History, Poetry, and ‘National’ Identity in Anglo-Saxon England and the

Carolingian Empire

Jennifer Neville

Troia capta est. Exinde origo Francorum fuit. Priamo primo regi habuerunt; postea per historiarum libros scriptum est, qualiter habuerunt regi Friga. Postea partiti sunt in duabus partibus. Una pars perrexit in Macedoniam, vocati sunt Macedonis …. Nam et illa alia pars, quae de Friga progressa est, ab Olexo per fraude decepti, tamen non captivati, nisi exinde eiecti, per multis regionibus pervacantis cum uxores et liberos, electum a se regi Francione nomen, per quem Franci vocantur. (Fredegar, Chronicles II.4–5)Troy was taken. From this event came the origin of the Franks. They had Priam as their first king. Afterwards, as is written in history books, they similarly had Friga as king. Later they were divided into two parts. One part marched into Macedonia, and they became the Macedonians …. And the other part, which advanced under Friga, had been deceived through fraud by Odysseus, but nevertheless they were never enslaved, only exiled by this event. With their wives and sons they migrated through many regions. A king by the name of Francio was chosen by them. From his name they are called Franks.1

With this interesting and no doubt completely fabricated story, Fredegar wove the origins of the Franks into world history in the middle of the seventh century.2 In the late twentieth century, as 1 Text is taken from MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 2, ed. B. Krusch (Hannover, 1888), pp. 45–46. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.2 The identity of the story’s fabricator in uncertain; it could have been Fredegar himself, but he equally could have derived the story from common belief; see J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings and Other Studies in Frankish History

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nationalism and identity become increasingly topical,3 it is easy to see the political implications of this act: Fredegar does not simply add his people to the end of a pre-existing, unchanging chain of events; he picks out and privileges certain models which justify and grant prestige to the narrative he creates of and for his people.4

This short passage contains at least three strategies by which Fredegar seeks to ensure the validity of the Franks and his account of them. First, he links up his ancestors with Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Empire: like their illustrious ‘cousins’, the Franks are destined for extensive rule. Empire runs in the family. Second, he asserts that his people have always been free: although they trace their ancestry to a people known primarily for having been defeated by the Greeks, the Franks have never been enslaved. Thus, Fredegar implies, they never will be. Third, and most important, Fredegar presents a myth of origin parallel to that of the Romans:5 just as Aeneas laid the foundations for the mighty Roman Empire, so Friga, here

(London, 1962), p. 80. For discussion of the authorship of Fredegar’s Chronicle, see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Fourth Book of the Chonicle of Fredegar with its Continuations (London, 1960), pp. xiv–xxviii; Walter Goffart, ‘The Fredegar Problem Revisited’, Speculum 38 (1963), 206–41 (reprinted in Rome’s Fall and After [London and Ronceverte, 1989], pp. 319–54); A. Erikson, ‘The Problem of Authorship in the Chronicle of Fredegar’, Eranos 63 (1965), 47–76; Roger Collins, Fredegar, Authors of the Middle Ages 13 (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 91–96.3 The discussion of these issues is already vast. Recent relevant publications include: E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983); Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986); Homi K. Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London and New York, 1990), pp. 291–322; E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1992); Craig Calhoun, Concepts in Modern Thought: Nationalism (Minneapolis, 1997); Myths and Nationhood, ed. Geoffrey Hosking and George Schopflin (London, 1997); Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge, 1997).4 For discussion of some of the implications of narrative in annalistic and chronicle writing, see Hayden White, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, Critical Inquiry 7 (1980), 5–27.5 For discussion of the role of the myth of origin, see Allen J. Frantzen, The Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick, NJ, 1990), p. 23.

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revealed as Aeneas’ brother, laid the foundations for Frankish domination over surrounding peoples.6 At the same time, the reference to Aeneas suggests that Fredegar’s account is parallel to and perhaps even as authoritative as Virgil’s Aeneid.

It is not difficult to imagine that this story could have been convenient for someone like Charlemagne, who consciously styled himself as a successor equal if not superior to the emperors of Rome, but Fredegar is not writing for the benefit of the imperial Carolingians.7 Likewise, while one could argue that he plays the same role as Charlemagne’s court-poets a few generations later, his story of the origins of the Franks is not merely propaganda for the Merovingian dynasty.8 Fredegar’s story clearly justifies and glorifies kings, but the central ruling figure is not the only ‘object’ constructed by his text. The projected audience, the people supposed to have descended from Friga and Francio, is also a creation of Fredegar’s text. That is, while we can imagine a group of people who were collectively flattered by being linked to Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire, it is the act of linking and flattering that brings this people into being. I choose the verb ‘imagine’ deliberately: in fact, we create ‘the Franks’ when we read a text like Fredegar’s and imagine a people being flattered by it. The audience that Fredegar addressed might also have imagined itself and thus defined itself as a single entity rather than a multitude of competing and cooperating groups in proximity with each other. On the other hand, it might not have, despite the text’s encouragement. In fact, it is possible that Fredegar’s text did not

6 Aeneas et Frigas fertur germani fuissent ‘It is said that Aeneas and Friga were brothers’ (Fredegar, Chronicles II.8).7 Charlemagne was superior because Christian. Cf. John Scottus Eriugena’s stance on the ancient poets in his poem, ‘My poetry and my times’, in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. and trans. Peter Godman (London, 1985), pp. 300–04, particularly lines 1–16.8 For an overview of Carolingian court poetry, see Mary Garrison, ‘The Emergence of Carolingian Latin Literature and the Court of Charlemagne (780–814)’, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 111–40. See also Goodman, ‘Introduction’, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. See below for further discussion of Carolingian court poetry.

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find an audience willing to imagine itself in this way for centuries; it has been argued that he ‘came into his own’ only in the ninth century, when he suddenly became ‘official history’.9

The fraught nature of constructions of ‘the people’, especially nationalist constructions, is normally considered to be a particularly twentieth-century issue.10 Anglo-Saxon and Frankish texts, however, display similarly complex and competing constructions of identity, which in both their ambitions and their twisting incompatibilities seem as postmodern as many postcolonial texts. I shall not propose here a radical reassessment of the modernity of nationalism, but I shall address some of the strategies that these early texts exploited in their creation of ‘imagined communities’, strategies which have clear parallels in modern nationalist activity.11 In pursuing these strategies I draw upon material from two genres (chronicles and heroic verse), a large geographical area, and a time period spanning four centuries. I shall not argue for an unchanging model of strategies in these different genres, places, and times. At the same time, however, these genres, places, and times are not uncrossable barriers. Poems like The Battle of Brunanburh and The Death of Edward are clearly implicated in the chronicles in which they appear.12 Likewise, the construction of the idea of an English kingdom or nation reflected and perhaps also influenced the construction of identity taking place in the

9 See Wallace-Hadrill, Long-Haired Kings, p. 72.10 For discussion of the tensions involved in such constructions, see, for example, Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation’, passim.11 The term is borrowed from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London and New York, 1991) and will be discussed below.12 For discussion of how heroic poetry contributed to the political aims of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, see Martin Irvine, ‘Medieval Textuality and the Archaeology of Textual Culture’, in Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed. Allen J. Frantzen (Albany, NY, 1991), pp. 181–210. Cf. also Janet Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of the English Nation’, in Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity, ed. Allen J. Frantzen and John D. Niles (Gainesville, FA, 1997), pp. 60–85.

