North

Sea

Worldwww.abdn.ac.uk/nsw

Society and Culture in the North Sea World is a cluster of researchers whose work encompasses connections and comparisons across the North Sea in a range of research periods, topics, and disciplines. At our core is a group of doctoral-level researchers, a number of whom hold funding awards from the College of Arts and Social Sciences under the Research Project Award Scheme:

Katherine Anderson Ed Jones

Duncan Gill Lewis Rattray

Amy Hayes Louise Senior

Mads Heilskov Lisa Wotherspoon

Fern Insh Zhangfeng Xu

Jan Graffius

Identity, Ethnicity & Environment in Rural Northern Scotland

Landscape is rarely neutral.

People have different ideas about who it belongs to…

…and how it should be used.

Louise Senior

How do negotiations over environment legitimate

some voices and exclude others?

And with what social, material and political

consequences for both people and place?

How does the ongoing process of creating identity, ethnicity and environment

unfold?

Louise Senior

Sovereignty, Law and Legal Administration in Orkney and Shetland, 1450-1650

Orkney and Shetland came under Scottish rule in 1468/9

• How did the move from Norse rule affect the administration of the law?

• How did this affect the substance of the law?

Katherine Anderson

The Earl’s Palace at Birsay: a symbol of Scottish rule

Sovereignty, Law and Legal Administration in Orkney and Shetland, 1450-1650

Katherine Anderson

•What can developments in this period tell us about sovereignty over the islands?

Masculinity and Status: A Comparative Study of Old Norse and Old Irish Literature

Assumptions:Value in comparative literature, particularly for Old

Irish and Old Norse • both traditions evolved independently of Roman

literature production• striking similarity of ideals concerning masculinity

Lisa Wotherspoon

Masculinity and Status: A Comparative Study of Old Norse and Old Irish Literature

Method• Comparative approach of narrative

literature of both cultures• Use of legal literature to determine relative

status of individuals• Focus on particular case studies

exemplifying each level of society as found in the narrative literature

- e.g. Conchobar, Conaire, Óláfr Haraldsson, Haraldr hárfagri (Kings)

Lisa Wotherspoon

Masculinity and Status: A Comparative Study of Old Norse and Old Irish Literature

Progress to date• Focus on comparison of kings• Attempt made to find expected/desired

behaviour of monarchs in legal and wisdom literature e.g. Audacht Morainn, Críth Gablach, Konungs skuggsjá

• Regal moderation as overarching theme- P. O’Leary (1986): expected conduct of

a king as distinct from that of a warrior• Required kingly duties differ through evolution

from pre-Christian king to rex iustus

Lisa Wotherspoon

Voyage to Scotland of Scota and Gaythelos from a 15th-century manuscript of the Scotichronicon

Cokete seal of Dunfermline c.1312 featuring St. Margaret of Scotland

Meeting of Doctors at the university of Paris, a popular choice for Scottish students.

Copy of the Declaration of Arbroath, 1320

St. Margaret’s Chapel, oldest surviving building in Edinburgh Castle, c.1130

Genealogical diagram from St. Margaret in top red circle to James II and queen Johanna in the bottom, Black Book of Paisley, c.1450

Duncan Gill

Ideas of the Female and their relationship to ideas of identity, governance and the roles of women in political society in Scotland,

1286-1406

• What were Scottish ideas of the female and femininity?– European, Gaelic, English influences– Physiological, theological, legal, cultural

• Ideas of governance in Scotland– Nature of kingship, Nature of Guardianship

• Comparison between guardianship of persons, and of the realm

• Was the Scottish nation/community female or feminine?– Ideas of governance and the idea of consent– Was the king “married” to the nation/community?

• How important were females to national, dynastic and family history?– Female founders: Scota, St. Margaret, Devorguila of Galloway

(Balliol), Marjory of Carrick (Bruce), Marjory Bruce (Stewart)• How did the importance and roles of female figures change:

– When there was no active/present/effective king? In times of war and crisis?

• To what extent did Scottish women affect how they were seen and portrayed?

