The long-lost remains of King Alfred the Great have been found buried under a car park, investigators claim.
Alfred died in 899, and his bones were repeatedly moved. He was buried in Winchester Cathedral until 1110, when his remains were moved to Winchester's Hyde Abbey, where they were interred before the high altar between the bodies of his wife and son.
The abbey was demolished after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, and the place was left in ruins.
In 1866, during construction of a workhouse on the site, the English antiquarian John Mellor excavated the area, found what he thought were Alfred's bones and had them reburied at nearby St. Bartholemew’s Church.
But in 2013, when archaeologists exhumed and carbon-dated the bones from St. Bartholomew’s churchyard, they proved to date from over 200 years after Alfred’s death - sparking Graham's interest and search.
He said: "Whoever’s bones they were, they weren’t Alfred’s. So, I decided to discover what happened to them.
"The quest has taken me 13 years.”
ALSO while I'm thinking of it: one of the fun things in the Norðleoda laga (which is more or less a list of wergelds in the Kingdom of Northumbria) is like. ok. a king's life is worth 15,000 thrymsas, right? which is the same amount as an archbishop or an aetheling (prince in the line of succession)
but
in addition to that 15,000 thrymsas which you have to pay to the king's direct family, you also have to pay another 15,000 thrymsas spread equally among all the freemen who served the king.
and that's so interesting, right? It's clearly and legally divided into "here is the money you pay for killing the person of the king" and "here is the money you pay for killing the crown".
and it makes so much sense! If the king dies, shit is chaotic for a long time. There is probably a war, there is probably some slaughter going on, there is almost certainly a massive disruption to trading and economies and the day-to-day administration of the kingdom. So, if you kill the king, everyone is owed damages.
There's a similar thing later on (I don't remember if it's for Northumbria or Mercia), where if you kill a member of the Church, you have to pay three times his wergeld. one third goes to the bishop (presumably as a stand-in for family), one third goes to the altar (which makes up for the loss to the Church), and one third is spread equally among all the households which that priest did rites for. because, you know. they don't have a priest for a bit.
idk I just really appreciate what that says about the relationship between the value of a person and the value of a role? and also honestly "the squabbles of the nobility have drastically affected life for the peasants, have 15,000 thrymsas" is a level of concern for the middle classes* which we could probably stand to aspire to today.
Lot of people assume Æthelred the Unready's epithet means "unprepared" but the reality is funnier because "Æðelræd Unræd" roughly translates to The Well-Advised One, Who Is Badly Advised
OK so I originally saw this on a Time Team (they're back!) video but today I was able to get (bad) photos for myself (the video was a Patreon exclusive so I didn't want to nick a screenshot and link back to it) so you're getting this post now.
So the Sutton Hoo site has been the source of many, many treasures. It's the British equivalent of Tutankhamen's tomb. The ship burial gave us some incredible treasures that shed new light on the Anglo-Saxons, including this helmet which is the most recognisable icon of Sutton Hoo (this is a replica but you can see the original at the British Museum - donated, not appropriated).
But my favourite thing in the museum - even over the Bromeswell bucket, which was ploughed up at some point but the bottom was recently found (again, thank you Time Team) and is from the Byzantine region if I remember rightly, but I digress - my favourite thing is this coin. I can't remember offhand if it was found in the ship burial or in the extensive cemetery for non-kings discovered under the site of the current visitor centre. But it's not Anglo-Saxon. Here it is:
So this is a coin from the reign of the Roman Emperor Honorius, who's quite an interesting figure in himself. He's the one who brought Roman rule in Britain to an official end, as the native Britons* had appealed for help to repel the Celts and the Picts (of Wales and Scotland) who, after the Romans had pulled back all their soldiers to deal with wider Empire problems, spotted that England was Free Real Estate and started helping themselves. Honorius, presumably more worried about problems closer to home and having already thought he was done with Britain, sent a letter back stating that the Britons* should look to their own defence. Roman rule was officially over (which left the Britons in a tight spot as, per my tour guide, they hadn't been allowed to own weapons under the Romans - but that's another story).
*Mostly in England, I think, and not really a cohesive group - more like a loose collection of tribes and communities that had been reduced to more or less Do What The Romans Say Or Else over the years
Anyway, because of this being a coin of Honorius, we can pretty conclusively date it to the late 4th-early 5th century. There's some wear on the coin, suggesting it didn't go into the ground fresh from the mint. There's also some (but less) wear on the frame around it, which is believed to be a later addition to allow it to be strung as a pendant**. And the archaeological context in which it was found backs that chronology up, because as I stated a million years ago near the start of the post, it was found in an Anglo-Saxon grave. That's from around the 7th century. Which means someone in the 600s AD (ish) was cremated with it (which might explain the molten-looking protrusion on the edge) or it was added to their grave when their ashes were buried. An Anglo-Saxon was wearing a centuries-old coin as jewellery, and it was obviously important enough to them to be a grave good.
**Obligatory reminder that we're interpreting the archaeology here, and it could have been sewn onto clothing or a saddle or hung from something as a tiny decoration - but it looks like a pendant, doesn't it? Sometimes that's the best you can do.
Why is this my absolute favourite, though? Well. When I was a kid in the 90s, I went to a hell of a lot of museums and castles. And what would you find in the gift shops?
[Image source]
And you bet I wore them. Centuries apart, people have always been people.
EMMA OF NORMANDY receiving the Encomium, in The Encomium of Queen Emma, c. 1050, British Library MS 33241 (Source)
"The Encomium demonstrates how central queenliness was to Emma's own self-image. The whole work is royal and queenly. The manuscript intended for Emma herself picked out royal names in half uncials, capitalized or highlighted them, and none more consistently than that of Emma herself. It opens with an illustration of her as a crowned, enthroned woman, with the author kneeling before her and her royal sons standing, slightly bowed, behind him. This is one of the earliest representations of a seated, majestic secular royal figure. It is an image of authoritative maternity but especially of regality. It is as queen, regina, that she is most often described in the Encomium, and her regal dignity is stressed at key points where it might be considered under- mined, as in her exile in Flanders. For the Encomium’s author and scribe Emma was always and overwhelmingly a queen. It is a common presentation of the king’s wife as patron, as in the chronicles which describe Emma and Edith in this role. It is the flattery of the commissioned author. But flattery works by playing to self-image. If this title summed up the author’s perceptions of a middle-aged king’s widow and mother who was his patron, his closeness to Emma suggests that it best reflected her preferred view of herself. In no other story is Emma as much the queen as in her own.
Her story is, however, no general praise poem. It is a specific justification and explanation of her actions geared to circumstances. Like the eleventh-century English chroniclers, or Henry of Huntingdon later, Emma too saw herself as a Norman-born wife and mother of Danish kings. She basked in the glory they reflected on her. Yet whilst the chroniclers telescoped her life and understood it through these identities, she used them to justify and explain it. Her apologia takes us closer to the problems which a woman’s several identities could pose: the tensions between her loyalties as a mother and wife, particularly to her sons by a first marriage after she has married again; the inadequacy of maternal ideals to provide a script for a woman faced with several children, especially by different husbands. Her self-presentation used the same identities, but more selectively than the Chroniclers; from what it omits and elides as well as from what it includes and emphasizes we learn what being a wife and mother meant in practice for a powerful woman.
The story she tells is not a whole-life narrative but a highly political one, appropriate to a particular stage. She chooses to present herself as the wife of a king, Cnut, not of kings, Ethelred and Cnut, and as a mother of all her sons. Emma’s is a Danish story, written in the reign of Harthacnut. It has no need to stress her first marriage, but nor could it have done. Emma’s story in 1041 had no place for Ethelred; it might have been different had it been written in 1043 during Edward’s reign, though not appreciably so. Family politics determined the dramatic events of 1035-40 in which Emma was so deeply involved and of which she has given us the most detailed surviving account. The family structures which produced them and the ideals available to discuss them were too much at odds to allow her case to be presented in other ways. Specific to circumstances as it is, it is Emma’s story as 1035-40 determined it should be told. This is not Emma’s narrative recollected in tranquillity on the eve of death, weighed, assessed and revalued when the end was apparent, but it is not clear that she could have told these years very differently even had she commissioned it then. The years 1035-40 might have figured less prominently. We might have heard more about Emma’s doings as queen, an identity of considerable importance to Emma herself. The set pieces about the much-loved queen, the hints of her sensitivity to queenly and royal dignity, and especially the equal share in rule which she stressed for herself as queen-wife of her husband and queen-mother of her sons might have been fleshed out with more details of the court politics and activities through which her queenship was exercised. That ‘might’ assumes an interest in and language to describe such exercise. The other eleventh-century stories, concerned with dramatic events rather than day-to-day politics, cast doubt on the existence of such a language. But Edith’s story suggests that it was being forged and was particularly appropriate to a queen."
— Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women's Power in Eleventh-Century England
The description of the Saxon gods in Wace's Brut, which is based on, and closely follows, Geoffrey's telling of this segment in HRB. It is a bit surreal to see the pagan Saxons explain their religion with Latin terms.
The identification of Odin/Woden with Mercury is in-line with the interpretio romana description of the primary Germanic deities provided by Tacitus in his Germania. Other Germanic deities conflated with the Greco-Roman gods are Thor (with Hercules), Tyr (with Mars) and, presumably, Freya (as "Isis" of the Suebi).
However, Wace's Brut retains Woden-as-Mercury but replaces Hercules and Mars with Jupiter, Saturn and Phoebus instead while Freya is listed without conflation. I can see Jupiter standing in for Thor, but Phoebus and Saturn are more difficult to conflate. Phoebus, in particular, is a curious addition since it's supposed to be an epithet of Apollo, unless it's a misspelling of Phobos, son of Ares/Mars.
Meanwhile, Layamon's version takes greater liberties with the Saxon deities by separating Woden from Mercury and then inserting even more names, including fictitious deities found in other Medieval literature such as Tervagant:
[...]
(Source: Brut/ The Chronicles of Britain, by Layamon)
It is amusing to imagine the Aesir's reactions to having Apollyon/Abaddon "on the team".
On a final note, Bede reports in his writings that Hengist and his brother Horsa are claimed to be descendants of Woden, like many pre-christian genealogies. Which means the Round Table potentially has an Aesir-descended member in the form of Osla Gyllellvawr, who could be identified with Octa, son of Hengist.
This all certainly adds to the amusing mishmash of cosmologies in Arthurian Legend, which already incorporates Christianity, Greek myth, Welsh Myth and, sometimes, Irish Myth.
I must not fear
Fear is the mind killer
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration
I will face my fear
I will permit it to pass over me and through me
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing
Only I will remain
