GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives

Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-12 > 0849972780


From: Anders Berg <>
Subject: Re: Danish Kings in 8th & 9th Centuries
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 16:33:00 +0100


At 18.43 1996-12-06 +0000, ic wrote:
>On Thu, 5 Dec 1996, Stewart Baldwin wrote:
[snip]
>> until after the murder of Godefrid. (AB ends in 882.) It seems that
>> one possible scenario is that King Sigifrid converted temporarily to
>> Christianity in 882, was the same person as the Sigifrid of AV884, and
>> was friendly to the Franks until after the murder of Godefrid (when he
>> again starts appearing in the annals as a hostile Viking).
>
>Possible, though Occam's razor is against it. However there is a school
>of thought that sees the various viking chiefs as much more integrated
>into Frankish political scene than the annals (with their ecclesiastical
>authors) would want to reveal. The church wanted the kings to fight the
>Vikings, as they had to fork out most of the danegeld; the nobles
>often didn't want to as they were the ones, more likely to die. Your
>explanation would probably find favour here.

Yes, the annals must be carefully analyzed. Objectivity was not the goal of
the writers, for sure. Both deliberate and undeliberate errors may occur.
Consider:
1. The Franks had to pay danegeld to some Danes. It would definitely look
better if the attackers were from the Danish King instead of some simple
viking raiders.
2. The vikings had everything to gain by pretending to be kings or some
relatives of a king wellknown to the Franks (such as Horich), rather than
just a local chieftain from a district in Denmark or Norway.

The result in both these cases would be an exaggeration in the Frankish
annals of the actual size and strength of the Danish _state_. The size and
strength of the viking fleet may still have been impressive!
The Franks had probably a pretty vague idea of what was really going on
north of the Danevirke. BTW, what is the earliest record of a visit in
Denmark by Franks, compared to all the visits (raids) by Danes on Frankish
territory?

There was a "cultural distance" between the annal writers and the
Scandinavians which must be considered, it is not enough to only look at a
certain source and judge it by how contemporary it is. This being said as a
slight defence of the sagas, which indeed are very non-contemporary but on
the other hand build on local tradition within the same cultural sphere.

>"Meanwhile, becos the king was young, all the leading men of the
>franks met at the palace of Compiegne to decide what should be
>done. And having taken counsel, they sent Sigfrid, a christian
>Dane and a faithful man of the king, who was the nephew
>of Horic the Dane, to negotiate with the leading men of his
>people, so that they should accept a tribute and depart from
>the kingdom."

Cheers,

Anders


http://www.algonet.se/~anderz

This thread: