All the Siward material is, as we will see, a composite of numerous motifs drawn principally from Anglo-Scandinavian tradition; however, there is a clear distinction between the two parts of the narrative, and the two stories told in the second part have some grounding in other sources. Both the death of Siward’s son and Siward’s own death are recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and versions of the two stories in the Gesta are also told by Henry of Huntingdon, with some additional details and dialogue which do not appear in the Gesta. Henry records Siward’s reaction to Osbeorn’s death in 1054 as follows:
Circa hoc tempus Siwardus consul fortissimus Nordhymbre, pene gigas statura, manu uero et mente predura, misit filium suum in Scotiam conquirendam. Quem cum bello cesum patri renuntiassant, ait, ‘Recepitne uulnus letale in anteriori uel posteriori corporis parte?’ Dixerunt nuntii, ‘In anteriori.’ At ille, ‘Gaudeo plane, non enim alio me uel filius meum digner funere.’ Siwardus igitur in Scotiam proficiscens, regem bello uicit, regnum totum destruxit, destructum sibi subiugauit.
(Around this time Siward, the mighty earl of Northumbria, almost a giant in stature, very strong mentally and physically, sent his son to conquer Scotland. When they came back and reported to his father that he had been killed in battle, he asked, ‘Did he receive his fatal wound in the front or the back of his body?’ The messengers said, ‘In the front.’ Then he said, ‘I am completely happy, for I consider no other death worthy for me or my son.’ So Siward set out for Scotland, and defeated the king in battle, destroyed the whole realm, and having destroyed it, subjected it to himself.)40
Henry was writing 70 years after Osbeorn’s death, and it is clear that by this time the story had already taken on a distinctly literary shape. The idea here is that wounds in the front of the body are a mark of honour, because they show that Osbeorn died fighting – not running away – and thus met a worthy death. It is an idea with analogues in various cultures, but it has often been noted that there is a close Norse parallel to this conversation, which also draws an explicit connection between the manner of the wounds and vengeance for the killing (Siward’s questions about Osbeorn’s death are followed by what is apparently a revenge attack on Scotland). This appears in Egils saga, when Kveld-Ulf asks for details of the death of his son Thorolf, who has been killed in battle against the Norwegian king:
Kveld-Úlfr spurði Ǫlvi vandliga frá atburðum þeim er gjǫrzk hǫfðu á Sandnesi þá er Þórólfr fell, svá at því hvat Þórólfr vann til frama áðr hann felli, svá ok hverir vápn báru á hann, eða hvar hann hafði mest sár, eða hverneg fall hans yrði. Ǫlvir sagði allt þat er hann spurði, svá þat at Haraldr konungr veitti honum sár þat er œrit mundi eitt til bana, ok Þórólfr fell nær á foetr konungi á grúfu. Þá svaraði Kveld-Úlfr: ‘Vel hefir þú sagt, því at þat hafa gamlir menn mælt, at þess manns mundi hefnt verða ef hann felli á grúfu, ok þeim nær koma hefndin er fyrir yrði er hinn felli. En ólíkligt er at oss verði þeirar hamingju auðit.’41
(Kveld-Ulf questioned Ölvir closely about everything that had happened at Sandnes when Thorolf fell: what brave deeds Thorolf did before he fell, whose weapon injured him, where he received his worst wounds, and how his death occurred. Ölvir told him everything he asked, that King Harald gave him the wound which alone was enough to kill him, and that Thorolf fell forwards at the foot of the king. Then Kveld-Ulf replied, ‘You have said well, because old men say that he who falls forwards will be avenged, and that vengeance will come near to the one before whom he falls. But it is not likely that such will be our luck.’)
The idea that the details of wounds received in battle have meaning, and can be interpreted, is presented in the saga as a traditional belief or superstition (what ‘old men say’). However, it is also a literary motif, appropriate for the story of a father’s reaction to his son’s untimely but honourable death. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle agrees that Osbeorn died in battle, but the stories of Siward’s reaction told by Henry and the Gesta differ in some details from the earlier account: the Chronicle says that Osbeorn died on campaign with his father in Scotland, but both the stories told by Henry and the Gesta have it that Siward is apart from his son and hears of his death from messengers. This allows for the introduction of a conventional reaction motif: in Henry’s story it is the dialogue about the placement of the wounds, while in the Gesta it is the separate but related motif of violent reaction to news of a death.
