Touching the Franks Casket: Global History and the Trojan Past on an Early Medieval English Object

Abstract The contribution examines the Franks Casket, a whale-bone casket probably produced in the northern British kingdom of Northumbria in the eighth century that displays a number of carved images referencing events from different cultural and temporal contexts as well as inscriptions in Roman script and runes, Latin and Old English. We focus on the casket’s lid, which shows a siege scene, with an archer prominently displayed towards the middle, the word ægili carved above him. Traditionally understood as a reference to an unknown story about Weland’s brother Egil, the image has also been read as a depiction of the siege of Troy by a minority of scholars. While we offer evidence that the latter reading is at least somewhat better founded than the former, we argue that the lid’s design does not necessarily invite a straightforward identification with a single cultural context but rather works as a hinge that ties together the various cultural and temporal references on the casket. In allowing the viewer to construct various contexts in which the image might be viewed, the Franks Casket suggests their fundamental compatibility, as if the supposedly distinct historical and legendary materials had always overlapped and permeated each other. Taking into account the object’s material and aesthetic form thus makes it possible to break away from all-too-simple narratives of historical succession and helps us understand the complex temporalities that early medieval English art was capable of generating.