This silver arm-band was part of the Viking ‘Bedale Hoard’, dating back to the late 9th or early 10th century. The style of workmanship suggests an Irish origin. For more information, including a video, visit Bedale Hoard: Yorkshire Museum.
IN 853, Dublin came under the control of the great Viking chieftain Olaf the White who, according to the Norse Sagas and the Irish Annals alike, married Irish royalty. Not all Irish princesses, however, yearned for a warrior-husband. Some were Christians, for whom Norse religion was a step back into darkness.*
One young woman of royal blood was placed under house arrest by her father for refusing such a marriage, but she managed to escape across the Irish Sea to Cumbria. There, alone in woodland somewhere between the coast and the western fells of the Lake District, she was free to choose a life of enlightened prayer and simple contentment.*
Her sole possession was a bracelet, marked with a small cross; indeed she was known only as Bega, from the Old English word for a bracelet.* People said that during her escape an angel from heaven had given her that bracelet, and that the hand that wore it opened every door her father might lock.
Of course, it was all very different if the Norse warrior in question was also a Christian. See The Wooing of Olaf Tryggvason.
The Norman-era seaside Priory of St Bees is usually assumed to have been founded at or near Bega’s hermitage. However, the much older tenth-century parish church at Bassenthwaite further north, in a secluded lakeside setting known in the 13th century as Beokirke, is another possibility.
‘Beage’ (bracelet) was also a lady’s name. Wilfrid, Bishop of Worcester from 718 to about 743, leased church-owned land in Gloucestershire to Earl Leppa and his daughter Beage (‘bracelet’). That place is now called Bibury, ‘manor or stronghold of Beage’. So Bega may have taken her name from the bracelet she always wore, or she may have been given the bracelet because it went with her name.
Précis
After the Vikings began their invasion of Ireland in 853, an Irish princess known to history as Bega fled to Cumbria. She owned little apart from a bracelet, said to have been given to her by an angel to aid her escape. A devout Christian, Bega chose to become an anchorite, living alone in woods near the Cumbrian coast. (58 / 60 words)
