Bayeux Tapestry

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The Battle of Hastings is seen as one of those seismic moments in history, particularly in England, though its impact was felt much more widely over the centuries that followed too. One of the most charismatic sources of the medieval period is the Bayer Tapestry, a set of images that tell the story of William I's conquest of England. I'm delighted to be joined today by Dave Musgrove.

whose new book, The Story of the Bayer Tapestry, Unraveling the Norman Conquest, written along with Michael Lewis, who is no relation, takes a fresh look at this fascinating source. Thank you very much for joining us today, Dave. Hey Matt, how you doing? I'm fantastic, thank you. So what can you tell us first off about the Bayer tapestry as an object? What do we know about when it's made and who it's made by?

Right, okay. So the first thing to say is we know very little about when it was made, why it was made, who made it or where it was made. We can make educated guesses about all of that, but we don't actually know anything. What we do know is what it is like as a physical... object now. We know it's about 70 metres or 200 foot long. It's about half a metre wide or high depending on how you look at it. It's composed of nine separate panels which were stitched.

together and it's linen panels upon which woolen thread has been stitched into it so it's not actually a tapestry in the technical definition of a tapestry is in fact an embroidery. The reason why it's called a tapestry goes back to the early 18th century when a French monk and antiquarian by the name of

Bernard de Montfaçon published a load of engravings of it. It was basically not really very well known at that point until he started doing some stuff and he described it as a tapisserie and ever since then people have called it a tapestry. But it ain't.

properly a tapestry. It's an embroidery. Probably too late for us to change it to the Bayer embroidery now. Well, people do say that it should be called the Canterbury embroidery for reasons which we can come back to. But yeah, no, I think the Bayer tapestry is the name that's stuck and that's... that's the one we should probably retain.

And we know that it is in Bayer. It currently resides in Bayer, a lovely little town in Normandy, which has a very nice medieval cathedral, also famous for lots of World War II activity and is a great place to visit. Right now you can go to the museum in Bayer and you can wander around and you can see the tapestry there. Though there is a lot of conversation and one of the reasons why Michael Lewis and I wrote the book is that a few years ago the idea of the tapestry...

Tapestry being loaned to Britain where Britain was mooted. And that was essentially because the museum where the tapestry is stored is going to undergo restoration. It's going to be changed. It's going to be redeveloped, basically. And so there will be an opportunity at some point in the next few years when the...

tapestry goes off display for it to be potentially moved we can come back to that if you want to chat about the possibilities of that actually happening so we know where it is right now and we know what it is like physically and just to describe what it actually shows it's kind of a

part thing, so you've got a central... freeze the central panel which is a cartoon type it shows the flow of the events leading up to the battle of hastings so it starts in around 1064 and then there's a long prelude to the battle and then the battle of hastings itself is shown considerable detail. And then above and below this main cartoon freeze there are borders, the upper and lower borders, and those borders

There's sort of lots of curious animals in them, sort of natural animals and fantastical beasts. And there's also some sort of vignettes in there of scenes. Whether those scenes kind of relate to what's going on in the main action is much debated, but they add quite a lot of interest to what... goes on and then alongside that there are some very sparse latin inscriptions or titular little captions that explain what's happening in the action but they are very brief very terse and quite

They say things like, Heek Harald Mare Navigavit, which means something like, Hear Harald sailed the sea. So that's the level of detail you get. And there's quite a few of them, but they're very basic and leave kind of a lot of room for understanding. And crucially, there's no dates given anywhere. It never says when things are happening. And it never says there's not, unfortunately, a little thing that says this tapestry was made by...

Bob. There's nothing to accredit it either. So there's lots of stuff there that we don't know, but what we do know is the basic details about it. And there's been... loads and loads of research on it telling you you know that's that really has helped us to understand precisely what it is it was actually only recently that they realized that there was nine panels rather than eight so there's been loads of research and lots of interesting research still to be

carried out. So it's a very exciting document.

