notes
introduction
1 ‘Daci … terram undique creberrime diutissime insilientes et assilientes, eam non optinere sed predari studebant, et omnia destruere non dominari cupiebant’ [Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. Diana Greenway (Oxford, 1996), pp. 272–3]. For discussion of Henry’s view see R. I. Page, ‘A Most Vile People’: Early English Historians on the Vikings (London, 1987), pp. 14–17.
2 ‘Þæt wæron þa ærestan scipu deniscra monna þe Angelcynnes lond gesohton’ [Janet Bately (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS. A (Cambridge, 1986), p. 39]. Translations from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are my own unless otherwise stated. The date was actually 789; for the different versions of this event, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, trans. Michael Swanton (London, 2000), pp. 54–5.
3 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, trans. Swanton, pp. 54–7.
4 For overviews of the history of the Vikings in England, see Katherine Holman, The Northern Conquest: Vikings in Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2007), and Simon Keynes, ‘The Vikings in England, c.790–1016’, in Peter Sawyer (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings (Oxford, 1997), pp. 48–82.
5 ‘mycel hæðen here’ [Susan Irvine (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS. E (Cambridge, 2004), p. 48].
6 ‘ergende wæron 7 hiera tilgende’ [Bately (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS. A, p. 50].
7 On this period of Scandinavian settlement in England, see D. M. Hadley, The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture (Manchester, 2006); D. M. Hadley and J. D. Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Turnhout, 2000); Matthew Townend, Viking Age Yorkshire (Pickering, 2014).
8 For varying assessments of the nature and scale of the settlement, see F. M. Stenton, ‘The Danes in England’, Proceedings of the British Academy XIII (Oxford, 1927); H. R. Loyn, The Vikings in Britain (London, 1977); P. H. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (London, 1971); D. M. Hadley, ‘“And they proceeded to plough and support themselves”: the Scandinavian settlement of England’, Anglo-Norman Studies 19 (1997), pp. 69–96; Hadley, ‘“Cockles amongst the wheat”: the Scandinavian settlement of England’, in William O. Frazer and Andrew Tyrrell (eds), Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain (London and New York, 2000), pp. 111–35.
9 For discussion of the value of place-name evidence in understanding the Scandinavian settlement, see L. Abrams and D. N. Parsons, ‘Placenames and the history of Scandinavian settlement in England’, in J. Hines, A. Lane and M. Redknap (eds), Land, Sea and Home (Leeds, 2004), pp. 379–431; see also Margaret Gelling, Signposts to the Past (Chichester, 1988), pp. 215–36; Gillian Fellows Jensen, ‘Scandinavian influence on the place-names of England’, in P. S. Ureland and G. Broderick (eds), Language Contact in the British Isles (Tübingen, 1991), pp. 337–54. On Old Norse personal names in England see Gillian Fellows Jensen, Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire (Copenhagen, 1968), The Vikings and Their Victims: The Verdict of the Names (London, 1995), and also Cecily Clark, ‘Onomastics’, in Richard M. Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume 1 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 452–89 (465–7).
10 On language contact between Norse and English speakers and the influence of the Old Norse language on English see J. Hines, ‘Scandinavian English: a creole in context’, in Ureland and Broderick (eds), Language Contact in the British Isles, pp. 403–27; P. Bibire, ‘North Sea language contacts in the Early Middle Ages: English and Norse’, in T. R. Liszka and L. E. M. Walker (eds), The North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 2001), pp. 88–107; Matthew Townend, Language and History in Viking Age England (Turnhout, 2002); Richard Dance, Words Derived from Old Norse in Early Middle English: Studies in the Vocabulary of the South-West Midlands Texts (Tempe, 2003).
11 For an overview see Hadley, The Vikings in England, and the bibliography at pp. 282–9.
12 Judith Jesch, ‘Skaldic verse in Scandinavian England’, in James Graham-Campbell, Michael Hall, Judith Jesch and David N. Parsons (eds), Vikings and the Danelaw (Oxford, 2001), pp. 313–25; Matthew Townend, ‘Whatever happened to York Viking poetry? Memory, tradition and the transmission of skaldic verse’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society XXVII (2003), pp. 48–90; John McKinnell, ‘The context of Völundarkviða’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society XXIII (1990–3), pp. 1–27.
