Gripla - 20.12.2013, Síða 14

GRIPLA14
at this time.48 the three men came together again in october of the same
year at Maastricht; Charles received Rorik graciously, while dismissing
Rodulfus on suspicion of treachery and exorbitant demands.49 We last
hear of Rorik in the following year, 873, when he visited Louis the German
in Aachen and, after taking hostages from the king, swore him fealty.50
In simon Coupland’s assessment, Rorik stands out as the most powerful
and influential of all the danes drawn into the Carolingian milieu in the
ninth century. He was unique in being a fidelis of all three royal brothers,
Charles the Bald, Lothar I and Louis the German, in addition to Lothar II.
the franks regarded him as ‘one of us’ rather than ‘one of them’.51
As a coda, we can note that Godofridus II seems to have kept up his
dynasty’s links with the Carolingian kings. In 882 he accepted baptism
and received a grant in frisia along with other honours formerly belong-
ing to Rorik. He was also given as a wife Gisla, the illegitimate daughter
of Lothar II.52
these processes of political trafficking brought danish kings and
members of their entourage into contact – in some cases sustained, in oth-
ers intermittent – with the prestige centres of a society far more opulent
and splendid than their own. the imperial circle had by now evolved its
pattern of residency away from that of a peripatetic warrior-court toward
more settled abode at a select number of élite centres. Charlemagne’s three
favourite palaces were those at Aachen, Ingelheim and nijmegen; accord-
ing to einhard, the splendid palace at Ingelheim ranked first among them,
and it continued in frequent use under Louis the Pious for assemblies and
receptions of envoys. the palace at frankfurt appears to have been another
showplace for both Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. these residences
were richly decorated with mosaics, paintings, frescoes and painted stucco
in ancient Roman style; indeed Aachen was celebrated as a new Rome.53
48 Maund, ‘“A turmoil of Warring Princes”’, 43.
49 Annales Bertiniani, 222–6; The Annals of St-Bertin, trans. janet L. nelson (Manchester:
Manchester university Press, 1991), 177–80.
50 Coupland, ‘from Poachers’, 98–9.
51 Coupland, ‘from Poachers’, 101.
52 Maund, ‘“A turmoil of Warring Princes”’, 44.
53 Peter Godman, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry (oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1987), 85; Mary Garrison, ‘the emergence of Carolingian Latin Litera-
ture and the Court of Charlemagne’, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed.
Rosamond Mckitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1994), 130.