"Thi Wilde Witsing": Vikings and Otherness in the Old Frisian Laws

TY - JOUR

T1 - "Thi Wilde Witsing": Vikings and Otherness in the Old Frisian Laws

AU - Bremmer jr., R.H.

PY - 2020/6/1

Y1 - 2020/6/1

N2 - In this article I argue that the Viking presence in various Frisian laws has little to offer for establishing a date of origin for a particular law-text. Rather than interpreting such references as reflection of real-time events, I want to make a case that mentions of tyrannizing Norsemen in these law codes should be seen as an essential constituent in a myth of origin, invented to justify the Frisians’ exceptional position within the political constellation of Western Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In this grand narrative, the role assigned to the Norsemen is basically that of the Other

AB - In this article I argue that the Viking presence in various Frisian laws has little to offer for establishing a date of origin for a particular law-text. Rather than interpreting such references as reflection of real-time events, I want to make a case that mentions of tyrannizing Norsemen in these law codes should be seen as an essential constituent in a myth of origin, invented to justify the Frisians’ exceptional position within the political constellation of Western Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In this grand narrative, the role assigned to the Norsemen is basically that of the Other

M3 - Article

SN - 0363-6941

VL - 119

SP - 1

EP - 26

JO - Journal of English and Germanic Philology

JF - Journal of English and Germanic Philology

IS - 1

ER -