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Carolingian empire.13 Finally, Fredegar’s resurgence of popularity after many years suggests that such texts may continue to speak to audiences, to create ‘peoples’, despite the different contexts in which such texts find themselves through time.

Benedict Anderson defines a nation as ‘an imagined political community…both inherently limited and sovereign’.14 What is important for my discussion is this idea of imagining, of fabricating a concept of a community: nations and other communities exist only when the people residing in them believe that they exist. This often unsubstantiated belief is necessary, because most communities are too large for the people inhabiting them actually to meet, know, or even hear all or most of their co-members, and thus for there to be true ‘communion’ between them. On its most basic level, then, an imagined community like a nation is a fiction:15 it is a belief that perhaps completely unrelated people share a common identity. Fredegar’s story of the origins of the Franks is clearly this kind of fiction, but while a nation may be a kind of imagined community, an imagined community is not necessarily a nation. Most modern thinkers would consider the concept of the nation to be almost exclusively a twentieth-century phenomenon, particularly because they perceive it to rely on the idea of citizenship.16 As a result, despite the fact that many critics believe that Anglo-Saxon England in the tenth century was already becoming a nation, I shall discuss strategies for building imagined communities rather than nation-building itself.17 Yet it is important to be aware that the term

13 For further discussion of this relationship, see below.14 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 6.15 Cf. Franz H. Bäuml, ‘Medieval Texts and Two Theories of Oral-Formulaic Composition: A Proposal for a Third Theory’, New Literary History 16 (1984), 31–50.16 ‘Nations are made by internal processes of struggle, communication, political participation, road building, education, history writing and economic development as well as by campaigns against external enemies’ (Calhoun, Concepts in Modern Thought: Nationalism, p. 79; emphasis added). For a list of features characteristic of the nation, see Calhoun, pp. 4–5.17 For the Anglo-Saxon creation of the idea of ‘England’, see, for example, Roberta Frank, ‘The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History’, in The Wisdom of Poetry: Essays in Early English Literature in Honor of Morton W. Bloomfield, ed. Larry D.

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‘imagined community’ cannot be used unquestioningly as a safe replacement for the perhaps anachronistic term ‘nation’. Its definition is already implicated in the modern idea of a nation ― unavoidably, as the term itself is borrowed from the definition of a nation. Although this implication is unavoidable, it does not necessarily invalidate the term: the kinds of strategies operating in different kinds of socio-political groups can be usefully compared, so long as every imagined community is not thought of as a proto-, undeveloped, or failed nation.

In Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian Empire, attempts to build imagined communities are often initiated by kings needing more than their own resources to achieve their ambitions.18 Both Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian kings resort to a similar collection of techniques through which they seek to bind their peoples not only to the figure of the king but also together. These similarities have raised questions of connections between efforts on either side of the Channel, particularly regarding the influence of Carolingian strategies on Anglo-Saxon kings.19 For example, it has been argued that many of Alfred’s policies, even his fortification programme, consciously echo developments on the continent during the reign of Charles the Bald.20 Similarly, the later coronation of Edgar might owe something to the continental example of Otto the Great.21 It lies beyond the scope of this paper to determine the extent of Carolingian influence on Anglo-Saxon identity; nevertheless, it is useful to note that similar strategies work on both sides of the Channel and in different times, as they

Benson and Siegfried Wenzel (Kalamazoo, MI, 1982), pp. 53–65, at 63; Patrick Wormald, ‘The Making of England’, History Today 45.2 (1995), 26–32, at 32.18 Kings are not, of course, the only ones attempting to build imagined communities; one of the most important of such attempts, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, does not have an obvious royal connection. For further discussion of Bede’s text, see below.19 See, for example, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Franks and the English in the Ninth Century: Some Common Historical Interests’, History 35 (1950), 202–18.20 Janet L. Nelson, ‘“A King Across the Sea”: Alfred in Continental Perspective’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series 36 (1986), 45–68.21 Janet L. Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London and Ronceverte, 1986), pp. 239–57; cf. Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems, p. 70.

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had indeed worked for thousands of years throughout the ancient world.22 These strategies for binding the people together, particularly under the figure of the king, include mass mobilisation for war, public spectacles like coronation ceremonies, and public assemblies.23 Both Anglo-Saxon and Frankish kings made liberal use of all these. Whether or not strategies like coronation ceremonies are employed with full consciousness of their effects, such activities work to bring together otherwise widely scattered people and involve them in a shared activity. These activities thus provide a basis for imagining a community that might continue even after the war, coronation, or assembly is over.

Religion proved central to the communities created during this period. For Gregory of Tours, for example, identity resided not so much in language or ethnic affiliation as in conformance to the kind of behaviour demanded and judged by the Christian God.24

Particularly under Charlemagne, Christian faith and Christian law provided a shared identity that both bound a disparate population together and marked it as distinct from other communities.25

Within such a framework, a king might develop an imagined community in a direct and apparently self-conscious manner. For example, we might look at Alfred’s policy of translating and distributing the books ‘niedbeðearfosta…eallum monnum to 22 See, for example, Smith, Ethnic Origins, pp. 50–57.23 For discussion of the role that mass conscription plays in the formation of ethnic groups (which may or may not become nations), see Smith, Ethnic Origins, pp. 37–41. For discussion of the confluence of secular and ecclesiastic interests that made such ceremonies possible and desirable, see Richard Humble, The Fall of Saxon England (London, 1975), p. 116. For public assemblies, see especially the Carolingian Annals from St-Bertin and Fulda, which are full of references to gatherings of ‘all the Franks’. See, for example, The Annals of St-Bertin, trans. Janet L. Nelson, Ninth-Century Histories 1 (Manchester and New York, 1991), p. 27, s.a. 833.24 Walter Goffart, ‘Foreigners in the Histories of Gregory of Tours’, Florilegium 4 (1982), 80–99 (reprinted in his Rome’s Fall and After, pp. 275–91).25 The importance of Christian identity to these communities has been addressed fully elsewhere and so will not be explored in detail here. See especially Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity AD 200–1000 (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, 1996), pp. 276–98.

