Abstract
This essay, inflected by the psychoanalytic research of Abraham and Torok and the sociopolitical implications of their work on transgenerational haunting, examines Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons as a crypt into which the unmourned losses and unacknowledged traumas of British colonialism are deposited. It argues that Turner, a historian inspired by the Old Norse poem Krákumál and driven by imperialist ideology, is haunted by a restless colonial ‘other.’ Its encrypted form stirs about the pages of his History, making ‘incomprehensible signals.’ Turner narrativizes these signals as the blood-eagle, ‘a cruel and inhuman retaliation’ that rips apart Ella’s body and tears out his lungs so that his Northumbrian kingdom might be conquered and colonized. Turner, terrified by the ghostly sounds that emerge from his narrative voice, buries Ella’s blood-eagled body within his History, which becomes a crypt across which Ella strays. This essay suggests that Turner, an ambiguous ‘father’ of Anglo-Saxon studies, has transmitted Ella’s blood eagle, an encrypted specter of empire, to his ‘children.’ It contextualizes scholarly quotes regarding the blood eagle within the setting of late-twentieth century decolonization, arguing that scholars return to the blood eagle and ‘act out’ the trauma that Turner has passed on to them to try and heal the hidden wounds of colonialism. This essay discusses Turner in order to ask what twenty-first century future has been and might be imagined for Anglo-Saxon history from over two centuries of wrestling with these encrypted ghosts of empire.
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Notes
From their First Appearance above the Elbe, to the Death of Egbert and From the Death of Egbert to the Death of Alfred are the first two volumes of Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons. They were printed in 1799 and 1801, respectively, with London printers, T. Cadell and W. Davies. In 1802 these volumes were reprinted by Longman and Rees, which likewise printed the last two of the four-volume History (From the Death of Alfred to the Norman Conquest (1802) and The History of the Manners, Landed Property, Government, Laws, Poetry, Literature, Religion, and Language, of the Anglo-Saxons (1805)) and each successive edition (1807, 1820, 1823, 1828, 1836, 1852). Given the longevity of this relationship between Turner and Longman, I have chosen to use the 1802 Longman edition in all quotes in this essay.
The stories of Ragnar and Ella are recounted in a number of texts from medieval Scandinavia and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. The spelling of names and places varies in these texts, and for consistency, unless otherwise indicated, I use Turner’s spellings.
On the historical figure of Ragnar see Smyth’s monograph Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles 850–880 (Smyth, 1977), which includes chapters titled ‘The Northumbrian Snake-Pit’ and ‘The Sacrifice of King Ælla.’ Like the statements by Campbell, John and Wormald, Smyth’s vision of the ninth century cleaves to Turner’s nineteenth-century narrative.
Ella’s ‘lung extraction’ and the blood-eagle’s sacrificial purpose emerge from a collection of saga narratives about Ella of Northumbria, Halfdan, son of Harald Fairhair, and the mythical figures Lyngvi and Brusi; comments via Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum and commentary of seventeenth-century Danish scholar, Stephanus Stephanius; and from the English poems by Robert Southey and Joseph Cottle. For a detailed accounting see Frank’s excellent essay (Frank 1984, 333–334) and a brief but thorough overview by McTurk (2007, 170–171).
Examples include Ridyard (1988, 69 n.250); Sawyer and Sawyer (1993, 25); Jeffrey (1996, 119); Baraz (2003, 67 n.59 and 71 n.69); Jan (2007, 357); Patton (2009, 224 n.84).
According to Ragnars saga, Ragnar marries into the Volsung line by wedding Áslaug, the daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild of the Völsunga saga. He inherits the throne of Denmark from his father, also named Sigurd.
‘vasat sem bjarta brúði/í bing hjá sér leggja’ … ‘vagasat sem un ekkju/íǫndvegi kyssa’ (Jónsson, [1912, 1913, 1914, 1915] 1973, 652, stanza 13, ll. 9–10 and stanza 14, l. 910). All translations of Krákumál are my own but lean upon McTurk’s (2007) prose translation, which follows, for the most part, Jónsson’s edition.
‘Hverr lá þverr of annan’ … ‘Hitt telk jafnt, at gangi/at samtogi sverða/sveinn í motí einum/hrøkkvit þegn fyr þegni’ (Jónsson, [1912, 1913, 1914, 1915] 1973, 642, stanza 16, l. 2; 654, stanza 23, ll. 2–4).
‘Hitt lœgir mik, jafnan/at Baldrs fǫður bekki/búna veitk at sumblum;/drekkum bjór af bragði/ór bjúgviðum hausa’ Jónsson, [1912, 1913, 1914, 1915] 1973, 655, stanza 25, ll. 2–6).
… Viðris/vǫndr í Ellu standi; /sonum mínum mun svella/sinn fǫður ráðinn verða’ (Jónsson, [1912, 1913, 1914, 1915] 1973, 655, stanza 27, ll. 5–8).
See Saxo Grammaticus’ Danish chronicle, Gesta Danorum, and the Icelandic sagas Ragnars saga and Ragnarssona þáttr.
While this quote in Rix derives from Thomas Wharton, he and Percy were ‘co-collaborators’ of Runic theory, and I use it here in reference to Percy for the sake of expediency.
For a list of available translations, see Farley’s ‘Scandinavian Influences on the English Romantic Movement’ (Farley, 1903, 58-ff), and, more recently, Ross’ comprehensive discussion (Ross, 1998, 229–272).
Wallace-Hadrill quotes here from Adémar de Chabannes, an eleventh-century French monk and historian. Note that the expression could implicate any number of deaths by beating, smashing, crushing, slaughtering, torturing, to name a few.
Sawyer’s The Age of the Vikings (Sawyer, [1962] 1971) and the contentious debates that surround it (Sawyer, 1969) are exhibits that reflect the relationships between mid-century academic historicism and European cultural unconscious.
For example, Frantzen (1990), Frantzen and Niles (1997), Scragg and Weinberg (2000), Ross (1998, 2001) and Wawn (2000, 2007).
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Acknowledgements
Research for this chapter was assisted by a New Faculty Fellows award from the American Council of Learned Societies, funded by The Andrew Mellon Foundation. A very special thank you to Melissa Gniadek for many conversations about this essay and others.
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Ellard, D. Ella’s bloody eagle: Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Saxon history. Postmedieval 5, 215–234 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2014.10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2014.10