The Seafarer (Historical Context)

Historical Context

Without the interest of Church leaders and the patronage of West Saxon kings, modern readers would have no Old English literature to speak of. While the so-called Anglo-Saxon period of English history extends from 449 to 1066 — from the beginning of the conquest of Britain by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, through the invasions and partial conquest of northern England by the Danish-and Norse-speaking Vikings, and until the defeat of the last Saxon King, Harold, by William the Conqueror — the literary period of the Old English peoples really only began after the conversion of these tribes to Christianity. Previous to this event, the literature of the migrating bands had been entirely oral. It consisted of ancient verse forms employing repeated stress patterns and alliteration, and it celebrated heroic figures of even earlier periods. But none of this oral literature could have survived the further invasions and cultural changes that later befell Britain if the tribes had not converted to Christianity and learned the art of letters. Furthermore, since the literate elite of the earlier part of this six-hundred-year period were almost entirely monks and other churchmen, without the abiding interest of ecclesiastical authorities in their ancestors’ pagan roots, none of the poetry of the Angles and Saxons would have ever obtained to writing. Still, it was King Alfred (849-899) and his successors in Wessex who vigorously collected and preserved the literary heritage of their ancestors while extending the body of literature through translation and fresh composition.

“The Seafarer,” an elegy and not a traditional Germanic epic (though an epic like Beowulf itself had elegiac sections), actually carries within itself evidence of a melding of cultures between Anglo-Saxons and the British. This merging points to a developing cultural synthesis between native and invader that was brought to an end by William’s conquest with his French-speaking Viking retainers. The fact is that by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, a body of English literature, an evolving amalgam of Germanic, Celtic, and Latin sources, was thriving with a growing readership, maturing in sophistication and complexity, and exploring new genres and themes. The Norman invasion cut off a process of development in English literature that would only begin again under entirely different cultural circumstances three hundred years later during the so-called “high” Middle Ages. Although modern readers are separated from the body of surviving Old English literature by the cultural watersheds of the Norman invasion, the Reformation and Renaissance, and the emergence of the present postmodern and post-Christian era, we must “stretch” our imaginations enough to try to appreciate this literature through the cultural lens of its original audience and understand it as a fascinating intermingling of pagan and Christian elements that conjoined Mediterranean, Celtic, and Germanic cultures into a surprising new aggregate.

The first Germanic people in Britain were hired by a British king named Vortigern as mercenaries to defend the Romanized Britons against their more barbaric cousins, the Caledonian Picts, to the north in what is now called Scotland. These hired guns were promised land in return for protection. Even though they were unlettered and uncivilized, Hengist and Horsa, the leaders of these expeditionary forces, quickly ascertained the social and military situation of the demilitarized Celts who had ceased from being warlike after nearly four hundred years of Roman rule. These early Anglian settlers sent swift word across the North Sea to their relatives, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, to migrate over to these fresh lands which lay ready for seizure. The invaders quickly and easily gained a foothold in Britain and began pushing back the native Celts towards modern Wales and Cornwall in Great Britain and Brittany in northwestern France.

Ironically, however, the military conquest by the Angles and Saxons of the Celtic homeland began the cultural and spiritual conquest of these Germanic pagans by the Celtic Christians. The Irish Church, founded by St. Patrick (390-460), himself a Romano-Briton, took on the task of evangelizing the new invaders. Early Irish monastic foundations in Lindisfarne and other sites spread not only a new faith but the cultural remnants of Rome’s Mediterranean civilization to the unlettered rulers. One by one, the “kings” of the Germanic “kin” saw the cultural advantages of embracing the new religion. Still, the coming of St. Augustine (who died in 607), an envoy sent by Pope St. Gregory the Great to extend the power of the Roman Church into northern Europe, sped up the Christianization process. The Roman and Celtic clergy, representing very different liturgical and theological traditions, finally made peace and common cause at the Synod of Whitby in 664.

The epic Beowulf provides us a wonderful glimpse into early Germanic cultural life. In one scene, a “scop” takes up a chanted narrative of past and present exploits in the “mead-hall,” where warrior retainers sit drunk but attentive to the singer-poet’s measured recitation. Once Christianization was complete, however, the work of the secular scop as entertainer and tribal historian was at first supplemented and eventually taken over by the monastic scribe, who not only committed earlier poems to writing but also composed works of his own. One such work, “The Seafarer,” definitely represents a movement beyond the traditional epic form, however. In many respects, “The Seafarer” echoes themes that abound in Welsh verse: longing for times past, sympathetic responses to the speaker’s lament in the voices of birds, and so forth. Perhaps composed in the seventh century at the Mercian borderland between Anglian intruder and native Briton in the west Midlands, “The Seafarer” embodies the blending of pagan and Christian, Germanic and Celtic traditions that was the cultural promise of those times.