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wiotonne’, ‘most needful for all men to know’26 as an attempt to create something like the modern apprehension of ‘everyone’ reading the shared newspapers, an apprehension which has been picked out as an important factor in the creation of modern nationhood. Anderson notes that reading the newspaper is an ‘extraordinary mass ceremony’, a ‘substitute for morning prayers’, in which, although sitting alone in the privacy of his own head, ‘each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion.’27 Leaving aside the interesting fact that the strictly modern phenomenon of nationalism is said to be a ‘substitute’ for a ceremony (morning prayers) that might have created a similar sense of identity in the pre-modern era, it is likely that Alfred was unable to achieve the simultaneity or the scope envisioned by the modern reader of newspapers.28 Nevertheless, he did create a community of readers, a group of people who could imagine each other through their shared reading even if they could never meet, and who, because of the privileged position granted by the possession of the technology of literacy, might have had the power and prestige to impress their conception of community on others.29

Across the Channel, Charlemagne, too, had promoted learning: his patronage was ‘a conscious attempt to promote the ecclesiastical and political unity of the expanding dominions of

26 From Alfred’s letter prefacing his translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, in King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet, EETS 45 (London, 1871), p. 6.27 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 35. Even in a modern nation, Anderson appears to expect only male communicants.28 Cf. Anderson’s ideas about time (Imagined Communities, p. 33). This is a very different conception of time from that discussed by Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems’, p. 68.29 See Franz H. Bäuml, ‘Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy’, Speculum 55 (1980), 237–65. Note that Alfred made literacy a requirement of those in office. See Asser’s Life of King Alfred, chapter 110 (translated in Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, trans. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge [Harmondsworth, 1983], pp. 109–10).

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the Franks’.30 He might also have come very close to prescribing the ‘extraordinary mass ceremony’ discussed by Anderson, for Charlemagne not only met with his people to consult them regarding their judgement and mobilised his mass armies every year; he also demanded litanies and fasts from all his subjects when he went on campaign.31 The enormity and significance of this demand warrants some thought, for it is one thing for a king to hope that his subjects might pray for him and quite another to demand that they all converge in their churches at the same time and participate in a service written particularly for the benefit of his military activities. This demand was apparently taken quite seriously: bishops were to anathematise anyone failing to observe a general call for prayer and fasting. As McCormick notes, this mass activity has the effect not only of harnessing the ‘putative spiritual strength of his subjects’, but also of obliging his subjects ‘to focus for nine evenings on his rulership, its exercise, and its difficulties’.32 I would add that such activity also has the effect of creating an imagined community, a community perhaps more extensive and universal than that of the modern newspaper-reader, since there are many newspapers among which sub-communities may divide themselves but only one Charlemagne for whom all had to pray. Note also that such a ‘prayer-program’ would draw together the whole population, unlike mass conscription to the army, which would only involve men of fighting age, or Alfred’s translation program, which would directly affect only the literate.

A king might also draw upon, if not actively recruit, the services of a writer like Fredegar (or perhaps even Otfrid) to

30 Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. Godman, p. 4.31 For Charlemagne’s consultation with his people, see, for example, Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers (Ann Arbor, MI, 1972), p. 49, s.a. 773. For discussion of ‘the judgement of the Franks’, see Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe, p. 108. For discussion of Charlemagne’s prescribed litanies and fasts, see Michael McCormick, ‘The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages: Crisis, Litanies, and the Carolingian Monarchy’, Viator 15 (1984), 1–23.32 McCormick, ‘Liturgy of War’, p. 12.

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contribute to his other strategies.33 In fact, in calling upon the Franks’ ethnic heritage, Fredegar exploits perhaps the most traditional and effective method to link individuals together, to create a ‘people’, for one of the most common and apparently ‘natural’ bases for an imagined community is ethnicity.34 On its most basic level, Fredegar’s story merely tells of the wanderings and the glory of one particular group of people said to be related to each other; it is a story which gives value to blood-ties and thus provides a group of people with a sense of identity, a way of imagining their connections to each other.

As Fredegar’s story shows, however, there is more to this community than blood-ties, and there is more to ethnicity than common descent. Smith suggests that an ethnic community normally identifies itself by the possession of six primary features: a collective name, a common myth of descent, a shared history, a distinctive shared culture, an association with a specific territory, and a sense of solidarity.35 These ideas ― particularly the role of the myth of origin in defining an ethnic community ― can offer additional insights to another, rather more famous myth of origin: the story of Scyld Scefing in Beowulf.36

33 Otfrid dedicates his Evangelienbuch to Louis the German, and his text makes appeals to a sense of Frankish identity, particularly as displayed in language, but there is no evidence that Louis requested it; the fact that Otfrid addresses it to high-ranking churchmen as well suggests that there was no explicit or exclusive royal patronage. For text, see Otfrids Evangelienbuch, ed. L. Wolff (Tübingen, 1973); for translation into German, see Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Kommentar zu Otfrids Evangelienbuch I (Bonn, 1976). For discussion of Otfrid’s letter to Archbishop Liutbert (Ad Liutbertum), see ibid. pp. 28-72, see also Francis P. Magoun, Jr., ‘Otfrid’s Ad Liutbertum’, PMLA 58 (1943), 869–90. Smith notes the importance of priests and monks as ‘transmitters and conduits of…symbolism’: see Ethnic Origins, p. 42.34 For discussion of how ‘natural’ such groups are, see Smith, Ethnic Origins, pp. 8-13.35 Smith, Ethnic Origins, pp. 22–30.36 Citations from Beowulf are taken from Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. F. Klaeber, 3rd edn (Boston, MA, 1950). All other citations from Old English poetry are taken from The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. G.P. Krapp and E.V.K. Dobbie, 6 vols (New York, 1931–42).

