Dragon Lords

by Eleanor Parker

  A few years later, around 1076, Adam of Bremen identifies Ivar, whom he calls the cruellest of Norse warriors, as the son of ‘Lodparchus’, evidently a form of Lothbrok.10 Adam attributes this information to a history of the Franks, although his specific source is unknown. Adam used a variety of written sources for his History but he had impressively well-connected oral sources, too: he was in close contact with the Danish king Svein Estrithson, Cnut’s nephew, who provided Adam with information about his ancestors among the kings of Denmark. At this stage, then, a man named Lothbrok was being identified as the father of some Viking leaders, although it is the sons, rather than the father, who are the focus of these references. The names Ragnar and Lothbrok are not recorded in combination until a few decades later, when the link was made by the Icelandic scholar Ari Þorgilsson in his Íslendingabók (written between 1120 and 1133), a history of the settlement and conversion of Iceland. In his first chapter, Ari says that ‘Ivar, son of Ragnar Lothbrok’, had St Edmund killed, ‘according to what is written in his saga’. This reference to Edmund’s ‘saga’ probably suggests Ari had access to one of the works on St Edmund written in England, although his exact source has not been identified; he may have used Abbo or Herman, or a composite version of the two containing some additional information (neither of those sources, in their surviving form, identifies Ivar’s father).11

  From the twelfth century onwards, these brief references to Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons grew into a forest of legends. It is in the twelfth century, too, that the first signs appear of a legend about Lothbrok in England, but this branch of the tradition was to develop in different ways and in very different contexts from the Scandinavian legends.

  Lothbrok in England: the beginnings

  of the legend

  The first mention of Lothbrok in England appears in a Latin text known as the Annals of St Neots, a compilation of annals based largely on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle but also incorporating details from other sources and from oral tradition. Its reference to Lothbrok is brief, but very suggestive. In an entry for the year 878, based on the Chronicle, it describes how one of the leaders of the Danes was killed in battle against the English and the Danes’ banner ‘Raven’ was captured. It goes on to explain:

  In quo etiam acceperunt illud uexillum quod Reafan nominant. Dicunt enim quod tres sorores Hynguari et Hubbe, filie uidelicet Lodebrochi, illud uexillum tex`u´erunt et totum parauerunt illud uno meridiano tempore. Dicunt etiam quod, in omni bello ubi praecederet idem signum, si uictoriam adepturi essent, appareret in medio signi quasi coruus uiuus uolitans; si uero uincendi in futuro fuissent, penderet directe nichil mouens – et hoc sepe probatum est.12

  (In that battle they took the banner which is called ‘Raven.’ For it is said that the three sisters of Ivar and Ubbe, that is, the daughters of Lodebroch, wove that banner and prepared the whole thing in the space of one noon-tide. And it is also said that in every battle where this banner is carried, if the victory is to be theirs there appears in the middle of the banner what seems to be a living raven flying; but if they are to be defeated, then it hangs down motionless – and this has often been proved.)

  The precise date and composition of this text are difficult to establish, but the sole manuscript was written at Bury St Edmunds between c.1120 and c.1140 (it is known as the Annals of St Neots because by the sixteenth century the manuscript belonged to the priory of St Neots in Cambridgeshire).13 It has been argued that the annals were originally compiled at Ramsey Abbey at the end of the tenth century, although this information may be a later addition – the composite nature of the text makes it difficult to ascertain when it was added to the annals.14 We have already seen that there was a particular interest in St Edmund and his Danish enemies both at Ramsey and at Bury St Edmunds, and it is not surprising that this first English reference to Lothbrok should occur in this context.