The Gesta’s story of Siward’s emotional response to his son’s death – smashing the stone sphere – has been compared to perhaps the most famous example of this motif in Norse literature, the reactions of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok to the news of their father’s death.42 As we shall see, this is not the only potential connection between the Siward material and legends about the sons of Ragnar. Meanwhile, Henry’s story, repeated by later chroniclers, had a long afterlife: Siward’s questioning and his judgement on his son’s death appear in Macbeth, which is distantly based on Siward’s Scottish campaign of 1054. Towards the end of the play Siward’s son (here called Young Siward) valiantly but vainly tries to kill Macbeth, and is killed himself. When the news comes to his father, Siward questions the messenger, asking where he got his wounds. He is told they were in the front of his body and so, Siward declares, he will not mourn him: ‘Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death’, he says.43 Siward’s stoic reaction and his ability to rejoice in the face of death are in a clear line of inheritance from Henry of Huntingdon’s story.
In fact, both of Henry’s two stories about Siward involve the earl’s reaction to death. The second deals with Siward’s approach to his own death, and bears a close resemblance to the version in the Gesta antecessorum, although once again, Henry preserves it in the form of speech:
Siwardus, consul rigidissimus, pro fluuio uentris ductus mortem sensit inminere. Dixitque, ‘Quantus pudor me tot in bellis mori non potuisse, ut uaccarum morti cum dedecore reseruarer! Induite me saltem lorica mea inpenetrabili, precingite gladio. Sullimate galea. Scutum in leua. Securim auratam michi ponite in dextra, ut militum fortissimus modo militis moriar.’ Dixerat, et ut dixerat armatus honorifice spiritum exalauit.
(Siward, the stalwart earl, being seized by dysentery, felt that death was near. And he said, ‘How shameful it is that I, who could not die in so many battles, should have been saved for the ignominious death of a cow! At least clothe me in my impenetrable breastplate, gird me with my sword, place my helmet on my head, my shield in my left hand, my gilded battle-axe in my right, that I, the bravest of soldiers, may die like a soldier.’ He spoke, and armed as he had requested, he gave up his spirit with honour.)44
27. The death of Earl Siward, by James Smetham, 1861 (©Wellcome Library, London, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Again, there are numerous parallels between this story and Norse examples of warriors choosing the manner of their death,45 and we have already seen that one medieval reader may have found a comparison between Siward’s death and the death of Beorn the son of Ragnar, swallowed up by the earth while in full armour.
Where did Henry of Huntingdon come across these two stories? It seems significant that they have several features in common. Both of them, each telling of a memorable reaction to death, appear in Henry’s Historia and in the Gesta antecessorum (with enough differences to suggest that the Gesta has not borrowed directly from Henry); in the Gesta these two episodes essentially comprise the second part of the narrative, and are more closely tied to the known events of Siward’s life than any other part of the text. Both episodes make substantial use of direct speech, and in each case the words attributed to Siward are effectively the point of the story. The core of each narrative may therefore originally have been a legend about a memorable utterance, and these two stories about Siward may already have been in circulation at the time Henry was writing, in the second quarter of the twelfth century. The first part of the Gesta’s narrative, telling how Siward came to England, has quite a different character – there is, f
or example, only one instance of direct speech in this section, and that is attributed not to Siward but to the old man on the mound, who tells Siward to go to London and seek his fortune. This is a particularly powerful speech, reflecting the old man’s mysterious knowledge of Siward’s name, his prophetic telling of his future, and the naming of the banner, and it is not really comparable to the memorable sayings of the other two episodes. It seems that the two stories told by Henry of Huntingdon – memorialising the old warrior’s indomitable courage in the face of death – were already circulating together by the twelfth century, but the first section of the narrative seems to have had different origins. It is to the first section that we will now turn.
