Fouracre P. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500-c. 700
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England in the seventh century 493
Roman civitas of London.
167
By then the kings of Kent had a royal reeve in
Lundenwic in whose hall disputes about property involving their people were
settled.
168
We are not well informed about the nature of the trade carried on at these
centres. The merchants at the wics were almost certainly involved in importing
the rich and exotic luxury objects upon the possession and distribution of
which royal and elite status depended. There is ample archaeological evidence
that such objects were brought into England in the seventh century. In return,
they seem to have exported animals, or animal products such as hides: the
large quantity of animal bones found at Hamwih suggest the slaughter of
herds acquired through the collection of tribute or as booty.
169
Despite the
prohibition (in Wessex at least) of the sale of a member of one’s people overseas,
slaves, acquired as war captives or through voluntary or penal action, were
almost certainly another valuableexport. The story of Imma showsthat London
was the basis of an international trade in such captives.
170
All this suggests that the motive force of trade in seventh-century England
lay in the exaction of tribute and the exercise of power rather than the operation
of a free market. The degree to which coin was involved is uncertain. We do,
however, know that by the 630sEnglish kings in the south-east had mints
which produced gold coins known as thrymsas (probably the shillings of the
early Laws). Such coins, progressively debased, continued to be produced until
the late seventh century when they were replaced by the silver coins known to
numismatists as sceattas. They too circulated mainly in the south-east, except for
those bearing the name of the Northumbrian king Aldfrith.
171
The distribution
of the major English wics indicates that by the late seventh century England
was part of the network of North Sea trading sites. By then the main focus of
trade had settled firmly in the English kingdoms of the south and east, and
away from the British kingdoms in the west.
conclusion: an english golden age?
By the close of the seventh century the new Christian culture of the English
had entered what has often been regarded as a golden age. It was a period of
remarkable literary achievement. The writings in Old English are impressive
enough: the law-codes, the first in Europe to be recorded in the vernacular,
167
For most recent discussion and bibliography see Hill and Cowie (2001). See also Lebecq,
chapter 23 below.
168
Laws of Hlothere and Eadric 16.
169
Campbell (1982); Hill and Cowie (2001), pp. 89–92.
170
Laws of Ine 11; HE iv.22.Cf. McCormick (2002), pp. 737–8.
171
Campbell (1982), pp. 62–3;Gannon (2003), pp. 7–13.
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494 alan thacker
reached a new flowering with those of Ine (d. 725) which deal with a particularly
wide range of complex issues; and there was almost certainly poetry of consid-
erable sophistication. More remarkable still was the Latin culture of the new
monasteries. In Northumbria, a small group of saints’ Lives produced in the
early eighth century are striking for their vigour and individuality. In Wessex,
Aldhelm was producing texts which if less attractive to modern eyes are never-
theless characterised by great learning and complexity.
172
Above all there is the
colossal figure of Bede: historian, hagiographer, exegete, computist, scientist,
poet and grammarian, his achievements dominate our picture of the age. And
while he is the most remarkable, he is not alone; the letter of his pupil Cuthbert
on the death of his master shows that others at Wearmouth and Jarrow could
deploy a Latin of equal limpid purity.
173
In the visual arts, a fusion of English, Irish and more exotic influences
produced a succession of great manuscripts, mostly of Gospel texts, adorned
with remarkable illuminations and exquisite Insular script, beginning with
Durrow and culminating in the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Biblical pandects
of Wearmouth-Jarrow, and the purple-stained pages of the lost books of
Wilfrid.
174
In architecture, new stone churches had been put up, including
the lost basilicas of Wilfrid with their complex arrangements of arcades and
galleries and their wonderful crypts which still evoke so vividly the catacombs
of Rome. In sculpture, the plastic fullness of the figures on the Ruthwell cross
and its contemporaries represents a unique classicising renaissance.
