Dragon Lords

by Eleanor Parker

  Þa ofer þone midne sumor com þa se micla flota to Sandwic, 7 dydon eal swa hi ær gewuna wæron, heregodon 7 bærndon 7 slogon swa swa hi ferdon. Þa het se cyng abannan ut ealne þeodscipe of Wesseaxum 7 of Myrcnum, 7 hi lagon ute þa ealne ðone hærfest on fyrdinge ongean þone here, ac hit naht ne beheold þe ma ðe hit oftor ær dide, ac for eallum þissum se here ferde swa he sylf wolde […] Þa to ðam middan wintran eodan him to heora gearwan feorme ut þuruh Hamtunscire into Bearrucscire to Readingon, 7 hi a dydon heora ealdan gewunan, atendon hiora herebeacen swa hi ferdon. Wendon þa to Wealingaforda 7 þæt eall forswældon, 7 wæron him ða ane niht æt Ceolesige, 7 wendon him þa (i) andlang Æscesdune to Cwicelmeshlæwe, 7 þær onbidedon beotra gylpa, forðon oft man cwæð gif hi Cwicelmeshlæw gesohton þæt hi næfre to sæ gan ne scoldon; wendon him þa oðres weges hamwerd. Þa wæs ðær fyrd gesomnod æt Cynetan, 7 hi þær togædere fengon, 7 sona þæt wered on fleame gebrohton 7 syþþan hiora herehyþe to sæ feredan. Ac þær mihton geseon Wincesterleode rancne here 7 unearhne ða hi be hiora gate to sæ eodon.80

  (Then after midsummer the great fleet came to Sandwich, and acted just as was their custom: they harried and burned and slew as they went. Then the king summoned out all the nation from Wessex and Mercia, and they stayed out in military service against the army all through the autumn, but it did no more good that it had often done before, because for all this the army went about exactly as they chose […] Then towards midwinter they went to the provision prepared for them, out through Hampshire into Berkshire to Reading, and they followed their old custom, lighting war-beacons as they went. Then they turned to Wallingford and burned it all, and spent one night at Cholsey, and then went along Ashdown to Cwichelmeshlæw, and there they waited for what they had been proudly threatened with, because it had often been said that if they reached Cwichelmeshlæw they would never get to the sea. Then they went home another way. The English army was then gathered at the Kennet, and [the Danes] came together there and at once put that troop to flight, and afterwards carried their booty to the sea. There the people of Winchester could see the proud and undaunted army as they went past their gates to the sea.)

  Cwichelmeshlæw (now called Cuckhamsley Barrow or Scutchamer Knob) is a significant site. It is a mound standing in a prominent position on the ancient track of the Ridgeway, high on the Berkshire Downs, commanding a view over the surrounding country for miles around.81 Although a prehistoric barrow probably dating to the Bronze Age, it takes its name from Cwichelm, seventh-century king of Wessex;82 early Anglo-Saxon sources record Cwichelm’s battles against the Welsh and Mercians alongside his brother Cynegils, and Cwichelmeshlæw may have been believed to be his burial-mound, or perhaps the site of one of his battles.83

  The mound was a meeting-place for the shire assembly of Berkshire, and an important local landmark set in a particularly meaningful landscape. In the early Anglo-Saxon period, this region was the heart of the kingdom of Wessex, the site of royal settlements and its first episcopal see at Dorchester-on-Thames, where Cwichelm was baptised in 636.84 Although by the early eleventh century the political centre of the kingdom had shifted south, the name Cwichelmeshlæw preserved these resonant associations with the early history of the West Saxon kings. To a reader of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there would have been echoes here too of earlier conflicts against the Vikings: the army travelled ‘along Ashdown’, where Alfred the Great had won a memorable victory against the Danes in 871, and this is an area with which Alfred himself was strongly associated – Cuckhamsley Barrow is less than five miles from Alfred’s birthplace at Wantage. For the chronicler, the bitter point is that the Danes were so dominant in Wessex at this period that they were confident enough to flout English threats of resistance – not only did the vaunted opposition not materialise, but they were able to raid across Wessex at will and deliberately defy the proud English boast that ‘if they reached Cwichelmeshlæw they would never get to the sea.’ They proceeded to carry their booty past the very gates of Winchester, by this time the political and spiritual centre of Wessex. In the perspective of the chronicler, the Danes were consciously using the landscape of West Saxon power to humiliate the English and demonstrate their control.85 The threat about Cwichelmeshlæw is framed as a boast but it might equally be interpreted as a superstition, even a curse, reflecting the power Cwichelm was supposed to hold over the mound which bore his name. The Danes defy not only a living king but a dead one: so fallen is the kingdom of Wessex from its former greatness (the chronicler implies) that King Æthelred is helpless to resist these invaders, and even the supernatural power of the once mighty Cwichelm has no ability to restrain them.

