In a letter of April 1904 to his confidant, Juan Francisco Piquet, Rodó explains that after the intense work demanded by Motivos de Proteo he plans to write shorter and potentially remunerative pieces for a while. He wants to take a break, not in the sense of stopping writing altogether, but so as to produce “artículos y correspondencias, notas de viaje, revistas críticas, etc.; todo ello breve y sin orden” (articles and correspondences, travel notes, critical reviews, etc.; shorter and more spontaneous pieces) (1345). The aim is to loosen (“desentumecer”) his muscles and his mind after the intense and regular discipline required to produce that massive and demanding work. It will allow him to fulfil the many requests for contributions that come to him regularly from periodicals in Spain and Latin America and to gather funds to put towards his planned trip to Europe.

El mirador de Próspero (Prospero's lookout tower) (1913), Rodó's last book published in his lifetime, includes some of these planned briefer pieces as well as some substantial new studies, together with older articles which had previously appeared in the press or literary magazines, as far back as the Revista Nacional. The volume consists of forty-five items of various dates, lengths and genres, which in a handwritten page in his archive the author grouped under the seven headings of biography, book reviews, psycho-sociological commentary, literary reflection, fiction (“fantasía”), literary doctrine, and miscellanea. The distribution of this material in terms of length is as follows: out of 245 pages in OC, just over half, 126, are devoted to biographies; 67 to psycho-sociological analysis; 40 to literary commentary and creation; and 12 to miscellaneous material most of which is in fact consistent with the first two categories. As suggested by the title, the overarching focus of the collection is Latin America: having addressed the youth of the subcontinent in Ariel and Motivos, Próspero now sets his sight on the wide panorama before him at his belvedere (“mirador”). The task is symbolically confirmed, says Roberto Ibáñez, by the fact that the book came out on 12 October, the anniversary of Columbus's landing in the new world – traditionally referred to as “Día de la Raza” (Day of the Hispanic race).

AS TENSIONS GREW in early 1820, Peel reflected whether the public had become more liberal than Liverpool's government could accommodate. Never more influential, public opinion seemed more than ever dissatisfied with the power it now held. Sustained discontent, Peel feared, might force a choice between sweeping concessions on essential points or handing Whigs and Radicals power. Liverpool, however, crafted an approach that defused pressure for political reform and reduced the popular discontent that gave it force. What historians later called liberal Toryism sought to promote economic growth and raise living standards while separating particular reforms from restructuring the entire political system. Showing ministers could govern in the public interest under the existing constitution gave them the political initiative while denying critics leverage. Measures worked to stabilize political authority and contain pressures on existing boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, a central challenge of the period with the revival of a mass politics linked only tenuously with the political elite. Liberal Toryism ensured reforms would come on terms that kept the essential fabric intact. Moving beyond the defensive management that had weathered the past five years, Liverpool took advantage of the shifting tide to pursue commercial reform within an agenda that consciously aimed to secure the constitutional order.

Defending obvious abuses and failings with a high hand, Liverpool realized, only invited opposition. Correcting them without conceding faults in the system as a whole avoided the trap Peel identified. It bolstered a case against wider reform. Liberalism as it later became understood differed from the liberal reforms Liverpool used to preempt it. The term liberal, which Peel considered “an odious but intelligible phrase,” only acquired political meaning from the later 1810s, partly in the context of resistance to established authority in Spain. Seeing Liverpool's policies from the perspective of developments after 1832 distorts their intent as he sought to deflect the kind of sweeping changes that followed his resignation in 1827. Instead of breaking with earlier policy, liberal Toryism brought a more active and systemic approach to a line Liverpool had pursued as circumstances allowed. His efforts to promote trade adapted a much older emphasis on securing market share to post-1815 realities.

After Edward the Confessor's death in 1066, three men claimed the English throne: William of Normandy, Harold Godwineson and Harald Hardrada (Haraldr Sigurðarson). Teachers and historians alike identify these claimants as Norman, English and Norwegian respectively. But Viking Age identities were not this simple. The conflicts of 1066 were one focused moment in a long history of shifting ethnic relations, which were perceived differently by various participants.

