Anglo-Saxon England

That Alcuin addressed to the monks of Lindisfarne the question, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?", is a much repeated dogma in Old English studies; but in this book close examination of the letter in question shows that it was addressed not to Lindisfarne nor to a monastic community, but to a bishop in Mercia. That ‘Ultán the scribe’ was responsible for some of the most lavishly illuminated Anglo-Saxon manuscripts is shown to be another untenable dogma. Fresh perspectives from interdisciplinary study: the ‘beasts-of-battle’ typescenes which are characteristic of Old English poetry are studied in the wider context of other European literatures. The nasty Viking habit of murdering hostages by throwing bones at them (as happened to St Ælfeah) is illuminated by a wide-ranging study of analogues in Scandinavian literatures. Characteristic features of Aldhelm’s enigmata are elucidated by the study of Byzantine riddles, thereby revealing a link between England and the Greek orient. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year’s publications rounds off the book.

List of illustrations; 1. Early Latin loan-words in Old English Alfred Wollmann; 2. Three men and a boat: Sutton Hoo and the East Saxon kingdom Michael Parker Pearson, Robert van de Noort and Alex Woolf; 3. Aldhelm\'s Enigmata and Byzantine riddles Čelica Milovanović-Barham; 4. The ‘baptism of tears’ in early Anglo-Saxon sources T. O’Loughlin and H. Conrad-O’Briain; 5. An unreported early use of Bede\'s De natura rerum Vernon King; 6. What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne? Donald A. Bulloughs; 7. Ultán the scribe Lawrence Nees; 8. A smith\'s hoard from Tattershall Thorpe, Lincolnshire David A. Hinton and Robert White; 9. An Anglo-Saxon fragment of Alcuin\'s letters in the Newberry Library, Chicago David Ganz; 10. Convention and originality in the Old English ‘beasts of battle’ typescene M. S. Griffith; 11. Serious entertainments: an examination of a peculiar type of Viking atrocity Ian McDougall; 12. Miracles in architectural settings: Christ Church, Canterbury and St Clement’s, Sandwich in the Old English Vision of Leofric Milton McC. Gatch; 13. A lost cartulary of St Albans Abbey Simon Keynes; 14. Bibliography for 1992 Carl T. Berkhout, Martin Biddle, Mark Blackburn, Sarah Foot, Alexander Rumble and Simon Keynes.