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That the Scyld Scefing episode is part of the internal structure of the poem is well established.37 Here, however, I would like to consider the story of Scyld Scefing not so much as a model directed at events within the poem, but rather as a model directed at people and events outside the poem. That is, I would like to consider this short, elliptical story as a myth of origin, with significance not only for the literary Danes ― the people within the text ― but also for the historical Anglo-Saxons, who, like Fredegar’s Franks, might have been encouraged by such a story to consider themselves as a people. On its most basic level, the Scyld Scefing story is about the founder of a dynasty, a founder with perhaps divine origins.38 Despite the focus on this important individual, very little is revealed about him or his origins: he came ofer yðe ‘over the waves’ (46a) as a feasceaft ‘destitute’ (7a) child, but the poem does not explain why this child was taken in, whether he was recognised as special, as Beowulf is later in the poem (Beowulf 247b–51a), why the people were lacking a king at the time, or how this child came to rule them. Perhaps more surprisingly, this hero’s true identity, whether divine or royal, is never revealed. Instead, the text focuses upon what he did. These acts were superficially simple: he ruled gloriously, and he left a son who left a son who left a son who left a son. Although there apparently was a time before Scyld Scefing (including, perhaps, the reign of Heremod, the bad king later mentioned as a warning to Beowulf), the arrival of this mysterious figure is picked out as a beginning point. In fact, it is picked out as the beginning point, not only for this story, but for this people as a whole.39 After the darkness of a lordless existence, Scyld Scefing gives the Danes prosperity, protection,

37 See, for example, Adrien Bonjour, The Digressions in Beowulf, Medium Aevum Monographs 5 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 3–11; Pamela Gradon, Form and Style in Early English Literature (London, 1971), p. 128; Edward B. Irving, Jr., A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven and London, 1968), p. 44.38 R.W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 87–89; Gustav Neckel, ‘Scyld Scefing’, Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift 2 (1910), 678–79; R.D. Fulk, ‘An Eddic Analogue to the Scyld Scefing Story’, Review of English Studies 40 (1989), 313–22.39 Cf. Frantzen, Desire for Origins, p. 23.

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and an identity. They are henceforth ‘the Scyldings’ (as they are called at line 30b, and throughout the rest of the poem).

It is common (and prudent) to avoid making statements about ethnicity in too much detail when Beowulf is discussed, since the issue raises irresolvable questions about the audience and date of the poem.40 Nevertheless, it is still possible to see what kind of role such a story might play in a community, for within the story of Scyld Scefing alone we have evidence for the first three of Smith’s features: a collective name, a myth of descent, and a shared history. However problematic ethnicity may be in the context of the composition and reception of Beowulf, we can view this story not only as a model for kingship within the poem but also as part of some ethnic community’s definition of itself. The story of Scyld Scefing provides a way in which the members of a community might explain who they were, why they were the way they were, and what their destiny might be.

We may never unravel why and how the Anglo-Saxons used this particular myth of origin, this definition which, for much of the Anglo-Saxon period, was unavoidably related not only to the Self but also to the Other (that is, the Vikings).41 In this regard it is important to note that interest in this myth of origin is not limited to Beowulf alone; other Anglo-Saxon texts pursuing similar tactics of self-identification link up clearly identifiable and datable Anglo-Saxons with members of the same ethnic community defined here in Beowulf.42 For example, Æthelweard’s 40 For one much disputed attempt to resolve these questions, however, see Kevin Kiernan’s comments about an Anglo-Danish court audience for the poem, in Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, rev. edn (Ann Arbor, MI, 1996), pp. 15–23.41 Cf. Nicholas Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven, 1989), p. 12. This problem led many critics to set the date of the Viking invasions as a marker for the date of the poem, a terminus ante quem. The most influential argument along these lines was probably that of Dorothy Whitelock in The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, 1951), pp. 25–26. For summaries of the vast debate on this subject, see Robert E. Bjork and Anita Obermeier, ‘Date, Provenance, Author, Audiences’, in A Beowulf Handbook, ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (Exeter, 1996), pp. 13–34. See also the essays collected in The Dating of Beowulf, ed. Colin Chase, 2nd edn (Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1997).42 For the linking of these two peoples, see Howe, Migration, p. 150; Alexander Callander Murray, ‘Beowulf, the Danish Invasions, and Royal Genealogy’, and Roberta Frank, ‘Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf’, both in The Dating of

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Chronicon describes apparently the same story of a foundling named Sceaf, who is said to be the ancestor of King Æthelwulf’s family:

Ipse Scef cum uno dromone aduectus est in insula oceani que dicitur Scani, armis circundatus, eratque ualde recens puer, et ab incolis illius terræ ignotus. Attamen ab eis suscipitur, et ut familiarem diligenti animo eum custodierunt, et post in regem eligunt; de cuius prosapia ordinem trahit Aðulf rex.43

This Sceaf arrived with one light ship at the ocean island which is called Skáney, surrounded by weapons. He was a very young boy and unknown to the people of that land. Nevertheless, he was received by them, and they cared for him with a diligent spirit as if he were one of them, and later they elected him king. From his family King Æthelwulf derives his descent.

Similarly, genealogical lists of, for example, the West Saxon kings also include references not only to pagan gods like Woden but also to people named Scef, Scyld, Beow, and even Heremod:

Haec sunt genealogiae regum Occidentalium Saxonum. Eadweard & Eadmund & Æðelred æðelingas syndon, Eadgares suna cyninges. Eadgar Eadmunding, Eadmund Eadwerding, Eadweard Ælfreding, Ælfred Aþolfing … Bældæg Wodening, Woden Frealafing … Eat Beawing, Beaw Scealdwaging, Scealwa Heremoding, Heremod Itermanning, Iterman Haðraing, Haðra Bedwiging, Bedwig Sceafing. Se Scef wæs Noes sunu, & he wæs innan þære earce geboren.44

These are the genealogies of the kings of the West Saxons. Eadweard and Eadmund and Æthelred are princes, sons of king Eadgar. Eadgar was the son of Eadmund, Eadmund was the son of Eadweard, Eadweard was the son of Ælfred, Ælfred was the son of Athulf … Bældæg was the son of Woden, Woden was the son of Frealaf … Eat was the son of Beaw, Beaw was the son of Scealwa, Scealwa was the son of Heremod, Heremod was the son of

Beowulf, ed. Chase, pp. 101–11 and 123–39.43 Text is taken from The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. A. Campbell (London, 1962), p. 33. For discussion, see Sam Newton, The Origins of Beowulf and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia (Cambridge, 1993), p. 73.44 Text is taken from Reliquae antiquae. Scraps from ancient manuscripts, illustrating chiefly early English literature and the English language, ed. Thomas Wright and James Orchard Halliwell, 2 vols (London, 1841–43), II, 172–73.

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Iterman, Iterman was the son of Hathra, Hathra was the son of Bedwig, Bedwig was the son of Scef. This Scef was Noah’s son, and he was born inside the ark.

