[Ne] com Unlaf mid scipum": A Summary of the Current State of Research with Regard to Olaf Tryggvason's Assumed Presence at the Battle of Maldon (original) (raw)
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II Æthelred and the Politics of The Battle of Maldon
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Perceived Villainy in The Battle of Maldon
2014
"The Vikings were a feared race of invaders in the time of the Anglo-Saxons. Pillaging, theft, and deceit were only a few of the wicked capabilities of the Danish, sea-going people. Throughout the ages, Vikings performed many acts that earned them the animosity they received. However, did these sea-travelers always deserve the title of ‘villian’ in every situation in which they were found? In The Battle of Maldon, at least, perhaps they did not. The Battle of Maldon is an Old English heroic poem that tells the story of an Anglo-Saxon defeat at the hands of the Vikings. The poem may at first seem to target the Vikings as the main villain of the story, but upon further reflection, this is simply not true. Although the Vikings are instigators of the battle at Maldon, my goal in this essay is to prove that the Vikings are not the major cause of the Anglo-Saxon defeat at Maldon..."
Mediaevalia, 1991
While the Old English heroic poem 'The Battle of Maldon' has long been read as a work of imaginative literature, based on real historical events of the Anglo-Scandinavian age, that serves to justify sacrifice in a patriotic cause on the field of war, I offer a different reading: namely, that the poem makes manifest the need for a policy of accommodation in the face of Viking assaults that had become too formidable for the English to resist by direct military action. In its numerous variant forms, the 'Maldon' story assumed myth-like characteristics in its time, embodying potentially contradictory messages, as myth often does. This paper was reworked as chapter 5 (pp. 203-36) of my book 'Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts' (2007), with two addenda (at pp. 237-52).
In 1968, in a remark as wise as it is learned, Professor George Clark wrote of The Battle of Maldon that "what the poet does not create does not exist even if history inspires his poem." 1 Readers of the poem have been mulling this over for forty years. The poet's words are all that we have, and each word bears the weight of the poet's impress. The battle itself is lost to time, and what appears in the poem is at best a recreation. The historical information it affords us has been subject, to some degree, to alteration by imagination, to the formulae of verse, and to the genre's chartered streets, in William Blake's phrase. Professor Clark has therefore asked readers to seek "the meaning of the events the poem imaginatively recreates." 2 He is careful to remind us that Maldon is not a poem of more recent vintage, but one steeped in medieval topoi. As a consequence, readers need to be alert to mediating assumptions about contemporary literary art, especially as regards ambiguity, structure, authorial intent, and the role of poetry in society. For example, contemporary readers often see in Maldon a nominally fragmented, aesthetically cohesive package which narrates an experience of loyalty. 3 We often presume that a poem is about something more abstract than itself, what is commonly called its theme. In Maldon, that theme is thought to be loyalty. An abstract Loyalty allows us to gauge the success or failure of the poem's characters. We ask whether this character or that character is loyal, and what is suggested more generally about loyalty. As one consequence of assuming a governing theme of loyalty, we implicitly allow that each character chooses to honor his obligation or not. This choice, any choice per se, makes the moral world of the poem ambivalent; and Maldon as it is read today is considered didactic insofar as it allows its readers to navigate vicariously ambivalent or conflicting loyalties. Thus, the speeches of the retainers are often explained as each man's declared choice to fight on, to be loyal. 4 But AElfwine, the first of the retainers to speak, does not argue for the right exercise of choice. He says, "Nu maeg cunnian hwa cene sy" (l.
Tolkien’s rewritings from The Battle of Maldon to Middle-earth
2014
The aim of this thesis is to analyze the themes and characters of the medieval Anglo-Saxon period that Professor J. R. R. Tolkien studied and applied to his writings through his productive literary life. With this study, I investigated the relations between the Germanic themes emerging from the poem "The Battle of Maldon" and the literary production of Tolkien, with a particular stress on the figure of the king and of the hero and the most debated word "ofermod".
ScandinavianVínaand English Battles
Notes and Queries, 2016
SCANDINAVIAN VÍNA AND ENGLISH BATTLES A minor backwater in the flow of debate about where the battle of Brunanburh, fought by King AEthelstan against Anlaf Guthfrithsson and Constantine king of the Scots in 937, is the river Vína. The battle of Brunanburh is generally accepted to be that named Vínheiðr in Egils Saga, where the eponymous hero's brother Þórólfr died. Vínheiðr in the saga is located by a river and nearby is the wood Vínuskógr, and a widespread assumption is that the river might have been named Vína, and so have supplied the first element of the places named in the saga. 1 When Egill laments his brother's death in verse, he says that the earth will grow over the grave Vínu naer 'near Vína', which is likely to be a reference to a river. 2 In discussion of these names, Campbell rejected any connection with Symeon of Durham's alternative name for the 937 battle, Weondun, on the basis that Þórólfr fought and died earlier in a battle near the Russian river Dvina (Vína) and the saga author confused the two. 3 But Matthew Townend showed that Campbell's argument was based on flawed logic because Haukr Valdísarson's Íslendingadrápa, well before Egils Saga, recorded Þórólfr's death in England fighting for King AEthelstan. He then pointed out that while the phonological correspondence and development is not flawless, Weon-could be rendered by Norse Vína. 4 In between Campbell and Townend, scholars found the possible correspondence of the names and battles compelling; indeed some writers still reconstruct Brunanburh in terms of the largely fictional account in Egils Saga. 5 The occurrence of the river name Vína in the
This paper will translate an excerpt from a little-known Latin text produced within living memory of 1066 for the details of the Battle of Hastings’ combat and geography. Quedam Exceptiones de Historia Normannorum et Anglorum (QE) survives as a unique abbreviation of the C redaction of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum (GND). The QE abbreviates the C redaction and adds interpolations, most concerning the FitzOsbern family, which has led to the suggestion that the anonymous scribe was either related to the family or associated with Bishop Osbern FitzOsbern of Exeter. He certainly had an interest in geography, adding the names of rivers, places and topographic features. The text was likely composed at Battle Abbey, being the earliest account of the Norman Conquest to be written there.