Anglo-Saxon Saturdays: Wulfes-Heafod

This Thursday, the History Channel series, Vikings, opened Season 2 with an episode called "Brother's War." Aside from the fantastic Viking shield-wall battle, gorgeous scenery, and imaginative costumes, the episode dealt boldly with the issue of betrayal. Without giving too much away, I thought it strange that when the traitor came to trial in this episode, the punishment everyone expected to be carried out was death. Death is certainly a terrible punishment, and probably fitting for such a grievous betrayal, but I had expected the verdict would be the Germanic institution of wulfes-heafod.

wulfes-heafod

(wolf-es heh-av-od)



a wolf-headed creature in the 15th c. Nuremberg Chronicle

Wulfes-heafod translates literally to "wolf's head," and no, this is not a mythic creature or monster, some sort of human with a wolf's head. Wolf's-head was a severe punishment for severe crime. When someone committed a crime serious enough to warrant a verdict of wulfes-heafod, such as murder or betrayal of one's lord, a priest (or other leader) would place his hand on the convicted criminal and declare him a wolf's-head.

Last week, I talked about Anglo-Saxon agoraphobia and how they did not like open places, but instead felt secure under a roof - both a literal one and the figurative roof of societal laws. This is exactly why being declared wolf's-head was such a terrible punishment; a wolf's-head was declared to be a wolf.

If you were declared a wulfes-heafod, you were no longer considered human. You were an "outlaw," that is, you were no longer under the protection of the law. No one was allowed to acknowledge you as a person; they couldn't talk to you, or give you food or shelter. Worst of all, they could, and were almost obligated to, kill you. Wolves were a threat, they were pests who attacked livestock and sometimes people, so whenever a wolf was spotted, it would be hunted. The same idea was supposed to apply to a wolf's-head, if seen, he would be hunted.

This, alone, would be a horrible fate for anyone at any period in history, but it was especially terrible for Anglo-Saxons (and in other Germanic cultures, such as in Vikings) because of their agoraphobia, their fear of open spaces. Being declared a wulfes-heafod exiled you only to open spaces, and away from the protection of the law. Being an "outlaw" was not freedom, it was a punishment worse than death.

Anglo-Saxon Saturdays: Weox Under Wolcnum

Last time, I wrote about one way in which the Anglo-Saxon conception of the world is different from ours in Modern America. This week, I'd like to share another, and this one is also illustrated with the help of a phrase from the proem to Beowulf:

Weox under wolcnum

(way-ox oon-der wohlk-num)

This phrase is the first half of line 8 in Beowulf and refers to the legendary king, Scyld Scefing, as he grew into a man. Weox under wolcnum translates to "waxed under welkin" or with more familiar vocabulary, "grew under the heavens." The poet chose the word "wolcnum" to fit the alliteration* but the concept, not the particular word, is what is important here. The idea is that Scyld grew up under the protection of the heavens, under the safety of the skies. This is a sort of verbal fencing-in, giving the impression of a sheep fold or fenced pasture that was a safe and happy place in which to grow up.

The Anglo-Saxons were an agoraphobic people. They saw rules and boundaries and a roof over the head as safe and protective. This plays into how community-oriented the Anglo-Saxon culture was as well. They were closely tied with their local communities and the idea of leaving those ties was terrifying (as I will expand upon in the next Anglo-Saxon Saturdays post, wulfes heafod). The happiest scenes in Anglo-Saxon literature fall under the theme of "joys of the hall" or the eating and drinking and singing and boasting and general merriment that went on in the safety of an Anglo-Saxon mead-hall.

When Grendel comes to attack Heorot in Beowulf, he comes from the wilderness, from the fens. This is where monsters and dragons dwell and you don't have the protection of your fences or home or your fighting companions anymore. The laws of man and common decency do not apply there, and the wild is a dangerous place where the weather, the landscape, and the animals seem to conspire together for your destruction.

This is the exact opposite of how most modern Americans feel. Our culture is claustrophobic. We tend to see boundaries and walls as confining, as something to be challenged. We tend to see wide open spaces as places of freedom and adventure, where anything is possible (think of the genre of American Westerns). But this is exactly what scared Anglo-Saxons about open spaces: if anything can happen, then anything can go wrong.


*Alliteration is a convention of Anglo-Saxon poetry; rather than rhyme, in which words sound alike at the end (i.e. - walker, knocker, sock her), when words alliterate, they sound alike at the beginning (i.e. - Will would wish to wail?).