• Academic tracts• Records

– Parliamentary– Exchequer Rolls– Charters– Universities

• Chronicles & Diplomatic• Ecclesiastic• Legal

– Scots– Canon– Roman

• Literary• Images

– Seals, Heraldry– Architecture

SourcesResearch Questions

Duncan Gill

Factional Politics in England, 1035-42

When King Cnut died in 1035, who was going to be his successor, and who stood behind those candidates?

Feng Xu

Harold

(c. 1015-1040)

Harthacnut

(c. 1018-1042)

Ælfgifu of Northampton

Earl Leofric

…

Ælfgifu (Emma) of Normandy

Earl Godwine

…1035-42: Factional politics in England

AND the whole North Sea World

Areas of Research and Possible Sources

Cnut’s conquest of England

Ealdorman and earls

Relationship with forces outside England

Succession problems, factional politics

and political violence

Chronicles

Charters, diplomas and writs

Domesday Book

Encomium Emmae Reginae, Vita Ædwardi regis qui apud Westmonasterium requiescat and others

Skaldic verses, law-codes, letters

Feng Xu

The Relics of the Sodality of the English Jesuit College at St-Omer .

Research Scope• What was the role of relics in Counter Reformation Europe?•What did they mean for the English community both at the College and for the wider English community in exile?• What was the significance of the different groups of relics- from the Passion, those of the Early Christians, through the English medieval saints, to the martyred contemporaries of the pupils and teachers at the English College?•How important was continuity for the post Reformation English Catholic Church?•How were the relics venerated and celebrated in St-Omer and what impact did they have on Catholic culture and thinking? •What was the role of the Sodality in promoting the veneration of the relics and the cults of the saints?•What significance did these relics have in the polemical propaganda war between the Catholic and Anglican church fighting for the ownership of the early English Christian Church?

The right eye of Fr Edward Oldcorne sj, executed 1609. Stonyhurst College

St Omers College, as it was first known, was set up in 1593 by an English Jesuit under the protection of Phillip II in the Spanish Netherlands. It was intended to provide an education for English Catholic boys forbidden on their native soil. It was seen as subversive by the Elizabethan government and proscribed in English law. It provided a modern humanist Jesuit education for English boys and became a gathering place for Catholic objects their parents had saved from destruction under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I.

Jan Graffius

Resources:• Archives of Stonyhurst College (the descendant of St Omers.) • Stonyhurst College’s museum collection of pre Reformation

Catholic manuscripts, vestments and relics, the surviving relics of the Sodality and 17th century Catholic relics and artefacts.

• Jesuit Archives in London, Rome, Ghent and the Netherlands.• Published Annual Letters of the Jesuit Provinces• Municipal Archives in St-Omer• Diocesan Archives in Ghent and Bruges• Writings of English Catholic chroniclers and missionaries• Arundell and Recusant Libraries at Stonyhurst College

Robert Persons sj, founder of St Omers College.

Stonyhurst College Collection.

Corporal used in the Tower of London by priests before execution at Tyburn 1581-90.

Jesuit Province at Stonyhurst College

Thorn from Crown of Thorns, once belonging to Mary

Queen of Scots.

Jesuit Province at Stonyhurst College

Jan Graffius

Margaret of Denmark and Scottish Queenship c. 1469-1486

Who was she?• Daughter of Christian I (Denmark)• Wife of James III (Scotland)• Mother of James IV (Scotland)

Some questions• Who was Margaret as an individual?• What were her experiences as a foreign

queen consort in Scotland?• How did she affect the reign of James III and

influence that of James IV?• What was the role and function of a

fifteenth- century Scottish queen?• Did her marriage reinforce or change the

links between Scotland and Scandinavia?

