Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 8

GRIPLA8
Carolingian poetics; and by tracing the development of tmesis more fully
in both poetic corpora.
scandinavian-frankish Relations
I start with a brief account of the two polities, i.e., the danish and
frankish realms. denmark at this period can be inferred to have exhibited
a mixture of regional and central power.3 Prior to the mid tenth century,
kingship seems to have been a matter of blood right and could be vested
in several persons at once, no single one of whom seems to have been per-
ceived, so far as our sources show, as having a better claim than the others.4
A centralising force is also manifest; indicative are the establishment and
progressive renewals of the large royal compound at Gamle Lejre,5 the con-
struction of the danevirke, the founding of Ribe and other emporia and
the canal works on samsø.6 to this list might be added the consolidation
of a royal centre at sliasthorp, the focus of recent archaeological investiga-
tions by Anders dobat.7 some kings in denmark, whatever the limits on
their sway at home, managed to exert an international presence. ongendus
and sigifridus are described in frankish sources as kings who claimed to
represent the ‘danes’ or ‘normans’ in negotiations with foreign leaders.8
Likewise, some kings took on the role of keeping the peace and protecting
foreign traders in the cosmopolitan emporia of scandinavia – not merely
Haithabu/Hedeby and Ribe in southern jutland but also Birka in sweden
3 søren M. sindbæk, ‘the Lands of Denemearce: Cultural differences and social networks
of the Viking Age in south scandinavia’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 4 (2008): 171,
196.
4 k. L. Maund, ‘“A turmoil of Warring Princes”: Political Leadership in ninth-Century
denmark’, Haskins Society Journal 6 (1994): 32, 41, 46.
5 john d. niles et al., Beowulf and Lejre, Medieval and Renaissance texts and studies, vol.
323 (tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance studies, 2007), 2.
6 Inge skovgaard-Petersen, ‘the Making of the danish kingdom’, in The Cambridge
History of Scandinavia, vol. 1, Prehistory to 1520, ed. knut Helle (Cambridge: Cambridge
university Press, 2003), 172–5; cf. Bjørn Myhre, ‘the Iron Age’, in The Cambridge History
of Scandinavia, 1:86–7.
7 full reporting is pending. Informal publications include Victoria james, ‘digging for
europe’, Geographical: Magazine of the Royal Geographical Society 85.3 (2013): 34–8.
8 skovgaard-Petersen, ‘the Making of the danish kingdom’, 172–73. normalised forms of
the Latin versions of the names seen in the annals and chronicles will mostly be used in this
discussion, in the absence of secure attestations of the corresponding contemporary danish
forms.