William presented himself as a Norman, Normannus. But, had he been asked, Harold Godwineson would probably have identified William as Francus rather than Normannus, reserving that label for Harald Hardrada. For the inhabitants of England, Normannus retained its original meaning of a man from the north. Harald Hardrada, for his part, would have recognized himself in that term, but for him it now took on a new distinction: in his praisepoetry, as Nóregs dróttinn (the lord of Norway), he was king of the Nor.me.r – literally, the Northmen, but in this context distinguishing the Norwegians from the Danes. The differing terminologies, and especially the overlapping and sometimes contradictory meanings of ‘Northman’ as an ethnonym, arose during the Viking Age. They reveal a wider issue: divergent, and highly political, perceptions of the value of viking heritage.

For, had the claimants in 1066 been asked who among them was of viking blood, the distinctions would have become even more blurred. Harald Hardrada is the obvious candidate. Scholars have called Harald ‘one of the last of the Vikings’: prior to becoming king of Norway, he was a Varangian mercenary and raider in Russia and Byzantium. Historians have surmised that Harald Hardrada attacked England near York because it had been the centre of a tenth-century viking kingdom, and he probably expected the people there to be more receptive to his rule. But William the Conqueror also called himself Normannus because of his viking ancestors. William traced his descent and ducal authority from his great-great-great-grandfather, Rollo the viking; the people he ruled over were still called Normanni because of their viking origins. Even Harold Godwineson, renowned as the last ‘native’ Anglo-Saxon king of England, was half Danish: his mother was from Denmark and closely linked to the family of Swein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great, the viking kings. But it was by promoting his status as a leading Englishman that he became king.

Norman dukes and English kings not only influenced hagiographical narratives, but on occasion acted as protagonists within them, interacting directly with the saints. In the hagiographies examined in this chapter, the bonds between rulers and saints are in each case made explicit and central to the narrative. The Fécamp Chronicle and the Vita Romani, discussed in the previous chapter, both used prophecies and visions to connect past and present to the crucial moment of viking invasion. In the texts discussed here, the device of saintly visions was used to even more direct effect. Two Translationes Sancti Audoeni, composed in early eleventh-century Normandy, defined the relationship of Rouen's patron saint with the ducal dynasty – a reciprocal relationship, in that the saint demanded devotion from his ducal patrons through posthumous interactions. In tenth- and eleventh-century England, two similar narratives related the appearance of saints Cuthbert and Neot to King Alfred, leading to his victory in battle over the Danes, and thus placed the West Saxon dynasty in these saints’ debt. The Latin Vita Prima Sancti Neoti and the Old English Life of St Neot reflect the influence of the West Saxon dynasty in eastern and south-western England, respectively; the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto presents the dynasty's more gradual establishment of authority in the north. In all three cases, a narrative of personal relationship between saint and ruling dynasty reinforced a dominant perspective on the viking past. Moreover, these vision narratives presented the partnership between ecclesiastical institution (and, by extension, divine approval) and secular power as forged in that viking past.

It emerges that English kings and Norman dukes used saints’ cults to establish their authority in comparable ways. Both presented their dynasties as the special devotees of existing cults, and at the same time associated those cults with narratives of the viking past. These similar strategies raise the question of how viking rulers in England interacted with ecclesiastical institutions and saints’ cults and so, after analysing these texts, I turn to the slight evidence for such interactions. Courting saintly patronage was clearly a successful strategy for secular rulers in promoting their own ideological agendas, and hagiographical narrative provided a means for shaping the recent past to support their authority.