By the early eighth century, the rich monasteries of England and especially
of Northumbria, although located on the edge of Christendom, were in no
sense remote provincial outposts. They were in touch with major cultural
centres in Francia and southern Gaul. Above all they were in close contact with
Rome, itself energetically developing liturgy, chant and papal ceremonial.
175
The double monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow, in particular, had introduced a
specialist in Romanliturgy and chant attached to St Peter’s itself and was actively
engaged in the study of biblical text. That one of Ceolfrith’s three great pandects
of the entire text of the Bible was designed as a gift was wholly appropriate: the
project to take it to Rome at once demonstrated the achievements of one of
the richest and most advanced monasteries in the Latin West and reciprocated
the gifts which it had itself received from the eternal city.
These, of course, were the achievements of an elite. Monasteries such as
Wearmouth and Jarrow with their buildings in the Roman style, adorned with
172
Aldhelm, Prose Works, ed. Lapidge and Herren; Poetic Works, trans. Lapidge and Rosier; Orchard
(1994).
173
Bede, Opera Historica i,pp. lxxii–lxxv, clx–clxiv.
174
Vita Wilfridi c.17; Alexander (1978). Further on the art and architecture, Wood, chapter 28a below.
175
See esp. McKinnon (2000).
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England in the seventh century 495
glass windows and floored with the artificial stone known as opus signinum,
were very grand indeed. And they were very rich. They were the focal points
of great estates together assessed at 110 hides, over a third of the size, on the
evidence of the Tribal Hidage,ofasmall province or kingdom.
176
They were
in no way remote. According to a late source, Jarrow was known as portus
Ecgfridi, and we may suspect that its founder intended it to be developed
as a major commercial and perhaps military and administrative centre.
177
An
army of dependants, probably of slaves, toiled to support the outstanding
cultural activities of the privileged community of ecclesiastics which lay at its
heart. Christianisation reinforced a social structure, already by 600 marked by
growing differentiation. In every sense, then, the seventh century represents
the point at which England became fully a part of Christian Europe.
176
Bede, Opera Historica i,pp.367–8, 370–1.
177
Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio ii.5.Iam grateful to Ian Wood for drawing my attention
to this reference.
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chapter 18
SCANDINAVIA
Lotte Hedeager
Our image of the societies of Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Sweden and
Norway) in the late Iron Age has been based predominantly on their economic
character, involving aspects such as agriculture and settlement, economy and
society, trade and urbanisation. Combined with studies of burial evidence,
these topics have been the starting point for models of the social and polit-
ical situation, including the earliest form of state-formation in Scandinavia.
1
In more recent years, however, ideological aspects of late pre-Christian soci-
ety have also started to come into focus.
2
A number of new excavations have
contributed to a keener interest in ‘cult sites’, while major new finds of gold
hoards have encouraged interpretations using terms such as ‘ideology’, ‘kings’,
‘aristocracy’ and the like.
3
This has provided a concrete counterpart to Old
Norse literature, new directions in research into the history of religion, and
in place-name studies. A new, interdisciplinary research movement is devel-
oping around these issues where religious, judicial and political conditions are
seen as closely interwoven and where an alternative understanding of the con-
nection between political authority, myths and memory, cult activity, skilled
craft production and exercise of power has emerged.
4
In the following out-
line, I have decided to concentrate mainly on this new approach. First, how-
ever, special attention will be paid to Scandinavia as part of early medieval
Europe.
1
Mortensen and Rasmussen (1988) and (1991); Fabech and Ringtved (1991); Hedeager (1992a).
2
Myhre (2003) gives the most recent summary.
3
Amongst the most important sites in this respect are Gudme/Lundeborg on Fyn: Nielsen, Randsborg
and Thrane (1994); Hedeager (2001); Sorte Muld on Bornholm: Watt (1992); Upp
˚
akra in Scania:
Larsson and H
˚
ardh (1998), and recently H
˚
ardh (2003); Borg in Lofoten: Munch, Johansen and
Roesdahl (1988), Munch (2003).
