lash - mounds, pagans in as england

8/22/2019 Lash - Mounds, Pagans in as England

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'hwelcum hlwa'?:Mounds, the Pagan Past and the Potent Dead in Anglo-Saxon England

Introduction:

The recent flourishing of archaeological research concerning 'the past in the past',1 awareof the mnemonic capacity of material culture, has approached the inherited aspects within the

Anglo-Saxon landscape as a malleable framework for collective memory and therefore a medium

through which the present may negotiate its relationship vis--vis the past, whether through the

appropriation, anathematization or obliteration of its physical remains.2 Perhaps the best

example of this dynamic process is the manifold appropriations (and in some case, re-

appropriations) undergone by earthen moundswhether prehistoric or Early Anglo-Saxon

barrow mounds or natural eminences mistaken for one of the formerfrom the fifth to the

eleventh century.

As illustrated by the recent works of many scholars, an analysis of the varied treatments

of mounds in both textual sources and the physical landscape can shed considerable light on the

various social, political, and ideological transformations that unfolded throughout the period.3

Not the least of these transformations was the conversion and Christianization of peoples with

much shared cultural background coming increasingly (if only imperfectly in fits and stops) into

political and religious unification. From the time of the conversion and throughout the fuller

Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England, arguably at once the most immediate and mostproblematic aspect of the past was the pagan ancestral heritage of a society in which ancestral

heritage continued to be a foundational component of its structures of power. As the story of the

Frisian King Radbod's aborted baptism suggests, the adoption of Christianity, though often a

process of syncretism and appropriation, had certain problematic implications for a culture's

illustrious ancestors. The tension between condemnation and redemption is a primary theme of

scholarship concerning early medieval attitudes towards the pagan past. On the one hand, many

scholars have suggested that the assimilation of pagan history to the Old Testament and the

1 See especially Williams, 'Monuments and the Past', Semple, 'Anglo-Saxon Attitudes', and Bell,Religious Reuse;'Churches on Roman Buildings'.

2 For perspectives on landscape and memory see Tilley,Phenomenology of Landscape; Schama,Landscape andMemory; Holtorf and Williams, 'Landscapes and Memories'.

3 See especially the works of Semple, Williams, Reynolds, Pantos, Carver and Blair cited below.


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historicization of the pagan gods allowed freshly Christianized cultures to maintain some

measure of ancestral pride in their pagan heritage.4 This theme is best illustrated in an Anglo-

Saxon context by the late ninth-century West Saxon royal genealogy which incorporates the

former deity Woden in historicized form as a lineal descendant of Noah, Adam and ultimately

Christ.5

On the other hand, assimilation of the pagan past to biblical history did not always work

simply to vindicate the former. If former gods were made human descendants of biblical

patriarchs, figures from the pagan past were, with notable biblical parallels, characterized as in

some way monstrous. For example, lfric and Wulfstan in their accounts of the origins of pagan

religion use entas in regard to Nimrod's people who constructed the Tower of Babel laid low by

God and for the mistlice entas, 'various giants', who, along with thestrece woruldmen e mihtige

wurdan on woruldafelum and egesfulle wron a hwyle e hy leofedon,6 ignorant men beganworshiping erroneously as gods through the devil's teaching. Perhaps informed by the

association of biblical giants with violence and rebuked pride, as well as out of genuine awe at

the grandeur of the heroic past, King Hygelac, who appears inBeowulfmerely as a human king

whose wlanc, 'pride', was fatal, is presented in theLiber monstrorum as a monster of marvelous

size whose giant bones were visited by men venturing from afar.7 Such ambiguous resonances

might also have been evoked by the description of various pieces of ancient material culture in

Old English poetry as enta geweorc, 'the work of giants', including inBeowulfboth the treasured

hoard (2774a) of a lost nation (224752a) as well as the barrow mound (2717b) in which it is

interred.8

4 Bloomfield, 'Patristics and Old English Literature'; Southern, 'Aspects of Historical Writing'; Hanning, Vision ofHistory, p. 58; Howe,Migration and Myth Making; Donahue, 'Beowulf and Christian Tradition'.

5 ASC 855 ADE, 856 CF (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, pp. 434). On genealogies as royal ideologicaltools, see Dumville, 'Genealogies and Regnal-lists'. On the assimilation of historicized gods with biblical figuresspecifically, see Davis, 'Cultural Assimilation' and Anlezark, 'Origins of the Anglo-Saxons'.

6 '...violent world-men who became mighty in world-powers and were awe-inspiring as long as they lived (alltranslations my own unless otherwise attributed). Wufstan, De falsis deis, ll. 368 (ed. Bethurum,Homilies,p.

222). For lfric's version see lfric,De falsis diis, ll. 99103 (ed. Pope,Homilies, p. 681).7 LMii (ed. Porsia, p. 138). Orchard,Pride and Prodigies, pp. 1134. The composition of the work has been datedaccording to the extensive corruption in its ninth- or tenth-century manuscripts to the period 650750AD byLapidge, 'Liber Monstrorum and Wessex'.

8 For more on the the confusing (and often confused) synthesis of biblical, Classical, patristic and Germanictraditions from which the textual community could draw concerning the relation of both antediluvian and post-diluvian giants to prideful pagan rulers of the past See Orchard,Pride and Prodigies, pp. 5885; Frankis,'Thematic Significance', pp. 25864.


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Our appreciation of the implications of textual sources such as these is always limited if

we do not also examine them in relation to the totality of evidencetextual, archaeological,

onomastic, etc.which may encode the un-formalized but thereby no less integral tenets of the

culture which produced it.9 Barrowsas a relict monument form which not only accumulated a

fair amount of depictions in textual sources, but which also saw its physical manifestations, both

ancient and newly built, put to a variety of uses during and after the conversion period provide

a uniquely valuable lens through which to view engagements with the past in Anglo-Saxon

England. In particular, reconstructing the interface of pagan and Christian ideas concerning

mounds, the ancestral dead and the supernatural offers to tell us much about the process of

Christianization in England and the ramifications of that process for attitudes towards society's

problematic pagan heritage as commemorated on the landscape.

Sarah Semple has persuasively argued that traditional ideas linking mounds to thesupernatural and the ancestral deadthe apparent rationale behind their positive appropriation as

foci of burial and assembly in the pagan periodsubjected the monument-form's reputation to

considerable complications in the Christian era.10 The development of negative connotations

can be traced in textual and pictorial depictions of barrows, as well as in the material evidence of

their negative appropriation as sites of judicial execution and burial.11 However, apparent high-

status burials inserted into prehistoric barrows continue to occur, although extremely rarely, as

late as the ninth or tenth century, while the same period saw the construction of churches on or

around prehistoric and early Anglo-Saxon barrows and the use of both preexisting and purpose-

built barrows as meeting-places for regional administration.12 It remains unclear to what extent

this particular pattern of (re-)use in Christian Anglo-Saxon England attests to the co-existence of

multiple perceptions contrasting to the point of incongruity (by no means impossible), or to

something more complex that allows for major variation within a coherent paradigm of thought

9 As outlined by John Hines, this methodology of interdisciplinary culture-history is based on the mutually-

constructive relationship between language and material culture and the central notion of culture as'the abstractbut unifying whole behind the tangible and familiar media in which it subsists, language and material life. It hasno existence separate from its manifestations in these forms, but it is equally implicit in both'. Hines, Voices inthe Past, p. 34.

10 Semple, 'Fear of the Past'; 'Anglo-Saxon Attitudes'; 'Locations of Assembly'. Williams, 'Monuments and thePast'; 'Assembling the Dead'.

11 Semple, 'Illustrations of Damnation'; Reynolds, 'Definition and Ideology';Deviant Burial.12 Pantos, 'Anglo-Saxon Assembly-sites'.


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concerning the material past.

Hoping to build on the foundations laid by previous scholarship, the present study will

attempt to address this question by situating the evidence for the use of mounds within the

broader system of ideas through which such engagements were mediated. With recourse to

comparable evidence relating to barrow mounds in the Celtic and Scandinavian worlds, I suggest

that the seemingly discordant use of mounds in the later Anglo-Saxon landscape becomes most

scrutable when viewed in the context of the interaction of pagan and Christian ideas about the

dead. More specifically, I argue that the cult of saints' relics provided a Christian framework of

thought into which pagan ideas relating to mounds and the ancestral dead were assimilated.

While this perspective will suggest how both preexisting and purpose-built monuments could be

used as either the suitably dignified or suitably loathsome stage-settings of later Anglo-Saxon

regional government, references to mounds in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,Beowulf, and theAlfredianBoethius will illustrate the various resonances of the pagan past that the use of mounds

in the landscape could activate.

