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Historisk tidskrift 124:3 • 2004

Innehåll (Contents) 2004:3

Uppsatser (Articles)

I marginalen på medeltiden – ett utrymme för kommunikation? Föreställningar om människor, djur och natur i bonaden från Bayeux

Agneta Ney

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Summary

Medieval Margins – a Site for Communication? Images of Culture and Nature in the Bayeux Tapestry

This article studies the textile narrative of the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England, which is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. The analysis is influenced by the work of art historian Michael Camille on the marginalia of medieval manuscripts. Camille has shown that marginal pictures are intended to correspond to the motives of the main scenes. Animals, misogynists and grotesques frequent the margin, which Camille considers to be a communicative space. Above all, the margin provides a narrative dealing with taboos and the comical.

While the Bayeux Tapestry has been used as a source for the period’s clothing, weapons and ships, its margins have not been analysed in their own right before. The tapestry has an upper and a lower margin and the most frequent motif in both are birds and other animals. “Birds-in-battle” are depicted in the upper margin, and real and fantastic animals in the lower one. The artisans who produced the tapestry were influenced by illuminations of medieval manuscripts and of Aesop’s fables, as well as real-life birds and animals, hunts and work in forests and fields. Above all, early medieval conceptions of nature, man and behaviour played an important role. As in manuscript marginalia, there is a correspondence between marginal and main scenes. For instance, animals in the margin express feelings similar to those depicted in the main scenes. Thus a dog is seen howling under a funeral scene, while close above the major battle scenes the appearance of birds and animals signal anxiety and threat. Animal symbolism, expressed as increased activity, aggression and finally death, along the lower margin correspond to the sequence of the narrative of the main scenes.

In the margins of the Bayeux Tapestry men are represented in ways that separate them from the main scenes. In contrast to the marginalia of medieval manuscript there is no misogyny. However, there is a difference between the way women are depicted in the margin and in the main scenes. While the former are naked with flowing hair, the latter wear elaborate dress and hide their hair beneath veils.

According to Camille, medieval marginal pictures are linked to a change from oral culture to literacy and to an increasing use of written documents as a form of social control. These factors may be of importance in considering the differences between medieval manuscript marginalia and the margin of the Bayeux Tapestry.

It appears that the Bayeux Tapestry has a secular message, with a heroic ideal as the main feature and the violation of oaths as the central motif. In the Viking and early medieval era, the violation of oaths was a very serious crime. For this reason, the tapestry can be interpreted as an expression of contrastive thinking on the law similar to that found in early law codes. Since the tapestry portrays William the Conqueror as rightful heir to the English crown, it also serves an important legimating function.