There are many different purposes for such genealogies. The most obvious may be to justify the power of an otherwise uncertain ruler. Thus conquerors or usurpers deliberately and artificially write themselves into native, ‘legitimate’ genealogies to solidify their power, as, for example, the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Norsemen in Normandy, and the Chaldeans in Babylon did.45

The perhaps surprising fact that links with pagan gods like Woden or Danish kings like Scyld appeared to lend prestige and legitimacy to Anglo-Saxon kings has been discussed elsewhere;46

here, I would draw attention to the fact that, like the myth of origin, the listing of genealogies also serves to define the identity of the community. That is, these texts are part of Anglo-Saxon writers’ attempts to define themselves as a group, as a people linked through their ruling dynasty to the same myth of origin.47

Another much discussed myth of origin is the story of the ‘Adventus Anglo-Saxonum’, which is found under the year 449 in the Peterborough manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, having been lifted more or less whole from Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica.48 The story is well known:49 facing increasing 45 Smith, Ethnic Origins, pp. 52–53.46 For discussion, see Kenneth Sisam, ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies’, Proceedings of the British Academy 39 (1953), 287–346; David Dumville, ‘Kingship, Genealogies, and Regnal Lists’, in Early Medieval Kingship, ed. Peter H. Sawyer and I.N. Wood (Leeds, 1977), pp. 72–104; Murray, ‘Beowulf, the Danish Invasions, and Royal Genealogy’, pp. 101–11.47 For discussion of the role that aristocratic dynasties can play in creating an ethnic community, see Smith, Ethnic Origins, pp. 69–91.48 Historia ecclesiastica I.15. For text and translation, see Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1991; repr. 1998), pp. 48–53. Although I mention the Peterborough manuscript specifically here, similar accounts are contained in the Winchester and Canterbury manuscripts, too. For text, see Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. John Earle and Charles Plummer, Vol. I (Oxford, 1892), p. 13. For translation, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. Michael Swanton (London, 1996), p. 13.49 The summary of the story that follows omits the important links between Biblical and Anglo-Saxon history. For discussion of these links, see especially

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pressure at home, the Romans pulled their troops out of the extremities of the Empire, thus leaving the Britons at the mercy of the marauding Irish and Picts. The Britons agreed amongst themselves to seek defence in the form of a mercenary army, which was composed of Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, and was immensely successful in its military campaigns.50 Seeing the cowardice of the people ruling the island, however, these Germanic tribes eventually decided to invade rather than defend the Britons.51 Significantly, both Bede and the chronicler, despite their different times, different audiences, and perhaps even different intentions, make explicit the connection between these invaders and their projected audience, ‘the people’ receiving their narratives.52 That is, the territorial boundaries of the Howe, Migration, pp. 8–32.50 For discussion of this mercenary army, see John Hines, ‘The Military Context of the Adventus Saxonum: Some Continental Evidence’, Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Sonia Chadwick Hawkes (Oxford, 1989), pp. 25–48.51 Whether the coming of the Anglo-Saxons was a true invasion or a gradual settlement has been long disputed. For discussion, see, for example, R. Lennard, ‘The Character of the Anglo-Saxon Conquests: a Disputed Point’, History 18 (1933): 204–13; C.J. Arnold, Roman Britain to Saxon England (London, 1984); J.N.L. Myres, The English Settlements (Oxford, 1986); Richard Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement: Archaeology and the Beginnings of English Society (Ithaca, NY, 1989), pp. 22-34; John Hines, ‘Philology, Archaeology and the adventus Saxonum vel Anglorum’, in Britain 400-600: Language and History, ed. A. Bammesberger and A. Wollmann, Anglistische Forschungen 205 (Heidelberg, 1990), pp. 17–36; John Hines, ‘The Becoming of the English: Identity, Material Culture and Language in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 7 (1994), 49–59.52 Different times: Bede lived from 672/3 to 735 AD. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle appears to have had its origin in the 9th century; the Peterborough Chronicle itself was copied from Kentish sources shortly after 1116 and was continued until 1121. See The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed and trans. Michael Swanton, pp. xviii and xxvi. Different audiences: The number of surviving manuscripts suggests that Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica circulated widely; see Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. xlii–lxx for description of manuscripts from England, France, Germany, and Italy. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a whole, too, probably had extensive and varied audiences, but the Peterborough Chronicle itself may have been enjoyed only by the community in the monastery at Peterborough. Different intentions: Bede may or may not have sought to create an image of an English nation when he described the history of the English church ― for discussion, see Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the

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contemporary inhabitants of Britain reflect the tribal distinctions present at this point of origin: the descendents of the Jutes rule in Kent and the Isle of Wight, the descencents of the Angles rule in Northumbria, and so on. These conquering peoples are, in fact, said to be the same people who live in the ‘present’ of Bede’s and the chronicler’s texts; they are imagined to be identical with the audience constructed by the narrative for itself. The texts thus elide the differences between ‘then’ and ‘now’; they assert that the identity being created through their narratives is actually ancient.53

This story fulfills the six conditions that Smith suggests are necessary for the definition of an ethnic community even more fully than Fredegar’s account of the origins of the Franks. For example, despite describing the three different tribes that contributed to the invading army, the story amalgamates them under one name and so provides a collective name for the resulting people (usually Saxons). The story itself constitutes a common myth of descent. The people travel under common leaders, Hengest and Horsa, and thus possess a shared history. They are strongly differentiated from the cowardly Britons in their tradition of heroism, and thus could be said to enjoy a shared culture. The migration to the island itself makes explicit their association with a particular territory.54 Finally, although

Origins of the Gens Anglorum’, in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. Patrick Wormald with Donald Bullough and Roger Collins (Oxford, 1983), pp. 99–129. Nevertheless, he probably did not intend to glorify the dynasty of Wessex, as the chronicler apparently did. For discussion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as ‘propaganda’, see Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Franks and the English’; Janet L. Nelson, ‘The Problem of Alfred’s Royal Annointing’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 18 (1967), 145–63; R.H.C. Davis, ‘Alfred the Great: Propaganda and Truth’, History 56 (1971), 169–82; J.M. Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Vocabulary as Evidence’, Proceedings of the British Academy 64 (1978), 93–129. Cf. also Irvine, ‘Medieval Textuality’, pp. 202–08 and Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems’, pp. 60-85. 53 Cf. Bhabha’s account of the tension between ‘signifying the people as an a priori historical presence, a pedagogical object’ and ‘the people constructed in the performance of narrative, its enunciatory “present” marked in the repetition and pulsation of the national sign’ (‘DissemiNation’, pp. 298–99).54 For fuller analysis of the importance of the migration to the island, see Howe,

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ostensibly from different ethnic groups, these people migrate to the island together and act as a unit. That is, they display a sense of solidarity.