Mounds and the Supernatural in the Early Medieval North Atlantic World:

Versions C, D and E of theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle record a peculiar anecdotesub anno

1006 regarding a viking army's visit to Cwichelmeshlw, a monument on the Oxfordshire-

Berkshire border known today as Cuckhamsley Barrow, Scutchamer Knob or more colloquially

as the Scotsman's Knob. A great fleet of Vikings, having overwintered on the Isle of Wight,began raiding again in Berkshire and Hampshire around Christmas before they wendon him a

andlang scesdune to Cwichelmeshlwe 7 r onbidedon beotra gylpa, foron oft man cw

gif hi Cwicelmeshlw gesohton t hi nfre to s gan ne scoldan; wendon him a ores weges

hamwerd.13 The monument in question, demonstrated through excavation to have been a

prehistoric structure, served twice as a shire assembly site in the tenth century,14 and this

administrative function alone may have rendered the site appropriate as the subject of such a

boast. However, it has also been suggested that the selection ofCwichelmeshlw as the subject

13 '...then turned along Ashdown to Cwichelm's barrow, and waited there for what had been proudly threa tened, forit had often been said that if they went to Cwichelm's barrow they would never get to the sea; they then wenthome another way.' ASC 1006 C (ASC MS C,ed. O'Brien O'Keeffe, p. 91).

14 Mentioned in S 1454, a 990-2 writ of dispute, edited in Baines, 'Wynfld v. Leofwine', pp. 646.


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of this boast and as an important regional meeting-place might have both been informed by some

reflex of the pre-Christian notionbetter represented in the literature and archaeology of the

Celtic and Scandinavian worldsthat mounds, especially burial mounds, were considered

conduits to the supernatural and centres of sentinel ancestral power.15

Sidin Irish medieval texts can refer to both the otherworld of the gods and the mounds

through which it was accessed, and this semantic duality has been used to understand the

complexes of prehistoric remains perceived in medieval folklore as ancient seats of regional

kingship.16 The prominence of mounds at such places as Tara, Co. Meath, Navan, Co. Armagh

and Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon, suggests that royal ritual required the arbitration of the

divine and sought to display a king's status as privileged intermediary for his people to the

otherworld.17 Mounds, albeit frequently de novo constructions rather than ancient monuments,

continued to be an important aspect of some royal sites in Early Christian Ireland,18 perhapssuggesting that the monument-form maintained an aura even for Christian rulers. Meanwhile, a

peculiar procedure recorded in an Irish law tract of the late sixth or seventh century suggests a

link between burial mounds and ancestral power. An individual claiming a disputed parcel of

land by virtue of hereditary right must prove the legitimacy of his claim by riding over burial

mounds at the parcel's boundarythe idea being that a false claimant would risk the ire of the

ancestors interred there.19 The existence of similar beliefs in Wales was suggested to Thomas

Charles-Edwards by the motif found in Nennius and the Second Branch of the Mabinogi in

which the positioning of a fallen ruler's burial is presumed to have an apotropaic function. 20

A comparable set of ideas seems to have prevailed during the Migration period and

Viking Age in Scandinavia as well. Though sometimes recorded centuries later, literary sources

depict the dead retaining some kind of active existence within the grave mound, place of

interment or other landscape feature.21 A common manifestation of this idea is the frightening

15 The possibility is raised by Semple, 'Locations of Assembly', p. 150 and Williams, Death and Memory, p. 209.16 Cathasaigh, 'Semantics of Sid', pp. 14850.17 Warner, 'Royal Mound in Ireland', pp. 2833.18 Ibid., pp. 3341.19 Charles-Edwards, 'Boundaries in Irish Law'.20 Ibid., p. 86.21 Says a moribund king in Friolfs saga I, 'My howe shall stand beside the forth. And there shall be but a short

distance between mine and Porsteinn's, for it is well that we should call to one another.' Cited in Ellis,Road toHel, p. 91. InLandnamabokandEyrbryggja saga, the dead of a particular family are said to reside among theirforebearers in their ancestral mountains, Sanmark, 'Living On', pp. 1712. For a general review of this material


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draugar, revenants, such as Glamr ofGrettis Saga, who raise from their graves to cause mischief

unless their heads are removed or body destroyed.22 The interaction between the living and the

mound-buried dead is not always expected to be so antagonistic. The body of King Halfdan in

Halfdanar Saga Svarta inHeimskringla (IX) is divided between four mounds in an effort to

vouchsafe the prosperity of the land, and there are some references in the sagas and in the

medieval provincial laws of Sweden and Norway to the worship of dead men focused on their

mounds.23 As in the Celtic tradition, there seems to be a link between the continued agency of

the dead within mounds and their use as seats of royal authority, where a king might literally sit

in order to proclaim his inheritance. Bjorn in the Olafs Saga Helga of theFlateyjarbokclaims

his kingship by sitting on the burial mound of his father, while King Hrollaugr inHaralds Saga

Harfagra rolls himself down from the king's seat atop a mound in order to abdicate.24 The

archaeological remains at Gamla Uppsala suggest the currency of this royal association outsidethe world of literary motif. The temple complex at Uppsala, described by Adam of Bremen

around 1090 as the setting of various ritual actions, including animal and human sacrifices,

includes a series of prominent Migration period royal burial mounds, providing a tangible

example of the association of burial mounds with royalty and ritual action.25

There is considerably less textual evidence from an Anglo-Saxon context depicting pre-

Christian times, but recent treatments of Anglo-Saxon paganism envision a broad repertoire of

beliefs and practices selectively adapted to local socio-political circumstances, though with some

degree of inter-regional standardization.26 Considering this evidence from the North Atlantic

region, it is not entirely unlikely that the boasts concerning Cwichelmeshlwrather than

simply a military prognosis based on an assessment of the relative tactical advantages of Viking

and English forces in the areamay actually reference a comparable cluster of beliefs that

existed in pagan England and survived (if in slightly diluted form) into the thoroughly Christian

milieu of the eleventh century.27 The fate of the body and soul after death and prior to judgment

see Ellis,Road to Hel, pp. 906.22 On draugarsee Chadwick, 'Norse Ghosts' and their later medieval analogues, Caciola 'Wraiths'.23 Ellis,Road to Hel, pp. 1005, for references in sagas. Sanmark, 'Living On', pp. 1678 for the provincial laws.24 Ellis,Road to Hel, pp. 1067.25 Roesdahl, 'Scandinavians at Home', p. 146.26 See texts collected in Carver et al., Signals of Belief, especially Carver, 'Archaeological Agenda'.27 Might the odd mention that the Viking army 'went another way home' suggest that the trip to Cwichelmeshlw

was an out-of-the-way excursion deliberately undertaken as a display of defiance to local lore intended to


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day was according to Thompson a 'grey theoretical area' in Anglo-Saxon Christianity,28 and thus

perhaps an area in which we might expect pre-Christian ideas to maintain sway. Beyond

Cwichelmeshlw,the enigmatic images carved in the right panel of the Franks Casket, including

what appears to be a shrouded figure lying within a mound, as well as a revisionist reading of

The Wife's Lament, which sees the narrator as a deceased person entrapped within a barrow, have

also been offered as evidence for the Christian incorporation of traditional ideas concerning the

continued existence of the dead in the grave.29 Moreover, John Blair has suggested that

anecdotes in post-Conquest sources, such as the Vita sancte Moduenne, William of Malmesbury,

Walter Map, and William of Newburgh, concerning revenants similar to both the Norse draugar

and Slavic vampire reveal fears and beliefs about the 'undead' that may well have arisen

ultimately from the pre-Christian era.30 The early circulation of such beliefs is at least intimated

by the correspondences between the reported methods of disabling revenants in the abovesources and occasional burial practices from sixth and seventh-century England.31 lfric's

warning that,gyt fara wiccan to wega gelton, and to henum byrgelsum mid heora

gedwimore, and clipia to am deofle, and he cym hym to on s mannes gelicnysse e aer li

bebyrged, swylce he of deae arise confirms that even learned ecclesiastics of the tenth century

could acknowledge at least the post-interment re-emergence of corpses.32

In terms of sentinel burial, a Norman work, the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, attributed

to Bishop Guy of Amiens and dated almost immediately after the battle it depicts, provides an

additional suggestion that the ideaeven if now only an antiquated notion fossilized as literary

motifremained sufficiently accessible to be employed ironically in relation to an Anglo-Saxon

demoralize the English?28 Thompson, 'Constructing Salvation', p. 229.29 See Webster, 'Iconographic Programme'; Sanmark, 'Living On', p. 169; Semple, 'Fear of the Past'. Appreciation

of the riddling qualities ofThe Wife's Lamentare well recognized, even if the status of the speaker, the nature ofher dwelling remains and the sense of her final lines remain debated. See Johnson, 'The Wife's Lamentas Death-Song'; Battles, 'Of Cave, Graves, and Subterranean Dwellings'; Wentersdorf, 'Situation of the Narrator'; Niles,'Ending ofThe Wife's Lament'.

30 Blair, 'Dangerous Dead'. On early modern accounts of Eastern European belief in vampirism, see Barber,

Vampires, Death and Burial, pp. 597.31 Reynolds,Deviant Burial, pp. 6195 and below pp. 145. Corresponding methods include decapitation, proneburial, mutilation of the lower limbs and the scattering of grain in the grave refill.

32 'witches yet go to crossroads and to heathen burials with their delusive magic, and call to the devil, and he comesto them in the likeness of the man who is buried there as though he rise from death'. lfric,De Auguriis (ed.Pope,Homilies,p. 796). Explaining revenants with recourse to demonic possession seems to have been a typicalecclesiastical strategy for the 'rationalization of theologically unacceptable phenomena', Blair, 'Dangerous Dead',

p. 549. See Caciola, 'Wraiths', pp. 115 for additional examples.


