From my blog...

Cnut the Great, d. 12 November

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Patricia

Cnut the Great, England’s Viking king, died on Wednesday, 12 November, 1035. Cnut’s birth date was not recorded, but it was likely some time in the 990’s, so he was probably in his early to mid-forties when he died at Shaftesbury Abbey, a foundation favored by the king.

Shaftesbury was the burial place of a previous, Anglo-Saxon king of England, Edward the Martyr, and it is tempting to think that Cnut might have been at the abbey because he was ill and he wanted to pray for the intercession of the sainted king (who by all accounts was no saint, but that’s another story.) Shaftesbury was an abbey of nuns, so it’s also possible that he was there to be tended by the sisters in hopes of recovering from whatever was ailing him. According to Cnut’s biographer Timothy Bolton, Cnut would have been surrounded by members of his court and his huscarles. I imagine that his queen, Emma, was with him as well. We cannot be certain of any of that, but kings of that period rarely went anywhere alone.

Although he was a viking, Cnut was a Christian. His mother, a Polish princess, would certainly have insisted that her children be baptized; Cnut’s baptismal name was Lambert. During his reign as England’s king he made a pilgrimage to Rome where he not only took part in the coronation ceremony of the Holy Roman Emperor but made visits to every sanctuary he could find in the city. It would have kept him busy, to be sure, but he also spent a good deal of his time there negotiating diplomatic and trade agreements for the benefit of the English.

In England, the make-up of Cnut’s court would have been Anglo-Scandinavian with, presumably, elite visitors from all parts of mainland Europe in attendance at times. Cnut “did his best to correct all the misdoings of himself and his predecessors, and wiped away the stain of earlier injustice, perhaps before God and certainly in the eyes of men. At Winchester especially he exhibited the munificence of his generosity, where his offering were such that strangers are alarmed by the masses of precious metal and their eyes dazzled as they look at the flashing gems.” (William of Malmesbury)

Queen Emma & King Cnut. New Minster Liber Vitae, 1031. British Library, Stowe 944, fol.6.

Cnut was buried in the minster at Winchester, although his remains are currently undergoing examination along with those of Queen Emma and several other royals whose bones are all mixed together in the same mortuary chest.

The examiners at the University of Bristol hope to identify and separate the remains, and determine the physical characteristics of each through DNA testing. When the findings are complete, we may know a great deal more about the appearance, and perhaps even the cause of death, of England’s Viking king.

Sources:
Dark Age Dorset, Robert Westwood
Cnut the Great, Timothy Bolton

 

 

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The Battle of Assandun

Posted on October 16, 2018 by Patricia

Edmund battles Cnut at Assandun. 14th c, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College

And all the nobility of the English nation was there undone!
                                                                                  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

On the 18th day of October in the year 1016 a great battle was fought between the forces of the English king Edmund Ironside and the Danish prince Cnut, younger son of Swein Forkbeard. According to the 12th century chronicler William of Malmesbury, Cnut had sailed to England in 1015 at the head of a massive fleet with the intention of either capturing the English throne or dying in the attempt.

Cnut’s fleet sails to England

Over the course of the next year the two war leaders met in battle four times, with Cnut unable to secure either the decisive victory he so desired or the death that Edmund Ironside would so willingly have granted him. Not until that fateful day in October would the rivalry for the English throne be decided on a down in Essex called Assandun.

Today, the site of that battle is claimed by both Ashingdon in southeast Essex and Ashdon, about 50 miles farther north. In a paper published in 1993, archaeologist Warwick Rodwell carefully considered both sites, but hesitated to definitively state that one or the other was Assandun. Nevertheless, Rodwell’s careful review of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) account and its tactical implications, along with his boots-on-the-ground research convinced me that the northern site, at Ashdon, is where the battle was fought.

On that October day Edmund Ironside led a force made up of “all the English nation” (ASC) against a Danish army that must have been significantly reduced in numbers after 12 months and 4 major battles. Yet despite the advantage of numbers, the English lost. The 12th century chronicler William of Malmesbury wrote, “On that field Cnut destroyed a kingdom, there the whole flower of our country withered.”

So, how did that happen? The earliest account, the ASC, puts the blame for Edmund’s defeat squarely on the shoulders of the villainous Eadric Streona, who “first began the flight and so betrayed his natural lord”. Eadric had allied with Cnut in 1015 but had deserted him for  Edmund when the Danes appeared to be on the losing side in the weeks before this battle. In using the term betrayed, the ASC seems to imply something more sinister than mere cowardice.

100 years later the chronicler John of Worcester went into more detail. He wrote that the English formed a battle line four men deep atop a hill, and King Edmund exhorted them to defend themselves and their kingdom from men that they had beaten before. The Danes approached slowly on level ground, and the English, at Edmund’s signal, attacked down the hill. The battle was fiercely fought on both sides, but Eadric Streona was still secretly Cnut’s ally. So when at Assandun the Danish line wavered and it looked like the English would win, Eadric, keeping a promise he had made to Cnut, fled with all his men “and gave the Danes the victory.”

The battle rages at Assandun

The most extensive account of the battle, though, appears in the Encomium Emmae Reginae, written in about 1043 and therefore earlier than Worcester’s account. In this version, Eadric urged his men to flee even before the battle began! “Let us flee and snatch our lives from imminent death, or else we will fall forthwith, for I know the hardihood of the Danes.” Eadric did this at Cnut’s behest in return for some favor—although the encomiast did not hazard what that favor might have been. Seeing a good chunk of his army leave the field Edmund was undeterred. He told his warriors that they were better off without the craven men who deserted them, and he “advanced into the midst of the enemy, cutting down the Danes on all sides.”

The encomiast claimed that the battle lasted all day—a very long time for a battle in this period—and that although the English had more men, they lost more men, too, than the Danes. It seemed to the English that the Danes were not so much fighting as raging (berserkers?), and that the Danes were determined to die before they would withdraw. When night fell, the English, weary and disheartened, retreated and Cnut was left master of the slaughter field.