The identity created by these features of ethnicity seems clear enough; what is less clear is the extent of its penetration into the consciousness of the community being encouraged to imagine itself: the extent of the story’s influence upon its intended audience.55 Did a significant proportion of Anglo-Saxons remember Hengest and Horsa? Did many Franks remember Priam, Friga, and Frankio? One of the distinctions asserted to lie between ‘true’, modern nations and pre-modern communities like Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian Empire is the absence of universal membership and equal participation by all in the body of the imagined community. In the case of Alfred’s translation policy mentioned above, for example, it is unlikely that the books ‘most necessary for all men to know’ were actually shared by more than a very small percentage of the population; this small percentage might have formed an imagined community, but not a nation.56 While Charlemagne’s typically ambitious prayer programme might have touched as many people as the modern newspaper industry, much of the rhetorical image-building and community-creation propagated by kings and interested ecclesiastics only touched ― indeed, only aimed to touch ― a fraction of the population. Even the endlessly recurring assemblies listed in the Annals of St-Bertin and the Annals of Fulda were not attended by ‘all the Franks’ as a modern audience might imagine them. If ‘all the Franks’ attended these assemblies, ‘Frank’ needs to be redefined: it appears to indicate a certain level of prestige and power rather than merely ethnic characteristics. The community imagined by these chronicle-writers is thus exclusive, not universal or ‘nation’-wide, and the identity created by annal-writers similarly might have been the property not of the ethnic community of the

Migration, pp. 33–71.55 For further discussion of the issue of penetration, see Smith, Ethnic Origins, pp. 70–73.56 According to Anderson, literacy and, especially, print-culture, are important pre-conditions of nationalism (Imagined Communities, pp. 37–46).

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‘people’ as a whole, but rather of a particular class.57 The audiences of Fredegar, Bede, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were probably similarly limited.

More extensive Carolingian myth-making took place in the context of an even smaller circle, among the court poets that Charlemagne and his descendants attracted to themselves. In this community Charlemagne is imagined as David, the ideal scholar-king and patron of poetry, ruling over the new Israel and the new Rome:58

Prospicit alta novae Romae meus arce PalemonCuncta suo imperio consistere regna triumpho,Rursus in antiquos mutataque secula mores.Aurea Roma iterum renovata renascitur orbi! (Moduin, Egloga 24–27)59

My Palaemon [i.e. Charlemagne] looks out from the tall citadel of the new Rome and sees that all kingdoms take their places in his own empire through his victory. The times are changed back to ancient customs. A renewed, golden Rome is reborn again to the world!

The panegyrics created by Charlemagne’s international team of poets provide a wealth of materials for myth-making, not only for the figure of the king, but also for the people exalted by his rule. However, shrouded with learned references to classical literature and encoded not simply in Latin, but in full-blown, flowery, elliptical, and deliberately clever Latin, these poems probably made little impact on anyone other than the poets themselves competing with each other for patronage.

57 The growing self-consciousness of this class may be suggested by the coining in 857 of a new collective noun to describe it: the baronatus. See Janet L. Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire in the Carolingian World’, in Carolingian Culture, ed. McKitterick, pp. 52–87, at 68.58 For the connection between Charlemagne and David, see, for example, Angilbert, ‘To Charlemagne and his entourage’ and Alcuin, ‘On the court’, poems 6 and 7 in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. Godman, pp. 112 and 118. Pope Paul I referred to the Franks as the new Israel (see MGH, Epistolae iii, no. 39, p. 552). For discussion of the Anglo-Saxons’ myth of being the new Chosen People, see Howe, Migration, pp. 72–107.59 Text is taken from Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. Godman, p. 192.

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Vernacular poetry, on the other hand, might have helped to create a more widely-held identity. Otfrid, for example, places great importance on the development of his people’s own literary language. It is a necessary part of their identity as a great people equal to the Greeks and Romans.60 Such a ‘native’ language is shared by the elite (ruling or literate) and the larger ethnic population, and thus it may be that the poems included in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reveal points of contact between the written record and the non-literate community co-existing with it. Consequently, The Battle of Brunanburh may suggest that the written, learned material contained in history annals reflects an imagined community extending widely through the people as a whole.

The ‘people’ encouraged to imagine itself as it listened to The Battle of Brunanburh would no doubt recognise itself as the same ‘people’ who found itself as it read the ‘Adventus Anglo-Saxonum’, for in this poem we see the Anglo-Saxons ― or, at least, the West Saxons ― defined in a way that shares striking parallels with the way that the Chronicle described them as they arrived on the island, despite the fact that, this time, they are repelling an invading army that has crossed the sea, rather than acting as invaders. That is, the Anglo-Saxons depicted in the poem measure up to the standard established at their point of origin: they are strong, heroic, and victorious over the cowardly opposition offered by the Vikings and their allies, just as they were strong, heroic, and victorious over the cowardly opposition offered by the Britons.61 The poem does not leave the audience to make this connection for itself; it refers directly to that moment of origin and states that this battle was the greatest since the Anglo-Saxons first arrived on the island:

Ne wearð wæl mareon þis eiglande æfre gietafolces gefylled beforan þissumsweordes ecgum, þæs þe us secgað bec,

60 See, for example, his Evangelienbuch, ed. Wolff, lines 31–36, 41–48, 57–58, and 119–26, and his letter Ad Liutbertum, lines 108–15.61 Providing a standard against which to measure the present is one of the functions of a myth of origins. See Frantzen, Desire for Origins, pp. 22–23.

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ealde uðwitan, siþþan eastan hiderEngle and Seaxe up becoman,ofer brad brimu Brytene sohtan,wlance wigsmiþas, Wealas ofercoman,eorlas arhwate eard begeatan. (The Battle of Brunanburh 65b–73)

Before this [battle] there has never yet been a greater slaughter of a people felled by the edges of swords on this island, as books and ancient authorities tell us, since from the east the Angles and Saxons, proud war-smiths, arrived up here, sought out Britain across the broad seas. These glory-eager warriors overcame the Welsh and acquired the country.

As the poem suggests, the heroes who devastate the Vikings in the present stand in direct descent from the first, glorious people who landed in Britain in the past, and they thus share their distinctive, even ethnic, characteristics. Although the poem describes only a small segment of the population, the West-Saxon equivalent of the baronatus, it presents this elite group as representative of the people who inhabit the island as a whole and works to ‘create an image of an unbroken tradition of national and racial heroic glory extending from the earlier kings in the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogy to the house of Alfred’.62 Anglo-Saxon identity reveals no real distinction between then and now.63

We might imagine that the whole of the Anglo-Saxon people would have gladly accepted an identity that promoted their superiority, and so we might feel justified in seeing the glorification of the Anglo-Saxons in The Battle of Brunanburh as consistent with the sense of self that existed outside the community of the text-reading elite. It is not clear, however, what this wider audience, ‘the whole of the Anglo-Saxon people’, entails. Directed by the text, we can imagine one: it would be composed of descendants of the first arrivals to the island, war-like heroes with blood unsullied by interbreeding with either 62 Irvine, ‘Medieval Textuality’, p. 202; cf. also pp. 207–08. For discussion of the baronatus, see above, note 57.63 ‘The very form of the traditional diction, formulas, and meter was ideologically encoded to link the present to the heroic past’ (Irvine, ‘Medieval Textuality’, p. 202).

