̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Department of Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic

British Academy elects Cambridge researchers to Fellowship

ta385 — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 10:59:00 +0000

They are among 86 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from medieval history to international relations.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are:

Professor Elisabeth van Houts (History Faculty; Emmanuel College)

Professor Tim Harper (History Faculty; Magdalene College)

Professor Rosalind Love (Department of ASNC; Robinson College)

Professor James Montgomery (FAMES; Trinity Hall)

Professor Ayşe Zarakol (POLIS; Emmanuel College)

Professor Tim Dalgleish (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit)

Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship consisting of over 1700 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas.

Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian Professor Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. ̽��ֱ��Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.

In 2024, a total of 52 UK Fellows, 30 International Fellows and 4 Honorary Fellows have been elected to the British Academy Fellowship.

Professor Ayse Zarakol said: “I am absolutely delighted to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy in recognition of my interdisciplinary work at the intersection of international relations, global history and historical sociology. It is an honour to join such a long line of distinguished scholars. I very much look forward to working with the Academy to advance research on the big questions of our day and to ensure that UK remains a hospitable environment for social sciences and humanities research that attracts the best talent from around the world.”

Professor Rosalind Love said: “As a grateful recipient of one its Postdoctoral Fellowships, I have always revered the British Academy and am deeply humbled by this honour. It shows that the Academy values the teaching of Medieval Latin, and research in that area, at a time when the subject faces cuts elsewhere. I’d like to express sincerest gratitude to the teachers who gave me a solid grounding and to all who have supported me over the years: they made this possible. I look forward to working with other FBAs to shape the future of the Humanities.”

Professor Tim Harper, Head of Cambridge’s School of the Humanities and Social Sciences, said: “It is an honour to be elected a fellow of the British Academy. As a historian, I am very aware of the challenges and opportunities for the humanities and social sciences that we collectively face. I look forward to continuing to strive to strengthen their position.”

Welcoming the Fellows, President of the British Academy Professor Julia Black said: “We are delighted to welcome this year’s cohort of Fellows, and I offer my warmest congratulations to each and every one. From the Academy’s earliest days, our Fellows are the lifeblood of the organisation, representing the very best of our disciplines – and we could not do all that we do without their expertise, time and energy. I very much look forward to working closely with our new Fellows – the breadth and depth of their expertise adds so much to the Academy.”

Six academics from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social sciences.

It is an honour to join such a long line of distinguished scholars.

Ayşe Zarakol

̽��ֱ��British Academy

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

An early medieval money mystery is solved

ta385 — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Byzantine bullion fuelled Europe’s revolutionary adoption of silver coins in the mid-7th century, only to be overtaken by silver from a mine in Charlemagne’s Francia a century later, new tests reveal. ̽��ֱ��findings could transform our understanding of Europe’s economic and political development.

Lost Irish words rediscovered, including the word for ‘oozes pus'

ta385 — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 07:00:00 +0000

If you were choosing where to live in medieval Ireland you might insist on somewhere ogach which meant ‘eggy’ or ‘abounding in eggs’, but in reference to a particularly fertile region. By contrast, you would never want to hear your cook complaining brachaid, ‘it oozes pus’. And if you were too boisterous at the dining table, you might be accused of briscugad (making something easily broken).

All three words have been brought back to life thanks to a painstaking five-year research project involving a collaboration between Queen’s ̽��ֱ�� Belfast and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��team has scoured medieval manuscripts and published texts for words which have either been overlooked by earlier dictionary-makers or which have been erroneously defined.

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Professor of Celtic and Medieval Studies at Cambridge says: “ ̽��ֱ��Dictionary offers a window onto a fascinating and important past world. ̽��ֱ��project extends our understanding of the vocabulary of the time but also offers unique insights into the people who used these words. They reveal extraordinary details about everyday lives, activities, beliefs and relationships, as well as contact with speakers of other languages.”

̽��ֱ��revised dictionary spans the development of the Irish language over a thousand years from the sixth century to the sixteenth, from the time just after the arrival of St Patrick all the way down to the era of Elizabeth I. ̽��ֱ��team has amended definitions, presented evidence to show that some words were in use much earlier than previously thought, and even deleted a few fake words. One of these is tapairis which had been taken to be some kind of medicinal substance but in effect is not a word at all, since it arose from an incorrect division of two other words literally meaning ‘grains of paradise’, the term for Guinea grains.

Lost words

̽��ֱ��rediscovered lost words include a term for ‘becomes ignorant' – ainfisigid, based on the word for knowledge: fis. Other words have been shown to have been attested hundreds of years earlier than was previously thought, such as foclóracht meaning vocabulary. Yet, other examples emphasise that the medieval world continues to resonate. One of these is rímaire, which is used as the modern Irish word for computer (in its later form ríomhaire).

Professor Ní Mhaonaigh explains: “In the medieval period, rímaire referred not to a machine but to a person engaged in the medieval science of computistics who performed various kinds of calculations concerning time and date, most importantly the date of Easter. So it’s a word with a long pedigree whose meaning was adapted and applied to a modern invention.”