"What? That's Legal in Ireland?"

If you hang around Ireland enough, you're sure to hear someone say something like,

"Very good crack there!"

or "That was great crack!"

First, do not be alarmed. They're not talking about the kind of stuff that's outrageously expensive and a felony to possess in the States. In fact, they're not talking about a physical thing at all. "Crack" is how the Irish Gaelic word craic is pronounced. It's a very common word in Ireland, referring to "a good time," a "good atmosphere," or plain old "fun."

So when an Irishman recommends a pub or restaurant or hostel with the qualifier, "they'e got great craic!" Take his advice. Good times will abound!

I've only been in the British Isles for about 10 days, and though I knew about some of these cultural and language differences beforehand, I thought it might be fun to share a few with you:

1. Craic (crack) is good.

2. There are no free refills. You'll often get a can of soda/pop, if that's what you order. They'll give it to you with a glass. Pour it into the glass and then drink it. Do not drink straight from the can (or bottle). And don't expect ice, either.
    [By the way, both of these are actually healthier options than the typical American-style bottomless glass filled to the brim with ice cubes; studies have shown that ice machines are often not cleaned as often as they should be and can produce ice cubes laced with lots of nasty bacteria, and soda is packed with tons of sugar and caffeine and other stuff that's better in small doses anyway.]

3. Chips are crisps and fries are chips. The snack food called "potato chips" in America are called  "crisps" in Ireland and the UK, and what we would call "fries," they call "chips." So an order of the classic fish 'n' chips is fried fish (cod, usually) and a pile of thick steak fries.

4. Bacon is not bacon. It's ham - cut into narrower strips than normal. Twice, I've ordered a meal "with bacon" and was disappointed when the dish arrived and instead of those delicious, pan-fried, crispy brown and red strips of delight, there was pink, plain old ham. Both times the food was quite tasty, but just know that in the British Isles, bacon isn't a fancy kind of pig meat, it is just a fancy name for regular pig meat.

5. Shops and restaurants close early. Most stores close by 5 p.m., except for chain-supermarkets and bigger stores like M&S (sort of like an upscale Target that sometimes includes a grocery section) or international chains like American Eagle and H&M, which might stay open until 7 or 8. I was surprised to find this true even in bigger cities like Dublin and London. Restaurants might be open only until 6 or 7, and even the pubs stop serving food at 8. So don't do all your sight seeing during the day, expecting to do some shopping and eating after the museums close, you may end up without dinner.

6. Pubs are a great place to eat, drink, and experience the local culture. And they're actually really clean and safe, too, in general. This is especially true in Ireland, where smoking is now illegal indoors and many pubs serve delicious food. If you want to hear some live music, a pub is probably your best bet, especially if you're on Ireland's West Coast. Most pubs will even welcome children and are a great way to immerse your family in local culture, but they'll want your kids out later on, probably by 8. The best pub atmosphere I've ever experienced was at Dick Mack's in the small coastal town of Dingle, on Ireland's beautiful and wild West Coast. If you want to hear some beautiful live traditional ("trad") Irish music, that's the place to go, any night of the week.

(Originally posted with points 1-4 from Bath, England, on June 25, 2013; updated from Hemse, Gotland, Sweden on July 30, 2013.)

Creating a new "Middle Ages"

Even before I knew I wanted to be a medievalist, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I started writing a short story eight years ago, when I was twelve, and quickly decided that it could make an interesting book, though I had no idea where the rest of the plot was headed. The story is about a young woman who wakes up in a prison and has absolutely no memory of who she is or why she is there. She learns that she was captured as a prisoner of a war which has been raging for six years, and she has a long internal battle left just to figure out who she is and what the nature of her involvement in the conflict was before her capture. While she is piecing her past together and trying to escape the prison, an enigmatic sort-of-assassin is searching for something which is very valuable to his king - something worth a massacre just to get his hands on it. He, too, struggles with deep internal conflict and piecing together the mystery of his own past, but his is a vastly different sort of history.

The two have no knowledge of the other's existence, nor any idea of just how closely intertwined their stories already are - nor any hint of the devastating results if they fail to find their purpose.

