AD
Anno Domini (see also CE)
AJ
Archaeological Journal
ANS
Anglo-Norman Studies
AntJ
The Antiquaries Journal
ASC
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, gen. ed., Dumville and Keynes; trans. Swanton
ASE
Anglo-Saxon England
ASPR
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records
ASSAH
Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History
BAR
British Archaeological Reports
BL
British Library
BNJ
British Numismatic Journal
CCHAG
Corpus Christianorum: Hagiographies
CE
Common Era (see also AD)
CR
Coin Register (annually in BNJ; see General Bibliography)
DN
Diplomatarium Norvegicum
EETS
The Early English Text Society
EHD 1
English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock
EHD 2
English Historical Documents, ed. Douglas and Greenaway
EHR
English Historical Review
EMC
Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds (www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/ coins/emc)
EME
Early Medieval Europe
HSJ
Haskins Society Journal
ÍF
Íslenzk Fornrit
KB
Det Kongelige Bibliothek (Copenhagen)
KLNM
Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder (og vikingtid)
LArch
London Archaeologist
MGH
Monumenta Germaniae Historica
MoLAM
Museum of London Archaeology Monographs
MoM
Maal og minne
MS
Mediaeval Scandinavia
N&Q
Notes & Queries
NMS
Nottingham Medieval Studies
NOWELE
North-Western European Language Evolution
PAS
Portable Antiquities Scheme
PBA
Proceedings of the British Academy
SRG
Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi
SS
Scandinavian Studies
TLAMAS
Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society
TRHS
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
vv.
verse(s)
VMS
Viking and Medieval Scandinavia
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 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, Anne-Hilde 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, 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 “Anglo-Saxon,” 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, 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