In answer to the questions about where it was made. So where it was made, most scholars, not all scholars, but most scholars would say that it was made in Canterbury in Kent. That's my observation earlier that it could be the Canterbury embroidery. The logic for that is that there are... both stylistic and content-based similarities between what you see in the tapestry and what we know existed in illuminated manuscripts that we know were in the monastic libraries in

Canterbury at the time. Documents such as the Utrecht Psalter, the old English Hexateuch, and a document called Junius XI as well. So, sort of stylistically, there are a lot of things that are very similar, and there are actual scenes which appear to have kind of been taken from these manuscripts. Like the Old English Text of Cheek is basically the biblical story, the early biblical story, and kind of been translated.

and dropped into the biotapestry in a completely different environment. So you can kind of think whoever created the tapestry had sight of these documents and obviously they didn't have photocopiers and things like that in the day. That also suggests geographical proximity as well. We also know that in England, the English seamstresses were well known. They were famous for being very good at their art.

And so there's a good case for saying that it was made in Canterbury. Other people say that's not true and that is conjecture, that it's a theory. Added into that is the likely... person who was responsible for it, the patron. Now again, this is much discussed and debated. My view and my co-author's view, Michael's view, is that it was most likely Odo of Bayeux. Now Odo was

William I, William the Conqueror's half-brother. He was the Bishop of Bayeux, and after 1066, after the conquest, he soon became the Earl of Kent, where Canterbury is. He was an important man, but the tapestry sort of shows him as considerably more important in the events of the conquest than the other written documents suggest. He appears in more prominent positions. He's kind of shown as a counsellor in advance of William's conquest. He's shown an important feast before.

the battle and he's shown in the battle himself sort of encouraging the troops he's actually named them The other sources don't give him that much of a place in the story, so it kind of feels like he's being bigged up in this tapestry. There's some curious figures who appear in the tapestry, people by the names of Wadard, Chirold and Vital, who we don't really know who they are.

but some historians have suggested those people were actually retainers of Odo and so it's kind of like that's the reason why they get in there. So the arguments do get a little bit circular here, but if Odo was behind the tapestry then, and he was in charge of Kent, Canterbury, then it kind of adds weight to the idea that it was made in... Canterbury. So we've got probably made in Canterbury, probably made by English seamstresses.

probably made under the direction or patronage of Bishop Odo. And in terms of when it was made, again... Much dispute. Obviously it needs to be made after 1066, though one thing that we haven't talked about is the end of the tapestry is missing, so we don't actually know at what point it finally concludes.

but definitely made after 1066. Some people would say it was made like straight away after 1066. Others say it was quite a long time afterwards. Our view is that it was made in the 1070s and actually it was made for the consecration of by a cathedral. back to Odo, Odo being in charge of Bayer, and that was consecrated in 1077. So view would be that it was made at some point in the 1070s, and it was made for display in the cathedral on the occasion of the consecration. But again...

Other people would have differing views on that. And like I said, it's all theories. So it's perhaps meant as a bit of propaganda on Odo's behalf. As you say, it bigs up his part in what happened in 1066 and just before. And then he's having this perhaps installed his cathedral at Bayer when it's being consecrated, sorry. And so it's very much telling a version of the Norman conquest with Odo placed.

much more front and centre than he was, which would kind of lend credibility to the idea that he was involved in commissioning or patronising it. But the Bayer Tapestry does tell a very particular story, which is unsurprisingly a Norman one. But what does it say about the lead-up? to the Norman invasion? Does it seek to provide some kind of justification for William's actions in invading England?

Yeah, so that's the key thing. I think a lot of people, you know, we've all seen the biotapestry. I'm sure all the listeners to your show will have seen the biotapestry or at least seen images of it. You can't write a book about the Norman Conquest or about medieval history generally without using an image from the tapestry.

And I think there's a sense that actually just shows the Battle of Hastings, but it doesn't. It's only really the last third of the tapestry that's dedicated to the battle. The first two thirds are the run-up to it. I'll just super quickly summarise. So it starts off in 1064. Like I said, there's no date, but we can work out that it must be around 1064. With the old King of England, Edward the Confessor, talking to...