̽��ֱ��historical dictionary on which the electronic one is based was originally published by the Royal Irish Academy in 23 volumes between 1913 and 1976. “Advances in scholarship since the publication of the first volume had rendered parts of the dictionary obsolete or out of date,” says Greg Toner, leader of the project and Professor of Irish at Queen’s ̽��ֱ�� Belfast. “Our work has enabled us to resolve many puzzles and errors and to uncover hundreds of previously unknown words.”

̽��ֱ��online Dictionary serves up a feast of information on subjects as diverse as food, festivals, medicine, superstition, law and wildlife. One of the newly added phrases is galar na rig, literally the king's disease, a term for scrofula which is known in English as king's evil.

Outlaws and turkeys

̽��ֱ��project sheds new light on Ireland’s interactions with foreign languages, cultures and goods in the medieval period. ̽��ֱ��Dictionary points out that útluighe, meaning an outlaw, ultimately goes back to the Old Norse word útlagi, though the term was perhaps borrowed into Irish through English or Anglo-Norman. Its use appears to have been limited – the researchers have only found it once, in a thirteenth-century poem by Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe.

Another loanword in Modern Irish is turcaí (turkey) but before this was borrowed from English, this bird was known as cearc fhrancach (turkey hen) or coilech francach (turkey cock). Strictly speaking, the adjective Francach means 'French' or 'of French origin'. This usage to denote a bird native to the Americas may seem odd but in other languages, it is associated with various countries including France, for reasons which remain unclear.

Spreading the word

Professor Toner says: “A key aim of our work has been to open the Dictionary up, not only to students of the language but to researchers working in other areas such as history and archaeology, as well as to those with a general interest in medieval life.”

In a related project, the researchers have been developing educational resources for schools in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

̽��ֱ��Dictionary launched on 30 August 2019 at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. A History of Ireland in 100 Words, drawing on 100 of the Dictionary's words and tracing how they illuminate historical changes will be published in October 2019 by the Royal Irish Academy.

For more on the newly discovered words, see a piece by Dr Sharon Arbuthnot, a researcher on the project, in the Brainstorm series on National Irish Television (RTÉ).

Researchers from Cambridge and Queen’s ̽��ֱ�� Belfast have identified and defined 500 Irish words, many of which had been lost, and unlocked the secrets of many other misunderstood terms. Their findings can now be freely accessed in the revised version of the online dictionary of Medieval Irish (www.dil.ie).

̽��ֱ��Dictionary offers a window onto a fascinating and important past world

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh

National Library of Ireland, Manuscript G11 403a10. Image, Irish Scripts on Screen

National Library of Ireland, Manuscript G11 403a10

Funding

Work on the Dictionary has been supported by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. ̽��ֱ��related project developing schools’ resources is funded by a grant from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, School of Arts and Humanities Impact Fund.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Æthelred the Unready, King of the English: 1,000 years of bad press

amb206 — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 09:30:00 +0000

A silver penny struck more than ten centuries ago (on display in the Fitzwilliam Museum) shows Æthelred, King of the English. ̽��ֱ��obverse shows the king in profile and the reverse a Christian cross. Thousands of similar coins have survived. Many are in collections in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm. This coinage is material evidence of ‘Dane-geld’, money paid to England’s enemies in attempts to forestall Viking invasions of England.

Inevitably remembered as ‘the Unready’, Æthelred died exactly 1,000 years ago on 23 April 1016 – 50 years before the Norman Conquest. ̽��ֱ��same date in April is recorded as the day of the death of William Shakespeare (in 1616) and also celebrated each year as St George’s Day.

Born around 968, son of King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth, Æthelred died in London, a place that had recently been established as political and commercial centre of England. He was the first monarch to be buried in the old cathedral of St Paul which much later became one of the most notable casualties of the great fire of London.

Æthelred’s nickname is a pun that may date from as early the 11th century. Æthelred means ‘noble-counsel’ while the noun unræd means ‘an ill-considered or treacherous plan. “ ̽��ֱ��nickname degenerated from ‘Æthelred unræd’ into ‘Æthelred the Unready’, and ‘Æthelred no-counsel’, giving rise to further stories about him,” says Professor Simon Keynes.

Keynes, a historian in the Department of Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic, has worked extensively on the Anglo-Saxon period – especially the charters and coinage that offer new windows into a time of turmoil. He was the organiser and keynote speaker at a conference last week.

Æthelred was just a boy aged around 12 years when he became King of the English, and his long rule was marred by repeated incursions from the Danes. Far from keeping English shores safe from attack, the vast amounts of money paid to the Danes (estimated at £250,000 – a huge sum at the time) simply whetted their appetite for English riches. They took the money and continued their raids. In 1016 England became, for some 50 years, part of an empire of the North Sea.