  In other ways, however, this appearance of Lothbrok is sur- prising. He is mentioned in passing, as if the English audience could be expected to recognise the name, and associated with three daughters who do not appear in any other source from England or Scandinavia. The two sentences describing the banner both begin dicunt, ‘it is said’, perhaps intending to attribute this information to popular oral tradition, and it may be that this is a local legend from East Anglia.15 However, the association of Ivar and Ubbe as a pair here suggests influence from the hagiography of St Edmund (the Chronicle entry which is the basis for this passage instead mentions an unnamed ‘brother of Ivar and Halfdan’), and a written source is also a possibility.16 We have already seen a comparable magical, prophetic raven banner attributed to Cnut in the Encomium, so this may be linked to a story already known in England rather than an independent version of the legend. There are parallels to the description here in later Norse sagas – including the detail that the raven banner was woven by a female relative of the warrior who bears it – but since the English examples of the motif pre-date any of the Scandinavian ones, it has been suggested that the story travelled from Anglo-Danish England to the north rather than the other way around.17

  As the East Anglian context for this first reference to Lothbrok suggests, it was the cult which grew up around St Edmund which provided the richest source for English legends about Lothbrok and his sons. Abbo’s tenth-century account of Edmund’s death was hugely influential, and we have already seen that Abbo has little interest in exploring the part played by the Danes. His interpretation of their behaviour – pagan ferocity and northern savagery – remained a common and widespread interpretation of the Danes’ motivation, when writers troubled to give them any motivation at all. Many later texts about St Edmund followed Abbo’s lead; the account of St Edmund’s death in the South English Legendary gives a perfunctory but fairly typical explanation of how and why Ivar and Ubbe came to England:

  Tuei princes of anoþer lond þat were of liþer þoȝt

  Faste here red togadere nome to bringe Engelond to noȝt.

  Hubba was þoþer ihote & þoþer het Hyngar.

  Wiþ grete furde hi come to Engelond er eni man were iwar.

  In Norþhumberland hi bigonne & þer hi sloȝe to grounde,

  Robbede also & brende to noȝt & destruyde al þat hi founde.18

  (Two princes of another country, who were of hostile thought, made the decision together to bring England to nothing. One was called Ubbe and the other called Ivar. They came to England with a great army before anyone was aware. They began in Northumberland and slew widely there, and stole and burned and destroyed to nothing all that they found.)

  Although this text is concerned to promote Edmund as an English saint – not only a saint of East Anglia – there is no interest here in the origins of his killers. Ubbe and Ivar are named, but they are only ‘princes of another country’, and are not even identified as Danes. This is fairly typical of the presentation of Ivar and Ubbe in vernacular saints’ lives of this period; by this date they often feature not as Danish invaders but as a much more general kind of threat, savage pagans of indeterminate racial origin, who attain, in John Frankis’ description, ‘almost mythic status as archetypal opponents of Christianity.’19 In the South English Legendary, one brief reference to Northumberland is all we hear of their existence before or after Edmund’s death: they come out of nowhere, manifest themselves only to wantonly kill, steal and destroy, and afterwards disappear again.

  In the former Danelaw, however, the role played by the Danes in Edmund’s death and veneration was a much more complex matter. This had been true from the very earliest days of Edmund’s cult: although a Viking army was responsible for Edmund’s death, it was the Danish invaders who were the first to recognise and acknowledge the power of the martyr. Some 25 years after the king’s death, coins bearing St Edmund’s name were being minted and circulated by the new Danish rulers of East Anglia. This may have been a shrewd political move to win the support of the local population, an act of expiation for the king’s death or, as Susan Ridyard suggests, ‘a produc
t of diplomacy, a negotiated, perhaps enforced, concession which might help to stabilise their political power’ and legitimise the new Danish regime.20 By the eleventh century, Edmund’s cult was still benefitting from the patronage of Danish kings. As we have seen, Cnut seems to have taken an interest in St Edmund, which post-Conquest writers like Herman interpreted in the context of the king’s Danish heritage: it was as his pagan father’s son, and the descendant of Danes, that Cnut was converted to the worship of Edmund. This focus on Cnut as a figure of the penitent Danish king does not, however, allow room for much discussion of the previous invaders for whose sins he is atoning, or what brought them to England in the first place.

  This began to change in the middle of the twelfth century. From that date onwards, we start to see versions of Edmund’s story which offer a variety of different interpretations to answer exactly that question: why did Ivar and Ubbe come to England, and why did they kill St Edmund? It is in these sources that we first find narratives in which not only Ivar and Ubbe, but also their father, Lothbrok, play a crucial role in the king’s death.