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Celtic or Viking races, as these have been clearly defined as ‘other’ to the ‘Anglo-Saxons’, as well as inferior and cowardly.64

Such a ‘people’ is clearly a fiction, not a reflection of the world outside the text. Yet this is what all imagined communities are. In fact, the argument that the poem reflects a sense of identity held widely outside of the text-reading elite depends upon an assumption that cannot be verified: it assumes that The Battle of Brunanburh has been imported into the Chronicle from elsewhere, that it enjoyed a separate existence with a wide, oral audience. We have no evidence that the poem circulated outside of versions of the Chronicle in which it appears. It is thus arguable but not provable that the myth of origin to which the poem alludes participated in anything like a nation-wide imagined community.

There are also convincing arguments against such an assumption. Far from guaranteeing that the poem existed in a broad, ethnic community, the vernacular, ‘oral-formulaic’ format of the poem can be seen as a textual strategy.65 That is, the form of the poetry itself, like Fredegar’s allusions to Virgil’s Aeneid, may be a rhetorical stance adopted by a poet seeking to gain authority for the story being told. The Battle of Brunanburh thence does not, in fact, speak with the voice of the community;

64 Note that the identification of another ‘race’, as opposed to the identification of an own ‘group’, is in itself an expression of domination; see Richard Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations (London, etc., 1997), pp. 52–73. For discussion of the ‘boundaries’ that guard an ethnic community’s purity, see F. Barth, ‘Introduction’, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Oslo, 1969) and ‘Enduring and Emerging Issues in the Analysis of Ethnicity’, in The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’, ed. H. Vermeulen and C. Govers (Amsterdam, 1994). However we imagine them, the reality was undoubtedly very different: building practices, for example, do not maintain such purity; common buildings were a hybrid of Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon techniques. See C.J. Arnold, An Archaeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 2nd edn (London and New York, 1997), p. 30. As the discussion below argues, The Death of Edward likewise suggests that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ communities were ethnically mixed.65 ‘By representing oral production in written discourse, orality becomes a significatum of textuality, an element of written discourse’ (Irvine, ‘Medieval Textuality’, p. 197).

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rather, it appropriates the authority associated with the act of speaking from the community.66

The striking similarities between the construction of the Anglo-Saxon people in the Chronicle’s story of the ‘Adventus Anglo-Saxonum’ and The Battle of Brunanburh thus reveal themselves to be unsurprising. They are indeed inevitable. It is not a case of an elite, literate construction coinciding with a popular, oral one, but rather a concert of texts ‘ideologically encoded for the creation of national myths of origin and dynastic succession’.67 In the same way, the copying of most extant Old English poetry, which took place when The Battle of Brunanburh and the other Chronicle-poems were being included in the Chronicle,68 might have participated in a rhetorical strategy of calling upon the heroic past represented by the oral-formulaic tradition to create a sense of a ‘people’, perhaps even a sense of a nation.69

Any sense of identity created by texts like The Battle of Brunanburh would not, of course, satisfy modern theorists of nationalism; the apparently limited circulation of the myth of origin and the limited extent of the identity created by it excludes Anglo-Saxon ‘England’ from the world of modern nations. It is important, however, not to view the strategies embarked upon in these texts as primitive and incomplete attempts at nationalism. Likewise, it is important not to consider them as first steps in a continuous and inevitable path toward the modern nation. Medieval communities like Anglo-Saxon England and the Frankish Empire did not fail to achieve a unified national identity, because they did not attempt one. In the rest of this discussion, therefore, I shall draw attention to the aspect of identity-building reflected in these texts which our fixation on the nation as the ‘normal’ imagined community might lead us to dismiss: its flexibility. 66 Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems’, p. 75.67 Irvine, ‘Medieval Textuality’, p. 202.68 For discussion of some of the implications of the copying of Old English texts at this time, see Hugh Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 18 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 3–15.69 Cf. Irvine, ‘Medieval Textuality’, p. 208. Irvine suggests that Cassiodorus’s History of the Goths and Isidore’s History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi participate in similar processes.

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It now seems self-evident that nations should be created,70 but the collection of texts from various times, places, and genres discussed here suggests that sometimes there are good, or, at least, sound political reasons not to bring an ethnic (or other) community into one, united whole. These reasons may be most clear in the Carolingian annals, where the unceasing battles between fathers, sons, and brothers demonstrate how necessary it was for these kings to divide the Franks and pit against each other segments of a population which was considered ‘one people’.71 The annals themselves provide labels for various segments of the population, each apparently with their own ethnic identity, but beyond the obviously separable Lombards, Danes, and Saxons, and beyond the variously separable Thuringians, Alemans, and Aquitanians, the Franks themselves were split between rulers at different times and places. That is, in times of dynastic struggle it was more important to be able to draw the people away from a single, central identity than it was to create one.

The advantages of disunity are not limited to combatants in family power-struggles. In both Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Frankia, a larger political identity actually depended upon the lack of a single, unified imagined community. This larger, prestigious political identity was empire. For both the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks, the idea of empire was one of hegemony over other races, of one race’s domination over different, distinct identities, usually identified as inferior.72

The conflicting imperatives of unity and disunity, of identity based on ‘nation’ and identity based on empire, appears in the Chronicle-poem on the death of Edward. At the beginning of the poem, we can see signs of what critics have pointed to as evidence of England’s emerging nation-hood: Edward is called Engla hlaford, which here seems to mean ‘lord of the English’ rather than ‘lord of the Angles’ (The Death of Edward 1b): he is

70 Cf. Calhoun, Concepts in Modern Thought: Nationalism, p. 94.71 This perception of the Franks as ‘one people’ is ascribed to Louis the Pious; see Annals of St. Bertin, ed. Nelson, p. 41, s.a. 839. It is, of course, difficult to gauge how widely this view was held.72 Cf. Calhoun, Concepts in Modern Thought: Nationalism, p. 68.