Harold, Earl Harold, Harold Godwinson, who at that time is the leading Earl in England, the main man below the king. They're having some sort of conversation, and then Harold goes off on a trip. He goes down to a place called Bosham on the south coast. And then he gets in a boat, crosses the Channel, and after some mishaps, ends up at the court of Duke William in Normandy as an honoured guest, or perhaps as a captive guest. And then he goes on a military campaign with William to...

Brittany. William's troops are basically attacking the Breton count there. Harold is shown performing heroically. He's shown as a militarily powerful man. That campaign is a success. William's troops defeat the Bretons. William then gives Harold some arms, some arms and armour. Harold is then shown swear. And then Harold quickly legs it back to England. Then Edward the Confessor dies. His burial, his death is shown in Westminster Abbey. Harold then quickly becomes king.

William hears about this, assembles a fleet and an army, and then finally his ships cross the Channel, and at that point we then get to the battle itself. So we show all this stuff prior to the Battle of Hastings. In all of that, I've mentioned Harold quite a few times and maybe William not so many times. So certainly the first third or so is really it's all about Harold, it seems. And then William comes in and then you kind of get this sort of dual story with Harold and William.

as the two guys. Harold is set up as a sort of a man of power, a man not to be dismissed, and William is also set up as a sort of a militarily potent figure. But Harold is always sort of shown in the context of William. He's kind of a foil to him in a way. All the stuff that I've described to you, all those events, that's the very basics that are shown. And as I was saying earlier...

The tapestry is very enigmatic in what it tells us. It doesn't tell us very much. So you are then left to interpret what those things are all about. So we don't know what oath. Harold actually swore to William, for instance. It doesn't say what he actually said. But all of that is essentially set up to picture Harold as a man who

purges himself, who goes against his word, and then that gives William the right to invade. And that whole period is showing a justification for William's eventual... invasion fleet so that's the sort of context of what's happening there and i guess we need to sort of drill into that a bit more to try and understand it yeah i think particularly as you say it doesn't tell us what it is that harold

swears to William while he's in Normandy, it doesn't tell us what it is that Edward the Confessor says on his deathbed when he's presumably making some settlement of how he wants the country to be ruled after he's gone. And for a piece of effectively Norman propaganda, it's quite odd that they're not more specific about exactly what they're claiming that Harold swore to William and exactly what they're claiming William wanted to happen to the kingdom because their whole...

assertion was that Edward the Confessor had left England to William the Conqueror and that Harold had gone over there and sworn to support William as king and then purged himself against that. But without explicitly telling us what those oaths were or what those conversations were. It surely leaves room for us to doubt what the Normans were trying to say.

I mean, that is one of the key things about this, the most exciting things is just, it's enigmaticness. It's the most enigmatic thing that you can imagine, to be honest. It's very strange that it isn't more candid about what's being shown. So as you said, the oath scene. So the oath scene is a really pivotal scene in the tapestry, and what you get is you get King Harold sort of contorting himself, physically contorting himself, between two reliquy boxes, so two sacred boxes of relics.

and he's sort of resting his arms across to touch these two reliquaries and William is sat there watching on and like there's a lot of people watching on actually that scene is sort of notable for eyes looking and a lot of pointing and the tapestry is really good for pointing. If you're interested in pointing, if you're a fan of pointing, it's really good. Is that the moment where it's telling us to make sure you look at this? This is an important bit.

Exactly, exactly. And another thing is, Anglo-Saxon art is big on hands. Hands are quite big and prominent in Anglo-Saxon art. So the hands are big and large and pointing, and you know that you need to be looking at stuff. And you can also follow the eyes of the characters.

you should be looking where they are looking and everyone's looking at Harold. So this oath, actually, by the way, the tapestry says that the oath is made in Bayer, or at least it doesn't actually say that, but the oath scene follows a scene in Bayer. So you kind of...

can assume that the tapestry is telling you this oath was made in Bayeux. No other documentary sources say that, so that's another reason why we make that argument that it was made for the consecration of Bayeux Cathedral. I should have mentioned that earlier.

