Hello all,
I am wondering if there are any good sources from Anglo-Saxons writing about Viking culture or life. The reason I ask is that I've read a lot about travellers from Europe in China and even the most Christian of Christians falling in love with Chinese culture. Similarly, there are several cases of Qing visitors to England finding England to be a lovely place. Often both are analysed through their respective religious/ideological views. I find these meetings of cultures to be fascinating. I just wondered if there are any good sources from Anglo Saxons of them meeting the barbarian Vikings or living among them, therefore finding themselves to look favourably upon Viking civilization.
Thanks everyone.
I am wondered if there are any good sources from Anglo-Saxons writing about Viking culture or life.
King Alfred the Great of Wessex (d. 899) who was famous for his struggle with the Danish raiders also commissioned to translate Latin Orosius' History against the Pagans into Old English, with some additions on the geography in Northern Europe.
In this additional section, we can find the summary of the description of now Norway (called Norð-weg, 'Northern Way' in literal translation), based on the oral account of the Norseman, Ohthere (rendered Óttar in Old Norse, and Ottar in modern Norwegian). Ohthere was apparently not the raider, but a kind of merchant-like figure who was also a chieftain in his homeland, Hålogaland in Northern Norway, accumulating the wealth by hunting and taking the tribute from arctic hunting-gathering people, the Finns (usually identified as modern Sámi people). He even presented the walrus tusk hunted in the far north to King Alfred. This account is also an indispensable source value for the ethnography of different arctic and sub-arctic peoples around Fenno-Scandia in the late 9th century, since Ohthere once seemed to take a journey around the northernmost part of Scandinavian into the White Sea, and the account also includes some groups of people he met in course of this voyage. The scribe also records the sea route he took from his homeland to two trading places in southern parts of Scandinavia, one of them was Hedeby (near now Schleswig) in south-eastern Jutland Peninsula.
On the other hand, the continuation of the addition in Old English translation of Ororius also includes the description based on another informant, Wulfstan (who was usually identified with English) who narrated the voyage from Hedeby into the Baltic.
While many researchers, both historians and literary scholars alike, have discussed the literary as well as the political motive of including these account into the translation work conducted in the court of West-Saxon ruler (Cf. Allport 2020. He argues that the incursion of the text was to show the 'symbolic' subjugation even of the Finns in the far north to King Alfred. Allport 2020: 274), I'd dare to say that these accounts, especially Ottar's one, are relatively less-biased on the life and society of the contemporary Scandinavians.
The following Youtube video read the modern English translation of Ohthere's account, though I've not checked the details on the identification of some groups of people and translation by myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcPMkEHJ928
I've read a lot about travellers......
Generally speaking, however, we cannot expect to find many of such kind of English (Anglo-Saxon) 'travel account' in the first millennium in Early Medieval Europe, since it was not so customary then for the contemporary people (especially Christians) to record their travel, possibly except for the pilgrim diary. As I illustrated in Just how different were Viking era Scandinavian countries from each other?, the large scale as well as stable kingdoms in Viking Age Scandinavia had essentially not appeared until Late Viking Ages, so not so many English people who also had an important business to record probably took a visit in Scandinavia in person then. As an example of this kind of text is the (hagiographic) Life of St. Ansgar who went to preach Christianity in Denmark and in Central Sweden from the 830s to the 850s.
Another relatively less-prejudiced text worth checking for pre-1066 period is probably Encomium Emmae Reginae (the Praise for Queen Emma), though the text itself was written in Flanders in ca. 1040. Queen Emma (d. 1052) was a daughter of Duke Richard I of Normandy, and re-married with King Cnut the Great of the Danes (d. 1035). In the first chapter of this text, King Sweyn Forkbeard of the Danes, that is to say, her second father-in-law, is depicted rather positively, in contrast with some German accounts like Adam of Bremen that the traditional half-pagan and cruel (revolted against his father, Harald Bluetooth) figure of Sweyn was largely based on. The revaluation of Sweyn Forkbeard as a military commander as well as a Christian ruler in Scandinavia has greatly progressed since ca. 1990, and the pioneering article of this trend by Peter H. Sawyer actually focus on the portrait of Sweyn described in EER rather than traditional Adam the German.
In fact, there were some accounts by the English (Anglo-Saxons) that also includes some description of Scandinavia even after the Norman Conquest (some of the Anglo-Saxon churchmen was invited to Scandinavia by the ruler, or even some others took temporary asylum in Scandinavia from the political chaos after the Conquest), but I assume this is an another story and not the direct focus of OP's question.
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