Danishness in the Viking Age: Violence, Christianity, and Boundary Perception in the Construction of Medieval Danish Identity

by

Jessica Tharp, B.A.

A Thesis

In

History

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Approved

John Howe, Ph.D. Chair of the Committee

Gretchen Adams, Ph.D.

Mark Sheridan Dean of the Graduate School

May, 2021

Copyright 2021, Jessica Tharp Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are numerous people who have helped me throughout the course of writing this thesis. First, I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. John Howe and Dr. Gretchen Adams, for their patience and invaluable feedback throughout the production process. I would also like to thank Dr. Sydnor Roy for her instrumental assistance in translating early medieval Latin, as well as her encouragement and advice. Thank you also to the numerous professors within the History Department at Texas Tech University who encouraged and helped me grow as a scholar.

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Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ii

ABSTRACT ...... iv

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II. THE THEORETICAL LANDSCAPE ...... 14

III. EXTERNAL SOURCES: FRANKISH ANNALS ...... 34

IV. INTERNAL SOURCES: GESTA DANORUM ...... 85

V. CONCLUSION ...... 112

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 118

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ABSTRACT This project looks at the development of Danish identity in the Viking Age. By analyzing internal and external descriptions of perceptions of the Danes in this tumultuous period of history, it is possible to understand how different conceptions of Danishness all interacted to craft a very specific image of Danish ethnicity. This thesis first looks at the history of identity studies themselves, and how the understanding and definitions of ethnicity have shifted across disciplines. It then applies this framework to the Frankish annals, a series of sources that provide contemporary Viking Age information on the Danes, and the Gesta Danorum, an internal Danish source produced after the end of the Viking Age. Ultimately it shows how the twin themes of violence and Christianity affected the construction and perceptions of Danishness in the Viking Age. It also indicates that the Danes, although often seen as peripheral to other European peoples, were inextricably intertwined with the early medieval European world.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In Russia in 2016, Vladimir Putin unveiled a 52-foot-tall statue of St. Vladimir, his namesake, on National Unity Day, a national holiday which Putin had restored in 2005.1 St.

Vladimir, known as St. Volodymyr to Ukraine, was a tenth-century prince of Kievan Rus who converted the country to Christianity. Kievan Rus, a medieval East Slavic state, was a federation of Slavic, Scandinavian, and Finnish tribes bound in a loose alliance headed by a leader based in Kiev. Vladimir, the great-grandson of Oleg, the country’s Viking founder, and the state’s first fully Slavic and Christian ruler,2 is venerated as a saint in both Ukraine and

Russia. Both countries also see him as the origin point of their modern nations and therefore foundational to their national history and identity. The move by Moscow to erect a statue to him, and therefore strengthen Russia’s claim to his role in their own history, has created further tension between the two countries, already on shaky ground after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, as “for some Ukrainians this represents an attempt to steal their history.”3

Across the Black Sea in Turkey, Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies have made conscious efforts to connect themselves, and their vision for their country, to the Ottomans. Thus,

Erdoğan has modeled his regime on the policies and concepts that guided medieval Ottoman rulers, most notably Selim I.4 He has made great shows of respect and deference to the late medieval Ottoman sultan, including naming a bridge over the Bosphorus after him and

1 “Putin Unveils 'Provocative' Moscow Statue of St Vladimir,” BBC, November 4, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37871793. 2 Britannica Academic, s.v. “Kievan Rus.” 3 Olga Bugorkova and Natasha Matyukhina, “Medieval Prince Vladimir Deepens Russia-Ukraine Split,” BBC, July 28, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33689641. 4 Alan Mikhail, “Why Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Love Affair with the Ottoman Empire Should Worry the World,” Time, September 3, 2020, https://time.com/5885650/erdogans-ottoman-worry-world/. 1 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 making ostentatious visits to the ruler’s tomb.5 Erdoğan has gone further in recalling the medieval and even the ancient past of Turkey by dressing his guards for political visits in traditional warrior garb from different periods of Turkic history, starting with the Ancient

Hunnic Empire in 200 B.C.6

Other countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe have also looked to the medieval past when constructing their national identity, particularly in the post-Soviet context. Slovenia for example has located its national origin in the early medieval kingdom of

Carantania, which was ultimately absorbed into the Frankish Empire in the eighth century.

Indeed, Slovenian government propaganda from the immediate post-Soviet period paints

Slovenia’s alleged predecessor Carantania as a remarkably progressive kingdom, even by modern standards.7 By creatively constructing a historical past that was rooted in the premodern period, Slovenia bolstered its claims to autonomy and separate collective identity during the turbulent period following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The Middle Ages has played a pivotal role in these countries’ conceptions of their own national identities. Reaching back to the premodern past, as mentioned above, attributes a certain amount of validity to national identities, which can then legitimize actions taken on nationalist bases. Nationalist identities are not necessarily benign. Within the past couple of decades various groups have harnessed nationalism to justify violence and political, economic, and social upheaval. The wars in the Balkans illustrate how nationalism can be weaponized, while both Russia and Turkey are prime examples of how regimes can deploy

5 Ibid. 6 Tulay Karadeniz and Jonny Hogg, “Chainmailed Turkic Warriors to Welcome More Foreign Leaders to Turkey,” Reuters, January 16, 2015, https://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN0KN16A20150116. 7 Nicole Lindstrom, “Between Europe and the Balkans: Mapping Slovenia and Croatia's ‘Return to Europe’ in the 1990s,” Dialectical Anthropology 27, No. 3/4 (2003): 318. 2 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 nationalism for their own, often violent or subversive, ends. A fundamental component of national identity, moreover, is the perception and depiction of a collective, shared history.

Often times, particularly in the European context as the above examples illustrate, the medieval period has an important place in this history. This tradition of originating modern nations in the Middle Ages reaches at least as far back as the nineteenth century, but as indicated, persists well into the present day.8

The present study fits into the broader context sketched above. In keeping with a renewed emphasis on ethnic and national identities in the modern period, it proposes to look back to the Middle Ages to investigate the perception and creation of Danish ethnic identity.

Scandinavians, along with many of the peoples of medieval Central and Eastern Europe, have often been left out of medieval ethnic identity studies. This is perhaps because they were peripheral to the Roman world, the continuity of which has been an important component in this scholarship, and because the source material is much sparser for the period of the Early

Middle Ages when these studies tend to focus. Perhaps for these reasons their coalescence as a discernible ethnic group tends to be located later on in the Middle Ages, after the high point of the Viking Age. Still, there are contemporary materials from external perspectives and internal sources produced somewhat later by the Danes sufficient to allow us to reconstruct some of the processes involved in the creation of Danish identity during the Viking Age. This formative period of Danish identity is important to understand in terms of what came later in the Middle Ages, the coalescence of a more centralized and Christianized Danish state.

Analysis of how outsiders talked and thought about the Danes, as well their own internal

8 Patrick Geary, “Writing the Nation: Historians and National Identities from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries,” in The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives, ed. Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 73-86. 3 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 perception of their history, can reveal a picture of Danish ethnic identity from the Viking Age and immediately afterwards. By focusing on the ethnic discourse between Danes and those that interacted with them, a basic framework of possibilities is uncovered that the Danes could draw upon to construct and maintain a cohesive identity. The images and themes that emerge not only help fill in part of the medieval past, but also provide more insight into how modern national and ethnic identities tend to mirror parallel historical processes.

Chapter 1 is dedicated to outlining the general trends in ethnic identity research. Since there are few studies that focus on the processes of ethnic identity formation for Viking groups, some time is dedicated to exploring how the study of collective identity itself has undergone various shifts across time and disciplines in order to develop an analytical framework. This framework of ethnic identity formation, based primarily upon the work of

Frederick Barth and the instrumentalist perspective, will be used as a basis in analyzing the

Viking Age Danes. Emphasis will be placed upon perceived group boundaries, as well as the process of othering. Beyond filling in the historiographical gap in the scholarship, this allows us to determine whether these theories provide historians with a useful framework with which to analyze medieval ethnic groups. The following chapters are divided both chronologically and by perspective. Chapter 2 will focus on the perceptions of the Danes from their neighbors the Franks, whose expansionism triggered Danish ethnic cohesion beginning in the eighth century. This will be done through use of a couple of Frankish annals produced from the late eighth throughout the ninth centuries. How these sources talk about the Danes will be the main focus of this chapter, which will attempt to parse out the perceived boundaries between different ethnic groups. A couple of themes emerge as vital in this process of boundary construction and maintenance. The first of these is violence, which indelibly colors how the

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Danes were perceived due to Viking raids across the European continent and beyond. How this is discussed, however, and how the Danes are othered through it, is an important component to be explored. This will be done by comparing how the discussion of the Danes mirrors or diverges from the discussion of other groups of people, such as the Saxons, Moors, or Saracens. The second theme is Christianity. Medieval perspectives are often filtered through the lens of religion, and this is the case, to varying degrees, for the sources in the present study. How Christianity affected the perception and depiction of the Danes plays into the perceived boundary that divides them from other ethnic groups. Often religion did not become an important component in the perception of the Danes until the Franks themselves were undergoing periods of internal strife and crisis, a point which will be explained and evaluated in more detail. Overall this chapter seeks to provide a picture of Viking Age Danish ethnic identity from the Frankish perspective.

Chapter 3 will build upon these same concepts, but from a late twelfth century internal perspective. Using Saxo Grammaticus’s long-winded Gesta Danorum, the same framework and themes will be utilized to examine the perception of Danish identity by one of their own from the far side of the Viking Age. How does Saxo perceive Danish identity? From his perspective, what are the boundaries between groups, and how are these maintained?

Primarily the focus will be on the first three-quarters or so of Saxo’s 16-book work, particularly Books IX to XI, which cover the breadth of the Viking Age.9 Like people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, historical memory plays an important role in Saxo’s conception of Danish identity. It is important to explore how he perceives and describes the

Danish past, from the mythical founding with a pair of brothers through the Viking Age. Just

9 Though Saxo’s work has no clear chronology, books IX-XI cover roughly 810-1086, while the Viking Age is dated ~793-1066. 5 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 as in the analysis of the external sources, careful attention will be paid to how violence and

Christianity play into Saxo’s narrative. Actions that seemed wanton and gratuitous from an outsider’s perspective are often depicted quite differently by Saxo. Indeed, while violence was an ubiquitous part of Danish life before and during the Viking Age, there were rules that governed it, and these will be explored, as well as how these rules crafted a framework of

Danishness that Saxo replicated throughout his work. Time will also be spent on exploring latent themes of Christianity that crop up throughout his work and how these played into his conception of Danish identity, as well as analyzing how and why Christianity became explicitly important in his narrative midway through Book IX.

A few clarifying statements are warranted here. First, the term Danes refers to those people who inhabited the area of modern Denmark up into modern southern Sweden.

Powerful chieftains emerged in Jutland, the area of southern Denmark, in response to

Frankish expansionism. These men were called kings in both the Frankish annals and the

Gesta Danorum, though kingship in Viking Age Scandinavia, as discussed in more detail below, looked quite different from continental forms. By serving as the main point of diplomatic contact with the Franks, the Danes contributed to the overall perception of the

Vikings, an ambiguous term which could refer to Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, or any combination of the three.10 Indeed, the Franks often did not distinguish between the term

Northmen and Danes, using the two interchangeably. Therefore, the Danes form the basis of

Frankish perception of the northerners, particularly as interaction develops between the two groups throughout the Viking Age. Some key figures helped drive these interactions and

10 There is much debate about the origin of the term Viking itself, though scholars agree that it comes from Old Norse, specifically the North-West Germanic dialect, and that it related to seafaring and piracy. See Kerstin P. Hofmann, “With víkingr into the Identity Trap: When Historiographical Actors Get a Life of their Own,” Medieval Worlds 4 (2016): 91-122. 6 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 perceptions. This includes Godifrid, the first Danish king that directly challenged Frankish authority in northern Saxony and left a long shadow in the Frankish imagination. It also includes Harald Klak, a Danish ruler who fled Jutland after being ousted by Godifrid’s sons and in exchange for Frankish support was baptized at the court of Louis the Pious. Both of these figures appeared in the Frankish annals as well as the Gesta Danorum and influenced concepts of Danishness in this era.

As stated above, it was the nineteenth century when nationalism really began to flourish throughout Europe. Interest in national identity grew in part to help justify national unification, and it became important to construct national narratives that gave this collective identity credibility. Thus, nationalists turned their eyes to the Middle Ages, when Roman control declined across the insular and continental world and new polities began to emerge.

This was a particularly important enterprise among Germans, the “historians, philologists, and archaeologists [who] collaborated to identify language groups and to project them back into history, where they could be identified with the peoples historical sources described as migrating into the Roman empire at the end of Antiquity.”11 This primordial framework, developed by the Germans initially, was then deployed by scholars of other nationalities within their own borders. For many of them, the medieval period was vastly important to their national stories because it was a period when states appeared that were roughly analogous to, or at least identifiable with, some contemporary ones. Their challenge was to unite diverse economic, political, and cultural developments into a coherent, teleological narrative that bolstered claims of national origin. Historians relied on real and fabricated medieval documents to help construct these stories, and though scholars of different countries worked

11 Patrick Geary, “European Nationalism and the Medieval Past,” Historically Speaking 3, no. 5 (2002), 2, https://doi.org/10.1353/hsp.2002.0043. 7 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 together and in the same intellectual environment, they often crafted contradictory or even hostile narratives. This all resulted in “the elaboration of a complex and at times contradictory web of national and international visions of possible pasts.”12 Still, these national histories became fundamental building blocks in the nationalist program moving into the twentieth century. By asserting a history that reached back into the premodern past and was based upon distinct ethnic units and their polities, nationalists were able to strengthen their claims to autonomy. This occurred throughout Europe, not only in the regions such as France and

Germany but also in areas in northern, eastern, and central Europe typically perceived as peripheral.

This conception of the past, moreover, was not relegated to the nineteenth century.

The nationalist paradigm of the medieval origin of modern states still retained traction among populations in the latter part of the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. This has become particularly apparent in light of the creation of new states in Eastern and Central

Europe in the past thirty years, the reignition of xenophobia and racism within Western

Europe,13 and a generally increasing ethnic consciousness around the world highlighted by the processes of decolonization and globalization. As massive geopolitical and cultural changes have occurred throughout the European continent and beyond, the past has again been

“mobilized to legitimize national politics, and medieval history has a prominent place in this mobilization.”14 This has at times resulted in very negative consequences for huge swathes of

12 Geary and Gábor Klaniczay, Manufacturing the Middle Ages: Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 3. 13 Geary, “European Nationalism and the Medieval Past,” 2. 14 Ibid. 8 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 the populations within European states, most clearly for ethnic and religious minorities.15 The breakup of the Soviet Union, moreover, created multiple new states, “most of them based on ethnic and linguistic identities,”16 allegedly evident in the medieval period.17 Throughout twenty-first century Europe, right-wing nationalist parties have been able to play upon fears of integration and “cultural standardization” to reinvigorate ethnic and nationalist narratives to their own benefit in response to the unifying efforts of the EU.18 Still, there are some within the EU that “welcome the possibilities for a pan-European identity to replace ethnic and national ones in a number of contexts.”19 Thus, despite the processes of modernization and globalization, national and ethnic identities have remained an important focus of modern polities and have been deployed in a number of contexts for a number of different concerns.

Further, the medieval period has remained an important component within many of the national narratives.

It was really the revitalization of ethnic identity in the postwar period, as well as the questions and concerns sketched above surrounding both ethnic and national identities moving forward into the twenty-first century, that breathed new life into historical studies of concepts of collective identity. In particular, medievalists began to visit (or revisit, as the case may be) medieval ethnic and nationalist claims. Their focus was primarily on ethnicity, and they asked a variety of questions. First, what sort of evidence do historians have for a unifying, ethnic identity within various people groups in these centuries? These studies were

15 Ibid.; Geary uses the example of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who claimed that the modern French people originated with the baptism of Clovis in 496 C.E. (thereby insinuating that non-Christians were not, in fact, truly French). 16 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Pluto Press, 2010), 3. 17 See Geary, “European Nationalism and the Medieval Past,” 2; here he uses the “amusing” example of Slovenia, which I have already mentioned above. 18 Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 3. 19 Ibid. 9 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 often complicated by the paucity of the evidence, or the perspective of the source material; for example, how should scholars treat archaeology in terms of its relation to ethnicity? What about documents written from an outsider’s perspective on a specific group of people? How should historians handle sources discussing certain peoples or events hundreds of years distant? There were also questions, from historians and social scientists alike, about the nature of identity itself. Is it biologically inherent, socially constructed, or something in between?

How is it formed? How does it function within societies and what purpose does it serve for those involved in its creation, maintenance, and deployment? Importantly, what sort of utility does ethnicity have as an analytical category for medievalists? Does it usefully illuminate the past, or is it merely another guise for the nationalist narratives which, as the modern period has frequently and worryingly illustrated, can have violent results?20 These as well as other questions led to important discussions across disciplines about the definitions of the terms used. They also led to the proliferation of a body of literature on ethnic identity, both in premodern and modern contexts, across diverse disciplines, from anthropology and psychology to history and archaeology.

Ultimately, the current project has a few broad aims, each of them related to a persistent gap in the historiography. The first of these is specific to historiography, and the issue discussed above about the scholarly perception of core versus periphery. While there has been a great amount of research done on the post-Roman barbarian successor states, investigations into the identity of the Scandinavian peoples, as well as those of Central and

20 As argued by opponents of the so-called Vienna School (a group who will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 1). See Andrew Gillett, ed., On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002) for an elaboration on this point, as well as other criticisms of the Vienna School, including the methodology, historiography, and theories that undergird their studies into early medieval ethnic development. 10 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Eastern Europe, have been much sparser. This shortchanges the view of the past because it leaves out an important part of the medieval picture. If a unifying ethnic identity was an important component in the formation of the successor states, as much of medieval ethnic identity scholarship argues, then why should that not also be the case in the establishment of these later polities? The processes of identity formation that assisted the development of ethnic identity in these earlier states can still be observed and studied in the Viking Age and

High Middle Ages. There will of course be important differences; the memory of Rome was much farther removed, for example, so there was less impetus, at least for the Danes, to emulate Roman forms as a way of legitimizing and reinforcing their authority. Still, there are recognizable processes and elements of ethnic identity construction waiting to be explored, providing a testing ground for the theories of ethnic identity formation developed by the social sciences and allowing scholars to see if they are useful in analyzing the premodern past.

It is important to understand these identity processes, moreover, because they serve as precursors to the unified, centralized Christian kingdoms that ultimately became a hallmark of the medieval period. This is just as much the case for those regions typically perceived as marginal or removed from the core of European history as it is for those that are considered vital to it. The Danes, along with the other Scandinavian peoples as well as those inhabiting

Central and Eastern Europe, played vital and important roles in the overall European narrative, but that is not always apparent or recognized in the historiography. They are typically perceived as peripheral to the central story of European history, despite the fact that they were inextricably linked with it, changing and in turn being changed by it. This is perhaps not too surprising, particularly for the Early Middle Ages, when internal sources that would enable historians to hear these peoples’ voices are scarce or, mostly, nonexistent. Still,

11 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 there is a persistent divide between these areas and the perceived core of Europe—that is, the areas roughly corresponding to modern-day France, England, Germany, and to an extent,

Italy. This divide is not really supported even by the scant extant sources, many of which were produced from the places just listed. The Danes, Swedes, and Slavs pepper the pages of many early medieval sources, even before they began to produce their own written works, and they clearly played important roles in the overall trajectory of European history. Therefore, studying the processes of Danish ethnic identity formation from the Viking Age and later not only fills in an extant gap in medieval identity studies, but also offers a fuller, more authentic picture of European history as a whole.

All of this provides insight into the processes of identity formation that persist in the present day. Collective identity categories like nationalism and ethnicity, rather than falling to the wayside as some theorists predicted would happen in the twentieth century, have continued to grow in salience in the modern and postmodern eras. The role of history in the conception of these identities, moreover, is vitally important to understand, as are the persistent ways in which these identity formation processes have occurred across space and time. How people remember their past is important to understand in order to grasp how they perceive themselves in the present. Many countries still place their origin in the medieval period, including the Danes, whose purported medieval ancestors are the subject of this thesis: modern Denmark claims to have one of the oldest monarchies in the world. Queen Margrethe

II traces her lineage back to circa 900 and the Viking kings Gorm the Old and his son Harald

Bluetooth.21 The examples of Russia, Turkey, and Slovenia have already been discussed as well. Observers accept these claims. Their actual historical veracity is ultimately insignificant.

21 “Kingdom of Denmark: One of the Country’s Oldest Monarchies,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, accessed December 13, 2020, https://denmark.dk/people-and-culture/monarchy. 12 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

What is important is to understand that these claims hold real weight in people’s conceptions of their national and ethnic identities. The first question to ask, then, is how such identities are formed. The medieval period, which plays such an important role in many European countries’ historical narratives, offers fruitful ground for testing theories about identity formation. Obtaining a grasp on how these identities are formed, and what purposes they serve, better equips various populations to confront issues of national and ethnic conflict that continue to plague countries around the globe.

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CHAPTER II

THE THEORETICAL LANDSCAPE The formation of an ethnic identity is a complex and multifaceted process. Thus it is not surprising that recent scholarship on identity has stemmed from a variety of fields, primarily anthropology, but also psychology, political science, history, and others. Although these disciplines often take different theoretical approaches and emphasize different questions and aspects of identity, they have some unifying overarching trends.22 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, prior to the study of ethnicity as a category in its own right, scholars focused on other similarly nebulous categories like race, culture, or tribe. Ethnicity really became a unit of analysis in the post-World War II period when the dangerous usurpation of prewar collective identity theory had been violently and horrifically demonstrated, and when ethnic identities persisted and even grew in importance. In this context, the study of ethnicity can be characterized by two broad trends: primordialism and instrumentalism. Primordialism sees ethnicity as something innate and inherent to human nature, keeping it mostly in line with older theories of collective identity, albeit with some important modifications.

Instrumentalism grew in direct opposition to primordialism and posited that ethnicity was merely a guise for other ends, namely political or economic power. This theory has had a tremendous impact on modern studies into ethnicity, including historical investigations of the identity category. In particular a group of scholars known as the Vienna School have taken up the mantle of instrumentalism beginning around the 1970s and applied the theory to studies of

22 Vivian L. Vignoles, Seth J. Schwartz, and Koen Luyckx, “Introduction: Toward an Integrative View of Identity,” in Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, ed. Vivian L. Vignoles, Seth J. Schwartz, and Koen Luyckx (New York: Springer, 2011), 7-8. 14 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 post-Roman polities. Because this thesis borrows concepts from all of these trends, this chapter spends considerable time on tracing their development.

As stated above, the renewed interest in studying ethnicity in the past couple of decades has emanated most importantly from anthropology. This interest stemmed from the fact that, despite the predictions of theorists such as Weber, ethnic identity as well as nationalism persisted and even grew in importance throughout the past century. While Weber theorized that these “primordial phenomena” would disappear as a result of the processes of globalization, the opposite has proven true.23 This became particularly evident in the last decades of the twentieth century when conflicts throughout the world, from former

Yugoslavia to Rwanda to various parts of Asia, demonstrated in bloody and violent detail the continued importance of ethnic identities. As Thomas Hylland Eriksen points out, “ethnic organization and identity, rather than being ‘primordial’ phenomena radically opposed to modernity and the modern state, are frequently reactions to processes of modernization.”24

Indeed, as the research has continually demonstrated, people often turn to ethnic identities in times of upheaval because they provide a sense of stability in an otherwise chaotic world.

