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THARP-THESIS-2021.Pdf 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. ii 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 iii Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 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. iv Texas Tech University, Jessica Tharp, May 2021 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
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