The Växjö rune stone

This evening, I have returned from a short trip to Växjö in Sweden, where I attended the launch of the Mapping Saints database, which contains descriptions and overviews of the various sources of the cult of saints in medieval Sweden. The project behind this database - Mapping Lived Religion - has been headed by Sara Ellis Nilsson, and I was fortunate enough to work as a part of the team for three months back in 2021. It was lovely to mark the conclusion to this enterprise. Yesterday morning, before the launch itself a friend and I headed into town, where I wanted to visit the cathedral. This was my first time in Växjö since I left the city in December 2020, and I was happy to see both the church and the rune stone again.  

The rune stone is located behind the east wall of the cathedral, and was found during renovations in the church building in 1813. According to the information plaque next to it, the stone has been dated to c.1000, but I will add that I myself do not know enough about rune stones to have an opinion on this issue. On the plaque, the text has been translated into Swedish and English, and the latter runs accordingly: 'Tyke - Tyke Viking - erected this stone in memory of Gunnar, Grim's son. May God help his soul'.   

The Växjö rune stone

 

The early date of the stone is intriguing, because it suggests that Växjö was a Christian centre several decades before the first Swedish bishop was consecrated - which was bishop Adalvard of Sigtuna around 1060, if we believe Adam of Bremen. If the date is correct, therefore, the stone is a testament to the slow and decentralised spread of Christianity in Sweden, especially since there was no Swedish church organisation at such an early point in time. In light of such a lack of an organisational infrastructure and framework, it is important, however, that we reflect on what it means to constitute a centre in this part of the Christianisation process. Centrality is relative, and the Christian community in Växjö around the year 1000 is likely to have been small. We should imagine that it consisted of a few locals, perhaps a significant percentage of whom were slaves, and that the religious life was headed by a missionary, either from England or from Germany, as these were the two main centres of active influence in the Nordic Christianisation. Moreover, we should expect that the community was protected by a local aristocrat, on whose farmstead important services were held, such as baptism, funerals, and the celebration of the main liturgical feasts.  

The durability of the Christian community was dependent on its relationship with locals. The protection of the local noble could be revoked, or indeed be insufficient in the face of a strong reaction from the pagan majority. For this reason, when we talk about Växjö as a Christian centre, this centrality does not necessarily mean that the community was deeply rooted or secure against changing attitudes. Centres can, and often are, short lived, and the testimony of the rune stone should not lead us to think that Christianity was stronger in Växjö than it actually was.  

The likely existence of a small but seemingly vibrant Christian centre around 1000, is especially interesting in light of a later legend that emerged in Växjö, namely that of Saint Sigfrid. I have recounted the legend in a previous blogpost, but a brief summary is necessary for the present purpose. Växjö became a diocese in the second half of the twelfth century, following the establishment of the Uppsala church province in 1164. At some point, the cathedral clergy at Växjö began venerating the figure of Sigfrid, who became the centre-point for the cathedral's institutional identity. The earliest surviving version of his legend - as far as I know - is contained in the liturgical office, composed towards the end of the thirteenth century. Here we learn about the English missionary and his three nephews who established a Christian centre in Växjö. Eventually, however, local opinion turned, and when Sigfrid was away visiting the king, his three nephews were killed. Their heads were found in a tub floating on Lake Växjö, and the local populace repented. 

Much is dubious about this story, in part because it makes a late appearance in the source material. We should also note that the name Sigfrid is essentially the same as Sigafrid, a missionary whom King Olaf II Haraldsson of Norway - later Saint Olaf - brought with him from England to Norway in 1016, at least according to Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesie Pontifici from the 1070s. Sigafrid is known in later Norwegian sources as Sigurd, and is often identified as the first Norwegian bishop. As the story of Saint Olaf was well known in the rest of the Nordic sphere, it could easily become a reference point or an inspiration for other cults. For instance, the early-twelfth-century legend of Saint Theodegarius in Northern Denmark identified Theodegarius as one of Saint Olaf's missionaries (although that name is not mentioned by Adam). It is entirely possible that the figure of Saint Sigfrid is partly connected to the legend of Saint Olaf, if only through the name of the Norwegian bishop.  

