In some elusive way, then, the Norwegian identity of this man seems to be important, but the Inventio tells us far less about him than we would like to know – unlike the priest Bruning and the healed Alfgiva, the Norwegian servant does not even have a name. Could it have been a man from Scandinavia, living in Northampton, who decided to promote the story of St Ragner the martyr? If so, when did this happen? The text places these events in the reign of Edward the Confessor (about a hundred years before the earliest records of St Ragner), giving it an air of antiquity and an association with not one but two saintly Anglo-Saxon kings. A more likely time for this story to emerge might, however, be the middle of the twelfth century, around the time in the 1140s when the church of St Peter’s was rebuilt in splendid Romanesque style, probably under the patronage of Simon de Senlis, earl of Huntingdon and Northampton. The church boasts a rich array of Norman carvings, including an elaborately decorated grave-cover which may be connected to St Ragner’s shrine.57 In Chapter 3 we will see how the earldom of Huntingdon and Northampton became linked to a legendary origin-story drawn from Anglo-Scandinavian narrative material, attached to Simon’s maternal grandfather Waltheof. This narrative, which is also set in the reign of Edward the Confessor, was recorded at Crowland and at Delapré Abbey, on the outskirts of Northampton, in the early thirteenth century. It is impossible to be sure if there is any relationship between this narrative and the cult of St Ragner, but the Northampton and Senlis connection is suggestive. If nothing else, it is a reminder that the elaborate Bury St Edmunds version of the Lothbrok legend was probably only the tip of the iceberg – there may have been other traditions about Ragnar and his sons circulating in England, for which we now have only incomplete and tantalising evidence.
The deaths of Lothbrok’s sons
The Inventio closes with a note that Ivar and ‘another pagan king’ died in 877.58 No information is given here except the date, but other English sources show an interest not only in Lothbrok’s death – the motivator of the Danish invasion – but also in the death and burial of his sons at various places in England. Some time in the first half of the thirteenth century, on the blank leaf of a manuscript of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, a number of brief notes in Latin and English were added on an assortment of historical subjects.59 They include two lines of verse in English on the sons of Lothbrok:
Yngvar and vbbe beorn wæs þe þridde
loþebrokes sunnes loþe weren criste
(Ivar and Ubbe, Beorn was the third, Lothbrok’s sons, hateful to Christ.)
These two lines draw the same connection between Lothbrok and the Middle English word lōth, ‘hateful, wicked’, which was noted by Geoffrey of Wells; they may be the remains of a longer poem, or simply a brief verse tag. The lines are followed by a short passage in Latin describing the deaths of Ubbe and Beorn. It says that Ubbe, after killing many Christians, was killed at ‘Ubbelawe’ in Yorkshire by the will of God, while his brother Beorn destroyed the church at ‘Scapeia’ (apparently Sheppey in Kent) and violated the nuns there. In a sudden act of divine punishment Beorn was swallowed up by the earth – horse and armour and all – at Frindsbury near Rochester. To this day, the note goes on, there is a deep fissure in the road there, 20 feet wide, where Beorn was engulfed by the earth, and the water at the bottom of it is always tinged red as if with blood.