Throughout history, therefore, including well before the advent of globalization, industrialization, urbanization, and other processes typically associated with modernity, ethnic identities were constructed to help cope with a changing world. This includes the tumultuous period of the Early to High Middle Ages and the Viking Age, the period under study in this thesis. It was the renewal of ethnic conflict around the globe in the latter part of the twentieth century that prompted various academic fields to revisit questions surrounding ethnicity.

23 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, Third Edition (New York: Pluto Press, 2010), Ebook, 2. 24 Ibid., 13. 15 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

However, while the study of ethnicity is a more modern phenomenon (despite being successfully applied in historical contexts), the history of the study of collective identity has a much longer history.

The History of Classification

The study of human collective identity has undergone various shifts. Terms have been developed and discarded, often reflecting the broader historical trends within which they were embedded. The separation of ethnicity from other constructed categories is a relatively recent phenomenon, as historically it has been subordinated to or caught up and conflated with other forms of classification. This was the case beginning in the nineteenth century, when many disciplines became interested in collective identity and “human diversity per se, and consequently the classification of human groups.”25 Moving away from the Enlightenment concept of human progress toward civilization, scholars and philosophers began to use the concept of race to explain human diversity and the idea “that human groups were essentially distinct, primordial entities, characterized by specific physical qualities.”26 Two schools of thought developed, one which based its conceptualizations of racial differences on physiognomy and anatomy, which in turn were then reflected in culture and mental capability.

The other focused on language and saw racial differences as arising primarily from culture and the environment. Toward the latter part of the nineteenth century, there was a return to the

Enlightenment concept of human progress, now contextualized according to different universal stages of development. This arose through the theory of social evolution, which attempted to categorize different races and nations based on where they fell along a broader

25 Siân Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (Routledge: New York, 1997), 40. 26 Ibid., 41. 16 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 understanding of human cultural development. While the focus on philology persisted, a new vein of thought was developed along this social evolutionary tract, which saw social, cultural, and mental characteristics as tied into race and physical appearance, with a hierarchy stratifying different racial groups.27 Race, then, was the umbrella under which both human diversity and collectivity were conceptualized, and “it was used as a synonym for national, cultural, and linguistic groups in much of the literature.”28

This tendency persisted into the twentieth century. Indeed, the concept of social evolution, which focused in on culture rather than race, but still envisioned different cultural groups within a broader framework of universal development, became the basis for ethnology.29 In the early twentieth century Franz Boas posited “that human behavior is culturally determined, an idea which became one of the central tenets of twentieth-century anthropology.”30 There was a particular emphasis in this vein on cultural contact and diffusion throughout history, although different people groups continued to be seen as distinct and uniform.31 Further developments occurred as scholars tried to separate the concepts of culture and race, particularly in light of the deployment of racial determinism for often violent political ends. This includes the racist doctrines of the Nazis, whose “state was founded on ethnicity and race—on self-love and other-hate.”32 For the Nazis, there was a distinction between ethnicity and race, that is Volk and Rasse, respectively, with the former representing

“an egalitarian and ecumenical promise to members of a so-called community of fate,”

27 Ibid., 41-42. 28 Ibid., 43. 29 Ibid., 45. 30 Ibid., 46. 31 Ibid., 48-49. 32 Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 10. 17 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 whereas the latter hinted at “a despised ‘other’ [that] lurked in the shadows.”33 Roping in the theories that had permeated the social sciences throughout the previous century, the Nazis developed a dangerous program of conflict and superiority. Using the idea of social evolution, as well as the tendency of understanding different cultures as distinct, uniform collectivities, the Nazis were able to “mobilize followers to participate in a moral universe that is accessible only to those who share a language, religion, culture, or homeland.”34 Backlash against this dangerous usurpation and deployment of the theories concerning human collective identities spurred postwar scholars to emphasize cultures and societies, especially so-called ‘tribal’ societies, as opposed to race. Still, the abstract nature of these concepts, and the problematic manner in which they could obscure the very subject they were intended to illuminate, led to a serious questioning of their utility. Coupling this with the political and ideological weight that these terms held as a result of the events of the previous century, the social sciences began to turn to another collective concept as the basic unit of analysis.

This was the concept of ethnicity, with the term first appearing in English in the

1950s.35 While the concept, which derives from the Greek ethnos, had existed across much of human history, scholarly use of the term developed particularly in the late 1960s and 1970s, partially as a result of what has been discussed above. Despite the turning away from concepts of tribe, race, and culture as the basic units through which to study collective identity, “the idea of a bounded, holistic social unit defined by language, culture and political autonomy remained intact.”36 The focus on ethnicity within the field of anthropology37 “represented

33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 13. 35 John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, “Introduction,” in Ethnicity, ed. Hutchinson and Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4. 36 Jones, Archaeology of Ethnicity, 51. 18 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 both a further shift in classificatory terminology due to the pejorative connotations of existing taxonomic categories, and a significant change in the theoretical conceptualization of cultural groups.”38 It also occurred in tandem with decolonization and the persistence and even growth of ethnic consciousness around the globe. Using the concept of ethnicity, which seemed better suited to explain the social landscape, the focus shifted to “the processes involved in the construction of group boundaries in the context of social interaction” and “research increasingly focused on the self-definitions of particular ethnic groups in opposition to other groups.”39 Therefore, the scholarly interest in ethnicity as a category of collective identity grew as a result of internal difficulties and trends across various fields as well as external historical developments, especially as the identity category acquired a renewed emphasis among different peoples around the world in the mid-twentieth century.

Trends in Ethnic Identity Studies

There are a few trends specific to the scholarship on ethnicity that are important to trace. The first of these is the theory of primordialism, which at least early on maintained many of the tenets of previous research into race and culture. Like earlier studies, primordialism maintained an emphasis on physical characteristics and automatically assigned a particular ethnic category by virtue of birth. In such an interpretation, “ethnicity is the collection of certain primordial human features, passed on through blood or genetics, which together distinguish one group from another, especially by physiology.”40 Further echoing

37 Sociology and psychology had a different relationship with the term; ethnic groups as a category of collective identity had already been a part of studies within these fields from the early twentieth century. However, it was subordinated to other concerns which the fields saw as more salient within societies, such as class. See Ibid., 53- 54. 38 Ibid., 51. 39 Ibid., 52. 40 Eric Barreto, “Ethnic Negotiations: The Function of Race and Ethnicity in Acts 16,” (PhD diss., Emory University, 2010), 44. 19 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 older scholarship, primordialists hold that this ethnic membership is a fixed category, meaning that ethnic groups are homogenous and distinct, with the boundaries between them rigidly defined. Accordingly, the impetus for ethnic divisions emerges internally within the group, to be identified by certain physiological and seemingly inherent cultural characteristics that naturally divide populations into discrete segments.41 In such an interpretation,

“primordial attachments are involuntary and possess a coerciveness which transcends the alliances and relationships engendered by particular situational interests and social circumstances.”42

Essentially, further echoing earlier studies with their emphasis on basic human mentality, though by omitting the concept of a universal hierarchy that stratified different groups of people, primordialists see ethnicity as a natural component of the human psyche.

For them, it is part of the inherent tribalistic nature that has guided societies to organize themselves into different units throughout history. Indeed, Harold Isaacs argues that these primordial ties “have an overwhelming power because of a universal human, psychological need for a sense of belongingness and self-esteem.”43 Some authors take this one step further, combining this psychological approach with a biological one, to arrive at an “explanation of conflict which is seen in terms of ingroup amity and outgroup enmity.”44 This thesis is predicated on notions of kinship selection, as explained by Pierre L. van den Berghe. He writes that

ethnic groups, for nearly all of human history, were what geneticists call breeding populations, in-breeding superfamilies, in fact, which not only were much more closely related to each other than to even their closest neighbors, but

41 Ibid., 45. 42 Jones, Archaeology of Ethnicity, 65. 43 Ibid., 66. 44 Ibid., 67. 20 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

which, almost without exception, explicitly recognized that fact, and maintained clear territorial and social boundaries with other such ethnic groups.45

He goes on to acknowledge that the kinship within ethnic groups may be “partially fictive” as a result of population movements and interbreeding.46 However, he argues that the fact that “the extended kinship of the ethnic group was sometimes putative rather than real was not the important point…. the kinship was real often enough to become the basis of these powerful sentiments we call nationalism, tribalism, racism, and ethnocentrism.”47 According to this kinship selection paradigm, categories such as ethnicity arose out of biological imperatives but were influenced by historical developments. That is, as humans “became increasingly formidable competitors and predators to their own and closely related species, there was a strong selective pressure for the formation of larger and more powerful groups,” which compelled them into “organizing against other competing groups, and therefore maintaining and defending ethnic boundaries.”48

Primordialism as outlined above has been heavily criticized from a variety of angles.

Siân Jones lays out some of the advantages and disadvantages of the approach. She argues that its advantages include its ability to explain the strong emotional component that is often involved with an ethnic identity. It also helps illuminate “the persistence of some ethnic groups over considerable periods of time, [even] when it appears to be to their own social disadvantage.”49 However, she also points out some of the flaws inherent in the primordial perspective, many of them related to the problematic ideas it had maintained from previous

45 Pierre L. van den Berghe, “Race and Ethnicity: A Sociobiological Perspective,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 1, no. 4 (1978): 404. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., 405. 49 Jones, Archaeology of Ethnicity, 68. 21 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 scholarship. The first of these is the underlying concept that ethnicity and ethnocentrism exist innately in human nature, because it causes a “romanticization and mystification of ethnic identity.”50 The theory does not investigate the “psychological potency” of “primordial attachments,” because “primordial ties or ethnic sentiments are posited as primitive and atavistic attributes which gain power from an instinctive predisposition in human nature.”51

Therefore, primordial approaches, because they see ethnic identity as arising coercively and involuntarily out of biological or psychological imperatives, “cannot explain the fluid nature of ethnic boundaries; the situational quality of ethnic identity at the level of the individual; or the fact that the importance of ethnicity itself varies significantly in different social contexts and between different individuals.”52 Further, they fail to take into account the “social and historical contexts in which particular ethnic groups are formulated,”53 or the “historically situated and culturally constructed nature of the very concepts that are central to their argument—most notably ‘ethnic group’ and ‘nation.’”54 Perhaps most importantly, primordialism did not entail a significant reassessment of the prevailing views that had characterized earlier studies into collective identity, that is, research that did not use ethnicity, but rather race, culture, or tribe, as an analytical category. While there were some modifications, such as getting rid of the value hierarchy based on ambiguous and racist or ethnocentric notions of development, primordialism still maintained many of the central tenets of previous scholarship. The problems associated with these concepts were partially

50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 69. 53 Ibid., 70. 54 Ibid., 71. 22 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 responsible for the development of ethnicity as an analytical tool in the first place. Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that another theoretical trend developed within the scholarship.

This was the instrumentalist approach, which was directly opposed to the primordial perspective. Instrumentalism saw the stimulus for ethnic divisions arising externally.

Instrumentalism originally developed in ethnic identity studies in direct opposition to the dangerous ways that many of the central tenets of primordialism—holdovers from the previous studies that focused on race, culture, and tribes—had been abusively deployed in the twentieth century. Instrumentalism views ethnicity as a tool that groups use to garner and maintain power and status. Therefore, “ethnicity is a product or a social construction of a particular group’s efforts to distinguish itself along ethnic lines… what is important in the study of ethnicity is not what it is but how it functions.”55 The important distinction between primordialism and instrumentalism is that instrumentalism sees ethnicity as “a guise adopted by interest groups to conceal aims that were more properly political or economic.”56 In this vein, “the persistence of the ethnic group cannot be assumed, since it is likely to emerge and disappear in tandem with the fluctuating claims to power advanced by competing interest groups.”57 Instrumentalists “treat ethnicity [not] as a critical end but as a means to the real social dynamics that prompt ethnic thinking.”58 Instrumentalism posits that ethnicity functions merely as a tool which different groups use to claim, garner, and maintain power. Since instrumentalism is seen as diametrically opposed to primordialism, it is fitting that the approach sees the impetus for ethnic cohesion arising externally rather than from some ingrained, biological imperative.

55 Barreto, “Ethnic Negotiations,” 44, emphasis original. 56 Jonathan Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2. 57 Ibid., 17. 58 Barreto, “Ethnic Negotiations,” 46. 23 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Frederick Barth’s seminal introduction in the edited volume Ethnic Groups and

Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference has played a huge part in the modern research into ethnicity. While his more or less instrumentalist approach suffers from that approach’s pitfalls, outlined below, he nevertheless outlines a couple of core tenets that continue to guide the field today.59 First, Barth emphasizes the ascriptive aspect of ethnic identities, writing that “ethnic groups are categories of ascription and identification by the actors themselves, and thus have the characteristic of organizing interactions between people.”60 This emphasis on the subjective and ascriptive identification of a people with an ethnic identity moved away from the primordial conception of ethnicity as something that was biologically inherent. It allowed researchers to think of ethnic identity as merely one category among many others (for example, gender, religion, or even class) through which groups of people could perceive and navigate the social world.61 Second, because he asserted that

“ethnicity is not defined by culture but by social organization,”62 the focus of investigation should thus be the “ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses.”63 Primordial perspectives understood “boundary maintenance as unproblematical” and as stemming “from the isolation which the itemized characteristics imply: racial

59 While most scholars recognize Barth’s work as indicating a fundamental shift in the field, they differ in the ways that they define his approach. Jones, for example, describes him as an instrumentalist, and indeed uses examples from his work to support her own critiques of the field. See Jones, Archaeology of Ethnicity, 72-79. Others emphasize his contributions in creating what they call the constructivist approach; see for example Eloise Hummel, “Standing the Test of Time: Barth and Ethnicity,” Coolabah 13 (2014): 46-60. Hutchinson and Smith describe his approach as a third option, known as transactionalist, to the then prevailing dichotomy between primordialism and instrumentalism; see Hutchinson and Smith, “Introduction,” 9. 60 Frederick Barth, “Introduction,” Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Long Grove: Waveland Press, 1998), 10. 61 Ibid., 25. 62 Hummel, “Standing the Test of Time,” 49. 63 Barth, “Introduction,” 15. 24 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 difference, cultural difference, social separation and language barriers, spontaneous and organized enmity.”64 Barth rejected this, pointing out that

boundaries persist despite a flow of personnel across them. In other words, categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories.65

Like his conception of ethnic identity as an ascriptive, constructed category, Barth’s focus on the boundaries between ethnic units was an important shift in the theory surrounding ethnicity. Finally, Barth also brought the process of othering to the fore in the study of ethnic identity. If ethnic identity was a method of ordering the social world, then “the roots of this social organization are not cultural content but dichotomization, so that the ethnic boundary is a social boundary formed through interaction with ‘Others.’”66 This process of othering, along with the notion that ethnic identities are constructed and ascriptive and defined by (social) boundaries, have all become central components in the study of the formation and maintenance of ethnic identities.

Like primordialism, the instrumentalist approach has its benefits as well as its drawbacks. One of the benefits of the approach is “in revealing and explaining the dynamic and situational aspects of ethnic organization.”67 Still, it remains problematic in a variety of ways, primarily related to its reductionist tendencies. These reductionist tendencies, in turn, are related to the theory’s origin as a counterpoint to primordialism. For example, seeing ethnicity as merely a guise for some other concern obfuscates the very real role it plays as a category of identification and analysis. Additionally, as Jones points out, “the reduction of

64 Ibid., 11. 65 Ibid., 9-10. 66 Hummel, “Standing the Test of Time,” 49. 67 Jones, Archaeology of Ethnicity, 77. 25 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 ethnicity to economic and political relationships frequently results in a neglect of the cultural dimensions of ethnicity.”68 Contrary to the primordialist approach, instrumentalism’s view

“that human behaviour is essentially rational and directed towards maximizing self-interest results in an oversimplification of the perception of interests by culturally situated agents, and disregards the dynamics of power in both intra-group and inter-group relations.”69 In other words, it tends to conceptualize homogeneity and to assume a level of agreement among an identity group where it may not or does not exist. This can be seen in Barth’s work: although he emphasized movement across social boundaries, he states that this movement only served to reinforce these boundaries and thereby perpetuate a fixed ethnic identity.70

Though not entirely foolproof, Barth’s theses had a profound influence on ethnic identity studies. This is true for a group of historians known as the Vienna School. These researchers have guided examinations of ethnic identity formation in the context of the decline of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the successor states in Europe. The scholar who spearheaded this particular group was Herwig Wolfram, and his book The

History of the Goths laid the groundwork for the study of early medieval ethnogenesis, a term which the group moved away from in subsequent work.71 He analyzed different source material to try and explore the meaning of Gothic identity in disparate cases and perspectives across time.72 Later scholars such as Walter Pohl really took up the mantle of instrumentalism and expanded Wolfram’s historical investigations to non-Germanic groups. These included

68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., 79. 70 Barth, “Introduction,” 38. 71 This, according to Walter Pohl, a Vienna School scholar, was due to a distortion of term’s meaning through the criticism and polemic leveled against ethnogenesis as well as those who used it in explaining Late Antique and early medieval transformation processes. See Walter Pohl, “Von der Ethnogenese zur Identitätsforschung,” in Neue Wege der Frühmittelalterforschung: Bilanz und Perspektiven, ed. Walter Pohl, Maximilian Diesenberger and Bernhard Zeller (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2018), 23-25. 72 Ibid., 15-16. 26 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 the Avars, a steppe people who held sway over much of Central Europe in the sixth through ninth centuries.73 Pohl developed the tools and theories of his predecessors such as Wolfram, which were themselves based on theories borrowed and developed from anthropology and the social sciences. His work is distinguished from Wolfram’s, however, because it “is much more fluid and has been profoundly influenced by the so-called ‘linguistic turn,’ in which the works of sociologists, philosophers of language and critical theorists were employed to understand how language and its use shaped past power structures.”74 This emphasis on claiming and legitimizing power fits squarely into the instrumentalist conception of ethnicity.

His emphasis on literary theory has led Pohl to emphasize “that it cannot be assumed that early medieval texts are simple records of reality. Rather, they are representations of it, many of them shaped by the distinctive concerns of their authors.”75 Pohl has been active in helping evolve the field by responding to criticism and expanding not only the breadth of early medieval ethnicity studies,76 but also the ways scholars think about ethnicity in the period. In keeping with Barth’s theses, he calls for researchers to understand ethnicity as merely one possible social identity category among several different options, and for them to research its salience in different contexts.77 Other scholars of the Vienna School, also influenced by

Wolfram’s work, have combined these concepts with intense source criticism to arrive at

73 See Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018). 74 Guy Halsall, Barbarian Invasions and the Roman West 376-568 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 16. 75 Peter J. Heather, “Ethnicity, Group Identity, and Social Status in the Migration Period,” in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Ildar Garipzanov, Patrick Geary, and Przemysław Urbańczyk (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008): 29. 76 In addition to expanding to non-Germanic groups like the Avars, Pohl has also called for a more systematic investigation of the role of women and gender within ethnic identity studies, an area where the field has been historically weak. See Pohl, “Gender and Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages,” in Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 23-43. 77 Pohl, “Introduction—Strategies of Identification: A Methodological Profile,” in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 26-27. 27 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 meanings of ethnic identity through different authorial perspectives throughout the early medieval period.78 This group of scholars has primarily focused on ethnic identity in the context of Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, and therefore have striven to emphasize the continuity of Roman forms within the ethnic constructs and burgeoning polities of these periods. Indeed, this has been an important overarching point throughout their studies, beginning with Wolfram. While this particular point is not relevant to the present study, their work remains useful because it provides a methodological roadmap for how to analyze and mine the historical source material to uncover the formation of ethnic identity in the medieval context.

Conclusions

The general trends in ethnic identity research more broadly, as well as how it has influenced studies on the early medieval period, have been laid out above. The study of collective identity has undergone various shifts, and investigations into the phenomenon really began to flourish in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are a few conclusions that should be drawn before this thesis narrows its focus to the subject under investigation in this study, the Danes. First, this study takes the argument that ethnic identity is a constructed phenomenon; it is not something that exists naturally and inherently, but something that is crafted. That is not to say that ethnic identity stands in for other concerns, as instrumentalism claims. This thesis occupies a middle ground between primordialism and instrumentalism in that it sees ethnicity as a constructed social identity category that fulfills a very human need to assert and maintain a unifying, collective identity. Part of the problem

78 See for example Helmut Reimitz, “Die Franken und ihre Geschichten,” in Neue Wege der Frühmittelalterforschung: Bilanz und Perspektiven, ed. Walter Pohl, Maximilian Diesenberger and Bernhard Zeller (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2018), 201-216 and Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 28 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 with primordialism was that it gave too much weight to the emotional aspects associated with ethnicity, at the expense of analyzing the ways that it could be deployed by certain persons or groups as a way of asserting and maintaining power. By contrast, however, part of the problem with instrumentalism was that it did not fully account for the very real affective power that ethnicity maintained in its own right. If ethnic identity is merely a guise for other concerns, then arguably any number of collective identities could have served—an example for the modern period would be nationalism. But the events of the past half century have indicated that this is not the case. Therefore, while this thesis relies heavily on the methodology and some general assumptions of instrumentalism, it simultaneously recognizes the explanatory power that primordialism maintains.

This study also understands that ethnic identity is often constructed or emphasized in response to some sort of disruptive force. This is because, in the primordialist sense, it satisfies the human need to maintain a sense of security in an otherwise tumultuous world by providing individuals a collective sense of kinship and commonality. There are numerous instances of this in history. The post-Roman kingdoms are one example: after the breakup of the Roman Empire in the west, the unifying authority that had maintained order in much of this part of the world dissolved. Therefore, in this time of movement, violence, and jockeying for power, ethnic identities became one method for groups of people to assume and maintain power. By emphasizing a shared ethnic identity as a substitute for Roman authority, groups were able to craft a sense of unity in often very pluralistic societies.79 There are also other, more modern examples. One is the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. In this chaotic period, multiethnic communities that had theretofore lived in relative harmony together began to

79 Indeed, this is what much of the work of the Vienna School seeks to uncover and investigate. 29 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 assert ethnic identities as a way of differentiating themselves from their friends and neighbors.

This increased tension among Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes, which ultimately broke out in violent and bloody conflict. As Dinka Corkalo Biruski discusses, “the social networks of friends, neighbors, and in-laws of different ethnic backgrounds began to fade, and ethnicity predominated in the shaping of new social relations.”80 The uncertainty engendered by the dissolution of Soviet control in the former Yugoslavia brought ethnic boundaries to the fore, and tension developed along these lines as people began to emphasize the differences between ethnic groups. Where before these boundaries had not been as clearly defined or emphasized, they were now “sharpened,” primarily through “the use of language by Croats and Serbs.”81

In times of unrest, people often turn to emphasizing collective identities, including ethnicity, as a way of asserting stability. This has the effect of creating unity internally by delineating the other, or those who are not included in the ethnic group.