13 Richard Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture in Northern England (London, 1980); David M. Wilson and Ole Klindt-Jensen, Viking Art (London, 1980), pp. 103–8; Sue Margeson, ‘The Völsung legend in medieval art’, in Flemming G. Andersen et al. (eds), Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium (Odense, 1980), pp. 183–211; John McKinnell, ‘Eddic poetry in Anglo-Scandinavian northern England’, in Graham-Campbell et al. (eds), Vikings and the Danelaw, pp. 327–44.
14 For discussion of the relationship between English and Old Norse literature in the Anglo-Saxon period, see Richard Dance, ‘North Sea currents: Old English–Old Norse relations, literary and linguistic’, Literature Compass 1 (2004), pp. 1–10; Robert E. Bjork, ‘Scandinavian relations’, in P. Pulsiano and E. Treharne (eds), A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature (Oxford, 2001), pp. 388–99; Heather O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (Oxford, 2004), pp. 136–48; Roberta Frank, ‘Anglo-Scandinavian poetic relations’, ANQ 3/2 (1990), pp. 74–9. For attempts to trace Scandinavian influence in Middle English literature, see Rory McTurk, Chaucer and the Norse and Celtic Worlds (Aldershot, 2005), and Paul Beekman Taylor, Sharing Story: Medieval Norse–English Literary Relationships (New York, 1998).
15 See for instance Hadley, ‘And they proceeded to plough and support themselves’, pp. 82–93, and ‘Cockles amongst the wheat’, pp. 111–35, and also Simon Trafford, ‘Ethnicity, migration theory, and the historiography of the Scandinavian settlement of England’, in Hadley and Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact, pp. 17–39.
16 Holman, The Northern Conquest, pp. 186–7.
17 On this period, see Alfred P. Smyth, Scandinavian York and Dublin (Dublin, 1975–9); Clare Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland (Edinburgh, 2007); Townend, Viking Age Yorkshire, pp. 25–84; Holman, The Northern Conquest, pp. 95–103.
18 On this battle and its context, see Michael Livingston (ed.), The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook (Exeter, 2011).
19 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, trans. Swanton, p. 110; Cyril Hart, The Danelaw (London, 1992), pp. 6–20; Matthew Innes, ‘Danelaw identities: ethnicity, regionalism and political allegiance’, in Hadley and Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact, pp. 65–88.
20 On this period, see Ian Howard, Swein Forkbeard’s Invasions and the Danish Conquest of England 991–1017 (Woodbridge, 2003); Angelo Forte, Richard Oram and Frederik Pedersen, Viking Empires (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 184–92.
21 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, trans. Swanton, pp. 143–4; Howard, Swein Forkbeard’s Invasions, pp. 99–119.
22 On Cnut’s reign see Elaine Treharne, Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220 (Oxford, 2012); M. K. Lawson, Cnut: England’s Viking King, 1016–1035 (Stroud, 2011); Timothy Bolton, The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest and the Consolidation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early Eleventh Century (Leiden, 2009); Bolton, Cnut the Great (New Haven, 2017).
23 Holman, The Northern Conquest, pp. 181–94; Paul Gazzoli, ‘Anglo-Danish relations in the later eleventh century’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010).
24 Henry Goddard Leach, Angevin Britain and Scandinavia (London, 1921), pp. 25–72, remains a useful summary; see also David Bates and Robert Liddiard (eds), East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2015).
25 Lesley Abrams, ‘The Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia’, Anglo-Saxon England 24 (1995), pp. 213–49; Goddard Leach, Angevin Britain and Scandinavia, pp. 73–113.