It seems clear that whether Eadric Streona fled before the battle began or retreated in the midst of the fray, he betrayed his king and directly impacted the outcome of the battle. Cnut’s collusion with him is somewhat less certain; made even more so by the fact that within a year he executed Eadric ‘most justly’ for his betrayals.

Edmund, apparently not yet willing to concede defeat, fled across England with the remnant of his army to Gloucester, with Cnut on his heels. There, the treacherous Eadric, who had a foot in both camps, brokered a settlement between them that divided England, with Edmund keeping the southern shires of Wessex and Cnut taking Mercia and the north, including the mercantile powerhouse that was London.

Cnut & Edmund Ironside agree to divide England

At this point, according to the Encomium, God stepped in: within a  month Edmund was dead, likely from wounds or from an illness he suffered in the aftermath of Assandun. Soon after, Cnut was proclaimed king of England.

The Battle of Assandun, which put a Dane upon the English throne,  is not as well known as that other battle that was fought exactly fifty years later at Hastings and resulted in a Norman takeover. There is no Tapestry that depicts the battle of 1016. But in Denmark, in the King’s Corridor of Frederiksborg Castle, both events are commemorated, for both Cnut and William came from Danish stock. On one wall is a hand-painted photographic copy of the Bayeux Tapestry. Facing it is a series of 19th century paintings documenting the 11th century Danish conquest of England, with several depictions of Cnut’s great victory at the Battle of Assandun prominent among them.

Sources:
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Rev. James Ingram, London, 1823
http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/asintro2.html

The History of the English Kings,  William of Malmesbury, trans. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M.Thomson, M. Winterbottom, Oxford University Press, 1998

The Battle of Assandun and its Memorial Church, Warwick J. Rodwell; in The Battle of Maldon: Fiction and Fact, Ed. J. Cooper, London: Hambledon, 1993

The Chronicle of John of Worcester, trans J. Bray, P. McGurk, New York, 1995

Paintings: The Danish Conquest of England, Frederiksborg Palace, artist Lorenz Frølich, 1886

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Tolkien and the Anglo-Saxons

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Patricia

Where has the horse gone? Where is the rider? Where is the giver of gold?
Where are the seats of the feast? Where are the joys of the hall?
O the bright cup! O the brave warrior!
from The Wanderer, Old English Poem. Translation: R.M.Liuzza

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
from The Two Towers. J.R.R. Tolkien

Most fans of J.R.R.Tolkien know that he was not just the author of one of the greatest works of fantasy ever written, but that he was a professor of English at Oxford and, for many years, the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon. He was, essentially, steeped in the language, history and poetry of Anglo-Saxon England.

So it is no surprise that even the title of the trilogy that brought him fame, The Lord of the Rings, is a reference to Anglo-Saxon kings who were warriors, lords, and ring-givers.

My own first encounter with Tolkien’s trilogy took place when I was 14, and although I loved the book and read it more than once over the decades that followed, I did not perceive the thrumming current of Old English history and language that coursed beneath it. That did not happen until I began my own study of the history of England before the Conquest, and I began to recognize Old English words  that were familiar from Tolkien’s novels. For example, Meduseld, the great hall of the kings of Rohan, is the Old English word for mead hall. Tolkien first describes it this way, in the words of Legolas in The Two Towers:

“…a green hill rises upon the east. A dike and mighty wall and thorny fence encircle it. Within there rise the roofs of the houses, and in the midst, set upon a green terrace, there stands aloft a great hall of Men.”

Meduseld from the film The Two Towers. Photo: https://redice.tv

The name of that place is Edoras, from, I can only guess, the Old English word edor, which means  ‘a place enclosed by a hedge’, just as Legolas describes it. Indeed, the very concept of a great hall comes from the cultures of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse. And of course there are words like shire (OE:scire—precinct), orc (god of the infernal regions), ent (giant), Mordor (OE: morþor—great wickedness), Deagol (secret), or Isengard (Iron fortress).

Many scholars, in particular Nancy Marie Brown in her recent book Song of the Vikings have written about the Norse/Icelandic elements in Tolkien’s novels; but it seems to me that Rohan is more Anglo-Saxon than Norse – although, admittedly, both societies sprang from common Germanic roots. The name Eowyn, for example, is strikingly similar to the Old English theowen, meaning hand-maiden. And because I cannot read about Eowyn’s exploits in The Lord of the Rings without thinking about Æthelflæd, 10th century Anglo-Saxon warrior queen and Lady of the Mercians, I have to wonder if Tolkien had Æthelflæd in mind when he imagined Eowyn.

My own novels are set in the 11th century reign of Æthelred Unraed (OE: ill-counseled), and the more I learned about Æthelred the more I was struck by similarities to Tolkien’s Theoden. In Old English þeoden means warlord, or king. When first we meet Theoden in the great hall of Meduseld in Edoras (see above), he is described thus:

“…in the middle of the dais was a great gilded chair. Upon it sat a man so bent with age that he seemed almost a dwarf; but his white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids from beneath a thin golden circlet set upon his brow…Slowly the old man rose to his feet, leaning heavily upon a short black staff with a handle of white bone; and now the strangers saw that, bent though he was, he was still tall and must in youth have been high and proud indeed.”

Theoden and his advisor Wormtongue, from the film The Two Towers. https://scenarieconomici.it

The 12th century historian John of Worcester describes King Æthelred as “…elegant in his manners, handsome in visage, glorious in appearance.” But by the beginning of the 11th century Æthelred is elderly, like Theoden, and has been long upon the throne. His kingdom is being ravaged by vikings as Theoden’s is under attack by orcs. As Theoden huddles in his great hall, unwilling to face the turmoil in his land or lead men to battle, so Æthelred earned a reputation as indecisive, cowardly, and indolent. And like Theoden, he placed his trust in a singularly bad advisor.

