The Great Heathen Army was the name of a coalition of Norse armies from the Scandinavian region; Denmark, Norway, and possibly also Sweden in approximately 865CE, and ending in approximately 875CE with the defeat of the Viking army by King Alfred ‘The Great’ of Wessex. There were multiple possible motivations for this invasion, including (but not limited to): revenge for the death of legendary Ragnarr Lodbok, the expansion of Norse control into the British Isles, and the need for fresher lands for agriculture. There are two main sources that tell us about the Great Heathen Invasion; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle by various authors and Life of King Alfred by Asser, which will be evaluated to determine their reliability as primary sources for the …show more content…
Similar to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Asser’s Life of King Alfred was hand-scribed by one author, and as such, readers must be cautious of scribing errors that are contained within the text. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, it is entirely possible that Asser authored this biography, under the orders of King Alfred, for a Welsh audience, and there is evidence to support this claim. For starters, Asser was a Welsh monk, and he lived in Wales until he was invited to Alfred’s court in Wessex. Alfred had recently acquired the lands in Southern Wales, where Asser lived, and Alfred had talked to the Welsh Kings (now lords), so it is possible that they told Alfred about Asser. As mentioned, the biography of Alfred was written shortly after he gained control over Southern Wales. Within Life of King Alfred, Asser often goes to painful lengths to describe the geography of locations, as if the audience would not know them, and also translates places names into their Welsh equivalent, even for places such as Nottingham, where no real equivalent existed. Because of these things, combined with the fact that this biography was commissioned by Alfred himself, would seem to suggest that King Alfred ordered Asser to write this biography in order to acquaint the Welsh to their new King, and to muster loyalty to King Alfred amongst the Welsh. So, while it is an account of Alfred’s life (including the events of The Great Heathen Invasion, which play a major part in Alfred’s life) it is possible that Asser exaggerated events and qualities of Alfred and his life in order to gain the favour of the Welsh people. Asser’s Life of King Alfred also refrains from mentioning any dissension within the kingdom of Wessex, so this is possibly a clue that Alfred had a hand in controlling what Asser put in the biography, so as to make Alfred look
In the book The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley, the book is a twist to what readers would expect. In the story, a girl name Alette is chosen for a certain mission and she goes in not knowing what to expect. Alette goes on these journey and face with challenges that she must overcome, but it is more about the destination then than the journey itself. One of the important theme throughout the book is transformation.
While the Anglo Saxons are the soldiers on foot holding axes and creating a shielded wall to brace impact. Using textual evidence and comparing it to the tapestry a medievalist can not only distinguish the two sides, but also learn what people in medieval times believed to be a beneficial way to explain significant events in their
The journals expose two different attitudes because these two authors have different personalities. Knight is intolerant with others. When she is questioned; she makes jokes pretending not to be bother, but she does. Basically, Knight is a bright woman who likes to observe others and for that, she makes use of sarcasm to criticize, especially women’s” bad tongues,” as Julia Stern describes on “To relish and spew disgust as cultural critique in The Journal of Madam Knight” another thing, she certainly dislikes interrogation, mainly because she is from Boston and well educated, so she has a refined background, and has trouble dealing with rural people. She believes that Bostonians are better and for that, she perceives herself, as superior in class
The Anglo-Saxons were a group of warlike tribes who occupied England starting around A.D. In the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, by an unknown author, the titular character is shown to be a perfect example of what the Anglo-Saxons believed to be a hero. Beowulf is a glory seeking warrior who throughout the epic is encouraged by the pursuit of glory; he later achieves this glory by winning great battles and boasting of his accomplishments; these accomplishments are later recognized by others in Anglo-Saxon society, further forwarding his quest for the glory.
“Beowulf,” a heroic epic passed down by word of mouth until the 6th century, tells of a brave soldier who gained glory by defeating different beasts. Beowulf, King of the Geats, chased riches and treasures every chance he got. His pride and desire for glory led him to Denmark to defeat the dreaded Grendel- a demonic beast who seeked vengeance for the intrusion of the Danes. Beowulf
"So,” begins poem. “The Spear-Danes in days gone by/ and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness./ We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns” (1-3). What follows is a brief history lesson, the story of “Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes,/ a ...
1) From “Disorder and Destruction: The Annals of Xanten” (in the Week 12 Charlemagne source you used last week) and from the other sources you have read, what is your impression of the Norse? How are they described? Please answer this question in your own words, but with quotations from the text to support your answer.