From the 6th century onwards, England had converted to Christianity while the Danes continued to worship Norse deities. Æthelred believed that this placed God on his side – but prayer proved useless. So did reprisals on Danish settlers. Fruitless attempts to bribe or defeat the Vikings sealed Æthelred’s reputation as a disastrous king who deserved to fail. Sellar and Yeatman’s 1930s classic 1066 and All That echoes this sentiment: the “Wave of Danes” who overran the country were “undoubtedly a Good Thing”.

“Throughout history, Æthelred’s payment of Dane-geld has been used as a short hand for drastic mismanagement and poor decision making,” says Keynes. “But there is another, more complex, picture to be painted of Æthelred’s reign, and the ways that he and his councillors tackled the considerable challenges that they faced as they sought to administer a kingdom and protect their respective interests.”

Much of what we know about Æthelred’s reign comes from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - an account by an anonymous chronicler of each year’s notable events. ̽��ֱ��Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is far from impartial: its verses were composed by court poets, or skalds, who celebrated the deeds of the leaders of the Viking armies. “ ̽��ֱ��story told in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and retold many times thereafter, is very superficial. But there is plenty of other evidence for the period, and the deeper one looks, the more complex and interesting it all becomes,” says Keynes.

Keynes says that no single body of evidence is richer than the 130 charters that survive Æthelred’s reign. More properly called ‘royal diplomas’, these charters are documents that record agreements made at assemblies held four or five times a year. Such meetings, which took place at major festivals, such as Easter and Pentecost, were an opportunity for both ceremony and business. ̽��ֱ��charters, written in Latin, were witnessed by prominent members of the church and key land-owners.

“In comparison to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which is a wonderfully vivid narrative in the vernacular, the diplomas are dry and seemingly impenetrable documents – and it’s true that individually they appear to yield little. But considered collectively, they offer an opportunity to reach below the surface of recorded events,” says Keynes.

̽��ֱ��majority of the charters issued during Æthelred’s reign represent grants of land. Others give detailed details of the forfeiture of land into the king’s hands or confirm the entitlement of a religious house to lands and privileges which have been lost.

“Royal diplomas were highly valuable documents in their own right. It was the possession of the charter itself which gave an individual the right to the land described even if the individual in question was not named. Not surprisingly copies and forgeries were made – which, for the historian, makes puzzling them out even harder,” says Keynes.

“ ̽��ֱ��diplomas also have long lists of witnesses which, when tabulated and analysed, enable one to detect interesting changes in the composition of the king’s councillors over the course of Æthelred’s long reign – suggesting perhaps who was gaining in power and who was declining.”

Exeter Cathedral holds one of the most beautiful surviving charters, written in ink on parchment. Æthelred's diploma for Bishop Ealdred of Cornwall (994) confirms Ealdred's status as bishop of Cornwall, at St Germans, and states that he is to have the same rights as the other bishops have in their own dioceses. “This charter was probably the outcome of a determination on the part of Archbishop Sigeric to set things in order,” says Keynes.

“ ̽��ֱ��English were under severe Viking attack, and this was one way of making arrangements more pleasing in the sight of God. ̽��ֱ��diploma was issued at a royal assembly, and was witnessed by a number of bishops, ealdormen, abbots, and thegns - in other words by the great and good of the land.”

Coinage offers another window into Aethelred’s reign and management of money is likely to have been on the agenda at royal assemblies. In a collaboration with the late Mark Blackburn, Keeper of Coins and Medals at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Keynes took a keen interest in the coinage of Æthelred’s reign. “Coinage was struck at as many as 80 minting places across England. It was produced in huge quantities for export as part of the tribute money paid to Viking armies and the army tax paid to a standing mercenary force,” he says.

“Variations in coin designs over time suggest that Æthelred and those working with him developed and maintained a system of staggering complexity. To control the economy, the authorities recalled coins of one type from circulation and exchanged them for coins of a new type. ̽��ֱ��designs tell their own stories. ̽��ֱ��earliest types feature the hand of God issuing from a cloud, perhaps to signify divine approval. Later the emphasis shifted to the king’s portrait and he is shown initially bare-headed and later wearing a helmet.”

̽��ֱ��rarest of the coins struck in Æthelred’s time is a short-lived Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) type. Worldwide, just 24 survive, one of which is in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum and displayed in the Rothschild Gallery. What makes this coin so remarkable is the absence of king’s portrait: the obverse features the Lamb of God and the reverse a dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit. “ ̽��ֱ��design represents a desperate appeal for peace, in perilous times,” says Keynes.

In portraying Æthelred’s reign as a time of turmoil, historians have drawn on a sermon given by one of the king’s most powerful advisors. Archbishop Wulfstan’s message to the English people is full of gloom: “For it is clear and manifest in us all that we have previously transgressed more than we have amended, and therefore much is assailing this people. Things have not gone well now for a long time at home or abroad, but there have been devastation and famine, burning and bloodshed in every district again and again.”

