Æthelred II and Cnut the Great: Millennial Conference to Commemorate the Siege of London in 1016 – Call For Papers

Æthelred II and Cnut the Great: Millennial Conference to Commemorate the Siege of London in 1016
University College London
6-9 July, 2016

London a thousand years ago: a lively port, the centre of trade, cross-roads for armies going north and south, seat of political government and dispute, all against the backdrop of a war between Æthelred II and Cnut with its culmination in the Siege of London of 1016. In just over a year the academics and interested public of London will commemorate this siege and its times with a three-day international conference.

Please come and join us! There will be other Cnutonica for this year but none other in the city where the war came to an end. Our conference will begin with a welcome on the afternoon of Wednesday 6 July 2016. Lectures will be scheduled to begin on the following day in Senate House, Birkbeck College and UCL in single session. There will be four plenaries, by

  • Prof Simon Keynes of the University of Cambridge in the area of Anglo-Scandinavian history
  • Prof Andrew Reynolds of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, on the archaeology of London relating to the Vikings and the siege of 1016
  • Prof Andy Orchard of the University of Oxford, on the contemporary Beowulf manuscript, BL MS Cotton Vitellius A.XV and Old English literature
  • Prof Emerita Roberta Frank of Yale University on Skaldic poetry and the Norse literary achievement

Papers are invited in the fields of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian literature, history and archaeology in and around the Siege of London in 1016. Possible subjects might include, but are not limited to:

  • Old English literature of the Benedictine Reform
  • Old English poetry (including Beowulf)
  • Anglo-Saxon palaeography of the tenth and eleventh centuries
  • Skaldic poetry at the court of Cnut
  • Æthelred II and the Danish Wars
  • Cnut and early medieval historiography
  • Material culture in the later Viking Age
  • Cnut and coinage of the British Isles
  • The archaeology of London
  • Anglo-Scandinavian cultural exchange
  • Knýtlinga saga and Icelandic and Norwegian sagas
  • The Danish empire
  • Cnut and the Baltic
  • Cnut and Rome
  • Queens Emma and Ælfgifu
  • Cnut’s Laws
  • The Beowulf manuscript in the context of Cnut’s reign

Please send abstracts of about 300 words to Richard North (richard.north@ucl.ac.uk). All papers will be considered on the understanding that speakers have a maximum of half an hour. We plan to arrange a manuscript exhibition, to be able to reserve student accommodation for attendees, and to invite speakers and other contributors to submit papers for a volume of Conference Proceedings for publication in the following year.