Outlaws and Transculturalism

An obvious aspect of liminality in its physical form – the state of residing on boundaries – is its proximity to the foreign. Moving between polities naturally brings one into contact with the inhabitants of both. We have already seen how Guthlac's time as an outlaw placed him closer to the British territories and into the association of British peoples, and if the site of his hermitage, between Mercia and East Anglia, seems less diverse to us, that likely has more to do with modern ideas of ethnicity rather than medieval notions of difference. The people moving through the early medieval North Atlantic negotiated a patchwork of kingdoms, particularly in Britain and Ireland, whose divisions represented more than just politics. Wider travels, however, undoubtedly put the itinerant into contact with a greater variety of peoples and cultures. The Norse, both historically and in the Icelandic sagas, are unmatched in this regard, as their voyages brought them from Scandinavia to locations as diverse as Iberia, America, Novgorod, and Constantinople. The individuals at the vanguard of these explorations were adventurers and frequently outlaws; a prominent example is Eírik the Red, whose expulsion from Iceland led to his discovery of Greenland and laid the groundwork for his son Leif's journey to Vínland.

The reality of outlaws’ existence on the border means that their stories often function as depictions of what Mary Louise Pratt has called ‘contact zones’ – ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and insubordination’. As she notes, the spaces in which such interaction occurs can vary quite a bit in type. For early medieval outlaws, it is worth pointing out that the contact zones encountered in the texts do not conform in most cases to the modern colonial examples Pratt works with. Instead, outlaw space is more like the borderlands described by Gloria Anzaldúa – areas between cultures, often divided politically, in which one culture and/or polity has hegemony over the others. Historians and archaeologists studying the early Middle Ages employ the term emporium to identify some of these spaces, where diversity was a consequence of trade.

A New Outlaw for a New Time

According to the twelfth-century Gesta Herwardi, the outlaw Hereward the Wake was driven from England before the Normans arrived to conquer it. He must have known about the invasion, but its effects on the Anglo-Saxon people do not hit home for him until he returns and realizes its dire consequences for his own family. The foreigners had ransacked his lands, roughed up his widowed mother, and when Hereward's younger brother dared to defend her, they killed him and placed his head upon a pike. Hereward is forced to enter his ancestral house incognito, removing his brother's head before facing what was inside. There he finds the Normans feasting and drinking in celebration of their crime. There is also an entertainer, who demands a piece of the spoils for his fee, but one of the locals declares that if Hereward were there, the Normans would never be able to lay claim to the plunder. The leader sneers at this, slanders Hereward's reputation and concludes, ‘Nam crucis patibulo afficeretur, nisi ex fuga suae saluti provideret, in nulla terra nisi trans Alpes ausus habitare’ (‘He may very well have been hung on the joint of a cross, unless he safeguarded his health through flight, undertaking to live on the other side of the Alps’). At this point Hereward steps out of the shadows and proves himself to be terrifyingly present, killing them all.

The Gesta Herwardi is but one of several twelfth-century works which feature the exploits of Hereward the Wake. Stories such as these demonstrate that the transgressive power of the outlaw in the North Atlantic persisted into the High Middle Ages. Unmoored on account of his outlawry, Hereward has a location as unstable as any other part of his liminal identity. He could be abroad, or he could be only yards away. His ability to cross borders so easily symbolizes his unpredictability as an opponent, and with this declaration of his presence back in England, he begins his role as a local resistance leader in the East Anglian fens. This is the same region where centuries before both Guthlac and Athelbald employed the mutability of border existence to their advantage, and Hereward displays the same ability as well, using his facility with the region to frustrate his opponents, upend expectations and connect peoples and places which previously held no association.

The Meaning of Wrecca

The valorization of the outlaw found in medieval texts is something that likely rarely occurred in real life. In reality, the most pertinent aspect of outlaws was how desperate and dangerous they were, no matter what other qualities they may have held. Out of a simple sense of self-preservation communities did not look to them for protection, or justice, or wisdom, or any other benefit they may provide in medieval fiction. Yet the circumstances by which fictional outlaws obtain and display these positive qualities are the same that made historical outlaws unique threats to conventional society in the Middle Ages. Establishing the context which allowed for the revision of outlawry in medieval fiction hinges upon understanding how audiences in these cultures came to invest outlaws with specific abilities that other figures did not – and perhaps could not – plausibly possess.

As we shall see, what marked an outlaw was his or her unceasing motion. An outlaw was one who flees, as the Anglo-Saxon terms wrecca and flyma convey, and that flight rarely had a terminus. Instead, outlaws led a restless existence, conducted in the remote boundaries of kingdoms, scrambling to outpace those seeking to capture or kill them. Of course, outlaws were not the only individuals moving along the boundaries of medieval literature or history. Numerous types were pushed to the margins by early medieval societies, or chose to exist there, either temporarily or permanently; likewise, there are plenty of characters out of medieval literature that demonstrate similar motion. In doing so, they share much with the outlaw. Nevertheless, outlaws occupy a central place in the understanding of itinerancy in this era. They are depicted as possessing the attributes of transience more ostensibly and in greater degree than other movers, and the portrayal of other roaming heroes – from saints to warriors to sailors – in turn relies heavily on outlaw tropes. Ultimately, a consideration of outlawry and its import is inextricable from a wider conversation about the potential engendered out of the movement of bodies across boundaries in the Middle Ages. All travelers access some amount of influence on account of their position on the margins, a power unavailable to more stationary and centralized members of their communities.

