Anglo-Saxon England and the Vikings, 757-1066
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
00:00
The Warrior's Secret Inner Life
The poem recounts isolation and the creation of a secret inner life. The wanderer has to take with him in his constant travels. Gold comes up as this symbol of social bonds that have been broken or lost. So i think that these poems convey how the instability, the succession disputes, the internacine wars that kept erupting over and over again in england up through ten 66. They could, on the one hand, be an opportunity for certain people to seek glory, to win in battle, but they also took this heavy toll,. This constant anxiety and rupture of communities and social bonds and groups.
Transcript
Play full episode