So the other documentary sources would say that Harold was making an oath to support William's claim to the throne. William's claim to the throne is based on the fact that in 1051, Edward the Confessor was having a lot of trouble with the...

The Godwin family, Harold's father particularly. And apparently William may have gone over to England and there may have been a sort of an offer made by Edward the Confessor to William. Now, that's much contested and debated, but that's kind of where the logic of his claim goes. And so they would say, the other documentary sources would say that in this oath scene in 1064, 1065, Harold is basically saying that he will support William's claim to the throne.

And when you look at the tapestry, you can kind of physically see the man is contorted. It looks as if he is, you know, being pulled in two directions in the tapestry. It looks as if he's really conflicted. So it's interesting. But the tapestry does not say anything about what this oath is. It just says... He makes a sacred oath. And then, yeah, on the deathbed of Edward the Confessor...

Again, you get this scene with the king dying and various characters around him. And other sources would have the king saying that Edward commends his wife, Edith, who was actually Harold's sister, and all the kingdom... to Harrell's protection, which is interesting. And it doesn't show that in the tapestry either. So the tapestry is basically fundamentally...

enigmatic. It doesn't get off the fence. It doesn't explain what's going on. And that's very interesting. It sort of allows the viewer to take a view, to make their own impressions of what it's showing.

There are some theories that, like, the tapestry was designed to have an interlocutor to someone explaining what was going on. So someone sort of using the captions as kind of bullet points, like a PowerPoint presentation saying, you know, this is like an aid memoir. So once we've seen this, then I need to... talk about this as possible. Or it could be that it was designed to just allow space for both victorious Normans and defeated English.

to be able to look at the tapestry and kind of not have to feel like they were struggling to be part of the story, if you see what I mean. It's interesting that it depends when you think the tapestry was made as to what sort of the political geography of England was at the time. There was a series of rebellions against William's rule. You've just written a fascinating feature for BBC History magazine about Herald the Wake and his rebellions, which everyone should have a look at.

And so the balance of power and William's attitude to his vanquished subjects changes a bit over time, so it depends on how you think about it. But yeah, so it basically allows the viewer to make their own view. But it also allows you to build up a... that Harold is an important man and it's by his own actions that he's kind of delivering his downfall. And that's quite important for the way the story plays out.

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I think one thing that you pointed out there was that Harold is portrayed in the tapestry as almost a heroic figure alongside William. So he's a warrior, he's a pious man. And in many ways, are we meant to walk away from it feeling like... Harold was William's equal rather than being the villain of the piece, if you like. And if so, why do you think the tapestry is concerned to portray Harold in kind of a positive light?

Yeah, again, so that goes back. So if we assume it's made in Canterbury, then there's a very basic level there that if it's made by English seamstresses, then perhaps they sort of would have some sort of control over what goes in. Now, that's a bit of a difficult argument to follow through on because...

Clearly, the tapestry was going to be shown to people. So if you like sneak in lots of subterfuge and secret messages, which is one of the theories about the tapestry is like, you know, actually there's an underlying anti-Norman propaganda threat. I think that's a little bit hard to demonstrate because... that would go quite badly when the great and the good saw the actual tapestry. But I think the tapestry is trying to get across a basic idea that the Norman Conquest, the whole story...

boils down to a clash between two men, between Earl Harold, who then becomes King Harold, and Duke William, who then becomes King William. And to position them as... Men of power, authority, honour to an extent. I mean, Harold, as you say, he's actually shown rescuing some of William's soldiers from the River Cunon just below Mont Saint-Michel in this Breton campaign. So he's a man who's brave. He's a good man in that sense.

But he's a man who, by his own actions, brings about his downfall. It's very much a two-horse thing. It's William versus Harold, and the tapestry just plows on in that line. And it feels like it's important to whoever's making the tapestry to have that sense that it's just these two guys and those are the two characters. I mean, Odo, as we said, appears, but he's not part of the actual discussion of the throne of England. But the tapestry's whole shtick...

is to make it between these two men, two men of equals, a worthy opponent for King William to defeat and then to be able to take over the throne. So part of the idea of building Harold up is that... It makes William's conquest even more impressive because actually Harold wasn't just this weak, ineffectual ruler that William pushed out of the way. He was an incredibly strong and powerful man that William defeated. Therefore, William must be all the better for it. Yeah, exactly. Though...