When people learn that I'm writing a book, they want to know what it is about, and the first thing I tell them is that it is a work of "Historical Fantasy," meaning that it's only "fantasy" in that the story does not take place in our world. Absent are all other aspects of a typical fantasy story: the Fire-Breathing Dragon, Magic, Goblins, or any other fantastic creatures or races. I've christened this story world, "Tellus," which is an ancient name for our own Earth, used most notably in C. S. Lewis' The Space Trilogy. I want to show the relationship between this world and ours; my story takes place when [at least a part of] Tellus is going through her own "middle ages" and the technologies, culture, and societal structures are similar to those of our world's middle ages. That's where the "historical" part of "Historical Fiction" comes into play. And that's what this post is all about: Tellus is not identical to Earth (and no, there will never be any travelling from here to there in any of my stories regarding it. It's not Narnia, it's just another sort of Earth, another sort of idea of what might very well have happened here if our own history was different).

So I have this task of creating a new and alternate sort of "middle ages," one that captures the ideals, histories, and hopes of a world which only vaguely exists in my mind and a little bit on paper. I have this task to bring to vivid and breathing life a world rich enough that my readers could imagine themselves exploring it and having their own adventures, far away from the story I'm telling. I have this task to weave an intricate fabric of societies, clashing cultures, landscapes, architectures, martial arts, religions, languages, and histories. I have this task that is so vast and daunting that it scares the bejeebers out of me. But it also lures me in to seek out the exotic and unknown reaches of this place called "Tellus," to have my own adventure exploring it and filling in the misty blank places with the rich detail of the veins in the leaves of ancient trees and the crumbling grout between the stones of a changing civilization.

The interesting and slightly disappointing part about all of this planning and creating and imagining, is that my readers will only get a little part of it. You see, by creating this vast and detailed description and history for Tellus, I am better equipped to dwell fully in this imagined world while writing the story in my book: better able to articulate why certain people act as they do, or speak with different accents, or hold cultural grudges, or are darker or stockier in build, or why the borders have been drawn as they are. The readers may never get even a quarter of all of the backstories and descriptions, but they will get enough of a taste in my book that their imaginations can freely and wonderfully fill in the rest. And that is exactly the fantastic beauty of reading a book, after all, isn't it?

You have no idea how much I want to jump right into the world of Tellus and describe to you the gorgeous landscapes and rise and development of the current cultures, and give you a taste of the whole complicated story of my book, but I can't. Wouldn't you rather see it for yourself? Wouldn't you rather read it in the faces and travels and fights of Eladar and Kaael, the amnesiac soldieress and tortured assassin of Tellus, as they embark on their life-voyages? While you are waiting for them to be ready to tell their story, why not set out for the exotic corners of your own mind and see what adventures await?

The Dream of the Rood vs. Christ II - Anglo-Saxon Cultural Change

8th century Ruthwell Cross, inscription
based on The Dream of the Rood

Have you ever wondered what happened to the rich oral and literary traditions of pagan Anglo-Saxon Britain when Roman Christianity was introduced to the island in the late sixth century? How could the foreign concepts of Christianity translate into stories that the Anglo-Saxons could actually understand, and how did Christianity change the culture of England as it grew in popularity over the Germano-Norse mythology that the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons brought with them from Northern Europe?


          Christian poets of Anglo-Saxon Britain faced a unique challenge in telling the story of Christ so that their audience could relate to this faith which was so fundamentally different from that of the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon idea of a leader was a warlord with never-fading courage and the daring to fight to the death, yet Jesus was a leader who allowed himself to be convicted of and executed for a crime of which he was innocent. In the late seventh or early eighth century, a Northumbrian poet penned The Dream of the Rood, which eloquently translated the foreign concept of Christ’s crucifixion into a language that the Anglo-Saxons could better understand. In contrast is the later work of a Mercian poet named Cynewulf, who wrote Christ II, which mainly deals with Christ’s ascension into heaven. Cynewulf also molded the Biblical story so that his audience might better connect with the events of the story. The manner in which these two poems reshape the gospel of Christ can tell the reader quite a bit about the cultural, religious, and social changes that took place in Anglo-Saxon Britain between the eighth and tenth centuries. The Anglo-Saxon religion shifted from the Norse pantheon toward Christianity, but their mead hall-centric, war-clan culture stayed much the same.