Tolkien gives Theoden a counselor named Grima (OE: mask) whose nickname is Wormtongue (OE: wyrm-tunge). A wyrm is a serpent or even a dragon, and Grima is a master at twisting words to persuade Theoden to do his bidding. He is a liar and false counselor who is unmasked by Gandalf.

Æthelred, too, has a false counselor, one Eadric, whom he trusted more than anyone else and whose nickname is Streona (the acquisitor). 12th century historians suggest that Eadric was able to gain advancement by his persuasive speech, and he acquired a reputation for deceit, treachery and murder.  It is only when Æthelred is driven out of England to exile in Normandy and presumably no longer under the spell of Eadric that, like Theoden, he finds his courage again and returns to England to lead his armies against his enemies.

A rejuvenated Theoden from the film. I expect he has a bit of Edward Ironside in him, as well as a rejuvenated Aethelred. https://www.amazon.com

Tolkien wrote, in his foreward to the 1966 edition of The Lord of the Rings,

“An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.”

He was referring specifically to theories connecting the wars in Middle Earth to World Wars I and II; but I think his comment can apply to anything that an author experiences – books read, languages learned, emotions experienced. Everything goes into the mind and one never knows what will re-appear, whether intentionally or not, in a manuscript.

My own historical novels, while based on my study of the reign of Æthelred, are very much a product of my own imagination and experience, but I am certain that they owe something as well to my dog-eared copy of The Lord of the Rings.

The road goes ever on and on…

 

 

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Emma of Normandy & Bayeux

Posted on May 26, 2018 by Patricia

The charming town of Bayeux near the coast of Normandy is perhaps best known for its remarkable Tapestry, a very long length of embroidered linen that portrays events surrounding the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

A few years ago I wrote about the Tapestry and its history on this blog, (you can review that here, if you like), but I had not yet visited Bayeux myself. I had been to Normandy – to Rouen, Fecamp, the Abbeys of Jumieges and Wandrille, to Caen and even the island and abbey of Mont Saint-Michele, but I had missed Bayeux in my several trips to Normandy over the years. Last month, though, I spent a few days there, absorbing the Tapestry and its story with some help from the audio tour that, interestingly, tells the story from the French point of view. Which, as you may guess, differs in certain crucial details, from the English version of what happened.

But today’s post is not about the Tapestry. No, it is about what I discovered unexpectedly as I wandered about the city of Bayeux: a direct link between Bayeux and Emma of Normandy, queen of England.

There is a park in Bayeux—Place Charles de Gaulle—named so because on June 14, 1944, shortly after the Allied landings of D-Day, the General returned to France, to Bayeux, after 4 years of exile during the Nazi occupation; and on that day he gave a speech in that park. It was a momentous event, and presaged the end of WWII. (And, by the way, the return of the Tapestry to Bayeux after the Nazis had spirited it away. See earlier post for that story.)

Charles de Gaulle in the streets of Bayeux. Photo: Imperial War Museum

But long before that, in about 960, Richard I—Emma’s father and the first Duke of Normandy—built a castle on what is now Place Charles de Gaulle.  Bayeux Castle was still standing until the latter part of the 18th century, and it’s entirely possible that way back in the late 10th century, Emma may have visited the castle with her family. Like all royals of that time, Richard’s court was peripatetic. It moved from estate to estate, or fortification to fortification, dispensing ducal justice and living off of local food rents. And hunting. And feasting. And probably sorting whatever problems had come up since the duke’s last visit.

Bayeux Castle had a fortified gate to the west that allowed direct access from outside the city. It had another gate to the east, that overlooked the city and was equipped with a drawbridge over the defensive moat that surrounded it. It had a lodge for the castle commander, a chapel, barracks for the garrison, and a manor house. It looks pretty impressive in the drawing below, but my guess is that the first fortification, built by Richard, was much, much simpler. Moat, drawbridge, manor and all those towers you can see were likely added centuries later. Still, it was a ducal estate, and Emma might well have spent time there as a child.

Photo: http://www.cestenfrance.fr

Today, smack in the center of the park stands a fountain that was erected in the 19th century by a mayor of Bayeux to honor the Dukes of Normandy. Atop the fountain is a statue representing Poppa, the woman believed to be the ancestress of all the Norman dukes and, by the way, the kings of England thanks to William the Conqueror and the events depicted on the Tapestry. Here is Poppa:

Statue of Poppa in Bayeux

So. Who, exactly, was Poppa and why did she land on that fountain honoring the Norman dukes?

According to historian David Crouch in his book The Normans, and he is drawing  from the 10th century Norman historian Dudo of San Quentin, Poppa was the beautiful daughter of a Frankish count, Berenger II of Neustria. She fell into the hands of the viking, Rollo when he sacked the city of Bayeux—and that sounds like it might make a good novel! Fans of the tv show VIKINGS, by the way, will be familiar with Rollo. This guy:

Rollo in VIKINGS; played by actor Clive Standen. Photo: The History Channel.

And if Rollo actually looked like that, the beautiful Poppa may have been smitten because Dudo goes on to report that Poppa became Rollo’s concubine. It’s just as likely that Poppa had no say in the matter whatever, and Rollo would later set Poppa aside to marry Gisela, the daughter of King Charles the Simple. Marriage in the 10th century was all about political alliances, not personal preference. Gisela, though, was childless, and she fell into disgrace for insulting her husband and for entertaining Frankish men on the sly. Apparently she preferred Franks to vikings, or maybe Rollo hadn’t put Poppa as far aside as Dudo would have us believe. Because when Gisela died, Rollo took up with Poppa again, and it was Poppa who was the mother of Rollo’s heir William Longsword, who was in turn the father of Richard I, who was in turn the father of Emma. So that makes Emma the great-granddaughter of Rollo and Poppa.

Note: The tv show VIKINGS would have you believe that Gisela was the mum of Rollo’s children. Not so. It was the beautiful Poppa, Berenger’s daughter–at least, according to Dudo. And he was there.

