The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000
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p. 464. Ravaging: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.aa. 969, 986, 1041 (EHD, vol. 1, pp. 227-33, 260, cf. 284).
p. 464. Taxation: see M. K. Lawson, in English Historical Review, 99 (1984), pp. 721-38, and the subsequent debate with J. Gillingham, in 104 (1989), pp. 373-406, and 105 (1990), pp. 939-61.
p. 465. Viking impact: this issue has aroused a long debate since P. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (London, 1962) first sought to minimize it. His talking down of the size of Viking armies is no longer accepted (Brooks, ‘England in the Ninth Century’; G. Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450-900 (London, 2003), pp. 120, 123); but more nuanced recent work by both historians and archaeologists tends to support a relatively minimalist approach: D. M. Hadley, The Northern Danelaw (Leicester, 2000), pp. 298-341; eadem, The Vikings in England (Manchester, 2006); J. D. Richards, Viking Age England (Stroud, 2000), pp. 49-77. These last two books are a new starting point for Anglo-Scandinavian studies.
p. 466. Maldon: see D. G. Scragg (ed.), The Battle of Maldon, A.D. 991 (Oxford, 1991), with a text of the poem, and J. Cooper (ed.), The Battle of Maldon (London, 1993). Compare Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 1010 (EHD, vol. 1, p. 243). For Byrhtnoth, see also Hart, Danelaw, pp. 131-5.
p. 466. Domesday Book spread: D. Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101-4 (the whole book has very valuable maps); P. A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford, 1994), pp. 13-60, 147-50.
p. 467. Hurstborne: Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, n. 110. For this and the pages following see especially R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (Leicester, 1997), pp. 1-177; and in addition J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Stroud, 1994), pp. 77-9; Hadley, Northern Danelaw; C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005), pp. 314-26, 347-51. The classic is F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897). For the Rectitudines, trans. in EHD, vol. 2, pp. 875-9, see P. D. A. Harvey, in English Historical Review, 108 (1993), pp. 1-22.
p. 468. Worcester thegns: see A. Wareham and V. King, in Brooks and Cubitt, Oswald, pp. 46-63, 100-116.
p. 468. Villages: C. Lewis et al., Village, Hamlet and Field (Macclesfield, 1997).
p. 468. Urban and productive network: Richards, Viking Age England, pp. 78-108, 139-77, gives a good overview. See in addition the document-based discussion of wool, etc. in P. H. Sawyer, ‘The Wealth of England in the Eleventh Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5 ser., 15 (1965), pp. 145-64, at pp. 161-3.
p. 469. Raunds: G. E. Cadman, ‘Raunds 1977-1983’, Medieval Archaeology, 27 (1983), pp. 107-22. Goltho: G. Beresford, Goltho (London, 1987). Churches: Blair, Church, pp. 368-425.
p. 469. Danelaw sokemen and fragmentation: Hadley, Northern Danelaw, pp. 165-211; Faith, English Peasantry, pp. 121-5.
p. 470. Displacement of families: Fleming, Kings and Lords. For royal strategic control of land into the eleventh century, when many land-grants were attached to office and revocable, see S. Baxter and J. Blair, in Anglo-Norman Studies, 28 (2006), pp. 19-46.
p. 471. Military participation: R. P. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley, 1988). Hundred assembly: see ‘1 Edgar’, from the 940s or 950s, trans. in EHD, vol. 1, p. 430.
Chapter 20
No overviews cover all the societies in this chapter, and each broad culture-area will have its more general and more detailed bibliography presented separately.
Basic introductions to the history of Scandinavia up to 1000 in English are in K. Helle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2003), and B. and P. Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia (Minneapolis, 1993); both go to 1500. See also P. Sawyer, Kings and Vikings (London, 1982). There are some valuable articles in J. Jesch (ed.), The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century (Woodbridge, 2002).
