Did medieval men love like we do?
Not just another battle story: 'Wulf and Eadwacer', an Anglo-Saxon love poem
Thank you to all those who contributed to this post by sharing their thoughts and comments on a Note I shared earlier this week. Click here to read our conversation around our preconceptions of medieval men.
I asked on Notes a few weeks ago what image or thoughts spring to mind when you think of medieval men. The first comment to pop up really made me chuckle.
For me, it was the title character in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, another story of rich vs. poor and fighting to win a woman’s affections.
These images share a macho image of medieval men, engaged in physical combat whilst seeking to sweep the leading lady off her feet. The modern audience would probably struggle to engage with a medieval tale that didn’t include a romance, something to offset the battle imagery and gore that we know deep down was a predominant feature of medieval life (think: Vikings, Braveheart and The Last Kingdom).
But were these men really hopeless romantics? Or have we simply imported our own modern perceptions of the perfect man into historical fiction?
Many of our stereotypes of medieval masculinity have a basis in truth: there really was a lot of fighting, feasting and murder, especially amongst the elites.
But I’d like to share a poem that, I think, suggests that there was also a lot of romance: that people really did fall passionately in love.
Wulf and Eadwacer
It is as though my people had been given A present. They will wish to capture him If he comes with a troop. We are apart. Wulf is on one isle, I am on another. That island is set fast among the fens, Murderous are the people who inhabit That island. They will wish to capture him If he comes with a troop. We are apart. I have grieved for my Wulf with distant longings. Then was it rainy weather, and I sad, When the bold warrior had laid his arms about me. I took delight in that, and also pain, O Wulf, my Wulf, my longing for your coming Has made me ill, the rareness of your visits, My grieving spirit, not the lack of food. Do you hear me, Eadwacer? For a wolf Shall carry to the woods our wretched whelp. Men may very easily put asunder That which was never joined, our song together.
Wulf and Eadwacer, tr. Hamer (2015: 83).
What is the plot of the poem?
There has been quite some debate about what exactly is going on in this poem. It has been described as an ‘attractive but almost totally obscure poem’, with much of the confusion centering around who Wulf and Eadwacer are.1
Richard Hamer (2015) gives the following interpretation:
‘[The poem details a] woman’s pregnancy by a raider from the other island brought about during some raid. Her people want vengeance. She calls her lover Wulf because he is a raider [elsewhere Viking raiders are called wælwulfas] … She tells of her longing for her lover’s presence … It is suggested that Eadwacer is the real name of Wulf.’2
Kevin Crossley-Holland (1982), however, has disagreed.
‘I take Eadwacer to be the woman’s husband and Wulf, by whom she has had a child, to be her lover. The islands emphasize separation and isolation. The woman has lost her lover; she may lose her child; she is threatened and defiant and afraid; her grief is unmistakable and universal.’3
I think I’m more convinced by Hamer’s argument, as otherwise the introduction of another character so late in the poem, to whom she cries in her distress, seems a bit odd to me. She also calls to Eadwacer to speak of their ‘whelp’ to be carried to the woods by a ‘wolf’, surely no coincidence when her lover has been called ‘Wulf’ throughout.
This enigmatic poem leaves my mind swirling with questions…
Does Wulf know about the baby?
What was the nature of their interaction / relationship?
The narrator talks about the ‘bold warrior’ laying his arms around her, which she received with ‘delight’ and ‘pain’: was this consensual or not?
She mentions ‘the rareness of your visits’: was this a one night stand or a longer-term affair?
Why do her people wish to capture him? Is it to do with his raiding activities or his relationship with the narrator?
Why does the narrator choose to parody Biblical language about marriage in the final two lines? Is she making a comment on the flimsyness of their relationship when compared with a marriage? Is she lamenting the way in which she is at the mercy of others, even in her romantic liaisons?
My biggest question is whether this was written by a man.
As I re-read Wulf and Eadwacer for this post, I couldn’t help but think about the literary world in which it was written. Mostly, this was made up either of monastic men or travelling (male) storytellers. And yet the poem is written in the female perspective.
Just like another Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wife’s Lament, which deals with themes of romantic longing and grief (you can read more about that here).
So here we have medieval men inhabiting the female perspective to write poetry exploring the lived experience of love.
And not just simple, straightforward love.
Wulf and Eadwacer seems to be the story of a short but intense romance that resulted in the birth of a child and led to the woman’s family seeking to kill her lover.
The Wife’s Lament shares the tale of a woman separated from her lover by his kinsmen.
These are passionate tales that could fill the pages of any modern historical romance novel - but were written by Anglo-Saxon men, maybe even Anglo-Saxon monks!
Surely to write these stories they had to have had their own experience of love?
This suggests to me, at least, that Anglo-Saxon England was a world in which men and women, contrary to the battle-laden stereotypes, fell in love, had flings, broke up, and experienced heartbreak and separation just as we do today.
And that the men were so affected by it that they took to poetry to express how they were feeling.
Was it more acceptable for them to inhabit a female perspective to do this? Had it already become more acceptable for women to express big emotions than men? Maybe. But the fact that they wrote these words (if, indeed, Wulf and Eadwacer was written by a man, and that’s a big if) suggests that they were, even if only internally, as susceptible to love then as they are now.
They had a softer side, a romantic side, that cared deeply.
And that seems to contradict the usual stories we hear of medieval men.
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A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse (2015). Richard Hamer (ed.), Faber & Faber: London, p.80.
Ibid.
The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology (1982). Kevin Crossley-Holland (ed.), Oxford University Press: Oxford, p.49.
Like Heath Ledger, the Kevin Costner Robin Hood also made me swoon way back in the day! Although I could never quite wrap my head around his American accent in that movie...
Thank you for this interesting discussion of the poem. There were many nunnery’s too- so the poem could easily have been written by a woman. Perhaps telling the story of why she is now cloistered.