But more than this process of gradual cultural coalescence ended with the coming of the Normans. The entire social fabric that had existed among lord, retainer, and serf changed irrevocably as French-speaking usurpers took the place of paternalistic clan leaders. The death of the Anglo-Saxon cultural nexus meant the real birth of Feudalism in England.

Compare & Contrast

• 600-100 BC: Although Germanic peoples were first mentioned in writing some six hundred years before the common era, they did not “officially” burst into the Mediterranean world until the second century BC with the invasion of Italy by the Cimbri and the Teutons, who were finally routed by the Romans in 101 BC.
• 58-51 BC: Caesar decides to invade Transalpine Gaul in 58 BC when protests by various Gallic tribes in loose confederation with Rome arise against the Suevi, a German tribe that had recently conquered territory in Gaul, and when he hears reports of a threatened invasion by the Helvetii, a Celtic tribe from the area that is now in Switzerland. Not only does he force the Helvetii to withdraw, but he also kills the Suevi’s leader, Ariovistus, in Alsace after an arduous offensive. Over the course of the various campaigns that constitute the “Gallic Wars,” Caesar has many occasions to meet and defeat various Germanic tribes, like the Usipites and Tencteri, that were then crossing the Rhine into Celtic territories. Caesar’s consolidation of Roman power in Gaul stops Germanic migration into the area for a while.
• AD 9: Roman power in Gaul continues to grow after Caesar’s adopted son, Augustus, settles his imperial claims at the end of the Roman Civil Wars and consolidates power. But in AD 9, Arminius (c. 17 BC-AD 21), a Cherusci tribal chieftain, leads a confederation of tribes in ambush and utterly destroys three legions under General Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Teu-toburg Forest. Augustus wisely decides that the only defensible frontier for the Empire is at the Rhine River and breaks off further Roman incursions into German territory.
• AD 167-175, 178-180: Emperor Marcus Aurelius Pius, famous Stoic philosopher-king of the middle Roman Empire, begins a series of campaigns against the Marcomanni and other Germanic tribes allied with them along the Danube River in what is now known as Austria. Even though Marcus Aurelius hands on troubles along the Danubian frontier to his son and heir, Com-modus, if he hadn’t succeeded in defeating the Marcomanni, the Empire might well have ended much earlier than it does.
• Third Century AD: The Roman world collapses into a nearly fatal crisis chiefly due to the unbridgeable gap between the rich upper classes in the cities and the unemployed urban poor and barely civilized peasants. Also, the wars that began under Marcus Aurelius persist, and increased taxation steadily devours the prosperity of the Empire. To meet rising military expenses and to supply the ever-growing bureaucracy, emperors, like Caracalla (d. 217), devalue Roman money and precipitate an economic crisis from “runaway” inflation. Defenses along the Rhine and Danube also disintegrate further under tribal attack, and the provinces of the Eastern Empire are overrun by Iranians. Finally, the command and control of the army completely breaks down. Between the years 235 and 284 only one out of more than two dozen emperors escapes violent death.
• Third Century AD: The Goths, a Germanic people who probably migrated from southern Scandinavia sometime before the time of Christ, settle by the Third Century into territories near the Black Sea and stage occasional strikes into Roman territory. Those who inhabit an area in what is now the modern Ukraine come to be known as Ostrogoths, or the “East Goths,” and those who occupy a region along the Danube are called Visigoths, or the “West Goths.”
• Third Century AD: The Franks, also known as the Salians, Ripuarians, and Chatti, come to inhabit the lower and middle Rhine Valley. In time, the Franks start to breach the Roman borderland around Mainz but are eventually driven back by Emperor Probus.
• 284-305: After much social, economic, and military disintegration, the Emperor Diocletian takes over the Empire and establishes total control over all aspects of Roman life. He adopts oriental court culture and protocols and transforms into an unending system the extraordinary measures adopted by the emperors of the third century to save the Roman state. Personal freedom is denied the peasantry, who then become tied to the soil of their birth. Artisans and higher civil servants are frozen into hereditary castes and taxed to the breaking point. Only rich landowners in fortified villas — a foreshadowing of medieval feudal lords — and the imperial bureaucracy predominate over the slowly collapsing social order.
• Fourth Century AD: Both the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths live peacefully near the Empire and trade with the Romans for luxury goods. They also adopt a heretical form of Christianity called Arianism, the belief that Christ was human and not divine.