̽��ֱ��forces ranged against Æthelred were impressive and implacable. In 994 a Viking fleet of more than 90 ships came up the Thames to London. In 1009 the Vikings came again. Almost ten centuries later, in the 1920s, a group of battle axes and spearheads, dating from around 1000, was found in the river close to old London Bridge. Vivid reminders of the raiders who sailed up the estuary to strike at the heart of England, they are on display at the Museum of London.

̽��ֱ��eight battle axes, with their fearsome curving edges, also pose a question: how could the king and his councillors overcome a threat of such a kind?

In September 1666 the great fire of London destroyed St Paul’s cathedral, taking Æthelred’s tomb with it. Today Æthelred is remembered in the cathedral coffee shop where a stone commemorates all the tombs known to be lost. “It’s quite touching to see Æthelred’s name close to the place where he was buried in 1016 and where he lay for the next 650 years,” says Keynes. “It’s highly unlikely that he will never shake off the damage done to him by his soubriquet – but it’s well worth continuing to challenge the accepted versions of the history of a fascinating period.”

Coins from Æthelred’s reign are displayed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in the Rothschild Gallery. Æthelred's charter for Bishop Ealdred of Cornwall (994) is available for consultation at Exeter Cathedral on request.

Inset image: Æthelred's diploma for Bishop Ealdred of Cornwall (994) (Exeter Cathedral Archive).

He was just a boy when he became King of the English and his reign was marked by repeated attacks by the Danes. Æthelred, who died 1,000 years ago on 23 April 1016, is remembered as ‘the Unready’. But his nickname masks a more complex picture.

Throughout history, Æthelred’s payment of Dane-geld has been used as a short hand for drastic mismanagement. But there is another, more complex, picture to be painted of Æthelred’s reign.

Simon Keynes

Fitzwilliam Museum Aethelred II, Helmet type, Cambridge, Cnit CM.33-1935

Silver penny from the reign of King Æthelred

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Opinion: From Medieval kings to modern politics: the origins of England’s North-South divide

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 15:11:35 +0000

̽��ֱ��medieval world has a powerful hold over our modern imaginations. We continually revisit this murky period of history in fictional frolics such as Game of Thrones, and stirring series including ̽��ֱ��Last Kingdom. Echoes of the so-called “dark ages” even carry as far as today’s politics – particularly when it comes to discussions about devolution.

Indeed, as Westminster begins to relinquish political powers to England’s newly-formed city regions, some have claimed that these territories should be defined by historical precedent, rather than administrative practicalities.

But how close are we to our medieval roots, and are our connections with the past really strong enough to influence modern-day decisions? To find out, we need to take a closer look at what’s left of the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Viking kingdoms of yore.

Ancient Elmet

̽��ֱ��Leeds city region. harkeytalk/Wikimedia commons

Perhaps the most obvious links between past and present can be found simply by looking at the names of places on a map. Take, for example, the Leeds city region – one of the first regions to be granted new powers over transport and skills development.

This region encompasses the villages, towns and cities between Harrogate in the north, Barnsley in the south, Bradford in the west and York in the east, with Leeds at its heart. But it’s not the first time Leeds has been the centre of a regional power base; it was also at the core of the early medieval kingdom of Elmet.

A map of the Old North, based on information from Celtic Culture by John Koch Notuncurious/Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA

This shadowy kingdom was under the control of Celtic rulers, who spoke a language akin to Welsh. It was later conquered by Edwin, an Anglo-Saxon king, in the 7th century and became part of his empire. Today, the kingdom is recalled in place names, and the parliamentary constituency of Elmet and Rothwell.

Yet despite these geographical similarities, this connection is tenuous – the modern Leeds city region also encompasses parts of North Yorkshire that would not have been in Elmet. And it’s unlikely that administrators had the medieval kingdom in mind when they were drawing the boundaries.

Pursuing the past

To find a more convincing connection between modern politics and medieval monarchs, we need to go beyond mere borders and explore cultural, political and genetic links. For instance, the advocates of Yorkshire devolution trace their heritage back to medieval times – and even earlier. There’s certainly some evidence to support their longstanding connection with the region.

̽��ֱ��People of the British Isles project analysed the DNA of more than 2,000 people whose grandparents came from the same rural areas. ̽��ֱ��resulting genetic groups have been compared with 7th-century kingdoms, indicating some local stability in population over many centuries. What’s more, these ancestral links hold cultural and political force: a recent study showed how much “Yorkshireness” is still a key element of the identity of those living in the county.

We can trace Yorkshire’s political identity back to the days of Edwin, a highly successful Anglo-Saxon king. Edwin belonged to the ruling dynasty of the Deirans, whose power base originally lay in eastern Yorkshire. Edwin expanded into the west of the county and overshadowed his northern Northumbrian neighbours, the Bernicians. He also established looser control over other parts of Britain. Not merely a warrior, Edwin was baptised in York and venerated as a saint. After his death, the Deirans lacked a strong champion. They were dominated by their northern neighbours and absorbed into a greater Northumbrian kingdom.