4
In addition to my ownworks from 1992 onwards,thereis a range of substantial studies by Scandinavian
scholars: e.g. Herschend (1993), (1994), (1996) and (1998); Kristoffersen (1995) and (2000a); Johansen
(1997); Skre (1998); Jakobsson (2003).
496
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Scandinavia 497
the historical setting of late iron age scandinavia
What are known as the Middle Ages in Scandinavia begin around the year
1000, half a millennium later than for the rest of western and central Europe.
Only from this date onwards did Scandinavia consist of unified kingdoms
and was Christianity established as a serious force in pagan Scandinavia. It is
consequently only from this date onwards that Scandinavia has its own written
history. By this date Iceland had been added to the Scandinavian lands, and
much of what was written about Scandinavian history actually comes from
Iceland.
Sure enough, Scandinavia had not been totally illiterate in the preceding
centuries. The runic script was used for magical purposes, as well as for mes-
sages, for protective charms, for memorials and so on, primarily on wood but
also on bone, metal and stone. There were, however, no extended literary texts
in this form. The runic script was not especially Scandinavian: early runes are
known from many Germanic peoples in fifth- and sixth-century Europe, in
England, the Netherlands, Germany and central Europe.
5
In those areas, how-
ever, the roman script was adopted at an early date, and only in Scandinavia did
the runic script develop further during the Viking period. This is the reason
why the runic script is so well known from this area, although it also explains
why we have to wait until as late as the twelfth century for Scandinavia to get
a written history of its own. This does not, however, mean that the people of
Scandinavia were without history, or without any knowledge of ancient events.
Quite the opposite, in fact, but their historical tradition was oral, transmitted
from generation to generation within the constraints of rules and traditions of
composition and performance.
The research tradition in Scandinavian Iron Age archaeology from the 1990s
and onward has been juxtaposed with the Old Norse sources (which include
agreat deal of material from Iceland) from the twelfth to the fourteenth cen-
tury. This is due to a new approach in archaeology, focussing on cognitive
structures, mentality, cosmology and systems of belief. However, the use of the
OldNorse sources from the thirteenth century as an explanatory framework
for the late Iron Age (from the sixth to the eleventh century) involves obvi-
ous reservations. These sources originate from early Christian times and are
therefore not to be treated as a reflection of ‘genuine paganism’. Despite this,
it would be going too far to discard all written texts as useless to our endeavour
and so leave archaeologists without any relevant written evidence from the
North. If used carefully, the Old Norse texts yield valuable information. In
addition, an anthropological approach based on non-western, pre-industrial
5
D
¨
uwel (1978).
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498 lotte hedeager
societies furnishes archaeologists with a general theoreticalframework, enabling
them to get beyond the archaeological and textual evidence. Lacking the mod-
ern separation of economic, political and religious institutions, pre-Christian
Scandinavia can be compared to traditional communities; in both cases the
world-view of a given society tends to fuse these separate domains into a coher-
ent whole. Since much cosmological information is thought to be contained
in myths,
6
special attention is paid to the myths of Old Norse literature,
primarily incorporated in the Poetic Edda and in the Edda of the Icelander
Snorri Sturluson (a kind of textbook for poets who wished to praise kings).
These high-medieval texts do not of course necessarily fit the material evi-
dence from the late Iron Age, but they may create a plausible setting. Central
myths representing the wisdom and knowledge of the pre-Christian world may
contain core elements that remain in place through time, although encrusted
in new layers of meaning, and adapted to new contexts. As an example, an
extensive pagan wisdom still existed in pre-Reformation Icelandic society, in
the guise of traditional esoteric knowledge, which then was transformed into
Satan-worship and witchcraft in the seventeenth century.
