And All That
October 14, 2016 11:07 AM Subscribe
"Harold’s death at Hastings by an arrow to the eye remains one of the most enduring ‘facts’ in English history. But this detail may have been the product of historians writing generations after 1066, and the Bayeux Tapestry, the most famous witness to Harold’s death, may not show the king being shot by an arrow at all."
Today marks the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.
-History Today's coverage includes articles on William's temperament and the genocidal Harrying of the North.
-Historian Marc Morris recreates scenes from the Bayeux tapestry with Playmobil figurines.
-One thousand costumed enthusiasts are gathering in East Sussex to recreate the battle. There's a short documentary on the 940th anniversary re-enactment on YouTube.
-If you want a credulous, old-fashioned, novelistic treatment of the turbulent characters in play during the crises of the 11th century—Robert the Devil and Cnut the Great, Earl Godwin and King Edward, William and Harold, Edwin and Morkar, Matilda of Flanders, Siward the Dane, arrogant Tostig, mountainous Harald Hardrada—you could do worse than 1863's Danes, Saxons, and Normans; or, Stories of our Ancestors, by J.G. Edgar.
Today marks the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.
-History Today's coverage includes articles on William's temperament and the genocidal Harrying of the North.
-Historian Marc Morris recreates scenes from the Bayeux tapestry with Playmobil figurines.
-One thousand costumed enthusiasts are gathering in East Sussex to recreate the battle. There's a short documentary on the 940th anniversary re-enactment on YouTube.
-If you want a credulous, old-fashioned, novelistic treatment of the turbulent characters in play during the crises of the 11th century—Robert the Devil and Cnut the Great, Earl Godwin and King Edward, William and Harold, Edwin and Morkar, Matilda of Flanders, Siward the Dane, arrogant Tostig, mountainous Harald Hardrada—you could do worse than 1863's Danes, Saxons, and Normans; or, Stories of our Ancestors, by J.G. Edgar.
I always thought it was tapestryshopp'd!!!
posted by BrashTech at 11:17 AM on October 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by BrashTech at 11:17 AM on October 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
Once you learn what an upside down world England was leading up to 1066, Harold's brief reign and death feel like much more of just a blip than the signal point of the end of an era. True, the Normans came in and changed a lot, but the world they changed was one already tumultuous in the first place. Generally, from the end of Roman rule, the island of Britain was pretty much the prize piece of an epic game of RISK between northern Europeans with control of this and that coming and going between dynasties like century long heart beats.
posted by Atreides at 11:26 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Atreides at 11:26 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
+1 for the FFP title reference.
posted by Quasirandom at 11:42 AM on October 14, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by Quasirandom at 11:42 AM on October 14, 2016 [9 favorites]
I want a really good bio on Emma of Normandy, is what I want. I suspect that she's as much responsible for the success of Cnut as Cnut.
posted by Diablevert at 12:15 PM on October 14, 2016
posted by Diablevert at 12:15 PM on October 14, 2016
My favorite character in the tapestry is Turold, a performer in the court of Guy of Ponthieu with dwarfism who is one of the relatively few explicitly named and identified individuals in the whole piece, because it is plausible that he is the same Turold who composed the Song of Roland.
I read a book a few years ago that went into all of the little easter eggs and strange bits and I recall enjoying it quite a bit (I checked and it's 1066 by Andrew Bridgeford).
posted by Copronymus at 12:20 PM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
I read a book a few years ago that went into all of the little easter eggs and strange bits and I recall enjoying it quite a bit (I checked and it's 1066 by Andrew Bridgeford).
posted by Copronymus at 12:20 PM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
But he's definitely dead, right?
posted by clockzero at 12:22 PM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by clockzero at 12:22 PM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
is this tapestree awfentic it shure looks liek it
posted by lalochezia at 1:05 PM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 1:05 PM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
BBC iWonder - "Why should I care about 1066?"
FTA: "The English had an international reputation for drinking - especially beer and mead - which often took place in mead-halls." Awesome!
BBC: 'England's darling' and Scotland's saint'
FTA: "Everyone knows what happened 950 years ago this month, don't they? William the Conqueror killed Harold and became King of England.
Not quite. Harold and the flower of his army died at Hastings on 14 October 1066. But the magnates of England then proclaimed Edgar the Aetheling as King."
posted by marienbad at 3:09 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
FTA: "The English had an international reputation for drinking - especially beer and mead - which often took place in mead-halls." Awesome!
BBC: 'England's darling' and Scotland's saint'
FTA: "Everyone knows what happened 950 years ago this month, don't they? William the Conqueror killed Harold and became King of England.
Not quite. Harold and the flower of his army died at Hastings on 14 October 1066. But the magnates of England then proclaimed Edgar the Aetheling as King."
posted by marienbad at 3:09 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
genocidal Harrying of the North.
Sadly the linked article doesn't use the word 'genocide', but it's an incredible thing to say. Genocide. Read the Domesday Book and think of all the villages in Yorkshire: "now it is waste." That's a generation later, and they're not describing a simple economic change, they're describing a post-genocide landscape where there are too few people to tax.
Though we remember Hastings, we're ambiguous as a nation as to what, exactly, we're remembering. Most people have never heard of the English genocide, but there's always been that tension when we remember what was, basically, a catastrophe for England, English people, and our culture. I want to give a few examples:
• the Normans destroyed so many of our buildings that it wasn't until 1819 that it was finally proven that we used to build in stone;
• English literature before 1066 was one of the strongest vernacular literatures in Europe, and it was killed off for nearly three hundred years;
• English metalwork was famed across Europe, but the Normans not only killed the craft, they melted down everything of that inheritance (the only things which survive are those outside England or buried, where the Normans couldn't get at them);
• English needlework was likewise famed, and we were humiliated by the Normans into recording our own destruction in the form of the Bayeux Tapestry.