̽��ֱ��original Northern Powerhouse

̽��ֱ��Kingdom of Northumbria. Wikimedia Commons

Bordered to the south by the River Humber, the Kingdom of Northumbria encompassed northern England and some parts of southern Scotland. Dating from the 7th century, it is said to be the first concrete instance of the North-South divide: the early medieval writer Bede described separate spheres of Northumbrian and southern English politics.

This northern Anglo-Saxon kingdom fragmented during the turbulence of the Viking Age. ̽��ֱ��core area was gradually incorporated into England, while the northern districts became part of Scotland. Nevertheless, Northumbrian identity evolved into a northern separatism that recurred in later times. This in turn generated a sense of northern cultural difference that is familiar today; “pies and prejudice”, in Stuart Maconie’s words.

But while large kingdoms were liable to disintegrate in turbulent times, local and regional networks have tended to remain relatively stable. They formed the building blocks of larger political units and some, like Yorkshire, went on to become modern-day counties.

A key question for modern politics is how the new devolution deals will complement these deeply-rooted identities. ̽��ֱ��case of Yorkshire highlights the tension between the new city regions, the old counties and an ancient northern identity. Medieval allegiances could be multi-layered, and encompass local, regional and national loyalties. ̽��ֱ��same balance is at stake in the modern devolution agenda.

Fiona Edmonds, Senior Lecturer in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Fiona Edmonds (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic) discusses devolution and the medieval kingdoms of England.

Chris Jones

̽��ֱ��Vikings are coming

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Outlaws, trolls and beserkers: meet the hero-monsters of the Icelandic sagas

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 14:28:14 +0000

“I’ve come to kill your monster!” exclaims Beowulf in the 2007 film version of the epic poem. But how do his suspicious Danish hosts know that this monstrously huge stranger is actually a hero searching for glory? And, by the same token, how do modern audiences with no prior knowledge of the Marvelverse know that the Incredible Hulk is a “good guy”? At least readers of the Icelandic sagas had an advantage: they were used to their heroes being monsters – at least part of the time.

Iceland’s medieval literature is rich in many regards: in Eddas and sagas, it tells us about early Scandinavia and its expanding world-view, ranging from the mythology of the North, the legends and heroes of the migration age, the Viking voyages and the settlement of Iceland all the way through to the coming of Christianity and the formation of kingdoms in Scandinavia.

It also tell us about monsters – for the literature of medieval Iceland is also rich in the paranormal. In mythology, gods and men fight against giants. In the sagas, humans battle the forces of disorder, the trolls and revenants – think a cross between a vampire and a zombie – that inhabit the wild mountains and highlands of Norway and Iceland. Or at least that is what, on the surface, appears to happen.

Trolls won’t always be trolls

Monstrosity, however, is never clear-cut. Because of their hybrid nature, monsters cannot easily be categorised – instead, they demand to be approached and read in a more nuanced way. Such a reading will soon lead to the realisation that not all monsters are created equal, that they do not all pose the same threat. For trolls are not always trolls.

In fact, the word “troll”, which we now understand to denote some kind of mountain-dwelling ogre, was used for a number of different kinds of figures: witches, the undead, berserkers, but also people who were larger or stronger or uglier than ordinary humans. Which leads us to the monstrous heroes of the medieval Icelandic family sagas, or Íslendingasögur.

Half monster, half hero

In these texts, we encounter characters that are both troll-like monster and human hero – that both threaten and defend society and that therefore draw our attention to the fact that the boundary between monstrosity and heroism is not only thin but also regularly crossed.

While some of the creatures that are referred to as “trolls” – especially revenants, but also witches and even berserkers – are unequivocally monstrous, the characters that occupy the most ambiguous position suspended between monstrosity and heroism are outlaws. These, however, are also the characters that have captured the Icelandic imagination the most: there are three sagas that scholars agree to be major outlaw stories, the sagas of Grettir Ásmundarson, Gísli Súrsson, and Hörðr Grímkelsson.

There are also some sagas that draw on similar narrative motifs to tell the story of men who are outlawed for at least parts of their lives, like the saga of the Sworn Brothers (Fóstbræðra saga) or the saga of the people of Kjalarnes (Kjalnesinga saga). All of these marginal heroes border not only on society, but also on that which one encounters when one leaves the social spaces behind: the monstrous.

This has less to do with their physical location in the “wild”, and more with the way they interact with society: when Hörðr goes raiding with his outlaw band, he becomes a threat to the local community. And such a threat to economic growth and social stability has to be removed. However, if these characters were only threatening, only monstrous, they would not have their own sagas. They are not only monsters: they are also heroes, defenders of the society they themselves threaten.