This manuscript, originally made around the end of the twelfth century, may have belonged to Tynemouth Priory in Northumbria. The other notes on the leaf include some details on King Osred of Northumbria (who was buried at Tynemouth) and the Anglo-Saxon boy-martyr St Kenelm, about whom there is also a line of English verse. In addition, there is a short passage in Latin about Siward, earl of Northumbria, which is taken from Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum. This briefly notes Siward’s conquest of Scotland in 1054 and reproduces Henry’s account of his death, in which Henry tells how Siward, after a long military career, insisted on dying in his armour rather than ‘in bed like a cow’. This story and others about Siward, and their connection to English legends about the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3; what is particularly interesting in the context of this manuscript is that the Siward story and the note on Ubbe and Beorn are found together, and that they both concern the unusual deaths of these Danish warriors. There is some comparison in the style of their deaths: Beorn, like Siward, dies in full armour, with his lance held upright. A final comment, added to Henry’s story about Siward’s death, makes the link to Tynemouth by noting that Siward’s successor as earl of Northumbria was Tostig Godwineson, who ‘laid the foundations of the church at Tynemouth’.60
Tynemouth was a cell of St Albans, the monastic community to which Roger of Wendover belonged, so there may be a connection between this knowledge of Lothbrok in Tynemouth and Roger’s story; there are differences, however, since in Roger’s version of the Lothbrok legend Beorn is not Lothbrok’s son, but his murderer. Like the information about Siward, the extract about Ubbe and Beorn seems to have been copied from another source, since there are close verbal parallels with a passage found in one thirteenth-century manuscript of the Chronica of Roger of Howden (London, British Library, Arundel MS. 69). This manuscript contains a number of additions to Roger of Howden’s chronicle, some of which are connected with the history of Bury St Edmunds, although all that is known of the provenance of the manuscript is that it belonged to Netley Abbey, near Southampton, by the fifteenth century.61
The Tynemouth manuscript also contains a marginal note (probably a later addition, and not present in the Arundel manuscript) connecting the story of Beorn’s death to Hoo St Werburgh, on the Hoo peninsula near Frindsbury in Kent. This link to Kent is particularly interesting, because most of the evidence we have looked at so far for English traditions about the sons of Lothbrok has come from East Anglia and the East Midlands; the references to Kent are therefore surprising, and not easily explained. There are, however, other comparable references to the violent deaths of Lothbrok’s sons from elsewhere in England. A late-medieval text found only in a manuscript from Hyde Abbey, Winchester, says that it was Ubbe who was swallowed up by the earth with his horse while he was riding, and Ivar (here called, as is common in English medieval sources, Hinguar) was drowned while crossing a ford in Berkshire. The place where he died came to be named after him, Hyngarford – modern Hungerford.62 This suggests that a variety of legends had grown up around the deaths of Lothbrok’s sons, focusing particularly on how they were punished for their wickedness by divine intervention. These seem to belong to an alternative tradition from the Lothbrok legend of East Anglia, and it may be significant that they come from areas of the country which had a very different history of Viking activity (although this may also simply be an accident of survival). The link made in these stories with English place-names like Hungerford, or with distinctive features of the landscape – the pit with its water tinged with blood – suggest they may be precursors to legends about the Danes which are recorded more fully from the early modern period, and which we will return to in the epilogue.
The king by the sea: burial-mounds
and the Danes in England
As well as these references to the deaths of the sons of Lothbrok, there may also have been legends about their places of burial, although the evidence for this is more scanty. The Tynemouth text mentions ‘Ubbelawe’ as the place of Ubbe’s death in Yorkshire, and this is a name which also occurs in passing in Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, an Anglo-Norman chronicle written c.1136–7. Gaimar records that after Ubbe was killed in battle in Devon he was buried in a mound which took his name, Ubbelawe.63 The name-element lawe derives from Old English hlæw, and refers to artificial elevations in the landscape, especially barrows and burial-mounds.64 Gaimar calls it a hoge, a word meaning ‘burial-mound’; this word was borrowed into northern dialects of English (and in this case Anglo-Norman) from Old Norse haugr, and it is found in place-names in the north of England in the form howe. This battle