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king in the late eleventh century. Infuriated and having refused to deliver Harold's body to his

mother in exchange for its weight in gold, William has the last Anglo-Saxon king interred at the

summit of a cliff near the sea under a stone reading:

Per mandata ducis rex hic Heralde quiescis,

Vt custos maneas littoris et pelagi.

By the duke's commands, O Harold, you rest here a king,That you may still be guardian of the shore and sea.33

These shards of evidence may all hint at an underlying belief in the continuing existence

and agency of the deceased in the place of their interment, yet we can only hope to appreciate

their full import when viewing them in relation to the assortment of evidence concerning mounds

and the dead in the physical landscape of Anglo-Saxon England. As in the Celtic andScandinavian arenas, the dialogue between archaeological and literary sources is particularlyilluminating. The following provides a general surveyby no means comprehensiveof

archaeological evidence for the uses of barrows throughout the Anglo-Saxon period (from the

fifth to the eleventh centuries), making reference to other source-types where appropriate.

Though the sum of the evidence seems to confirm the continuing association of mounds with the

supernatural and the potent dead across the conversion, these associations in the Christian era

allowed mounds to be revered as much as feared, a pattern suggestive of a complex and

ambivalent attitude towards the pagan past we shall explore later.

Mounds in Anglo-Saxon England (the fifth to the eleventh century):

Though the re-use of prehistoric monuments for Anglo-Saxon burials has been

recognized at least from the time of the barrow-digging antiquarians of the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, the full dynamic extent and rationale for monument re-use has been an

underdeveloped discussion until relatively recently. Williams's nationwide survey of the re-use

of various prehistoric monuments in the Early Medieval period accounted for about seventeen

percent of all early Anglo-Saxon burial sites (from the fifth to the eighth century), with re-use

seemingly of roughly equal popularity across the country.34 Round barrows were the most

33 Guy, Bishop of Amiens, CHPI, ll. 5601 (ed. Morton and Muntz, pp. 389).34 Williams, 'Ancient Landscapes', pp. 4, 19.


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common subjects of re-use, acting as the foci of communal cemeteries, smaller burial groups,

and individual high-status barrows especially in the late sixth and seventh centuries. In recent

years, evidence has also been mounting for the structural enhancement of complexes of

prehistoric features, including the addition of square enclosures, posts and buildings near

monuments, perhaps in the context of multi-functional cult sites, used for assembly, burial, ritual

and administration in the early Anglo-Saxon period.35 The classic type site in this category is the

sixth-to-seventh-century settlement site at Yeavering, the axis of which seems to have been

orientated according to two pre-historic features, a stone circle and a Bronze Age barrow, both of

which were used as foci for burial.36

Whereas Yeavering's excavator interpreted the pattern as evidence of long-term ritual

continuity from the Bronze Age to the Conversion Era, such re-use is now commonly

understood, following an influential article by Bradley,37 as an effort to 'create continuity' withthe illustrious past suggested by ancient remains. Williams, for example, interprets the

secondary burial in ancient monuments as an effort 'to fix the identities of living and dead kin-

groups with reference to the past and the supernatural'.38 Whatever the extent of the migrant

population in Early Anglo-Saxon England, the populations ruled by emerging elites must have

been to some extent ethnically heterogeneous,39 and the ritual appropriation of ancient

monuments may have legitimated the claims of these elites in a variety of ways. For migrant

groups attempting to consolidate their authority over a foreign land and an indigenous

population, appropriation would perhaps have legitimated their ascendancy by fabricating a link

between themselves and the ancient builders who had scrawled their might on the landscape.40

Interestingly, a number of earthworks are associated in place-names with the early Anglo-

Saxon deities whose names are preserved in the days of the week. Thunor is usually associated

with natural features such as fields and groves, but is also attached to tumuli, as in the case of

Thunreslau (Essex), the name of a half-hundred in Domesday,41 and the Thunoreshlw

35 Williams, 'Assembling the Dead'; Semple, 'Locations of Assembly'.36 Hope-Taylor, Yeavering. The site is thought to represent Edwin's royal villAd Gefrin described by Bede.37 Bradley, 'Time Regained'.38 Williams, 'Ancient Landscapes', p. 25.39 For a recent summary of the evidence with relevant citations, Brugmann, 'Migration and Endogenous Change'.40 Williams, 'Ancient Landscapes', p. 25.41 See Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 161. Such a name has been thought to indicate that an unidentified mound

marked the meeting-place of the administrative unit. Thurstable (Essex), another possible Thunor name for a


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mentioned in the Minster-in-Thanet foundation story.42 Place-names associated with Woden, the

Teutonic deity featured prominently in Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies, apply to natural as well

as to man-made features. Wenslow (Bedfordshire), again recorded as a half-hundred in

Domesday, apparently refers to a now unidentifiable mound that once served as the unit's

meeting-place.43 Woodnesborough (Kent) may refer to an artificial mound formerly situated

near the village's medieval church,44 but a more certain identification is Wodnesbeorgin Alton

Priors (Wiltshire),45 a neolithic long barrow thought to have suggested the naming of Wansdyke

(wodnes dic), a long linear earthwork stretching from Somerset to Wiltshire.46

Considering the Celtic and Scandinavian comparanda rehearsed above, we might

reasonably hypothesize from the place-names such as these that a perceived connection between

ancient remains and the supernatural existed also in England. If so, intrusive and associative

monument re-use in the context of elite burial or settlement may be seen as reifications in asuitably impressive and durable medium of the same ideology expressed in the Anglo-Saxon

royal genealogies recorded in later texts. As especially prominent monuments with origins

beyond living memory, though perhaps recognized by migrants as similar to features

remembered from their ancestral homelands, the prehistoric barrow landscape of Britain

provided a valuable material medium through which descent from the supernatural could be

reified.47 The individual graves of the late sixth and seventh century superimposed on earlier

monuments at Cow Lowe, Galley Low (Derbyshire), Swallowcliffe Down, Roundway Down,

Ford, (Wiltshire), and Lowbury Hill (Berkshire), as well as the imitative de novo construction of

barrows for high-status burial at Taplow (Buckinghamshire) and Sutton Hoo (Suffolk), may then

half-hundred which contains the elementstapol('post') may also reference a physical feature marking anadministrative meeting-place. See references to Meaney below pp. 156, n. 94 for the possibility that some lateAnglo-Saxon administrative meeting-places had their origins in pre-Christian cult sites.

42 See below p. 15, n. 87.43 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 16144 According to eighteenth-century tradition, some 'grave-goods' including a spear head and fragments of bone and

pottery were recovered from this mound, see Davidson and Webster, 'Burial at Coomb', p. 8; Behr, 'Early

Medieval Kent', pp. 434.45 Now called Adam's Grave, wodnesbeorgis listed as the site of battles in ASCE592 and 715 (Anglo-SaxonChronicle,ed. Whitelock, pp. 158, 171).

46 The name appears in a series of charters, beginning with S 368 (KCD 335) in 903 AD. On the dating, see belowpp. 2930.

47 Citing Tacitus, Moisl, 'Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies', p. 216 suggests that descent from a deity was animportant ideological principle among early Germanic peoples, conferring ethnic coherence to agens and royalauthority to its rulers.


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be seen as a development of this previously less exclusive folk tradition.48 Such innovation has

often been attributed to the emergence of new elites of superordinate status, who required a

grand medium to express their dynastic claims to regional authority, monopolizing the use of an

ancient monument form, and thus perhaps to divine descent or ancestral legitimation of power.49

Though the visibility of the burial mounds at Sutton Hoo from the entrance point to the

East Anglian Kingdom via the river Deben has been questioned,50 a significant number of high-

status barrow burials of the late sixth to eighth century do occur in prominent locations near

territorial boundaries or entry ways.51 This pattern is particularly characteristic of the Avebury

region of North Wiltshire, an area remembered in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a location of

confrontation with the British from the late sixth century and contested between Wessex and

Mercia from the seventh to the ninth century. Semple has hypothesized that this contentious

political environment motivated an ideologically potent form of burial rite characterized byintrusive secondary high-status interment in prominently positioned prehistoric barrows.52 These

sentinel-type barrows would have demonstrated polities' land claims not merely by appropriating

ancient features, but also, perhaps, by evoking the notions we have seen reflected in the literary

sources above regarding the dead's continued existence and protective capacity within the

grave.53 Considering the evidence that the intrusive secondary interments at Roundway Down 7

in North Wiltshire and Swallowcliffe Down to the south incurred considerable damage to

primary prehistoric remains, such burials could have functioned as aggressive statements of the

ascendancy of a new elite community, assuming the role of sentinel ancestors by violently

appropriating ancient remains.54

Though the particular intentions and contexts of monument re-use must have varied

across time and space,55 the appropriation, elaboration or fabrication of conspicuous and durable

relics in the landscape could work to embed the identities of the appropriators into the land,

48 Williams, 'Ancient Landscapes', pp. 213.49 Shepherd, 'Social Identity', pp. 6477.50 Williamson, Sutton Hoo and its Landscape, contraCarver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings?, p. 106.51 Williams, 'Placing the Dead', pp. 6283.52 Semple, 'Burials and Political Boundaries', pp. 823.53 Ibid.54 Semple, 'Burials and Political Boundaries', pp. 801.55 For a contrast to the Avebury region, see the predominance of associative communal cemeteries rather than

intrusive, single barrow burial in her regional case-study of West Sussex, Semple, 'South Saxon Kingdom'.