On the Vikings, English-language bibliography explodes uncontrollably, and only key surveys can be cited. G. Jones, A History of the Vikings (Oxford, 1968) is a traditional literature-based survey; P. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (London, 1962) is the classic problem-focused analysis, to which all later work reacts; recent collective works include J. Graham-Campbell (ed.), Cultural Atlas of the Viking World (Abingdon, 1994) and P. Sawyer (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings (Oxford, 1997).
p. 472. Rimbert: the Life of Anskar, trans. C. H. Robinson, is available on
p. 472. Håkon: Snorri Sturlason, Heimskringla, trans. S. Laing and P. Foote (London, 1961), 4.32.
p. 474. Gudme: see above all P. O. Nielsen et al. (eds.), The Archaeology of Gudme and Lundeborg (Copenhagen, 1994). For Denmark before 700, see also L. Hedeager, Iron-age Societies (Oxford, 1992); several articles in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 10 (1999); and U. Näsman, in R. Hodges and W. Bowden (eds.), The Sixth Century (Leiden, 1998), pp. 255-78.
p. 474. Godofrid and Horic’s Denmark: see K. Randsborg, The Viking Age in Denmark (London, 1980); E. Roesdahl, Viking Age Denmark (London, 1982); U. Näsman, in I. L. Hansen and C. Wickham (eds.), The Long Eighth Century (Leiden, 2000), pp. 35-68; P. Sawyer, ‘Kings and Royal Power’, in P. Mortensen and B. Rasmussen (eds.), Fra stamme til stat i Danmark, vol. 2 (Højbjerg, 1991), pp. 282-8. After 900, see the general works cited above.
p. 476. Norway before Harald: see e.g. B. Myhre, ‘Chieftains’ Graves and Chiefdom Territories in South Norway in the Migration Period’, Studien zur Sachsenforschung, 6 (1987), pp. 169-87; for after Harald, see the general works cited above.
p. 476. Iceland: J. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London, 2001), esp. pp. 63-141. For assembly politics, see Sawyer and Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia, pp. 80-99. For Norwegian law, see L. M. Larson, The Earliest Norwegian Laws (New York, 1935).
p. 477. Slaves: R. M. Karras, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven, 1988).
p. 477. Hávamál: trans. C. Larrington, The Poetic Edda (Oxford, 1996), pp. 14-38; quotes from stanzas 1, 25, 38, 58, 90.
p. 479. Political losers: see P. Wormald, in R. T. Farrell (ed.), The Vikings (Chichester, 1982), pp. 141-8; S. Coupland, EME, 7 (1998), pp. 85-114.
p. 479. Sawyer quote: Age of the Vikings, p. 194.
p. 480. Ívar: see esp. A. B. Smyth, Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles, 850-880 (Oxford, 1977).
p. 480. Harald: Snorri, Heimskringla, 10.2-6, 79-92.
The early Sclavenians or Slavs are increasingly well covered by English-language surveys based on the extensive archaeology of eastern Europe. The best are now F. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250 (Cambridge, 2006), developing his The Making of the Slavs (Cambridge, 2001), focused on south-eastern Europe; and, more generally, P. M. Barford, The Early Slavs (London, 2001). Early Rus is analysed brilliantly by S. Franklin and J. Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750-1200 (London, 1996). I have relied extensively on these four. Shorter accounts by Czech and Polish scholars are M. Gojda, The Ancient Slavs (Edinburgh, 1991) and P. Urbaczyk (ed.), Origins of Central Europe (Warsaw, 1997); there are also important insights in F. Curta (ed.), East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Ann Arbor, 2005), which contains a huge bibliography of English-language works. Every wing of the ethnogenesis debate about the Germanic peoples (see above, Chapter 4) is represented in these works too. The tenth century is well analysed by T. S. Noonan, J. Strzelczyk, K. Bakay (for Hungary) and J. Shepard, in NCMH, vol. 3, pp. 487-552, 567-85; for this period see also the older, more traditional but still interesting, non-archaeological survey by F. Dvornik, The Making of Central and Eastern Europe (London, 1949). L. Leciejewicz, Gli Slavi occidentali (Spoleto, 1991) is an important synthetic overview of the western lands.
