Note X. p. . Danish Marriages

The “mos Danicus” with regard to marriage or concubinage, or rather with regard to some third state between marriage and concubinage, is often mentioned in the Norman history of the time. And, though I do not remember the exact words being used in England, yet something of the same kind seems to have existed there also. The ease with which Earl Uhtred (see p. ) parts with two successive wives, the relations between Cnut and his two Ælfgifus (see p. ), perhaps the relation between Harold the son of Godwine and the East-Anglian Eadgyth Swanneshals (see vol. iii. Appendix NN), all seem to point to a practice of the same kind. Indeed we shall find (see below, Note SS) that it is by no means clear whether the first wife of Æthelred, the mother of his heroic son, was not in the same way cast aside to make room for the Norman Lady. Instances of the same sort might indeed be found very much later in German, in French, and in English history, and we find a relation essentially the same as far as we can go back in the history of the Aryan race. The “mos Danicus” might just as well be called “mos Achaicus;” the relation between Rolf and Popa at once reminds one of the relation of Briseis to Achilleus, or of Andromachê to Neoptolemos. Briseis is a captive; but she receives the honourable appellation of ἄλοχος (II. ix. 336, 340); she has hopes of becoming even κουριδίη ἄλοχος (II. xix. 298). Still Achilleus’ relation to her in no way hinders him from taking another wife (II. ix. 394), any more than it hinders Diomêdê (ib. 661) from taking her place during her constrained absence. In just the same way, Popa is put away to make room for King Charles’s daughter; but afterwards we read (Will. Gem. ii. 22), “Repudiatam Popam ... iterum repetens sibi copulavit.” (See more in detail, Benoît, v. 7954, and Roman de Rou, 2037.) The “mos Danicus” is opposed to the “mos Christianus.” The tardy bridal of Richard and Gunnor (see p. ) was done Christian fashion; “Virginem [viraginem?] ... sibi in matrimonium Christiano more desponsavit.” So says William of Jumièges (iv. 18), and he even thinks it necessary to guarantee (v. 5) that the marriage of Alan of Britanny and Hadwisa the daughter of Richard the Good was celebrated “Christiano more.” The expressions used with regard to Sprota herself are many and various. She is in Dudo, 97 A, “conjux dilectissima;” in 110 D, “matrona venerabilis,” a description which, I need hardly say, proves nothing as to her age. In Flodoard, A. 943, her son is “natus de concubina Britanna.” King Lewis, if we may believe William of Jumièges (iv. 3), went a step further, and called young Richard “meretricis filium ultro virum alienum rapientis.” This is mere Billingsgate, as Richard was certainly born before William’s marriage with Liudgardis, though from the Roman de Rou (v. 2073, 2251) one might be led to think otherwise. Elsewhere (iii. 2), in announcing the birth of Richard, William calls her “nobilissima puella, Danico more sibi [William Longsword] juncta, nomine Sprota.” And so Benoît, 8872;

“Icele ama mult e tint chere;
Mais à la Danesche manere
La vout aveir, non autrement,
Ce dit l’estorie qui ne ment.”

The last line is most likely meant as a compliment to William of Jumièges.

The essence of this kind of connexion seems to be that the woman is the man’s wife but that the man is not the woman’s husband. He can evidently leave her at pleasure, but there is no recorded instance of her leaving him. This difference may however be simply the result of the difference of rank between the parties in all the cases with which we have to deal. The wife or mistress of a prince is obviously less likely to forsake him than he is to forsake her. And from a modern Scandinavian writer I gather that Scandinavian manners, at a somewhat later time, allowed of a connexion of nearly the same kind, but one which put the sexes more on a level.

“The term fylgikona (literally companion-woman), which frequently occurs in the Sagas, must have originally meant the same as frilla. Later on, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it received a more honourable import, as it was applied to a free woman living with a man in connubial intercourse according to the terms of a formal contract, but without the observance of the usual wedding ceremonies, and especially without consecration by the Church. Connexions of this kind seem to have been rather common, especially in Iceland, and dated from the time when the Church began to lay greater hindrances in the way of obtaining a divorce than had formerly been the case. This connexion would be dissolved at the wish of either of the parties, or in accordance with the terms which had been previously agreed upon, without the intervention of the Church, a result which was not in accordance with Christian views, and could not be applied to marriages proper.... The fylgikona frequently occupied the position of house-wife.” Keyser’s Private Life of the Old Northmen, pp. 35, 36.

As for earlier Frankish laxity, among many strange examples I choose the strangest. “Luxuriæ supra modum deditus [Dagobertus] tres habebat ad instar Salomonis reginas, maxime et plurimas concubinas. Reginæ vero hæ erant, Nantechildis, Wlfegundis, et Berchildis. Nomina concubinarum, eo quod plures fuissent, increvit huic chronicæ inseri.” Fredegar, c. 60.