Dragon Lords by Dragon Lords The History & Legends of Viking England (Retail)

Author:Dragon Lords The History & Legends of Viking England (Retail)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
ISBN: 9781786723604
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2018-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

Gaimar provides this as an explanation for all Danish attacks on England from the ninth century onwards, rationalising Viking activity as a coordinated attempt at national expansion. The Danes are imagined not as opportunistic plunderers but as would-be conquerors who target England specifically because their ancestors had once ruled there. Gaimar returns to this subject in his account of the meeting between Cnut and Edmund Ironside at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire in 1016. In common with a number of medieval historians, Gaimar says that on this occasion the two kings made preparations for a single combat to determine which of them should rule England, and in the middle of the duel he has them debating their respective rights to the English throne. As they face each other before beginning the combat, Cnut interrupts and speaks mult sagement, ‘very wisely’ (4307), about his grounds for claiming to rule England. He tells Edmund that they are both the sons of kings who have ruled the country, but that his ancestors held England many years before the coming of the Saxons:

e bien sachez loi[n]gtenement

l’urent Daneis nostre parent:

prés de mil anz l’out Dane aince[i]s

ke unc i entrast Certiz li reis.

Certiz, ço fu vostre ancïen,

e li reis Danes fu le mien.

Daneis le tint en chef de Deu,

Modret donat Certiz son feu:

il ne tint unkes chevalment,

de lui vindrent vostre parent.

Pur ço vus di, si nel savez,

si vus od mai [vus] combatez,

l[i] un de nus ad greignur tort,

ne savom liquels en ert mort.

Pur ço vus vol un offre fere

e ne m’en voil de rien retrere:

partum la terre dreit en dous,

l’une partie en aiez vus,

l’altre partie me remaigne!

(4315–33)

(Our Danish ancestors, I’ll have you know, have been ruling here for a very long time. Almost a thousand years before king Cerdic came to the throne, Danr was king. Cerdic was your ancestor, and king Danr was mine. A Dane held the land in chief from God. It was Mordred who granted Cerdic his fief; he never held it in chief, and your family is descended from him. In case you don’t already know, I’ll tell you that if you fight me, one of us is going to be in the wrong more than the other, though we don’t know which one of us will die as a result. This is why I’m willing to make you an offer – one that I will not seek to back down from: let us divide the kingdom exactly in two, with one part going to you and the other remaining with me.)9

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