p. 481. Making distinctions: here I am closest to Curta, The Making.
p. 481. Settlements and eighth-century strongholds: see esp. Barford, The Early Slavs, pp. 47-88, 113-23, 131-3; Curta, T
he Making, pp. 247-310; Gojda, The Ancient Slavs, pp. 16-43, 78-94; Z. Kobyliski, in Urbaczyk, Origins, pp. 97-114; Barford, in Curta, East Central and Eastern Europe, pp. 66-70.
p. 482. Einhard: Life of Charlemagne, trans. P. E. Dutton, Charlemagne’s Courtier (Peterborough, Ont., 1998), pp. 15-39, c. 15.
p. 483. Zoupaniai: Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, ed. and trans. G. Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins (Washington, 1967), c. 30 (cf. cc. 29, 32, 34 for zoupanoi).
p. 483. Thessaloniki: Les Plus Anciens Recueils des miracles de Saint Démétrius, vol. 1, ed. and trans. P. Lemerle (Paris, 1979), pp. 169-74.
p. 483. Slave trade: M. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 733-77 (pp. 737-8 for sclavus and slave).
p. 484. Avars: see above all W. Pohl, Die Awaren (Munich, 1988).
p. 484. Hungarians: see K. Bakay, in NCMH, vol. 3, pp. 536-52; A. Bartha, Hungarian Society in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Budapest, 1975).
p. 485. Rus: Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence, pp. 3-180; T. S. Noonan, in NCMH, vol. 3, pp. 487-513; Barford, The Early Slavs, pp. 232-49. I follow Franklin and Shepard on the dating of the Rus occupation of Kiev.
p. 486. Rogvolod, Ol‘ga: The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text, trans. S. H. Cross and O. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), pp. 91, 78-87. The text dates essentially to the 1110s, although earlier material may begin in the 1060s: see A. Rukavishnikov, EME, 12 (2003), pp. 53-74.
p. 486. East Slavic: see esp. S. Franklin, Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950-1300 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 36-40, 83-100, 110-15 (on Old Norse survivals), 123-4.
p. 487. Ramparts and towns: Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence, pp. 170-80; Barford, The Early Slavs, pp. 246-7; compare P. Squatriti, in Past and Present, 176 (2002), pp. 11-65.
p. 488. Moravia: see e.g. Barford, The Early Slavs, pp. 108-11; F. Graus et al., Das grossmährische Reich (Prague, 1966), in German and French; Curta, Southeastern Europe, pp. 124-34; J. Poulík, ‘Mikulce’, in R. Bruce-Mitford (ed.), Recent Archaeological Excavations in Europe (London 1975), pp. 1 - 31.
p. 488. Sirmium theory: see I. Bóba, Moravia’s History Reconsidered (The Hague, 1971); C. R. Bowlus, Franks, Moravians and Magyars (Philadelphia, 1995), esp. pp. 5-18.
p. 489. Croatia: see in English Curta, Southeastern Europe, pp. 134 - 47, 191 - 201; N. Budak, in Hortus Artium Medievalium, 3 (1997), pp. 15-22; and the articles by M. Ani and N. akši, in G. P. Brogiolo and P. Delogu (eds.), L’Adriatico dalla tarda Antichità all’età carolingia (Florence, 2005), pp. 213 - 43, with citations of other work in Italian and Croat.
p. 489. Bohemia and Poland: see J. Strzelczyk, in NCMH, vol. 3, pp. 516-35; Barford, The Early Slavs, pp. 251 - 67; P. Manteuffel, The Formation of the Polish State (Detroit, 1982); and P. Barford, P. Urbaczyk and A. Buko, in Curta, East Central and Eastern Europe, pp. 77-84, 139-51, 162-78.