  22. The remains of Cwichelmshlæw (now called Cuckhamsley Barrow or Scutchamer Knob), once a prominent mound on the Berkshire Downs, where the Vikings defied Anglo-Saxon threats in 1006

  What is interesting in both these stories is that the burialmounds in question belong to Anglo-Saxon kings – Oswiu and Cwichelm – but retain their meaning in the context of a Danish invasion. In each case the Danes are perceived as making use of the power of the landscape and showing an awareness of the cultural and political resonance such monuments might have for their Anglo-Saxon enemies. Perhaps this provides one possible environment in which the story of Ivar’s howe may have arisen, for an English audience more sympathetic to the Danes than the writer of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; a tradition significant in an English context becomes the means by which power is transferred to the invading Danes.

  An even stronger parallel occurs in the context of another narrative about the invasions of 1066 which, like Ragnars saga, links a burial-mound legend to the Norman Conquest. The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio says that after his death at Hastings Harold Godwineson was buried, on William’s orders, under a heap of stones on a cliff by the seashore. His tomb bore the epitaph ‘You rest here, King Harold, by order of the duke, so that you may still be guardian of the shore and sea.’86 William of Poitiers adds that this was done in mockery of Harold, and in spite of his mother’s petition that his body be returned to her for burial.87

  Harold’s fate after the Battle of Hastings is a contested issue in the medieval sources, and became the subject of legend. In addition to this tradition of burial by the shore, different sources claim he was buried at Waltham Abbey, or that he survived the battle to live as a hermit in Chester.88 The legend of his survival reached Scandinavia and Iceland, and Hemings þáttr, which

  takes the story of Ivar’s burial-mound from Ragnars saga, is also

  one of several Norse texts to tell of Harold being rescued from the battlefield at Hastings and recovering from his wounds to live as a hermit.89 Elisabeth van Houts has persuasively argued that the Carmen’s description of seashore burial is likely to originate from Scandinavian England, rather than from Normandy, and she even suggests that the Carmen describes a form of king-making ceremony, in which William declares himself king on the burialmound of his defeated enemy.90 If this is the case, the idea finds its strongest resonance within the particular context of Anglo-Scandinavian England and the complex and contested identity of Harold and his family. Through their Danish mother Gytha, Harold and his siblings had strong family ties to Scandinavia: at the time of Harold’s death in 1066 his cousin, Svein Estrithson, was king of Denmark, and he and his siblings represented the most powerful Anglo-Scandinavian dynasty in England. Gytha, whose request to William prompted this ‘mockery’ of a burial, returned to Denmark after the Conquest, with the remaining members of her family and some of Harold’s children, to seek refuge with her nephew Svein.91 In the years that followed, Svein and his brothers took an active part in aiding English rebellion against Norman rule, and there was a serious threat of Danish invasion in the decades after 1066, the period in which the Carmen and William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi were written.92

  23. Harold Godwineson on the Bayeux Tapestry (Wikimedia Commons)

  In Chapter 3 we will see how an origin-myth associated with Gytha’s family and the Danish r
oyal dynasty appears in post-Conquest England in a disparaging, anti-Danish (though also anti-Norman) context. It might be possible to read the references to Harold’s burial by the sea as a mocking assault on the Danish side of the king’s identity, casting the defeated Harold – whose legitimacy and claim to the throne were so roundly attacked by Norman writers in the immediate aftermath of the Conquest – in the role of a pagan Viking invader. Despite the claims of Ragnars saga, William doubtless did not trouble to seek and out destroy Ivar’s burial-mound, but this story of Harold’s burial seems to imagine the Norman conqueror flouting the protective power of the barrow in a not dissimilar way.