Ailithre, Penance, and Punishment

In 891, three Irishmen washed up on the coast of Cornwall in a hide boat. Their vessel held neither oars nor supplies, but the story they told onlookers was not one of accident at sea. Instead, they claimed to have placed themselves in this perilous position because, in their words, ‘hi woldon for Godes lufan on eltiodignesse beon’ (‘they wished to be on pilgrimage for the sake of God's love’). Setting out on the sea, and the lack of conveyance, was entirely their own doing. They had given themselves enough food for seven days, but it had run out before they reached the British shore. Finding themselves in England, the three men made straight for the court of King Alfred.

These men were not outlaws. Nevertheless, whether they realized it or not, their actions imitated a form of criminal exile. The practice which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle renders as elþiodignes for Godes lufan is a translation of the Latin peregrinatio pro amore Dei (‘peregrination for the sake of God's love’), a common description in Irish texts of what was known in the vernacular as ailithre. Ailithre was a type of pilgrimage peculiar to the early medieval North Atlantic, often associated exclusively with the Irish of the first few centuries of their Christianization. Despite its identification with the Irish, ailithre can often be found attached to interpretations of Anglo-Saxon society as well, a potential influence which will be considered later. As a practice, however, and as a literary trope, ailithre served as a vehicle (both literally and figuratively) for exploring questions of proper conduct in the newly Christian North Atlantic.

Latin manuscripts referred to ailithre as peregrinatio, which is often translated ‘pilgrimage’ in modern English. This term is not technically incorrect, yet it often lends itself to confusion due to a broader understanding of pilgrimage in the sixth through eighth centuries. Its modern definition – as a journey undertaken for devotional purposes to a shrine or other site of religious import – is largely anachronistic for the period of early Irish Christianity.

Holy Wreccan

Unlike the other two North Atlantic cultures in this book, there was no definitive ‘outlaw tradition’ among the Anglo-Saxons. Figures such as Beowulf, the Wanderer, or the Seafarer may share some qualities with outlaws, but their overlap is far from complete, and as we have seen in Chapter 1 it would be reductive to claim that wrecca is perfectly translated as outlaw. As a result, the literary dimension of the outlaw in Anglo-Saxon England can be said to be lacking. However, as with the Irish, there is an additional sphere within Anglo-Saxon society where the qualities of the outlaw found expression – in the practice and depiction of Christian asceticism in the North Atlantic. Ailithre was a repurposing of criminal punishment for penance that redefined the categories of illicit and righteous action. The same can be said of the actors. The liminal power accessed by the outlaw was valuable as capital to spiritual leaders as much as it was to secular. Add to this the mandate of Christianity to embrace the despised and reject worldly authority, and an affinity for outlawry appears almost natural to ascetic forms of the faith. The Anglo-Saxon corpus, while lacking secular outlaw heroes, contains many saintly heroes who reflect outlaw tropes in this way. How these two modes of life intertwine and diverge is seen most clearly in the career of Guthlac, hermit of Crowland, who in the course of his life was both an outlaw and an ascetic. In examining the works that feature him one is able to gain a better idea of how holiness and criminality could intersect in the early medieval North Atlantic. Moreover, it is through figures such as Guthlac – their abilities both amplified and sanctioned by God's favor – that one can see just how transformational an outsider can be due to the liminal power he or she represents. Of course, as we have seen, the application of the influence borne of foreign engagement provoked controversy easily; also seen in the Guthlac tradition is how the principle of conduct once again governs the correct usage of foreign expertise within North Atlantic literature.

Irish Conduct in Anglo-Saxon England?

A modest yet dangerous expedition is undertaken in the third chapter of Bede's Vita sancti Cuthberti, when several monks from a community on the south bank of the Tyne leave the monastery to forage for timber. On the return journey, carrying their provisions on rafts, they position themselves on the opposite bank and attempt to cross, only to find themselves blown by a sudden squall towards the river mouth. A rescue force dispatched soon finds itself in the same straits, and the monks are left drifting out into the open sea with nothing but their own prayers and those of their brethren on shore to save them. Yet there are other observers of this crisis, ‘uulgaris turba non modica’ (‘a mob of common people of no small size’), who quickly conclude that they are already witnessing divine intervention in action:

It is somewhat unclear as to what the veteres culturae are which the crowd on the shore claims the monks have abolished. The laypeople may be stubborn heathens, or they may be partisans in the ecclesiastical conflicts which roiled Britain in Bede's and Cuthbert's days. In either case, in their interpretation of the events which unfold before them and in the characterization of the perceived crimes of the monks, they express belief in the concept of conduct such as was outlined in the Irish immrama.

The late medieval poem The Hermit and the Outlaw dates from the turn of the fourteenth century, and is preserved in two extant manuscripts. It is a straightforward exemplum, highly reminiscent of the parable of the prodigal son, concerning two brothers, one a ‘gode ermyte’ and the other a ‘wylde outlawe’ and ‘erraunt theff’. The bulk of the story follows the fate of the latter, who makes an ingenuous attempt to repent after encountering a pilgrim in the woods. The humor of his callowness and resistance to hard work eventually gives way to tragedy, however, as what was meant to be an easy penance becomes for him a matter of life or death. Determined to take no water – a drink he normally detests – the outlaw is subjected to intense thirst and is offered only water to slake it. Instead of succumbing to temptation, he opens his veins and drinks his blood, dying in this world but gaining life eternal. The hermit has a vision of his brother rising to heaven and, unaware of the circumstances of his death, bitterly compares his brother's life with his own:

God quickly upbraids the hermit for his resentfulness, and subsequent investigation reveals to him his brother's late conversion and the manner of his death. Reassured of the justice of his brother's salvation, the hermit lives out the rest of his days in devotion and eventually goes to heaven himself.