorial cross 396 Sct. Peder Stæde settlement (Viborg) 309–10 Scyld Scefing, Danish forebear 247n, 248, 281, 284, 293, 294–96, 299, 300 see also Beowulf Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury (990–994) 102 Sigmundr vi, xvii 10, 225, 235–53 Sigurd, English or Danish bishop in Norway (1015) 394, 395, 397 Sigurðr Hákonarson, earl of Lade (Hlaðir) 245 Sigurðr the Crusader Magnússon, king of Norway (1103–1130) 388, 389, 481 Sigurðr Sigmundarson, hero 240–42, 245–47, 249n, 250n, 252, 284 Sigurðr Snake-Eye Ragnarsson, Viking 247, 249 Sigvatr Þórðarson, see Skalds Skáldatal (enumeration of poets) 256, 478 see also Skalds Skalds (eulogists) 4, 10, 12, 57, 60, 174, 192, 210, 249, 251, 255, 280, 300, 355, 459, 462, 465–66, 467, 468, 471–72, 473, 475, 484 see also Liðsmannaflokkr, Skáldatal – By name and work – Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 288 – Egill Skallagrímsson: Aðalsteinsdrápa 297 – Eilífr Goðrúnarson: Þórsdrápa 280n, 297 – Einarr skálaglamm Helgason: Vellekla 280n, 404 – Einarr Skúlason: Geisli 285

548

Index

– Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson: Hákonardrápa 280n – Hallvarðr háreksblesi: Knútsdrápa 249, 280, 289–90, 297, 423 – Kormákr Ǫgmundarson: Sigurðardrápa 245 – Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 285, 409 – Óttarr svarti, 1, 4n: Hǫfuðlausn 286–87; Knútsdrápa 288–89, 290, 298, 423; Lausavísur (i.e., single verses) 284n – Þjóðólfr Arnórsson 479 – Þjóðólfr of Hvinir: Ynglingatal 287n – Þórarinn loftunga: Glælognskviða 475, 478; Tøgdrápa 291–93 – Þórðr Kolbeinsson, Eiríksdrápa 4n, 152–53, 285–86 – Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld 256, 477–78, 479 – Þórðr Særeksson, Erfidrápa Óláfs helga 294 – Sigvatr Þórðarson 255–76, 478; Austrfararvísur 256, 261–62; Bersǫglisvísur 262; Erfidrápa Óláfs helga 261, 262, 276; Flokkr af Erlingi Skjálgssyni 266–67, 396–97; Knútsdrápa 248–49, 256, 262, 274, 291, 294–95, 296–97, 423; Lausavísur (i.e., single verses) 267–68; Nesjavísur 260–61, 264, 267; Vestrfararvísur 256, 257–60, 261, 263–65, 273, 298; Víkingavísur 261 Sigtryggr Cáech, Irish-Norse king of York (ca. 920–927) 174 Skåne (then Denmark) 2, 10, 170n, 385, 409n, 460 – as homeland of Thorkell 286, 349, 470, 476–79 – and Beowulf 10, 283, 293–94 – as site of Holy River campaign 7, 288, 291, 294, 296, 299, 300, 467 – as missionary ground 341–42, 346 – as church province 365, 366, 441, 446 – finds in 345 Skjærvøy altar panel 455

Skjǫldr, Danish forebear 248, 261, 285, 290–93, 294–96, 299 see also Scealdwa, Scyld Scefing, Skjǫldunga saga Skjǫldunga saga, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Søndersø finds XII, XVI, 10, 305, 306, 308, 309, 311, 314–22, 323, 328–29, 331, 332, 333, 347 South English Legendary, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Southwark (London) 13, 16, 58–59 – mint 66–67, 74 – moneyer’s dies from 321 – Cnut’s ditch in 5, 150–51 – Cnut’s garrison at 6, 15 – church to St. Óláfr in 54 – weaponry finds in 82 Spearhead A23353 XI, 91 Stenton, Sir Frank M. 113, 129–31, 160, 170, 357, 467–68, 480n Stephen of Blois, king of England (1135–1154) 178 Stiklestad (Stiklastaðir), battle (1030) of 7, 275, 353, 364, 395, 438, 444, 445, 451 St. Paul’s (church, minster or cathedral, London) 24, 28–29, 31, 32, 33–35, 37–39, 41, 42, 44, 51, 53, 54, 107, 164, 178, 179, 223 – theft of St. Ælfheah from 13–17 – Ringerike-style tombstone 55, 58, 92 Supplement to Jómsvíkinga saga, see Jómsvíkinga saga (and/or Appendix) Sveinn Alfífuson, son of Cnut and Ælfgifu 386, 395, 438, 444 Sveinn Forkbeard Haraldsson, king of Denmark and England (ca. 986–1014) 193, 201–02 – mother 402–05 – daughter 429 – marriage(s) 409–11, 419–24, 462 – his war with his father 408, 416 – first campaign in England 102, 136, 146 – visit to Normandy 259