p. 491. Brittany: J. M. H. Smith, Province and Empire (Cambridge, 1992).
p. 491. Liutizi: Thietmar, Chronicon, trans. D. A. Warner, Ottonian Germany, (Manchester, 2001), 3.17-19, 4.13, 6.22 - 5 (25 for assemblies), 7.64. Wales is discussed most fully by Wendy Davies in two books, Wales in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 1982) and Patterns of Power in Early Wales (Oxford, 1990); also relevant are Rees Davies’s important synthesis of the period after 1063, Conquest, Coexistence and Change (Oxford, 1987), and K. L. Maund, Ireland, Wales, and England in the Eleventh Century (Woodbridge, 1991). For Scotland, see A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975) and A. P. Smyth, Warlords and Holy Men (London, 1984); for Scandinavian areas, B. E. Crawford, Scandinavian Scotland (Leicester, 1987); for an alternative view, see B. T. Hudson, The Kings of Celtic Scotland (Westport, Conn., 1994). Here, a new synthesis of the period is implicit in recent detailed work, but is currently most clearly expressed in relatively brief surveys, notably those of T. O. Clancy and B. E. Crawford, in R. A. Houston and W. W. J. Knox (eds.), The New Penguin History of Scotland (London, 2001), pp. 56-81; S. M. Foster, Picts, Gaels and Scots (London, 2004), pp. 104-14; K. Forsyth, in J. Wormald (ed.), Scotland: A History (Oxford, 2005), pp. 1-34; and D. Broun, Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 71-97. See now also A. Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789-1070 (Edinburgh, 2007). Ireland is the least satisfactorily synthesized of these three; the books cited in Chapter 7 either end in 800 - 850 or else have weak ninth- and tenth-century sections. The latter is particularly true of D. Ó Cróinín (ed.), A New History of Ireland, vol. 1 (Dublin, 2005), which manages to omit Brian Boru! D. Ó Corráin, Ireland before the Normans (Dublin, 1972), despite its short compass, is easily the best guide. See also N. Patterson, Cattle-lords and Clansmen (Notre Dame, Ind., 1994).
p. 492. Great Prophecy: see Armes Prydein, ed. and trans. I. Williams and R. Bromwich (Dublin, 1972); quote from lines 125-6.
p. 493. Maredudd: see D. E. Thornton, in Welsh History Review, 18 (1996-7), pp. 567 - 91.
p. 493. Increasing coherence of rulership: e.g. W. Davies, ‘Adding Insult to Injury’, in eadem and P. Fouracre (eds.), Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 137-64, at pp. 161-2.
p. 494. Viking hegemony: Davies, Patterns of Power, pp. 56 - 60.
p. 496. Dux and rex: D. Ó Corráin, ‘Nationality and Kingship in Pre-Norman Ireland’, in T. W. Moody (ed.), Nationality and the Pursuit of National Independence (Belfast, 1978), pp. 1-35, at pp. 9-11.
p. 496. Territorial expansion: see e.g. F. J. Byrne, Irish Kings and High-kings (London, 1973), pp. 180-81; Ó Corráin, Ireland, pp. 10, 30 - 31.
p. 497. Dublin excavations: see S. Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin, vol. 1 (Dublin, 2000), and P. F. Wallace, in Ó Cróinín, New History, vol. 1, pp. 815 - 41.
p. 497. Feidlimid: see Byrne, Irish Kings, pp. 211-29.
p. 498. Máel Sechnaill I: see Byrne, Irish Kings, pp. 256-66. For the Viking impact, see further B. Jaski, in Peritia, 9 (1995), pp. 310-51. Quotes: The Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. S. Mac Airt and G. Mac Niocaill, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1983), s. aa. 845, 851 and 862.
p. 498. Brian Boru: see J. V. Kelleher, in E. Rynne (ed.), North Munster Studies (Limerick, 1967), pp. 230-41 for early Dál Cais; Ó Corráin, Ireland, pp. 120-31; and now above all M. Ní Mhaonaigh, Brian Boru (Stroud, 2007).
p. 499. Wealth of Limerick and Dublin: Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh: The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, ed. and trans. J. H. Todd (London, 1867), pp. 79-81, 113-15; Brian’s rule: ibid., pp. 137-41.