7
Galdur (galdring),
galdraastafir (magic staves), runs (secret or occult), skaldskapur (poetry) and
hamrammr (a person who could change shape at will) were too much rooted in
everyday life and thought to lose their role as meaningful concepts. The runic
staves from Bryggen in Bergen also indicate that the Eddic poems were still
well known in Norway in the late Middle Ages. From another perspective it has
convincingly been argued that mythological texts such as the Poetic Edda, some
scaldic verses and Snorri’s Edda incorporate myths that explain fundamental
ideas with regard to life and death in Nordic societies. These ideas retained
their relevance when the majority of the population on Iceland had become
Christian.
8
Snorri’s role in writing the Edda has been a matter of debate for a long
time. Some scholars have seen him as a creative literary artist, others as a far
more reliable communicator of pre-Christian mythology
9
who had no obvious
reason to disparage the faith of his ancestors, although he probably did not
share it himself.
10
Although Snorri’s work has been influenced by Christianity –
as he wrote in a Christian society – one may well wonder whether he could
manipulate old and familiar myths to the extent of giving a false image of the
pre-Christian cosmology still known to his audience. Within a Christianised
society, pre-Christian traditions were still kept alive, possibly perceived through
a Christian perspective, and therefore distorted. Also, we should not discount
6
E.g. Weiner (1999).
7
Hastrup (1990), p. 401.
8
Clunies Ross (1994).
9
In general modern scholars represent the ‘positive’ opinion, among others Holtsmark (1964); De
Vries (1970); Turville-Petre (1975).
10
Hultg
˚
ard (1999).
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Scandinavia 499
the possibility of some ‘invention of tradition’, and of authors like Snorri being
eager to incorporate traditional myths within a new framework, stressing the
continuity between ‘old times’ and the new world they inhabited. Incidentally,
Snorri’s narratives correspond in many details to other early medieval texts
from different parts of Scandinavia. In spite of all these problems, we cannot
afford to disregard Snorri’s information and the information given in the Poetic
Edda.Weare dealing with fundamental myths and systems of beliefs, which
should not be regarded as the mere product of the late pre-Christian era in
Scandinavia. On the contrary, their roots must be deeply anchored in the
traditional pagan universe,
11
i.e. the late Iron Age, and must as such be treated
as a valuable source for archaeologists studying these centuries.
The great literature of early Scandinavia, written in the Old Norse language
but in the roman script, includes other works of Snorri Sturluson, such as
Heimskringla, composed about 1230 with the encouragement of the king of
Norway with the purpose of picturing a coherent narrative of the Norwegian
kings and their descent from the legendary Ynglinga kings of Sweden (Ynglinga
saga). In Denmark, around 1200,Saxo Grammaticus wrote his Latin Gesta
Danorum: the history of the Danish people from prehistory to the present,
again with the encouragement of the Danish king. Even though these historical
accounts reach far back in time and tell of kings, heroes and events which may –
and may not – have some distant connection with historical reality, they are not
historical sources which can simply be used to gain an insight into the history
of Scandinavia in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries. The only possibility
for this lies in whatever information about Scandinavia other early medieval
European texts contain.
scandinavia in european historiography
‘From the mouth of the Rhine my fleet sailed over the sea in the direction
of the rising sun to the land of the Cimbri [presumably Jutland], whither no
Roman had ever gone before, either by land or by sea.’ Thus wrote the emperor
Augustus around the time of the birth of Christ in Monumentum Ancyranum,
an extract from his now lost autobiography reproduced on a temple wall in
Ancyra (now Ankara) in Asia Minor. At that time Scandinavia was beginning
to take its admittedly remote place in the Roman world-view. Even though we
find scattered ‘information’ in the early Greek sources and the Roman historian
Pliny the Elder (d. 79 ad), it is in the Roman historian Tacitus’ work Germania
of the end of the first century ad that we can first talk about a real description
of the northern neighbours of the Roman Empire, the Germanic areas (i.e.
11
Meulengracht Sørensen (1991).