Despite the many dubious elements of the Sigfrid legend, the Växjö rune stone does invite a very important question, namely whether this legend could contain some kernel of truth, such as a very faint echo of actual events from the slow spread of Christianity in Sweden around the turn of the millennium. We will, of course, never know, and we are unable to venture beyond the labyrinth of accrued stories and later additions that comprise the Sigfrid legend. Nonetheless, what we can surmise is that there was Christian activity in Växjö around the year 1000, and this activity endured for some time. We do not know how long, but we can assume that a man who had been spending part of his life abroad as a pirate had gone to the deep Swedish woods - presumably returning to his ancestral region - and there erected a monument in memory of a fellow Christian. This interpretation is not the only possible one, of course. The fates and lives of eleventh-century people could twist and turn in unexpected ways - ways unimaginable to us today, so the historical stories of Tyke and Gunnar might have unfolded very differently from how I imagine them here. Even so, this rune stone is a Christian monument, and a monument is a costly, time-consuming matter, which in turn suggests that there was enough stability and a sufficiently sizeable Christian population in Växjö that the monument was allowed to be erected, and that the monument stood for some time. This rune stone, then, is a anchoring point in time, that allows us to think more carefully about later legends, and about the complexities of eleventh-century history.      

Atlántida – or, the converging of modern medievalism and the legend of Atlantis, part 2

This is the second of four blogposts on the comic book story Atlántida by Ricard Ferrándiz, which is a part of the storyworld of El Capitán Trueno. See also the first, the third and the fourth installment.

El Capitán Trueno and Atlantis      

Due to the scarcity of medieval, or perhaps rather medievalist, Atlantis fantasies, I was very excited to find the Capitán Trueno album Atlántida, and I read it eagerly in the course of a dark evening before Christmas. I should note, however, that this album is my first encounter with the comic book series El Capitán Trueno (aside from a parody/homage in the comic book series Mortadelo y Filemón which was what made me aware of the captain’s existence). Consequently, I cannot evaluate the book in light of the history of the series, and in my comments and reflections I will be unable to catch elements that will be obvious to long-time readers. My aim with this text is, instead, to examine the treatment of the Atlantis myth and to see how the author has dealt with certain issues that are standard topoi of stories about Atlantis.  
 

I should first, however, give some brief notes of introduction to readers who are as unfamiliar as I am with the universe of Capitán Trueno. The comic book series was created in 1956 by the author Victor Mora Pujadas and the artist Miguel Ambrosio Zaragoza, and it is centred on the exploits of four protagonists: Capitán Trueno who is a Spanish knight, his girlfriend Sigrid who is the queen of the island Thule in the far north, and their friends Goliath the giant and the young boy Crispín. The temporal setting of the series is the end of the twelfth century, and in the course of the series’ long history the quartet has been brought to many distant geographical locations. El Capitán Trueno has enjoyed immense popularity in Spain, and several other comic book writers and artists have contributed to the growth to the series. The album in focus here is drawn and written by Ricard Ferrándiz. Perhaps needless to say, the following paragraphs will contain several spoilers.    

Atlántida begins in Sigrid’s island kingdom Thule, presumably modelled in part on Iceland – often identified as the classical Thule by several medieval scholars – and in part on Norway, considering that Iceland in the twelfth century was not a kingdom whereas Norway was. The idea of a female ruler of a distant northern island touches on several elements found in medieval depictions of the far north, for instance in Adam of Bremen, but these cannot be addressed here. As the story begins, however, the kingdom is in preparation for the wedding of Sigrid and Capitán Trueno, a wedding that – true to the vagaries of comic book series – has been decades in the making. In order to escape the hubbub of the preparations, Goliath and Crispín go fishing, and Goliath hooks a bottle with a message inside it. This message is what sets the sequence of events unfolding.      
            

The text of the message is in Latin, which is translated by Capitán Trueno, and it is a call for help with a map of the island and a drawing of the constellation Orion. The captain remarks that it is an island not found on any nautical map (which makes perfect sense at the turn of the twelfth century, both considering that the Atlantic south of Spain was for all intents and purposes uncharted territory, and that the portolan charts were to be invented first in the thirteenth century). Due to the mystery of the island’s location and the call for help, Sigrid, the queen of Thule, decides to go in immediate search of the sender of the bottle and let the nuptial ceremonies wait until their return.