It's very interesting that the tapestry doesn't show quite a lot of the story and it doesn't show a bit where Harold did demonstrate great military effectiveness at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, which will... probably come on and talk about in a minute but yeah it's definitely feels like it's showing that you know this guy was someone worth beating and you ought to bear that in mind and i think that sort of plays back into that sense that the tapestry is there

to allow both sides of the story to take something from it. Going back to what I said, I don't think it means that there has to be secret messages, but I think it just means that both sides of the story need to be able to take something from what they can see. And if you were a supporter of Harold...

then you can kind of celebrate that when you look at the tapestry. You can see it in the way that you want to see it. Do you think it might have been a little bit of an effort not to upset the English too much, to give them their Jews as... having taken part in what was a really big head-on clash between two titans.

Yeah, very much so. And I think it allows that space for people to make their own interpretations. And, you know, there's some bits of it which do follow quite closely a sort of a pro-Godwin interpretation of events, the life of King Edward the Confessor.

a documentary source which seems to be very similar in certain bits so it feels like there is the sense that the kind of the English view that is allowed to come through within the tapestry but of course it is eventually in essence a depiction of the conquest of England by William the Congress. So it does celebrate that as well. But it celebrates it in a muted and slightly understated way in some ways. It's not a great victory tapestry. It's something a little different to that.

Cheering the opposition off the pitch at the end of a football match you've just won? Something like that? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Yeah, it's an interesting allusion, yeah. You mentioned the Battle of Stamford Bridge there and the action that takes place in the north of England before the conquest is one of the big...

glaring emissions from the Bayer tapestry. So why do you think that all of that was left out altogether? Yeah, okay. So to quickly summarise that, so we've got the invasion in the north just before the Battle of Hastings itself. And I'm sure listeners know, Harold Hardrada, the famous and fearsome Norwegian king, joined forces with...

King Harold of England's estranged brother Toste, and they'd invaded with an army, got to York in the north. They defeated the northern English earls Edwin and Morcar at the Battle of Fulford on 20th September. And then on 25th September, this is all 1066, King Harold of England. takes his forces up there and comprehensively defeats Hardrada and Tosti at Stamford Bridge. Hardrada and Tosti both die and their army is essentially...

decimated. There's hardly any of them get back to their ships to get away, apparently. And that's a pretty big thing. Hardrada was, you know, a notable military figure and Harold defeats him and defeats him comprehensively. but that's not shown that is not shown in the story and you could you know that's

If you want to look at it in the way of building up Harold as a great military figure, it's kind of surprising that maybe that would have been a good thing to show that he'd been able to defeat one of the great figures of the 11th century from a military perspective. Yeah, because it would almost create this three-way...

Thing in 1066 where you've got these three incredible military leaders in William, Harold of England and Harold Hardrada, and William could have portrayed himself as coming out on top of all three of those rather than just him and Harold. But the thing is, it's a very Southern-centric story, the tapestry. It takes no interest in the North whatsoever. It's all about what's happening in Southern England and across the Channel in Normandy. And that probably is a reflection of the intro.

of the patron and the people designing it. Perhaps they just didn't really care about the North at all. Perhaps it was just like not at all in their sphere of interest. But also, for me importantly, to bring Hardrada into the story, it complicates matters. It means you need to... explain

A third figure, it goes against this dualistic man against man thing that I mentioned. The key thing is, is that for the tapestry to work for William, it needs to be showing that Harold was a valid and rightful figure in himself, but that... William's claim was correct because Harold had purged it himself. And it's just like, that's the simple line that you need to take. So if you introduce...

other contenders to the throne with perhaps equally valid claims. And that slightly dilutes the power of that message for William. So you need to just keep it simple. And, you know, that sort of follows modern politics in a way. get a simple message and keep hammering at home. I'm not going to compare it to Brexit, but Brexit's a complicated thing and that was boiled down into simple messages. So maybe you can take some sort of a modern parallel from that sort of thing.