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whether those identities were defined by Germanic or divine ancestry or more simply by shared

local history, culture and political allegiance. The appropriation of ancient monuments may even

have been employed to obscure perceptions of ethnic difference between migrant and native

groups by amalgamating formerly separate ritual traditions.56 Indeed, Blair has recently argued

that Romano-British prototypes of square enclosures frequently superimposed upon prehistoric

remains may lie behind the few Anglo-Saxon sites which seem to fit the descriptions provided by

Bede, Gregory and Aldhelm of thefana,'shrines' presumably used among the pagan English at

the time of conversion.57

Scholars have also suggested that Christianity, either directly through conversion or more

indirectly through its proximity as a competing ideology, may have contributed to the

monumentalization of cult in the late sixth and seventh centuries.58 The burial ground at Sutton

Hoo may indeed represent the act of a proud but insecure and newly established pagan dynastydefining its cultural allegiance with reference to an imagined Scandinavian past in defiant

opposition to the cultural imperialism of Christian Francia,59 but these potentates' predilection for

'permanent and conspicuous commemoration' may have been influenced in part by the stonechurches built by rival dynasties.60 We may perceive barrow burial as a distinctly pagan practice,

but the Mound 1 burial at Sutton Hoo, just as the females interred at Roundway Down and

Swallowcliffe Down,61 included artifacts infused with Christian iconography, and there is some

evidence that traditional barrow burial continued into the later eighth century and beyond.62

Indeed, the metal coffin fittings found at the isolated grave at Ogborne St Andrew (Wiltshire) is

thought to place the latest apparent high-status burial inserted into a prehistoric mound as late as

56 See Williams, 'Ancient Landscapes', p. 26 and Hrke, 'Context for the Saxon Barrow', p. 205.57 Blair, 'Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines'. For the description of thefana see Bede,HEi.30, ii.13, ii.15, iii.30 (ed.

Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 1069, 1827, 1901, 3223) and Aldhelm,Letter 5 (to Heahfrith) (ed. Ehwald,Aldhelmi Opera, p. 489).

58 For this phenomenon in a wider European context see Wood, 'Historical Re-Identifications' and van de Noort,'Early Medieval Barrows'.

59 Carver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings?. See also Carver,'Early Medieval Monumentality', p. 6; Carver,'Meaning of Monumental Barrows', p. 133.

60 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, p. 53.61 On the implications of these 'Christian' artifacts in later seventh-century wealthy female barrow burials , see

Crawford, 'Votive Deposition', pp. 945; Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 2305; Geake, Grave-goods,pp. 1267.

62 See for example Alfriston, Harting Beacon, Bevis's Grave and Kemp Howe (Geake, Grave-goods, pp. 1834,154, 158).


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the ninth or tenth century.63 Although the increasing incorporation of the new belief system into

dominant modes of thought and behavior would eventually bring major changes in the

perceptions and uses of prehistoric features and the monument-form of the barrow, at the

beginning of the conversion process, the church seems to have adopted some measure of

tolerationperhaps pragmatically sofor traditional places of burial and ritual.

Rare insight into the Gregorian conversion initiative's policy towards sites of pre-

Christian importance is provided by Bede's transcription of Gregory's instructions to Bishop

Mellitus that the heathens' 'well-built' shrines should not be destroyed, but merely the idols

within, and the shrines rededicated to Christ.64 Although Bede had little reason to depict pagan

practice accurately and Gregory may have been assimilating any available knowledge of Anglo-

Saxon paganism with Classical paganism and biblical convention,65 the technique of

appropriation outlined by Gregory would seem to provide a theoretical model for approachingthe subject of Christianization in Anglo-Saxon England in general and in particular for the

archaeological evidence for that process. Unfortunately, identifying instances of a clear

development from pagan sacred site to Christian church has met with limited success. The

firmest case is at Yeavering where building D2, interpreted from its cache of ox skulls as one of

the few 'well-built' pagan shrines on record, was superseded by a church around the mid-seventh

century.66 At this early stage, ancestral places and monumental prehistoric features, such as

those present at Yeavering, may have still retained an aura that churchmen thought it best to

exploit in order to facilitate the transition to the new lore. This pragmatism seems to have been

at the center of Gregory's mandate:

When this people see that their shrines are not destroyed they will be able tobanish error from their hearts and be more ready to come to the places they arefamiliar with, but now recognizing and worshiping the true God...It is doubtlessimpossible to cut out everything at once from their stubborn minds: just as theman who is attempting to climb to the highest place, rises by steps and degrees

63 Semple, 'Borders and Political Boundaries', pp. 789.64 Bede,HEi.30 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 1067). Aldhelm's letter to Heahfrith would seem to provideadditional evidence for the appropriation of pagan cult sites by the church: 'Where once the crude pillars of thesame foul snake and the stage were worshiped with coarse stupidity in profane shrines, in their place dwellingsfor students, not to mention holy houses of prayer, are constructed skilfully by the talents of architects', trans.Lapidge and Herren,Aldhelm: The Prose Works, pp. 1601. For Latin edition see citation above, p. 11, n. 60.

65 See Page, 'Anglo-Saxon Paganism' and Church, 'Paganism in Conversion-Age Anglo-Saxon England'.66 Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, pp. 2779; Hamerow, 'Special Deposits', p. 12; Ware, 'Space at Gefrin', p. 156.


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and not by leaps.67

Two of the other more convincing candidates for the Christian appropriation of pagan

sites in the early conversion era involve the re-use of preexisting mounds. At Ripon (Yorkshire),

St Wilfrid seems to have deliberately aligned his late seventh-century church according to aprominent natural hillock (perhaps mistaken for a barrow)68 previously used for burial in the

early seventh century. The hill top, presumably fulfilling the burial needs of the adjoined

religious community, remained the focus of exclusively male high-status coffined burial into the

ninth century.69 A similar instance of appropriation seems apparent at Bampton (Oxfordshire),

whose incorporation of the place-name element beam may suggest the focus of a pre-Christian

cult site.70 Here two Bronze Age barrows attracted a church, a chapel and an associated

cemetery, which radiocarbon evidence suggests had been initiated by the ninth century.71 John

Blair has recently suggested that the church at Goodmanham, the place according to Bede where

Edwin's chief priest destroyed a pagan shrine whose remnants could still be seen in the eighth

century, may also overlay a prehistoric mound.72 Even in centuries after the conversion,

ecclesiastical establishments seemed to have been attracted to preexisting monuments that may

have accumulated folk legends in the course of time. Taplow and High Wycombe

(Buckinghamshire), barrow burials of the early seventh and late seventh century respectively,

were adjoined by later churches, as was the unusually late barrow burial at Ogborne St Andrew

(Wiltshire).73Insight into the motivations underlying the adjoining of churches to preexisting

monuments may actually be provided by textual and archaeological evidence that mounds were

sometimes considered malignant. The most famous instance of a church having been built in

association with a barrow is provided by Felix's Vita Guthlaci, an eighth-century Latin

hagiography which relates how the hermit Guthlac, much like his exemplar Anthony, was

67 Bede,HEi.30 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 1067).68 Its thirteenth-century place-nameElveshowe (Elf's barrow) may suggest this, see Hall and Whyman,

'Monasticism at Ripon', p. 65.69 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 1856.70 The beam ofbeam tun is thought to refer to a hallowed tree, post or pillar, such as that around which a series of

radial burials were oriented at Yeavering, and such as have been argued to have acted as cult foci in a pre-Christian context. See Blair, 'Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines', p. 2; Meaney, 'Pagan English Sanctuaries', pp. 30, 35.

71 Blair, 'Bampton', pp. 12830.72 Blair, 'Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines', pp. 224.73 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, p. 374.


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plagued by demons when he sought out isolation. Rather than a tomb in the desert, however, the

loathsome space taken up by Guthlac is a barrow (tumulus) situated within an uninhabited

fenland. The barrow has formerly been dug into in hopes of treasure,74 but it is never clearly

deemed sepulchral, nor the demons reckoned the spirits of pagan men buried within.75 In any

case, his eventual appropriation of the barrow seems not to be the redemption of some positively

valued ancient place, but rather the purification of a particularly loathsome one.76 Guthlac A, a

poem of uncertain relation to Felix's Vita recorded in the tenth-century Exeter Book but possibly

composed much earlier, borrows from the diction and conventions of heroic poetry to focus

especially on the saint's combat with the demons. Here, according to a recent article by Alaric

Hall, Guthlac is described as undertaking a divinely inspired campaign to cleanse mounds,

perhaps to connote the conversion of pagan places.77 This paradigm of the conversion of an old

and fearsome, if not explicitly pagan place, could apply to some of the barrows adjoined bychurches just as much as the Jelling model of retrospective conversion intended to incorporate

the ancestral dead into the Christian fold.78 If churchmen had initially relied on accommodating

themselves within pre-existing sacred places to facilitate conversion, Christianization eventually

brought about the circumstances under which ancestral places could be superseded or even

demonized.