This concept applies to the early medieval Danes as well, particularly when the expansionism exhibited by the Franks is taken into account. As Ildar H. Garipzanov argues, beginning especially in the ninth century the Danes began to flit in and out of Frankish sources. As these two people groups increasingly came into contact, the Danes appeared to construct what he refers to as a “political ethnicity out of a fluid world of early medieval ethnicities as a response to the particular circumstances—in this case as a reaction to the situation in the northern Carolingian frontier in the early ninth century—and its dissolution

80 Dinka Corkalo Biruski, “Lessons Learned from the Former Yugoslavia: The Case of Croatia,” in Handbook of Ethnic Conflict: International Perspectives, ed. Dan Landis and Rosita D. Albert (New York: Springer, 2012): 332. 81 Ibid., 336. 30 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 when those circumstances ceased to exist.”82 While it is not clear that this political ethnicity of the Danes dissolved, as he argues, when the Franks stopped gazing northwards and instead began to deal with decades of internal strife, his assertion that ethnic cohesion was formed in response to the external threat of Frankish expansion holds weight, particularly upon a closer look at the sources. This is part of the reason that Frankish sources on the Danes have been chosen for this study. A perceived threat to their autonomy meant the Danes had a vested interest in banding together against an external enemy. As circumstances changed on the continent, so too did their organization and activity, but Danish identity persisted and developed throughout the Viking Age and this period became an important part in the later mythos of Danish ethnicity.

There are two additional points to emphasize here. The first of these, in line with what has just been stated, is that the process of othering is an indelible part of ethnic identity formation and maintenance. Part of the process of defining a group of people entails identifying who is not included in the group. As Barth stated, boundary maintenance by contrasting the group against another collective perceived as ‘other’ is an important part of the ethnic identity formation process. This can be examined through the eyes of those within and outside the group, in the ways that they describe either themselves in relation to outsiders, or the ways outsiders are described in relation to themselves. This is partially why a combination of internal and external sources have been chosen to examine the ethnic identity formation of the Danes. Thus, the second important point is that the primary way ethnic identity is constructed is through discourse. Indeed, as Jonathan Hall points out, while aspects like

82 Ildar H. Garipzanov, “Frontier Identities: Carolingian Frontier and the Gens Danorum,” in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Garipzanov, Patrick Geary, and Przemysław Urbańczyk (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008): 115. 31 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

“genetic traits, language, religion, or even common cultural forms” are “important symbols of ethnic identity, they really only serve to bolster an identity that is ultimately constructed through written and spoken discourse.”83 Often these elements—language, religion, or culture—are important markers of ethnic identity, and will frequently be used as a lens for describing different groups of people. In the Middle Ages this is particularly true for

Christianity, which informs the perspectives of all the sources, internal and external, utilized for this study. It is this discourse between in-group and out-group members that really serves to reinforce ethnic identity, that is, the recognition of a distinct group of people and the boundaries that mark it out, along with the replication and therefore reinforcement of both of these across the sources.

It is these concepts that guide the present study into Danish ethnic identity in the

Viking Age. If perceptions of ethnic identity are constructed through written discourse, it is useful to analyze the varying sources for Danish activity that exist for the Viking Age. These include external sources, like the Frankish annals and Adam of Bremen’s work on the see of

Hamburg-Bremen, as well as internally produced sources such as Saxo Grammaticus’s long- winded history of the Danes. Pulling together the information and perspectives of these varied sources allows us to reconstruct a picture of Viking Age Danish identity, one in which the image of the Danes as fierce, violent raiders coexists with a more tempered, rational depiction. How violence is depicted across the sources is an important thread that will be explored in the present study. So too is the theme of Christianity and conversion, which is a fundamentally important point in many medieval sources and tends to inform the viewpoint of medieval authors. Throughout, these themes will be used to view the othering process, and

83 Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 2. 32 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 how this contributes to both the formation but also the reinforcement of Danish ethnic identity.

33 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

CHAPTER III

EXTERNAL SOURCES: FRANKISH ANNALS An important component in the formation of ethnic identity is discourse. Spoken and written discourse reveals how a group of people talks about others and perceives boundaries between groups. For this reason, it is useful to examine the external sources about the Danes in order to parse out how they were perceived, as well as what their interactions and depictions in the sources can tell us about Danish identity. The main sources used in this chapter are the Frankish annals, which give yearly reports on the events in the Frankish

Empire. Eventually there were two sets of annals corresponding to the western and eastern portions of the Empire. This thesis focuses on the earlier annals related to the western portion.

First are the Annales Regni Francorum, which will be explored in great detail in order to fully understand how perceptions of Danish identity developed and shifted. This is followed by a look at the Annales Bertiniani, which continued the Annales Regni Francorum. In total these two annals cover the mid-eighth to the late ninth centuries and provide insight into contact with the Danes at the outset of the Viking Age. A variety of things emerge when studying these annals: first, that violence was the fundamental component in the perception of Viking

Age Danish ethnic identity. Even religion, which does come to the fore later on after Viking attacks increased exponentially, was less important in the initial and defining contact. As

Frankish expansionism during the ninth century in part triggered Danish coalescence, the interactions between these two groups of people helped form a specific image of Danishness.

This image is then replicated and reworked later on in Danish sources, where similar themes arise but are utilized and depicted differently.

34 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

The first source that will be analyzed is the Annales Regni Francorum (hereafter

ARF).84 Not much is known about who wrote the annals, although based on codicological and paleographical evidence, it is clear that there were multiple different scribes recording the events throughout the years they cover. Scholars typically divide the ARF into three different sections based on author; the first section runs from 741-794, and was “compiled… between

787 and 793 on the basis of older annals and the continuations of Fredegar,” followed by the events occurring in the scribe’s own lifetime.85 The second portion covers the years 795-807, though there is debate about when the new scribe took over responsibility for recording annual events, perhaps anywhere from 792-795.86 The third and final portion of the ARF picks up from here and finishes out the source, running from 808-829.87 While the identities of the authors of the ARF remain a mystery to scholars today, a couple of things are clear: they were most likely members of the royal chapel, and from 818-829 “the influence of archchaplain Hilduin, abbot of St.-Denis, is unmistakable”.88 The language changed with the authors, becoming more learned and deploying a more sophisticated, complex Latin, indicating that the latter two authors, particularly the third one, were influenced by

Charlemagne’s Carolingian revival.89 In line with this, the entries tended to become longer and more involved as the years progressed. This is part of what makes the ARF such a useful source for Danish activity, because the Danes are mentioned often by all the authors. Indeed,

84 There are two versions of the ARF, the original version and a revised version, wherein an author, perhaps the third contributor, went back to previous years and added information up to circa 812. The original, unrevised version is primarily used in this work in an attempt to authentically capture contemporary perceptions as they developed. Any references to the revised version specifically noted. 85 Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, transl. Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers (University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 1972), 5. 86 Ibid, 6. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid, 5-6; see also J.N. Adams, “The Vocabulary of the Annales Regni Francorum,” Glotta 55, no. 3/4 (1977): 258-259. 35 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 as the Franks expanded northwards, they began to recognize the Danes as a people with whom they must reckon, and how they describe the Danes, particularly in comparison to their descriptions of other peripheral peoples, lends insight into perceptions of the Danes in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. This external perspective, in turn, provides a piece of the puzzle of Danish identity in this period.

The first references in the ARF to these people living north of Frankish influence occurs in 777. This was close to the beginning of Charlemagne’s reign as the sole ruler of

Francia. Throughout the next four or so decades until his death in 814, Charlemagne subdued neighboring peoples—including the Lombards, Saxons, and various Slavic groups—and put their territories under Frankish control, relying on a fairly complex administrative system in order to control all this new land. This increasingly brought the threat of Frankish influence, and more sinisterly invasion, closer to the borders of the Danes, who inhabited the area north of Saxony, that is, modern-day Jutland and up into southern Sweden. This Frankish threat appears to have provoked Danish coalescence, so that where before there was little centralized control uniting the various tribes sprinkled throughout this area, now certain powerful chieftains began to form coalitions in order to resist any potential Frankish incursion. This is reflected in Frankish sources: initially the northerners were referred to as just that—

Northmen. Later, however, as interactions increased, the Franks begin talking more specifically about the Danes and their kings, who alternately created havoc along the Frankish frontier or sought peace with Frankish rulers.

This first mention of the Northmen in the ARF in 777 occurs in reference to a certain rebellious Widukind. He was a Saxon responsible for inciting a revolt against Frankish overlordship among the Saxons. After his revolt was crushed, he sought refuge along with a

36 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 few of his allies in parts of the country of the Northmen.90 Other sources more specifically explain that he found sanctuary with King Sigifrid of the Danes.91 This was a portent of things to come, as the Danes would soon frequently be involved, directly and indirectly, in revolts against Frankish rule. Five years later, the Northmen are again mentioned, along with the

Avars and Saxons, as arriving at Charlemagne’s synod at Cologne. Emissaries from the

Northmen had been sent by King Sigifrid to deal with Charlemagne. Despite the fact that they had agreed at Cologne to a treaty, Widukind, who had once more stirred the Saxons to rebellion, again found sanctuary in their territory.92 The Northmen are not mentioned for another twenty-two years, during which time they presumably watched with growing apprehension the crushing, subjugation, and ultimate relocation of the Saxons, as well as the conquest of many of the Slavs. In these early mentions of the Northmen in the ARF, they are starting to come into the political purview of the Franks. They are designated by the general term Northmen, not by more specific ethnic terms like Danes or Swedes.93 This is despite the fact that trade and interaction with the Franks had been occurring in Scandinavia since at least the sixth century. Indeed, elite Scandinavians in these earlier periods imitated the

Merovingians, modeling their lifestyles on Frankish ones and working hard to obtain Frankish

90 Annales Regni Francorum, inde ab A. 741. usque ad A. 829; qui dicuntur Annales Laurissenses Maiores et Einhardi, [hereafter ARF] s.a. 777, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz and Friedrich Kurze (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani 1895), 48. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 91 The revised version of the ARF mention this; see also Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern: 751 – 918, ed. Johann Friedrich Böhmer and Engelbert Mühlbacher (Innsbruck: Wagnerschen Universitäts- Buchhandlung, 1908), 88. 92 Ibid s.a. 782, 58, 60. 93 Both of these ethnic designations were mentioned by earlier authors. Tacitus mentions the Suiones, or Swedes, in his Germania written in the first century. See Tacitus, Germania 44.2, with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Herbert W. Benario (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 56. In the mid-sixth century, Jordanes, a self-proclaimed Goth, writes of both the Suetidi (another term associated with the Swedes) and the Dani, who are “of the same stock” and inhabit the island of Scandza. See Jordanes, De Origine Actibusque Getarum III.23, ed. Theodore Mommsen (Munich: Weidmann, 1882), 29. Procopius, a Byzantine historian roughly contemporaneous with Jordanes, also mentions the Dani. See Procopius, History of the Wars, Books V and VI, XV.193-194, transl. H.B. Dewing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919). 37 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 goods.94 Still, it was in the earlier part of the eighth century that commerce really began to flourish and southern Scandinavia became strategically important in terms of new trade routes, again as a result of Frankish expansion. This not only triggered closer economic contact between the Danes and other northerners with people on the continent, it also increased the importance of knowing more about the Northmen’s organization, both militarily and politically. This need was heightened in the ninth century when the Vikings begin wreaking havoc throughout the continent.

Quite a bit happened in the years before the next mention of the Danes in the ARF.

First, Northmen attacked the English monastery at Lindisfarne in 793, which scholars typically cite as the beginning of the Viking Age. This brazen attack on a holy place was world shattering for many Christians: it was troubling that the saints of Lindisfarne, including the well-known St. Cuthbert, could not protect their own, and that the pagan barbarians were not felled by God’s judgment for their wickedness.95 A sense of helplessness permeated the atmosphere across Britain. Alcuin, a Northumbrian monk teaching at Charlemagne’s palace school in Aachen, wrote to the English bishop Higbald, a survivor of the attack, that

Charlemagne would attempt to ransom those who had been captured in the raid.96 In the aftermath of Viking attacks throughout the next several decades within Francia. Charlemagne began to reinforce coastal defenses in response to this new threat. In the spring of 800 he set out from Aachen and traversed the northern coast of Francia, “which was then infested with pirates,” constructing a fleet and posting guards to combat this new threat that was worryingly

94 Ulf Näsman, “Exchange and Politics: The Eighth-Early Ninth Century in Denmark,” in The Long Eighth Century, ed. Inge Lyse Hansen and Chris Wickham (Boston: Brill, 2000), 35-37. 95 John Haywood, Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 44. 96 Ibid, 46. 38 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 close to home.97 He continued to shore up Francia against Viking incursions in the ensuing years, and “showing a clear understanding of the nature of the Viking threat, Charlemagne concentrated his forces – fleets, coastguards, and fortifications – at the mouths of the empire’s major rivers.”98 The initial wanton violence of the attack on Lindisfarne colored the Frankish view of the northerners. Although the first decades of the ninth century witnessed few Viking raids, and the ARF is more concerned with Frankish attempts to settle the border region between themselves and the Danes, the first impressions and fears associated with the Danes as a result of this attack persisted. This influenced how the Danes were differentiated and othered. These perceptions were amplified in the Annales Bertiniani beginning circa 830 when Viking raids, as they are typically understood, increased on the continent once more.

In this rather tense environment, the Danes really came into the purview of the Franks.

The first specific reference to “Danes” in the ARF occurs in 804. It is also the first time that a certain king Godifrid appears, a figure who became a sort of reference point for the next few decades.99 That is, subsequent generations of Danes are described in terms of their relationship to Godifrid—whether they are his brothers, sons (indeed, the filii Godifridi are mentioned several times in the coming years), or nephews. An important thing to note here is the ways that the Frankish perspective distorts the view of Danish cohesion, particularly because their reference framework for rulership is based upon a couple of centuries of internal kingship. Referring to individual chieftains as kings suggests a level of cohesion across

Jutland, the source of the majority of Danish activity in this period, that probably did not exist yet. It was only by about Saxo’s time (circa 12th century) that the Danish king resembled a

97 ARF s.a. 800, 110: ‘… quod tunc piratis infestum erat…’ 98 Haywood, Northmen, 78. 99 Godifrid also appears in Saxo Grammaticus’s narrative, a point which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. 39 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 traditional medieval ruler. Indeed, in Scandinavia at this time, “in theory, Scandinavian kingship was elective and any man possessed of royal blood… was eligible.”100 In this early period of the Viking Age, “Scandinavian rulers were primarily rulers of men rather than territory so any man of royal blood who could attract a warrior following might be recognized as a king by his men even if he did not actually have a kingdom.”101 This is what made

Viking-style activity so fruitful, because “a reigning king might find it expedient to go on

Viking raids, to bolster his own reputation and to gain extra wealth to reward his own warriors and keep them loyal so that he could fight off challenges to his authority.”102 However centralization, which took place throughout the Viking Age within Scandinavia, slowly eliminated opportunities for claimants to make their bids for power. Though the Frankish annals mention only a few Danes by name, thereby insinuating that there was strong centralization among them at this time, the development of centralized kingship would require centuries and would be considerably complicated in large part by the Viking Age itself.

The Franks’ foreign policy would have been facilitated by having a single person to treat with. In 804, Godifrid came to the border region of modern-day Schleswig-Holstein, which contained an incredibly important trading center which the Danes called Hedeby.

According to the ARF, he arrived there with his fleet as well as his cavalry to meet with

Charlemagne. However, deterred by the advice of his men, he instead sent emissaries to conduct his business with the emperor.103 The details here begin to reveal some of the broader themes that will accompany mentions of the Danes later on in the sources. Godifrid’s military capability, which at this time was often represented by the number of men a leader could

100 Haywood, Northmen, 40. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 ARF s.a. 804, 118. 40 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 summon, was on full display when he came to the border region between his own land and that controlled by the Franks. This show of strength, and the irrevocable latent threat of violence that accompanied it, indicated to the Franks that the Danes were willing and able to protect their own interests. As these two groups of people began to come into more prolonged contact with one another, the threat of military action from both sides loomed over the northern border of the Frankish empire, amplifying the threat already associated with the

Danes because of their attacks in England. It played into the perception of the Danes from the

Frankish perspective, as their growing importance in the Frankish worldview necessitated a better understanding of their internal organization. Therefore the boundary demarcating the

Danes as an ethnic group was from the outset predicated in part on anticipating and ultimately mitigating their potential for violence and destruction, which they had demonstrated time and again. These concerns, moreover, indicated the threat that the Danes posed to Frankish control, not only in this narrow trans-Elbe border region between the two power centers, but more broadly to Frankish hegemony throughout northern Europe.104

There is evidence to support this notion in the annals themselves. This same year, 804,

Charlemagne forced the troublesome northernmost Saxons, who kept rising up in rebellion against Frankish rule, out of trans-Elbe Saxony. He then gave control of the region to the

Abodrites. The Abodrites were one of several different Slavic tribes that in this era inhabited much of Eastern Europe up into modern-day Germany. Throughout the previous decades they had been slowly amassing power over the other nearby Slavic federations. The sources for these peoples, like those for the Danes, are similarly scarce in these early centuries, though they do appear often in Frankish and Byzantine sources, which tend to attribute to them an

104 Daniel Melleno, “Between Borders: Franks, Danes, and Abodrites in the Trans-Elben World up to 827,” Early Medieval Europe 25, no. 3 (2017): 361. 41 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 unjustified level of homogeneity. At any rate, as Charlemagne’s empire expanded eastward, he came into contact with these tribes, and many of them became his tributaries. Indeed, the

Abodrites became important allies, assisting Charlemagne in his fight against the Saxons105 and providing men and security along the border. It is telling that he moved to station this people on a border that up to that point had persistently remained turbulent, and upon which the Franks had just managed to strengthen their tenuous hold. While the Abodrites had proved themselves to be reliable allies, they were also stationed there to serve as a “friendly buffer between the Carolingian empire and the world beyond the Elbe.”106 They were important, but expendable, useful insofar as they remained loyal and tributary to the Franks and continued to help them maintain the limits of their empire. Their location next to a rapidly coalescing, hostile people ensured they would bear the brunt of any incursions by the northerners, which

Charlemagne clearly felt were imminent, given his efforts throughout the early ninth century to shore up the defenses along Francia’s coast and rivers. His placing of the Abodrites in

Saxony was just another layer in his overall program to protect his empire from external threats, primarily by the Danes and other hostiles to the north.

This threat was realized in 808 only four years after Charlemagne had ceded this new territory to the Abodrites. That year was a fascinating and active one for the Danes. The annals record that word had reached Charlemagne that Godifrid had moved against the

Abodrites with his army. This prompted Charlemagne to send his son, Charles, to the River

Elbe with a combined force of Franks and Saxons, instructing him to resist the ‘mad’ king if

105 See ARF s.a. 798: ‘Nordliudi contra Thrasuconem ducem Abodritorum et Eburisum legatum nostrum conmisso proelio acie victi sunt.’ 106 Ibid. 42 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 he should attempt an attack on the borders of Saxony.107 This description of Godifrid is interesting, as it is the first time that there is a distinct value judgment attached to the Danes since their first appearance in the ARF. Clearly the threat of underlying violence is inherent in the annalist’s choice of words to describe the leader of the Danes. The Latin word he uses here is “vesano,” meaning mad or insane as well as furious or wild, and can even mean raging in its participial form. That the Franks see these people as threatening is incredibly clear, by word choice and by the move years earlier to put a strong ally along their shared border. Still, rather than moving further into the area of Saxony, Godifrid held steady on the shore for a few days, having assaulted and captured some unspecified Slavic fortifications. He displaced

Charlemagne’s chosen leader of the Abodrites, Thrasco, “hung another duke named Godelaib whom he had captured through treachery,” and imposed tribute on two-thirds of the Slavs.108

Significantly, Godifrid had the assistance of certain other Slavic tribes in his attack against the

Abodrites. One of these was the Wilzi, a group which had long held what the Frankish author calls an “ancient enmity” for the Abodrites, and who willingly joined the Danes in their assault.109 The annalist also mentions two other groups, the Linones and the Smeldingi, who assisted the northerners. While the Franks did not pursue the Danes in retaliation, they were not so lenient with the Slavs. Charles crafted a bridge at the Elbe and decimated the land of the Linones and Smeldingi to remind them who they should remain subservient to before moving back across the river to defend Saxony.110

107 ARF s.a. 808, 125: ‘…iubens vesano regi resistere…’ 108 Ibid: ‘… Godelaibum alium ducem dolo captum patibulo suspendisset…’ 109 Ibid, 126: ‘Erant cum Godofrido in expeditione praedicta Sclavi, qui dicuntur Wilzi, qui propter antiquas inimicitias, quas cum Abodritis habere solebant, sponte se copiis eius coniunxerunt…’ 110 Ibid, 125. 43 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Godifrid, however, had not yet finished causing noteworthy events for the Franks to record. In addition to his attack, with the support of other Slavic tribes, on the Abodrites, he also set his eyes on a trading center located in their territory, a port town called Reric in the

Danish language, which provided a “great advantage” to his kingdom due to the taxes that it paid to him.111 Reric was squarely located in upper Saxony, which was now under the control of the Abodrites and ultimately the Franks, but it paid tribute to the Danes. This indicates that while the Abodrites were nominally under Frankish control, and worked to protect Frankish interests, they were not fully immune to Danish ambitions to their north, even beyond seemingly random attacks such as the one recorded in 808. Despite the fact that Reric was apparently subject to Danish authority in the region, Godifrid decided to sack it on his return to his homeland. Perhaps he was concerned that its location within Abodrite (and by extension, Frankish) territory could ultimately undermine Danish control over the trade networks in the Baltic and North Sea region. To solve this problem, he destroyed the town and carried off its merchants to Hedeby, the aforementioned trading center located within his own territory.112 This shows “a clear awareness on the part of the Danish king of the growing importance of trade and commerce for his royal ambitions,”113 and indicates how Frankish interests in the region sparked a Danish response.

This is the background against which the Danes were perceived within the Frankish world at the outset of the Viking Age. They were not just another group that could be easily subjugated and brought into the Frankish fold. Rather, they presented a very real threat to

Frankish hegemony across northern Europe at this time, and it is clear from the sources that

111 Ibid, 126: ‘Godofridus vero, prisuquam reverteretur, distructo emporio, quod in oceani litore contstitutum lingua Danorum Reric dicebatur et magnam regno illius commoditatem vectigalium persolutione praestabat…’ 112 Ibid. 113 Melleno, “Between Borders,” 364. 44 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 the Franks were very aware of this fact. This played into how the Franks dealt with them— often as equals, as the events recorded in 809 will illustrate. Even when there was military action between the Danes and Franks, it was often taken tangentially through proxy wars, with the Slavs bearing the brunt of these. Recall the events discussed above, wherein Charles moved into Saxony to take up a defensive position against the Danish incursion, leaving briefly only to re-subdue the Linones and Smeldingi. The Danes were perceived in the sources as a rival power that presented a very real threat to Frankish control over the borders of the empire. This ever-present threat was mitigated by placing the Abodrites, a battle-proven ally, as a buffer, but the fact remained that the Danes were powerful enough to keep the Franks on their guard, and forced them to protect their rivers and coasts from raids. From the outset, then, the Danes represented a hostile force in the early years of direct contact with them.