I want a really good bio on Emma of Normandy,
I don't know if this is a sophisticated joke or not, but Emma is one of the few women with a contemporary biography. The Encomium Emmae Reginae is mostly self-serving, but still.
posted by Emma May Smith at 3:55 PM on October 14, 2016 [15 favorites]
Sadly the linked article doesn't use the word 'genocide', but it's an incredible thing to say. Genocide. Read the Domesday Book and think of all the villages in Yorkshire: "now it is waste." That's a generation later, and they're not describing a simple economic change, they're describing a post-genocide landscape where there are too few people to tax.
Though we remember Hastings, we're ambiguous as a nation as to what, exactly, we're remembering. Most people have never heard of the English genocide, but there's always been that tension when we remember what was, basically, a catastrophe for England, English people, and our culture. I want to give a few examples:
• the Normans destroyed so many of our buildings that it wasn't until 1819 that it was finally proven that we used to build in stone;
• English literature before 1066 was one of the strongest vernacular literatures in Europe, and it was killed off for nearly three hundred years;
• English metalwork was famed across Europe, but the Normans not only killed the craft, they melted down everything of that inheritance (the only things which survive are those outside England or buried, where the Normans couldn't get at them);
• English needlework was likewise famed, and we were humiliated by the Normans into recording our own destruction in the form of the Bayeux Tapestry.
I want a really good bio on Emma of Normandy,
I don't know if this is a sophisticated joke or not, but Emma is one of the few women with a contemporary biography. The Encomium Emmae Reginae is mostly self-serving, but still.
posted by Emma May Smith at 3:55 PM on October 14, 2016 [15 favorites]
I don't know if this is a sophisticated joke or not, but Emma is one of the few women with a contemporary biography.
Nah, I mean I'd be interested to read a contemporary secular biography of her. I confess I haven't read the Encomium, but from what I understand it's a self-serving haigiography of someone who was in her time a fairly controversial figure. Of course, even the fact that she was clever enough to get her own version of the story out there suggests a lot of what's interesting about her. Married of to one of the biggest chuckleheads in history, whose incompetenace managed to first bankrupt and then strip him of his kingdom, she finds herself widowed at 30 when in walks this tall, good-lookin' 20-year-old Viking and she nods to herself, says I'll have me some of that, please, and proceeds to ditch her family and form a partnership that leads to one of the most peaceful and successful kingships in English history until that point.
there's always been that tension when we remember what was, basically, a catastrophe for England, English people, and our culture
I dunno, was there really such a thing as England before William? I mean, yeah, Alfred, but throughout his time the North was Viking-ruled and half-Viking in culture, and that's the bit that got exterminated in the Harrying. The dialects of Old English were so disparate they were barely mutally intelligible. In William's holocaust was England forged.
posted by Diablevert at 6:05 PM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
Nah, I mean I'd be interested to read a contemporary secular biography of her. I confess I haven't read the Encomium, but from what I understand it's a self-serving haigiography of someone who was in her time a fairly controversial figure. Of course, even the fact that she was clever enough to get her own version of the story out there suggests a lot of what's interesting about her. Married of to one of the biggest chuckleheads in history, whose incompetenace managed to first bankrupt and then strip him of his kingdom, she finds herself widowed at 30 when in walks this tall, good-lookin' 20-year-old Viking and she nods to herself, says I'll have me some of that, please, and proceeds to ditch her family and form a partnership that leads to one of the most peaceful and successful kingships in English history until that point.
there's always been that tension when we remember what was, basically, a catastrophe for England, English people, and our culture
I dunno, was there really such a thing as England before William? I mean, yeah, Alfred, but throughout his time the North was Viking-ruled and half-Viking in culture, and that's the bit that got exterminated in the Harrying. The dialects of Old English were so disparate they were barely mutally intelligible. In William's holocaust was England forged.
posted by Diablevert at 6:05 PM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
And there was 'arold
with 'is eye full of arrer
on 'is 'orse
wiv 'is 'at in 'is 'and
we learned as kids.
So it wernt true, ye say.
Makes you wonder about the rest of the stuff. Dunnit?
posted by jan murray at 7:47 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
with 'is eye full of arrer
on 'is 'orse
wiv 'is 'at in 'is 'and
we learned as kids.
So it wernt true, ye say.
Makes you wonder about the rest of the stuff. Dunnit?
posted by jan murray at 7:47 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
An 'h', an 'h', my kingdom for an 'h'!!!!
posted by awfurby at 10:16 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by awfurby at 10:16 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
1066 was an inside job. William The Bastard
lied, thegns died. Follow the Danegeld. Wake
UP, ye ovine ruminants of the land.
(twitter thread)
posted by hawthorne at 2:05 AM on October 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
lied, thegns died. Follow the Danegeld. Wake
UP, ye ovine ruminants of the land.
(twitter thread)
posted by hawthorne at 2:05 AM on October 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
My British literature professor, of Irish descent, wouldn't allow, or respond to, any mention of William the Conqueror in his classroom. For him, we spoke of William, the Bastard Duke of Normandy, or we held our tongues.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:43 AM on October 15, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by Ghidorah at 4:43 AM on October 15, 2016 [6 favorites]
This is fascinating, and I'd like to learn more about how the literature and metalcraft, particularly, were eliminated. Can someone point me toward solid sources? I'm not so interested in the battle as its aftermath.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 10:21 AM on October 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 10:21 AM on October 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
What would have happened if the Normans had lost the Battle of Hastings?
posted by Chrysostom at 8:38 AM on October 20, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Chrysostom at 8:38 AM on October 20, 2016 [1 favorite]
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