• 306-337: After having fought off numerous opponents, Constantine I successfully reorganizes the Roman Empire. He also decriminalizes Christianity and eventually converts to the emergent faith himself. He establishes a second capital at Byzantium and names it Constantinople after himself in 330. With two capitals as foci for the East and the West, he reorganizes the entire system of local government into prefectures, dioceses, and provinces under regional metropolitan control. Indeed, his reforms, though too late for the West, enable the Roman Empire to survive in the East until the year 1453. Still, Constantine’s division of the Empire into two parts only becomes official in the year 395.
• 358: Emperor Julian, later known as “the Apostate” because of his desire to return the Empire to paganism, grants the Salian Franks an area of land called Toxandria between the Meuse and the Scheldt rivers in exchange for Frankish military allegiance and support.
• 370: The Ostrogoths are defeated by and forced into fealty with the Huns.
• 378-418: With further pressure from the Huns pushing both Gothic tribes across the Roman frontier, the Visigoths in 378 defeat the Eastern Romans of Byzantium at Adrianople. Repudiating an alliance they had forged with the Byzantines after their victory, the Visigoths turn to the West and sack Rome in 410 under their king Alaric I and then continue migrating and marauding until 418, when they settle in Aquitaine in southwestern France.
• Fifth Century AD: The Ripuarian Franks and the Chatti, cousins to the Salian Franks, had also struck across the frontier of middle Rhine during the first quarter of the fifth century. As a result of the invasion of Gaul by the Huns, a band of Ripuarians takes over Cologne.
• 406: The Vandals, another Arian Christian tribe that had originally migrated into what is now Hungary, also suffer attacks under Huns from the East. They eventually push across the frontiers of the Roman Empire in December 406, when they cross the Rhine into Gaul.
• 429-439: Having pushed on into Spain by 409, the Vandals under their new ruler Gaiseric (ruling from 429 to 477) use Spain as a launchpad for their invasion of North Africa, leaving the Iberian peninsula for others to conquer.
• 449-1066: From the times of the first incursions by Hengist and Horsa until the death of Harold II at Hastings, the so-called Anglo-Saxon period of British history presents an integral continuum of steady social evolution. The whole pattern of early Anglo-Saxon society first centers on families, clans, and tribes and depends upon a class of warriors bound together in a filial system of reciprocity called a comitatus in Latin. Scholars believe this same system predominated for all Germanic peoples. The regional and tribal leader (ealdormann or eorl) counted on both military support and undying loyalty from his thegns (“thanes,” that is, armed retainers), who in return presumed their leader would provide them with an organized defense and luxurious bequests for their services to him. From the seventh until the eleventh century this tribal system evolves incrementally because of extending filiation into larger and larger kingdoms, most significantly the East Anglian kingdom of Mercia, the North Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, and the West Saxon kingdom of Wessex. But by 959, all of England is rather loosely filiated and united under the kings of Wessex, the greatest of whom was Alfred the Great (849-899). However, this West-Saxon lineage of kings is halted for a generation in 1016 when the Danish king Canute succeeds in conquering and holding England, thus crowning more than two centuries of sporadic Viking penetrations and seizures in England. Nevertheless, two Anglo-Saxon kings, Saint Edward the Confessor and Harold II, do return to reign again, but only for 24 years (1042-66) before the conquest of England by the Norman William I ends Anglo-Saxon cultural and political hegemony.
• 455: Having consolidated power over the western Mediterranean, Gaiseric successfully invades and sacks Rome in 455. Because of this act of utter destructiveness, the name “Vandal” has come to signify anyone who barbarically and wantonly destroys property.
• 461-81: After the Merovingians — one of the smaller bands into which the Salian Franks were divided, named after its chieftain Merovech — extended Salian domination to the south, perhaps as far as the Somme River, Childeric I (d. 481), Merovech’s son, continues to support the Romans until the death of the Roman Emperor Majorian in 461. He then leads an uprising against Aegidius, the Roman governor in northern Gaul. Aegidius, however, prevails in the struggle and exiles Childeric across the Rhine among the Thuringian tribe. Nevertheless, Childeric returns after a few years and defeats the Romans with the help of some Saxon allies. In the end, Syagrius, Aegidius’s son and successor, is able to keep Childeric from moving his people south of the Somme, but in the meantime another Salian tribal chieftain has taken control of Liege.
• 476: Odoacer (or “Odovacar”), a member of either the Sciri or the Rugian tribe born around 433, deposes and replaces the child emperor, Romulus Augustulus, on August 28, 476, thus finishing off the already dying Western Roman Empire. In time, Odoacer also conquers Sicily and Dalmatia, menacing the possessions of the Eastern Roman Emperor, Zeno.
• 481-511: Clovis, Childeric’s son, converts to Roman Catholicism and in time conquers most of Gaul to unify the Franks under his Merovingian dynasty.