Fringe dwellers

̽��ֱ��story of Grettir “the Strong” Ásmundarson is a particularly interesting example of this. In the 19 years Grettir spends as an outlaw both in Norway and Iceland, he constantly moves back and forth between human society and isolation as a “monster”, never fully belonging to either. When he steals from the local farmers or simply sits on their property and refuses to let go, he becomes a monster in the eyes of society. But when he fights against trolls and revenants, performing tasks no one else would be able to perform, he becomes a guardian of the medieval Icelandic galaxy that consists of farms and sheep.

In this duality, Grettir and Hörðr and other strong, troll-like men, are not too dissimilar from the monstrous heroes of the present day. Bruce Banner has clear anger management issues, but when he transforms into the Hulk, his strength enables him to perform amazing feats of heroism in defence of society. But the dual nature of his character can also make him turn against his friends and allies, just as Hörðr turns against his family when he wants to burn his own sister in her house.

This fluid continuity between monstrosity and heroism has been explored extensively in medieval literature: Beowulf or the Táin Bó Cúailnge, (the Cattle Raid of Cooley) – just like the Icelandic sagas – have their fair share of monstrous heroes. But it keeps fascinating us even today.

Shows such as Heroes have added a new shade to this exploration in recent years. Currently, even the humanness of zombies is on the cultural agenda in Warm Bodies or iZombie. Let us hope that, as this exploration continues, as we become more aware of the continuity between the monstrous and the human, we will eventually realise that, often, “the other” is just another “self”.

̽��ֱ��Avengers in the North, a talk by the author on the monstrous superheroes in the Viking Age, will be part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Rebecca Merkelbach, Doctoral Candidate, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Inset images: An old Mountain Troll, 1904 (Wikimedia Commons); ̽��ֱ��Hulk (Ton Haex).

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Rebecca Merkelbach (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic) discusses the monstrous heroes of Scandinavian mythology and literature.

Wikimedia Commons

Manuscript of Beowulf, in the British Library

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-ShareAlike

Where to find a dragon in Cambridge

jeh98 — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 08:00:00 +0000

Scroll to the end of the article to listen to the podcast.

Earth, water, air and fire. If you were to pick an element that you most associate with dragons, you would probably choose the last – fire. And though the jaws of all the dragons to be found lurking in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) are devoid of flames, they do speak to the immense power of the dragon to ignite cultural imagination in all corners of the globe.

From the Anglo-Saxons of Old England, to the lamas of Tibet and the jungles of Borneo, dragons have been carved, stitched and emblazoned on countless artefacts of human creativity and endeavour.

But on closer inspection, a more appropriate element to associate with these mythical reptiles may indeed be water.

Sporting arguably the finest beard in the MAA, this dragon formed the fearsome figurehead of a canoe. On display in the Maudslay gallery, it was found in the Baram River District of Borneo by alumnus of Christ’s College and influential anthropologist, Dr Alfred Cort Haddon, during his fieldwork expedition to Malaysia and the Torres Strait Islands in 1898.

In the folklore of Borneo, the dragon is a goddess of the underworld. She protects the living, guards over the dead, and is associated with earth, water, thunder and lightning. One particular folktale tells of a dragon that guards a precious jewel on the top of Mount Kinabalu, the highest point of the island.

This fellow, and his mighty fine facial hair, has been temporarily removed for conservation but will be back to take his place in the museum soon.

A few paces across the gallery take you all the way from the coasts of Borneo to the former Kingdom of Derge, high in the Himalayan peaks of Tibet, and takes our watery connection in a slightly different direction. This extremely rare piece of Derge ware is an iron water bottle covered in silver and gold ornamentation and bound with brass. ̽��ֱ��hexagonal spout rises from the mouth of a sea monster at the base, and anyone looking closely at the handle will notice that it is in the form of a dragon.

̽��ֱ��dragon, or zhug, is a deity in Tibetan mythology. Influenced by the dragons of Chinese and Indian culture, Tibetan dragons are believed to have control over the rainfall and represent water. ̽��ֱ��dragon keeping a close eye on this water container was presented to Frederick Williamson, a Cambridge graduate and Political Officer of the British Raj, by the Prime Minister of Tibet in 1933 and deposited in the museum by his wife, Margaret, in 1976.

Stepping further back in time, we find dragons that were traded across the seas by Anglo-Saxons between the 5th and 11th centuries.

̽��ֱ��museum's collection of Anglo-Saxon brooches, some with dragon-like creatures engraved on the front, were among the first in Britain to have testing carried out on their garnets – decorative pieces of red gemstone. ̽��ֱ��results of this testing have provided evidence that the Anglo-Saxons were trading with India.

Serpentine or dragon-like shapes were common in Anglo-Saxon art as they were easy to work into the interlaced designs that were popular during the period. Beyond just being carved on jewellery and armour, the association between dragons and treasure was particularly strong in Anglo-Saxon writing – even entering proverbial sayings such as the maxim “draca sceal on hlæwe, frod, frætwum wlanc” (a dragon must be in a mound, old and proud in his ornaments).