Areas of Research and Possible SourcesCourt and Household Exchequer Rolls and Treasurer’s Accounts Political influence and intercession Chronicle accounts and vernacular literatureThe image of queenship Parliamentary RecordsLinks between Scotland and Scandinavia Ecclesiastical and diplomatic papersMargaret as a mother Art and material evidence

Amy Hayes

Amy Hayes

Ed JonesPhD in Musical Composition

•A practise-led PhD researching into the Human Voice with a specific interest in

Northern texts. Compositions consist of a range of works from small song cycles

for a single voice and piano, and substantial works for orchestra and large

chorus.

•Advised by Prof. Paul Mealor in the Music Department and Prof. Peter Davidson

from the History of Art Department

Works

• A song for Soprano and Piano on a setting of Prof. Peter Davidson. – “She talked once of coming back to Cromarty from the south as the very last day of

summer turned to autumn, the firth like a mirror, the crescent moon falling in the bright night sky – Orion rising and the northern lights in cloths of green and citron-coloured tissue in the air. The whole sky mirrored and shadowed in the motionless waters, stirred only by the folding and refolding Aurora. Still, blue dusk. Sky and water alive with colour and the first chill of winter on the evening wind.” *

– Composed for today’s event to be sung by Jillian Bain Christie and Ed Jones on Piano• An Arctic Elegy based on the Franklin Expedition in 1845.

– Texts from the era and other texts based on the voyage interspersed with liturgical settings of the requiem mass.

– Scored for full orchestra and chorus with soloists• Contemporary settings of various folks songs from across Scandinavia.

– Songs for voice and piano using contemporary compositional techniques incorporating melodies found in folk songs from Scandinavia.

* Peter Davidson, The Idea of North (Reaktion Books, 2005). Adapted by the author.

Ed Jones

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God: and the books were

opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it: and death and Hell delivered up the dead which were in them...And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

(The Book of Revelation, chap. 20)

Memoria as an Identity-creating Practice in the 15th-Century North Sea Region

Mads Heilskov

Memoria as an Identity-creating Practice in the 15th-Century North Sea Region

The concept of medieval memoria and of memoria-culture can be defined in many ways. Some scholars understand memoria as the various religious, ritual and liturgical forms and practices of commemoration of the dead in the Middle Ages. Others see memoria as a broader phenomenon related to the omnipresent cultural remembrance of ancestors in medieval society and as such a phenomenon which can be investigated from a wide range of angles.

  According to current scholarly consensus medieval community was a community

of both the living and the dead; this meant that almost any social activity can possess a commemorative dimension. There is, however, a great deal of ambiguity and internal contradictions within the medieval memoria-culture. These mainly concern the complicated relationship between Christian idealism and “real life”.

  My PhD project deals with the cultural and social aspects of memoria and how

these practices played an important part in identity formations in 15 th century society. I have adopted an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approach, which I think is necessary when dealing with a field as diverse as medieval memoria. I incorporate a wide range of source-material in my study, ranging from written legal documents to material representations.

Mads Heilskov

Soldiers of Fortune and Military change in Scotland 1620-1660What’s it about?

An estimated 60,000 Scots served in continental armies in the first half of the 17th Century.

In 1639 there was a particular influx of continental veterans into the Covenanting Armies of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

This thesis seeks to examine the ‘emigrant homecomings’ of soldiers of fortune and their impact on Scottish military developments from the end of the reign of James VI and I to the Restoration.

Some Questions

The impact of returning Swedish officers has been examined – what of the homecomings of Scots who served in Dutch, Spanish, Austrian or French service?

When and why did the Soldiers of Fortune decide to come home?

What military impact did returning veterans have on Scottish armies of the period?

How did Covenanting and Royalist armies reward the services of ‘Soldiers of Fortune’?

Was there any onward movement after service in Scotland during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms?

To what extent did returning soldiers contribute to a Scottish ‘Military Revolution’ in the period?

Lewis Rattray

Areas of Research

Scottish early modern continental links. Emigrant homecomingsFiscal-Military state formationScottish Royalism Military RevolutionEarly modern warfare in ScotlandConcepts of ‘Gaelic Warfare’

Sources

Parish and Burgh recordsChroniclers’ AccountsParliamentary RecordsState Papers, Personal Papers Pamphlets

Lewis Rattray