  Lothbrok is not mentioned by Abbo, Herman, or other early writers on Edmund, although the Annals of St Neots show that Lothbrok was a name associated with Ivar and Ubbe in England by the twelfth century. A decade or so after the manuscript of the Annals of St Neots was written, an account of the early life of Edmund was composed for the monks of Bury St Edmunds by Geoffrey of Wells.21 The main purpose of this text was to fill in some of the gaps in St Edmund’s legend: the earliest sources provide no information about Edmund’s parentage or youth, or anything before the events immediately leading up to his death, and in the twelfth century this was a space his hagiographers did their best to fill.

  Geoffrey explains that he wrote his De Infantia S. Eadmundi at the urging of Sihtric, the prior of Bury St Edmunds, and Goscelin, the sub-prior; his work is dedicated to Ording, who was abbot between 1148 and 1156, and so can be dated to those years. Geoffrey himself was probably a canon of Thetford Priory, and his name suggests he came from Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk.22 He claims that he had discussed Edmund’s parentage and youth with the monks of Bury St Edmunds, and that on these occasions everyone would share the information they had learned about the saint, while Geoffrey would contribute what he had heard from oral tradition or from reading.23 This is all the information he gives us about his sources for the De Infantia S. Eadmundi.

  Geoffrey’s contribution to the legend of St Edmund is, as the title of his text suggests, to tell the story of Edmund’s youth, and to explain how he came to be king of East Anglia. He says that Edmund was born on the continent, the son of the king of Saxony, and a relative of Offa, king of East Anglia.24 Offa has no heir, and decides to go on pilgrimage in the hope that God will provide him with a successor. On his journey, he visits Saxony and stays with his kinsman, Edmund’s father. He is impressed by Edmund’s conversation and manner, and decides to adopt the young man as his son and heir. Offa dies on his journey soon afterwards, bequeathing his kingdom to Edmund.

  Edmund sets out for East Anglia, and lands on the north Norfolk coast. From the moment of his landing, miracles begin to occur: twelve healing streams spring up from the earth, and the area around Hunstanton, the place of his arrival, becomes the most fertile land for crops in the whole of East Anglia. With his taste for etymologising, and a touch of Norfolk pride, Geoffrey explains that Hunstanton means ‘town of the honeyed-stone’ – a fitting name, he says, for a town whose inhabitants are sweet-tongued and sturdy as stone.25 Geoffrey comments that these rivers and this fruitful land can still be seen in the region, bearing enduring witness to Edmund’s holy presence there.

  Edmund is accepted by the people as a legitimate heir to Offa, and the kingdom flourishes under its new saintly king. His fame spreads and reaches Denmark, where it comes to the ears of a man named Lothbrok, ‘a very rich and famous, but wicked and deceitful man’. Geoffrey asserts that the name Lothbrok means odiosus rivus, ‘loathsome brook’, interpreting the name as if it were an English compound, from lōth ‘hateful’ and brōk ‘brook’.26 For an English-speaker this would have been a logical assumption, and, while probably inaccurate, it is not the most fanciful of all the etymologies which have been proposed for ‘Lothbrok’ over the years.27 It does, however, suggest that nothing like the story attached to the nickname in Scandinavian tradition was known to Geoffrey.

  From this loathsome brook, Geoffrey says, flows a stream of hateful progeny: three sons, Ivar, Ubbe and Beorn. This family originate in the north of Denmark, and are members of a people known for their physical strength, height and fortitude in battle, as well as their cruel acts of piracy and plunder. Geoffrey comments that they are descended from the Goths, their neighbours, and that they interpret their own name (dacos, ‘Danes’) as related to dagos (i.e. de gothorum, ‘from the Goths’); the idea that the Danes were descended from the Goths was a common one.28 Geoffrey goes on to say that Ubbe was particularly known for his skill in magic and the ‘devilish arts’ of witchcraft. He had the power to cast spells over an opposing army, and when he approached his enemy he would say to his men ‘Lift me up on high, that I may overlook the army’ (superuideam).29 If he was able to ‘overlook’ them in this way, their luck would fail them and Ubbe’s army would triumph. This is a supernatural power which has several parallels in Norse literature, as well as in the Gesta Herwardi.30