Prophets and dragons
With the exception of the two stories about reaction to death, the Gesta antecessorum is very vague about the latter part of Siward’s life. By contrast, the early part of the text forms a cohesive narrative, covering a brief period of time and possessing its own internal causal logic: Siward’s youthful dragon-fighting, his encounter with the old man on the mound, and his killing of Tostig are not a series of unrelated episodic adventures but a structured account which purports to explain how the Danish warrior Siward came to obtain an earldom in England. Such a narrative must have been compiled, at least in outline, at the same time and as a single unit. It draws motifs from traditions about the Danes in England and knits them together to compile a narrative of Siward’s early life; it gives the impression of being composed to explain how Waltheof ’s Danish father came to possess his earldom, and to convey the idea that in coming to England Siward – and his son and descendants – in some way fulfilled their appointed destiny.
This is most clearly illustrated by Siward’s encounter with the old man on the mound, which takes place at the moment of his first landing in England. This episode contains some elements we have already encountered in legends about the Vikings in England, although used here in a slightly different way, and it places Siward in an established tradition of Norse heroes who receive supernatural help from a figure like this enigmatic old man. In Old Norse literature Odin frequently manifests himself in this form, appearing in disguise to guide young warriors to their destiny and bestow gifts upon them – precisely what this old man does for Siward.46 Siward meets this Odinic figure sitting on a mound, and the act of sitting on a burial-mound frequently occurs in Norse tradition as a means of accessing wisdom or supernatural aid. To take one famous example, the whole great line of the family of the Völsungs begins when King Rerir, unable to have a child with his wife, sits on a mound and prays to Odin and Frigg, who send him an apple which enables his wife to conceive a son.47 This son, Völsung, becomes the progenitor of a family of heroes and warriors, including Sigurðr the dragon-slayer, who himself has mysterious and life-changing encounters with an old man who turns out to be Odin.
In the English narrative the old man has prophetic knowledge of Siward’s name and destiny, and guides him towards achieving it with the gift of the banner. This banner, which is named ‘Ravenlandeye’, suggests a link to the raven banner which appears in legends about Cnut, the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, and other Scandinavian warriors. As we have seen, the story of the prophetic raven banner was known at Cnut’s court, since it appears in the Encomium Emmae Reginae, and it is linked with the sons of Lothbrok in the twelfth-century Annals of St Neots. All three raven banners in English sources are therefore associated with Danes, and two of them have similar prophetic properties which suggest a likely common origin. Siward’s is not said to have any distinctively supernatural qualities, but the old man’s comment that the banner will convince Siward’s companions of the truth of his words, that is, of their prospects for success in London, might be a remnant of the banner’s prophetic qualities in the other sources, its ability to predict victory or defeat. In those texts the prophecy concerns success in battle, and in an invasion of England; Siward is not an invader, but he is a Danish warrior who has come to prove himself and win lands in England. The placing of this encounter at the moment of landing in Northumbria suggests he is here in a parallel position to Cnut and the sons of Lothbrok, although his destiny is an earldom and not a kingdom. Interestingly, this narrative does not present Siward coming to England as part of a Danish invasion, or as a result of Cnut’s reign in England (as must have been the case in reality); his is an independent enterprise, and the king who grants him promotion is Edward the Confessor. This might suggest a desire in this narrative to present Siward not as a Viking invader, but as an adventurous young Danish warrior who finds success in England and becomes a trustworthy supporter of the English king.
It is worth noting that one of the Norse parallels to the raven banner story, in Orkneyinga saga, says that the Orkney earl Sigurðr Hlöðvisson owned a raven banner, which was carried before him at the Battle of Clontarf,48 and there is a specific connection between this story and the Crowland narrative in the fact that Sigurðr not only bears a name cognate with that of Siward of Northumbria, but also shares Siward’s byname digri. This may simply be a coincidence: the nickname, although rare in England, was fairly common in Scandinavia.49 However, Judith Jesch suggests that if the story of a raven banner was known in royal circles during the reign of Cnut and his sons, as its appearance in the Encomium indicates, it may have travelled to Orkney from there;50 the banners of Siward and Sigurðr would then most probably be independent outgrowths of the same English stories about the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. The court of Cnut was, of course, the specific milieu in which Siward of Northumbria first came to prominence, although the later Crowland narrative does not show any awareness of this.
Siward’s story also seems to draw on a detail associated with another would-be Scandinavian invader of England: it has been suggested that the name of Siward’s banner, Ravenlandeye, appears to be a blend between the raven banner and the banner Landøyðan (‘land-waster’), which belonged to the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada.51 According to later Norse sources, this banner was Harald’s most valuable possession, since (like the raven banner) it brought victory to the one forwhom it was borne into battle.52 It was said to have been carried by Harald’s army in England in 1066, both at Fulford and at Stamford Bridge.53 Tales about Harald were apparently circulating in England in the twelfth century – a story of his semi-legendary exploits in the East is told by William of Malmesbury, who describes how Harald strangled a lion with his bare hands,54 and it may be that the name of his banner was also known in England.
The connection of the raven banner motif with the figure of the old man sitting on the mound is unique to the Siward story, but both elements are reminiscent of other legends about the Danes in England. We have seen that a connection between burial-mounds and arrival in England features in Ragnars saga in the form of Ivar’s howe, which had the power to defend England from later invaders; in some Norse accounts of 1066, Ivar’s burial-mound on the coast of Cleveland is said to be the first place where Harald Hardrada landed when he came to conquer England – the expedition on which he carried the banner Landøyðan. Siward’s version of the story is slightly different, but this mound too seems to be situated near the sea, since Siward encounters it immediately on landing in Northumbria. The connection between the appearance of a raven banner/mound episode in the Siward material, the legend of the sons of Ragnar, and traditions about the last campaign of Harald Hardrada in England is extremely suggestive, especially as later Icelandic tradition connected Waltheof and Harald, naming Waltheof as one of those who fought against Harald and Tostig in England in 1066.55
There is one further possible point of contact between the legends of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok and the Siward narrative in the Gesta antecessorum. According to the Gesta, Siward’s Danish father was named ‘Beorn Beresune’, and both Siward (Sigurðr) and Beorn feature among the names of the sons of Ragnar in Scandinavian tradition. These are among the most common Old Norse names, but we may briefly consider whether there is any connection between the Siward material and
these two characters in the Ragnarssons legend, especially Sigurðr. The two are sometimes grouped together: in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum, Bjorn and Sigvard are said to have killed Ælla of Northumbria, an act more usually attributed to Ivar and Ubbe.56 Sigurðr does not appear in any of the English versions of the Ragnar legend, but Beorn features several times, although not always as one of Ragnar’s sons: Geoffrey of Wells gives the names of the three sons of Lothbrok as ‘Inguar, Hubba, et Bern’, but we have seen that in Roger of Wendover’s story, the man who is responsible for bringing the Danes to England is named Bern. Beorn, although identified in continental sources as one of the sons of Lothbrok, was not always grouped with his brothers in the English traditions, and his role seems to have been reinterpreted in varying ways.
As for Sigurðr, known as ormr-í-auga (‘snake in the eye’), his absence from the English sources makes it difficult to tell what part, if any, he took in the Ragnar legend in its earlier stages of development.57 His role may have been expanded in Scandinavia at a later date after a link was made between the Ragnar tradition and the Völsung legend, which made Áslaug/Kráka, the daughter of Sigurðr the Völsung, Ragnar’s second wife; the coincidence of the names encouraged, and may perhaps have inspired, this link.58 There are no strong narrative parallels between the stories of Siward of Northumbria and the Sigurðr of the Ragnar legend, but Sigurðr is the only one of the sons of Ragnar to have a direct encounter with an Odinic figure comparable to the old man on the mound who offers Siward patronage and protection. Saxo’s Gesta Danorum tells how Sigvard is wounded in battle and healed by a man who gives his name as Rostar (i.e. Hroptr, a name of Odin59) in return for a promise to consecrate to him all the souls of the men Sigvard will afterwards kill. Rostar pours dust on Sigvard’s eyes and little snakes appear in them, and this, says Saxo, is how Sigvard got the nickname ormr-í-auga.60
Dragon Lords Page 12