Another effect of what are called the ‘historical elements’ in Beowulf – the subsidiary stories of the Danes and the Geats – is to give the poem greater depth and verisimilitude. Hrothgar, the Danish king, is a ‘historical character, and the site of his palace of Heorot has been identified with the village of Leire on the island of Seeland in Denmark. The Geat king Hygelac really existed, and his unlucky expedition against the Franks, referred to several times in the poem, is mentioned by Gregory of Tours in the Historia Francorum and has been given the approximate date of AD521 (127).
Howard Hughes appears to be the world’s most brilliant and eccentric aviator and movie director in the film The Aviator (Mann & Scorsese, 2004). He is admired, wealthy and powerful. However, throughout the course of the film, his eccentricities lead to significant impairment. Paranoia, impulsivity and fears of contamination plague his thoughts and behaviors. He becomes unable to cope with being in public and he cannot maintain personal or professional relationships. As a result, Howard is left isolated, losing his social support and success. It is evident that he has symptoms that are characteristic of both obsessive-compulsive disorder and bipolar I disorder. His behaviors become so impairing and distressing that they impact every sphere of
For more than a millennium, literary excavators and scholars have been deciphering and intensively studying the epic Beowulf. The suspenseful and dramatic narrative takes place in Scandinavia where the Danes are experiencing the wrath of a monster known as Grendel. The titular eponymous King of the Geats gives the King Hrothgar necessary assistance to combat this ruthless and belligerent creature. After being killed, the hero Beowulf defeats Grendel’s mother in a watery underworld called her lair after she strikes Herot Hall. In the final scene, after serving five decades as Geatland’s generous and amiable king, he defeats the infamous dragon. Unfortunately, Beowulf suffers severe wounds from the battle. After briefly summarizing and analyzing
When Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus, the issues of race were at their peak. It was the time where blacks were seen as barbarous and villainous, and that is exactly what Shakespeare gave his audience when he presented the character Aaron the Moor. Unfortunately white Europeans did not sympathize or connect with this character, mostly because Aaron seemed to symbolize the black population as a whole. Shakespeare makes it very clear that Aaron has a hard time of gaining the likeness and approval of not only the audience, but also the characters in Titus Andronicus. In his article, Uddalak Dutta states that “Shakespeare seems to attest that “blackness” is, indeed, not merely skin-deep but an essential character trait” (927). Aaron’s characterization is one that cannot be matched by any other character in Shakespeare’s plays. Aaron embodies the characteristics of
On the 14th of September in the year 1607 the Earl of Tyrone Hugh O’Neill and the Earl of Tyrconnel Rory O’Donnell fled Ireland alongside officials, their families and numerous Gaelic chieftains. They left Ireland from Rathmullen in County Donegal. This flee was to become known as the flight of the Earls. They arrived in the Spanish Netherlands and then eventually made their way to Rome. The Flight of the Earls led to the most drastic form of the British government’s policy of plantation in Ireland. The Flight of the Earls has remained as one of the most memorable events in the history of Ireland. But what exactly were the reasons for the Flight of the Earls? The causes have been debated by historians with different interpretations as to why they fled but it is clear that the influence of the Earls in Ireland have been diminished greatly in the years prior to the Flight of the Earls. This essay seeks to clarify the reasons for the decline in power of the Earls in Ireland through exploration of the solidification of British rule in Ireland, along with key events in the years prior to the Flight of the Earls such as Hugh O’Neill’s campaign and onto the nine years war and the Battle of Kinsale and the Treaty of Mellifont after the Battle of Kinsale.
him a special place beside English kings since the time of Alfred. The body of writings were
The Angles were a Germanic tribe that occupied the region which is now Scleswig-Holstein, Germany. With their fellow ethnic groups, they formed the people who came to be known as the English. The Saxons were a Germanic people who first appeared in the beginning of the Christian era. The Saxons were said to have lived in the south Jutland Peninsula in the north of what is now Germany, but the fact has not been proven. They attacked and raided areas in the North Sea throughout the third and fourth centuries. By the end of the sixth century, the Saxons had taken all of the Roman territory within north-west Germany, as far as the Elbe River. The Angles joined the Saxons in the invasion of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. British resistance to the 'Anglo Saxon' invaders in the second half of the fifth century ended with the Anglo Saxon’s victory at the battle of Mount Badon. After the British were defeated, though, the Angles and the Saxons continued to fight over their religion for many years (Irvin, Vacca, Probst, Beers, p.46).
On the surface, the poem Beowulf seems to be a simple tale of a brave hero who triumphs over three monsters and who engages in several other battles in order to preserve what is just and right. A more thorough reading, however, reveals that the epic poem is filled with events that symbolize historical and social conditions that prevailed during the European reign of the Scandinavians in the seventh century to around the ninth century, following the Danish invasion of England (Sisson 1996).