The Legend of Havelok the Dane and the Historiography of East Anglia

The Story and its Sources

The story of Havelok the Dane appears to have been well known in eastern England from the twelfth century to the end of the Middle Ages. The earliest Anglo-Norman version occurs in Geoffrey Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis.¹ The plot can be summarized as follows:

During the reign of Arthur's nephew Constantine, the Danish king Adelbriht, who has conquered Norfolk and the land from Colchester to Holland in Lincolnshire, marries Orwain, the sister of King Edelsi, a Briton, who rules Lincoln and Lindsey and the land from Humber to Rutland. Their daughter Argentille becomes the ward of her uncle after the death of her parents, and Edelsi marries her off to a scullion called Cuaran in an attempt to disinherit her. This Cuaran turns out to be Haveloc, the son of Gunter, the hereditary king of Denmark who was slain by King Arthur for withholding tribute. Haveloc discovers his lineage, returns to Denmark, and takes back the throne from one Odulf, who has occupied it illegitimately. He then invades England and forces Edelsi to surrender Argentine's heritage. When Edelsi dies soon afterwards, Haveloc and Argentille rule his kingdom for twenty years.

The story is best known today from the fourteenth-century Middle English poem Havelok the Dane.² The poem differs from Gaimar's account in the names of its characters and many details of plot, as the following summary shows:

King Athelwold of England dies, leaving his daughter Goldeburgh in the hands of Earl Godrich of Cornwall. Meanwhile, King Birkabeyn of Denmark dies, leaving Havelok in the hands of his seneschal Godard, who orders the fisherman Grim to kill the young prince. Instead, Grim sails to England and raises Havelok in Grimsby. Havelok eventually takes a job in the kitchens at Lincoln Castle, where Godrich, thinking Havelok is a commoner, marries him to Goldeburgh in order to disinherit her. When Havelok's royal heritage is revealed, he goes to Denmark, defeats Godard, and then returns to England and defeats Godrich to become king in both countries.

There are also a number of shorter versions of the story or references to Havelok in a variety of sources, which will be surveyed below. It was once thought that some or all the extant texts derived from a common source, probably an earlier poem in Anglo-Norman French, but this view has been convincingly disproved by Alexander Bell.³ Today these variations are usually treated as corruptions or confusions of accounts similar to one of the two main versions or as variants that developed in folk tradition. It is also generally assumed that the Havelok legend has its origins in historical events before the Norman Conquest, but that it has been so modified by centuries of retelling that only a few details of the original story remain in the extant versions. The strongest evidence for a pre-Conquest origin to the story is the name Havelok itself, along with the nickname Cuaran used by Gaimar. This nickname was also applied to the tenth-century Norse king Ólafr Sigtryggson, and since Ólafr is frequently rendered Abloyc in Welsh sources, many have concluded that the Havelok story ultimately goes back to a tale about Ólafr Sigtryggson that passed at some point through a Celtic-speaking area of Britain, probably Cumbria. That said, there is little other resemblance between the life of the historical Ólafr and the legendary Havelok, so the story as we have it is clearly a great deal removed from any historical account of the Norse king.⁴

Some commentators have attempted to connect other characters in the story with historical figures and the plot with various historical scenarios before the Norman Conquest. The most recent and elaborate of such theories is by Max Deutschbein, who sees Ólafr Sigtryggson as the focal point for stories about several historical scenarios having to do with Scandinavian activity in England and concludes that this was a story about the struggles between the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians for control of the north of England and Mercia...