North face of the
Ruthwell Cross

The Dream of the Rood describes Christ as both a brave warrior and warlord. The cross (rood) says of Christ, “I trembled when the warrior embraced me,” (l. 42) and even calls Christ “heaven’s War-Lord,” (l.64) who is served by his “warrior-men” (l. 61). The Christ of the eighth century Dream of the Rood was most certainly a powerful warrior-lord and the savior of mankind, but not much else. Christ is a fairly simple character in the Dream of the Rood.

In Cynewulf’s later poem, Christ II, Jesus is no longer identified as just a warrior-lord, but as the god-lord. He is not only the gold-giver, but “their Dispenser of treasure” (l. 455), “Bestower of glory” (l. 456), and “Protector of the heaven-kingdom” (l. 563), among many other names.  Christ II even analogously describes Jesus Christ as a bird, when Cynewulf writes that Job, “with the sympathy of love devised a name for the Ruler’s Son and called him a bird whom the Jews could not understand in the strength of his divine spirit," (l. 633-34). Christ as a bird is the utter opposite of the proud warrior of the Dream of the Rood. Cynewulf expanded Christ’s character so that he is not merely a warrior now, but he is gentle as a bird as well as a great ruler. The reader is merely introduced to Christ in the Dream of the Rood, but Christ is the reader’s intimate friend in Christ II, with a vast personality that can both vanquish the armies of evil (l. 558-585), and soar in the heavens like a bird.

In the Dream of the Rood, the reader is introduced to the Christian afterlife, for those who worship the warrior-Christ who died on the rood, “…where there is great bliss, delight in heaven, to where the Lord’s nation is seated at a banquet, to where the bliss is everlasting,” (Rood l. 139-42). This heaven is like a great feast that never ends, as facilitated by Christ for his faithful. The heaven of the Dream of the Rood is a place that is intended to convince the reader of the rewards of following Christ.

Descriptions of heaven in Christ II, are quite different, as heaven is now the “city of the Prince” (l. 554) in the heaven-kingdom (l. 563) instead of just a feast-hall. Cynewulf writes of all of Christ’s servants (the saints) arriving in heaven as a “radiantly clad, a shining throng. Welcome guests, they saw [Christ’s] trappings on the high throne heaven’s Ruler,” (l. 554-7). This is a grand leap from the festive, yet simple feast-hall-heaven of the Dream of the Rood. In Christ II, the reader is told of a great kingdom where all of the subjects wear rich clothing and are honored as guests of the king.

Page from the Exeter Book, the manuscript
containing Cynewulf's Christ II

The focus of the Dream of the Rood is on Christ and the cross. Other small details are explained, but the tale is mostly a shining and dramatic introduction to Christianity, so it does not weigh the reader down with side stories – it is an introduction to the faith of Christianity. “The time has now come that far and wide I will be worshipped by men across the earth,” speaks the cross, (l. 80-3) admonishing the dreamer who heard the cross’s story to go and share it with the rest of the world (l. 95-6). The Dream of the Rood tells the reader that Christianity has arrived (“The time has now come…” l. 80) and is the only way to partake in that eternal feast-hall after death.

The focus of Christ II is much wider than just the Ascension. Cynewulf also tells the reader of the end of the world and Christ’s return on Judgment Day, “with a great legion [to] visit again the nations of the earth and at that time judge every deed which people have committed here below the skies,” (l. 522-6) and also explains the idea of spiritual gifts that Christ “sowed and planted abundantly throughout men’s minds,” (l. 663). These are two deeper aspects of the Christian faith which might be difficult to understand without first a familiarity with the basics. Cynewulf seems to assume that his reader is already well versed in Christianity as he spends much more time embellishing than explaining.

The way in which the Dream of the Rood describes Jesus Christ as a warrior, heaven as an eternal banquet-hall, and the hope of salvation as simple and clear, demonstrates that it was written when the Anglo-Saxon reader was less likely to be familiar with the basics of Christianity. By the time Cynewulf penned Christ II, however, Christianity seems to have been fully integrated into Anglo-Saxon society, as Cynewulf’s Christ is a deep and rich character, heaven is his otherworldly kingdom, and in place of the message of salvation are several paragraphs about complicated aspects of Christianity, such as Spiritual Gifts. The Christianity of the Dream of the Rood is straightforward and easy to understand, while that of Christ II is complicated and grand. Clearly, a great shift happened in the one to two centuries between the compositions of these two poems, turning the culture of Anglo-Saxon England from one saturated in Norse mythology to one steeped in Christianity.