Æthelred II ‘the Unready’ and the Role of Kingship in Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu

Abstract

Episodes of travel to foreign courts are a feature of Íslendingasögur — Icelandic family sagas. It is a trope particularly ubiquitous of the skáldasögur — poets’ sagas — where a skáld’s reputation as warrior and hero is augmented through interactions with historical figures of the Scandinavian world. The resultant depictions of various cultures and societies are one of the interesting features of the corpus. The late thirteenth-century Gunnlaugs saga provides a notably rich exemplar of the motif of the travelling skáld. The hero, Gunnlaug Illugason, travels widely, visiting the royal courts of England, Viking Dublin and Sweden, alongside various non-royal courts including that of Norway. Of particular interest is the portrayal of Æthelred II (978–1016) and the English court, which is not only at odds with the depictions of other courts within the narrative, but with the historical tradition of Æthelred’s fraught kingship. This article examines the differing portrayals of kingship within Gunnlaugs saga, questioning how Icelanders perceived English rulers in contrast to their Scandinavian counterparts, and whether Æthelred’s characterisation as a good king is authorial invention, or remnant cultural memory of his kingship.

ORCID

Matthew Firth http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1626-3123

Notes

1 For an overview of Æthelred’s reign, see Levi Roach, Æthelred the Unready (New Haven, 2016), especially at pp. 1-19 for how perceptions of his kingship have shifted over time.

2 R. Quirk (trans.) and P. G. Foote (ed.), Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu — The Story of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue, (London, 1957); hereafter cited as Gunnlaugs saga and chapter. Quotes from Gunnlaugs saga throughout this paper will be in English translation except where the Icelandic has especial relevance. Both English and Icelandic are drawn from this edition of the text.

3 Gunnlaugs saga 7 (stanza 5).

4 Margaret Clunies Ross, ‘The Skald Sagas as a Genre: Definitions and Typical Features’, in Russell Poole (ed.), Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas of Poets (Berlin, 2001), pp. 25-7, 32-5.

5 Gunnlaugs saga 7 (st. 5).

6 Gunnlaugs saga 6-9.

7 Gunnlaugs saga 8. Skarar (more commonly Skara) is located in the province of Västergötland in modern Sweden.

8 P.G. Foote, ‘Introduction’, in Quirk (trans.) and Foote (ed.), Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu, p. xv.

9 For an overview of the complicated political world around the North Sea in the early eleventh century, see Knut Helle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Volume 1, Prehistory to 1520 (Cambridge, 2003), particularly Part II, ‘From Vikings to Kings’, pp. 105-235.

10 Jónas Kristjánsson. Eddas and Sagas, trans. Peter Foote (Reykjavík, 2007), pp. 98-101, 104-05; Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ‘Kormakr the Poet and his Verses’, Saga-Book 17 (1966–69), pp. 22, 25-6; Simon Syvertsen, ‘The Price of Integrity’, in Aasta Marie Bjorvand Bjørkøy and Thorstein Norheim (eds), Literature and Honour (Oslo, 2017), p. 60.

11 Russell Poole, ‘Relation between Verses and Prose in Hallfreðar saga and Gunnlaugs saga’, in Russell Poole (ed.), Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas of Poets (Berlin, 2001), p. 161. Skáldatal, a catalogue of Icelandic court poets, records Gunnlaug as having been in service to Olof Skötkonung, Eirík Hákonarson, and Æthelred; Skáldatal, in Heimir Pálsson (ed.) and Anthony Faulkes (trans.), The Uppsala Edda (DG 11 4to) (London, 2012), pp. 100-01, 110-11, 114-15.

12 Gunnlaugs saga 11 (st. 20), p. 32 (n. 7); Einar Ólafur Sveinsson (ed.), Kormáks saga, in Íslenzk fornrit (ÍF) 8 (Reykjavík, 1939), p. 207, ch. 3; M. A. Jacobs, ‘Hon stóð ok starði: Vision, Love and Gender in Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu’, Scandinavian Studies 82 (2014), pp. 160-61; Poole, ‘Relation between Verses and Prose’, p. 162.

13 Poole, ‘Relation between Verses and Prose’, p. 163.

14 Gunnlaugs saga 10.

15 Gunnlaugs saga 11 (st. 16).

16 Ibid.

17 Robert G. Cook, ‘The Character of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue’, Scandinavian Studies 31 (1971), p. 1.

18 Ibid., pp. 13-14.

19 Kristjánsson, Eddas and Sagas, p. 284.

20 Jakob Benediktsson (ed.), Landnámabók, ÍF 1 (Reykjavík, 1968), pp. 54-5, 108, 213-14, 367: S15, H15, S75, H140, H320, H365; Skáldatal, pp. 100-01, 110-11.

21 Bjarni Einarsson (ed.), Egils saga (London, 2003), pp. 167-68, ch. 81.

22 Gunnlaugs saga 11 (st. 20); Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Skáldskaparmál (London, 2008), vol I, p. 63, st. 202.

23 Quirk (trans.) and Foote (ed.), Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu, p. 9; Kristjánsson, Eddas and Sagas, pp. 228-29, 256-57, 284-85.

24 For example, the descriptors given to both Hallfred and Gunnlaug are remarkably specific and identically worded — mikill ok sterkr [powerful and strong], jarpur á hár [chestnut of hair], nefljótur [ugly-nosed], Gunnlaugs saga 10; Einar Ólafur Sveinsson (ed.), Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds, ÍF 8 (Reykjavík, 1939), p. 141, ch. 2. In turn, Kormák and Gunnlaug both lose duels to ‘the first wound’ when their opponents’ weapons break on their shields, the shards of which deal very slight injury to the hero, Gunnlaugs saga 11; Kormáks saga 10.