Lack of knowledge about Danish inner organization, beyond the little the Franks were able to glean through envoys and (very brief) military engagements, meant that they appeared unpredictable, violent, and ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Interestingly, the authors of the annals do not attribute this to their paganism, even though Christianity certainly influenced the ARF, particularly considering it was produced at the royal chapel. As the

Viking Age progressed, these initial impressions—unpredictability, savagery—of the Danes got replicated and amplified, forming a fundamental component in the perception within the

Frankish sources of who the Danes were. Later on, however, there would be more explicit religious explications, typical of medieval sources in periods of crisis, where a violent, barbaric enemy (the Danes) would serve as an instrument of divine wrath on a fickle and unfaithful populace.

45 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Before all of this, however, there was a reduction, at least temporarily, of hostilities between the Franks and the Danes. As already mentioned, relations between the two groups were characterized by alternating periods of antagonism and (often very tentative) reconciliation. That was the case in this two-year span. After the aggressive events of 808, in

809 Godifrid sent word through traders (again, we see the significance of trade) that he had heard that Charlemagne was angry with him for the attack against the Abodrites the previous year. He claimed that the Abodrites had actually attacked him first, and made it clear that he wished to cleanse himself of the accusations made against him. To allow each side to air its grievances, he suggested that both rulers send nobles to meet at a neutral site across the

Elbe.114 That Charlemagne even agreed to this meeting tellingly illustrates the powerful position of the Danes “and to what great lengths the Carolingians were willing to go to stabilize the [trans-Elbe] area.”115 Charlemagne had expanded the empire by about fifty percent during his tenure as king and later emperor, but he faced a different problem in administering and maintaining all the new territory. The Franks now had a vast amount of land and people to oversee bordered by groups hostile to their expansionism and influence.

Still, the Danes recognized that poking the bear, while perhaps successful short-term, was not always advisable long-term, and could potentially harm future aims particularly in the Danish homeland, where unification was still far-off. This reality most likely contributed to

Godifrid’s decision in 809 to seek peace with Charlemagne.

This meeting was an interesting one, partially because, as discussed, it was structured as a meeting between equals. Comparing this to other meetings in the annals illustrates how extraordinary it was in the context of Frankish administration in the late eighth to ninth

114 ARF s.a. 809, 128. 115 Melleno, “Between Borders,” 368. 46 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 centuries. Charlemagne was in the habit of holding public synods in order to receive legates from tributary and rival peoples, from the Saxons and Slavs to the Greeks and Muslims. The annals record that he would both give and receive gifts as well as hostages that had been taken in previous engagements, affirm treaties or make promises of peace, and send the emissaries on their way. In 777, when Charlemagne held a synod at Paderborn, Ibn al-Arabi and his son

Deiuzefi (the annals specify that his Latin name is Joseph) along with al-Arabi’s son-in-law attended this assembly, along with a multitude of Saxons (except for the rebellious Widukind, who as noted above had fled to Nordmannia). The Saxons were baptized and pledged their freedom and property to Charlemagne and his heirs if they should break the Christian faith.116

In 782, Charlemagne held a synod at Cologne, where King Sigifrid’s legates came before him.

Also at this assembly were Avar emissaries sent by that people’s khagan and jugur.117 In 798, the year that Thrasco, duke of the Abodrites, defeated the northern Saxons, Charlemagne received legates from Alfonso, king of Galicia and Asturias as well as emissaries sent by the

Byzantine empress Irene.118 These diplomats all came to Charlemagne’s court at his own strongholds. This tradition would be continued under Charlemagne’s successors and illustrates not only the legitimacy of the Frankish Empire, but also how much power it wielded. To agree to meet a rival power in an area not under Frankish control was very unusual. It showed both how powerful the Danes had become and how tenuous Carolingian control was over the trans-Elbe region. Moreover the Franks were not seeking retribution from the Danes. Instead, the Slavs once again bore the brunt of the tensions between these two powers. Thrasco, the duke of the Abodrites who had been forced out of Saxony by the

116 ARF s.a. 777, 48; see also Scholz, Carolingian Chronicles, 55-56. 117 Ibid s.a. 782, 58-60. 118 Ibid s.a. 798, 102-104. 47 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Danish attack, gave his son to Godifrid as hostage, as the Danish leader had demanded. Then, with a joint force that included Saxons, he moved against the Wilzi and later the Smeldingi and “compelled all those who had defected from him to return to his alliance.”119

The first mentions of interactions with the Danes in the ARF relate to some broader questions guiding this thesis. First, how does this perception of the Danes fit into the theoretical framework laid out in Chapter 1? That is, what does this information tell us about how the Franks perceived the Danes as an ethnic group? If ethnic identity is a phenomenon constructed through discourse, what does the ARF tell us thus far about Danish-ness in the early Viking Age? What sort of characteristics help define this group, and how are the Danes differentiated in the sources from other groups of people? Finally, how do the various interactions with the Danes help guide or shift this perceived boundary? The Danes, up to this point, had occupied an ambiguous place in the Frankish mindset. They represented an ever- present, and often painfully real, military threat along a vulnerable border, yet they were not immediately dealt with like other military threats to the Franks—that is, through direct invasion. Consider earlier groups discussed in the ARF, for example the Lombards. In 755

Pepin, Charlemagne’s father, began a campaign against the Lombards on invitation of the pope. According to the annals, the Lombard king Aistulf “resisted” the justice which Pepin sought for the pope.120 In exchange for the pope’s legitimization of the Carolingians’ seizure of power from the Merovingians, Pepin moved to assist the Roman pontiff. The annals record that, “with God’s help and the intercession of the blessed apostle Peter, King Pepin with the

Franks was victorious.”121 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “abominable” Aistulf did not wish to

119 Ibid s.a. 809, 128-129: ‘… omnes, qui ab eo defecerant, ad suam societatem reverti coegit.’ 120 Ibid s.a. 755, 12. 121 Ibid. 48 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 keep to his word, and after being defeated by Pepin (who also took Ravenna and several other important city centers and gave control of them to the pope), only a year later while hunting

“[Aistulf] was struck by God’s judgment and ended his life.”122 Later on, in 773 after Pepin’s death, Charlemagne was again induced by the pleas of the pope to come to his aid against the

Lombards.123 Besieging the city of Pavia, he defeated the Lombard king Desiderius a year later and left a detachment of Franks in the city, and then “with God’s help returned with great triumph to Francia with his wife and the rest of the Franks.”124 It is important to note that the invasions of Italy are always legitimized in the annals by both the invitation of the popes and the treachery of the Lombards. This description parallels those involving other

Frankish adversaries and was a clear way for the Franks to represent their past in the most beneficial light. There are similarities in how the Lombards and Danes were described— perfidious and treacherous—but the Lombards were treated quite differently than the Danes were a few decades later on. For one, the Danes did not face divine retribution for their dishonesty, indicating that religion, at this point, does not really play into Frankish perceptions of the Danes. Additionally, both Pepin and Charlemagne had tried to deal with the

Lombard situation diplomatically, but to control the Lombards they were perfectly willing to use force if and when necessary. This was not the case with the Danes, who despite having broken treaties with the Franks did not endure direct invasion. Even when Frankish emperors did move troops to the northern border region, they rarely engaged with the Danes directly, and they did not move into the area of Jutland, where Danish power was actually centered.

122 Ibid s.a. 756, 14. 123 Ibid s.a. 773, 35. 124 Ibid s.a. 774, 40. 49 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Another very useful comparison is with the Saxons, who are discussed at length in the annals in the late eighth century. The Saxon Wars took up much of Charlemagne’s reign, and it was not until 804 that the Saxons were fully dealt with by moving them from their homeland and dispersing them into other parts of Francia. The Saxons offer a useful comparison to the Danes partially because they represented a constant problem for the Franks, just as the Danes did, and also because they are described in similar ways, albeit with some important differences. A couple of mentions in the ARF help illustrate this point. In 773, while Charlemagne was off dealing with King Desiderius of the Lombards, the Saxons revolted. They came with their army to the fort of Büraburg, whose terrified inhabitants locked themselves within the castle. Then, the “raging” Saxons began to burn the houses outside the castle, eventually coming to a church blessed by St. Boniface which the martyr had prophesied would never be burned down.125 The Saxons persisted in trying to set fire to the building until there appeared both to some Christians inside the castle as well as to

“certain pagans who had come in the army itself” two youths in white who protected the church from fire.126 The Saxons, unable to complete their mission of burning the church, fled in a panic; afterwards one of them was found next to the same church, sitting bent upon his heels, tinder in hand, as if he wished to try to blow on it to set fire to the building.127 Only three years later the ARF records another incident with the Saxons. At this point, the Saxons had been defeated multiple times by Charlemagne, and several Saxon tribes had given hostages and sworn fealty to the Frankish leader. Once again, however, while Charlemagne was absent from the region and down south in Italy, the Saxons seized the opportunity to

125 ARF s.a. 773, 36, 38. 126 Ibid, 38: ‘… quibusdam paganis, qui in ipso aderant exercitu…’ 127 Ibid. 50 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 neglect their hostages and break their treaties, then through “evil devices and iniquitous entreaties” had induced the Franks in Eresburg castle to leave the fortification.128 They then moved with the same designs to the castle at Syburg. After trying and failing to take the castle by force, they again decided to try to burn the place to the ground. As they readied for battle against the Christians, “the glory of God appeared manifest above the church building.”129

Two red shields, flaming and revolving, appeared above the church, and “when the pagans who were outside saw this sign,” they were so terrified that they fled from their camp.130

The examples of the Lombards and Saxons illustrate similarities and differences from the treatment of the Danes. All three groups are described as untrustworthy and prone to using tricks, fraud, and wickedness to achieve their ends. Both the Lombards and the Saxons face direct retribution for their transgressions, however, whereas the Danes do not. This indicates how different the situation was in the ninth century in the northernmost reaches of the

Frankish realm compared to the situation in mid to late eighth century northern Italy and

Saxony. This in turn affects the perception and representation of the Danes in the ARF.

Another notable difference is the ways that religion does, and does not, play into the perception of the Danes. In the examples above, the Lombards face God’s wrath for their transgressions, while the Saxons are referred to as pagans multiple times. Not only do the

Danes not face divine retaliation for their misdeeds, they were also never referred to as pagans in the ARF. This is despite the fact that there were efforts to Christianize the Danes beginning in the ninth century, accelerating with the efforts of St. Ansgar, the first bishop of Hamburg, in 826. However, although the ARF does not highlight the Danes’ non-Christian status, the

128 Ibid, 44. 129 Ibid: ‘… apparuit manifeste gloria Dei supra domum ecclesiae…’ 130 Ibid, 46: ‘Et cum hoc signum vidissent pagani, qui aforis erant…’ 51 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 groups are described in remarkably similar terms, particularly the Saxons and the Danes.

Specifically there is a use of words such as ‘savage,’ ‘wild,’ and ‘raging’ to describe the two ethnic groups, which for the Franks helps delineate these people from the Franks themselves.

The perception of the Danes as wild and unruly actually fits in the wider context of external perceptions of the Danes, again in the context of the Viking raids in Britain, but also of the geographic area of Scandinavia more broadly. This part of the world was cold, unforgiving, and difficult to live in; it meant that the people from there had to be tough in order to survive.

There are stories stretching back to antiquity of mythical creatures that inhabit this part of the world.131 Even as it became clear that Scandinavia was simply inhabited by fellow humans, there is a perceptible sense of the superiority the administratively and religiously advanced

Franks felt over their unruly northern neighbors. This could have to do in part with the fact that by the time the Danes really came into the political purview of the Franks, Charlemagne had primarily ceased expanding his empire and instead devoted himself to administering what he had amassed in the previous couple of decades. Thus from the outset, the Danes were seen from a defensive rather than an offensive perspective. Still, the Franks had proven time and again that they were powerful enough to conquer external enemies and bring them into the

Frankish fold, so this is not entirely convincing. The Franks did ultimately move to directly engage the Danes multiple times in the latter years of the ARF, first under Charlemagne and then under his son Louis, but this was only after subdued Frankish responses to years of transgressions by the Danes. Therefore, it is clear that the Danes, though described similarly

131 For example, Adam of Bremen mentions a few different creatures in his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum that live in this part of the world, primarily in the northeastern reaches of Scandinavia. These include Amazons, the mythical group of female warriors, and Cynocephali, dog-headed men, among others. Adam pulled much of this lore from ancient sources that he used when crafting his narrative. See Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, transl. Francis J. Tschan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), xix. 52 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 to groups like the Lombards and Saxons, occupied a different space in the Frankish mindset.

The boundary that separated them as an ethnic group is separate from these other two, though they are all described in similar terms. They were not quite just another group to be subjugated or dictated to, but neither were they necessarily on par with the Byzantines (with whom the Franks had maintained a respectful, careful relationship up to this point) or even the

Franks themselves, though by 809 it was becoming increasingly clear to the Franks that they could not simply ignore Danish power in the north.

This is particularly evidenced by other events recorded for 809, the same year that

Godifrid’s proposed trans-Elbe meeting between his and Charlemagne’s emissaries occurred.

The ARF records that Charlemagne received word about Godifrid’s “boasting and pridefulness,” which Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni attributes to the Danish leader’s desire to bring all of Saxony and Frisia into his domain.132 Charlemagne’s hand was finally forced in this region, particularly after his ally Thrasco was killed through the treachery of Godifrid’s men in the town of Reric, and he decided to build a fortified settlement across the Elbe.133

This signaled an important shift in relations between the Danes and the Franks. Where before the Franks had dealt only occasionally with the Danes, now they began to have frequent, direct interaction with the northerners. The challenges to Frankish rule could no longer be countenanced, because they threatened the stability of the entire northern portion of the

Frankish realm. As the Franks became more involved with Danish politics in the ensuing years, a clearer picture of Danish identity began to take shape in the annals. From the outset, the Danes had been seen through a lens of violence; it was partially because of the threat that

132 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni 14, p.12, ed. G.H. Pertz and G. Waitz (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1880). Frisia had been under Frankish control since the eighth century. 133 ARF s.a. 809, 129-130. 53 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 they posed that the Franks had employed the Abodrites as a buffer. Thus, the rhetoric of violence and savagery, a ready tool to describe non-Frankish (and non-Christian) groups, became even more prevalent as relations with the Danes underwent various shifts and, later, as Viking attacks ravaged the settlements throughout Francia and beyond. It is these descriptions that have come to dominate contemporary and even modern perceptions of the early medieval Danes.

Moving forward, mentions of the Danes become more numerous in the annals. This partially reflects the growth of Frankish interest in the trans-Elbe region, and in the Danes themselves. First, Godifrid attacked Frisia (as Einhard had mentioned he was planning to do) with a fleet of two hundred ships, defeated the Frisians and imposed tribute upon them, and received 100 pounds of silver from them before sailing for home once more. Charlemagne, who was on his way to Aachen and had already been considering an expedition against

Godifrid prior to this, was so enraged that he gathered an army and immediately moved to meet the Danish leader in battle. According to the ARF, Godifrid, “puffed up by the vainest hope of victory, boasted that he wished to meet with the emperor on the battlefield.”134 Such a slight to Charlemagne himself, and more broadly to Frankish supremacy, was unconscionable.

Before this could happen, however, Charlemagne learned that the very fleet that had just devastated Frisia had returned to the Danish homeland and that Godifrid had been killed there by one of his own attendants. Later that year Godifrid’s brother Hemming, who had become the Danish leader, made peace with the emperor.135 This year again signals a further shift in

Frankish relations with the Danes. The Franks had already begun to create fortifications to

134 Ibid s.a. 810, 131: ‘Nam rex ille vanissima spe victoriae inflatus acie se cum imperatore congredi velle iactabat.’ 135 Ibid, 133. 54 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 protect Saxony, but up to this point much of the aggression between the two groups had been oblique, perpetrated and retaliated through proxy wars, primarily at the expense of the Slavs.

Now, however, Charlemagne was ready to directly engage the Danes in battle for their audacity in attacking Frisia. While this did not actually happen, it was clear that the Franks were going to have to find new ways to deal with the Danes, who were becoming increasingly daring in challenging Frankish authority in the North and Baltic Sea region. Indeed, what was all the more grating and frustrating for the Franks was how the Danes went about their attacks. They hit their targets swiftly and disappeared with their booty before any real counterattack could be launched against them. This pattern, of course, would become the standard for Viking attacks throughout the continent. In the ensuing years, the inability of the

Franks to get a handle on the Danes and other Northmen, coupled with persistent attacks as well as internal turmoil between Charlemagne’s sons and especially his grandsons, meant that the disruptive, violent nature of the Danes became their defining characteristic in the annals.

The peace between Charlemagne and Hemming, sworn in 811, did not quiet the troubles in that portion of the continent. Indeed, the ARF’s entry for 812 begins with a paragraph detailing the internal strife engendered by Hemming’s death. A dispute arose between the relatives of Godifrid under his nephew Sigifrid and those under Anulo who supported Hemming’s less antagonistic approach. Civil war ensued, and both were killed, though Anulo’s side was victorious and the Danes installed as their new kings his brothers,

Reginfrid and Heriold, referred to in modern scholarship as Harald Klak. According to the

ARF, 10,940 men died in the battle.136 Whether or not this number is accurate, it shows that the Franks were beginning to pay closer attention to the Danes. Indeed, they had a vested

136 Ibid s.a. 812, 136. 55 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 interest in making sure that the side of Anulo was successful, because that group offered better foreign policy options for the Franks than Godifrid’s relatives, who were likely to emulate his aggressiveness in the region. The two new kings sent legates to Charlemagne to make peace and to ask for the return of their brother, “who had long served as a hostage.” 137

The following year, the Franks sent some of their own emissaries, as well as some Saxons, across the Elbe to the Danish border to return him to the kings, who were themselves off fighting the English. When Harald and Reginfrid returned home, civil war erupted once more, with the sons of Godifrid leading the charge. These challengers were helped by some Danish nobles who had been living with the Swedes for some time, and by Danes still settled in their own homeland. With this assistance they were able to drive out the two kings “without much effort.”138 Now power once again lay with Danes hostile to Frankish influence in the trans-

Elbe region.

In the Carolingian world, several big things happened in 814. First, Charlemagne died, leaving his son Louis the Pious to ascend to the throne. This was when the status quo really started to disintegrate within the Carolingian world, though the decline would accelerate even more after Louis’s death in 840. Louis and his successors’ reigns were beset by internal strife between heirs determined to gain more territory and power over their relatives, constant incursions by the Vikings from the north, and frequent revolts among their allied and tributary

Slavic groups. The Danes themselves had entered a period of internecine war which “was rooted in a real political question: what relationship should the Danes have with their southern neighbors?”139 This not only had implications looking outwards, but also affected how the

137 Melleno, “Between Borders,” 375. 138 ARF s.a. 813, 138-139: ‘… non multo eos labore pepulerunt.’ 139 Melleno, “Between Borders,” 374. 56 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Danish world itself would develop. The fact that the anti-Frankish faction had won temporary supremacy meant the Franks would need to watch the Danes closely, and to plan for more violence and destruction originating from that part of the world. Initially the Franks had only looked askance at the northern border. Their awareness of its precariousness is evidenced by the precautionary move to station the Abodrites there, and the coastal and river fortification program began by Charlemagne, but up to this point they had made little direct effort to deal with the Danes except for occasional diplomatic meetings. However, the events of the previous decade had slowly pulled their gaze to this region, and while in some ways internal war among the Danes could help the Franks by keeping the Danes distracted, it also could have ramifications within the Frankish realm. With such a vast territory to administer, and new conflicts arising each year, it was crucial that the Franks find a way to settle their northern border. Luckily Louis got a boon in when Harald arrived asking for his help and protection, having made another attempt to retake control of the Danes and losing in the process not only his bid for power but also his brother and co-ruler, Reginfrid.140 Louis sent him to Saxony to “await the opportune time” when Louis could give him the assistance he needed.141 This came in 815, when a joint force of Saxons and Abodrites was brought together and sent to the land of the Northmen to take up Harald cause, moving into Silendi142 and setting up on the shore to face the Danes. However, the sons of Godifrid, though they had gathered many troops and a fleet of 200 ships, remained stationed on an island three miles off from the coast, “since they did not dare to join them in battle.”143 Because they could not fight

140 ARF s.a. 814, 141. 141 Ibid: ‘…oportunum tempus exspectare…’ 142 Modern-day eastern Schleswig; see ARF s.a. 815, 142, fn. 1. 143 Ibid: ‘…cum eis congredi non auderent…’ 57 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 the Danes directly, the Frankish forces ravaged the surrounding neighborhood and took forty hostages before returning to the emperor at Paderborn.144

Harald continued to harass the sons of Godifrid from his position in Saxony throughout the following year, and by 817, two years after the expedition into Schleswig, the

Danes sent legates to the emperor promising peace. The Franks, however, felt this promise was an “empty” one, disregarded it, and continued to champion Harald’s cause.145

Meanwhile, relations with the Abodrites, Charlemagne’s reliable ally, broke down when their new leader, Sclaomir, refused to share power with Thrasco’s son Ceadrag as Louis had ordered. Sclaomir resolved never to cross the Elbe and come before the Franks again, and instead joined with the sons of Godifrid to his north.146 He persuaded them to send their fleet into Saxony where they devastated the banks of the River Stör, coming all the way to Esesfeld castle before they were defeated by Frankish resistance.147 Another year passed without mention of the Danes, but in 819 Sclaomir was brought before the emperor and exiled; Louis then gave sole control of the Abodrite kingdom to Ceadrag,148 a decision he would mourn only a few years later, as will be seen below. Later that year Louis ordered the Abodrites to take Harald to his ships and he sailed into his homeland, having apparently made an alliance with some of the sons of Godifrid to jointly rule. Two other of the former ruler’s sons had been expelled in the meantime, presumably ones who were opposed to Harald’s return.149

Still, the annalist remained skeptical of the Danes’ trustworthiness, writing that the whole

144 Ibid. 145 Ibid s.a. 817, 145. 146 Ibid, 147. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid s.a. 819, 149-150. 149 Ibid, 152. 58 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 charade was thought to be a trick.150 We can see that the figure of Godifrid has cast a long shadow in the minds of the Franks, for good reason. His violent attacks against the Abodrites and Frankish supremacy in the north had colored the Frankish perception of the Danes, and they remained distrustful of the Northmen. Civil war among the Danes provided them with an opportunity, but it also made an already tenuous, conflict-prone border even more so, and this is why it was so important for the Franks to support the pro-Frankish Harald.