After an eventful voyage, during which they encounter a strange ship filled with a dead crew in black cloaks which appear to signal that the island is in the vicinity, they reach their destination, which is cloaked in volcanic fog. The group of four split into two teams and go exploring the island to look for the sender of the message. Suddenly, Trueno and Sigrid are ambushed by a group of humans cloaked in fur and armed with clubs and stone axes, of a broad and strong build reminiscent of the stereotypical stone age man. These men are later called “hombres rojos”, red men, by the narrator of the story, and they abduct Sigrid and bring her to an ancient ruined city where they tie her up for a human sacrifice, barely stopped in time by Trueno and, with timely aid, Crispín and Goliath. The latter two are armed with jars of explosives, which they have been given by the sender of the message whom they have met in the meantime. This man is the last surviving descendant of Atlantis. 

Once the situation has calmed down, the pale and cloaked Atlantean Djad-dze invites them into the subterranean realm which is the last remnant of the once mighty city state. Here, in the laboratory and library, he recounts the history of Atlantis, once so prosperous and advanced, then brought low by a cataclysm interpreted as divine retribution for the struggle and bloodshed that eventually tainted the Atlanteans. He then explains why he has sent for their aid: The volcano is about to erupt, and this will most likely wipe out the entire island and with it all the accumulated knowledge of physics, history, chemistry and other disciplines of Atlantis. It is Djad-dze’s wish that at least some of this is preserved, with the exception of one red-bound volume, whose content the human species is not yet prepared to receive. The four then prepare their departure from the moribound island, and after a brief but violent encounter with another band of red men, they are underway to Thule where they still have problems awaiting – but that is irrelevant to the Atlantis element and also an unnecessary spoiler, so I will say nothing of it here. With this summary of the events in Atlántida pertaining to Atlantis, I hope to have prepared the ground for a reflection on some of the elements in the story and how they fit with the wider cultural history of the Atlantean civilisation, to which I will return in the next blogpost.

Language and embrace - ruminations for March 31

In the medievalist section of social media, March 31 is International Hug A Medievalist Day, founded by Doctor Sarah Laseke, currently of Leiden University. This is the day when social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook explode with images of embraces from medieval manuscripts, using scenes of demons battling, furtive and illegal embraces, amorous encounters, scenes of the Visitatio Mariae, the kiss of Judas, and so on.

As a medievalist, I find these displays of virtual intimacy somewhat heart-warming, and it made me remember an often quoted passage from Derek Walcott's book-length poem Omeros, in which he states:

Because Rhyme remains the parentheses of palms
shielding a candle's tongue, it is the language's
desire to enclose the loved world in its arms

I have loved this verse ever since I first read it in the spring of 2008, which was the second term of my first year at university, and a time when I had just starting to explore unfamiliar literatures. It is a pleasing thought that language seeks to contain what is loved in its embrace, and the equation of language and love through this imagery is one that I find immensely moving.

The further I venture into the fields of medieval studies, and the more I explore the literatures of the medieval period, the more aware I become that Derek Walcott's description of language is a highly idealized one, and one that should be sought but one which often is discarded. Instead, the sad truth is this: Language is often used to destructive ends, even when it is cloaked in a semblance of love and goodness.

There is nothing uniquely medieval about this. In the modern world we see more than sufficient examples of how the choice of words marks up delineations between us and them. This is why, for instance, a Syrian child coming to the UK is termed a migrant, whereas a Brit settling down in Spain refers to himself as an expat.

Using words as tools of alienation appears to be a human constant, and is just as much a modern feature as it is a medieval feature. For me, however, the medieval use of words and language in this way has been very much on my mind recently, as research has brought me more closely into how medieval writers would talk about language to identify the cultural others, and how language was an important way to emphasize someone's degree of humanity.

I recently worked on an article where I noted the frequency of sources that would remark about this and that people that they spoke unintelligibly or like animals. One favourite example comes from Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, in which he refers to the Northern Norwegians as not so much speaking as gnashing their teeth together, so that their neighbours can barely understand them. (It is worth noting that he probably received this information in Denmark.)

Another example that I have worked a lot on lately is the Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eius et passione gloriosissimi Canuti regis et martyris. This work, a saint-biography of Knud IV of Denmark, also known as Saint Knud Rex, was written in the 1110s by the English monk Aelnoth of Canterbury, and records how Saint Knud was killed by an angry mob of Danish noblemen and commoners in Odense in 1086. In order to emphasize the uncivilised behaviour of the regicides, Aelnoth often depicts them as raging, and in one memorable instance states that they behaved "more porcorum", in the manner of swine.