  Unfortunately we learn no more from Geoffrey of these powers of Ubbe’s. He does tell, however, how Lothbrok heard of King Edmund’s rise to power in East Anglia. One day when Lothbrok and his sons are talking and the brothers are boasting of their brave deeds, Lothbrok taunts his sons by comparing them unfavourably to the English king:

  [P]ro nichilo inflati estis et in uentum uerba profertis. Quid enim dignum adepti estis memoria inter preliorum discrimina? Certe quidam inuuenis Ædmundus ante non multos hos annos a saxonia descendit, anglicos ad sinus cum paucis apulit et regnum Estangle pro uelle disponit. Quid uos unquam simile peregistis? O qualis genitura mea in uobis!

  (Much reason you have to be so boastful, and to make the air ring with your proud words! What, I should like to know, have you ever achieved worth remembrance as the result of all your hard-fought battles? Why, there is a young man named Eadmund, who, not many years ago, embarked from Saxony, and landed in an English haven with a few followers, and now he has the realm of East Anglia under his absolute control! What have you ever accomplished like that? Oh! how inferior are you whom I have begotten!)31

  Enraged by their father’s taunts, Ubbe and his brothers decide to prove their worth by invading England.

  At this point Geoffrey abruptly concludes his text, referring the reader to Abbo for further information; his own narrative is intended to be a prequel to that authoritative account of Edmund’s death. He leaves Lothbrok’s sons in the act of plotting against Edmund and collecting an army, but the story breaks off before they actually set sail for England.

  The De Infantia is clearly not a positive portrayal of Lothbrok and his sons and their history with Edmund, but it is a much fuller one than any previous source had provided. In this text Geoffrey does spend some time describing and characterising the Danes, and provides them with a motive for attacking England – and Edmund specifically – beyond greed for plunder and love of battle. The way in which Geoffrey has Lothbrok encourage his sons to compare themselves with Edmund leads the reader, too, to compare the saint with his Danish opponents, to weigh up their contrasting characters and rival claims to the throne of East Anglia. The Danes appear as a negative, inverse reflection of Edmund and his family: as a demanding and taunting father, Lothbrok stands in opposition to the two kings who feature as loving and supportive father-figures to Edmund (his birth father, the king of Saxony, and his adoptive father Offa). Both aspire to rule the kingdom because of the urging of a father-figure, and although Geoffrey has been careful to point out that Edmund has a legitimate claim to the throne through Offa, Lothbrok’s speech explici
tly presents them as rival conquerors.

  In this text, neither Edmund nor the sons of Lothbrok are natives of East Anglia; both belong to Germanic tribes, related to the Anglo-Saxons, but originating from the continent and coming to claim the throne from across the sea.32 The native line of kings seems about to die with Offa (perhaps this is Geoffrey’s way of explaining why it did in fact die out with Edmund).33 This means that Edmund, like the Danes, is a newcomer to England – a foreign ruler, even if his kinship with Offa is emphasised. It is Edmund whose landing in England is dwelt upon by the text – his immediately fruitful interaction with the land functions as both a revelation of his saintly power and an omen for the prosperity of his future reign. It is a moment of peaceful conquest. The healing rivers which spring from the Norfolk soil as soon as Edmund sets foot upon it present an implied contrast with the ‘loathsome brook’ and his stream of hateful progeny, the meaning Geoffrey draws from his interpretation of Lothbrok’s name. Geoffrey’s etymologising makes sense in this context, encouraging the reader to see a contrast between the streams originating from Edmund and from Lothbrok.34 Whatever the origins of Geoffrey’s information about Lothbrok and his sons, he puts it to imaginative work in constructing his narrative about St Edmund’s youth.