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Angevin Britain and Scandinavia

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Angevin Britain and Scandinavia ^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation / http://www.archive.org/details/angevinbritainscOOIeacuoft HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE VOLUMES PBEVIOUBLT ISSUED I THREE PHILOSOPHICAL POETS LUCBETIUS, DANTE, AND OOBTHE BT OEOBOE SAMTATANA II CHIVALRY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAUCER, HALOBT, 8PEN8EB, AND SHAKESPEABE BT WILLIAM HENBT SCHOnELD in THE COMEDIES OP HOLBERG BT OSCAR JAMES CAMPBELL, JB. IV MEDIAEVAL SPANISH ALLEGORY BT CHANDLEB BATHTON POST V MYTHICAL BARDS AND THE LIFE OF WILLIAM WALLACE BT WnXIAM HENBT SCHOnELD HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDED BY THE GENERAL EDITOR WILUAM HENRY SCHOFIELD PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY VI ANGEVIN BRITAIN AND SCANDINAVIA HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATFVE LITERATURE VOLUME VI ANGEVIN BRITAIN AND ~" SCANDINAVIA BY HENRY GODDARD LEACH SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: HtTMPHRBY HILFORD OZIORD TmrVEBSITT FBISS 1921 SEEN BY PRESERVATION SiiRVICtS DATE. -ML COPTRIGHT, IWl HABVARD UNIVEB8ITT PBESS LIBRARY 7593S5 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM HENRY SCHOFIELD MY TEACHER AND FRIEND WHOSE INSPIRATION, PRECEPT, AND COUNSEL DURING FIFTEEN YEARS HAVE MADE THIS WORK POSSIBLE PREFACE THE following chapters constitute the present stage of a study of mediaeval relations be- tween the literatures of the British and Scandina- vian countries, begun at Harvard University in 1906 at the suggestion of Professor William Henry Schofield, and continued under his inspiring super- vision until his death, June 24, 1920. A prelimi- nary summary may be found in a thesis presented at Harvard University in 1908, in part fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philos- ophy, and now deposited in the Harvard College Library. Three years of graduate study at Har- vard, 1905-1908, were followed by two years of research, 1908-1910, in the libraries of the Scan- dinavian countries as Travelling Fellow. The years 1910-1912 as instructor at Harvard, and 1912-1921 as secretary of the American-Scandina- vian Foundation, have not furnished leisure abun- dant for further investigation, but for such golden hours as gods, faculties, or trustees have given, the writer is profoundly grateful. In any case an incomplete guide-book in strange territory is better than none at all. The author's debt to his more learned friends, American, English, and Scandina- vian, who have helped him in his various essays into history and literature, is obvious. Especially viii PREFACE large is his gratitude to the Librarians of the Uni- versities of Harvard, Christiania, Copenhagen, and Uppsala, and the Royal Libraries in Copenhagen and Stockholm; to Halldor Hermannsson, Curator of the Fiske Collection, Cornell University, Pro- fessor F. N. Robinson of Harvard, Rektor Henrik Schiick of Uppsala, Professor Gustaf Cederschiold of Goteborg; the late Professor Moltke Moe, Pro- fessor Alexander Bugge, and Professor Knut Liestol of Christiania; the late Professor Axel Olrik, Pro- fessor Finnur Jonsson, Professor Johannes C. H. R. Steenstrup, Dr. Ellen Jorgensen, Dr. Gudmund Schiitte, and particularly to the late Dr. Kristian K&lund, Curator of the Arnamagnean Collection, of Copenhagen. The book in its final stage is an attempt to carry out the instructions of the General Editor, who read through the entire manuscript before his last illness, and desired this work, as far as possible, to conform to his high standard of com- bined essay and monograph. The revision, during Mr. Schofield's illness, was undertaken by my friend Mr. Roger S. Loomis (A.M. Harvard, B. Litt., Oxon.), who assumed responsibility for the control of facts, weeded out errors, supplied gaps, abridged, and rounded off rough edges with literary skill and sound scholarship. The office of publisher's reader, left vacant by Mr. Schofield's PREFACE ix death, luckily was assumed by Professor George Lyman Kittredge of Harvard University, and in his hands, like all manuscripts read by this master scholar, this book has acquired further merit. Also, I wish to thank Professor William Witherle Law- rence of Columbia University, who has read the proofs in the light of the theories advanced and made valuable suggestions. In a work of this compass it is impossible to maintain proportionate treatment. While some chapters are based almost entirely upon first- hand study of original sources, other chapters which lie outside the Angevin period, such as those on the Scandinavian settlement of Britain and on Epic Survivals, are necessarily rapid surveys of results obtained by specialists in pre-Conquest his- tory and literature. The chapter on Books of In- struction, also, falling outside the main subject of this study, the development of romantic narrative, professes to be only a summary of secondary ma- terials. It is my hope that any disappointment readers may feel