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500 lotte hedeager
Europe north of the Roman frontier along the Rhine and the Danube, and
west of the Vistula). The composition of the Germania should probably be seen
as a logical consequence of Augustus’ information about the Cimbric land in
far, unknown parts, in other words in military terms. Tacitus was describing
those areas which were beyond the border but within the Roman sphere of
interest, and his Germania distinguishes between parts of Germanic territory
and different Germanic peoples, many of which, such as the Goths, the Svear,
the Langobards, the Suebi (Sueves), the Heruli and more, reappear as tribal
names in the early Middle Ages. A number of the factual, ethnographic details
given by Tacitus are also found practically unchanged in Langobardic tradition
five or six centuries later.
12
A more substantial geographical description of Scandinavia comes from the
middle of the second century in the work of the Greek geographer, astronomer
and mathematician Ptolemy, who lived in Alexandria from c.90 to 160 ad.
As a geographer he sought to map and measure the then known world, which
included the north-west of Europe. His world map is much closer to geograph-
ical actuality than that of the later Middle Ages, which is an ingenious compo-
sition with Jerusalem at the centre. In his Geographica (‘Guide to Geography’),
which consists of eight books, Ptolemy states that there were four islands east
of the Cimbric peninsula, ‘Insulae Alociae’ (northern Jutland) and Insulae
Saxonis (west and south of Jutland). These are known as Skandiai, three small
ones and one very large one which was that furthest east and lay opposite the
mouth of the Vistula, the latter being the true Skandia.Healso gives the names
of several different peoples (Geographica 2.11).
Ptolemy’s information was repeated around 550 ad by the Ostrogothic his-
torian Jordanes, who wrote his Getica (De Origine Actibusque Getarum (the
history of the Gothic people)) in Constantinople. The Getica is part based
on the now lost work on Gothic history by the Roman senator Cassiodorus,
Chancellor at the Ostrogothic court in Ravenna, Italy, in the first half of the
sixth century.
Jordanes began his account with a geographical introduction in which Scan-
dza (Scandinavia) was described quite thoroughly. This not only refers to
Ptolemy but also includes a surprisingly comprehensive account of a large
number of named tribal areas, beginning with the northernmost, the Adogitti.
Jordanes gives a careful account of the extraordinary circumstances in which
they lived, in an area where there was unbroken sunlight for fourteen days
in the summer, while there were forty days with no real daylight during the
winter. This is because, he explains, the sun can be seen throughout its course
during the summer while in the winter it does not rise up above the horizon
12
Ausenda (1995), pp. 32–3.
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Scandinavia 501
(Getica iii.19–20). However strange this must have seemed to someone resid-
ing in Constantinople or Ravenna, it is a reasonably correct account of the
situation in the north of Scandinavia.
Amongst the many tribal groups Jordanes named are the Finns, the Lapps,
the Svear, the East Goths, the Gaut-Goths, the Swedes, the Danes and the
Heruli. They are all names which are well known in early medieval Europe
in other contexts. This detailed description may be attributable to the King
Rodulf Jordanes refers to: he had left his kingdom, that of the Ranii, possibly
Romsdal in southern Norway, to seek sanctuary with the Ostrogothic king
Theoderic.
13
It could have been him (or, indeed, some of his subjects) who
provided Cassiodorus with information about the Scandinavian peoples at the
beginning of the sixth century. Even though several of the groups concerned can
apparently be located on the map, approximately at least, using either linguistic
or archaeological evidence,
14
Jordanes’ text is anything but an uncomplicated
one, and its value as a source is much debated.
15
What it does demonstrate,
however, is the existence of tribal groupings as the basis of the geographical
subdivision of Scandinavia, while the account of Rodulf indicates that the king
was the political linchpin of the tribe.
This perception is supported by, inter alia,Gregory of Tours’ description
of what seems to be a real historical event. In his history of the Franks, the
Historiae,from the end of the sixth century, reference is made to a Danish king
Chlochilaic (Hygelac) who, around 515,brought a fleet to raid the Frisian coast
but was slain by King Theuderic’s son Theudebert who had been dispatched to
the area with a large army (Historiae iii:3). The account of this episode contains
several interesting points.