This connection of language and beastly behaviour has deep roots in Christian literature. Among the most famous early examples is perhaps the encounter between Saint Antony of Egypt and a satyr, as told by Jerome in his Life of Paul of Thebes. Here, the satyr, and also the hippocentaur, are speaking in a manner that is difficult to understand. In this way, their lack of language, their semi-animal composition, and their uncivilised inhabitation all combine to emphasize their otherness. The trope is an often repeated one, and draws on the same old approach to language and civilization that once made the Ancient Greeks coin the term "barbar" for someone outside the Greek world, meaning someone speaking unintelligibly.

In light of all these instances where languages are employed as demarcators of us and them, as fences you set up to identify yourself as inhabiting a different space than your neighbour, it is comforting to sometimes embrace the notion of Walcott's verse that it is the language's desire to enclose the loved world in its arms.

And this is also what medievalists will be doing tomorrow, when we engage in the social media phenomenon of #Whanthataprille, an online celebration of medieval languages.

Sometimes, it is good for the soul to be a medievalist.

Where the Wild Women Are - bearded women in medieval geography

To the human mind, faraway places have always held a vague promise of wonder. In the Middle Ages, these places were predominantly located in the east and the north, places were few of their own had gone and places of which the ancient authorities spoke of with enchanting but incredible certainty. Writers of natural history from Herodotus to Pliny the Elder included in their works great narratives of the marvels of the east and the north, the homes of wild peoples and monstrous races. The fictitious Letter To Aristotle, purportedly written by Alexander to his old tutor, and other accounts of the Macedonian conqueror captivated the medieval imagination and achieved a wide dissemination in languages as diverse as Georgian, Greek, Old Norse, Old English and Old French.

Several writers throughout the medieval centuries dealt with the marvels of the world's periphery, and it was not only the east but also the north which served as the setting for tales about strange and weird creatures and phenomena. When these stories were set in the north, they often received an additional dimension by reference to the passage in Jeremiah 1:14 where the Lord says to His prophet that from the North, evil will break out. In a future blogpost I hope to expand more on this.

For the time being, however, I simply want to address the appearance of bearded women in the medieval periphery as described by two medieval writers, Thomas de Cantimpré (1201-72) and Adam of Bremen (fl. c.1070). 

Bearded women in conversation
Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.045, Opus de Natura Rerum, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290
Courtesy of Enluminures.cultures.fr

Among the many wonders of the east, we find a selection of wondrous and often monstrous women. The most famous are probably the amazons whose masculine ferocity had troubled male minds since the time of Homer. There were also others, and first I will present some which are found in Thomas de Cantimpré's magnificent encyclopedia Opus de Natura Rerum.

Thomas de Cantimpré was born in modern-day Belgium and received his education at Liége and later at Cantimpré. He entered the Dominican order in 1232 at Louvain and the next year he went to Cologne where he went to study under Albertus Magnus. After a while in Cologne, he went to Paris. Thomas was a very learned man, and he wrote a big encyclopedia of the known world which was called Opus de Natura Rerum. One section of this work - in which the marvels of Creation are expounded - is dedicated to the monstrous races of the east. It is in this section we find the mention of the bearded women, among a number of other typical marvels of the eastern periphery, such as women with infected glands and women giving birth to toads.

Women with inflamed glands

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.045, Opus de Natura Rerum, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290

Courtesy of Enluminures.cultures.fr

Woman giving birth to a toad

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.045, Opus de Natura Rerum, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290

Courtesy of Enluminures.cultures.fr

The appearance of these weird and, perhaps most importantly, subversive women are part of a monstrous kaleidoscope through which the east is seen as a kind of mirror of the west, and its peoples are held up as a way of emphasising the normalcy of the Christian world. The east is a world of heathendom, of monstrosity and of women who transgress the natural order by growing beards or giving birth to amphibious creatures.

We also see women inhabiting the same role in Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, written in the 1070s. The fourth part of this history deals with the faraway north, a description of the northern islands, i.e. Scandinavia, Greenland and Iceland. Adam himself was never north of Denmark, but received his information at the court of the Danish king Svein Estridsson. However, although Adam might have heard a great deal of fantastical tales about Norway in Denmark, parts of his description probably owes to commonplace descriptions of the wild periphery.

This can be seen for instance in his presentation of the women of Norway, chapter 30 (my translation):

In the wildest mountains which are there [in Northern Norway] we hear about women who are bearded, and men who hide in the forest and rarely are seen. 

This is part of a lengthy exposition of the weirdness of the north, which includes references to anthropophagi, oxen that live in the sea, white bears and islands inhabited by cyclops, several of which we also find in Thomas de Cantrimpré's Opus de Natura Rerum. Small wonder, since these are features of the imagined periphery, a place of contrariness whose topography rests on centuries of writings of natural history.

Anthropophagi and cyclops

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.045, Opus de Natura Rerum, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290

Courtesy of Enluminures.cultures.fr

Saint Hallvard of Norway

Today, May 15, is the feast of St Hallvard of Norway, the patron saint of Oslo, and in this blogpost I want to give a brief presentation of one of the few Norwegian saints who were recognised as such by the official medieval church calendars.

 

The legend of St Hallvard as depicted in the coat of arms of Oslo Municipality

Image taken from Wikimedia

The story of St Hallvard has predominantly been transmitted to us from liturgical sources: the Breviarium Nidrosiense  (modern-day Trondheim) which was printed in 1519 (and later printed by Gustav Storm in Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, and a manuscript from Utrecht which was printed in Acta Sanctorum from 1680. In the latter work the feast is set to May 14, a mistake - or perhaps a local custom - that has been repeated in David Farmer's Oxford Dictionary of Saints. The Utrecht legend is a more expansive version, but both sources transmit a short, liturgically precise legend. Hallvard was venerated in the archbishopric of Nidaros, which included mainland Norway (including parts of modern-day Sweden) and the North-Atlantic islands and taxlands such as Iceland and Greenland. Hallvard was also venerated in Skara in modern-day Sweden and, as stated, in Utrecht. The cult of Hallvard seems to have been most fervent in Oslo, whose cathedral was and remains dedicated to him.

Nic Schiøll, St. Halvard, 1938-1945. Bronse. Oslo City Hall

Photo, Brigitte Stolpmann (from UiO-Wiki)

We have mostly just liturgical textual sources for the legend of St Hallvard. He is not mentioned in any of the Norwegian historiographies from the twelfth century, such as Theodoricus Monachus' Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium from c.1180, or the anonymous Historia Norwegie from roughly the same period. He is briefly mentioned in Adam of Bremen's History of the Church of Hamburg, but Adam's account gives no details about his legend beyond his status as a martyr, and the fact that he was killed by friends while protecting someone who was not a friend.

The story can be summarised very briefly. Hallvard (d.1043) was a young son of a nobleman from Husaby near Oslo. As he was crossing Drammenfjorden by boat, a woman called out to him and begged him to save her from a group of men who wanted to kill her. She was wrongfully accused of stealing, and Hallvard wanted to help her. Then the pursuers appeared on the scene and demanded that Hallvard hand her over to their justice. When the young man refused, the attackers shot him with arrows and tied a millstone around his neck to sink him in the fjord. His body later resurfaced and he became the centre of a local cult. Ten years later his body was exhumed and translated to the church of St Mary in Oslo.

Halvard and the maiden

Fresco by Alf Rolfsen, Oslo City Hall

Courtesy of oslobyesvel.no

Sources


Adam of Bremen, Beretningen om Hamburg stift, erkebiskopenes bedrifter og øyrikene i Norden, translated into Norwegian by Bjørg Tosterud Danielsen and Anne Katrine Frihagen, Oslo, 1993
Farmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford, 2004

Gjerløw, Lilli (ed.), Antiphonarium Nidrosiensis Ecclesiae, Oslo, 1979

Gjerløw, Lilli (ed.), Ordo Nidrosiensis Ecclesiae, Oslo, 1968

Storm, Gustav, Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, 1880

http://www.katolsk.no/biografier/historisk/hallvard

The Fount of Tides - how tidewater was explained in the Middle Ages

Veni in altitudinem maris, et tempestas demersit me

- Psalm 68

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine

- Psalm 130

One of the most persistent myths about the Middle Ages, is the idea that medieval men and women thought the earth was flat. This myth has become one of the rafters in the great narrative of modernity, which is built around the idea of continuous historical progress in which mankind's self-improvement is as linear as the passing of time. The grand narrative of modernity is largely based on an intense, unrelenting optimism and enthusiasm about technological advancement and societal development, to a great extent propped up by a secularist dislike of religion and the rise of relativism. The main idea seems to be that since society is always improving - which is one of the great dictums of modernity's champions - things must have been pretty bad all those centuries ago, especially since the world was dominated by a tyrannical, monolithic church and science was kept at bay by the metaphysics of monks. That this is grossly simplistic can be seen in this short article on the myth of the flat earth.