The possible loathsomeness of ancient earthworks in the Christian era is perhaps reflected

in the emergence of a distinctive cemetery-type from the seventh century. Previously, deviant

burialsmarked by unusual features such as decapitation, binding, and prone burialoccur

among more typical burials in community cemeteries.79 The advent of Christianity seems to

74 VG xxviii (ed. Colgrave, pp. 925). See also below pp. 212.75 A clearer association between a mound and malevolent pagan power is found in Stephen of Ripon, VWxiii (ed.

Colgrave, pp. 289), a near contemporary hagiography in which a staff-bearing pagan priest mounts a barrow tosummon his wicked magic against Wilfrid's household.

76 Whereas Hines, Voices in the Past, pp. 6870 suggests that Guthlac's transformation of haunted fenland isdesigned to assert a joint Mercian-East Anglian claim to the cultivation of valuable fenland resources contested

with Lindsay at the time, Siewers, 'Landscaps of Conversion' argues that the primary opposition constructed byFelix's Vita is Christian Mercia against the indigenous pagan connotations of the landscape. Guthlac's triumphover the demons who once take the guise of a Welsh army is designed to articulate the ascendancy of ChristianMercia over the area's indigenous population.

77 Hall, 'Anglo-Saxon Sanctity', pp. 2136, 22430.78 Harold Bluetooth seems to have exhumed his parents from their burial mounds at Jelling and reinstalled their

remains in an adjacent church, Roesdahl, 'Scandinavians at Home', pp. 1578.79 Reynolds,Deviant Burial, pp. 20334.


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have enhanced the need to separate the unwanted dead from the community at large, 80 and from

the seventh to the twelfth century, earthen mounds, especially those situated near administrative

boundaries and major thoroughfares, provided the most common focus for cemeteries used

exclusively for the interment of deviant burials, many of which appear to represent the victims of

judicial execution.81 Twelve of the twenty-seven execution cemeteries listed by Andrew

Reynolds are associated with mounds (though only six are known to have been preexisting

monuments, while many others may represent purpose-built features)82 and among these are

Roche Court Down (Wiltshire) and Sutton Hoo (Suffolk), monuments hypothesized to have been

important centers of cult in the seventh century.83

Semple argues that the supernatural associations of barrows, the root of their importance

in the pagan era, survived the process of conversion and were responsible for the

anathematization of such features in the Christian era, when barrows seemed to have beencharacterized as loathsome places by churchmen so as to discourage residual links to ancestral

places and the pagan past.84 Tracing the development of associations surrounding barrows in

texts and manuscript illuminations, Semple argues that associations with pagan practice and

malevolent supernatural entities evident in eighth-century sources, including, Stephan's Vita

Wilfridi, Felix's Vita Guthlaci andBeowulf(for which she accepts an early date), survived into

the tenth and eleventh century, as attested by Guthlac A, Maxims IIand Wi Frstice, when they

were augmented by associations with the imprisonment and punishment of wrongdoers.

Examples illustrating the latter include the beorginto which the sinful Mermedonians are washed

by the purging flood inAndreas,85 and the Thunures hleaw which marks the spot where the

80 The earliest reference to the exclusion of criminals from consecrated ground occurs in II thelstan, ch. 26 (ed.Liebermann,Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1, pp. 1645), though Bede,HEv.14 (ed. Colgrave andMynors, pp. 5045) provides an early anecdote suggesting the custom of consigning sinners (in this case amonk) to the periphery of cemeteries. Gittos, 'Consecrating Cemeteries', pp. 2058 suggests that the heightenedsense of sacred and profane in Irish Christianity may have imparted some early influence in England, where atradition of formal cemetery consecration is attested sooner than on the continent.

81 Reynolds,Deviant Burial; 'Definition and Ideology'.82 Reynolds,Deviant Burial, p. 156.83 Radiocarbon dated to the late seventh century, the commencement of deviant burial at Sutton Hoo could overlap

with high-status barrow burial in the vicinity as part of a multi-functional ritual complex, Carver, Sutton Hoo: ASeventh-Century Princely Burial Ground, pp. 3479; Semple, 'Locations of Assembly', p. 144. Regardless, theexclusive use of the site for deviant burial thereafter suggests that the collocation of high-status and deviant

burial was no longer considered appropriate.84 Semple, 'Fear of the Past'.85 SeeAndreas 1587B1600 (ed. Brooks,Andreas,p. 51).


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wicked counselor Thunor is swallowed by the earth in the earliest versions of the so-called

Mildrith legend.86

A series of unique illuminations in the early eleventh-century Harley Psalter provides the

starkest representation of this association with punishment and hints at its possible origins.

Manipulating the hollow-hill motif of his exemplar, the Utrecht Psalter, Harley scribe F depicts

what appears to be a distinctly Anglo-Saxon vision of hell as comprising 'a living-dead existence,

trapped within the earth, often within a hollow beneath a hill or mound, tormented by demons'.87

The landscape context of these hell-holes as well as the depiction of the tormented souls as

decapitated or bereft of other limbs corresponds closely to what we know about contemporary

execution practices, and the decision to illustrate the psalms' descriptions of hellish torment in

this way suggests the fate that mounds were thought to have in store for deviants barred from

Christian burial. It may not be too bold to suggest that traditional ideas concerning mounds asthe locus of continued existence after death were assimilated to the Christian conception of hell

such that mounds became fearful places particularly suited to the disposal of the morally

untouchable.88 It is noteworthy in this regard that the landscape context of execution sites at

cross-roads as well as their frequent description as hena byregelsas, 'heathen burials', in

charter bounds corresponds exactly to lfric's understanding of where witches go to summon

corpses from the earth.89

Mitigating what might otherwise seem like the outright anathematization of barrow

mounds, is the regional limitation of identified execution sitesmost are in south and central

England with only one, Walkington Wold (East Yorkshire), from the north90and the evidence

for the use of mounds as the meeting-places of administrative units, especially hundreds, in the

later Anglo-Saxon period.91 Mentioned as an organizational system only in the tenth century, the

origins of the hundredal system are obscure,92 though Meaney has suggested from

86 On the dating and content of the relevant narratives, see Rollason, The Mildrith Legend, pp. 1520, 74 and 76,and for a summary, see Hollis, 'Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story', p. 49.

87 Semple, 'Illustrations of Damnation', p. 240.88 Ibid.89 On references to execution sites in charter bounds, including a handlist of suspected examples, see Reynolds,

Deviant Burial, pp. 21922, 27281. On lfric, see above, p. 7.90 Buckberry and Hadley, 'Execution Cemetery at Walkington Wold'. See Reynolds, Deviant Burial, p. 152 for

distribution map.91 See Pantos, 'Anglo-Saxon Assembly-places', 'On the Edge of Things'.92 Loyn, Governance of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 1405; Reynolds,Later Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 768; Blair,


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correspondence of a few theophorous place-names and hundred meeting-places that some sites at

least may have made the transition from pagan shrines to administrative meeting places.93

Tracing any deeper connection between cultic assembly practices in the early Anglo-Saxon

period and later administrative systems is extremely problematic, not least because place -name

evidence suggesting moot-mound sites has hitherto been subject to only limited archaeological

evaluation.94 One of the few hundred mounds which has undergone modern excavation is

Secklow (Buckinghamshire), which proved to be at least post-Roman and lacking in any early

Anglo-Saxon phase of activity.95 The excavators suggested the mound was purpose-built for

assembly in the tenth century and then provided a list of eleven other suspected moot-mounds

previously excavated. Of these, only one proved sepulchral and one demonstrably prehistoric.96

Another on their list, however, Scutchamer Knob, the Cwichelmeshlw of theAnglo-Saxon

Chronicle, which functioned twice as a shire assembly site in the tenth century,97was provensubsequently to have been a prehistoric construction.98 Given the Chronicle's reference to

Cwichelmeshlw and the apparent influence of superstitious notions on the placement of

execution sites, ideological considerations regarding mounds' association with ancestral power

likely influenced the use of old or even purpose-built monuments as sites of assembly. However,

mere practical considerations (conspicuousness, ready platforms for speech-giving) would have

encouraged the use of old and new mounds as meeting-places, as would the simple force of

tradition, even if the ideological principles which may have originated that tradition had in some

areas lost relevancy or simply fallen out of memory.

To summarize, the monumentalization of cult in the late pagan era may have been partly

influenced by the proximity of Christianity as a competing ideology and in the early phases of

conversion, the church may have tactfully dovetailed itself into pre-existing ritual landscapes.

However, the importance of barrows in pre-Christian ritual and belief, perhaps especially their

Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 2369.93 Meaney, 'Pagan English Sanctuaries'; 'Hundred Meeting-Places', pp. 22832.94 The existence of moot-mounds is largely deduced either from elements referring to mounds in the name of the

hundredal units themselves or from the other place-names compounding words for speech or assembly withthose for mounds, Pantos, 'Vocabulary of Assembly'.

95 Adkins and Petchey, 'Secklow Hundred Mound', pp. 2456.96 Ibid., pp. 24650.97 Mentioned in S 1454, a 990-2 writ of dispute, edited in Baines, 'Wynfld v. Leofwine', pp. 646.98 Sanmark and Semple, 'Places of Assembly', pp. 2535.