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Well, everything that's ever happened. The origin stories of the cities we inhabit or of what's in our kitchen cupboards. Why we've always been drawn to dictators. The greatest discoveries, inventions and mistakes. ever made for curious stories check out dan snow's history hit wherever you get your podcasts do you think there was also an effort not to

diminish William's achievement by pointing out that Harold had already fought this battle, was perhaps with a depleted, tired army himself. And so William, you know... caught Harold on a bad day and made the most of it because that would diminish Williams' victory at Hastings. Yeah, I do think that a bit. My co-author, Professor Michael Lewis, doesn't quite hold with that because I think you have to accept that...

Harold would have used the northern third, the northern forces, and then would probably have relied on a southern third down in Hastings. So perhaps... he would have been able to draw on separate bodies of troops and perhaps, you know, yes, there would have been a big journey up and down for Harold and his housecarls, his main troops, but perhaps they weren't, the whole force might not have been quite as tired as you might expect. But yeah, it's interesting that that line isn't pursued.

And someone else who you point out is conspicuous by their absence, but kind of looms large over the whole story without appearing there, and perhaps this plays into the idea of not complicating the matter as well, is Edgar Etheling. the man who could have been King of England when Harold became King, who was briefly proclaimed King in the wake of Hastings. And yet he...

appears nowhere in the tapestry whatsoever. He's utterly unmentioned. Can you tell us a little bit about Edgar and how he comes to be in the position he's in, and then maybe why you think he's missing from the tapestry? Yeah, so Edgar I find absolutely fascinating. And when we're working on this book...

There's so much to say about what is in the tapestry, but I just found what's missing to be really interesting. So we just talked about those battles. That's interesting that they're not in there. But the omission of Edgar I find absolutely fascinating and it plays into the story quite nicely. So Edgar, who's Edgar? So we need to go back 50 years from Hastings to 1016.

When you've had King Ethelred the Unready on the throne, famously unready, but unready means ill-advised. He was ill-advised quite often in the way that he dealt with the Danish incursions that were the subplot to his entire reign. lots of attacks from Danish forces. And in 1013, the Danish king Svein and his son Knut came over, and they did very well, and Ethelred had to flee, and then he comes back.

then Vane dies in 1014, Ethelred dies in 1016, and Ethelred's son, Edmund Ironside, and Canute are left to fight it out. They have a battle. Canute basically wins, but then Canute and Edmund Ironside agree to... share the rule of England, or so it seems, something like that. But then...

Edmund Ironside dies soon after this agreement is made, and Canute rules England solely for a couple of decades, and then his sons rule for a few more years, and then eventually Edward the Confessor takes the throne. the Confessor, was the son of Ethelred the Unready. And after all this happened in 1016, he fled to Normandy, where his mother had family. His mother was part of the Norman Ducal family. Ironside had a son as well.

Edward, who fled east, he went to the royal court of Hungary eventually. And he had a son there called Edgar, Edgar Etheling. They basically lived in Hungary until the 1050s. And Edward the Confessor, he married, he married Edith, as we talked about, but he did not have a child. He didn't have an heir. So after a time...

they realised that the closest person in blood lineage to Edward the Confessor, who could take on the line, was in Hungary. So they sent out a party at some point in the 1050s to go and basically tell... Edward and Edgar to come home, to come back to England and meet Edward the Confessor. And they duly did. Edward sadly died almost immediately after he got back to English shores, but Edgar survived. He was a boy.

only five or so, but after a time he was given the title Etheling or Froneworthy by Edward the Confessor. So I think that by the 1060s you can fairly reasonably say that Edward and probably the... written that the body of noble counsellors to the English king had set their stall out that Edgar was going to be the acknowledged successor to Edward the Confessor.