The regional significance of the saints’ cults highlighted in the previous chapter points towards a crucial perspective on viking heritage both sides of the Channel: territorial and geographical distinctions. Different regions responded in varied ways to Scandinavian, English and Norman rulers, and were affected differently by the viking past. In modern historiography, the duchy of Normandy – and with it, the Norman people – is frequently presented as the direct outcome of the actions of Rollo's viking army and the territorial agreement made in 911. Likewise, modern historical accounts of Scandinavian influence in England employ numerous maps revealing the distribution of Old Norse place-names, ‘viking’ artefacts and Anglo- Scandinavian sculpture across the so-called ‘Danelaw’. Yet tenth-century developments, by which the political boundaries of the Norman duchy and the English kingdom were reshaped, proceeded gradually, as Norman rulers received land from the French king and English kings expanded their territory into areas dominated by Norse leaders. Contemporaries did not always attribute the same significance to these developments as modern historians have done. Moreover, existing regional loyalties continued to attract allegiance.

This final chapter compares the historical consciousness represented in Norman ducal charters and English royal diplomas, with particular emphasis on how it related to ethnic identity in different regions. Geographical identity is frequently identified as a focus of ethnicity: Handelman views ‘permanent territorial boundaries’ as the force which makes ethnicity into a community, and Hutchinson and Smith include ‘a link with a homeland’ as one of their six main features of ethnic groups. We encountered medieval manifestations of these views in the emphasis on migration myths in Chapter 2, while the idea of the ‘homeland’, or patria, appeared as a strong motivation, full of emotional ties, in many of the historical and hagiographical texts explored in earlier chapters. On a local scale, regional identities were particularly strong in the early medieval world, in societies in which long-distance communication was slow and mass communication infrequent. The various levels of geographical identities illustrate particularly clearly how individuals perceived themselves to be members of several ethnic groups, which were employed in different situations. Among the overlapping geographical identities present in England and Normandy, this chapter explores the perceived effects of viking raids and conquests on geographical boundaries between peoples.

The date of composition of Fulbert's Vita Romani is important for the arguments contained in Chapter 3 of this book because of the particular narrative of viking invasion and domination that it contains – a narrative that is absent from all other texts related to the cult of Romanus. I believe that Fulbert wrote his text in the mid-tenth century, and therefore that this narrative represents an early vision of ethnic relations in Normandy, before a standard account had come to dominate: these arguments are rehearsed in Chapter 3. If I am wrong, and Fulbert wrote in the mid-eleventh century, then this would suggest that more varied narratives of the relations between vikings and local inhabitants continued to circulate long into the ducal period.

Fulbert's Vita Romani was largely unknown to modern scholarship until Felice Lifshitz completed her study of Romanus's dossier. Although it now exists in only two manuscripts, the many other texts Lifshitz has surveyed which depend on it reveal a much wider medieval circulation. Lifshitz concluded that the Vita Romani was composed by a certain Fulbert in the mid-tenth century, probably in 943. If we accept this date, then the Vita Romani was one of the earliest literary products from Normandy and, alongside the Planctus of William Longsword, the earliest Norman text to refer to the viking period. Fulbert had previously been identified with either of two Fulberts who were active in Rouen in the mid-eleventh century. More recently, several scholars have disputed Lifshitz's dating of Fulbert's Vita, and even returned to these identifications. However, Lifshitz's argument is the only one to make sense of all the internal, contextual and manuscript evidence, a conclusion also reached recently by John Howe.

Fulbert's Vita Romani is related to several other hagiographical texts. It is only through assessing the arguments for these connected texts’ dates of composition that a conclusion regarding the date of the Vita Romani can be drawn. Here I lay out the crucial connections between Fulbert's Vita Romani and these texts, with a particular focus on issues of authorship.

The first group of texts related to Fulbert's Vita Romani involves an alternative, shorter, version of the Vita, which exists in several copies. This Vita is associated with a letter from Gerard, ‘pater cenobitarum’, addressed to Uuigo or Hugo, archbishop of Rouen.

DE REGUM FRANCORUM

Primus rex Francorum Chloio.

Chloio genuit Glodobode.

Ghlodobedus genuit Mereveo.

Mereveus genuit Hilbricco.

Hildebricus genuit Genniodo.

Genniodus genuit Hilderico.