in Devon is the one in which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that the raven banner was captured (and also the point at which the Annals of St Neots adds its note about Lothbrok’s daughters weaving the banner in one noon-tide). However, the detail of Ubbe’s death and burial and the name of his barrow-mound are Gaimar’s additions to his source, and are not recorded elsewhere. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle only says that a brother of Ivar and Halfdan was killed; Gaimar adds Ubbe’s name and the location of the battle at ‘Pene’ (perhaps Penwood or Penselwood). There have been attempts to identify Ubbelawe with a landmark near Appledore, on the Devon coast, which has now been lost to the sea, but which as late as the eighteenth century was known as Ubbaston or Whibblestan.65
Wherever this mound may have been (if it really existed), Gaimar may have learned its name in Lincolnshire, where he was probably writing. It may be that there was never any particular legend attached to this burial-mound, but it is worth noting that the Norse legends about the sons of Ragnar make a point of saying that Ivar was buried by the sea in England. Ivar’s burial-mound features prominently in Old Norse narratives of Anglo-Scandinavian history, because it is given a crucial and dramatic role to play in the two conquests which England faced in 1066. Its construction, on Ivar’s own orders, is described in Ragnars saga:
Ok þa er hann la i banasott, męllti hann, at hann skylldi þangat fera, er herskat veri, ok þess kvazt hann vęnta, at þeir mundi eigi sigr fa, er þar kęmi at landinu. Ok er hann andaz, var sva giort, sem hann męllti fyrir, ok var þa i haug lagidr. Ok þat segia margir menn, þa er Haralldr konungr Sigurdarson kom til Englandz, at hann kęmi þar at, er Ivar var fyrir, ok fellr hann i þeirre faur. Ok er Vilhialmr bastardr kom i land, for hann til ok braut haug Ivars ok sa Ivar ofuinn. Þa let hann giora bal mikit ok lętr Ivar brenna á balinu. Ok eptir þat berzt hann til landsins ok fęrr gagn.66
(And when [Ivar] lay in his last illness, he said that he should be carried to the place where armies came to harry, and he said he thought they should not have the victory when they came to the land. And when he died, it was done as he had said, and he was laid in a barrow (haugr). And many people say that when King Harald Sigurðarson [i.e. Harald Hardrada] came to England, he landed at the place where Ivar was, and he died on that expedition. And when William the Bastard came to the land, he went to the place and opened Ivar’s howe and saw Ivar, undecayed. Then he had a great fire made and had Ivar burned in the flames. After that he fought battles across the country and won the victory.)
This burial-mound also appears in Hemings þáttr, a narrative written in Iceland in the thirteenth century, which deals at greater length with the attempted Norwegian invasion of England, the Norman Conquest, and its aftermath. It draws on a range of sources, some of which may have included information ultimately of English provenance; it includes, for instance, a version of the legend that Harold Godwineson survived the Battle of Hastings and lived on as a hermit in England.67 It also seems to have used a version of Ragnars saga, from which the story of Ivar’s burial-mound may have been borrowed. In Hemings þáttr, Harald Hardrada and Tostig Godwineson see a mound as they arrive on the coast of Cleveland in 1066, and Harald asks for the name of it:
Þeir taka land ok ganga þar vpp sem Kliflond heita konvngr spyr T(osta) hvat heitir hæð sv er þar er norðr a landit. T(osti) s(egir) eigi er her hverri hæð nafn gefit. konvngr s(egir) nafn man þo þersi eiga ok skalltv segia mer. T(osti) s(egir) þat er havgr Ivars beinlavsa. konvngr svarar fair hafa þeir sigrað England er at hans havgi hafa fyrst komit. T(osti) s(egir) forneskia er nv at trva slikv.68
(They reached land and came ashore at a place called Cleveland. The king asked Tostig, ‘What is the name of the hill which is along the land to the north?’ Tostig said, ‘Not every hill has a name given to it.’ The king said, ‘But this one has a name, and you shall tell it to me.’ Tostig said, ‘That is the howe of Ivar the boneless.’ The king replied, ‘Few who have landed in England near this howe have been victorious.’ Tostig said, ‘It’s superstition to believe such things now.’)
In these texts, the difference between the two invaders of 1066 is shown by how they react to Ivar’s burial-mound: William is prepared to risk the wrath of the great Viking by burning his bones, but Harald, who is convinced he is doomed to die on his expedition, accepts the bad omen as his fate. The connection between the mound, the act of naming, and success or failure in conquest is significant here, drawing a powerful link between the invader’s burial and the land he has conquered. Ivar’s ability to defend his kingdom endures after his death, and the burialmound, standing on the cliffs above the sea, is a visible symbol of his supernatural control over it.
