Author : Katherine Holman
Publisher : Signal Books
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 13,36 MB
Release : 2007
Category : History
ISBN : 9781904955344
"This book reveals another very different side of Viking society. It claims that the Viking legacy was not simply one of 'rape and pillage', but included law and order, agriculture and trade, as well as language and heroic literature. It also provides evidence that the influence of Scandinavians in the British Isles continued well after 1066"--Jacket.
Author : Alistair Campbell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 23,68 MB
Release : 1998-08-13
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780521626552
The Encomium Emmae Reginae is a political tract in praise, as its title suggests, of Queen Emma, daughter of Duke Richard I of Normandy, wife of King Ethelred the Unready from 1002 to 1016, and wife of the Danish conqueror King Cnut from 1017 to 1035. It is a primary source of the utmost importance for our understanding of the Danish conquest of England in the early eleventh century, and for the political intrigue in the years which followed the death of King Cnut in 1035. It offers a remarkable account of a woman who was twice a queen, and of her determination to retain her power as queen-mother. This reprint, which contains the definitive text and translation of the Encomium Emmae Reginae first published in 1949, traces the basic outline of Queen Emma's career and transports us to the heart of eleventh-century politics by defining as clearly as possible the historical context in which the Encomium was written.
Author : Frank Barlow
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 171 pages
File Size : 35,5 MB
Release : 2013-08-16
Category : History
ISBN : 1317868099
The family of Earl Godwin of Wessex stands among the most famous in English history, whose most famous son was King Harold. Frank Barlow charts the family through to Harold – the last Anglo-Saxon king – and finally the crowning of William the Conqueror during the Norman Conquest. Set against the backdrop of Viking raids and ultimately the Norman Conquest of 1066, Frank Barlow unravels the gripping history of a feuding family that nevertheless determined the course and fortunes of all the English.
Author : Magnús Fjalldal
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 177 pages
File Size : 20,94 MB
Release : 2005-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0802038379
Medieval Icelandic authors wrote a great deal on the subject of England and the English. This new work by Magnús Fjalldal is the first to provide an overview of what Icelandic medieval texts have to say about Anglo-Saxon England in respect to its language, culture, history, and geography. Some of the texts Fjalldal examines include family sagas, the shorter þættir, the histories of Norwegian and Danish kings, and the Icelandic lives of Anglo-Saxon saints. Fjalldal finds that in response to a hostile Norwegian court and kings, Icelandic authors - from the early thirteenth century onwards (although they were rather poorly informed about England before 1066) - created a largely imaginary country where friendly, generous, although rather ineffective kings living under constant threat welcomed the assistance of saga heroes to solve their problems. The England of Icelandic medieval texts is more of a stage than a country, and chiefly functions to provide saga heroes with fame abroad. Since many of these texts are rarely examined outside of Iceland or in the English language, Fjalldal's book is important for scholars of both medieval Norse culture and Anglo-Saxon England.
Author : Gale R. Owen-Crocker
Publisher : Boydell Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 13,63 MB
Release : 2011
Category : Art
ISBN : 1843836157
Harold II is chiefly remembered today, perhaps unfairly, for the brevity of his reign and his death at the Battle of Hastings. The papers collected here seek to shed new light on the man and his milieu before and after that climax. They explore the long career and the dynastic network behind Harold Godwinesson's accession on the death of King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, looking in particular at the important questions as to whether Harold's kingship was opportunist or long-planned; a usurpation or a legitimate succession in terms of his Anglo-Scandinavian kinships? They also examine the posthumous legends that Harold survived Hastings and lived on as a religious recluse. The essays in the second part of the volume focus on the Bayeux Tapestry, bringing out the small details which would have resonated significantly for contemporary audiences, both Norman and English, to suggest how they judged Harold and the other players in the succession drama of 1066. Other aspects of the Tapestry are also covered: the possible patron and locations the Tapestry was produced for; where and how it was designed; and the various sources - artistic and real - employed by the artist.