Bordering the park and within sight of the fountain is the Hotel Particulier Poppa. Hotel particulier is the French name for luxurious city mansions. This one was built in the 19th century and now it is an actual hotel—something I did not realize until after I left Bayeux. It seems that I might just have to return there one day—to visit the Tapestry again and to stay in the lovely hotel named after Emma’s great-grandmother.

 

 

 

 

 

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Book Club Bingo Adventure

Posted on May 5, 2018 by Patricia

On Sunday, June 10, I will be flying down to San Diego to participate in BOOK CLUB BINGO ADVENTURE, an event hosted by Adventures By The Book. I will be one of 22 authors who will be talking and lunching with readers in an intimate setting at the San Diego Public Library.

This is an all-day event, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Come spend a day with authors and talk about books! Our keynote speaker will be NY Times bestselling author Jenna Blum, and attendees will receive signed copies of Jenna’s latest hardcover novel, THE LOST FAMILY.

There will be drawings, giveaways, book sales and signings by all 22 authors in attendance, with sale proceeds going to the San Diego Public Library.

This will be THE book event of the year, so anyone who loves books, loves book clubs, loves libraries, and is anywhere near San Diego in June, come join us!

Event Details

Sunday, June 10, 2018, 9:00am-4:00pm
San Diego Central Library, Shiley Special Events Suite, 9th Floor
330 Park Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92101
Open to every reader; you do not have to be in a book club to attend this event.
Cost*
$85 early bird pricing (extended to May 10, 2018) for NovelNetwork members** & San Diego Public Library Foundation donors
$95 early bird pricing (extended to May 10, 2018) for non-members

Find out more about this event and about NOVEL NETWORK here.
I hope to see some of Queen Emma’s fans on June 10th!

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The Death of Æthelred

Posted on April 22, 2018 by Patricia

Æthelred II, Anglo-Saxon king of England, died on 23 April, 1016. His passing was noted  in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in an entry that was probably written within a decade of his death:

He ended his days on St. George’s day; having held his kingdom in much tribulation and difficulty as long as his life continued.

Ethelred the Unready, Chronicle of Albion c.1220, British Library

Beyond that rather bald statement, we know nothing about the final days of the man who had ruled England for 38 difficult years. What was the cause of his death? Who were the witnesses that stood at his bedside? What words, if any, did he speak before he breathed his last? Any answers to these questions must be mere conjecture—guesses built on what  we know of events in England at that time.

For example, several months before his death, in late September or early October, the king had been taken ill. That the Chronicle actually notes that he was sick that autumn of 1015 is an indication of how grave his condition must have been. Mind you, his immediate forbears were not long-lived. His father had died quite suddenly at about age 34 and his uncle at 19. His elder brother died at 16 and his grandfather at 25, but both of them were murdered so they hardly count. (It wasn’t all fun & games, being an Anglo-Saxon royal.) Nevertheless, at 47-ish, Æthelred was well past his ‘sell by’ date in comparison to his forbears, and any illness would be worrisome. It may have come upon him suddenly, for the Chronicle states that he lay sick at Cosham—a royal estate, judging from evidence in the Domesday Book, but one not previously associated with Æthelred.

As bad luck would have it, he fell sick at roughly the same time that a Danish army led by Cnut invaded England’s southwestern shires, only about fifty miles from where Æthelred lay ill in a manor that was not nearly as safe as the stone walled burhs of nearby Chichester or Winchester. Nevertheless, he stayed at Cosham, apparently too sick to do anything about the invasion beyond ordering someone else to gather a force and respond to it—assuming he was well enough to actually give that order himself.

The king’s health must have improved, though, because after Christmas we find him in London—a journey of about seventy miles from Cosham. Was he well enough to ride there, in the rain or snow of late autumn or mid-winter, or was he borne along muddy roads in a horse litter? Or did he sail to London on dangerous seas along the Sussex coast and around Kent into the Thames estuary? No matter which mode of travel he chose, it could not have been an easy journey and would have lasted at least a week, perhaps longer.

During the early part of 1016 he was recovered enough to lead the London garrison north from the city to muster with an army led by his son, Edmund. Remember, this was still winter, and although it was not as cold in the Anglo-Saxon period as it would be some 400 years later when the Thames at London froze so hard it could be crossed on foot, January was still cold, and you couldn’t count on it being dry. A sojourn with the army would likely have been miserable. Even a tent fit for a king was still a tent. Æthelred did not stay with the army long, though. He soon returned to London, not because he was sick but because, according to the Chronicle, he was afraid that someone in that great host wished him harm. Perhaps he had good reason to be afraid; or perhaps he was just paranoid. Clearly, though, he intended to stay alive. Nevertheless, by April he was dying.

So, although we do not know the exact cause of Æthelred’s death, it may have been that his health, both of mind and body, was failing in the final weeks of his life.

As to who was with him at the end, that, too, must be conjecture. His son Edmund had been campaigning in western Mercia, but suddenly he returned to London. It’s possible that he had received word of the king’s impending death and that he wished to see his father one last time, or possibly he wanted to position himself to make a bid for the throne. Perhaps both things were in his mind. In any case, it is likely that he was near his father’s bedside at the end and that his younger, twenty-something brother Edwig was with him.

Some of the king’s daughters, too, might have been witness to Æthelred’s passing although the Chronicle makes no mention of any of them being in London. Well, actually, the Chronicle does not mention them at all, ever. They were women, you know. Anyway, if the king’s daughters had gathered at the London palace to celebrate Christmas they might have remained within the safety of the city’s walls, given that a Danish army was marauding around the kingdom. Æthelred’s daughter Ælfa had been recently widowed when her husband was murdered by the Danes; did she flee to London after his death or did she barricade herself inside Bamburgh Castle in Northumbria? Her sister Edyth was the wife of a traitor who had joined the Danes. If she was still welcome at her father’s court, she may have been at the king’s side. Their sister Wulfhild was married to a powerful East Anglian lord, but she might have preferred even a bitter, wintry London to the sogginess of the fens, so she, too, may have been at the king’s bedside. Their youngest sister Mathilda would likely have remained in her convent at Wherwell, near Winchester. Nuns didn’t get out of the cloister much.