Olaus Magnus map of the northern reaches from 1539
Courtesy of medievalists.net

The origin of this idea has been traced to the novel The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving, published in 1828, in which the belief in a flat earth becomes the foil of the medieval powers and elevates the hero Columbus who single-handedly proved the earth's spherical shape. This misconception is prevalent even today, and has been taught in schools for a long time.

Although the myth has been ascribed to Washington Irving's novel, the idea that the medieval world was flat may have been in circulation long before 1828. In this blogpost, I will look at an excerpt from Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hamaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, written in the 1070s, which may show us one of the sources for the idea of a flat medieval earth.

The excerpt in question describes a voyage into the deep northern waters for the purpose of finding out whether there was any solid land beyond Iceland (which is described as the world's outermost region, even further away than Greenland and Vinland). Eventually, the expedition reaches the northern waters and discover that the world is covered by a thick fog, and after a while they reach the end of the earth where there is a deep chasm in which water flows in and out. This is the fount of tides, according to Adam of Bremen. Since it was still unknown in the 11th century that the moon affected the tides and ebbs of the earth, it was believed that the tide was caused by the ocean issuing out of this great abyss. The excerpt is found in book four, chapter 39. The following is my own translation, and it can be checked against the Latin text. I have also used, as a corrective reference, the translation into Norwegian by Bjørg Tosterud Danielsen and Anne Katrine Frihagen from 1993.

Thereafter passing on this side Denmark and on the other side Britain they arrived at the Orkneys, which they kept on their left side when passing, having Norway on the right side and assembled after a long voyage at the frozen Iceland. From this point they plowed the waters into the furthermost region of the seven stars [i.e. the Arctic], and after a while they put behind them all the islands that could be seen - of which I have spoken above - and commending their brave journey unto the omnipotent God and the blessed confessor Willehad, they then were plunged into this dark mist of the frozen waters, which the eyes could penetrate only with great difficulty. And lo: the unstable channel of the ocean returning to the hidden beginning of its source, and the unfortunate, despairing sailors - indeed, imagining death only - were drawn with a most forceful urge towards chaos [it is said to be the chasm of the bowels of the earth] [sic.], [towards] this deep in which, rumour has it when the sea seems to withdraw, all the seas return and are then swallowed up and again spewed back up from whence they are said to have sprung. When these sailors now solely implored the merciful God to receive their spirits, the force of this returning sea washed some of the ships away, while others were repelled by the flowing water and brought back a long way behind the rest. And after they had been liberated from this present danger, which their eyes clearly saw, by help of the favourable God, with great strength they took to the oars to help the escape.

What is interesting to my purpose here is the idea of a great chasm at the end of the world. This image, sailors falling off an edge and into the deep unknown, is emblematic of how the idea of the medieval flat earth has been represented. However, Adam of Bremen is not talking about a flat earth, he is talking about a chasm in the Arctic from which water issues and is drawn back, thus creating those mysterious tides. The chasm in itself, as any discerning reader will note, does not and can not suggest a flat earth, for if it did the water that went into the chasm could not be regurgitated from it. Elsewhere in his work, it is also very clear that Adam operates with a spherical world, as he refers to the British sea which runs into the Arctic and covers the whole world - not in the sense that it flows to the edges of the world and then falls into the void, but in the sense that it runs around the globe.

When considering this excerpt from Adam's Gesta hamaburgensis, it is easy to see a possible origin for the idea that medieval men and women thought the world was flat. If the anecdote about the Frisian sailors who toppled into the chasm at the end of the world entered folklore and became one of those stories of imprecise and unknown origin, you don't need many steps before the regurgitating chasm is replaced by a cosmic void. Of course, we don't know that this confusion has taken place, and I'm certainly not saying that Adam is the source for Washington Irving's misconception, but the anecdote nonetheless illustrates those potential misunderstandings which become so ingrained in public consciousness as to morph into factoids.