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association with the ancestral dead and the supernatural, subjected their reputation to significant

complications as the process of Christianization continued and the new belief system became

more firmly entrenched. In the centuries following conversion, it appears that preexisting

mounds could be subject to both positive and negative appropriation, while purpose-built

mounds used for either execution burial or administrative assembly were capable of providing

either a suitably loathsome or suitably dignified stage for the actions of regional government.

Avenues for Interpretation: Malleable Space and The Potent Dead

The question remaining is what this varied pattern of re-use in Christian Anglo-Saxon

England might suggest about the attitudes of Christians towards their pagan fore-bearers. As

dissonance is to be expected concerning what must have been a contested issue, we should

militate against overly deterministic or mechanistic interpretations. Yet, without reconstructinganything approaching a dogmatic view (which certainly never existed) of the pre-Christian past,

it is possible, at least to some extent, to reconcile the evidence for what seems like the outright

anathematization of ancestral places with the evidence for lingering respect for earlier traditions

of burial, assembly and monument building and place them into a coherent framework of thought

that allows for major variation across time and space. As shown above, scholars have found

Gregory's Letter to Mellitus instructive in this regard. Viewing this text and the evidence for

mounds within the broader theological system in which they existed, I hope to show that notions

of empowered space which underlie the cult of saints' relics provides a useful contemporary

theoretical framework within which the challenging pattern of mound (re-)use in Middle and

Late Anglo-Saxon England might be better understood.

Admittedly, Gregory's advice to Mellitusis offered as a practical technique to approach a

specific type of site. His rationale is that the familiarity of these places could, when rededicated

to a Christian end, facilitate conversion by mitigating the disjuncture between the old and new

ritual systems. However, his technique of appropriation as well as the physical ritual he

prescribes for the consecration of a pagan shrineaqua benedicta fiat, in eisdem fanis

aspergatur, altaria construantur, reliquiae ponantur99is underpinned by a more general theory

99 'Take holy water and sprinkle it in these shrines, build altars and place relics in them', Bede, HEi.30 (ed. andtrans. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 1067).


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of empowered space, which can be shown to have applied more broadly in the Christian period.

The most familiar contemporary manifestation of empowered space is the cult

surrounding saints' relics. Saints were considered to be especially sanctified people who enjoyed

a privileged connection to the divine and could therefore act as intercessors for their devotees.

Veneration of these individuals focused around their bodily remains, ideally (but not essentially)

preserved uncorrupted. These 'primary relics' retained the holiness of the saint, his or her

spiritual power, and could even be used, according to Gregory, to consecrate a profane space.

The transferability of sanctity also underlies the notion of 'secondary relics', otherwise dull

matter that manages to absorb the holiness of the blessed either through contact with the living

saint or with his or her primary relics.100 Just one among countless examples is the buttress upon

which Aidan leaned when he died, which later, as related by Bede, proved invulnerable to fire

(though luckily not to splintering, as these were taken to work cures).101 The potency of anyspace or material was thus considered essentially malleable, able to be imbued with spiritual

power given the presence of a suitable vector, whether primary or secondary relic. Sanctity was

contagious.

The theology of the cult of saints and its fundamental notion of the malleable potency of

space (almost so fundamental as to be taken for granted) has significant ramifications for our

investigation as it provides a framework within which all modes of use for barrows old and new

in the Christian era may be made more scrutable. First, we may suggest that the assimilation of

Christian and pagan beliefs which accounted for the identification of barrows as hell-mouths,

was only one aspect of the interaction of inherited and imported beliefs which underlies the

Christian use of barrows. Notably, the Christian cult of saints and the ritual role envisioned for

sites combining burial and prehistoric monuments in Anglo-Saxon paganism share a fundamental

similarity in that the revered dead have some access to a supernatural realm, yet also retain some

potent and accessible presence in their remains or site of interment.

Though the cult of saints had no explicit dogma, this idea of dual presence was

intermittently made explicit.102 Abbo of Fleury in the tenth century said as much in relation to

100 See Rollason, Saints and Relics, p. 11.101 Bede,HEiii.17 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 2645).102 Perhaps, as quoted by Brown, Cult of Saints, p. 4, in the foruth-century epitaph of St Martin of Tours: 'Here lies

Martin the bishop, of holy memory, whose soul is in the hand of God; but he is fully here, present and made


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the primary relics of St Edmund, the martyred king of the East Angles:

De quo constat, sicut et de aliis sanctis omnibus iam cum Christo regnantibus,quod, licet eius anima sit in caelesti gloria, non tamen per visitationem dienoctuque longe est a corporis presentia, cum quo promeruit ea quibus iamperfruitur beatae immortalitatis gaudia.

Of him it can be said, as of all the other saints who are now reigning with Christ,that, although his soul is in celestial glory, it is through daily and nightlyvisitation not removed from the body, along with which it has merited theenjoyment of the joys of blessed immortality.103

Geary has pointed out the unique preeminence of the cult of corporeal relics in Western

Christianity and suggested that its development may have been fed in part by its similarity with

preexisting notions concerning the position of the dead in society.104 His argument perhaps gains

force from the specifics of the cult of saints' translation into some of the cultures Christianizedthrough Western European colonialism. For example, an anthropological investigation of modern

pilgrimage practices in Mexico found that the small figures and images that replace corporeal

relics as the foci of pilgrimages are a direct continuation of pre-Columbian traditions.105 A

different pattern of assimilation may have prevailed during the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon

England where indigenous traditions aligned in important ways with the incoming relics cult. It

is not unlikely at least that the similarity between an inherited cluster of beliefs concerning the

ancestral dead and the imported theology of saints meant that each exerted some influence over

the development of the other.106 Griffiths mentioned this idea briefly in his exploration of Anglo-

Saxon paganism. Of saints he writes,

...the veneration of their relics may seem to possess (and may have been fearedor even encouraged to possess at the time) something of the sort of superstitiousregard for ancestral remains I assume for the pagan Anglo-Saxon period.107

Supposing an interaction of these traditions, it is possible to contend that the apparent

plain in miracles of every kind'.103 Abbo of Fleury, Vita Edmundi xvi. 2731(ed. Winterbottom, Three Lives,p. 86; trans. Rollason, Saints and

Relics, p. 7).104 Geary,Living with the Dead, pp. 414. The absorption of pre-existing ideas concerning the relationship betweenthe living and the dead by Christian society, and specifically the role of the church in mediating the system ofgift giving between the living and the dead, is also discussed by Fell, Feasting the Dead, in an Anglo-Saxoncontext and byInnes, State and Society, pp. 3447, in a Carolingian context.

105 Turner and Turner,Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture.106 Griffiths,Anglo-Saxon Magic, p. 45 mentions this possibility in passing.107 Griffiths,Anglo-Saxon Magic, p. 45.


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anathematization of the ancestral pagan dead suggested by the re-use of barrows for deviant

execution and burial developed through a kind of inversion of the cult of saints, wherein

proximity to or association with an accursed dead or former pagan practice was sufficient to

render a space accursed, and hence suitable for the interment of execution victims. This

circumstance would accord with the common use ofhena byregelsas, 'heathen burials', in

charter bounds to refer to contemporary execution sites and with Semple's contention that by the

late Anglo-Saxon period, barrows both prehistoric and early Anglo-Saxon in origin were viewed

as products of the same 'heathen' past and were selected for execution sites for that reason. 108

Four of the twenty-seven execution sites listed by Reynolds occur in association with early

Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, and notably one of these, Ashtead (Surrey) is one of the only four

execution sites not found in association with any monument.109

Supporting evidence for the mutual influence of Christian and pagan beliefs concerningthe potent dead is perhaps provided by a unique episode in an eleventh-century manuscript of the

Historia de sancto Cuthberto,110 in which Cuthbert's remains when transported to a hillrather

than the ancestral dead actually situated in the landscape fulfill the role of legitimating a royal

claimant. Appearing in a vision, Cuthbert instructs the abbot of his community to search outamong the Danes and elect as king a certain Guthred son of Hardacnut, saying hora vero nona

duc eum cum toto exercitu super montem qui vocatur Oswigesdune et ibi pone in brachio eius

dextero armillam auream, et sic eum omnes regem constituant.111 Bishop Eardulf later brings

Cuthbert's body to the hill in question and Guthred swears an oath of peace and fidelity over the

saints remains. Although not explicitly a barrow, the landscape context of this ceremony as some

manner of eminence112 ascribed to an Oswig113 is tantalizing. The scene may represent a kind of

108 Semple, 'Anglo-Saxon Attitudes', p. 377.109 Reynolds,Deviant Burial, pp. 156, 2346.110 Although traditionally dated to the mid-tenth century (see Craster, 'Patrimony of St Cuthbert'), the work's most

recent editor, still acknowledging clear evidence based on patterned scribal errors that the earliest survivingmanuscript is copied from an earlier exemplar, is inclined towards an eleventh-century date nearer the extant

manuscript. SeeHSC(ed. Smith, pp. 2536.)111 '...at the ninth hour lead him with the whole army upon the hill which is called Oswigesdune and there place onhis right arm a golden armlet, and thus they shall all constitute him king' HSCXIII (ed. and trans. Smith, pp. 5253).