25 The independence of the Icelandic Commonwealth from external political forces at this time is only relative to the heavy Norwegian influence of the Sturlung Era in the early thirteenth century, and it is of note that the decision of the Alþingi to formally accept Christianity as Iceland’s religion c. 1000 came as a result of pressure from the Norwegian King Olaf Tryggvason. Jenny Jochens, ‘Late and Peaceful: Iceland’s Conversion through arbitration in 1000’, Speculum, 74 (1999), pp. 644-66. The term ‘Insular’ is used herein to refer to the various courts and cultures of the Atlantic Archipelago including (but not limited to) England, Orkney and Viking Dublin.

26 Jesse Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London, 2001), pp. 82-4, 118-20.

27 Egils saga 50-51.

28 Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson (eds), Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa, ÍF 3 (Reykjavík, 1938), p. 124, ch. 5.

29 Egils saga 55, 64; Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa 5.

30 Gunnlaugs saga 6-7.

31 Margaret Clunies Ross, A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 21-3; Magnús Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England in Icelandic Medieval Texts (Toronto, 2005), p. 5.

32 Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 3-11; Matthew Townend, ‘Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England’, Review of English Studies 51 (2000), pp. 351, 356.

33 Gunnlaugs saga 6.

34 Gunnlaugs saga 6 (st. 2); Diana Whaley, ‘Representations of Skalds in the Sagas: Social and Professional Relations’, in Russell Poole (ed.), Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas of Poets (Berlin, 2001), p. 290.

35 Ibid.

36 Snorri Sturluson, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, in Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulks (trans), Heimskringla, (London, 2011), vol. I, pp. 184-5, ch. 49.

37 Gunnlaugs saga 8-9; Whaley, ‘Representations of Skalds in the Sagas’, p. 290.

38 Gunnlaugs saga 8.

39 See above, pp. 3-4. The account of the conflict between the hirðmenn, and its resolution, is likely a fiction constructed around the verse which pre-existed the prose narrative. The episode both allowed the saga-author to use a verse he perceived as genuine and resolved the conflict with Eirík to allow for future narrative development.

40 The terms drápa and dróttkvætt are not mutually exclusive, the latter refers to a metrical structure, while the former refers to a ‘long poem with a refrain’ which frequently employs dróttkvætt measure in its stanzas, but not prescriptively so. Clunies Ross, A History of Old Norse Poetry, pp. 33-9.

41 Gunnlaugs saga 9, there is little to support Gunnlaug’s boastful claims.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.; A flokkr is a ‘long poem without refrain’ as opposed to a drápa which has a refrain. Clunies Ross, A History of Old Norse Poetry, p. 33

44 For example, the verse spoken to Sigtrygg ends with the line þat er drápu lag [it is in drápa-form], Gunnlaugs saga 8 (st. 8); in turn we are told the Orcadian earl listens to the verse Gunnlaug composed for him ok var þat flokkr [and it was a flokkr], Gunnlaugs saga 8.

45 Whaley, ‘Representations of Skalds in the Sagas’, p. 290-91.

46 Gunnlaugs saga 8.

47 Geraldine Barnes, ‘The Medieval Anglophile: England and its Rulers in Old Norse History and Saga’, Parergon, 10 (1992), pp. 16-18.

48 Gunnlaugs saga 7.

49 Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 116.

50 Dorothy Whitelock (trans.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London, 1961), p. 86, C-E 1002; S 909, (Text: Spencer Robert Wigram’, The Cartulary of the Monastery of St Frideswide at Oxford [Oxford, 1895], vol. I, pp. 2-7).

51 Foote, ‘Introduction’, p. xxiv; Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 5.

52 See for example: Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, Diana Greenaway (ed. and trans.) (Oxford, 1996), pp. 340-41, vi. 2; J.A. Giles (ed. and trans.), Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History (London, 1849), vol. I, pp. 486-88, 1002; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson, and M Winterbottom (eds and trans) (Oxford, 1998), vol. I, pp. 300-01, ii.177. See also, Simon Keynes, ‘The Massacre of St Brice’s Day (13 November 1002)’, in Niels Lund (ed.) Beretning fra seksogtyvende tværfaglige vikingesymposium (Aarhus, 2007), pp. 43-55.

53 Gunnlaugs saga 10.

54 See for example: Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, Karsten Friis-Jensen (ed.) and Peter Fisher (trans.) (Oxford, 2014), vol. I, pp. 728-35, X.14.1-7; Snorri Sturluson, Óláfs saga Helga, in Finlay and Faulks (trans), Heimskringla, vol. II, pp. 147-49, ch. 130-131.

55 Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, 1180–1280 (Ithaca, 2006), pp. 3-6, 86 (n. 5); Kristjánsson, Eddas and Sagas, pp. 49, 283-85. It is also possible that the author was conflating Knút’s activities with those of his father, Sveinn, who was actively raiding England in the years around 1004.

56 Gunnlaugs saga 10.

57 See for example: Cook, ‘The Character of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue’, pp. 12-4; Diana Whaley, ‘Introduction’, in Diana Whaley (ed.), Sagas of the Warrior Poets (London, 2002), p. 32.

58 Gunnlaugs saga 7.

59 Byock, Viking Age Iceland, pp. 134-7.

60 Gunnlaugs saga 6, 9.

61 Gunnlaugs saga 9, 10.

62 Gunnlaugs saga 7.

63 Gunnlaugs saga 9.

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Matthew Firth

Matthew Firth

Matthew Firth is a PhD candidate at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, researching cultural memory and the representations of early English kingship in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. He has published articles on pre-Conquest kings and queens and the transmission and reception of their narratives over time in a number of journals including The Royal Studies Journal (forthcoming), Comitatus, The Melbourne Historical Journal, The Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, Cerae and Eras.