Author : Ann Williams
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 28,87 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Anglo-Saxons
ISBN : 9781852640477
This book provides a unique work of reference cutting across ancient cultural divisions within Dark Age Britain, and it enables the reader to follow the careers of people as far apart in time and place as the early Kentish kings and Viking earls of Orkney. Entries range from well-known characters such as Merlin, Alfred the Great, the historian Bede and the Danish warlord Cnut to the more obscure Pictish kings and abbots of Iona. Each entry is presented in a succinct and compact form in an easily accessible A to Z format. Here experts on a multitude of early historic peoples in Britain have brought together a dossier of scholarly findings on all those whose lives can be reconstructed from an examination of early source material, incorporating the very latest research. Englishmen from Wessex to Northumbria, Welshmen and Cornishmen, Northern Britons, Scots and Picts, Scandinavians from the Danelaw and York as well as from the Viking earldom of Orkney and the Southern Isles, all take their place in this wide-ranging survey of the people of Dark Age Britain. This detailed work of reference, supplemented by chronological and genealogical tables, will be an essential tool for all those with an interest in Dark Age Britain.
Author : Nicole Marafioti
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 13,31 MB
Release : 2014-03-21
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1442668709
The King’s Body investigates the role of royal bodies, funerals, and graves in English succession debates from the death of Alfred the Great in 899 through the Norman Conquest in 1066. Using contemporary texts and archaeological evidence, Nicole Marafioti reconstructs the political activity that accompanied kings’ burials, to demonstrate that royal bodies were potent political objects which could be used to provide legitimacy to the next generation. In most cases, new rulers celebrated their predecessor’s memory and honored his corpse to emphasize continuity and strengthen their claims to the throne. Those who rose by conquest or regicide, in contrast, often desecrated the bodies of deposed royalty or relegated them to anonymous graves in attempts to brand their predecessors as tyrants unworthy of ruling a Christian nation. By delegitimizing the previous ruler, they justified their own accession. At a time when hereditary succession was not guaranteed and few accessions went unchallenged, the king’s body was a commodity that royal candidates fought to control.
Author : Elizabeth Muir Tyler
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 361 pages
File Size : 31,15 MB
Release : 2017-05-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1487513380
In England in Europe, Elizabeth Tyler focuses on two histories: the Encomium Emmae Reginae, written for Emma the wife of the Æthelred II and Cnut, and The Life of King Edward, written for Edith the wife of Edward the Confessor. Tyler offers a bold literary and historical analysis of both texts and reveals how the two queens actively engaged in the patronage of history-writing and poetry to exercise their royal authority. Tyler’s innovative combination of attention to intertextuality and regard for social networks emphasizes the role of women at the centre of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman court literature. In doing so, she argues that both Emma and Edith’s negotiation of conquests and factionalism created powerful models of queenly patronage that were subsequently adopted by individuals such as Queen Margaret of Scotland, Countess Adela of Blois, Queen Edith/Matilda, and Queen Adeliza. England in Europe sheds new lighton the connections between English, French, and Flemish history-writing and poetry and illustrates the key role Anglo-Saxon literary culture played in European literature long after 1066.
Author : Mike Bryant
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 46,62 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1430312890
"When the long-haired star appeared in the heavens a week and a day after Easter in the year of Our Lord 1066, all God-fearing men knew that it was meant to portend some great event in the history of mankind." Thus begins the novel 1066, which records "the hitherto undiscovered recollections of Oswulf the Englishman" to chronicle the Norman conquest of England. This carefully researched work depicts in vivid detail an era characterized as much by intense piety as by brutal violence. It is a world peopled by Vikings and saints, popes and warriors, and by such historical personages as Macbeth and Lady Godiva. One of the great turning points of Western history, the Conquest is also a gripping human tale of passion, heroism, victory and defeat.
Author : Benjamin Pohl
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 399 pages
File Size : 44,15 MB
Release : 2022-06-09
Category : History
ISBN : 110848297X
Offers a comparative cultural history of north-western Europe in the crucial period of the eleventh century.