in these chapters may be balanced by the fuller treatment of romance, ballad, pseudo- history, and saga which is only thus made possible. H. G. L. Harvard College Library, July 1, 1921. CONTENTS Preface Page vii I. The Scandinavian Settlement of Britain 3 II. Envoys and Traders U III. The Clergy 73 IV. Books of Instruction 114 V. Pseudo-Histories 129 VI. Western Romance 149 VII. Tristan in the North 169 VIII. Breton Lays 199 IX. Arthur and Charlemagne 227 X. Eastern Romance 265 XI. Epic Survivals 289 XII. Six Viking Sagas 313 XIII. Outlaw Legends 335 XIV. Ballads 356 XV. The Revival 377 Chart of Romances 382 Notes 389 Index 411 > \ CHAPTER I The Scandinavian Settlement of Britain In those days was the same language in England as in Norway and Denmark; but the speech changed when William the Bastard conquered England. Gunnlaugs Saga THE temperamental affinities of the English and Scandinavian races — their individual- ism, their hardihood, their enterprise — have roots very deep in the past.* For the Anglo-Saxon race, while speaking a language closely related to Ger- man, nevertheless possesses a deep infusion of blood from the North. Three times the island of Britain was overrun by men from the Danish pen- insula and Norway. While most of us recognize the Scandinavian origin of Danes and Normans, we have not so generally recognized that the Angles and Jutes were also Scandinavian in origin. But evidence has accumulated to show that they too had their home for centuries in Denmark and were allied in blood and customs to the men of the North. The Angles first appear as one of a group of seven tribes called the Ingaevones, who, Tacitus in his Germania (98 a.d.) states, were Uving along 3 4 SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN the southern coasts and on the islands of the Baltic. These tribes must have applied a similar name to themselves, for in Beowulf the Danes are called Ingwine, and the Anglo-Saxon Runic Poem says that Ing, apparently an early deity, "was first seen by men among the East Danes, but after- wards he departed eastward over the sea, a car speeding after him." Moreover, in Old Norse liter- ature the god Freyr is sometimes called Yngvi- Freyr, and the Swedish kings styled themselves Ynglingar. Of the Ingaevonic group Tacitus says: "There is nothing noteworthy about any one of these tribes except that in common they worship Nerthus, that is. Mother Earth, and believe that she inter- venes in human affairs and visits the peoples. On an island in the ocean there is an unviolated grove, and within it a consecrated car protected by a covering, which but one priest is permitted to touch. He knows when the goddess is present in her sanctuary, and walks beside her with great reverence as she is drawn along by cows. It is a season of rejoicing, and every place which the god- dess deigns to visit is a scene of festivity. No wars are undertaken, no arms are touched; every weapon is shut up; then only are peace and quiet to be observed, then only loved, until at length the same priest restores the goddess, weary of mortal SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN 5 intercourse, to her temple. Afterwards the car and its coverings, and if you are willing to believe it, the divinity herself, are washed in a secret lake. Slaves perform this oflBce, whom the same lake in- stantly swallows up. Hence arises a mysterious dread and a holy ignorance concerning what that may be which only those witness who are about to perish.'* When the native deities emerge in Old Norse lit- erature, Nerthus is no more. But the Danes wor- shipped a harvest goddess whom they called Gefion, whose oxen drew the island of Sjselland (Zealand) out of the Swedish Malaren and planted it in the sea as a home for the Danes. Among the seven Ingaevonic tribes Tacitus mentions the Anglii. The Danes probably first appear as the Daukiones, mentioned by Ptolemy in his Geography (ca. 150 a.d.) as inhabiting Skan- dia, the largest of three "islands" east of the penin- sula we now call Denmark. Skandia is doubtless, the modern Swedish province of Sk&ne, inhabited at this early period by Danes and mistaken for an island before the Baltic had been explored. The form Scadinavia is found even earlier in Pliny's Natural History ijll a.d.), where it is expressly stated that the "island" is of a magnitude as yet unascertained. Tacitus is the first to mention the Suionum Civitates or Swedes. The NorSmenn and 6 SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN NortJweg do not appear under these names until the time of Alfred the Great. A fourth great Scan- dinavian race, the Gotar, have given their name to the island of Gotland and to Gotland in Sweden, and the question of their relationship to Goths, Geats, and Jutes has provided many a bone for scholarly contention. The tendency in the past has been to conclude that because the Anglo-Saxon language as it ap- pears in Britain bears closest affinity to Low German, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes of the Con- tinent must all have been Germans.
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