• 488-493: Zeno, Emperor of the East, sponsors the Ostrogothic king Theodoric against Odoacer. Theodoric overruns Italy and assassinates Odoacer at a banquet on March 15, 493, a week after Odoacer had yielded up power to him.
• 493-553: The Ostrogothic king Theodoric rules over all of Italy from 493 to 526. But when Theodoric’s daughter, Amalasuntha, is murdered by her husband and co-ruler, Theodahad, in 535, the Byzantines themselves invade the kingdom to reestablish their influence over the area. By 553 the Byzantines and the Lombards, another Germanic tribe, have divided Italy between themselves.
• 507-08: The last vestige of Visigothic presence in Aquitaine is driven out by Clovis, Merovingian King of the Franks. Over the years, however, Visigothic interests had already moved southward into Spain.
• 511-561: Upon Clovis’ death, his kingdom is split up, according to Frankish custom, among his four sons: Theodoric (d. 534), Chlodomer (d. 524), Childebert I (d. 558), and Chlotar I (d. 561), who make their respective capitals at Metz, Orleans, Paris, and Soissons. After a bloody forty years of struggle, Chlotar is finally able to reunite the Merovingian holdings by the time of his death.
• 533-534: After Gaiseric’s death, his descendants have problems safeguarding their borders. In 533 the Byzantine general Belisarius attacks the strongholds of the Vandals and in turn reduces their kingdom in North Africa to absolute ruins by 534.
• 561-613: Upon Chlotar’s death, the Frankish kingdom is again divided among his four sons. This time, two of his sons, Sigibert I (d. 575) of Austrasia and Chilperic I (d. 584) of Neustria, begin a struggle for ultimate control over all Frankish lands that will last well beyond their respective deaths.
• 585-711: By 585 the Visigoths have extended and consolidated their control over the Pyrenees to Spain. Visigothic power in Spain then basically goes unchallenged (except for exchanges with the Byzantines in the seventh century) until the Muslim invasion of 711, when they are utterly dispossessed of power.
• 629-639: In the long run, Chilperic’s family prevails in its struggle for Frankish supremacy, and Chilperic’s grandson, Dagobert I, becomes king of all the Franks, the last Merovingian king of any significance. After Dagobert’s death, the kings of the Merovingian dynasty become captives of various magnate families.
• Seventh Century: The Carolingians, a family of Ripuarian Franks that eventually took its name from Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne, had their origins in the union of the family of Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, with that of Pepin of Landen (d. 640), hereditary mayor of the palace in Austrasia, during the early Seventh Century. As mayors of the palace, the Carolingians are in fact the actual rulers of Frankish territories under the later Merovingian kings. Even though an attempt at taking away the crown fails in the mid-seventh century, family fortunes improve over the next hundred years.
• 845: Having successfully mounted numerous short raids upon cities and villages around the North Sea from the late Eighth Century, Viking raiders adopt a new tactic. Instead of mounting short forays in spring and summer only to spend the winter back home, now larger bands begin to encamp on small islands at the mouths of major rivers. This tactic furnishes them with year-round bases near their quarry. Viking chiefs then combine to form larger armies in order to take advantage of fissures among the Anglo-Saxons and Franks and thereby extract larger and larger duties from Frankish and Anglo-Saxon kings.
• 878: Danish Vikings control large parts of eastern and northern England in a region that comes to be known as the “Danelaw.”
• 911: A Viking leader named Rollo receives lands at the estuary of the Seine River from the Carolingian king, Charles III, for his pledge to defend the riverine approaches to Paris from the attacks of other Viking bands. This marks the beginning of what is to become the Duchy of Normandy.
• Tenth Century: During the same period, Got-landic and Swedish Vikings, traveling down the Volga River, begin making contact with traders from the Muslim Empire, who pay them in silver for their trade goods. The Dnepr River takes them to the Black Sea and Constantinople, seat of the Byzantine Empire, where they form an elite guard in service to the Byzantine Emperor. According to Russian accounts, these so-called “Varangians” eventually raise up the first ruling house over the Rus or East Slavs under their leader Rurik in Kiev.
• 987: Carolingian rule comes to an end in what is now called France after having already ceased in what is now Germany in 911.
• Tenth through Eleventh Centuries: The Normans, Danish Vikings who had settled in northern France under the Norwegian chieftain Rollo and his descendants, continue their activities in true Viking style, despite their conversion to Christianity, by raiding northward toward Flanders. Rollo’s son, William Longsword (d. 942), becomes the true engineer of Norman triumph, however, by centralizing and enlarging the Duchy. Although disturbed by internal violence, particularly under Duke Robert I (reigning 1027-35) and during the minority of his son, Duke William II (later William the Conqueror), the state created by these early Norman rulers depends upon strong ducal authority and evolve administrative and feudal combinations to maintain it.