112 The Latin word used is mons, which is usually translated mountain, but can also refer to smaller eminences, suchas hills. OE dun likewise may refer to either hills or mountains. The semantic ambiguity ofdun and itsinteraction with beorgis discussed by Kitson, 'Fog on the Barrow-downs?'.

113 The site is unidentified as is the Oswig in question, though Oswiu was the name of the Northumbrian king who


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conciliatory assimilation occasioned by the reintroduction of pagan belief by Scandinavian

settlers, but it may just re-enact the same manner of interaction between pagan and Christian

ideas during the period of conversion that preceded it.

Some comparison may be made between the use of a saint's relics in this coronation

episode and evidence from Early Medieval Ireland that saints' graves began to take on the legal

functions formerly fulfilled by ancestral tombs in traditional cemeteries. According to

Carragin, uniquely in Ireland, the cult of corporeal relics developed in tandem with the notion

of Christian burial as a requirement for salvation in the eighth and ninth centuries.114 To expedite

this transition, the church seems to have positioned the remains of saints as substitutes for that of

the ancestors. Not only did proximity to a saint's remains now supplant proximity to ancestral

graves as a mark of dignified burial, Christian cemeteries focused around a saints' remains seem

also to have taken over the secondary functions of the ancestral cemeteries they sought toreplace, including their use as the site of oath-taking, regional fairs, and judicial assemblies. 115

Gittos has suggested a link between the development of a notion of Christian burial in Ireland

and England,116 and the possibility of parallel developments with regard to the interaction of

ideas about saints' remains and the ancestral dead is not unlikely given the ecclesiastical

connections between the two regions.

An additional piece of anecdotal evidence from Anglo-Saxon England might also be

brought to bear on this issue. The well-known Fonthill Letter, a vernacular document addressed

from Ealdorman Ordlaf to King Edward the Elder regarding a disputed estate in Wiltshire,

mentions amid the misadventures of the thief Helmstan an apparently penitential trip to the tomb

of Alfred, the king under whom he had been given a judicious settlement in a previous dispute.

After Helmstan is pronounced an outlaw for wrangling cattle, Orlaf continues: a gesahte he

ines fder lic 7 brohte insigle to me, 7 ic ws t Cippanhome mit te. a ageaf ic t insigle

e. 7 Du him forgeafe his eard 7 a are e he get on gebogen hf.117 Of the seal Whitelock says

in a footnote to her edition:'Probably a document authenticated by a seal, to show that he hadoversaw the Synod of Whitby, Bede,HEiii. 25 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 294309).

114 Carragin, 'Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland', p. 1468. O'Brien, 'Pagan and Christian Burial'.115 Carragin, 'Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland', p. 14951.116 Gittos, 'Consecrating Cemeteries', pp. 2058.117 'Then he sought your father's body [i.e. Edward the Elder's father, i.e. Alfred the Great], and brought a seal to me,

and I was with you at Chippenham. Then I gave the seal to you, and you removed his outlawry and gave him theestate to which he still has withdrawn', edition and translation from Keynes, 'The Fonthill Letter', p. 88.


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taken an oath at the king's tomb'.118 In this case the oath seems to have been a procedure

sufficient to restore one's lawfulness.119 The common practice of swearing oaths over a saint's

relics was based on the understanding, as mentioned above, of their continued presence within

the physical object itself. An oath over the body of a king isperhaps better seen as a strictlysymbolic act not necessarily based on the preconception of actual supernatural presence as with

saints' relics. However, it is important not to take what may appear as the ritual's obvious and

straight-forward symbolism for granted. There is nothing logically inevitable about choosing a

tomb as the site to perform an oath under the authority of the dead man buried there. I would

suggest only that the perceived logic of the ritual's symbolism in this tenth-century context likely

owes something to the currency of beliefs associated with the cult of relics' (if not also to pre-

Christian ideas about the dead). Hence, the anecdote at least raises the possibility that the

theology of the cult of saints could inform thinking about more than just the saintly dead.Whatever the case, the development of an attitude towards the pagan dead as a kind of

antithesis to the cult of saints would have allowed barrows with both uncertain and known pagan

histories to be incriminated as 'secondary anti-relics' (a loathsome designation reinforced through

their use for judicial execution), while the monument form itself maintained some potential

dignity. This would explain why ten of the eleven excavated suspected barrow-moots proved to

be purpose-built, perhaps to provide monuments of certain, untainted history.120

Nevertheless, the other fundamental aspect of the cult of relics, the principle of

malleability, could help explain the use as a meeting-place of a monument formerly used for

pagan ritual and burial, such as is hypothesized for Lovedon Hill (Lincolnshire).121 Justification

for continued use could be achieved, if felt necessary, by the ritual cleansing of the sort

prescribed by Gregory. Blair's thoughts in relation to the re-use of pagan sites for churches could

apply equally well to their re-use as administrative meeting-places:

The ritual cleansing of any such places, as both a necessary and sufficient

118 EHD I.102 (ed. Whitelock, p. 545).119 Keynes, 'The Fonthill Letter', p. 88 suggests the practice of vouching a dead man to warranty attested inIne ch.53 andII thelredch. 9.2 (ed. Liebermann,Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1, pp. 1123, 2267) as a

possible analogue for Helmstan's oath, while Harmer,Anglo-Saxon Writs, p. 13, n. 2 compares it to four lateeleventh- and twelfth-century writs in which abbots of Westminster certify that individuals, in one case a thief,have taken sanctuary and begged the sheriff's pardon at the shrine of the yet uncanonized Edward the Confessor.

120 Pantos, 'Anglo-Saxon Assembly-places', pp. 1723.121 Williams, 'Ancient Landscapes', p. 23.


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condition for re-use, will have made sense to the English as well as theirecclesiastical mentors. On the whole it is likely that both living pagan shrinesand abandoned older monuments were used, or not used, as other requirementsdictated, without anxieties about pollution posing any insuperable problem.122

Avenues for Interpretation: The Heroic Pagan Past:

We have already seen how the notions of malleability and conversionif not explicitly

from pagan to Christian usageplay out in relation to mounds in the Guthlac narratives.

Interestingly, the same notions may also be argued to operate in relation to mounds inBeowulf,

even though the theme of the Christianization of space is precluded by the poem's pre-Christian

setting. According to Alaric Hall, one of the traditional story elementsof heroic poetry

redeployed by Guthlac A is barrow-breaking, a familiar motif in Old Norse and Icelandic

narratives.123 Though we can only speculate that similar stories of young warriors proving their

mettle by invading barrows also circulated in Anglo-Saxon England, the most elaborate survival

of Old English heroic poetry,Beowulf, does include an aged hero invading a barrow. LikeGuthlac, Beowulf's deeds effectively transform the connotations surrounding the monument-

form, though the process is achieved through replacement rather than conversion. The mounds

ofBeowulfalso hint at positive, alternative aspects of the pagan heritage which features in the

landscape might evoke in the Christian era.

The barrow as the proverbial abode of the dragon according to Maxims IIand exemplifiedinBeowulfis cited by Semple as evidence of the negative associations of barrows in the

Christian period.124 This is warranted, for the barrow-dweller wreaks disorder by destroying the

gifstol Geata, ('the gift-throne of the Geats', 2327a), the locus of the gift-exchange that appears

throughout the poem as society's strategy for social integration.125 However, we must reckon

with the full history of that barrow and its connection with the monument newly built for

Beowulf's own interment.126 The dragon's barrow existed long before its appropriation by the

122 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, p. 184.123 See citations of Chadwick and Ellis above, p. 5, n. 22.124 Semple, 'Fear of the Past', pp. 10910.125 For the most sophisticated recent analysis of gift-giving inBeowulfand the 'socio-genetic' character of Beowulf's

exploits see Bazelmans,By Weapons Made Worthy.126 For an investigation of the links between the barrows of the dragon and of Beowulf with a slightly different

focus than what follows, see Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, pp. 8694.


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dragon. The earliest use we hear of is by the so-called Last Survivor. At that time,

Beorh eallgearowunodeon wonge wteryum neah,niwe be nsse, nearocrftum fst.r oninnan br eorlgestreona

hringa hyrde hordwyrne dl...

A barrow stood all ready on open ground near the sea-waves, new by theheadland, secure in its powers of confinement. Into this the keeper of the ringscarried a large amount of what was worth hoarding, noble treasures.127

Here the barrow is open, ready, prominently sited, and a useful confinement of the lost

nation's legacy. In the narrative present, after the coming of the dragon (given as three hundred

years earlier, 227881a), the barrow's history is apparently forgotten, and its entrance eldum

uncu, 'unknown to men' (2214a). Following the destruction of the dragon and the winning ofhis hoard, Beowulf requests a new mound to be constructed for his own commemoration.

Hata heaomre hlw gewyrcean,beorhtne fter ble t brimes nosan;se scel to gemyndum minum leodumheah hlifian on Hronesnsse,t hit sliend syan hatanBiowulfes biorh, a e brentingasofer floda genipu feorran drifa.

