It not only derailed my imaginative process, it blew the
It took a week or so to arrive and then I promptlyĭevoured it. Tend to sit in great undigested lumps in my imaginative path) but I had I don't normally continue to research once I've begun the the work ofĪctually committing fiction (facts, until they're fully assimilated, She describes receiving her copy of Penelope Walton Rogers' Cloth And Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450-700 while she was already in the course of writing Hild: And one entry shows how careful her research was and how much it helped shape her story. Griffith's blog " Gemaecca" describes how she worked out the details of the role of women in early English society. And a lot of that work centred around weaving. Griffith has done an excellent job of showing us the way Anglo-Saxon women and their British slaves and underclass lived and worked. If recreating Anglo-Saxon England is difficult, recreating the lives of women in this society is harder still, given that they are often absent from sources that deal more with wars, royal dynasties and church politics. One of the best things about Griffith's novel is that this is a woman's view of a very male world. There are no trolls and dragons (though there are dangers and terrors enough in Hild's world), but this novel has the worlds of both Beowulf and Sutton Hoo as its backdrop and its recreation of this culture is intricate and effective as a result. And Edwin wears a garnet ring that evokes the rich garnet decorations from Sutton Hoo. The king's warriors - the gesithas of his retinue and the core of his warband - glitter with arm rings, rich belt fittings and ring-hilted swords. Edwin's royal hall at Yeavering is brought to life with descriptions that have more than a touch of Hrothgar's Heorot in Beowulf. Like the Beowulf-Poet, Griffith evokes a world that is hard, harsh, rich and elaborate. Hild saw immediately what this meant for them." Eorpwald, who would step into the kingship of the East Angles - but Edwin would inherit the mantle of overking, the most powerful Angle in Britain. Sulky Eorpwald, Raedwald's second son, who had been too young to fight at Edwin's side. Overking of all the Angles, who had helped Edwin kill Aethelfrith and drive the Idings into exile.
In Nicola Griffith's novel Hild, her heroine is the teen-aged "seer" to Edwin, her uncle, and the news of the death of Raedwald realigns the network of alliances and rivalries that makes up her world: As " Bretwalda", Raedwald was the nominal senior over-king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and on his death this status passed to Edwin of Northumbria. 624 AD), whose death changed the balance of power amongst the rival Anglo-Saxon and Welsh kingdoms of seventh century Britain. The Sutton Hoo ship burial was most likely that of Raedwald of East Anglia (d. The intricate workmanship of the helmet, shield-mounts, brooches, belt fittings and purse lid in the grave put the descriptions in the poem into a vivid archaeological context and showed early medieval England was a far brighter and more wealthy and sophisticated place than had been previously believed. But the finds in the seventh century grave at Sutton Hoo showed that the material culture described in the poem was very real. He was probably writing around 1000 AD and his story, complete with its trolls and dragons, was set in the misty almost-prehistory of fifth century Denmark. Far from being fantasy, the Beowulf-Poet was evoking the richness and splendour of Germanic nobility with great accuracy. Then, in 1939, the great burial mound at Sutton Hoo was excavated and conceptions of both Anglo-Saxon England and Beowulf changed. Given that the Anglo-Saxon England in which the poet was writing seemed to consist of little more than thatched huts with dirt floors, these descriptions seemed fanciful. The Beowulf-Poet describes richly decorated helmets, jewelled belts and swords, huge painted halls and warriors decked in arm rings and riches. This was not just because it was a story with sea-monsters, trolls and a dragon in it, but also because the material world it described was far richer, elaborate and more colourful than the Anglo-Saxon world that had been uncovered by archaeology. Until the mid-twentieth century, scholars regarded the Old English epic Beowulf as a work of fantasy. Nicola Griffith, Hild: A Novel, (Blackfriars, 2014) 560 pages, Verdict?: 4/5 An elegantly-written and vivid recreation of seventh century Northumbria.
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