In 820 the annalist records the first description of the stereotypical Viking attack. The template for these types of attacks has already been described: the Danes sought out easy targets, hit them quickly, exacted tribute or took hostages for later ransom, and sped off in their ships. Often they would then sue for peace in the year or two following these attacks as a way to alleviate the growing tension with the Franks. Now, however, we come to the first instance in the ARF of a major Viking attack, a type of event that later annalists would record with regularity. In 820 pirate ships from Nordmannia attempted to plunder Flanders, only burning some worthless cottages and seizing some cattle before moving out again. Similar events transpired at the mouth of the Seine, where the pirates met Frankish resistance once more and lost five of their own. In each of these attempts, Charlemagne’s defensive preparations did their job and repulsed the invaders. Along the coast of Aquitaine, however, the pirates were successful, and after completely plundering a village named Bouin they returned home with enormous spoils.151 While the Viking Age technically began around the turn of the ninth century, the Franks had not yet endured the sustained, constant Viking attacks that would characterize a later period. Conflict in the trans-Elbe region, which often took the form of quick, tribute-exacting attacks by the Danes on Frankish holdings, had been

150 Ibid: ‘sed hoc dolo factum putatur.’ 151 Ibid s.a. 820, 153-154. 59 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 persistent, but the water-borne raids of the Vikings had been rare in Francia throughout the first decades of the ninth century. This was starting to change by 820, when the ARF first mentions Northmen pirates.152 Soon the Danes are described in detail, and these descriptions got amplified when the Franks and others were beset by an onslaught of invaders from the north for which they were not fully prepared. The Franks viewed them through the ever- present lens of violence because they represented a very real threat along the northern

Frankish border. Then, the wantonness of the attacks and the widespread success which the

Danes overwhelmingly achieved helped to exaggerate this initial impression.

In 821 the annalist records, probably with relief, that “all was quiet concerning the

Danish region this year.”153 Harald had indeed been taken back by the sons of Godifrid, so for the time being the Danes were not described negatively since they did not pose any problem.

The following year, moreover, the two sets of rulers both sent legates to the emperor, indicating that the fighting among the Danes had settled down for the time being.154 However, other troubles arose in this region, namely that Ceadrag, Thrasco’s son and Louis’s appointed ruler of the Abodrites after the deposition of Sclaomir, was accused of making an alliance with the sons of Godifrid, just as his predecessor had. In response Louis sent Sclaomir back to

Saxony to take control of the Abodrites, but upon arriving there the former leader caught ill and died. This rather brief description of the northern region of the Frankish realm fits in with the broader picture that the annals had heretofore laid out and which the Franks had been struggling with, namely that the Danes provided a suitably powerful and attractive alternative to Frankish control in the region. The Abodrites were willing to use this to their advantage,

152 Ibid, 153. 153 Ibid s.a. 821, 156: ‘De parte Danorum omnia quieta eo anno fuerunt.’ 154 Ibid s.a. 822, 159. 60 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 especially now that the relationship with the Franks had deteriorated from its high point under

Charlemagne.155 Still, in 823 Ceadrag was able to give sufficient evidence as to his trustworthiness to the emperor, and partially “because of the merits of his ancestors” was given gifts and sent back with impunity.156 This same year Harald once again came to Louis, asking for help against the sons of Godifrid, who were threatening to drive him from his homeland. Louis took the opportunity to send a couple of his men to find out information not only about the conflict between Harald and Godifrid’s sons, but also about the current events in the Danish homeland. They returned with the archbishop of Reims, Ebbo, who had been previously sent to preach to the Danes “with the counsel of the emperor and the authority of the Roman pontiff” and “by the previous summer” had baptized many of them into the faith.157 This is the first mention in the ARF of any attempt to convert the Danes, though the

Vita Anskarii indicates that Ebbo had been attempting to bring the word of Christ to the Danes for some years prior.158 Louis made peace with the sons of Godifrid in 825, and reconfirmed it the following year.159 In 826, Harald, along with his wife and “a great multitude of Danes,” came to Mainz and all were baptized at St. Alban’s. He returned to his homeland through

Frisia, where the emperor gave him the county of Rüstringen so that he could find sanctuary there if necessary, presumably if he should be pushed out once again by the sons of

155 Louis had taken control of parts of Saxony from the Slavs and given it back to the Saxons and Frisians, heightening tensions between the Franks and the Abodrites. Additionally, the alliance with the Franks had initially provided the Slavs with ample opportunity for gain, from territory to other special favors. Now that the Frankish realm had shifted to administration over expansion, these opportunities had shrunk, if not disappeared entirely. See Melleno, “Between Borders,” 375-379. 156 ARF s.a. 823, 162: ‘… tamen propter merita parentum suorum non solum inpunitus, verum muneribus donatus ad regnum redire permissus est.’ 157 Ibid, 162-163: ‘Cum quibus et Ebo Remorum archiepiscopus, qui consilio imperatoris et auctoritate Romani pontificis pradeicandi gratia ad terminos Danorum accesserat et aestate praeterita multos ex eis ad fidem venientes baptizaverat, regressus est.’ 158 Rimbert, Vita Anskarii, XIII, ed. G. Waitz (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Haniani, 1884), 34-35. 159 ARF s.a. 825, 168. 61 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Godifrid.160 It is clear from these entries that the Franks were continuing to hedge their bets with Harald, despite the fact that they were nominally at peace with the sons of Godifrid. The

Danes had proven time and again, from the Frankish perspective, that they could not be trusted, and that their unpredictable nature would erupt in violence before long. Harald had for some years now provided the Franks with a potential alternative, an opportunity for stabilizing the northern border. His conversion went a long way towards resolidifying that fact. Still, the report of the Viking attack only a few years prior was a troubling portent of things to come, and the instability of the Danish region had become a constant threat.

It was a fortunate that Harald had a place to flee to, because in 827 the sons of

Godifrid once again cast him from joint rule of the kingdom and forced him to flee to the border of Nordmannia. At this point one of Godifrid’s sons is named for the first time. The annalist records that Horic had agreed to come to Nijmegen, where the emperor was holding a convention, but he did not show, much like his father had done decades previously with

Charlemagne.161 In 828, while Saxon counts and Danish nobles were discussing a peace treaty as well as the issues surrounding Harald, the pro-Frankish Dane disrupted the proceedings.

Having become “exceedingly greedy,” Harald “broke the peace that had been agreed upon and affirmed with hostages” and began “burning and plundering several farmsteads of the

Northmen.”162 This prompted the sons of Godifrid to move against the Franks stationed along the Eider River, who were caught unawares and forced to flee. The Danish troops seized plunder and returned, and then, in order to prevent a Frankish response, sent an emissary to the emperor explaining that they had acted unwillingly and only out of necessity. They left it

160 Ibid, 169-70. Perhaps unsurprisingly this does indeed happen the following year. 161 Ibid s.a. 827, 173. 162 Ibid s.a. 828, 175: ‘Herioldus rerum gerendarum nimis cupidus condictam et per obsides firmatam pacem incensis ac direptis aliquot Nordmannorum villulis inrupit.’ 62 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 to him to decide the best way that they could make amends for what happened so that peace could remain between the two parties.163 This episode is an interesting one, because it is the first time that the Franks had potentially been at fault, at least as far as the ARF was concerned. Their candidate for the Danish throne was the one who had broken the peace established between the Danes and the Franks. Typically it was the Danes, operating from the

Danish homeland into Francia, who caused trouble and disrupted the peace. However, in this case Harald, as a representative of Frankish interests in the region, was the one who had acted rashly. There is a sure line drawn between the Danes and the Franks in this instance. The annalist is clear that the retaliatory attack by the sons of Godifrid caught “our men” unawares, indicating that there was a clear boundary between the Franks and the Danes that Harald and his actions had helped to illuminate. While the Franks may have supported the Dane and his ambitions for control, he was still clearly seen as an outsider and only useful insofar as he provided beneficial opportunities for the Franks. Thus, the Franks were once again depicted as the victims of the unpredictable and violent Danes, despite the fact that they had a vested and direct interest in the conflict. These characteristics had defined the group within the Frankish imagination up to this point. Indeed, the sons of Godifrid’s fickleness is further evidenced by their immediate move to make satisfaction to the emperor after directly attacking the Franks.

Beneath this initial impression, however, it is clear that the Danes were quite smart about their neighbors to the south: as has been the pattern up to this point, they followed up their attack with an effort to make peace. While they were constantly challenging Frankish authority, they were still very aware that a direct conflict with the powerful southerners would most likely not play out very well for them in the end. Luckily for them, in this particular episode their

163 Ibid. 63 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 attack was justified, though as noted not because the Franks were directly at fault, but because of the actions of another Dane. The annalist also wrote that they forced the Franks they attacked to flee, rather than cutting them down, indicating that they were responding to

Harald’s rashness and clearly showing that they were quite able to project power in the region, despite the peace that the two parties were trying to establish.

The last year of the ARF is an entry that is short in comparison to the ones for the previous decade or so. It mentions the Northmen, however, and illustrates the broader

Frankish concern about growing Danish power and potential incursions into Frankish strongholds. While Louis prepared to set out from Aachen to Worms, he “received news that the Northmen wished to invade the trans-Elbe region of Saxony and that their army, which had done this, was approaching our border.”164 Troubled by this news Louis sent word into all of Francia to muster all his troops to meet him in Saxony. However, an unspecified amount of time later he learned that this rumor was false and the emperor continued on to Worms as he had originally planned.165 The story about the invasion of the Northmen was entirely plausible to Louis in the context of the problems the Franks had persistently had with the Danes in the trans-Elbe region. It was believable enough so that, despite the intermittent efforts at peace between the two peoples, including the (in some ways disastrous) meeting the year before, he was ready to call up his troops and go to war. Saxony had continually been a contested area between these two people, but it represented something a bit more for Louis. The Saxon Wars were some of his father’s hardest fought wars, and subduing this region and its peoples had been a bitter affair. To lose it within the first fifteen years of his reign would have been

164 Ibid s.a. 829, 177: ‘Sed priusquam inde promoveret, nuntium accepit, Nordmannos velle Transalbianam Saxoniae regionem invadere atque exercitum eorum, qui hoc facturus esset, nostris finibus adpropinquare.’ 165 Ibid. 64 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 damaging symbolically, not to mention politically and militarily, as it had long provided a buffer to the hostile Danes just to the north. He could not afford to lose it to the Danes not only because it made him look weak as a ruler, but also because it gave too much life to the concept of Danish power, which had been persistently growing in this region, and which could then directly challenge Frankish hegemony throughout northern Europe. Luckily, however, his hand was not forced in this instance, and he was able to move to the yearly synod at Worms, where he engaged in the usual show of Frankish supremacy by sending and receiving legates and gifts at his court. This is the end of the Annales Regni Francorum.

Beginning in 830 the Annales Bertiniani166 picked up the yearly reports. The Danes and Northmen appear in the context detailed above. We have seen that from the outset the

Danes were understood through a lens of violence, primarily because of the attack on

Lindisfarne in England. This shadowy impression slowly crystalized in the Frankish worldview as interaction with the Danes grew and they became another group with whom the

Franks had frequent dealings, sometimes peaceful, often not. Beginning in the early ninth century, the threat emanating from the north prompted Charlemagne to begin constructing fortifications along the coast and at the mouths of the rivers into Francia as a defense against these seafaring raiders. The initial impressions of the Danes as menacing was only reinforced through the Danes’ seemingly unprovoked attacks on Frankish possessions in Saxony and

Frisia. The Franks struggled to prevent or to get a handle on these attacks, while the Danes tended to disappear back to their homeland before any effective offensive could be launched against them. Indeed, the Franks seemed always to be on the defensive against these unpredictable people, who were described alternately as mad or untrustworthy. These

166 Hereafter AB. 65 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 characteristics helped define the Danes, heightening the sense of violence and savagery associated with them from the outset but also helping reinforce the perceived boundary that marked them out as an ethnic group. Based on the ARF, the Danes were prone to violence, and often engaged in it willfully and wantonly, whereas the Franks represented the other side of the coin, the level-headed, reliable force that opposed them. These boundaries and perceptions were replicated and reinforced in the AB, particularly as Viking attacks, which up to this point had been rather stagnant, begin to increase exponentially. Based on these annals, it is clear that violence thus became an indelible aspect of Frankish conceptions of Danish ethnicity in this period and moving forward.

The AB is an interesting source in a variety of ways. It picks up the tale from the ARF, beginning in 830 and runs through the next fifty years to end in 882. The AB details the tumultuous events of the ninth century within Francia in the latter part of Louis’s reign and into that of his heirs, primarily that of Charles the Bald. This is an active period of Frankish history, with historians disagreeing on how to interpret it. Much like the debate surrounding the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the west, some scholars see this as a period of

Carolingian collapse, when “the western economy re-entered a deep recession, and

Christendom reeled under the blows of pagan Viking attacks,”167 while other scholars see it as a period of flourishing “creativity and growth, when new political communities, a new and dynamic western economy, and a self-conscious Latin Christendom first took distinctive forms.”168 The AB provides fodder for both arguments, as it contains very detailed explanations of a variety of things, from Viking attacks to Carolingian dynastic conflict to

167 The Annals of St.-Bertin, translated and annotated by Janet L. Nelson (New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), 1. 168 Ibid. 66 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 upheavals and rebellions within and beyond the Carolingian realm. The AB, though they were intended as a continuation of the ARF, differ quite a bit in tone from its predecessor, which were on average drier and shorter. Like the ARF, multiple authors worked on the AB, with the first years up to circa 843 probably recorded at the palace by a group of scribes working together, under the influence of the archchaplain. By 843, however, it seems clear that

Prudentius (d. 861), a Spanish-born cleric who at one point lived in the imperial household, was solely responsible for the annals. At this point he was writing from the western portion of the Carolingian world, which had been divided after Louis’s death among his three sons.

Interestingly, and in stark contrast to the character and creation of the ARF, it was at this point that the AB ceased being produced at the palace school, as Prudentius appears to have taken the only working manuscript with him when he became bishop of Troyes. As Janet L. Nelson writes, “there is no evidence that the annals were continued at the palace thereafter, or that

Charles himself took any interest in their continuance there. In other words, the AB from 843 were no longer in any sense an ‘official’ record.”169 This meant the tone of the AB shifted and became “more personal” in nature.170 After Prudentius’s death in 861, Hincmar of Rheims picked up the task of recording the annals and continued them until his own death in 882.

Like his predecessor, the annals under Hincmar’s pen “are a record of events written away from the palace, from the perspective of an ecclesiastical magnate; and they represent a personal, often idiosyncratic view, not intended for the public gaze, still less for the king’s.”171 Overall these annals provide a wealth of knowledge about continuing perceptions

169 Ibid, 8-9. 170 Ibid, 9. 171 Ibid, 11. 67 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 of the Danes in this period, particularly in light of the Viking attacks which persistently ravaged the Franks throughout the ninth century.

The mentions of the attacks of the Danes, and Northmen more broadly, become much more numerous in the AB. Therefore, instead of going year by year to look at how the Danes are depicted over time, it is simpler to take a more holistic view of these annals, using the framework developed above from the ARF and seeing how it was replicated and changed through the AB. Unlike the majority of the ARF, the AB begins using the term Northmen quite regularly in addition to Danes, perhaps reflecting the multiethnic nature of the Viking attacks on the continent. Still, the two terms tend to be used interchangeably by all of the authors, though Hincmar, the third scribe, tends to prefer the term Northmen.172 Despite the fact that different terms are used, it seems clear that the Danes were primarily responsible, at least in

Frankish eyes, for the various Viking raids that devastated the Frankish realm. This is evidenced by the frequent attempts to make alliances or seek reparations for Viking attacks from known Danish leaders, who are often referred to by name in the AB. Moreover, in the

AB the same perceived ethnic boundaries separate these people from the Franks and other groups of people. The framework within the ARF described above gets replicated and reinforced throughout the AB as Viking attacks persisted, with violence and savagery continuing to form a crucial component in the perception of the Danes. Additionally, there are more value judgments associated with Christianity, perhaps evidenced by Prudentius and

Hincmar working independently on the AB within their own bishoprics.

172 For example, from 834-837, the territory of Frisia was attacked consecutively each year by people whom the scribe describes both as Danes and Northmen. Later, in 841, the scribe records that Harald, the pro-Frankish ruler who was mentioned often in the ARF, for some years had been causing great harm in Frisia and along the coasts of the Christians along with the rest of the Danish pirates. In Prudentius’s section, he refers to Horic as king of the Northmen in 845 and king of the Danes in 847. 68 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

The first Viking style attack recorded in the AB is in 834. 173 This is the first of four consecutive annual attacks on the emporium of Dorestad in Frisia, an extremely important trading center in the Frankish empire. Danes sacked the town each year from 834 to 837, prompting the emperor in 835 to fortify the coast against these invasions.174 Frisia had already been a target of Danish attacks throughout the ARF, and raids in this region, including on the town of Dorestad, continued for several years, while attacks began to increase in other regions as well. Louis’s move to fortify the coast against the Danes as a result of these attacks recalls earlier events from the ARF, wherein Charlemagne fortified the coasts and rivers of Francia against the growing northern threat. There is a similar awareness on the part of the Danes of the significance of trading centers, as well as the same pattern of reconciliation that had characterized Danish-Frankish relations heretofore. Horic, Godifrid’s son who had risen to power during the internal disputes within the Danish homeland, sent emissaries to the emperor in 836 to make amends for the raids. He explained that he had not authorized these attacks, and his legates arrived later that year looking for compensation for capturing and killing those involved.175 Like his predecessors, Horic carefully tried to alleviate tensions with the Franks before they boiled over into direct conflict, which could be even more damaging for him considering the Franks had already demonstrated their willingness to support royal pretenders. Such a possibility, in the context of his own tumultuous rise to power as well as the broader power struggles occurring among the Danes in the ninth century, most likely influenced his decision, as did the reality of Frankish power, which was still considerable, although it was waning due to internal strife in the in the years after Charlemagne.

173 Annales Bertiniani s.a. 834, ed. Georg Waitz (Hannover: Inpensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1883), 9. 174 Ibid s.a. 835, 11. 175 Ibid s.a. 836, 12. 69 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

More important in terms of this project are the ways that violence played into the perception of the Danes as an ethnic group. From the outset the Danes were viewed through a lens of violence, as Danish-Frankish relations in this period really began in the shadow of the

Viking attack on Lindisfarne. This then hung over the subsequent mentions and interactions recorded in the ARF, providing an indelible foundation upon which Danish identity would be perceived in the AB. The language throughout the AB mirrors that of the ARF in a variety of ways. In 837, the year of the fourth consecutive attack on Dorestad in Frisia, the scribe writes that the Northmen invaded Frisia “in their accustomed manner,” and “coming upon our people unprepared, massacred many and plundered more.”176 Later, in 839, pirates are described as “inflicting great harm along our borders.”177 In 841, the Danes arrived at Rouen and pillaged the town “with robbery, sword and fire,” as well as “slaughtered and took captive the monks and rest of the population.” After plundering or taking payment from the monasteries and other places along the Seine, these fearsome northerners left the people in the region terrified.178 The following year, in 842, the Northmen again attacked, this time the emporium of Quentovic. They plundered the trading center as well as captured and murdered people of both sexes, and the people living there were able to save some of the buildings only by paying the northerners off.179

Entries such as these abound in the AB, often many in a single year. The emphasis on the savagery of the attacks—using words like “slaughtered” and “massacred”—highlights

176 Ibid s.a. 837, 13: ‘Ea tempestate Nordmanni inruptione solita Frisiam inruentes, in insula quae Walacra dicitur nostros imparators aggressi, multos trucidaverunt, plures depraedati sunt.’ 177 Ibid s.a. 839, 22: ‘Quidam etiam pyratae in quiandam Frisiae partem irruentes, non parum incommode nostris finibus intulerunt.’ 178 Ibid s.a. 841, 25: ‘Interea pyratae Danorum ab oceano Euripo devecti, Rotumam irruentes, rapinis, ferro, ignique bachantes, urbem, monachos reliquumque vulgum et caedibus et captivitate pessumdederunt et omnia monasteria se [quae]cumque loca flumini Sequanae adhaerentia aut depopulati sunt aut multis acceptis pecuniis territa reliquerunt.’ 179 Ibid s.a. 842, 28. 70 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 both the violence of the Danes and the helplessness of the Franks in the face of their attacks.

The inability of the Franks to really put a stop to Viking activity throughout their realm, from

Frisia all the way down to Aquitaine, compounded the initial impressions formulated years earlier, strengthening the connection between violence and the Danes. It got further amplified by word of attacks in other countries as well. For example, in 844 the Northmen attacked the part of the island of Britain on which the Anglo-Saxons chiefly lived. Gaining victory after three days of fighting, they then proceeded to pillage, plunder, and murder everywhere.180

Three years later Prudentius wrote that the Irish, who had been attacked for several years by the Northmen, were made tributary to them. Encountering no resistance there, the Northmen were then able to stay in the surrounding islands.181 In 850, some Northmen attacked Frisia, others hit the coastal regions of northeastern Francia, and still others went to Britain to fight the English once more, where they were defeated.182 In 859, Danish pirates traced a long route through the sea and navigated between Spain and Africa. Sailing up the Rhone, they devastated towns and monasteries in the surrounding countryside before settling on the island of Camargue.183 This handful of instances illustrate how widespread Viking attacks were throughout Europe. The regularity with which they were recorded, in addition to the numerous entries detailing attacks within Francia proper, illustrates how easily the initial impression of the Danes could be amplified within the Frankish mindset. Moreover, for the

Franks the destructiveness of the Danes had been initially confined to a specific area—the trans-Elbe region and Frisia, as we saw in the ARF—but it had quickly billowed over into all of Europe. The inability, not only of the Franks but of other peoples, to handle the onslaught

180 Ibid s.a. 844, 31. 181 Ibid s.a. 847, 35. 182 Ibid s.a. 850, 38. 183 Ibid s.a. 859, 51. 71 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 of Viking activity meant that these attacks helped magnify the sense of violence and destruction associated with the Danes from the outset.

All of this also had the side benefit, from the Danish perspective, of ensuring cooperation from the people they attacked. Indeed, numerous times throughout the AB the scribes record that the Danes were paid off, often with large sums, in order to make them leave. In 852, for example, the Northmen came to Frisia with 252 ships, and after accepting the payment which they asked for, set out to other places.184 Five years later the Danes, moving up the Seine, freely ravaged everything. When they came to Paris, they burned several different churches, and others were only saved by giving huge payments to the raiders.185 In 858, these same Danes captured Louis, grandson of Charlemagne and abbot of the monastery of St. Denis, and his brother Gauzlin, establishing a hefty price for their ransom. In order to pay this, the treasuries of the churches throughout Charles the Bald’s kingdom were emptied on his orders. When this was not sufficient, the king as well as all the bishops, abbots, counts, and other powerful men eagerly added a great amount in order to reach the required sum.186 In 866, the Northmen forced a couple of Frankish nobles to flee, without any fight breaking out between the two groups. Afterwards Charles negotiated a peace with them in exchange for a large payment, which he raised by levying a tax upon his kingdom in order to pay the agreed-upon amount “both in silver and in wine”.187 These examples are typical of the response to Viking attacks, particularly as the Franks became more accustomed to them. It quickly became clear that the easiest way to prevent or mitigate

184 Ibid s.a. 852, 41. 185 Ibid s.a. 857, 48. 186 Ibid s.a. 858, 49. Nelson writes that Louis’s ransom cost 686 lbs. of gold along with 3250 lbs. of silver. See Nelson, Annals of St.-Bertin, 86, n. 7. 187 AB s.a. 866, 80-81. 72 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 destruction was to pay off the northerners and send them on their way, most likely to other targets. Thus, the fearsome reputation that the Danes garnered within the Frankish worldview assisted their Viking activity. The Franks had tried multiple different methods of dealing with the Danes, from diplomacy to direct armed conflict to backing certain claims to Danish control, and none of these had quite worked. Regardless of how they approached the problem, these northerners had caused significant trouble for them for the last few decades, and now they were even more audacious in their attacks. As the attacks got bolder and more numerous, the concern associated with the Danes—tied indelibly to their potential for violence—got heightened and thus became an overarching component in their perception.