Norse literature is rich in legends linked to barrows and burial-mounds, which are the location of encounters with the otherworld, with supernatural beings, and with the dead.69 There is a variety of evidence from Anglo-Saxon England, too, for the cultural importance of burial-mounds: as meetingplaces and as landmarks, as the home of dragons and demons, and as the site of hidden treasure, such mounds seem to have been interpreted as profoundly meaningful sites of encounter, a liminal space for coming face to face with the past.70 The most famous burial-mound in Anglo-Saxon literature appears at the end of Beowulf, when the hero is buried in a barrow on a headland, according to the instructions he has given before his death.71 As described in the poem, this barrow serves as a memorial to Beowulf and a landmark to sailors, but its function appears to be mnemonic, not defensive – there is no explicit warning to future invaders.72 The idea of the defensive burial-mound seems to represent a particular offshoot of this wider literary tradition which connects the burial-mound with invasion and conquest. This may be linked to the role of mounds in king-making, the claiming of inheritance, and the enacting of royal power: there are numerous examples in Old Norse literature of kings being formally elected or accepted as king on a mound, as well as of mounds being used as the sites of assemblies and the proclamation of laws.73 It has been suggested that the story about Ivar’s burial-mound recorded in Ragnars saga may have originated in an area of England with strong Anglo-Scandinavian heritage, since this was, as Rory McTurk puts it, ‘surely the most likely environment for the development of a story in which a Viking leader seems to be presented as a guardian spirit of the English people.’74 There is no trace of this from any surviving English source; if some kind of legend was ever attached to the burial-mound that is recorded in English sources, Ubbelawe, it was not preserved.
However, there are two examples of burial-mound stories worth discussing here which occur in sources written in late Anglo-Saxon England, both in the context of interaction between the English and an army of invading Danes. One is a miracle-story in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, written in Northumbria in the late tenth or eleventh century.75 This story takes place after the Viking conquest of York, after Ælla and Osberht have been defeated by the Danes. The Viking leader, Halfdan – in Norse tradition, though not here, one of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok – has been forced to flee. He has been driven mad by the wrath of God in punishment for his sins, perhaps an early example of the kinds of stories about the violent deaths of Ubbe, Ivar and Beorn considered above. As a result, there is a power vacuum, and by the supernatural intervention of St Cuthbert a young slave-boy named Guthred is chosen to become king of the Danes. Cuthbert appears in a vision to Eadred, the abbot of Carlisle, to announce to him how Guthred should be elected and made king: ‘lead him with the whole army upon the hill which is called Oswigesdune and there place upon his right arm a golden armlet, and thus they shall all constitute him king’.76 The body of St Cuthbert is brought to the hill for the king-making ceremony, and Guthred and the army swear on the relics that they will keep peace and fidelity with the community of St Cuthbert. As the saint has instructed, Guthred grants all the land between the Tyne and the Wear to St Cuthbert’s community.
This is a remarkable episode, which seems to show the Christian leaders of Northumbria making a political and religious accommodatio
n with the pagan Danes.77 Guthred is presumably the Guthfrith who ruled in York between c.883 and 895, and here he is cast in the role of Cuthbert’s anointed king – a second King David, plucked from humble origins to become a Christian ruler. Guthfrith was buried in York Minster, so by the end of his reign he must have accepted Christianity. However, although the new king and his army swear an oath on the relics of St Cuthbert, the details of this king-making ceremony – the location on Oswigesdune, the use of a symbolic armlet – reflect pagan Scandinavian custom.78 The mound of Oswigesdune was presumably a meeting-place associated with a king named Oswiu, perhaps the brother of King Oswald who reigned in Northumbria between 642 and 670. It is necessary to be cautious in using a miracle-story like this as evidence for the situation in ninth-century Northumbria, but whatever lies behind this episode, it offers an example of a Norse kingmaking ceremony involving a burial-mound, associated with the Danish invasions, which became part of English historiographical accounts of this period.79 A similar connection between the supernatural power of a hlæw and a Danish invasion seems to lie behind an intriguing passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 1006. A Danish army raided in Wessex that year with devastating effect, and the chronicler is scathing about the lack of resistance they met with from the English:
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