Childericus genuit Chlodoveo.

Chlodoveus genuit Theodorico, Chlomiro, Hildeberto, Hlodario.

Chlodharius genuit Chariberto, Ghundrammo, Chilberico, Sigiberto.

Sigibertus genuit Hildeberto.

Hildebertus genuit Theodoberto et Theoderico.

Et ante Hilbericus genuit Hlodhario.

Hlodharius genuit Dagabertum.

CANTWARA

Aeðelberht Uihtreding

Uihtred Ecgberhting

Ecgberht Erconberhting

Erconberht Eadbalding

Eadbald Eðilberhting

Ęðilberht Iurmenricing

Iu:menric Oes[…]

Oese Ocging

Ocga Hengesting

Hengest Uitting

Uitta Uihtgilsing

Uihtgils Uegdaeging

Uegdaeg Uodning

Uoden Frealafing

At first glance, early medieval genealogies such as these present information on origins and ancestry, and therefore seem to provide the basis for an understanding of ethnicity. However, examination of these texts rapidly reveals that their claims are by no means accurate, that they were constantly reworked, and that they are highly selective in content. It is doubtful whether Merovech and Hengest – let alone Woden – were real historical figures; certainly, they accrued a body of fantastic legend attached to their names. Meanwhile, the selection in these two texts completely bypasses all the women who must have played essential roles in the descent of these kings. The genealogies’ applicability, moreover, was malleable: the first claimed to represent all the Frankish kings, its neatness hiding multiple kingdoms and dynastic complexity; the second is entitled merely the Kings of Kent, but Hengest came to be seen as the forefather of all Anglo-Saxons. We must, therefore, investigate the context, reception and adaptation of the genealogical formulations in order to understand how descent and ethnicity interacted.

This chapter investigates the impact of the Viking Age on genealogy produced in England and Francia. Anglo-Saxon and Frankish genealogies produced before the mid-tenth century were restricted to royal lines. Concepts of ethnicity in these texts were therefore entangled with issues of royal legitimacy. Early medieval genealogies emerge as complex texts which, far from being simple records of biological descent, were ultimately ideological statements. As such, they are indeed invaluable evidence for identity, not biological but social: they represent the subjective perception and political impact of constantly evolving ethnic relations.

We may therefore expect the events of the Viking Age, in which Scandinavians became a political force and significant demographic within England and Francia, to be reflected in genealogical texts.

This chapter and the next explore how inhabitants of England and Normandy in the tenth and early eleventh centuries perceived the recent viking past. During this period, historians and hagiographers looked back on the viking raids and wars which afflicted Francia and England in the ninth century, and the subsequent Scandinavian conquest and settlement of certain regions. Writers imposed their own interpretations on the earlier conflicts and, as these chapters will demonstrate, dominant narratives emerged in England and Normandy respectively. This chapter investigates the creation and dissemination of these dominant narratives, exemplified in England by two texts describing the martyrdom of St Edmund, and in Normandy by the Fécamp Chronicle, which was closely linked to Dudo's De moribus. The English vision of the viking past presented a conflict between Christian Anglo- Saxons and pagan vikings, with solely temporary effects. In Normandy, on the other hand, Christianity was seen to transform viking conquerors and unite them with local people. Investigation of earlier evidence for the cults of St Edmund in England and St Romanus in Normandy, however, suggests that the establishment of these narratives replaced alternative visions of the viking past. Rather than being witnesses to dramatically different events, the dominant narratives responded to contemporary ethnic relations in England and Normandy around the year 1000.

Furthermore, despite the different narratives that emerged either side of the Channel, these texts reflect remarkably similar contexts of literary production. Firstly, it is noteworthy that, in both regions, interpretations of the viking past predominantly emerged in hagiographical texts (the Fécamp Chronicle, as explained below, is in part a compilation of hagiographies). Framing the events described within this genre had the effect of attributing moral and supernatural significance to interactions between vikings and others. The explanation for this, however, most properly resides in the fact that, leaving aside the ‘official’ histories of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Dudo's De moribus, hagiography was the primary means of literary and historical composition in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in both England and Normandy. This brings us to a second point, which is that these texts were composed in or for monastic institutions, often recently reformed, founded or refounded.

