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The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor: its version of the Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Christine Fell
Christine Fell
Affiliation:
The University of Nottingham
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Extract

The fourteenth-century compiler of the saga of Edward the Confessor, Saga Játvarðar konungs hins helga, supplemented his material on the king with history, anecdote and legend on various topics. His final chapter contains an account of the Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium after the Norman Conquest. No historian doubts that this event took place. There is fairly full documentation from Byzantium itself and the accounts of the Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic and the hagiographer Goscelin are not unknown. But in general the medieval chroniclers in England make no reference to it and the scholars who have worked on Játvarðar saga, perhaps insufficiently aware of supporting Byzantine evidence, have tended to dismiss the account as a fabrication. Gudbrand Vigfusson calls it ‘an extraordinary story’. Professor Jón Helgason writes, with a characteristic touch of fine disdain, that ‘the saga concludes with the episode of Earl Sigurðr of Gloucester, who after the Conquest left England, together with other English malcontents, and with the Greek emperor's consent settled in a country six days' journey north-east of Constantinople. Here they gave the towns such English names as London and York. The source of this far-fetched story is unknown.’ H. L. Rogers says no more than ‘evidently a similar tradition was known to the Anglo-Norman Ordericus Vitalis’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 3 , December 1974 , pp. 179 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 179 note 1 On this see my ‘The Icelandic Saga of Edward the Confessor: the Hagiographic Sources’, ASE 1 (1972), 247–58.Google Scholar

page 179 note 2 Icelandic Sagas, ed. Gudbrand, Vigfusson, Rolls Series (1887), 1, xvii.Google Scholar

page 179 note 3 Byskupa Sqgur, ed. Helgason, Jón, Corp. Cod. Islandicorum Mcdii Aevi 19 (Copenhagen, 1950), 22.Google Scholar

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page 179 note 5 ‘Clearly full of ambiguities’, Sigfús, Blöondal, Væringjasaga (Reykjavík, 1954), p. 258.Google Scholar

page 180 note 1 Sigfús, Blöndal, ‘Nabites the Varangian’, Classica et Mediaevalia 2 (1939), 147.Google Scholar

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page 181 note 1 Vigfusson, , Icelandic Sagas, pp. 398–400.Google Scholar

page 181 note 2 Miss Ciggaar's article, which includes a transcript of the relevant Sections of the Chronicon Laudunensis and lists previous publication of the manuscripts, is to appear shortly in Revue des Études Byzantines.

page 181 note 3 See my ‘A Note on Pálsbók’, Med. Scandinavia (forthcoming).

page 182 note 1 My transcripts are from Phihipps 1880. My thanks are due to the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, for permission to use this manuscript.

page 182 note 2 The saga writer cannot have failed to recognize the term drenc borrowed into Old English from ON drengr. But in the Chronicon it is equated with a specific rank, a meaning which it acquired in late Old English and which survives into Middle English. ON drengir would not have suggested to the audience a rank equivalent to barúnar, but rather either the personal followers of the jarl (in which case there would have been more than eight) or the general body of emigrants whose presence is covered by the term mikit lið ok fritt.

page 183 note 1 The Flateyjarbók reading is ‘Guðina junga Ballduinasun jaris’.

page 184 note 1 Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, E. O., Camden 3rd ser. 92 (London, 1962), 291.Google Scholar

page 185 note 1 von Feilitzen, Olof, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book (Uppsala, 1937), pp. 361–3.Google Scholar

page 185 note 2 This is the E text. (Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Earle, J. and Plummer, C. (1892–1899) 1, 208)Google Scholar. The D text has the name form Sigwarð.

page 185 note 3 The only piece of evidence against Siward's leadership of the emigration is Florence of Worcester's statement that Siward Barn was one of the prisoners released by William on his deathbed in 1087. But Florence may have been relying on nothing more than the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's list of rebels against William and the issue could have been confused by the presence of two Siwards at Ely. The Durham charters including Siward Barn in the witness-lists are forgeries. On the other hand recent scholarship mentioning the leader of the emigrants as ‘Siward, dont les chroniques ont conservé le nom’ has as its sole source Játvarðar saga, translated into Latin by Thormodus Torfæus in 1711, quoted from there by the nineteenth-century historian Augustin Thierry and adopted uncritically as late as 1953 by Janin, R., La Géographic Ecclésiastique de l'Empire Byzantin (Paris, 1953), p. 591.Google Scholar

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page 186 note 1 Vasiliev, A. A., ‘The Opening Stages of the Anglo-Saxon Immigration to Byzantium in the Eleventh Century’, Annales de l'Institut Kondakov 9 (1937), 65Google Scholar. Anyone working in this field must be deeply indebted to Vasiliev's research. I have relied heavily on this article for the Byzantine material.

page 186 note 2 Von Feilitzen, , Pre-Conquest Personal Names, p. 372.Google Scholar

page 187 note 1 Morkinshinna, ed. Unger, C. R. (Christiania, 1867), pp. 12–13Google Scholar; Flateyjarbók, ed. Vigfusson, G. and Unger, C. R. (Christiania, 1860–1808) 111, 304–5.Google Scholar

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page 188 note 1 Blöndal, ‘Last Exploits’, p. 2, and Gustav, Storm, ‘Harald Haardraade og Væringerne i de græske Keiseres Tjeneste’, Hisiorisk Tidsskrift 2nd ser. 4 (Christiania, 1884), 369–70.Google Scholar

page 188 note 2 As Freeman, E. A. pointed out (The History of the Norman Conquest, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1870–1879), p. 847)Google Scholar, it is an interesting comment on the haphazard nature of our sources that we hear of Wuifric's embassy only because he donated relics of St John Chrysostom to Abingdon. The record is in Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Joseph, Stevenson, RS (1858), 11, 46–7.Google Scholar

page 190 note 1 Details will appear in Miss Ciggaar's forthcoming article in Revue des Études Byzantines.Google Scholar

page 191 note 1 Acta Sanctorum Maii vi (Antwerp, 1688), 410.Google Scholar

page 191 note 2 Vitalis, Ordericus, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. Augustus le, Prévost (Paris, 1838–1855) 11, 171–2, and 111, 169 and 490Google Scholar. For the first of Orderic's references see also The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis 11, bks six and iv, ed. Marjorie, Chibnall (Oxford, 1969), 202–4.Google Scholar

page 192 note 1 Vasiliev, , ‘Opening Stages’, p. 53.Google Scholar

page 192 note 2 Anna, Comnena, Alexiad, trans. Sewter, E. R. A. (Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 95–6 and 100.Google Scholar

page 192 note 3 Jonathan, Shepard, ‘The English and Byzantium’, Tradilio 29 (1973), 53–92.Google Scholar

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page 195 note 1 Pontieri, , De Rebus Gestis, p. 75.Google Scholar

page 195 note 2 I am indebted to Professor Donald Bullough of the University of St Andrews for arguing this case. He writes (in a personal communication): ‘To offer Kherson to the “Foreign Legion” which was no longer needed at Kibotos fits so neatly that I am inclined once again to give the saga even more credit than you have done’.

page 195 note 3 For this material see a forthcoming article by Jonathan, Shepard, ‘Another New England?’.Google Scholar

page 196 note 1 Robert, Byron, The Byzantine Achievement (London, 1929), p. 147, n. 1.Google Scholar