  Saints and sagas: conclusions

  In this chapter we have looked at the English traditions relating to Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons within a medieval English context, rather than attempting to assess their relationship to the historical facts or to the much more extensive legends recorded in the Scandinavian sources. In part this is because both those avenues of inquiry have already been fully and profitably explored, but it is also because there are advantages in re-situating these traditions within their English context, and in relation to the particular communities and texts where they are recorded. Because the English narratives about Lothbrok and his sons are scattered and brief by comparison with the Norse tradition, they have often been interpreted within the context of that larger body of material, in order either to hypothesise about the origins of the later Norse traditions or to explain what might otherwise be cryptic references in the English sources. In this approach, the people for whom these traditions are assumed to be most meaningful, for whose cultural identity they are perceived to be most relevant, are the early Scandinavian settlers in northern England, in the first decades after the settlement when a sense of Norse identity might be strongest. Alfred Smyth’s judgement is typical, commenting that the English traditions about Lothbrok and his sons ‘are independent survivals in a greatly altered form of the saga of Ragnar which began life among the Northumbrian Danes before these had lost their identity in medieval England.’93

  These may, indeed, be the origins of the stories about Lothbrok and his sons – we will never really know for sure. However, the context in which they are preserved in English sources is very distant from these hypothetical beginnings. They appear in a range of hagiographical and historical sources, predominantly linked to the history of East Anglia, although with a few other isolated references. In the hagiography of St Edmund, expanding the role of Lothbrok in Edmund’s death allowed space for an exploration of kingship and royal power, with Edmund’s Danish antagonists cast variously as contrasts or as complements to the central figure of St Edmund. They were given a role in the increasing promotion of Edmund as not only a regional but also a national saint, a patron of England, whose cult was particularly linked to the royal family – a trend culminating in Lothbrok’s appearance among the brightlydressed pagan Danes of Lydgate’s fifteenth-century poem.94 At the same time, the two main versions of the Lothbrok story, eventually combined into one narrative, both have strong links with eastern England, particularly with East Anglia, and explore some possible reasons why the Danes might have come to that region in the Anglo-Saxon period.

  Other references to the various fates of Ivar, Ubbe and Beorn are less interested in motive than in punishment – colourful stories which prove that the invaders got what they deserved. In contrast to the East Anglian traditions (though perhaps descending from them), they are more widely scattered throughout the country: the notes on the fates of Lothbrok’s sons survive in manuscripts which could hardly have belonged to places further apart, from Tynemouth in the north to Netley Abbey on the coast of Hampshire. They are added to other, more authoritative sources for English history, perhaps because they were perceived to be relevant to local concerns, perhaps simply out of interest. The wickedness of Ivar and Ubbe and their brothers formed a standard part of later medieval narratives about the Viking Age, mostly following the Anglo-Saxon sources; what we see in these brief references, however, seems to be evidence of a tradition which continued to develop, rather than a simple reproduction of previous narratives. They are an indication that narratives about the Danes in England should not be viewed simply as imperfect or derivative survivals of older legends, but as a living tradition in their own right, with continuing meaning and relevance to English audiences throughout the medieval period.