Queen Emma was very likely among the women who attended the king in his final days. Although there are some scholars who believe that Emma was in Normandy from 1013 until 1017–for she and her children had fled there in late 1013 and the king had joined them for a time–I’m not of that opinion. Emma’s properties and income were in England, so once the king had returned to England and his throne she had little reason to remain at her brother’s court in Rouen.

Photo Credit: John Mason

Certainly Emma’s eldest son, 11-year-old Edward, had returned to England and likely he would have been with his mother at the king’s side. Whether her daughter Goda and her youngest son Alfred were there or had remained behind in Normandy is anyone’s guess. The Chronicle gives us no clue.

What about the clergy? Who would have prayed at the king’s bedside? The most powerful prelate in the kingdom was Wulfstan, archbishop of York. Because York was already under Danish control it’s possible that Wulfstan had taken refuge in London with the king, especially if the king had been ailing. The Canterbury archbishop, I believe, would have been sent for if the king’s death was imminent, along with the bishops of London and Rochester, and probably some of the abbots who often attended the gatherings of the witan where charters were drawn up and laws formulated. The abbot of Peterborough, Abbot Ælfsy, was close to the queen and had accompanied her to Normandy. I’d bet money that he was in London with the queen when the king passed away. The scene may have looked something like the depiction of the death of Edward the Confessor on the Bayeux Tapestry although I’m guessing that on both occasions there would have been far more people in attendance.

Death of Edward the Confessor

Æthelred was laid to rest in St. Paul’s. The great stone church on Ludgate Hill probably rose high above every other church in the city. It had been re-built after a fire in 962 destroyed the earlier church. It had an elaborately carved wooden ceiling, and buried behind the main altar was St. Erkenwald, the 7th century bishop known as the ‘Light of London’. If you’ve ever wondered who Bishopsgate was named after, wonder no more. It was Bishop Erkenwald. Also buried in St. Paul’s at that time was the recently martyred archbishop of Canterbury, Ælfheah, who had been murdered by drunken Vikings in 1012. Æthelred would have known him well, and perhaps for a time they lay side by side near the main altar. Only for a time, though, because within a decade Æfheah’s remains would be carried in a magnificent procession to Canterbury, and in 1087 St. Paul’s would burn down once again. A new St. Paul’s rose from those ashes, and Æthelred was given an elaborate tomb there, next to St. Sebba, a 7th century king of Essex. That’s Æthelred on the right.

Sebba & Ethelred Monument, Wikimedia Commons

Alas, both tombs were lost when that church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, but there is a plaque in St. Paul’s that commemorates them and many others whose monuments were lost.

Photo Credit Stephen C. Dickson

In the days following Æthelred’s death, his eldest living son, Edmund, would be proclaimed king by all the counselors and the citizens in London. His coronation was the first to take place in nearly forty years, and despite the Danish army that was terrorizing the kingdom, there must have been an element of hope and exuberance and perhaps relief in the atmosphere of London on the day that the vigorous young king, 27 years old and nicknamed Ironside, took his place upon his father’s throne.

Edmund Ironside. Wikimedia

As for Æthelred’s final words,they went unrecorded. But given the many years that he reigned in the face of repeated Danish assaults, and given the turmoil that he left behind, he may well have expressed something akin to the words that Winston Churchill often repeated to staff during the darkest days of The Blitz: “Keep buggering on”.

Sources:
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles,  1997, Anne Savage, trans.
Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 2001, Pauline Stafford
An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, 1981, David Hill
www.TheHistoryOfLondon.co.uk, Peter Stone
www.opendomesday.org

 

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Emma of Normandy Through Time

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Patricia
Mortuary Chest, Emma of Normandy, Winchester Cathedral

Mortuary Chest, Emma of Normandy, Winchester Cathedral

Emma,
a gem more splendid through the splendors of her merits…

So begins the epigram written late in the 11th century by Godfrey, prior of Winchester, commemorating Emma, Queen of England.

Queen Emma died on 6 March, 1052, and was buried with great honor in the royal mausoleum, the Old Minster, in Winchester. Her passing was noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and commemorated annually by prayers at Winchester’s New Minster, at Ely Abbey and at Christ Church Canterbury. At her death she was at least 60 years old, perhaps as old as 70, and for 32 of those years she was a queen of England. She was the consort of two kings, the mother of two kings, and the great-aunt of William the Conqueror who would have had no claim to the English throne in 1066 if it hadn’t been for Queen Emma. She was wife, mother, queen, widow and dowager queen through one of the most turbulent periods in England’s history.

Although Emma does not have the name recognition today of, say, Eleanor of Aquitaine or Ann Boleyn, she was a remarkable woman and quite well known, not only in her lifetime but for centuries after her death.  Where’s the proof of that? Well, to begin with, we have two contemporary drawings of Emma – and that in itself is remarkable.

Queen Emma & King Cnut. New Minster Liber Vitae, 1031. British Library, Stowe 944, fol.6.

Queen Emma & King Cnut. New Minster Liber Vitae, 1031. British Library, Stowe 944, fol.6.

Frontispiece of Encomium Emmae Reginae. 11th c. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Frontispiece of Encomium Emmae Reginae. 11th c. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In addition, Emma, who was given the name of a royal Anglo-Saxon saint, Ælfgiva, upon her marriage to England’s King Æthelred, may be one of the few female figures stitched into the Bayeux Tapestry. Caveat: it is not certain that this is Emma. Scholars continue to argue passionately about the identity of the lady in the tapestry; she was important enough to be named, and apparently she was so well known at the time that anyone looking at the tapestry would have known who this Ælfgiva was and where she fit into the story. Not so those of us looking back at it from a distance of 900 years! The images surrounding  her–the monk who reaches toward her face, and the little naked man in the lower border–merely add to the mystery.

Aelfgyva (Emma?) on the Bayeux Tapestry.

Aelfgyva (Emma?) on the Bayeux Tapestry.

