Richard North
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 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 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.
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 island-chain’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 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 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)
[“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 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 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” (Half-Dane 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 skjǫldung-meaning 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 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 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 “þjóð-Skjǫldungar” 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
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.]
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 half-rhyme. 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 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 skjǫld-element 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 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 Anglo-Saxon 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 (“Praise-Tongue”), 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:
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” 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 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 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
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.]
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 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 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 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.
Notes
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.
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.
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.).
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”).
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.
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.”
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).
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.
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).
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.”
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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
71
See note 29 above. Anderson, “Scyld Scyldinga,” 470–72.
72
Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. Campbell, 33.
73
“Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 660–61 (v. 9).
74
“Sigvatr: Knútsdrápa,” ed. Townend, 657 (v. 6).
75
Fagrskinna, ed. Bjarni Einarsson, 187 (chap. 32).
76
“Óttarr: Hǫfuðlausn,” ed. Townend, 763 (v. 18).
77
Hofmann, Lehnbeziehungen, 103 (§ 113).
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.
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”).
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).
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.
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).
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.