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presented as lord of a unified ethnic community with a collective name.73 Hints of a national ‘England’ also reappear later in the poem, where the deore rice ‘precious realm’ (19b) is described as the Engla land ‘land of the English’ (20a) despite being ruled previously by the Danes. This specific territory and the people who live there together make up the homeland that Edward rules: ‘Eadward se æðela eðel bewerode, / land and leode’, ‘the noble Edward guarded the homeland, the land and people’ (24–25a).Edward is also, however, a ruler over many races, and the ‘English’ themselves may not be as united and collective as they first appeared:

…hæleða wealdend, weold wel geþungen Walum and Scottum and Bryttum eac, byre Æðelredes, Englum and Sexum, oretmægcum, swa ymbclyppað cealde brymmas, þæt eall Eadwarde, æðelum kinge, hyrdon holdlice hagestealde menn. (Death of Edward 8b–14)

The well-grown ruler of warriors, the son of Æthelred, ruled over the Welsh and Scots and also the British, and the English and the Saxons, champions, just as the cold seas surround [them], so that all military men loyally obeyed Edward the noble king.

Perhaps Engla at the beginning of the poem should be translated as ‘Angles’ rather than ‘English’ after all: perhaps the Saxons are to be viewed as yet another alien race, like the Welsh, ruled by the imperial Edward. Yet the Saxons are grouped with the Engla, not with the Welsh: they are close to being ‘English’ even though they are not. The boundaries between self and other, between alien race and ‘English’, are not clear-cut, or, at least, the words used to describe the identity of that self are not clear-cut. Thus the term ‘English’ in the poem seems to be both exclusive and inclusive: it may mean both ‘this particular people, the Angles’ and ‘all those ruled by Edward’. In fact, the term ‘English’ may be capable of including the Welsh, Scots, and Britons, for all five 73 Cf. Smith’s list of the six primary characteristics of an ethnic community above.

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races are summed up under the same labels, oretmægca ‘champions’ (11b) and hagestealde menn ‘military men’ (14b), and identified by their common territory, the place which ymbclyppað cealde brymmas ‘the cold seas surround’ (12).74

The poem therefore shows a series of overlapping identities. It begins by celebrating Edward as king of what seems to be a ‘nation’, but goes on to celebrate Edward as an emperor over many peoples, and then collapses the distinctions between those peoples ― distinctions which we might have thought necessary to maintain the idea of empire itself. In fact, the poem does not pursue the idea of empire; whatever the reality of the political situation, there is little evidence here of a hegemony of the ‘English’ over the other races, as we might have expected in a celebration of an emperor.75 If the term ‘English’ is seen as absorbing the identities of the Welsh, Scots, Celts, and Saxons, such an appropriation may suggest a hegemony, but the poem does not praise one people over another, and Edward rules all five races, apparently equally ― with the ‘English’ given no pride of place, named neither first nor last. The ‘English’ do not subjugate or rule the Celts here; only Edward does, as he does the ‘English’.

The confusion over identities in this poem does not, of course, detract from the poem’s purpose of glorifying the dead king, a task for which the poet drew upon a range of myth-making strategies. For example, the story of Edward’s wandering wræclastum ‘on the paths of exile’ (17a), his destitution lande bereafod ‘deprived of land’ (16b), followed by a glorious reversal, has parallels with the story of Scyld Scefing (Beowulf 4–11), 74 It is difficult to know how carefully the words in this passage should be scrutinised, but some of them may contain additional significance. For example, the use of a word ultimately denoting kinship (mæg) in this compound is suggestive: even if these races only shared a propensity for fighting, there was at least this level of kinship between them. Hagesteald similarly may have carried implications of membership in an inclusive court. Cf. the definition in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth, ed. J. Bosworth, ed. and enlarged by T.N. Toller, with Enlarged Addenda and Corrigenda by A. Campbell, 2 vols (Oxford, 1898–1972), s.v. hagosteald: ‘one living in the lord’s house, not having his own household…’.75 Cf. the description of Charlemagne in Theodolf’s poem, ‘On the Court’, in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. Godman, p. 152, lines 35–46.

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another king who started out as an exile and ended up as a great defender and provider for his people. In addition, the poet’s insistence on Edward’s piety ― his soþfæste sawle ‘soul firm in truth’ (2a) ― hints at saintly aspirations, or perhaps even something approaching divine kingship. In the midst of these other rhetorical strategies, the two strategies of ‘nationalism’ (if we can call it that) and ‘imperialism’ (if there really is an empire here) both contribute to the multi-faceted glory of the king developed throughout this poem, despite the fact that they depend upon conflicting strategies.

This apparently self-contradictory medley of myth-making strategies probably seemed complementary as well as complimentary to its poet and audience, for the conflict between the identity of ‘England’ and the identity of ‘Great Britain’ derives from our own nation-oriented perspective, not from the poem itself. The poet of The Death of Edward, and Fredegar, the Carolingian analists, and Charlemagne’s court poets, sought to create many different imagined communities rather than a single national identity, not because they were incapable of defining their audiences in national terms, but rather because their needs were different. Anglo-Saxon England and Francia had a rather different relationship with the ‘international community’ than, say, modern Palestine does now: the Church demanded from them not defined territories, effective government, a permanent population, and relations with other nations,76 but conformance and submission to its authority. The literature left by authors defining imagined communities at this time thus reflects shifting balances of power rather than failed national aspirations.

It would be wrong, however, to see this fluidity as characteristically or exclusively pre-modern, or to see modern nationalist discourse as univocal, uncontested, and bound where the poet of The Death of Edward was somehow ‘free’. In fact the main difference is not the presence of multiple imagined communities in Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian writing on identity but rather the absence of a rhetoric focussed on singularity and wholeness: the absence of nationalist rhetoric. Nationalism

76 Peter Malanczuk, Akehurst’s Modern Introduction to International Law, 7th

rev. edn (London and New York, 1997), pp. 75–80.

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claims to represent a whole, a homogenous society, but it, too, like the societies described in this paper, is always fissured.77

Modern nationalist movements are as dependent upon power-holding elites as the Carolingian empire and do not, in fact, draw upon ‘the people’ as a whole. Like The Battle of Brunanburh’s use of oral-formulaic poetry, the fiction of universal participation is part of nationalism’s rhetorical strategy for gaining authority.78

What we see in these Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian texts, then, is the same mixture of identities, the same competitions between imagined communities, that obtains still in modern writing on identity. What we do not see are the ‘ideological manoeuvres’ that attempt to give such imagined communities ‘essentialist identities’.79

77 See Calhoun, Concepts in Modern Thought: Nationalism, p. 44 and Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation’, p. 296: nationalism’s discourse is ‘at the same time obsessively fixed upon, and uncertain of, the boundaries of society’.78 Cf., for example, the discussion in Calhoun, Concepts in Modern Thought: Nationalism, p. 74.79 Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation’, p. 300.

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