Hlafdige and Hlaford Gendered Power and Images of Continuity in Encomium Emmae Reginae

Abstract

The woman who, depending on a historical source, political environment, and the time of her life, is remembered under the names of Emma and Ælfgifu was in the very centre of events shaping eleventh-century political reality of England, Normandy, and Denmark. As a wife of two kings and a mother of two kings whose rule extended, albeit with varying degree of efficiency, over England, Denmark, and Norway, her importance can hardly be questioned. At the same time, the dramatic events in which she was embroiled, including the particularly brutal maiming and then death of one of her sons, her repeated loss of and reinstatement into power, the pendulum swings between periods of political usefulness and relative abandonment, might make her particularly appealing to the attempts at what may be called historical psychologizing of her character (...).