  733-751: From 719 until his death, Charles Martel (c. 688-742), illegitimate son of Pepin of Heristal (d. 714), boosts the Carolingian family’s fortunes even further by turning back a Muslim force at Tours in 733 and then completing his subjugation of southern France. Charles’s son Pepin the Short finally deposes Childeric III, the last of the Merovingian monarchs, and with support from the Pope becomes king of all the Franks in 751.

• 768-771: At his death, Pepin the Short, Charles’s son, leaves joint rulership of the Carolingian domains to his two sons, Carloman and Charles (later known as Charlemagne). Carloman’s death in 771 makes Charles sole ruler.
• 771-814: During his long rule, Charlemagne not only doubles the Frankish kingdom by conquests in Germany, Italy, and Spain, but also succeeds in bringing about a renaissance in the arts and sciences of that time. In 800 he is crowned Emperor of the West by the Pope of Rome.
• 793: Viking — whose name is eventually given to various North Germanic tribal groups and derives from the Old Norse verb vika, “to go off” — land on foreign shores for the first time and destroy the by-then-ancient Celtic monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria. This action establishes a pattern of marauding piracy that will persist for two more centuries.
• 804: Moving in across northern Germany just south of the “Danevirke” — a defensive barrier built by the Danes under a powerful local king in Schleswig, during their 39-year war with the continental Saxons — the Franks under Charlemagne begin to note in their annals the disturbing presence of barbaric peoples farther to the north of their Empire.
• 840-843: Louis I, Charlemagne’s sole heir, inherits from his father both the Empire and its continuing problems: Viking intrusions, Muslim assaults, and a grasping nobility. In typical Frankish fashion, Louis then leaves his Empire to the joint rulership of his three surviving sons, Lothair I, Louis the German, and Charles II (Charles the Bald). After Louis’s death in 840, however, the civil wars that had already begun during his reign continue and eventually lead to the division of the empire into three kingdoms under the Treaty of Verdun in 843.
• 1060-1091: Robert Guiscard, one of the many sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a Norman noble who had taken on allegiance with the Lombards against the Byzantine Empire in southern Italy, establishes himself as an independent ruler in Calabria and Apulia. Between 1060 and 1091 he and his brother, Roger I, undertake the conquest of Sicily from the Muslims.
• 1066: Not to be outdone by the sons of Tancred, Duke William II becomes King William I of England when he and his retainers defeat the West Saxon King Harold II in the Battle of Hastings. He moves rapidly to establish a centralized monarchy in England on the Norman pattern.
• 1087: William dies, leaving a strong kingdom to his sons, William II and Henry I.
• 1102-1204: Abrogating his father’s will, Henry I invades and subdues the Duchy of Normandy under his control. Although William the Conqueror had left Normandy to his eldest son, Duke Robert II (c. 1054-1134), the Duchy will not return to French control until 1204.
• 1139: Roger II succeeds in transforming earlier Norman conquests into the kingdom of Sicily, which serves as a foundation for further Norman extension into North Africa and Dalmatia during the later twelfth century.
• 1154: Ending a prolonged struggle for power between William’s descendants, Henry II, son to Matilda, William’s daughter, finally van quishes his cousin, Stephen, William’s nephew. In doing so, he inaugurates the Angevin dynasty’s control over England.
• Twentieth Century: The history of Western European peoples has ever been one of continual invasion and migration from early times until now. The presence of Germanic peoples all over the globe stands as evidence of the pervasiveness of this migration. The European colonization of the world since the sixteenth century is just a dimension of Germanic tribal migrations from ancient times.
• Twentieth Century: Descendants of the Romanized and Latin-speaking Gauls of the former Roman province of “Gallia” are still called after the name of their erstwhile conquerors, the “French” (“Frankish”). French culture itself represents a centuries-long melding of Celtic, Germanic, and Roman influences.
• Twentieth Century: Despite its long Moorish occupation, Spain still shows traces of its Visigothic past in both language and culture.
• Today: Despite the addition of French to its linguistic and cultural mix, Modern English still represents a compromise between a variety of competing dialects. Like French and Spanish, it has become a world language of millions of speakers.