We are on much firmer ground some 100 years after Emma’s death when an anonymous artist depicted her in a lavishly illustrated, 12th century biography of her son, King Edward the Confessor.

Emma with her sons Edward & Alfred from The Life of Edward the Confessor, 12th c.

Emma with her sons Edward & Alfred from The Life of Edward the Confessor, 12th c.

Queen Emma presents her sons to Richard of Normandy, The Life of Edward the Confessor, 12th c., Cambridge University Library, Ee.3.59:fol4v

There are textual references to Emma, too, from the 11th century on. She appears in one of the Norse sagas, (Liðsmannaflokkr), as the chaste widow who stands upon the wall of London and watches the battle raging below her. She is mentioned in the annals of Germany and Normandy, and in the post-Conquest histories of England.

Late in her life Emma herself commissioned a book to be written about events she witnessed or which impacted her in some way. Known today as the Encomium Emmae Reginae, it was certainly read and discussed at the Anglo-Danish-Norman court where she reigned as queen mother. More than 500 years later a copy of that book was in the library of William Cecil, chief adviser to Elizabeth I, so it’s quite possible that the great Tudor queen, too, was familiar with Emma’s name and reputation.

Certainly someone in Elizabethan London knew about Emma. She appears as a character in a drama from that period titled Edmund Ironside.  It’s not a very good play, although at least one scholar thinks it may have been a very early work of Shakespeare. Whoever the author was, he knew enough about Emma to imagine her as a queen and as a grieving mother who is forced to send her children out of England for their safety.

After that, we have to fast-forward to the 1960’s to find Emma again. In his 1968 production The Ceremony of Innocence, playwright Ronald Ribman imagined Queen Emma as, well, something of a harridan. He places her opposite an agonized and irresolute King Æthelred.

A very snarky Queen Emma in A Ceremony of Innocence.

It was at about that same time that historical novelists began to set their stories in 11th century England, and Emma was cast in supporting roles. You can find her in Anya Seton’s Avalon,  Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter, Helen Hollick’s I am the Chosen King, and Justin Hill’s Shieldwall. 

Scholars of medieval history, of course, have always known about Queen Emma. Many eminent historians – Alistair Campbell, Helen Damico, Simon Keynes, Eleanor Searle, and, especially Pauline Stafford (Queen Emma & Queen Edith: Queenship & Women’s Power in 11th Century England, 1997) – have looked closely at Emma’s career. Their in-depth studies led to the publication of popular biographies by Isabella Strachan (2004) and Harriet O’Brien (2005).

In 2005, though, Emma was finally given a central role in a historical novel. Helen Hollick’s A Hollow Crown was published in England in that year, and it appeared in the U.S. in 2010 as The Forever Queen. Emma was making a comeback!

FQueen

My own novel about Emma, Shadow on the Crown, was published in 2013.  It has since been translated into four languages, introducing Queen Emma to readers in Russia, Germany, Italy and even Brazil.  The sequel, The Price of Blood, was released in 2015, and it continues Emma’s story up to the year 1012. I am currently at work on the final book of the trilogy that will follow Emma into her second royal marriage and introduce her, I hope,  to an even broader audience.

Recently, Queen Emma became the subject of scientific investigation. Her skeletal remains and those of a number of early English monarchs have for some years been  undergoing examination by a team of scientists from the University of Bristol. The effort hopes to separate and identify bones that were tumbled together into mortuary chests in the 17th century, as well as to learn details about these long-dead royals. (Personally, I would love to know, at the very least, how tall Emma was and what her diet might have been.) Recently the Dean and the Chapter of the cathedral announced that the remains had been “formally dated by the Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford and that their origins are thought to be from the late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods, which is consistent with the historical burial records of the named individuals.” The study is on-going, and I am sure that I am not the only one anxiously awaiting further announcements about their findings.

The mortuary chests in Winchester Cathedral.

So, through the efforts of scientists, of scholars, of historians, of novelists who love history, and of readers who love historical fiction, this remarkable woman is once more garnering some name recognition as a significant figure in English history.

Shadow on the Crown, Russian edition.

 

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A Story in Three Parts

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Patricia

My current work in progress is the third book of a trilogy about the 11th century queen of England, Emma of Normandy.

Why write a trilogy, you may wonder. Why not put the entire story into one book? Maybe, you think, I began to write a single book, but the story just got away from me. Or was it possible that I knew it was going to be a trilogy back when I began to write it? (In 2007, if you’re wondering.)

In fact, I knew from the start that this had to be more than one book. It seemed to me that I would not only have to tell Emma’s story, but I would also have to include the very complicated history of the world she lived in and immerse readers into it. Either I was going to write more than one novel, or it was going to be so long that no one would want to publish it—not that I had any inkling, when I began, that it would ever get published.

I’d already spent several years researching Emma, the Normans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, and the history of late 10th and early 11th century England, and before I wrote a single word, there was a very big decision I had to make:

How much of Emma’s life story was I going to tell?

That was a dilemma, because Queen Emma lived well into her sixties, perhaps even into her seventies. Almost immediately I decided that I did not want to write a novel that would cover, say, fifty years, for the simple reason that I did not know how to do it, even in a trilogy, without diluting the drama that I felt was inherent in Emma’s story. One thing I did know was this:

It is drama, conflict and change –those things that we hate in our own lives—that make the imaginary world of a novel so compelling.

So in contemplating my novel, I needed to focus on the drama. I had discovered that there were two distinct periods of Emma’s life that were fraught with conflict: the 16 years of her marriage to King Æthelred of England which began when she was probably about 16, and another period of nine years when she was in her 50’s. Both periods were marked by turmoil in Emma’s life and by massive unrest and political upheaval in England.

Emma and her children fleeing from Sven Forkbeard’s conquest of England. Manuscript Miniatures Cambridge.

It was that earlier period, when Emma first arrived in England, that intrigued me the most. I wanted to explore the difficulties that she must have faced as a young, foreign queen. I wanted to write a story that would reflect the turbulent history she witnessed, explore what she must have lived through, and imagine for myself the emotions she must have experienced.