By far the best overview of Christian Spain, 711-1000, is A. Isla Frez, La alta edad media (Madrid, 2002). An important recent synthesis of social development is J. A. García de Cortázar, ‘La formación de la sociedad feudal en el cuadrante noroccidental de la Península Ibérica en los siglos VIII a XIII’, Initium, 4 (1999), pp. 57-121. In English, the basic short guide is R. Collins, in his Early Medieval Spain (London, 1983), pp. 225-68, updated in NCMH, vol. 2, pp. 272-89 and vol. 3, pp. 670-91, and in his The Arab Conquest of Spain (Oxford, 1989); these concentrate on political history. P. Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford, 1993), pp. 73-171, is a stimulating discussion of the changing imagery of legitimization in Asturias-León. W. Davies, Acts of Giving (Oxford, 2007) is basic on the rural society of the tenth-century. For an English version of the active Spanish-language social history of the period, see S. Castellanos and I. Martín Viso, ‘The Local Articulation of Central Power in the North of the Iberian Peninsula (500-1000)’, EME, 13 (2005), pp. 1-42. These works cite wider bibliography, almost all in Spanish or Catalan.
p. 500. Oviedo artistic tradition: J. D. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain (State College, Pa., 1990), pp. 27-46. For Asturian-Leonese royal ideology in general, and its strong attachment to the Visigothic past, see T. Deswarte, De la destruction a‘ la restauration (Turnhout, 2003).
p. 502. Court cases: R. Collins, in W. Davies and P. Fouracre, The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 85 - 104.
p. 502. Palace entourage: see e.g. Isla, La alta edad media, pp. 143 - 51; for counts of Castile, I. Álvarez Borge, Poder y relaciones sociales en la Castilla de la edad media (Valladolid, 1996), pp. 73-108, with earlier bibliography.
p. 503. Navarre: see J. J. Larrea, La Navarre du IVe au XIIe siècle (Brussels, 1998), pp. 213-26, cf. pp. 111-60.
p. 503. Depopulation theory: C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Despoblación y repoblación del valle del Duero (Buenos Aires, 1966).
p. 503. Castros, etc: Castellanos and Martín, ‘Local Articulation’; I. Martín Viso, Poblami- ento y estructuras sociales en el Norte de la Península Ibérica (siglos VI-XIII) (Salamanca, 2000); J. Escalona Monge, Sociedad y territorio en la alta edad media castellana (Oxford, 2002). The core work at the back of the interpretation of these latter writers is A. Barbero and M. Vigil, La formación del feudalismo en la Península Ibérica (Barcelona, 1978).
p. 503. Castrojeriz (dated to 974, but interpolated) and Cardona: G. Martínez Díez, Fueros locales en el territorio de la provincia de Burgos (Burgos, 1982), n. 1; J. M. Font Rius, Cartas de población (Barcelona, 1969), n. 9 (cf. Luke 22: 26).
p. 504. Ilduara: M. del C. Pallares Méndez, Ilduara, una aristócrata del siglo X (A Coruña, 1998).
p. 504. Peasant resistance: see esp. R. Pastor, Resistencias y luchas campesinas en la época de crecimiento y consolidación de la formación feudal (Madrid, 1980). Compare for Catalonia the sharp move from peasant autonomy to aristocratic and seigneurial power in the eleventh century (esp. c. 1030-60) in a context of civil crisis; this is one of the clearest examples of the ‘feudal revolution’ in the west Frankish lands, but it is significant that it took place south of the Pyrenees. See in English P. Bonnassie, From Slavery to Feudalism in South-western Europe (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 104 - 31, 149 - 69, 243 - 58.