  CHAPTER 3

  The story of Siward

  The tales of the ancients tell that a certain noble man, Ursus (whom the Lord, contrary to the usual manner of human procreation, allowed to be begotten with a white bear as his father and a woman of noble birth as his mother), begot Spratlingus; Spratlingus begot Ulsius; and Ulsius begot Beorn, nicknamed Beresune, that is, ‘Bear’s Son’. This Beorn was Danish by race, a distinguished earl and illustrious soldier. As a sign, however, of the difference of species on the part of his ancestors, nature had given him the ears of his father, that is, those of a bear. In all other ways he resembled his mother’s species. And after many acts of valour and military adventures, he begot a brave son, a noble imitator of his father’s strength and military skill. His name was Siward.1

  This is the beginning of a text which survives in a thirteenth-century manuscript, probably written at Crowland Abbey in the Fenlands of Lincolnshire.2 What follows is an eventful story about the life of Siward, the grandson of a bear, telling how he travelled from Denmark to Britain in search of adventures, fought a dragon, and tricked Edward the Confessor into giving him an earldom. Many of the episodes in this narrative have marked parallels in Old Norse literature, and it has sometimes been described as the closest thing to saga to have survived from medieval England.3 But the context in which it survives is, perhaps, surprising: this text, known as the Gesta antecessorum comitis Waldevi, is presented as an account of the ancestors of Waltheof, earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, who was venerated as a saint at Crowland Abbey. This suggests that the story of Siward, with his bear ancestry and his exotic adventures, was apparently intended to reflect glory on one of the abbey’s saintly patrons. What did this tale about the exploits of a Danish warrior have to offer to an audience in thirteenth-century Lincolnshire? In this chapter we will explore this story within the context of related narratives from the East Midlands and the Fens, including the legends of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok and tales of Hereward the Wake, and see how the story of Siward may have come into being.

  The historical Siward

  Unlike some of the Viking warriors we have considered so far, Siward is a well-attested historical figure. His origins are obscure, although he was probably born in Denmark (the name Siward is a common anglicisation of the Norse name Sigurðr). He seems to have risen to prominence in the reign of Cnut: he first appears in English sources in 1033, two years before Cnut’s death, holding the title of earl of southern Northumbria.4 His predecessor in that role was Erik Hakonarson, Cnut’s brother-in-law, earl of Hlaðir and ruler of western Norway. Erik had played an important role in the Danish conquest of England in 1015–16, and was rewarded by Cnut with the huge and powerful earldom of Northumbria. Erik appears to have died around five years later (the precise year is unknown), but it is not clear exactly when Siward succeeded him as earl.5

  Given the care with which Cnut made his appointments, it is surprising that such an important earldom should have been entrusted to a man whose family origins are so unclear; the speed of Siward’s rise might suggest his ancestry was more distinguished than we can now reconstruct. It has been speculated that he may have been related either to Erik or to Cnut himself,6 but no such relationship is mentioned in any contemporary source. The only evidence we have for his family history is the ‘bear’s son’ genealogy quoted above – and that presents numerous problems, as we shall see.

  24. St Olave’s, York, the church founded by Siward, earl of Northumbria, where he was buried in 1055

  In any case, Siward outlasted the Danish king who had appointed him, and remained
an important figure in English politics well into the reign of Edward the Confessor. At first he was ruler only of southern Northumbria, the region centred on York, but in 1041 the rest of Northumbria north of the Tees was added to his earldom. This was the old pre-Viking kingdom of Bernicia, with its centre at Bamburgh, and Siward allied himself with the house of Bamburgh by marrying a woman named Ælfflæd, whose great-grandfather, Waltheof, had been ealdorman of Bamburgh at the end of the tenth century. The twelfth-century writer Symeon of Durham claims that Siward obtained control of northern Northumbria by murdering his predecessor Eadulf, a member of the house of Bamburgh.7 By the early 1050s, in addition to his earldom in the north, Siward also held lands in the East Midlands, ruling an earldom centred on Northampton and Huntingdon.8

  We do not have a great deal of information about Siward’s time as earl, although we know that he offended the community of St Cuthbert at Durham by appropriating some of their lands and challenging their ancient privilege to elect their own bishop,9 and that he supported Malcolm III in his struggle for the Scottish throne. Perhaps Siward’s most significant act as earl was to lead an expedition to Scotland in 1054 on behalf of Edward the Confessor, in support of Malcolm and against Macbeth. During this campaign, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records, Siward’s son Osbeorn and his nephew were killed in battle.10