The genealogies examined in the previous chapter counted generations back to ‘founder ancestors’ of a dynasty or of an entire gens. Thus the Merovingian dynasty took their name from Merovech, while the West Saxons located their origins in the figure of Cerdic, the first of their people to arrive in Britain. Placed within genealogical lists, these names held meaning only because they were attached to a deeper store of historical narrative: origin myths, which recounted the actions of the founder ancestors. In the person of the founder ancestor, the boundaries between dynasty and people often seemed to dissolve. Like genealogies, these origin myths (usually called origines gentium by modern historians) echoed and referred to contemporary ethnic relations. An origin myth for a people that no longer existed would cease to be recounted, since the motive for recounting the narrative was to explain the existence of contemporary groups. Individuals within such histories were representative of group identities currently important in the perceptions of writers and audience.

Origin myths have been used to discuss the actual pasts of Germanic peoples during the ‘Age of Migrations’ but, given their fluid nature and the chronological distance at which they were usually written, they are extremely unreliable as evidence of the events they describe. The designation of ‘myth’ is perhaps a little misleading, since it implies a separate genre from other forms of history. In fact, we know of these origines gentium from their places in conventional histories such as Bede's Historia ecclesiastica and Jordanes's Getica, in which they are not treated differently from other historical events. Moreover, as we shall see in this chapter, writers continued to create such tales as ethnic relations developed. They are united more by function than literary genre.4 However, early medieval origin myths tended to employ a common vocabulary and increasingly referred to their earlier precursors. Susan Reynolds has emphasized that Scandinavian ancestry was as much a part of this vocabulary as descent from Troy or Noah's Ark. Scholars have treated accounts of Scandinavian origins as somehow more historical than other myths, but such origins were similarly a literary creation, and eventually became a topos, employed by early medieval writers in much the same way. These traditions then influenced perceptions of the Scandinavian origins of raiders and migrants in the Viking Age.

The evidence of genealogies, histories, hagiographies, charters and law codes reveals how Viking Age writers deployed diverse visions of ethnic relations in different texts and contexts. In some instances, vikings of the ninth century were depicted as the enemies of Christians and even equated with contemporary Danish attackers, while in others viking heritage or distant Scandinavian origins were drawn on as a source of pride and power. Dudo's De moribus evoked both perspectives at once. Yet such apparent contradictions should not pose a problem for the historian. Rather than attempting to reconcile these varied accounts into a single vision of ethnic relations in either England or Normandy, we must engage with the purposes and impact of each ethnic narrative and its propagation. The varied depictions of ethnic relations in both societies provide evidence that early medieval ethnicity was indeed ‘situational’: not an innate and unchanging feeling but a flexible expression of perceived social relations, formulated in response to immediate needs and political concerns.

The diversity of ethnic narratives in the various texts discussed in this book add significantly to our understanding of ‘situational’ ethnicity because, in Viking Age England and Normandy, they stem from the same individuals. The same elites have been identified as patrons of diverse texts and divergent narratives. The Norman dukes commissioned Dudo to write the De moribus as an account of their dynastic origins, patronized monastic houses where hagiographical accounts of their ancestors were produced, and controlled the production of charters that presented their authority as interlinked with people and territory. These representations of the past may all be identified as promoting the Norman ducal family's interests, but their emphases – and the significance of viking identity – differed in each one. In England, the situation was even more diverse, involving conflicting claims as well as differences in emphasis. In their genealogies, West Saxon monarchs presented their dynasty as stemming from Scandinavian kings and heroes; they influenced hagiographical narratives to associate Anglo-Saxon Christian resistance to viking pagans with their more immediate ancestors; and charters and law codes provided them with varied means of responding to regional differences, only occasionally attributed to Scandinavian settlement.