Again, it is useful to make some comparisons to other peoples described in the AB.

The Saracens are a parallel case because they had also been engaged in piratical activity, yet there are some important differences that should be noted. First, their piracy was concentrated in the Mediterranean, and primarily affected Provence and Italy, the southern reaches of the

Carolingian realm. Contact with the Saracens also stretched back further than it did with the

Danes, as the Muslim conquest of Spain in the early eighth century had then brought the two powers into both military and diplomatic contact. Still, they provide a useful foil against which to look at the depiction of the Danes in order to see how different elements played into the perception of certain groups of people. The first mention of the Saracens in the AB occurred in 838, when a fleet of them attacked Marseilles in Provence. Similar to some of the

Viking attacks described above, the raiders abducted people of both sexes and ravaged the whole city before carrying off the treasures of the church.188 In 846, Saracens and Moors advanced to Rome up the Tiber and devastated the basilica of St. Peter, where they then

188 Ibid s.a. 838, 15. 73 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 carried off the altar placed over his tomb and the rest of the ornaments and treasures of the building. Afterwards they occupied a heavily fortified place within the mountains a hundred miles from the city, where they were ultimately caught and annihilated by some of Lothar’s commanders.189 A couple of decades later the Franks decided to cease their siege of

Benevento, which for some time had been an area of conflict with the Moors and Saracens.

As they retreated, the Saracens came out of their base on Bari and stole more than 2,000 horses from the rear guard of the Frankish forces, ordered themselves into two cavalry formations, and proceeded to the church of St. Michael on Monte Gargano, which they plundered. Later that year the Saracens captured Roland, archbishop of Arles and abbot of St.

Caesarius, on Camargue, the island which the Danes had settled on in 859 after sailing up the

Rhone.190 They ransomed him back to the Franks, but before the exchange was made, the bishop died onboard their ship. In order to hide this, the Saracens cleverly accelerated his return, and after receiving their payment, sent out the bishop seated on his chair, clothed in the priestly clothes in which he had been captured, and as if to honor him brought him from the ship to land. When those who had ransomed him came to congratulate and welcome him, they found him dead.191

It is clear that there were many similarities in the activities of the Danes and the

Saracens. For one, they both tended to attack monasteries and churches, places that were guaranteed to provide treasures and hostages. The overriding goal in these attacks was to hit easy targets without warning, seize whatever plunder was available, and make off before any resistance could be mounted. Monasteries and other places of worship were prime targets for

189 Ibid s.a. 846, 34. 190 See p. 37 above. 191 Ibid s.a. 869, 106. 74 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 achieving wealth and glory for pirates operating from either end of Europe. Danes and

Saracens both made use of this fact to great effect.

However, there are some notable differences between the two groups. For example, the Saracens are not described in the AB in very violent terms; words like savage, slaughter, massacre, and the like do not accompany their descriptions.192 Again, this is despite the similarities in the two groups’ activities, and despite the numerous recorded instances of

Saracen piracy. While not as persistently devastating as Viking piracy, it was still fairly prevalent during the ninth century, enough that such an omission is telling. We would expect them to be perceived differently than the Danes as an ethnic group, but their piracy was also differently described. This illustrates that the language surrounding Viking activity is unique and tied to earlier perceptions of the Danes, and not a paradigm for describing piracy in general. It indicates that the wild, violent nature of the Danes, formulated from several decades of prolonged interaction at this point, is a fundamental component in their overall perception as an ethnic group in the Frankish world.

Another component, which did not really appear in the ARF in relation to the Danes but is quite prevalent in the AB and other contemporary annals, is Christianity. As discussed above, the authors of the ARF were willing to use religious language in describing different peoples, for example the Saxons, who are labelled pagans more than once. However, this sort of description, not applied to the Danes in the ARF, begins to be used about them in the AB, where the more descriptive language becomes more religious in nature. Take for example the

Saracens once more. In 847, the year after they had sacked the basilica of St. Peter, they were

192 These sorts of descriptions of the Saracens do appear in some other sources. See for example Annales Xantenses s.a. 846, in Annales Xantenses et Annales Vedastini ed. Bernhard von Simson (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1909), 16. Hereafter AX. 75 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 sailing home, burdened with the treasures they had seized. During their trip, however, they

“disparaged with their pestilential mouths God and our lord Jesus Christ and his apostles.”193

Suddenly there arose an unavoidable whirlwind that dashed all of their ships together, killing all of them. The sea tossed some of the corpses onshore, still holding some of the stolen treasures to their breasts.194 This is a unique incident, but the way things are described— plunders, blasphemers, or those who break God’s word ultimately facing divine judgment—is fairly common within the AB. These annals take a much more typical view of describing events as the perpetration of God’s will and wrath, as evidenced by this example.195 This crops up throughout the source, and even at times affects how Danish activity is described.

There are a few examples. The first is in 840, where the scribe writes that Hariold was given Walcheren and other neighboring regions as a benefice by Lothar. Such a thing was entirely detestable, “that the people who inflicted such evil on Christians should then be offered the same Christian lands and people and churches of Christ, that the persecutors of the

Christian faith should become lords of the Christians, that the Christian people should serve worshippers of demons!”196 In 845 the annals offer an example of a very typical worldview, one that appears in many different types of medieval sources. This is when the pagan Danes serve as instruments through which God’s wrath is enacted on the unfaithful. Prudentius writes that the Northmen sailed down the Seine to the sea, burning and plundering the shores as they went. He then states that God, so offended by “our sins,” wore down the lands and

193 Ibid s.a. 847, 35: ‘… cum inter navigandum Deo et domino nostro Iesu Christo eiusque apostolis ore pestifero derogarent…’ 194 Ibid. 195 Theodicy, the effort to explain why God permits evil to exist, has a very long history; see Britannica Academic, s.v. “Theodicy.” There is also a very large and diverse body of scholarly literature on the concept; see for example Theodicy, ed. Jill Graper Hernandez (Basel: MDPI, 2019). 196 Ibid s.a. 840, 26: ‘… ut qui mala christianis intulerant idem christianorum terries et populis Christique ecclesiis praeferrentur, ut persecutores fidei christianae domini christianorum existerent, et demonum cultoribus christiani populi deservirent!’ 76 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 kingdoms of the Christians. However, in order that the pagans should not accuse God of improvidence and impotence, divine judgment struck the Northmen with blindness and insanity while they were returning home with the spoils of their latest attack. The few men that were able to escape then announced the omnipotence and wrath of God.197 In both of these examples religion begins to play a more explicit role in the annals’ descriptions and perceptions of the Danes. Not only are they othered through their paganism, they also serve as instruments of divine anger on the unfaithful. While it is perhaps surprising that we do not see more of this language earlier in the annals, for example in the ARF, it is not surprising that these sorts of laments and scenes arise now in the AB. The initial sense of violence associated with the Danes, coupled with the drastic increase in Viking activity and the resultant helplessness the population felt in response to these attacks, means that such references became common. It was a timeworn framework through which these authors could make sense of their world, particularly in times of turmoil, which the Viking Age certainly represented.

This mentality was not just due to Viking attacks either. During this period, Francia was under assault, so it seemed, by foreign invaders coming from nearly every direction.

Danes and other Scandinavians came up the rivers, primarily from the north but also south from the Mediterranean, where Muslim pirates also operated. In addition to this, in the late ninth century the Frankish realm was beset by new raiders from the east, the Magyars

(modern-day Hungarians). These people came down from the Russian steppes and “were regarded as the scourge of Europe.”198 This multi-pronged assault on the realm of

197 Ibid s.a. 845, 33. 198 Paul Lendvai, The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 7. 77 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Christendom, like the attack on Lindisfarne, was psychologically damaging for the populations in these areas, particularly the churchmen that watched heathens sack Christian strongholds. The sorts of laments and explanations found in the annals discussed above abounded across the medieval world, from England to Spain to Germany.199 There was a collective sense that the kingdom of Christ was at risk, and this fear was augmented by the fact that Christians themselves assisted the invaders. Indeed, the internal Frankish power struggles frequently benefitted Viking activity, as local leaders could use the foreigners to further their own ends. In 843, the Vikings attacked Nantes while the population was celebrating a religious holiday, slaughtering the bishop, many clerics, and lay people of both sexes.200 A later source, which should be treated skeptically, claimed that this attack was assisted by “Lambert, a local count, who was in rebellion against King Charles and hoped the

Vikings would help him get his hands on Nantes.”201 Even Pippin, Charles’s nephew and king of Aquitaine, used the Vikings to his advantage. The AB records in 857 that he allied with

Danish pirates and devastated the town of Poitiers and other areas within Aquitaine.202 Later he gave up his monastic habit to be a laymen and apostate and again joined with the

Northmen, following their customs.203 That a Christian, and a clergyman no less, would commit such a sin was beyond concerning, and particularly galling because he joined with a people who were known for slaughtering and targeting Christians.

199 John Howe, Before the Gregorian Reform: The Latin Church at the Turn of the First Millennium (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016), 45-46. 200 AB s.a. 843, 29. 201 Haywood, Northmen, 87. This may have been an invention of the Chronicle of Nantes; see Nelson, Annals of St.-Bertin, 55, n. 1. While this alliance may have been fake, it made sense in the context of the ninth-century upheavals within the Frankish Empire, and further illustrates how local politics were often caught up with the issues facing the Carolingian realm as a whole. 202 AB s.a. 857, 47. 203 Ibid s.a. 864, 67. 78 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Other annals from this period echo the themes from the AB, though they are much darker. Take the Annales Xantenses (hereafter AX), a briefer set of annals produced in the lower Rhine, “probably Ghent, then Cologne, rather than Xanten.”204 Though the first portion of this source relied heavily on the ARF, it became “fuller, and independent… from 832 to

873.”205 The AX strongly utilized the language of heathens versus Christians, reflecting the overarching mentality guiding people’s perceptions at this time. Viking attacks were frequently described as being perpetrated specifically against Christians, and the Northmen were often referred to as heathens or pagans. In 847, for example, the annals record that the

Northmen had ravaged the Christians and joined battle with a couple of counts before rowing up the Rhine to sack Dorestad.206 Three years later, the Northmen Roric, who had recently dishonestly fled from Lothar, returned to Dorestad and fraudulently imposed many evils on the Christians there.207 The AB further illuminate this particular incident by noting that

Lothar, because he could not put a stop to Roric’s raiding in Frisia and Betuwe, received him in good faith and gave him Dorestad and other counties.208 Later entries in the AX became brief and doom-ridden, reflecting the grimness that people felt in the mid-late ninth century.

In 852 the annalist wrote simply that “the swords of the pagans glowed; [there was] excessive heat of the sun, followed by famine, and fodder for the livestock was insufficient.”209 The next year only stated that famine was so great in Saxony that many people had to support themselves with horsemeat.210 The AX end in 873, and the final lines sum up the general sense

204 Nelson, Annals of St.-Bertin, 227. 205 Ibid. 206 AX s.a. 847, 16. 207 Ibid s.a. 850, 17. 208 AB s.a. 850, 38. 209 AX s.a. 852, 18: ‘Ferrum paganorum incanduit; nimius ardor solis, et fames subsecuta est, et pabula animalium defecerunt…’ 210 Ibid s.a. 853, 18. 79 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 of doom and disillusionment that had come to characterize much of the discourse in this period. The annalist recorded that the Lord had constantly afflicted his people with various misfortunes and “visited their iniquities with the rod and their sins with the whip.”211 The

Annales Vedastini (hereafter AV), which picked up in 873 after the AX end, continued this trend. In 884, the annalist painted a vivid picture of the hopelessness and devastation the

Christian world felt in light of the Viking attacks. The Northmen persisted in capturing and killing the people of Christendom, destroying fortifications and burning villages, and the corpses of clerics, noble and other laymen, women, children, and babies were tossed throughout the streets. There was no street or place where the dead did not lie, and distress and anguish were everywhere to see the Christian people laid waste all the way to extermination.212

Such violence and destruction not only affected people’s perceptions of the Danes— seeing them as persecutors of Christendom—it also forced them to rethink their Christian worldview. Because these events became typical, they had to come up with ways to rationalize the unthinkable, otherwise their very faith itself was in question. One way to do this was to look inward at Christians themselves. Indeed, “contemporary ninth- and tenth- century charters and chronicles blame the destruction not only on ‘pagans’ but also on ‘bad

Christians.’”213 The lines between pagans and unfaithful Christians, moreover, were easily blurred, as plenty of Vikings converted to Christianity. Some, like Harald in 826, did so to gain Frankish support; in 862, for example, Weland, a Scandinavian chieftain, came to King

211 Ibid s.a. 873, 33: ‘… et diversis plagis Dominus assidue populum suum afflixit et visitavit in virga iniquitates eorum et in verberibus peccata eorum.’ 212 Annales Vedastini s.a. 884, in Annales Xantenses et Annales Vedastini ed. Bernhard von Simson (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1909), 54-55. 213 Howe, Before the Gregorian Reform, 48. 80 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Charles and converted to Christianity with his wife and sons.214 The following year he was accused of unfaithfulness by two Northmen who had been with him (a fact which the AB specifies was later found to be true). When Weland denied this, one of the Northmen challenged him with arms according to their custom in King Charles’s presence, and Weland was killed in that conflict.215 Often too baptism and conversion came as a consequence of defeat; in 878, across the channel in England, Guthrum was baptized along with many other

Vikings after his defeat by Alfred.216 Similarly, in 873, the AB records that after Charles’s successful siege of the Northmen at Angers, he imposed conditions of flight or conversion upon them, with the added caveat that they should never again inflict any evils in his realm. In

February, it was agreed that those who had been baptized during their stay over the winter and wished to truly hold to the Christian faith should come to him, that those pagans who were willing to become Christian should be baptized, and that the rest should leave, never to return.217

This is the context for understanding how Christianity in the AB played into ethnic perceptions. The ninth century was an incredibly disruptive period for the Frankish empire; internal dynastic conflicts, external threats from the north and the south in the form of Viking and Saracen or Moorish attacks, and general uprisings among tributary groups threw into question much of the Christian framework. Beyond this, the lines between Christian and pagan as well as faithful and unfaithful were becoming increasingly blurred, as interactions between the Northmen and the Franks increased and shifted and as the Danes themselves

214 AB s.a. 862, 58. 215 Ibid s.a. 863, 66. 216 Asser, Life of King Alfred, in A Medieval Omnibus: Sources in Medieval European History, ed. Clifford R. Backman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 95-96. 217 AB s.a. 873. 124-125. 81 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 converted to Christianity, albeit it slowly and sometimes only tacitly. Still, the fact that a

Christian people would be attacked by non-Christians needed to be rationalized somehow.

This is why there are descriptions of divine retribution for the pirates’ audacity, as well as the explanation that it was because of Frankish impiety and faithlessness that they were under siege by these foreigners. Rather than seeing the attacks as an indication of God’s powerlessness, the scribes rationalize them as evidence of his omnipotence and judgment.

Such an “approach was very much a pastoral one for Frankish historians,” because “in these accounts, they diagnosed the problem (sin), and offered both a reason for defeat (God’s justice) and a solution (reform and repentance).”218 Therefore, in some ways the violence of the Danish attacks illustrates divine displeasure with the Franks. In order to punish the

Christians who had not remained faithful, God sent non-Christians, in all their savagery, to enact his wrath on the population. In this way, religion became an important component in the

Frankish perception of the Danes. Paganism in part helped explain the Danes’ violent tendencies, but it also made them prime agents through which the Christian God could send a message to his own followers. As their own faith was called into question, partially because of the Viking attacks, religion became an important component in the Frankish perception and description of the Danes. It was the crisis in their own religious views that brought religion to the fore when thinking about and coping with the violence of Viking activity.

The ninth century is a significant period in the perception of Danish ethnic identity.

Both the Annales Regni Francorum and the Annales Bertiniani provide a wealth of information about the perception of the Danes, helping to craft a particular image of them that is indelibly grounded in a sense of violence. This initial impression stems from Viking

218 Robert A.H. Evans, “Christian Hermeneutics and Narratives of War in the Carolingian Empire,” Transformation 34, no. 2 (2017): 156. 82 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 activity in Britain, primarily the attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne in 793, an event which uniquely penetrated the Christian worldview. While the Franks had contact with their neighbors to the north prior to this, primarily through trade, it was the outbreak of Viking raids that struck a notable chord within the Carolingian world, and really brought the threat of violence to the fore of the Frankish images of the Danes. From the outset, then, the Danes were seen through this lens of violence, perceived through their potential for causing destruction within the Frankish world. This forms the basis upon which future interactions were predicated, particularly as the Danes began to challenge Carolingian supremacy in the northernmost reaches of the Frankish Empire by raiding into Frisia and Saxony. Even when diplomatic relations were established with the Danes, the Franks continued to perceive them through this lens of violence, and each attack only reconfirmed their defining biases and perceptions. Indeed, while similar language is used to describe the Danes as other external peoples, from the Lombards to the Saxons and later the Saracens, it is clear that there is a specific boundary separating the Danes as an ethnic group from others. They were uniquely understood through their perpetration of violence, so much that it becomes a fundamental component in how they are perceived and described as a group of people. Significantly, although it was common for medieval authors to explain away violence and savagery as attributable to a group’s paganism, this was not the case for the early years of interaction with the Danes. It was really only later, as Viking activity drastically increased , parallel to the other problems plaguing the Carolingian world, that religion became an important component in their perception. That is, as the Frankish faith was challenged by the incessant external attacks, calling the supremacy and omnipotence of God into question, the Franks had to find new ways to describe and rationalize Viking attacks. Thus, the Danish propensity for violence

83 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 became part of the Christian worldview, wherein they were finally punished for their audacity but also served as instruments of divine wrath on the unfaithful Frankish population.

All of this helps craft a very specific picture of Danish ethnic identity at the outset of the Viking Age. This image is irrevocably attached to violence: the Danes from the outset were seen as prone to it, and this perception was reinforced through decades of interaction.

This foundation was laid in the late eighth and early decades of the ninth centuries in the shadow of the attack on Lindisfarne and the subsequent Danish raids into Frankish-controlled

Saxony and Frisia. Then, the exponential increase of Viking activity beginning in the mid-

830s served to bolster this already-formulated perception. Thus, violence became a defining component of Danish ethnic identity in the Viking Age within Frankish sources. This image of Danishness was then harnessed centuries later by the Danes themselves, where similar themes persisted in their own narrative sources, although they were deployed and described quite differently. The Frankish framework, grounded in the connection between the Danes and violence, was in part coopted by the Danes later on to create their own image of Viking

Age Danish ethnicity, and thus their own contemporary conceptions of what it means to be a

Dane.

84 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

CHAPTER IV

INTERNAL SOURCES: GESTA DANORUM Three centuries after the end of the AB, the Danes produced their own narrative source. This was the Gesta Danorum, written in the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries by Saxo Grammaticus, a churchman based at Lund. The Gesta Danorum is composed of sixteen books that “in their entirety form one of the most important texts of medieval Danish literature.”219 Indeed, “many Danish scholars have seen it as their primal, National

History.”220 Written at least a century after the end of the Viking Age, when centralized,

Christian kingdoms were emerging within Scandinavia, it offers insight into internal perceptions of Danish identity in this period. Violence continued to play a role in Saxo’s understanding of Danish ethnicity, as it did in Viking Age Frankish sources, but how this element operated within his narrative was quite different. While ubiquitous, it was not something that was engaged in wantonly, and he often saw harshness tempered by magnanimity and mercy. Christianity also played a role in Saxo’s conception of Danish identity, so careful attention will be paid to the story of their conversion. Analyzing how Saxo deployed these two aspects of Danish identity, including how they played into Saxo’s perceived boundary between the Danes and other groups of people, offers a picture of Danish ethnicity from an internal and post-Viking Age perspective. It further illustrates how the perception of Danish identity associated with the Viking Age, culled from Frankish sources in the previous chapter, got replicated and reworked later in the Middle Ages. Ultimately it helps

219 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen and transl. Peter Fisher (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), v. 220 André Muceniecks, Saxo Grammaticus: Hierocratical Conceptions and Danish Hegemony in the Thirteenth Century (Kalamazoo: Arc Humanities Press, 2017), xiv. 85 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 illuminate some of the processes involved in ethnic identity construction and indicates how lines of discourse form a fundamental component in the creation and perception of ethnicity.

The long-winded Gesta Danorum utilizes complex Latin. Much of the extant scholarship has been on its first nine books, which cover the mythic past of the Danes right up to the Viking Age. Much less work has been done on the last half of the work, where Saxo begins discussing contemporary events partway through Book XIV.221 This chapter focuses primarily on the first three quarters of the work, from the Preface to Book XI,222 in order to parse out how the same images and themes found in the Frankish annals of the ninth century are replicated and reworked within Saxo’s conception of Danish history, and therefore his perception of Danish identity.

First, though, a few words on the author and the work itself. There has been a lot of speculation on just exactly who Saxo was. He was certainly connected to Archbishop

Absalon, “a powerful prince of the church, who kept court and supported a large household in his residence at Lund in Scania.”223 A certain Saxo appears in Absalon’s will as his secretary, and “without doubt this Saxo should be identified with the author of the Gesta Danorum.”224

It is likely he was also “a cannon of the cathedral chapter, and a magister, a title that may indicate that he taught, or had taught, at the cathedral school.”225 With his position as a member of Absalon’s retinue at Lund, Saxo was well-placed to take advantage of the

221 Book XIV, in fact, is “disproportionately long” compared to the rest of the Gesta Danorum; it takes up more than a quarter of Saxo’s narrative, though it only covers events from 1134-1178. See Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, 970. 222 As indicated in the introduction, Saxo’s work follows no clear external chronology. These books discuss events from ~810-1086, which covers the bulk of the Viking Age. 223 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, xix. 224 Ibid. 225 Ibid, xxx. 86 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 flourishing courtly life at Lund, as it was both “the ecclesiastical center of Denmark”226 and

“a regular station in the itinerary of the royal court.”227 From here Saxo had access to a well- stocked library and to visiting noble and military men from whom he could gather stories, which he then used within his narrative. The Gesta Danorum itself can only be dated based on its contents, which leaves its official dates of composition rather blurry, particularly because

Saxo does not appear to have proceeded chronologically when writing it. Still, based on the evidence, it seems that Saxo had begun working on the Gesta Danorum c. 1188 and finished it c. 1208.228 Further conjecture based on this information indicates that Saxo himself was born c. 1163 and lived at least until 1208, give or take several years on either end of these dates.229

Before moving into an in-depth study of the Gesta Danorum itself, it will also be useful contextualize Saxo’s Denmark, as the situation in his time was much different than in the ninth century. Saxo lived during a period of great stability and centralization under the

Valdemarian dynasty (1157-1241). As discussed in the previous chapter, kingship up to this point is easily misconstrued based on the extant sources, including those of the Franks.