Students in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNAC) come face-to-face with dragons in a number of courses, according to Dr Richard Dance. Probably the most famous of these is the dragon that defeats the eponymous hero of Beowulf in the epic poem’s dramatic finale.

Ða se gæst ongan gledum spiwan,

beorht hofu bærnan; bryne-leoma stod

eldum on andan; no ðær aht cwices

lað lyft-floga læfan wolde.

Wæs þæs wyrmes wig wide gesyne,

nearo-fages nið nean and feorran,

hu se guð-sceaða Geata leode

hatode and hynde: hord eft gesceat,

dryht-sele dyrnne ær dæges hwile.

(Beowulf – XXXIII. Project Gutenberg.)

̽��ֱ��stranger began then to vomit forth fire,

To burn the great manor; the blaze then glimmered

For anguish to earlmen, not anything living

Was the hateful air-goer willing to leave there.

̽��ֱ��war of the worm widely was noticed,

̽��ֱ��feud of the foeman afar and anear,

How the enemy injured the earls of the Geatmen,

Harried with hatred: back he hied to the treasure,

To the well-hidden cavern ere the coming of daylight.

(Beowulf – XXXIII. Project Gutenberg.)

“A major theme in heroic and epic literature is obtaining treasure and giving it out to the people – treasure was particularly important in a pre-monetary economy. Dragons, often depicted jealously guarding their hoard, represent the obverse of generosity, like a bad king figure,” says Dance.

“Beowulf is the longest Anglo-Saxon poem that we know of, and it is complex, carefully wrought and evocative. It’s good poetry as well as being a good poem — a finely crafted piece of treasure in its own right. A lot of words and the way it arranges its ideas are recognisably poetic compared to Old English prose”.

Dance explains that the words “draca” (dragon) and “wyrm” (serpent, reptile) are used fairly interchangeably in the poem to refer to the hero’s final foe.

“When the dragon appears towards the end of the poem we see that, very early on in written culture, the fantasy fiction idea of a dragon that we have today is already formed. Looking at dragons in modern fiction you can see that our ideas of what a dragon is depend quite closely on the ways they are presented in medieval literature like Beowulf, especially via the works of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, himself an Anglo-Saxon scholar,” says Dance.

Dr Judy Quinn of ASNAC, who researches Old Norse poetry, says that Scandinavian and Icelandic poems demonstrate how productive a symbol the dragon remained for poets in the medieval period.

“Poets were drawn to the legend of dragons such as Fáfnir and Níðhöggr found in the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda – a 13th century Icelandic anthology of traditional anonymous verse. ̽��ֱ��proverb ‘dragons often rise up on their tails’ is recorded in the 12th century Icelandic poem Málsháttakvæði,” says Quinn. “ ̽��ֱ��dreki or dragon most often encountered in medieval Scandinavian poetry is a ship, named for the dragon shape carved out of the prow of Viking-Age war-ships.”

Whether in it, or on it, or providing a useful container for it, the dragons of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology have a long and storied relationship with water. Which is perhaps unsurprising given how the fire-breathing lizards of our imaginations started life in many cultures and mythologies – as serpents, sea monsters, or river deities.

But to find the most unusual connection between the MAA’s dragons, we need to turn to an even more essential element – tea.

Medieval England, between the 16th and 18th centuries, gives us an exhibit affectionately nicknamed “Dragon in a cup”. One of the highlights of the MAA’s permanent Archaeology of Cambridge display, this piece of stained glass depicts St John the Evangelist. At the end of an outstretched arm, St John holds a poisoned chalice – with a tiny dragon peeping over the rim. It is a fairly common motif for St John to be depicted in this way, bearing an ominous cup of dragon – although the dragon in question looks far too friendly to be poisoning anybody.

For the next stop on our tea cup quest, we’re off to Borneo by canoe again to find another intricately carved prow, known to the museum staff as George.

Part-crocodile, part-dragon, George is afflicted by a condition that most tea-lovers will be able to sympathise with – he sees tea cups wherever he goes.

And finally, once more to Tibet and this tea cup decorated with a long, green dragon. Donated to the museum by the Williamsons, this cup is part of a large collection of Tibetan artefacts, including a teaspoon and a folding tea table both decorated with images of dragons.

All that remains is for someone to discover a dragon using a tea cup and the MAA’s collection will truly be complete.

You can meet all of these dragons, and many more of their friends prowling the treasures at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – from Javanese Batik cloth, to Japanese netsuke.

During the summer, children can embark on their own animal adventure and try their hand at finding all of the exhibits in the museum’s Animal Safari Trail.

Admission to the museum is free and it is open every day except Mondays.

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: E is for an animal that takes pride of place among the medieval manuscripts in the Parker Library, and is the subject of vital conservation research in Thailand's 'Golden Triangle'.