Most importantly, I wanted to present the unrest of that time, not from the viewpoint of a king or a warrior, but from the viewpoint of a woman. The men’s stories—those tales of heroes in mail with their swords and shields—have been told over and over; it is the women’s stories that have gone largely unrecorded. That was my challenge: tell the story that hasn’t been told.

In the process I have created 68 characters, most of them historical figures, including their backgrounds and detailed descriptions. I have researched and imagined 11th century England, Normandy and Denmark, including 25 different towns. I have had to envision churches, great halls, royal chambers, ships, manors, abbeys, tents and army camps—and fittingly furnish each one of them.

Sometimes historical re-enactors provide inspiration.

I have had to make up a great deal of Emma’s story due to the simple fact that there was no monk sitting on a stool in a corner of the great hall or the royal bedchamber taking notes about what the king, the queen and their retainers and attendants said to each other. Emma didn’t keep a journal. There are no letters extant from her or anyone who knew her, and even many of the annals that were kept at the time have been lost. Most of what we know was written after the people involved were already dead. It has been a difficult task to write Emma’s story—much more difficult than I first imagined. It has filled my life now for nine years, and I’m not finished yet.

I do not regret a moment of it.

Why do we read and watch and listen to stories? We have been doing these things since our ancestors first gathered around their fires in the dark or drew pictures on cave walls. Stories fascinate us. We fall into them, we fall in love with the characters we meet in them, we draw inspiration or insight from them, we experience emotions through words printed on a page.

I set myself the task of creating that emotional rush—first for myself and then for anyone else who would read what I’d written. That meant I had to whittle sixteen years of 11th century history, and sixteen years of a woman’s life along with her hopes and fears and a myriad of decisions, into manageable chunks, I had to take readers into another time and place,  introduce them to individuals with odd names they had never heard before, and occasionally fling words at them from an English language so different from our own that it is unreadable to anyone who has not made a study of it.

That meant I had to write…a trilogy. Three books, yes; but one story about a once-powerful woman who had been forgotten but who deserved to be re-introduced to the world.

Her name was Emma.

Russian language cover of Shadow on the Crown

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Vikings 5 Recap, Episode 10: MOMENTS OF VISION

Posted on January 25, 2018 by Patricia

Although this episode is set in Denmark and Iceland, there is an elegiac quality to it that reminded me of Old English poetry.

O the bright cup! O the brave warrior!
O the glory of princes! How the time passed away,
slipped into nightfall as if it had never been!’

How appropriate, that the final words we hear at episode’s end are from the spámaðr:

“We are all going into the dark.”

This somber mood begins in the opening moments with the mournful song that the battle Danes sing as they march toward slaughter. I don’t know what the words of the song mean, but it is in a minor key and their voices echo eerily through the hills. Hearing the song, the major players look skyward or close their eyes. Heahmund the Christian prays. Everyone is solemn except Ivar because this is Ivar’s party and he is oh! so happy. Everybody else is going to fight, and he is going to watch them die. Fun times!

Then the war drums begin. And after that the bells begin to toll. Meantime, two armies face each other beneath a dark sky across a field where mist is rising. The sense of doom is conveyed in everything we see and hear, from the black paint around Lagertha’s eyes to the rasp of her sword as she pulls it from its sheath, to the cry of “Loose!” as the sword comes down and we hear the sound of arrows flying.

The quick cuts between present and past time in the midst of the ongoing battle, the ‘moments of vision’ of the title—these are techniques we’ve not seen before in the show. Michael Hirst explained in a recent interview that he was bidding farewell to some of his characters as well as trying to convey what happens in the mind of a warrior in the midst of battle when death is but one sword stroke away. We see brother meet brother; we see one turn away from fratricide and another embrace it. And that dirge-like song returns to haunt us as we watch. I found the scenes with Halfdan the most moving, even though, as a character I didn’t especially like him.

Magrethe’s weird visions add to the sense of doom, and we’ve seen this kind of thing over and over. Everybody has visions! Athelstan, Ecbert, Alfred, Floki, and now Margrethe. I wish Hirst would be a little less prolific with the visions already. It’s true that not everything Margrethe envisions comes to pass, but if that’s supposed to tell us that we can’t trust her, ummm, we already knew that!

The battle continues to rage, and although many are ready to die, there is one who WANTS to die. We still cannot be sure why. And then…we’re off to Iceland where Bul, who died last week, is being mourned by his family and even by the man who killed him because, as Floki tries to convince Eyvind, it was an accident. Well, we know Eyvind by now. Floki tries to nip vengeance in the bud—quick cut back to the battlefield and the vengeance taking place there—and he tries to bargain with Eyvind while Aud observes them. Eyvind wants revenge, and Floki has to find another way to prevent his community from descending into the chaos–like that battle happening in Denmark–that he had hoped to leave behind. A sacrifice to the gods is what’s needed. How, we wonder, will that play out? But that’s a cliff hanger to be explored when the series returns.

Back on the battlefield (and, honestly, how do these people know who is who?) Ivar has a moment of eye contact with Heahmund, another with Lagertha, and finally with Bjorn, and that seems like set-up for future conflict, however this episode ends.

In Kattegat Margrethe is not so much worried about who is dying on the battlefield as she is about whether she’ll make it to queen or not. She visits the spámaðr and leaves us in no doubt that she’s mad. It’s a scene that adds creepiness to the gloom.

Can I just mention here that I don’t really buy Ivar’s miraculous ability to walk, given that he’s been ‘grounded’ from birth?

In Kattegat, when the battle is done and a good many Danes have died, Bjorn goes to his mother who is almost catatonic with grief. We have seen something similar, when she mourned her miscarriages. This goes well beyond that and, oh my goodness! She looks so much like Daenerys Targaryon I started looking for a dragon.

The very last scene made me shout ‘Yes!’ although it seems like it might be too little, too late. Still, it’s an interesting twist.

And now, we wait.

