Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 15

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Altogether, in the words of George Henderson, Carolingian architecture
emphasised power and splendour in an essentially political statement.54
As we have seen, danish kings and their entourages and envoys were visi-
tors on various occasions at all four of these centres, as also at Maastricht,
a major ecclesiastical centre. When foreign embassies were received, they
would present lavish gifts sent by their master, to which reciprocal gifts
from the emperor were made as the ambassadors departed.55 According
to Hincmar of Rheims, the most important occasions of gift-giving were
coordinated by the queen herself.56 such occasions guaranteed that port-
able, high-prestige artifacts would make their way from empire to various
regions of denmark and perhaps onward into norway.
Literature at the Carolingian Court
Complementary to the visual splendour of these architectural settings,
Charlemagne set about creating a literary circle to rival those that had
guaranteed the fame of the most eminent rulers and emperors of the past.57
He attracted literati from the major european centres of culture outside
francia, along with distinguished representatives of insular learning.58
these recruits would have thought of themselves primarily as ambassa-
dors (missi), grammarians, theologians, advisers to the king – not as poets
– but nevertheless they undertook the production of copious new texts in
quantitative Latin verse, extending to an unprecedented range of forms
and genres.59 this renewed pursuit of literature and learning was to endure
right through the ninth century.60
these poems were, at least in part, in requisition for communication,
54 George Henderson, ‘emulation and Invention in Carolingian Art’, in Caro lingian Culture,
248.
55 Ganshof, The Carolingians, 163, 176, and 178.
56 dutton, Carolingian Civilization, 525, translating Hincmar of Rheims, Hincmarus de ordine
palatii, ed. and trans. thomas Gross and Rudolf schieffer, 2nd ed., Monumenta Germaniae
Historica: fontes iuris Germani antiqui in usum scholarum separatim editi, vol. 3 (Hanover,
1980).
57 Peter Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London: duckworth, 1985), 4; story,
Carolingian Connections, 3–4.
58 Godman, Poetry, 6.
59 Garrison, ‘the emergence’, 112–13.
60 Godman, Poetry, 1.
sCHoLARs And skALds