During the scholarly discussion about the complex relationship between the Anglo-Saxons and the sea, scholarship approached this relationship from a variety of perspectives including debates about the role of the sea for Anglo-Saxon culture, religion and identity. A closer examination of both the archaeological evidence of Anglo-Saxon seafaring and the use of ship terminology in writings from the Old English period indicates a possible relationship between a change of material culture in Britain during the Germanic invasions in the fifth and sixth century and the use of specific ship terminology in Old English. The exemplary discussion of the use of cēol , arguably the oldest Old English term for ships, indicates the continuing importance of ships, seafaring and conquests for an Anglo-Saxon identity throughout the Old English period. Approaching the relationship between the Anglo-Saxons and the sea from these different perspectives indicates the interconnectedness between their material culture, their literary traditions and their dealing with their own heroic past during the Old English period.
The poem of St Erkenwald and his encounter with the body of a pagan judge preserved in a tomb underneath St Paul's Cathedral has never provoked an intense scholarly discussion. During the past two decades, however, the poem has altogether lost the scarce attention it used to receive. This is surprising in regards to its outstanding quality but also because of a number of peculiar characteristics the text has in comparison with other works written during the Middle Ages. Arguing for the importance of the historical details provided by the poem, my article takes a number of these peculiarities into account and suggests a new reading of the poem. In this approach, I do not dismiss the major topics of the earlier scholarly discussions, mostly focused on the poem's theological and stylistic topics or its presumed sources. My article rather presents an additional reading from the perspective of a literary history, thus arguing that the poem of St Erkenwald can be placed within a discourse tradition to which a number of earlier authors contributed, the most famous among them being the Venerable Bede. While the poem addresses a variety of theological and stylistic topics and is of course influenced by its contemporary religious and social developments, it also contributes to one of the fundamental problems of English identity in the Middle Ages: coming to terms with a pagan origin.
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