Particularly for the Viking Age, rulership was characterized by figures who garnered power over several different regions, bringing relative stability to the Danish world. However, their deaths typically resulted in succession disputes, complicated by the fact that there was no clear rule of hereditary transfer and any relative of the previous king, even distant ones, could make a claim for power. Recall the ARF’s discussion of the period of civil wars discussed in the ARF that ensued after the death of Godifrid, a phenomenon that persisted throughout the

226 Ibid. 227 Ibid, xxxi. 228 Ibid, xxxv. 229 Ibid. 87 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 ninth century and beyond. Because of this, Denmark was often split into different regional kingdoms ruled by different claimants to the throne right up until 1157, when Valdemar I unified it under his government.230 When his son Valdemar II died in 1241, however, dynastic strife again ensued. Saxo, though writing during a stable interval of medieval Danish history and its accompanying flourishing courtly culture, is fully aware of this characteristic trend within Danish history. Thus he “frequently tells of similar occasions in his narratives, echoing the context known to him at firsthand.”231

The Gesta Danorum provides a creative, internal perspective on Danish history and through that, conceptions of Danish identity. Saxo made it clear in his Preface that the work was intended to be an authoritative view of Danish history, writing “my chronicle… should be recognized not as something freshly compiled, but as the utterance of antiquity; this book is thereby guaranteed to give a faithful understanding of the past, not a frivolous glitter of style.”232 Such an assertion indicates Saxo’s desire to convince his audience that he was accurately representing his people’s past, particularly because he based much of his work on the poetry and runic inscriptions that formed a fundamental component of Old Norse literary and creative culture.233 In fact, Saxo praised the ancient Danes for their creativity, writing that their heroic desire to record their deeds for posterity recalled the Romans, and positing “how much historical writing might we suppose men of such genius would have published if they had slaked their thirst for composition knowing Latin?”234 From just these couple of excerpts,

Saxo has already made clear his view of the Danes, as well as his intentions for his work.

230 Muceniecks, Saxo Grammaticus, 3. 231 Ibid. 232 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, 7. 233 Ibid. 234 Ibid. 88 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

First, at the forefront was his admiration for the ancient Danes, which translated to and culminated in the figure of Valdemar II, the reigning king of his own time. Indeed, as will be discussed in more detail below, his narrative hinged upon tracing this lineage and detailing the personalities of the great Danish kings. The best and most worthy of these figures brought glory to the Danes by embodying the qualities that Saxo saw as foundational for good rulers, and thus, for the Danes as a group of people.

Saxo saw violence in particular, which the Franks had steadily associated with the

Danes in their own Viking Age sources, as constant. Often kings came to power through bloodshed, and continually had to prove their worth by striking down foes, both internal and external. It was paramount, however, that those that Saxo saw as worthy be depicted as possessing a couple of very important traits. One of these was warrior prowess, but it had to be tempered by magnanimity and wisdom. Saxo established this in his preface where he praised the then-king Valdemar II (r. 1202-1241), writing “everyone knows your well- practiced courage and philanthropy, so that one cannot measure which is greater, the terror struck into your foes on the battlefield or the gratification felt by our citizens at your mildness.”235 These characteristics are echoed throughout the long line of Danish kings that form the central focus of Saxo’s narrative. Thus, while violence was an important component of Danish identity in both the external and internal sources, it functioned differently in Saxo’s conception and depiction. Unrestrained, unjustified violence, which became a hallmark of the

Frankish perception of the Danes in the Viking Age, was by contrast looked down upon by

Saxo. His ideal form of Danishness was the ability to defeat enemies swiftly and decisively

235 Ibid, 9. 89 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 coupled with a generous, sometimes merciful spirit, one that would choose the moral high ground when challenged.

There are numerous examples throughout the first eleven books of the Gesta Danorum that illustrate this point. One of them appears at the very beginning of the first book, where

Saxo discussed the mythical brothers from whose line the Danes sprung. These were Dan, from whom the Danes draw their name, and Angel, the progenitor of the English. These siblings “gained rule over the territory by the willing consent of their countrymen, who voted them to the chief position through an appreciation of their outstanding courage and virtues.”236 At the outset of his narrative, then, Saxo has established that there are a couple of specific traits required for leadership. Dan’s sons, Humli and Løther, fought one another for control, with Løther emerging victorious and forcing his brother to retire from ruling. Then, he “played the king as intolerably as the soldier, immediately inaugurating his reign with arrogance and crime; he reckoned it a measure of virtue to deprive all his most distinguished subjects of life and wealth and to clear his country of fine citizens, imagining that his equals in birth must be rivals to his throne.”237 It is worth noting here that Løther would have been justified in believing this last point: recall that in the Viking Age, rulership was predicated partially on blood—any relative, however distant, could potentially have a claim to rule—but could also hinge on any individual’s ability to amass a loyal following through raiding and plundering. Saxo certainly would have been aware of this fact of Danish history, and this is perhaps why he includes a line on it here, though as a supporter of the Valdemarians—whose line is traced back to Løther—he appears skeptical that anybody not possessing royal blood would be able to make a real bid for the throne.

236 Ibid, 21. 237 Ibid, 23. 90 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

After Løther was killed during a rebellion, his son Skiold238 ascended to the throne.

Saxo described him as a figure with “Løther’s natural bent but not his habits… so that he bypassed all the traces of his father’s pollution.”239 Not only was Skiold a brave and tested warrior beginning in his youth, but he also possessed great generosity, looking after the wellbeing of his subjects personally, even paying his people’s debts himself, “as if he vied with other kings’ courage through his own bounty and generosity.”240 He also took great pains to take care of “his chieftains, giving them incomes when they were at home as well as the booty won from the enemy, for he would maintain that soldiers should have their fill of money and the glory go to their commander.”241 This melding of generosity with violence, a wise and giving nature with warrior capability, persists throughout Saxo’s narrative, including in the books that roughly correspond to the Viking Age. In the latter part of Book VIII, for example, Saxo discussed a certain Gøtrik, the legendary subject of Gautreks saga whom he identified as the Godifrid who appeared in the ARF. Upon his introduction in the Gesta

Danorum, Gøtrik was described as “remarkable both for his military prowess and generosity, so that you could not say whether his courage or his kindness was more characteristic of him; so well did he correct severity with mildness that the one seemed to counterbalance the other.”242 Saxo further illustrates Gøtrik ‘s generosity by detailing an incident with the

Icelander Ræf. While the latter was visiting the Norwegian king Goti, he received a very fine bracelet as a gift, prompting a courtier to “over-extravagantly” gush about the present,

238 This Skiold (meaning ‘shield’) appears as the ancestor of the Danish royal line, the Scyldings, in Beowulf. See Ibid, n. 5, and Philip A. Shaw, Names and Naming in 'Beowulf’: Studies in Heroic Narrative Tradition (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), esp. 53-102. 239 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, 25. 240 Ibid. 241 Ibid. 242 Ibid., 621. 91 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 claiming “that no one’s philanthropy matched Goti’s.”243 Bound by a sense of honor and truthfulness, however, and detesting the pomposity of the courtier, Ræf “preferred to give his word on behalf of Gøtrik’s generous disposition in his absence rather than fawn hypocritically on his present benefactor.”244 The courtier challenged him on this, and Ræf journeyed to visit

Gøtrik, who with “unsurpassed liberality” presented the Icelander with multiple very fine gifts.245 When Ræf revealed his wager to Gøtrik, the Danish king “rejoiced because his bounty towards Ræf had been by accident rather than design and declared that he had felt more pleasure in the giving than the recipient experienced from the gift.”246 Having been proven correct, Ræf went back to Norway to collect his reward from the courtier, who refused to honor their agreement, prompting Ræf to kill him and take Goti’s daughter back to

Gøtrik.247

In the Gesta Danorum, such were the characteristics that made a good Dane, and thus, a good leader. In Saxo’s perception of Danish identity, violence clearly still played a prominent role, just as it had in the Frankish perception of the Danes a couple hundred years before. He filled every book of his narrative with detailed descriptions of battles, wars, and other types of disputes, indicating how violence served as a fundamental component of

Danish history and therefore Danish identity. However, it functioned quite differently in

Saxo’s narrative than in the Frankish sources. Whereas the Franks perceived the Danes as prone to unrestrained and unjustified violence, the Gesta Danorum shows from the internal perspective that there were rules that governed its perpetration. To engage in the wanton

243 Ibid. 244 Ibid, 623. 245 Ibid. 246 Ibid. 247 Ibid. 92 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 destruction that was associated with the Vikings in the Frankish sources was frowned upon in

Saxo’s estimation. His ideal Danes were the ones that tempered their thirst for plunder with wisdom and generosity (toward their own subjects, of course, and not necessarily toward outsiders).

This is the case even with figures like Gøtrik, who appear wily and destructive in the

Frankish annals but exemplify the ideal characteristics of a Danish leader within Saxo’s narrative. First, he is incredibly generous to those that are loyal to him, illustrated by the incident with Ræf. This generosity had a practical as well as a literary component. That is, in order to maintain his followers’ loyalty, particularly in the context of the Viking Age, a leader had to provide plenty of opportunity for gain. The inability to do this meant their followers could be drawn off by leaders who offered chances for fame and riches. As has already been discussed, the Viking Age often hindered Scandinavian leaders’ efforts to gather and centralize power, as charismatic men could go out and make a fortune through raiding, gaining a loyal following the process that they could then harness to support their bids for power in the Danish world. This emphasis on providing opportunities for gain as a prerequisite for gaining or maintaining power was not just a phenomenon in the Scandinavian world, either. Recall the trouble the Franks had with the Abodrites under the reign of Louis the Pious, where their leaders began shirking their agreements with the Franks and looking instead to the Danes as potential power brokers, partially because they were no longer benefitting as much from the Frankish relationship. Therefore, while Gøtrik’s generosity is important in terms of depicting him in the best possible light, and as the ideal Danish leader, there is an underlying practical reality that informs this particular trait. This is one way that

93 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 the Viking Age, and the Danish emphasis on warrior culture and violence, continued to influence Saxo’s perception of Danish identity in his own time.

Gøtrik also engaged in justified violence. First, he defeated and imposed tribute on the

Saxons, before turning his eyes to Sweden and appointing his old champion Ræf as leader of the campaign. When Ræf was killed through treachery, he forced the Swedes, both the nobles and the commoners, to each pay a sum in gold as atonement.248 Later, after Charlemagne subdued the Saxons and brought them under the purview of the Franks, “Gøtrik attacked the peoples who lived on the banks of the Elbe and tried to bring Saxony back to its old acknowledgement of his rule, even though the inhabitants were happier to accept

Charlemagne’s yoke and the armed might of the Holy Roman Empire in preference to that of

Denmark.”249 Then, after “winning a spectacular victory over the Saxons,” Gøtrik attacked

Frisia and made it tributary to him as well.250 However, when “the Danish king resolved to swoop down on the farther regions of Germany… he was caught in an ambush by one of his own retainers and dispatched with a traitor’s weapon in his own home.”251 When

Charlemagne received news of this, he rejoiced, “admitting that he had never met with any stroke of luck as delightful as this.”252

Many of these events are recorded in the ARF. Gøtrik’s seemingly unprovoked attacks from that source are illuminated by Saxo as being motivated by his desire to bring the Saxons back to the Danish fold. Whereas the Franks depict the Danes as erupting into Saxony and later Frisia rather unexpectedly, the internal Danish perspective offers a different view, one

248 Ibid, 623-625. 249 Ibid, 625. 250 Ibid. 251 Ibid, 627. 252 Ibid. 94 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 where the Danes were justified in their efforts to penetrate these areas. According to Saxo,

Gøtrik was reacting to Frankish incursions into a part of the world where the Danes had maintained significant sway. Charlemagne was the one responsible for disrupting the status quo, and this wound was made all the sharper by the Saxons’ desire to remain tributary to him rather than the Danes. Thus, Gøtrik was totally justified in moving back into Saxony and

Frisia, in stark contrast to the depictions from the ARF, where he appeared to have done so with little warning or rationalization. This demonstrates how the unrestrained violence of the

Danes garnered from the Frankish sources was, from the internal Danish perspective, often targeted rather than random and retaliatory rather than unprovoked.

This emphasis on justified violence was so important in Saxo’s conception of Danish identity that nonadherence was deadly. The example of Løther has already illustrated this, as his intolerable method of ruling, coupled with a thirst for blood that caused him to murder his own people, ultimately led to a rebellion that killed him. The story of the end of Harald

Hildetan is another good example. His death in the Battle of Bråvalla while fighting his nephew Ring, the ruler of Sweden, is detailed at the start of Book VIII. After outlining the forces supporting Harald’s side of the war, which included two women “whose female bodies

Nature had endowed with manly courage,”253 Saxo provided a good example of how there were rules that governed the perpetration of violence and war. Harald, “not wishing the

Swedes to be caught unprepared for war… sent envoys to Ring to make public the breach of peace between them with an open announcement of hostilities.”254 Later, with the battle lines at last arrayed, Saxo called Harald “as witless as he was sightless,” because “such a person could not be satisfied with his wealth, even though, were he to consider his age, he ought to

253 Ibid, 535. 254 Ibid, 538-539. 95 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 be pretty well content with a tomb.”255 His point here was that “the Swedes were under strong compulsion to fight for their freedom, fatherland, and children, whereas their foes had undertaken this war solely through foolhardy arrogance.”256 It is clear that while warfare was perfectly justifiable, violence motivated by greed was detestable, and would end in defeat.

Thus Harald was struck down by Odin himself, whose previous beneficence toward the Danes was snatched away just as quickly as it had been offered.

After his victory, however, Ring embodied the qualities that should be exhibited by a good leader. With bodies piled up everywhere, he had his uncle’s body found and cremated with all due ceremony, even encouraging the “mourning jarls… to cast a large quantity of weapons, gold, and precious objects onto the pyre as tinder, thereby showing reverence to such a mighty king, who had deserved this respect from them all.”257 He then had his uncle’s ashes placed in an urn and buried in a royal funeral at Lejre. Thus, “by carefully performing the due obsequies for his uncle, Ring won the Danes’ goodwill and turned inimical hatred into friendship.”258 The result of this battle, however, was that “the empire of the Danes was brought by changing Fortune under Swedish power.”259

The Battle of Bråvalla is an important episode because it clearly illustrates several elements important to Saxo’s conception of Danish identity. First, it is clear that violence and warfare, in and of themselves, were not something that needed to be avoided or lamented. For the Danes it was a way of life, particularly in the context of the constant dynastic and succession upheavals that characterized premodern Danish history. What made such activity

255 Ibid, 544-545. 256 Ibid, 545. 257 Ibid, 551. 258 Ibid. 259 Ibid. 96 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 repulsive was if it was engaged in ignobly. This is why Harald ultimately faced defeat at the hands of another people, the Swedes, despite rising to fame and glory in Book VII (with the help of Odin, who as noted turned on him in the above battle). Violence had to be justifiable and honorably executed, as when Harald gives Ring notice of his attack or when Ring shows due deference to his uncle’s remains. The best of Saxo’s leaders, the ones who exemplified these qualities and therefore embodied the ideal of what it meant to be a Dane, faithfully adhered to this rule.

Thus, violence played an important role in the post-Viking Age conception of

Danishness. It was also at play in differentiating the Danes from other groups of people, and in keeping with the emphasis on boundaries between groups as a way of constructing ethnic identity, it will be useful now to turn to a couple of quick comparisons to see how Saxo does this in his narrative. The first group to be discussed will be the Swedes, a people with whom the Danes are in almost constant contact. Indeed, Saxo often described how the Swedish rulers are either tributary or even relatives of the Danish kings, as with Ring and Harald

Hildetan above. Saxo saw the Swedes as separate but related to the Danes, and likewise for the Norwegians and Icelanders. Still, he saw them as inferior to the Danes, and certainly not as strong militarily; since military prowess formed such an important part in his conception of

Danish identity, the negative value he attached to this is quite clear. In his discussion of the

Battle of Bråvalla, Saxo wrote that Harald Hildetan’s forces actually consisted of “very few

Danes; the majority… were Saxons and other girlish peoples.”260 Thus, “the Swedes and

Norwegians should reflect how vastly superior the multitudes of the North had always been to

Germans and Wends. Their army, compounded not of solid military timber, so it seemed, but

260 Ibid. 97 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 the slimy dregs of humanity, would prove contemptible.”261 This helped explain Harald’s defeat, despite the fact that the Danes were superior to the Swedes and despite the fact that there was an “inimical hatred” constantly motivating conflict between the two groups.262 The

Swedes are also described as devious, an element that had characterized the depiction of the

Danes within the Frankish annals. When Gotrik sent Ræf to Sweden, his second-in-command was killed through treachery, “since the Swedes were afraid to kill him with naked violence.”263 Such cowardice was telling, since Saxo placed such a premium on courage in his construction of Danish identity. It stood in direct contrast to how Saxo’s ideal Danish leaders handled challenges, which was to face them head-on.

Another useful people to use as a comparison are the Wends,264 who cropped up throughout Saxo’s narrative. As discussed above, he described them as inferior to

Scandinavian peoples in the Battle of Bråvalla and part of the reason that Harald Hildetan’s side was ultimately unsuccessful. They appeared at other points throughout the Gesta

Danorum, however, and they served as antagonists towards whom Saxo bore particular animosity. In Book V, for example, the Wends invaded the Danes, prompting the Danes to retaliate ferociously, defeating the Wends through superior strategy and turning the tables to invade Wendish territory. When the Wendish king asked for a truce, the Danish king, Frothi, refused. His friend and advisor Erik praised him for this refusal, “stating that he should play the game abroad as it had begun at home, by which he meant that the Danes had been

261 Ibid. 262 Ibid, 551. 263 Ibid, 625. 264 The Wends, also called Sorbs, were a Slavic people who lived between the Oder River in the east and the Elbe and Saale Rivers in the west. See The Columbia Encyclopedia, s.v. “Wends.” Saxo uses the general term Sclavorum, “Slavs,” to refer to these people within his narrative. 98 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 provoked by the Wends.”265 Again, the importance of provocation as a justification for violence is illustrated here. Later, Frothi convinced those Wends who had engaged in plundering as well as “those who were skilled in the pursuit of evil arts to step forward and receive their gifts.”266 The Wends’ “strong avarice cheated them into setting profit before shame and imagining that crime was a glorious thing.”267 Frothi had those who eagerly stepped forward strung up and executed by their own people, illustrating “how deserved punishment followed the desire for reward without desert, how longing for unearned gain was visited by a well-earned penalty.”268 Saxo was clear that the Wends were inferior to the Danes in this episode, as their invasion resulted in incredibly harsh—but warranted—retribution. He also illustrates how unchecked greed will ultimately lead to a bitter and violent end. Further, he saw them as primarily made up of vagrants and criminals, as evidenced by the fact that

Frothi’s ordered executions “wiped out almost the entire stock of the Wendish race.”269

Saxo’s narrative draws some clear boundaries just in these two examples. Firstly, the

Danes are clearly superior to both the Swedes and the Wends, in that these two groups of people are constantly on the losing end; even when the Swedes were victorious over the

Danes, it was not because they were inherently better than the Danes, but because they had fought an army with hardly any Danes in it. In fact, they fought an army of Germans and

Wends, illustrating even further how little Saxo thought of the Wends. While the Danes were not opposed to using tricks to fool their foes, the Swedes and Wends relied on treachery and subterfuge, whereas the Danes were characterized by their tendency to face issues and

265 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, 315. 266 Ibid. 267 Ibid. 268 Ibid. 269 Ibid. 99 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 challenges head on. Saxo clearly attached a value judgment to this fact within his narrative. In this way the Wends and Swedes serve as foils for the Danes, as well as provocateurs, groups of people who through their possession of weaker qualities allow the Danes to demonstrate their own superiority.

This is how violence plays into Saxo’s conception of Danish identity within the Gesta

Danorum. Throughout the first half of the work, he has laid the groundwork wherein the

Danes are defined in part by how they perpetrate violence: it must be justified and also tempered by generosity toward their own people. There are some similarities and differences between Saxo’s depiction and that of the Franks from the ninth century. First, violence, often perpetrated with ferocity, formed a fundamental component in both the internal and external perception of the Danes. In both sets of sources, the Danes are quick to action and often overwhelm their enemies, a fact depicted in the Frankish sources as due to their use of surprise attacks and later, because they were instruments of divine wrath. In Saxo’s narrative, however, the Danes are successful because they were simply the superior people, on par with even the mightiest of their enemies. Take the twin examples of Charlemagne and Ragnar

Lothbrok, the latter of whom is primarily a literary invention of Saxo’s. As a youth, Ragnar shows great practicality and eloquence, and as he grows up as king he continually proves himself a skilled fighter as well as a shrewd political leader. Saxo states that he is the Dane responsible for “mounting hostilities against Britain,” and he subdued that region as well as brought Norway under Danish control.270 Ragnar is a classic example of a Viking king, mounting seaborn expeditions against neighboring and far-flung peoples and places, from the

270 Ibid, 641-643. 100 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Finns and Biarmians to the Russia and even to the Hellespont.271 When some Danes rallied to the cause of Harald Klak—the very Harald discussed in the ARF and AB whose conflict with the sons of Godifrid led him to seek Frankish support throughout the early ninth century—

Ragnar was forced to shift his gaze from external conquests to dealing with internal civil strife. Ragnar ultimately defeated Harald and forced him to flee, and later dealt very harshly with those who had supported the pretender.272 It was Ragnar’s belief that Germany served as

“a sanctuary for his enemies and Harald’s refuge” that prompted him to invade Saxony, a decision which brought him face-to-face with Charlemagne himself.273 In the ensuing conflict between the two groups, Charlemagne with his greater force was unable to defeat Ragnar’s smaller band. Thus, Ragnar was depicted as Charlemagne’s rival, if not his better, for

Charlemagne, “that tireless man, who had subdued almost the whole of Europe, who had paraded over such a vast stretch of the world with his unruffled, mighty conquests, here saw that army which had vanquished so many states and so many peoples turn tail and be overthrown by a small company from a single province.”274

This sort of language recalls the previous chapter’s discussion about how the Danes were powerful enough to challenge Frankish hegemony and authority in Northern Europe.

While Saxo certainly had a vested interest in depicting the Danes in the best possible light, this particular fact had its roots in the reality of the Viking Age, something that characterizes

Saxo’s narrative. It is also significant that, once again, Saxo’s narrative provided a justification for the Danish incursions into Saxony, much as he had for Gøtrik earlier in the

271 Ibid, 649-659. 272 Ibid, 643. “Nor was Ragnar satisfied to put his prisoners to a straightforward death but chose rather to kill them under torture, so that individuals who could not be induced to forsake their disloyalty might not even be allowed to lay aside their lives without punishments of the most stringent ferocity.” 273 Ibid. 274 Ibid, 645. 101 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Gesta Danorum, in stark contrast to the depictions garnered from the Frankish annals. This serves as another example of how different conceptions of violence play into perceptions of

Danish identity.

