Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c. 950–c. 1015 by Katherine Cross

Abstract

Reviewed by: Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c. 950–c. 1015 by Katherine Cross Matthew Firth Cross, Katherine, Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c. 950–c. 1015, Woodbridge, York Medieval Press, 2018; hardback; pp. 276; 3 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781903153796. In Heirs of the Vikings, Katherine Cross undertakes a comparative examination of the evolution and appropriation of concepts of viking identity in England and Normandy in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The similarities in the English and Norman experience of ninth-century viking raiding, settlement, and, ultimately, rule, provide Cross a platform from which to juxtapose the subsequent development of ideas around identity and ethnicity in both regions. That Cross opens the volume with a clarification of terminology rejecting 'viking' as an ethnic identifier (p. xii) and titles her introduction 'The Problem of Viking Identity', indicates that she has no illusions as to the complexity of her task. There is a certain unease in the historiography of ethnic identity in the Middle Ages—ethnicity now, as then, subject to politicization, misinterpretation, and misappropriation. It is, in [End Page 237] part, Cross's awareness of the fraught nature of her topic, and the resultant care and attention to detail with which she provides it, that makes Heirs of the Vikings a compelling and successful study of the construction of medieval identities. Cross's book is fundamentally a literary study. In her introduction, she notes the historical disconnect between the study of Norman ethnic identity and of Anglo-Scandinavian ethnic identity. Where the former has focused on literary sources and Norman identity as a social construct, the latter has preferenced philological and archaeological evidence with a view to identifying continuing Scandinavian cultural influence. Cross is, however, clear in her assertion that 'identification with vikings and Scandinavian origins cannot be mapped onto the persistence of Norse culture' (p. 17). This is a key point upon which she predicates her argument and, by extension, the book as a whole. It is not that Cross seeks to reject the conclusions of philology and archaeology—she does draw on both at times—but rather that her focus is upon self-identification and the political appropriation of ethnicity, a practice that often leaves limited evidence outside of written sources. The book is comprised of five main chapters delineated by literary types—a functional structure, though Cross does not adhere to it prescriptively (an approach that allows the argument to flow well throughout the volume). The first chapter examines genealogy, taking in such famous examples as Æthelweard's Wessex genealogy, and Dudo of Saint-Quentin's genealogy of Norman dukes. Cross examines approaches to inherited identity and compares characterizations of ancestral ethnicity as a construct of Normans and Anglo-Saxon elites. Tying in well with these mythologized lineages, Chapter 2 looks at origin myths, once again with a particular focus (on the Norman side) on Dudo. Here Cross argues that the appropriation and recasting of such narratives represent a politicization of ethnicity. Chapters 3 and 4 turn to historical narrative as represented by hagiography, in which Cross discusses how ecclesiastical elites depicted, and secular elites promoted, an inherited viking identity. She suggests that, despite the varied historical settings, the motifs that inform the depiction of a Scandinavian ethnicity have a certain commonality between England and Normandy. The final chapter analyses a series of charters, attempting to isolate regional variations in the use of viking identity, and how these were adapted to legitimize territorial claims. If there is a criticism to be made, it is that the volume is somewhat uneven in treating the regions under consideration. Cross's study is most genuinely innovative in her approach to English sources, which is both nuanced and thorough. Perhaps as a result of the historiographical precedent of literary study of Norman identity, the Norman sources are approached with somewhat less vigour. The study of charters could certainly have drawn in more sources, and both charters and genealogies could have been treated with some additional sensitivity to Norman regionalism. It is, however, a small matter and does little to undermine what is an admirably...