Conclusion: Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon in the Welsh borderlands

Abstract

Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England concludes with the Latin Life of Harold Godwinson, an understudied text set during the transition from Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Norman England. The Vita Haroldi continues to depict the Welsh borderlands as a distinctive territory where two peoples came together across the temporal divide of the Norman Conquest. This work claims that Harold was not killed at the Battle of Hastings, but survived and lived for many years afterwards disguised as a hermit in the Welsh borderlands. Harold’s curious Vita is a fitting microcosm of this book. The Welsh borderlands serve as the cultural intersection between Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England, the last place where English identity is preserved after the Norman arrival. Yet Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon, can survive only within the borderlands, a cultural nexus of Anglo-Saxon and Welsh. The Vita Haroldi underscores the reputation of the Welsh borderlands as a distinct region where two peoples came together, even from a perspective of longing for a lost English past after the Norman Conquest.