Another component, already touched on above, that appeared in the Frankish sources that Saxo also discusses, is the civil wars that wracked the Danish world in the Viking Age.

Ragnar’s reign, according to Saxo, was constantly beset by challenges. This was partially because Ragnar was engaged in traveling to and conquering all sorts of lands and peoples, in typical Viking fashion, and often away from his ancestral home. This provided ample opportunity for pretenders—including Harald, who eventually “spurred his country to fresh rebellions and came forward to take possession of the crown”—to attempt to seize control at home.275 In fact, conflict between Harald’s heirs and those of Ragnar (who was himself one of the heirs of Gøtrik, recalling the filii Godifridi constantly referenced in the ARF) persisted throughout Book IX. Ragnar’s line, however, comes out victorious, because they are the rightful rulers in Saxo’s eyes, and because they are able to stand on their own feet against their enemies, whereas Harald had to seek Frankish support numerous times.

This brings up the second theme guiding this thesis, that of Christianity. Up to this point there have been few explicit references to Christianity in Saxo’s narrative, mostly because he was detailing portions of Danish history predating the advent of Christianity and its missionaries in Scandinavia. There are a few spots in his narrative, however, that are clearly influenced by his own Christian background, even before Book IX when the Franks begin evangelizing to the Danes. He used Christian imagery within his narrative as a literary device. This is especially noticeable in his preface, when discussing King Valdemar II’s

275 Ibid, 659. 102 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 grandfather, Cnut Lavard, who was later canonized. Saxo wrote “Your resplendent grandfather too, the sanctified object of public devotion, who achieved immortal glory through an undeserved death, now awes with his radiant holiness the people over whom he was once victorious. More valor than blood flowed from his venerable wounds.”276

Doubtlessly Cnut Lavard’s being a saint influenced the way Saxo spoke about him here, but there are points throughout his narrative where the Christian concepts of humility, acceptance of fate, and the transience of the temporal world are on full display, and one section of Book

V was devoted to noting the birth of Christ.277 Additionally, the fact that Saxo originates the

Danes in a human ancestor—and not a supernatural one, as Snorri Sturluson does in his prose

Edda—could also indicate on another level how his own Christian worldview shapes his understanding and depiction of Danish history and identity. Supernatural figures, from gods to giants to other sentient creatures, appear throughout the first half of his narrative, but he chooses to place Danish origins in humans, letting their virtues speak for themselves instead of originating in some otherworldly power. This ensures that their later salvation by conversion is possible, because while they frequently interact with the supernatural, the Danes themselves are purely human and therefore able to enter the world of Christendom.

The story of Humli and Løther, the sons of the legendary Dan, progenitor of the

Danes, illustrates how humility and acceptance of fate influence Saxo’s narrative early on. As discussed, the two of them fought for the throne, with Løther emerging victorious and forcing his brother, as a condition of his surrender, to abdicate the throne in exchange for his life.

Saxo wrote that Humli, “compelled thus to abdicate power by his brother’s violence… furnished testimony to mankind that palaces may contain more magnificence, but in cottages

276 Ibid, 9. 277 Ibid, 353. 103 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 there is more safety. Yet so patient was he under injustice that people believed he rejoiced at being stripped of honor as if it were a kindness.”278 This emphasis on humility and acceptance in the face of unfairness is very Christian in nature, and indeed, was “the proper demeanor for a Christian king.”279 Humli would have been perfectly justified in mounting a counterbid for the throne against his traitorous brother by the framework that Saxo uses to judge later leaders within his narrative. Instead, Humli chose to accept his fate, reflecting on the virtues of a humbler existence and the temporality of wealth and power.

This concept fits in with the framework that has been outlined above about Saxo’s ideal type of king. In the Viking Age, there was a “crisis” in the concept of kingship, as

Germanic forms came into conflict with Christian forms that had evolved within Europe during the preceding centuries. As stated, there were key concepts that associated the ideal of a Christian king: “strength in war and in law, but humbleness before God, and piousness, to be an exemplar to the people of virtuous behavior, chastity, and moderation.”280 By contrast,

Germanic kingship

was manifestly based on very opposite rules… the king with the ability to swagger and boast personified the epitome of a good ruler, the acquisition of many concubines was not lecherous but vigorous, and the consumption of large quantities of food and intoxicating beverages at feasts was not considered gluttonous or excessive but part of the offering and accepting of “guest-rights” through the extension and acceptance of abundant hospitality.281

The conflict between Danish rulers’ desire to emulate southern forms of kingship and needing to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of their followers by adhering to cultural norms proved a challenge to centralization, just as Viking-style raiding did. Viking Age kings who

278 Ibid, 23. 279 Tina L. Thurston, Landscapes of Power, Landscapes of Conflict: State Formation in the South Scandinavian Iron Age (New York: Kluwer Academic, 2001), 83. 280 Ibid. 281 Ibid. 104 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 wished to coopt continental forms of kingship as a way of gaining power found this difficult, as melding Christian with German forms of kingship seemed impossible. While “they had moved toward sovereignty, establishing a base in wealth and land… rule was still expressed in a chiefly manner, based on personal reputation for luck and skill… but especially through a continuing personal and reciprocal relationship with the underlords and warrior elite.”282

Several of these elements live on within Saxo’s narrative. His ideal ruler was generous to his loyal followers, making sure that they received wealth as a condition of their loyalty and support, often had multiple wives (at the same time), and engaged in activity that

Christians would doubtlessly see as excessive. The Gesta Danorum, however, is a good example of how Christian concepts could be melded with Germanic ones to arrive at a workable form of kingship that allowed Danish leaders to centralize power. While Saxo’s ideal kings possessed the very Germanic qualities outlined above—including one that has guided much of this chapter, that of violence through warrior capability and courage—they also were prone to bouts of humility, as with Humli. Additionally, Saxo saw the right to rulership not only embodied by possession of these characteristics, but also predicated on blood or genetics. Thus, while pretenders like Harald or the usurper discussed just above in theory could make a bid for power based on their ability to garner support, in Saxo’s mind they simply did not have any right to rule, and therefore were ultimately unsuccessful in their bids for power. This hereditary concept of kingship is very Christian and flies in the face of

Germanic norms, where rulership was premised on close pacts between a chosen leader and his band of followers, and “to break this relationship—to reduce the warband’s power and to

282 Ibid, 84. 105 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 increase the king’s—would have been an affront” to those very followers.283 In Saxo’s narrative, then, there was a melding of these concepts, whereby his ideal kings maintained a strong relationship with those loyal to him and ensured that they had their fill of plunder, but they also ruled by right and exhibited very Christian qualities. Thus, even before the introduction of Christianity directly into his narrative, the religion influenced his sense of

Danish history and therefore identity.

Where Christianity comes directly into play, however, is partway through Book IX.

This book falls within the Viking Age and roughly corresponds with Frankish missionary efforts to the Danes. The exploits of Ragnar, who Saxo saw as an equal if not superior to

Charlemagne, are detailed in this book. In fact, Ragnar defiles Christianity within Denmark.

Harald, the challenger for the throne defeated by Ragnar, received assistance from the

Frankish emperor Louis the Pious partially on condition of his baptism. Louis also sent

Christian missionaries to accompany him back to his homeland, along with a contingent of

Saxons to serve as military force.284 In Schleswig, Harald erected a church and later

“dishonored pagan idolatry, uprooted its shrines, outlawed the sacrificial attendants, and abolished the priesthood,” making him “the first to bring Christian rites to a primitive land and by extirpating the worship of devils [he] fostered the true belief.”285 When Ragnar came back on the scene from his pirate activities, he immediately “desecrated the hallowed rites introduced by Harald, annulled the true worship, restored the false religion to its ancient position, and gave his blessing to its ceremonies.”286 Harald, forced to flee by Ragnar’s presence, rather than holding true to his new faith, “now staked his fortunes on impiety

283 Ibid, 84. 284 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, 661. 285 Ibid. 286 Ibid. 106 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 instead.”287 Thus, although he was instrumental in converting and bringing the Danes into direct contact with Christianity, he went “from being the glorious promoter of this blessed faith” to “a notorious apostate.”288 Saxo had already made clear that he did not care for the figure of Harald, but this episode illustrates once again how little he thought of the challenger.

Rather than celebrating him for his efforts in bringing Christianity to the Danes, Saxo instead disparaged him for not sticking to his faith when the tide turned against him.

Thanks to Harald, however, Christianity was now directly within the Danish purview.

Now, they were susceptible to divine wrath in ways that had not really been the case in Saxo’s narrative thus far. Indeed, Ragnar himself faced retribution for desecrating the Christian religion when he mounted a seaborn attack against Ælla, an English king whose father had been killed by Ragnar in one of the Dane’s previous expeditions. Saxo wrote that “the

Almighty wrought due punishment on Ragnar and made him pay visibly for his spurning of

Christianity” by enduring a horrible death at Ælla’s hands.289 Later, as more dynastic strife shook the Danish world, another pretender for the throne “seized the royal crown” from the rightful ruler, a youth named Erik.290 The new king, “with no qualms about challenging the boy’s rightful leadership nor wresting the sovereignty from him illegally… divested [Erik] of his scepter, [and] himself of virtues.”291 Such pretension and audacity could not go unpunished, and “the vengeance of divine wrath requited this lack of human decency.”292

In the space of just a few pages Christianity has already come to be direct force within the Gesta Danorum. Harald’s introduction of the religion into Denmark opened the door to

287 Ibid. 288 Ibid. 289 Ibid. 290 Ibid, 667. 291 Ibid. 292 Ibid, 669. 107 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 the Danes knowing the ‘true belief,’ meaning they now were susceptible to both God’s mercy and his wrath. Up to this point the influence of Christianity in Saxo’s narrative had been subtler, relying more on abstract concepts associated with Christian doctrine and language that evokes religious imagery. Still, the model of a good Danish king which had provided the framework for much of Saxo’s narrative itself reflects a decidedly medieval Christian concept of rulership, melded with Germanic traditions, as mentioned above. Now, however, the Danes had to contend with Christianity and the Christian god directly, particularly when they defiled or disrespected the religion. Still, it was possible for a Dane, in typical Christian fashion, to repent later in life and therefore achieve success or salvation. This is what happens with

Ragnar’s grandson Sigvard I, who “moved in the steps of his grandfather and suddenly emerged as a whole-hearted practitioner of piracy.”293 Unfortunately he also emulated his grandfather’s destruction and rejection of the Christian religion, but he redeemed himself later by “setting aside the profanity of a misguided mind on the wholesome advice of Ansgar, [and] atoned for all the offences of his pride and spent as much energy in fostering Christianity as he had before in spurning it.”294 This is Saxo’s single mention of St. Ansgar, a figure who in other sources played a huge role in evangelizing and converting the Danes and other

Scandinavians.295 Sigvard’s son, however, had the opposite problem, in that he was a successful leader in every way except accepting the true faith of Christianity.296

This is the turning point for Saxo’s narrative. Once the Danes were directly exposed to

Christianity, and had the opportunity to convert to the faith, it became an important

293 Ibid. 294 Ibid. 295 This is because of later struggles to bring Denmark out from the ecclesiastical authority of Hamburg-Bremen, where Ansgar served as the first archbishop. 296 Ibid, 671. 108 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 component in Saxo’s conception of a good ruler. Now, his ideal Danish leader had to be swift and capable in war, ready to fight and violently protect or expand his realm, generous to his people and those that fought with him, and able to accept and espouse the Christian faith. He bemoaned those leaders that did not adhere to the new faith or that persisted in persecuting the

Christians, such as Gorm the Old, “who was always malignantly disposed to the true faith and desired to obliterate the toleration of Christians just as though they were the foulest of mankind.”297 In Book X, Saxo cites Harald Bluetooth’s support of Christianity as a partial reason for the rebellion that led to his exile and later, death. His son Sven, “giving rein to impiety… resolutely bent his attentions to the abolition of holy rites and, after expelling every trace of Christian worship from the land, restored sacrificial priests to the temples and offerings to the altars of the gods.”298 Sven continued to persecute Christians within Denmark, and “at his instigation, having already embarked on worship of the Godhead, the Danes returned to superstitious beliefs.”299 Harald’s son did not go unpunished, however, and all

“this foolhardy behavior… was repaid with misfortunes of considerable stringency by a

Divinity retaliating against men’s scorn of Him, and He hounded its originator with the most depressing twists of fate.”300 After enduring years of hardship, captivity, and revolts that forced him into exile as his father once had been, Sven finally turned his eyes to Christianity.

This conversion went hand-in-hand with his resumption of royal power, although according to

Saxo he hid his newfound belief in an effort to not alienate his subjects.301 It was under

297 Ibid. 298 Ibid, 703-705. 299 Ibid, 705. 300 Ibid. 301 Ibid, 717. 109 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Sven’s later rulership that Poppo, “a man of striking intellect and piety,”302 performed a miracle before an assembly of Danes and “through the fame of this miracle he implanted from abroad a religious spirit in our race.”303

This is how Christianity played into Saxo’s conception of Danishness. Before the introduction of Christianity directly into his narrative through the conversion of Harald Klak, he crafted a framework of rulership that melded together Christian and Germanic themes.

When Harald reentered Denmark after his baptism by the Frankish emperor Louis, however, the Christian faith became an explicit force in his narrative. He praised those rulers who adopted and adhered to the religion and lamented those that turned away or even persecuted it. Those that did choose to violently target Christians faced divine retribution, of the sort that they often in the end converted as a result of these hardships. Thus, the Christian faith immediately and indelibly becomes another vital component of Danish leadership and through that, their history and identity. A notable difference between his narrative and the Frankish sources, as well as many other medieval histories, is the lack of a sense that the Danes were instruments of divine wrath. This motif also appears in other medieval histories, for example

Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, where the pagan Angles, Saxons, and Jutes serve as tools through which God punished the unfaithful Britons. This mentality, as discussed in the previous chapter, cropped up once more in the ninth century in the face of mounting Viking attacks and the requisite helplessness and fear they garnered across the continent. While some rulers, most notably Sven, are punished for their faithlessness through revolts by tributary and non-Christian populations, this paradigm does not become an

302 Ibid. 303 Ibid, 719. 110 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 important part of his narrative. Despite this, however, Christianity came to have a fundamental influence on his understanding of Danish identity in the Viking Age.

These are Saxo’s images and perceptions of Danish identity up through the Viking

Age. As in the Frankish sources, both violence and Christianity played important roles in his estimation of Danishness, but they operated quite differently. Where the Franks perceived the

Danes as prone to unrestrained destruction, Saxo’s narrative indicates that some underlying rules prevented this. For one, a leader could not greedily or unjustifiably engage in violence for violence’s sake; rather he needed to be provoked, and his thirst for blood must be tempered by his magnanimity and generosity towards his own men. This conception had undertones of Christianity, in that a leader who was strong in war must also be beneficent to his people. Thus, while violence was an important aspect both in external and internal perceptions of the Danes, it operated quite differently between the two sets of sources. This was also the case for Christianity. In both sets of sources, Christianity only directly comes to the fore in the perception of the Danes after a specific point: for the Franks it was in light of the persistent Viking attacks, and for the Danes it was after Harald Klak converted and brought missionaries into Denmark. After these turning points, Christianity becomes an explicit component guiding the perception of the Danes; for the Franks they served as instruments of God’s wrath, whereas for Saxo it added another, vital layer to his understanding of Danish history and identity. From that point on, his ideal Danish rulers needed to adhere to the faith, or else face divine retribution. Thus Christianity, like violence, played an important role in both perspectives, but only became explicitly important in each after specific historical turning points.

111 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION The previous few chapters have covered various aspects involved in the creation of ethnic identity. First, as the understanding of collective identities shifted over time, there grew in the mid-twentieth century a renewed emphasis on ethnicity as a category of analysis. This social identity category became important in light of decolonization around the globe, during which different populations began to assert their ethnic identities as a way of garnering and reasserting their own autonomy and legitimacy. This prompted scholars, particularly in the social sciences, to revisit the theoretical frameworks used to study collective identities, including ethnicity. Primordialism, which posited that ethnic identities were biologically based and inherent, fell out of style in favor of instrumentalism, which in direct opposition to primordialism claimed that ethnicity was merely a guise for other concerns, be they economic or related to power. Historians participated in this trend, and the Vienna School produced much scholarship on the post-Roman barbarian kingdoms and how ethnic identities came to the fore in successor state-building.

This thesis is particularly predicated on the instrumentalist school, and a few of its core concepts. The first of these is that ethnic identities were not biologically inherent, but a developed and constructed phenomenon. There has been a particular focus on boundary maintenance, that is, what sort of elements help define boundaries between different groups of people and how those are constructed as well as how they persist and change across time and between different perspectives. An important component in the construction of ethnic identities, moreover, is discourse, and particularly discourse between in-group and out-group members. Picking apart how these two opposing perspectives construct and maintain the

112 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 boundaries marking out a particular group of people offers a more nuanced image of ethnic identity. For that reason, various Frankish annals as well as the Gesta Danorum formed the basis of analysis, as they respectively offer information about external and internal perceptions of Danishness at different points in the Middle Ages.

Two themes guide this analysis. The first is violence; it is clear, nearly from the outset, that the Danes are perceived through this lens within the Frankish sources. They come into the political purview of the Franks after their attack on Lindisfarne in England, and their increasing attacks on Frankish-controlled lands and allies, not to mention the Franks themselves, only serves to solidify and ultimately enhance this initial impression. Thus, the perception of the Danes as a distinct people is indelibly premised on their perpetration and use of violence, which often is depicted as wanton and gratuitous. Later in the ninth century, as

Viking raiding began to rock the continent, these perceptions got amplified even further, and another element began to affect people’s perceptions of the Danes. This brings in the second theme, Christianity. As peoples all over Europe were beset by decades of Viking attacks, the ferocity and destructiveness of the northerners had to be explained somehow. Therefore, the

Franks began to explain the attacks of these pagans as punishment for their own sins. This added a new layer to the Frankish perception of the Danes, as they now were seen as instruments of divine wrath on an unfaithful population. The crisis in their own faith prompted this rationalization and allowed them to maintain their Christian worldview while at the same time make sense of the devastating, persistent attacks they endured throughout the ninth century and beyond. Overall the Frankish perspective offers a perception of the Danes, as an ethnic group, as incorrigibly violent and unjustifiably bloodthirsty.

113 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

The internal perspective of the Danes from about three centuries later both supports and contradicts much of this. First, violence continued to play a role in Saxo’s conception of

Danish history and identity, but it operated quite differently in his depiction. While warfare and violence in general were a part of life for the Danes since their mythic founding, unfettered, gratuitous destruction was not. Instead, Saxo’s ideal kings possessed both warrior capability coupled with generosity, particularly toward their fellow warriors and subjects. A good ruler, moreover, needed to be provoked to action, and could not engage in it wantonly, as depicted in the Frankish sources. Thus, Saxo offered rationalizations for the invasions by certain Viking kings who also appeared in the Frankish annals, illustrating this fact.

Additionally, many of his Danish kings possessed a measure of humility, putting aside their own desires or concerns in order to better support their men. All of these qualities helped

Saxo construct an ideal of rulership, and therefore Danishness, that melded together Germanic as well as Christian cultural norms. Indeed, Christianity also played an important role in his perception of Danish identity, though as in the Frankish sources, it only became explicit after a certain point within his narrative. This is after the conversion of Harald Klak at the court of

Louis the Pious in the ninth century, after which the Dane (who Saxo sees as an illegitimate claimant to the throne) brought back missionaries to Denmark and thus, introduced

Christianity to the country. From that point on, the religion became an important component in his framework of the ideal Danish king, with the ensuing kings alternately supporting or persecuting the religion (sometimes both), much to Saxo’s chagrin or pleasure. In this way,

Christianity comes to play a distinct role in his narrative, adding to the already-established importance of violence, with both functioning as important components in his perception of

Danish identity.

114 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

Combining these two perspectives, as stated, provides a nuanced view of medieval

Danish identity. When people imagine the Scandinavians in the Middle Ages, they inevitably imagine the Vikings, perhaps in their now-ubiquitous horned helmets (for whom we can thank the nineteenth-century composer Wagner), with long pale hair and a bloodthirstiness that can only be quenched through the swinging of their axes and the plunder of their enemies. Indeed, this stereotype can be defined as “an image of a barbaric, uncontrollable, dirty, male warrior.”304 Much of this sort of perception was gleaned just through the analysis of the

Frankish annals, indicating how continental conceptions of the Danes influenced later historical perceptions. Still, such a view obfuscates our view of the past, because it provides a one-sided and overly simplistic understanding of a period of history that is often much richer than this. Thus, understanding how and why the Franks had this particular perception of the

Danes, and how it developed and was amplified over time, is important to understand. So, too, is combining this intensely negative, external depiction with the more positive, internal one to arrive at a more balanced understanding of the various images of Danish identity in the

Middle Ages.

A close analysis of the sources reveals that the Danes were much more involved in broader medieval European history than is typically acknowledged. Trade, particularly with the Franks, had been an important component of their economic and cultural life since at least the eighth century. Combining the two perspectives analyzed within this thesis thus also illustrates how the Danes, and indeed the Scandinavians more broadly, should not be seen as peripheral to the puzzle of European history, but as just another piece within it. In addition to being influenced by the trajectory of European history as a whole, they were also changed by

304 Roberta Frank, “The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet,” in International Scandinavian and Medieval Studies in Memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber, ed. Michael Dallapiazza (Trieste: Parnaso, 2000), 199-208. 115 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 it, and it is important to recognize this fact. This project also helps close another gap in the historiography, one that has privileged ethnic research on the barbarian successor states at the expense of later polities, often again those that have traditionally been seen as peripheral. By taking the theories and processes outlined from ethnic identity research, both from historians as well as social scientists, it has sought to illustrate how these concepts retain utility for scholars studying these places and peoples.

The emphasis on ethnic and national identities around the globe demands a better understanding of their nature and creation. There are numerous examples, from Russia to

Turkey to modern-day Denmark, of how these categories retain incredible importance today.

Moreover, one cannot overlook the role of historical memory, which for many European populations often centers upon the Middle Ages (and even earlier, in some cases). Therefore, it is important to visit the extant sources in order to better understand this period of history, and how the images and themes associated with it persist across time to be deployed, honestly and dishonestly, benignly and nefariously, in the modern world. In just this single project it has been made clear that the stereotypical modern view of the medieval Danes is too simplistic, and that there were multiple ways to depict and perceive Danishness in the Middle

Ages. These depictions, moreover, shifted across time and space and between peoples and polities, reflecting the author’s contextual and individual worldviews and purposes. This ultimately offers another lesson to the modern world. Identity categories like ethnicity and nationalism rely on marking out boundaries—defining who is and who is not included under a particular designation. Therefore, it is important to better understand the processes involved in their construction and maintenance. Doing so allows modern populations around the globe to

116 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 better evaluate these categories in and of themselves, as well as find ways to navigate competing identities and the conflicts that inevitably arise with them.

117 Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021

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