Index

– ecclesiastical and urban policy 340–41, 352, 362–65, 373, 394 – as overlord of Norway 386 – invasion (1003) of England 101–02, 193 – invasion (1012) of England 2–3, 57, 107–08, 146–47, 153, 171, 178, 287 – death and burial 3, 107, 109, 341, 361, 396 Sveinn Hákonarson, earl (d. ca. 1016) 286 Sveinn II Ástríðarson, son of Earl Úlfr and king of Denmark (1047–1076) 285, 288, 339n, 362–63, 369, 405, 407, 409, 415–16, 417, 428 Sveinn Úlfsson, see Sveinn II Ástríðarson Sven Aggesen, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Svend Estridsen, see Sveinn II Ástríðarson Swegen Cnutsson, see Sveinn Alfífuson Swein Forkbeard, see Sveinn Forkbeard Haraldsson Sweyn Estrithson, see Sveinn II Ástríðarson Świętosława, putative name of Cnut’s mother 419–24 Świętosława (Sveinsdóttir), see Santslave Swithun, St. 7, 11, 213, 216n, 379–97, 393 The Battle of Maldon 121, 271, 290 Theodericus monachus, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (668–690) 29 Thietmar of Merseburg, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Thorkell the Tall 2–5, 102 – family 476–81 – campaign (1009–1012) in England 104–06, 344 – murder of Ælfheah 12 – service to Æthelred 107, 120, 286–87 – alliance with Cnut 155, 173, 174, 198, 423–24 – East Anglian earldom 169, 349 – exile from England 426 – rebellion 345 Trøndelag 4, 7, 280, 395, 396 Trondheim (Niðarós) 153, 256, 396, 472–73 see also Trøndelag – cult of St Clement in 436–41, 444, 446

549

– cult of St Óláfr in 374 Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, see Skalds Þjóðólfr of Hvinir, see Skalds Þórarinn loftunga, see Skalds Þórðr Kolbeinsson, see Skalds Þórðr Særeksson, see Skalds Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld, see Skalds Þorkell of Apavatn, foster-father of Sigvatr Þórðarson 256 Þorkell inn hávi, see Thorkell the Tall Þórr, Norse god 280n, 297 Uhtred, earl of Northumbria (d. 1016) 2, 3–4, 127, 176–77, 193 Ulfcytel, ealdorman of East Anglia 117, 123, 125, 126, 128 – as defender of London 151–53, 156, 164 – widow marries Earl Thorkell 349 Úlfr Þorgilsson, earl of Skåne, regent of Denmark (d. 1026) 227, 232, 375, 480n – execution by Cnut 349, 460n, 463, 464 Úlfr, mercenary from Yttergärde (s. xi) 344 Viborg (Jutland) 7, 323–34, 335, 345, 347–48, 351 see also Søndersø finds – excavations at 305–06 – topography 306–08 – Store Sct. Peder Stræde settlement 309–10 – Viborg Søndersø settlement 311–13 – crafts and smithying at 313–16 – luxury imports at 316–17 – material links with England 320–23 – local political landscape 324–29 – physical structure (ca. 1018) 329–32 – as aristocratic center in Jutland (ca. 1018) 10–11, 317–20 – as site of Cnut’s accession in Denmark (1019) 7, 300, 333 Vita Ædwardi Regis, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Vita s. Swithuni episcopi et confessoris, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Vladimir, prince of Kyiv (980–1015) 434, 435–46, 437–38 Vǫlsunga saga (ca. 1275) 10, 225–26, 238, 240, 244

550

Index

Wallingford 3, 141 Walter Map, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Watling Street 3, 175, 176, 278 Weapon deposits, see London Wheeler, Sir (Robert Eric) Mortimer (1890–1976) 41, 58n, 75, 77, 85–92 Widukind, historian, see Chronicles, annals, and histories William I, king of Normandy and England (1066–1087) 8, 68, 171n, 216, 224, 225–26, 227 William II Rufus, king of England (1087–1100) 226 William of Jumièges, see Chronicles, annals, and histories William of Malmesbury, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Winchester 3, 9, 17, 32, 72n, 73, 97, 115, 124, 125, 145, 146, 159, 179, 189, 234, 235, 290, 396 – Cnut’s links with 209–10, 216–34, 257, 273, 274, 277, 298, 300, 380 – Emma’s links with 227–32, 233 – Drayton Charter 180, 181–86 – Anglo-Caroline hands 279 – Cnut’s assembly (1020/21) at 10, 177, 218, 227, 232–33, 291 – Cnut’s burial in 223–27 – town 42, 43, 56, 62 – Old Minster 7, 209, 212, 213–15, 216, 217, 220, 222, 235, 236, 243, 244 – New Minster 212, 213, 220, 222, 235, 342, 364, 376 – Winchester Annals 221 – Leofwine’s Lund-discovered pen-case lid with style from 347 – Cathedral mortuary chest 210 – St. Swithun and 382–83, 388–89, 392, 393 – See also “Sigmundr Stone” (Old Minster), Liber Vitae (New Minster)

Wipo, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Wren, Sir Christopher (1632–1723) 23, 37 Wrytsleof (for Vartislav?), possible Obodrite hostage in England 429–30 Wulfstan, archbishop of York (1002–1023) 371 – penitential tradition 375–76 – efforts against the Danes 107, 169, 270, 339 – Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (1013–1016) 3, 107, 118–21, 135–36, 270 – law codes for Cnut 173, 178–79, 217–18, 273, 274, 275, 278, 290, 300 (1019–1020 Letter), 357, 380 – influence on Cnut 357 – literary style reflected in Drayton Charter 183 – literary style reflected in Sigvatr Þórðarson 270, 272–73, 276 Wulfstan, Cantor, see Chronicles, annals, and histories Wyrtgeorn, Wendish king in England 413, 429; see Pribignev Uto York, archdiocese 3, 278, 337 – archbishops 107, 124, 125, 218, 357, 380 – as an old urban emporium 31, 62, 348 – site of a mint 66, 70n, 72 – lost by King Ælle to Ívarr (866) 298–99 – Norse kings of 174, 175n – merchants of avenged by Edgar (969) 181 – axis with Canterbury 11, 366, 369n – as King Sveinn’s preferred site for coronation (1014) 4, 176, 180 – in Sigvatr’s Knútsdrápa (“Jórvík”) 248–49, 273–74, 296–97 – and Bishop Henry of Lund 370–71 – church to St. Óláfr in 374–75 Ǫnundr Jakob Óláfsson, king of Sweden (ca. 1022–1050) 256, 291, 294