Courtesy of this website

Oxen under the Sea

matre satus Terra, monstrum mirabile, taurus

parte sui serpens posteriore fuit

- Fasti, Ovidius

This week in my Medieval Latin class we have been working with an extract from the fourth book of Adam of Bremen's (fl.c.1075) Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum. While the three first books of this work are dedicated to the history of the See of Hamburg, while the fourth is a topographical exposition of the northernmost reaches. As he himself puts it (in my translation): "And in this way Norway is the outermost province of the earth, therefore it is proper that we set this book in the outermost place [of our work]. The fourth book was written in the 1070s and much of the information he received at the court of the Danish king Svein Estridson (1047-76), possibly in modern day Sjælland. Adam himself probably never visited Norway and certainly not Northern Norway. Accordingly, what he tells us from this part of the region, he knew through hearsay at the Danish court, and also through older authorities such as Solinus and Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum. In addition to some interesting factual information - for example pertaining to the cult of Olav Haraldsson - the book gives an interesting view of how Norway was conceived in the contemporary mindset. This is especially the case for Northern Norway which is presented as a region encompassing both the savage and the sacred. The savage is represented by bearded women and strange beasts such as black foxes (presumably polar foxes which indeed have a brown/black pelt), while the sacred is represented by localised versions of the legend of the seven sleepers, and the tale of Saint Ursula of Cologne and the 1100 virgins, some of whom, Adam contends, escaped to Norway. It is perhaps this spin-off or extension which later grew into the legend of Saint Sunniva, or it may be that Adam confused Sunniva with Ursula.

The purpose of this blogpost, however, is not to go into great details about Adam's fascinating work, but to look at one animal which caught my attention. In his exposition of the wildlife of Norway Adam says:
In these same mountains there are there are untamed beasts of such a plenitude, that in many parts of the region they feed only on wild animals. There they capture oxen, buffalos and moose as they do in Sweden; furthermore bisons which they [also] capture in Slavonia and Russia; only Norway [however] has black foxes and white hares and martens [presumably stoats], and bears of the same colour, who live under the ocean in the same manner as the oxen.

- Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, Adam of Bremen, book 4, chapter 32 (my translation)

Mosaic of an ophiotaurus, exhibited at Yorkshire Museum, York

 

It was of course this latter idea that caught my attention. I'm accustomed to many strange ideas from ages past pertaining to the habitation of animals, and I knew about the myth of barnacle geese hibernating in barnacles. However, the thought that oxen should be living under the sea was very quaint, and Adam himself continues these lines by saying "several [of these things] appear strange and unaccustomed to us". The most likely explanation of these submarine oxen are, in my mind, that they are a confusion of the walrus. However, the idea has an interesting classical counterpart, namely the ophiotaurus - as shown above - and the taurocampus, which appear to be variations of the same mythological theme.

The ophiotaurus is found only in the poem Fasti by Ovidius, as quoted in the epigraph,and the name means snake-bull. According to the poem whoever burned the beast's entrails would gain the power to overthrow the gods. The distich above describes it as follows (in my translation):
brought forth by Earth its mother the marvellous monster

was a bull and its hindpart was like a serpent.

From the baths in Ostia Antica, courtesy of giannidedom

This description also fits the beast known as the taurocampus. I don't know the origins of this particular animal, nor am I familiar with any classical references to it, but the name is a amalgamation of taurus and campus, which appears to be a common name for water beasts whose hindparts are coiling in a manner more akin to an eel than a serpent. There are numerous beasts such as this is Roman iconography, and we see a great variation in the mosaics of Roman baths, such as the one above from Ostia Antica. In this particular fauna, "campus" appears to be merely a suffix describing the sligthly serpentine tail, and we therefore have beasts such as pardalocampus (with the foreparts of a leopard) and the hippocampus (with the foreparts of a horse, presumably moulded on the seahorse). The latter beast also found its place in the medieval world through its inclusion in bestiaries, such as the one below.

Submarine creatures from MS Harley 4751, 2nd quarter of 13th century, England

Whether Adam of Bremen knew about the ophiotaurus or the taurocampus is beyond conjecture. We know he was familiar with several classical authors, such as Vergilius, and it is far from unlikely that he had read Fasti. The conclusive proof, however, eludes us, and we can only guess whether Adam, when writing about the oxen who lived under the sea along with the white bears, thought of the monster who was half-ox and half serpent as imagined by the Romans.

References


Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum

Farmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of Saints

Publius Ovidius Naso, Fasti

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01132c.htm