Inset images: Figurehead of a canoe, accession number Z 2403 ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge); Derge iron water bottle, accession number D 1976.115 ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge); Viking ships (Jos van Wunnik); Circular panel of glass, showing a saint with a dragon in a chalice, accession number Z 16318 ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge); Head for front of canoe, accession number Z 2698 ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge); China tea cup ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge).

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, D is for Dragon. Watch out for fire-breathers among the treasures of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, in Anglo-Saxon proverbs, and in fantasy literature from medieval Scandinavia to the present day.

When the dragon appears in Beowulf we see that, very early on in written culture, the fantasy fiction idea of a dragon that we have today is already formed

Richard Dance

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Derge iron water bottle. Accession number: D 1976.115.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Ghosts from the past brought back to life

sjr81 — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 08:14:08 +0000

Dating from 1250, ̽��ֱ��Black Book of Carmarthen is the earliest surviving medieval manuscript written solely in Welsh, and contains some of the earliest references to Arthur and Merlin. ̽��ֱ��book is a collection of 9th-12th century poetry along both religious and secular lines, and draws on the traditions of the Welsh folk-heroes and legends of the Dark Ages.

However, despite its importance (the manuscript is designated ‘MS Peniarth 1’ in the National Library of Wales) and decades of scholarly research, the work of a PhD student from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has illuminated tantalising new glimpses of verse from the 750-year-old book.

Myriah Williams and Professor Paul Russell from Cambridge’s Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC), believe that a 16th century owner of the book, probably a man named Jaspar Gryffyth, summarily erased centuries’ worth of additional verse, doodles and marginalia which had been added to the manuscript as it changed hands throughout the years.

However, using a combination of ultraviolet light and photo editing software, the 16th century owner’s penchant for erasure has been partly reversed to reveal snatches of poetry which are previously unrecorded in the canon of Welsh verse. Currently, the texts are very fragmentary and in need of much more analysis, although they seem to be the continuation of a poem on the preceding page with a new poem added at the foot of the page.

Williams said: “It’s easy to think we know all we can know about a manuscript like the Black Book but to see these ghosts from the past brought back to life in front of our eyes has been incredibly exciting. ̽��ֱ��drawings and verse that we’re in the process of recovering demonstrate the value of giving these books another look.

“ ̽��ֱ��margins of manuscripts often contain medieval and early modern reactions to the text, and these can cast light on what our ancestors thought about what they were reading. ̽��ֱ��Black Book was particularly heavily annotated before the end of the 16th century, and the recovery of erasure has much to tell us about what was already there and can change our understanding of it.”

Williams and Russell will present a lecture at ̽��ֱ��National Library of Wales today, part of a larger exhibition on the life and work of Sir John Price, one-time owner of the Black Book. There, they will detail some of their findings, stressing the importance of continued research on the manuscript.

“What we have discovered may only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be discovered as imaging techniques are enhanced,” said Russell. “ ̽��ֱ��manuscript is extremely valuable and incredibly important – yet there may still be so much we don’t know about it.”

Despite its value today, the Black Book of Carmarthen (so called because of the colour of its binding) was not an elaborate production, but rather the work of a single scribe who was probably collecting and recording over a long period of his life.

This is readily visible on the manuscript pages themselves; the first pages feature a large textura script copied on alternating ruled lines, while in other parts of the manuscript – perhaps when vellum was scarce – the hand is very much smaller and the lines per page tight and many.

That the Black Book may have been something of a labour of love is also reflected in its content by the breadth of genres represented. These range from pieces of religious verse to praise poetry to story poetry.

An example of the latter is the earliest poem concerning the adventures of the legendary Arthur, which sees the famed hero seeking entrance to an unidentified court and expounding the virtues of his men in order to gain admittance.

Other heroes are praised and lamented in a lengthy text known as Englynion y Beddau, the Stanzas of the Graves, in which a narrator presents geographic lore by claiming to know the burial places of upwards of eighty warriors. Arthur makes an appearance here as well, but only insofar as to say that he cannot be found: anoeth bid bet y arthur, ‘the grave of Arthur is a wonder’.

Other famous figures also appear throughout, including Myrddin, perhaps more familiarly known by the English ‘Merlin’. There are two prophetic poems attributed to him during his ‘wild man’ phase located in the middle of the manuscript, but additionally the very first poem of the book is presented as a dialogue between him and the celebrated Welsh poet Taliesin.

Since the creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae in the 12th century there has been a connection between Carmarthen and Merlin, and it may be no accident that the Black Book opens with this text.

Measuring approximately only 17cm by 12.5 cm, the book is made up of 54 pages of vellum (animal hide) and came to the National Library of Wales in 1904 after being bought, alongside other manuscripts, by the Library’s founder, Sir John Williams.

One of the UK’s most important medieval manuscripts is revealing ghosts from the past after new research and imaging work discovered eerie faces and lines of verse which had previously been erased from history.

To see these ghosts from the past brought back to life in front of our eyes has been incredibly exciting.

Myriah Williams

National Library of Wales

̽��ֱ��ghostly faces under UV light

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike