Reading Beowulf in the eleventh century
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
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Charters
Letters
Law codes
Skaldic verse
Primary sources
* This website is still under construction, so not many of the links work! Please feel free to explore what you can, send me abusive demands to hurry up, or return from 13th December, by when I hope to have most of it working like a dreamy dream. *
One of the challenges in studying the eleventh century in England, particularly the reign of Cnut the Great which so interests me, is that sources are sparse and scattered. As part of my research, I’ll be bringing together some of the different documentary, artistic, and physical bits and pieces which have a bearing on how he may have been perceived, and I’ll usually put these here in some form.Old English literary sources (which aren’t historical in the same way because their dating is so fraught) are over here.
If all this is a bit dizzying, this is the coolest documentary source for Cnut’s reign; this is the most exciting artistic source; and this is the most thrilling physical source.
It’s generally more productive (and more fun) to draw your own conclusions from primary sources, so do your worst. But, for those who are interested, I’ll share some of my own comments and commentary on texts here.
Texts from this period usually exist in three forms (and obviously sometimes many different variants of them): manuscripts; editions; and translations. I intend to bring all three types together where they’ll be useful to me, and I’ll always tell you where I get them from. I endlessly crave manuscript images, so please contact me if you have some or would permit me to take some. In general, translations from Old English will be mine, from Latin will be mine but based on someone else’s, and from Old Norse will be entirely based on other people’s. If you’re going to cite anything you see on this site, it’s definitely worth either checking the originals if you can get hold of them, or contacting me to ask about them. I will, for instance, never reproduce arguments about the ‘correct’ text and will usually silently expand contractions so you’re not getting the real thing here.
Documentary
With the magnificent Bede, these are the supreme historical source for most of English history up to the late eleventh century. There are multiple versions (hence Chronicles, not Chronicle), and I’ve mostly relied on the E version here. They’re remarkably quiet throughout Cnut’s reign which I find interesting but I’m not quite sure how to explore this further. There’s loads of research into these brilliant texts: some good starting points can be found in the references section.
These are mostly based on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, with some manner of mad colouring. More or less contemporary is the fairly uninteresting Thietmar. Florence of Worcester (who was a man) has some passive-aggressive comments to make, which I’ve put here (leaving out a lot of other stuff and nonsense). William of Malmesbury is the first chap to bring up the crazy tale of Cnut and the waves, and has some other interesting ideas.
A lot of royal (and other) business was conducted through charters and writs which certified gifts and freedoms from tax and whatnot. Most of the extant charters are related to churches – but this may just be because they were more likely to be preserved in such places. Most of them only exist now in recopied versions from a few centuries later. A full list of charters attributed to Cnut is here, a guide to reading charters here, and some example charters here and here.
Because charters sometimes give a bit of narrative explaining what’s going on, they can be a fascinating supplement to the Chronicles for historical information. One of the more famous examples is Æthelred’s charter to St Frideswide’s church, which describes the horrific ethnic violence which took place in Oxford in 1002.
Almost no letters from the whole Anglo-Saxon period survive and it’s impossible to know how often people communicated by letter. A pretty brilliant fragment records a controversy over fashions in clothing and hair length resulting from the Danish invasions. Two extraordinary survivals, though, are letters from Cnut to his people, one from around 1020 and the other around 1027 – both when he was spending some time sorting out Scandinavian affairs. I’m also very fond of this letter from the Bishop of Chartres thanking Cnut for some presents.
Liberal folk like Keats loved Anglo-Saxon laws because they look like an expression of ancient English liberties, and to some extent they are. But they need to be used carefully – not as a description of how disputes in Derbyshire were dealt with, but as an expression of how a regime wanted to be perceived. There’s a simply stunning site on Anglo-Saxon law codes here, and an ongoing project on them here, but I’ve put some of the extracts from Cnut’s codes (there are generally agreed to be three) which most excite me here. And this isn’t a law code, but it is wicked.
Because he was ethnically, and to some extent culturally, Scandinavian, Cnut became a renowned patron of traditional skaldic poetry. It’s pretty dense stuff, comparable to the Old English Riddles in some ways, and is utterly awesome. I won’t pretend to be even remotely expert on it, but here are some of the bits that really matter to me.
Artistic
There are two massively famous images of Cnut which are contemporary with his reign. That doesn’t mean they look like him (does anyone really care what he looked like?) – but it does mean that they in some sense express something about what he wanted to be seen as, or something about how he was seen.
One is in the front of the Liber Vitae (Book of Life) of New Minster, Winchester – an abbey closely connected with the English monarchy, which Cnut got himself onside with as much as he possibly could. It shows him with the extraordinary Emma Ælfgifu presenting a cross to the church.
You can also see Cnut on his coins. Part of what was so awesome about the late Anglo-Saxon state is that they reissued coins on a regular basis (about 83 million coins were made in Cnut’s 19-year reign), and lots of them can be seen on t’internet. I’ve put a few here for your viewing glee, but way more can be seen here and here. Or, for those of you in London, behind glass at the British Museum.
And of course there are later representations of this remarkable man. They’re not a lot of use to me, but they are usually quite pretty. Here’s one of him fighting Edmund Ironside (interestingly, Ironside is supposed to have challenged him to combat but Cnut wasn’t up for it; his personal warrior credentials may not have been as impressive as his political skill).
Physical
This was discovered at Winchester, and it’s incredibly exciting. It’s probably part of a frieze going around the inside of the church and it almost certainly shows part of the Volsungrsaga, specifically this bit. And the most reasonable story of how it was made says it was Cnut what done it (or had it did).
During the English Civil War, Winchester was besieged and bones got flung around all over the place as part of some kind of crazed defence effort. So Cnut’s bones could be anywhere. But they’re probably here.
There are runic stones scattered across Scandinavia recording key local events – often the transfer of allegiance or something. In some ways, they form a similar purpose to charters and do it better because they’re more permanent (but also more expensive to make, and harder to carry to court). A few mention Cnut, and lots of them show interesting fusing of artistic ideas.