Bid those famous for war to build a fine mound after the pyre on the headland bythe sea; it shall tower high on Whale's Cape as a remembrance to my people, sothat seafarers when they drive their tall ships from afar across the mists of theflood will thereafter call it Beowulf's Barrow.128

Later, the construction of the barrow is described:

Geworhton a Wedra leodehlw on hoe, se ws heah ond brad,wegliendum wide gesyne,ond betimbredon on tyn dagumbeadurofes becn; bronda lafe

wealle beworhton, swa hyt weorlicostforesnotre men findan mihton.

Then the people of the Weders constructed on the promontory a mound which

127 Beowulf2241b5 (ed. and trans. Swanton,Beowulf,pp. 1412).128 Beowulf28027b (ed. and trans. Swanton,Beowulf,pp. 1689).


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was high and broad, to be seen far and near by those voyaging across the waves,and in ten days had built up a monument to the man renowned in battle; theysurrounded the remains of the fire with a rampart, the finest and most skilful mencould devise.129

The topographical situation of Beowulf's barrow closely corresponds with that of the LastSurvivor's barrow, but this parallel positioning makes the contrasts between them stand out all

the more starkly. The clearest contrast is between anonymity and commemoration: The Last

Survivor and his people are anonymous, as is the nsse upon which his forgotten barrow is sited.

Meanwhile, the new barrowat least at the momentis widely seen by sailors, associated in its

name with one man and presumably his people, and positioned on a promontory that itself seems

to have a specific name,Hronesnsse, 'Whale's Cape' (2805b).

Moreover, Beowulf's barrow, one might argue, is as much of an ethical as a physical

mnemonic reference point, a reminder of his illustrious example of sacrificial heroism to guide

the behavioral as well as nautical navigating of its onlookers (and perhaps even to the poem's

audience).130 The communal effort undertaken to gather the wood for the pyre, heap up the

mound and redeposit the treasure in Beowulf's mound may be understood as a final counter gift

to their fallen lord that symbolizes the Geats re-dedication to the integrating system of reciprocal

exchange that the fleeing thegns have so recently failed to maintain and which the Geats will

certainly require should the forebodings of renewed feud come to fruition. 131 Whatever the

Geats' eventual fate, the events set in action by Beowulf's deeds restore the form of the barrowfrom the abode of the dragonparagon of destabilizing niggardliness, who begrudges even that

a single drinking vessel should enter into the circulation of humans' exchange to the enduring

medium for the commemoration of human achievement, however transient and uncertain it

might be.

The parallel histories of Beowulf's barrow and that of the anonymous Last Survivor

especially the king-less Geats inheritance and re-deposition of the lost nation's dubiously cursed

129 Beowulf315662 (ed. and trans. Swanton,Beowulf,pp. 1845).130 Even if the quality of Beowulf's example was as debated among its original audience as ardently as it is today,

the poem's portrayal of barrow burial is free of the unadulterated condemnation reserved for the Danes' sacrificesto idols (17588).

131 See Lash, 'Useless Treasure'.


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hoard132may well have been meant to foreshadow the eventual destruction of the Geats and the

consigning of Beowulf's name to oblivion. To suggest the transience of the achievement

commemorated in Beowulf's barrow, rather than diminishing its value, may actually highlight its

preciousness. The tone of Beowulf's final evaluation (if only by the Geats and not explicitly the

poet) is elegiac, not scornful.

a ymbe hlw riodan hildedeore,elinga bearn, ealre twelfe,woldon ceare cwian, kyning mnan,wordgyd wrecan ond ymb wer sprecan.Eahtodan eorlscipe ond his ellenweorcduguum demdon. Swa hit gedefe bit mon his winedryhten wordum herge,ferhum freoge, onne he for scileof lichaman lded weoran.

Swa begnornodon Geata leodehlafordes hryre, heorgeneatas;cwdon t he wre wyruldcyningamanna mildust ond monwrust,leodum liost ond lofgearnost.

Then those brave in battle, the children of princes, twelve in all, rode road themound, would lament their grief, bewail their king, recite a lay and speak aboutthe man. They praised his heroism and acclaimed the nobility of his courageousdeeds. It is fitting that a man should thus honour his friend and leader withwords, love him in spirit, when he must needs be led forth from the flesh. Thus

the people of the Geats, the companions of his hearth, mourned the fall of theirlord; they said that among the world's kings he was the gentlest of men and themost courteous, the most kindly to his people and the most eager for renown. 133

In the context of a Christian work depicting a culture's imagined heroic heritage,

Beowulf's barrow becomes in the poem's final image the focus of a lament for the end of what

was best of a flawed age. Regardless of the poem's date of composition, a necessarily

insurmountable uncertainty,134 the sole extant manuscript from c.1000 AD would have presented

the form of the barrow as a poly-valant image that could evoke both ancient evil and ancient

glory,and it is possible that positive connotations of barrow burial in Beowulfmay attest to132 On the curse or curses surrounding the hoard, see Cooke, 'Cursing of the Hoard'; Thayler, 'Double Curse'. 133 Beowulf316982 (ed. and trans. Swanton,Beowulf,pp. 1857).134 For a general summary of the various considerations bearing on the poem's origins see Fulk et al.,Klaeber's

Beowulf, pp. clxiiclxxxviii.


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associations that informed the use of barrows for both burial and assembly in middle and late

Anglo-Saxon England.

There is one additional stray reference to the use of a barrow as a pagan funerary

monument that also perhaps hints at the existence of a positive association between the

monument-form and the Germanic heroic past. One of the oft discussed alterations made by the

Old English translator of Boethius'sDe consolatione Philosophiae is the perhaps pun-intended

inclusion of Weland, the famous smith of Germanic legend, in place of 'Fabricius' among the

classical exempla cited by Boethius to illustrate the transience of worldly glory. The prose

rendering of Boethius's book two metre seven in the B-text, preserved in a manuscript of the late

eleventh or early twelfth century, reads:

Hwr sint nu s foremeran and s wisan goldsmies ban Welondes? (Fori

ic cw s wisan fory am crftegan ne mg nfre his crft losigan ne hinemon ne mg onne e on him geniman e mon mg a sunnan awendan ofhiere stede.) Hwr synt nu s Welondes ban, oe hwa wat nu hwr hiwron?

Where now are the bones of the famous and wise goldsmith Weland? (I said wisebecause the craftsman can never lose his skill nor can it easily be taken from himany more than the sun can be moved from its place.) Where now are the bones ofWeland, or who knows now where they were?135

Though preserved in an earlier manuscript from around the mid-tenth century, the Old

English metrical version of this section is rendered from an Old English prose translation of thesort reflected in the text above rather than the original Latin. As such it follows the text closely

yet includes one notable addition of detail, likely to fit the requirements of the metre.

Hwr sint nu s wisan Welandes ban,s goldsmies, e ws geo mrost?Fory ic cw s wisan Welandes ban,fory ngum ne mg eorbuendrase crft losian e him Crist onln.Ne mg mon fre y e nne wrccanhis crftes beniman, e mon oncerran mgsunnan onswifan and isne swiftan rodorof his rihtryne rinca nig.Hwa wat nu s wisan Welandes ban,on hwelcum hlwa hrusan eccen?

135 ECPB text chapter 19, ll. 1621 (ed. Godden and Irvine, vol. 1, p. 283; trans. Godden and Irvine, vol. 2, p. 30).


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Where now are the bones of wise Weland, the goldsmith, who was previouslyvery famous? I said the bones of wise Weland because the skill which Christgrants to any earth-dweller cannot be lost by him. Nor can anyone ever deprivea wretch of his skill more easily than any man can divert and turn aside the sun

and this swift firmament from its correct course. Who now knows in whichmound the bones of wise Weland cover the earthen floor?136

Bones were a common type of primary relic among saints, and the unknown whereabouts

of Weland's bones in this ubi suntformation is intriguing, especially when one recalls that the

Liber monstrorum claims that the bones ofrex Higlacus, King Hygelac inBeowulf, in insula

Rheni fluminis reservata sunt, et ostensa sunt hominibus venientibus de longinquo, as if the focus

of some heroic (or monstrous) pilgrimage.137 Though it is difficult to decipher what may have

been the Christian moral evaluation of Weland from a few references in verse in and his most

famous appearance on the eighth-century Frank's Casket, which juxtaposes his vengeance with

the adoration of the Magi,138 he appears here as a 'symbol of craftsmanship and a consoling

image of permanence amid the flux and decay of earthly existence'.139 Perhaps doubly suggested

by Biblical precedent and the Latin saying frequently cited about the figure Weland replaces,140

the great smith's skill is heralded as an inalienable human faculty gifted by God. Meanwhile, the

lost burial mound is an ambiguous image that conveys a sense of both transience and endurance

by simultaneously evoking the mnemonic capacity of material commemoration and its regretful

limitations. A mound might still continue to memorialize Weland, if only its location had notslipped from our memory.

This sentiment is echoed in the prose section preceding this metrical excerpt in Cotton

136 ECPC text metre 10, ll. 3343 (ed. Godden and Irvine, vol. 1, p. 427; trans. Godden and Irvine, vol. 2, p.126).137 '...have been preserved on an island in the Rhine River and have been shown to men visiting from far off'. LMii

(ed. Porsia, p. 138).138 For example, Abels, 'What has Weland to do with Christ?' claims Weland and the Magi were t

lash - mounds, pagans in as england

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