26 James Campbell, ‘Some twelfth-century views of the Anglo-Saxon past’, in Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), pp. 209–28; Richard Southern, �
�Aspects of the European tradition of historical writing: 4, The sense of the past’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 23 (1973), pp. 243–63; Andrew Galloway, ‘Writing history in England’, in David Wallace (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 255–83; Judith Weiss, ‘Insular beginnings: Anglo-Norman romance’, in Corinne Saunders (ed.), A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary (Oxford, 2004), pp. 26–44; Martin Brett and David A. Woodman (eds), The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past (London, 2016).
27 Today ‘Viking’ is often used in this sense, but the word does not occur with this meaning in medieval English texts; for discussion see Christine Fell, ‘Old English wicing: a question of semantics’, Proceedings of the British Academy 72 (1986), pp. 295–316. For a summary of the language used to describe these Scandinavian peoples in medieval sources and in modern scholarship, see Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland, pp. xv–xx.
28 For examples, see Magnús Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England in Icelandic Medieval Texts (Toronto, 2005); Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, ‘Helpful Danes and pagan Irishmen: saga fantasies of the Viking Age in the British Isles’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 5 (2009), pp. 1–21.
29 Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England in Icelandic Medieval Texts, p. 27; see for instance the use of the term in Knýtlinga saga, in Bjarni Guðnason (ed.), Danakonunga sögur (Reykjavík, 1982), pp. 91–321 (124).
30 P. G. Foote (ed.), Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu (London, 1957), p. 15.
31 On continuity as well as rupture after 1066, see especially Treharne, Living Through Conquest; Laura Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 2007); John Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity, and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000); Hugh Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066–c.1220 (Oxford, 2003).
chapter 1: ‘from the north comes all that is evil’: vikings, kings and saints, c.985–1100
1 On the poem and its context see Janet Cooper (ed.), The Battle of Maldon: Fiction and Fact (London, 2003); Donald Scragg (ed.), The Battle of Maldon AD 991 (Oxford, 1991); Simon Keynes, ‘Apocalypse then: England A.D. 1000’, in Przemysław Urbańczyk (ed.), Europe Around the Year 1000 (Warsaw, 2001), pp. 247–70.
2 D. G. Scragg (ed.), The Battle of Maldon (Manchester, 1981).
3 For an alternative view, see Leonard Niedorf, ‘II Æthelred and the politics of The Battle of Maldon’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 111 (2012), pp. 451–73. On the possible composition and leaders of the Viking army at Maldon, see Donald Scragg, The Return of the Vikings: The Battle of Maldon 991 (Stroud, 2006), pp. 63–9.
4 For recent assessments of Æthelred’s reign see Ryan Lavelle, Æthelred II: King of the English, 978–1016 (Stroud, 2002); Ann Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (London, 2003); Levi Roach, Æthelred the Unready (New Haven, 2016); and on his later reputation, Simon Keynes, ‘The declining reputation of King Æthelred the Unready’, in D. A. E. Pelteret (ed.), Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings (New York, 2000), pp. 157–90.
5 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, trans. Swanton, pp. 126–44.
6 Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 52–4.
7 The Passio is edited by Michael Winterbottom in Three Lives of English Saints (Toronto, 1972), pp. 67–87, and translated in Lord Francis Hervey (ed.), Corolla Sancti Eadmundi (London, 1907), pp. 6–59; for discussion see Rebecca Pinner, The Cult of St Edmund in Medieval East Anglia (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 33–47.
8 Ælfric, Lives of Saints, ed. Walter W. Skeat (London, 1881–1900), vol. 2, pp. 314–35 (314).
9 On the use of eyewitness testimony in medieval history-writing, see Elisabeth van Houts, ‘Genre aspects of the use of oral information in medieval historiography’, in B. Frank, T. Haye and D. Tophinke (eds), Gattungen mittelalterlicher Schriftlichkeit (Tübingen, 1997), pp. 297–311, and on the plausibility of Abbo’s claim, van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 47–8.
10 On Æthelstan’s reputation see Michael Wood, ‘The making of King Aethelstan’s empire: an English Charlemagne?’ in Patrick Wormald, Donald A. Bullough and Roger Collins (eds), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 1983), pp. 250–72; Elaine M. Treharne, ‘Romanticizing the past in the Middle English Athelston’, Review of English Studies 50 (1999), pp. 1–21.