16
First and foremost, the event itself must have been something quite special,
simply because Gregory, who otherwise wrote very little about Scandinavia
and the north-eastern regions, actually recorded it. Secondly, it is worthy of
note that Gregory uses the term rex for the Danish king. Gregory was very
careful in his use of royal terminology, and he always used the term dux for
kings of peripheral areas or areas which were subject to Frankish overlordship
such as the Bretons, the Frisians, the continental Saxons, the Thuringians,
the Alamanni and the Bavarians. When, therefore, he refers to Chlochilaic as
rex he concurrently recognises that the leader of the Danish fleet was effec-
tively independent of the Frankish king. And it is finally noteworthy that the
Danes are not mentioned at all after 515, either by Gregory or in other Frankish
sources. The explanation may be that the victory over Chlochilaic was such
a serious defeat for the Danes that their raids and attempts to dominate the
13
See Skre (1998), ch. 5.1.2.
14
Callmer (1991).
15
Seeinparticular Svennung (1967) and (1972) and references.
16
As pointed out by Wood (1983).
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502 lotte hedeager
Frankish-controlled Frisian littoral ceased throughout the following centuries.
The popularity of this story in the Germanic epic tradition, in, for instance,
the much later Old English poem Beowulf,
17
helps to underline the importance
attached to the event. Southern Scandinavia never fell under Frankish hege-
mony as it was too far away, but after 515 the Danes kept away from Frankish
territory and consequently stayed comprehensively out of European history
for several centuries to come.
‘scandza’–aeuropean origin myth
In the sixth and seventh centuries Scandinavia nevertheless held quite a special
position in the minds of the Migration-period Germanic peoples in Europe as
the place from which many of them, or at least the royal families, claimed their
origin. Between the early medieval peoples on the continent and in England
there were three alternative origin myths: looking back to Troy and the Trojan
heroes (like the Roman origin myth), to Palestine and the biblical people, or to
Scandza, Scandinavia.
18
The former two are explicable in terms of the Greco-
Roman and Christian influence from late antiquity; the earliest of these, and
the one which is not immediately explicable from this perspective, is the third.
In his Getica,Jordanes placed his description of Scandinavia in the intro-
duction, and it is followed by an account of the long history of the migration
of the Goths which began there. Jordanes himself declares that his knowledge
derives from Ablabius (Getica iv.28), who had written the history of the Goths
in the middle of the fifth century. This may have been incorporated by Cas-
siodorus, who in turn passed it on to Jordanes, who completed his Getica in
551.But this does not explain why this migration history recurs in the majority
of the early national/royal origin myths, such as those of the Langobards, the
Burgundians, the Anglo-Saxon peoples, the Heruli and more besides.
Since Cassiodorus wrote his Gothic history in order to make the Ostrogoths
and their royal family, the Amali, equal in birth to the Romans (who came from
Tr o y), it is all the more remarkable that he ‘adopted’ and developed Ablabius’
account of their origins in Scandinavia. But this was not all. Cassiodorus also
copied the Roman royal genealogy, in which there were seventeen generations
between Aeneas and Romulus, by linking Theoderic’s grandson Athalaric to the
first king of the Goths, Gaut/Gapt, through seventeen generations of Gothic
Amal kings, and Gautr is the name Odin gave himself.
19
17
E.g. Storm (1970).
18
Hachmann (1970), pp. 109ff.
19
In Grimnismal (54). Parts, perhaps all, of this poem were composed in Norway in the late ninth or
tenth century. The Old Norse form corresponding to Gapt is Gautr, one of Odin’s names (North
(1997)). Whatever identity one finally attributes to Gautr, the connection with the Scandinavian
pagan pantheon seems to be clear. See also De Vries (1956), p. 41.