 

Photos of VIKINGS © The History Channel
THE WANDERER  from Old English Poetry: An Anthology, edited and translated by R.M. Liuzza

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Vikings 5 Recap, Episode 9: A SIMPLE STORY

Posted on January 18, 2018 by Patricia

 

The first half of this episode rockets around from Lagertha’s camp to Vestfold to Floki’s Iceland settlement and back around again. We’re all used to this by now, right? The episode begins with the aftermath of last week’s battle, but I want to jump, first, to Iceland.

This series has forced me to do some research about the settlement of Iceland. I have learned (and I am certain that many of you already knew this) that our Floki is based upon Raven-Floki (Hrafna-Floki), a great viking who was the first Norseman to set foot on Iceland, which led to the settlement of Iceland by his countrymen. His story is told in the Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements) written in 13th century Iceland. Raven-Floki took 3 ravens with him to help him find land, and that’s how he got his nickname and why we see the raven, Odin’s bird, with him in the show. He stayed a season with his companions in Iceland, returned to Norway, and eventually went back to Iceland. What we are seeing in these episodes are fictional stories, sprinkled with characters from Iceland’s history,  about what difficulties Floki and company may have had to cope with as they settled this new land.

Gustaf Skarsgard as Floki

Floki’s dream of a community where internal strife is resolved through negotiation is shattered by the end of the episode.

Meantime, in Norway, all the war leaders survived last week’s battle, which means that nothing has been resolved. Nobody is going to back down. At Hvitserk’s suggestion Ivar sends him to Uncle Rollo, across the sea and about fifty years into the future, to ask for help. Rollo, as we know, is no stranger to brotherly strife. He agrees to help Ivar, and you may have heard the wail from thousands of yearning Rollo fans when the man himself didn’t appear in person but sent ships and men. Today it would take two weeks to sail round trip between Oslo and Rouen. It would have taken far longer in the 9th century. Then you have to add in time for negotiation, gathering troops and supplies, weather complications and their impact on a fleet – so we are looking at a passage of weeks if not months before the Franks actually appear.

When Lagertha and Bjorn find out about the Franks they are still in their camp somewhere. They have been in that camp a long time, apparently, but they can take it. They are vikings. Bjorn goes to Ivar and pleads with him, in the presence of Harald and Astrid, to give up this war. Ivar’s response is scornful and he gestures for his thugs to surround Bjorn. Harald puts a stop to that, protesting, “This is not our way.” I was astonished. I have been watching this series for 5 seasons now, and I would have sworn that this was exactly their way, at least in the show. Scorn, distrust, betrayal, and trickery are all part of the script. But Harald’s protest may be just one of the signs of a developing rift between the Norse king and Ivar. We shall see.

Bjorn returns to camp to report, gloomily, the arrival of the Franks. So many Franks! Ubbe wants to jump into battle, Lagertha wants to send some of their men to protect Kattegat, and Halfdan cheers them all up with his morose pronouncement that the outcome has already been decided by the gods. Never invite Halfdan to a party.

Also, I forgot to mention: Heahmund and Lagertha are now an item. Was anyone surprised?

Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Heahmund & no longer a bishop; Katheryn Winnick as Lagertha.

And now a few words on my love/hate relationship with what’s going on in Wessex.

I loved Æthelwulf’s summary, right out of the history books, of the situation in which Wessex found itself: facing viking invaders from all over who were attacking the British Isles and who were putting, as the king says, ‘our land and our faith in peril’.

I loved that bee. Most of the time we do not know how Anglo-Saxon kings died. It’s up to storytellers to come up with explanations, and this was a beauty. And I can’t help wondering what they did to make his face so puffy at the end.

Moe Dunford as King Aethelwulf

I loved Æthelwulf’s moving death scene. His affection for Judith almost made me forget that he had her ear cut off  a while back. I loved the almost immediate meeting of the witan to choose the next king, indicating that, yes, it was the witan that made that choice.

BUT…
I know this is picky, but what is Judith wearing? She has gone all high medieval on us, and it’s only the 9th century!

Judith’s high medieval couture.; actress Jennie Jacques

For comparison, here is Alfred the Great’s queen, Lady Ælswith, in THE LAST KINGDOM.

Lady Aelswith (Eliza Butterworth) in a gown more appropriate to her century. Photo: THE LAST KINGDOM

I also have to take Michael Hirst to task yet again for re-writing English history. I was taking notes as I watched this episode, and when Judith offered Cuthred the bishopric of Sherborne in return for supporting Alfred, not Æthelred, as Æthelwulf’s heir I wrote: “Oh my God I don’t believe this…”

It got worse. Judith claimed that Wessex did not need a warrior king. WRONG! Given the viking incursions, that’s EXACTLY what Wessex needed. In fact, it needed a warrior king and his brother to take on the vikings. Somehow, though, she persuades Æthelred, who is acclaimed king by the gathered nobles, to refuse the crown in favor of his younger brother Alfred. NOOOO!!!!

Here’s the thing: Even if we accept the complete elimination of King Æthelwulf’s 2 older sons who ruled Wessex or parts of it after Æthelwulf died, there are still the six years of King Æthelred’s reign, when he and Alfred TOGETHER fought against the viking invasions of Wessex. Is this where the title of the episode, A SIMPLE STORY, comes from? The oversimplification of history to fit this series? But Hirst hasn’t just simplified history. He’s changed it. It makes me nuts when he does that, and judging from the look on Æthelred’s face when Alfred is crowned he’s not too happy about it either. Also, there was never a bishop of Sherborne named Cuthred. Just saying.

On the plus side, the final few minutes of the episode were beautifully filmed. Alfred’s coronation, Heahmund’s oath of fealty to Lagertha and the temple fire in Iceland all brilliantly juxtaposed. Heahmund, then Floki, then Alfred falling to their knees. The cries of ‘Long live the king’ in Wessex echoing as the pagan temple in Iceland falls. Is the symbolism too heavy handed? Maybe. But I liked it.

Photos of VIKINGS © The History Channel

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