11 Adelard of Ghent, ‘Lectiones in Depositione S. Dunstani’, in Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge (eds), The Early Lives of St Dunstan (Oxford, 2012), pp. 142–3; see C. Cubitt, ‘Archbishop Dunstan: a prophet in politics?’ in Julia Barrow and Andrew Wareham (eds), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 145–66.
12 Hervey (ed.), Corolla Sancti Eadmundi, pp. 18–19.
13 Alcuin quotes the same passage in reference to the attack on Lindisfarne; on this and other examples see Simon Coupland, ‘The rod of God’s wrath or the people of God’s wrath? The Carolingian theology of the Viking invasions’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42/4 (1991), pp. 535–54 (538). On the apocalyptic overtones of such language, see James Palmer, ‘Apocalyptic outsiders and their uses in the early medieval West’, in W. Brandes, F. Schmieder and R. Voß (eds), Peoples of the Apocalypse: Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios (Berlin and Boston, 2016), pp. 307–20.
14 Hervey (ed.), Corolla Sancti Eadmundi, p. 21.
15 On the development of the cult of St Edmund see Pinner, Cult of St Edmund; Simon Yarrow, Saints and Their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford, 2006), pp. 24–62; Anthony Bale (ed.), St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint (Woodbridge, 2009); Grant Loomis, ‘The growth of the Saint Edmund legend’, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 14 (1932), pp. 83–115; Dorothy Whitelock, ‘Fact and fiction in the legend of St Edmund’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 31 (1969), pp. 217–33.
16 Support for Edmund’s cult by the West Saxon kings, including Æthelstan and Æthelred, has been interpreted as a means of easing the assimilation of East Anglia – until Edmund’s death an independent kingdom – into the kingdom of England; see Susan J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 224–6.
17 Ælfric, Lives of Saints, vol. 2, p. 316. On Ælfric’s Life see Carl Phelpstead, ‘King, martyr and virgin: Imitatio Christi in Ælfric’s Life of St Edmund’, in Bale (ed.), St Edmund, King and Martyr, pp. 27–44.
18 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. Michael Lapidge (Oxford, 2009); on the dating of Byrhtferth’s works, see pp. xxviii–xxix.
19 ‘Dicunt quidam quod ex ipsis Danis pater eius esset qui cum classica cohorte cum Huba et Hinuuar ueniebant: ideo pater non penitus Christo seruire studuit’ (Byrhtferth, Life of St Oswald, pp. 16–17).
20 Andrew Wareham, ‘Saint Oswald’s family and kin’, in Nicholas Brooks and Catherine Cubitt (eds), St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence (London and New York, 1996), pp. 46–63; Dorothy Whitelock, ‘The conversion of the Eastern Danelaw’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society XII (1937–45), pp. 159–76; Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984), pp. 223–4.
21 Lesley Abrams, ‘The conversion of the Danelaw’, in Graham-Campbell et al. (eds), Vikings and the Danelaw, pp. 31–44; Abrams, ‘Conversion and assimilation’, in Hadley and Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact, pp. 135–53; Hadley, The Vikings in England, pp. 192–236.
22 See Byrhtferth, Life of St Oswald, p. 16, n. 52.
23 Antonia Gransden, Legends, Tradition and History in Medieval England (London, 1992), pp. 49, 83–4.
24 Cyril Hart, ‘The East Anglian Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981), pp. 249–82.
25 ‘inedicibiliter est repleta et mercatorum gazis locupletata, qui undique adueniunt, maxime
ex Danorum gente’ (Byrhtferth, Life of St Oswald, pp. 150–1).
26 Townend, Viking Age Yorkshire, pp. 183–5, and Dorothy Whitelock, ‘The dealings of the kings of England with Northumbria in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, in Peter Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins (London, 1959), pp. 70–88.
27 ‘nefandi Dani’; the quotation from Jeremiah occurs in his account of the Battle of Maldon, which follows immediately on from the chapter which describes the Danish presence in York (Byrhtferth, Life of St Oswald, pp. 154–9).
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