And Tom Licence has written an interesting biography recently of Edward the Confessor, and he makes the point that the blood lineage was important, and that most kings did have the royal blood in them going back over the last few centuries. So it's an obvious point, but it's an important point. So this guy Edgar, in the 1060s, was there as a clear and obvious successor, but he was a boy. He was young.

And none of this is shown in the tapestry. And as you said, after the Battle of Hastings, and there's nothing to suggest that Edgar was actually at the battle, we don't know, but he might have been, he would have been quite young. Some people did come out, the Bishop of London and various people did come out.

to say that Edgar should take over, should be the king. Support of him very quickly dissipated when William showed that he was basically militarily omnipotent by that point. But there was this other player in the story, and this other... rightful claimant to the throne, you could say, if you're looking at it from a royal lineage perspective, who's not shown at all. And there's a very obvious reason for that. It's not really in the interests of...

William and whoever's designing the tapestry to support William's claim, to introduce this idea that there is actually a true rightful claimant. That very much goes against this idea of a William coming in. defeating a perjurer defeating someone who's gone against his own word and having that rightful claim if there is to the side someone who's hasn't perjured himself and

is the closest blood relative to the king. So you can see why he's not included. But it's got repercussions for our understanding of the conquest, I think, which I'm sure we'll come to in a second. So do you think... Maybe Harold Hardrada and Edgar Etheling are both missing because there's no easy way to debase their claim. So Harold has this charge of perjury laid against him, which allows William to say, this is the reason why...

I'm the rightful king and, you know, he purged himself before God. But there's nothing like that that he can say about Harold Hardrada and Edgar Etheling to immediately undermine their claim. So you'd have to deal with it in a more direct kind of way. which would be perhaps uncomfortable or long-winded, maybe even if you're doing it in pictorial form. So it's easier just to forget that they ever existed and deal with Harold.

Exactly. And to make it very much that William's defeating one man who's, by his own actions, has basically made himself fallible. And just on Hardrada, there is a really interesting new bit of research that's come up that's Hardrada.

could potentially have been related to Edgar Eflin by marriage, his uncle by marriage, because of what was going on in the Hungarian royal court. So there is even an idea that he might have been coming over in support of Edgar, which would further have complicated things and made it even less... fruitful for Harderada to be included in the tapestry because that would really

complicate matters and make it difficult to explain what's going on. But yeah, so I think the basic thing is the tapestry is trying to keep it as simple as it can and make it this dual head-to-head clash between these two guys. And I guess the one thing that Edgar's story has over Hardrada's as well is that it continues after Hastings. So Hardrada is at least dead before you get to Hastings and isn't an issue, but Edgar is still around.

And his career continues long after Hastings and is interspersed with various moments of rebellion. So he is a more difficult figure to deal with than Harold, maybe. Yeah, Edgar's life is fascinating. Someone needs to write a full good biography of him. Maybe you, Matt. Do you know what I'd love to? He's so fascinating. And for a figure to be sat there, lined up to be king in the midst of all of this going on, and then he has...

this weird relationship, I think, with William the Conqueror where he keeps rebelling and William sort of keeps patting him on the top of the head and saying, never mind, carry on. It's just such an odd, you know, it feels like anybody else would have been executed by William the Conqueror the first time. but Edgar seems to get away with it endlessly.

It's weird, isn't it? That needs further investigation. So as he said, yeah, he initially acknowledged as a king by some people, and that goes away quickly. But then he gets involved in rebellions, rebellions which lead to the harrying of the north, essentially. Then he goes away to the Scottish court. for a bit and he's surprisingly allowed to return to Williams Court in the 1070s he makes friends with Robert Curtos

He gets involved in all sorts of Anglo-Scottish politics and intrigues and to-ing and fro-ing over there. He goes on crusade at the end of the 11th century. He seems to be fighting with Kurtos again in 1106 at the Battle of Tonshbray.

We don't know when he dies exactly, but he seems to have lived a very long life and perhaps might have been alive into the 1120s, maybe even longer. So he had quite a life and he was involved in a lot of stuff. And it's very surprising that he managed to live this charmed life. Maybe William just felt that he couldn't, with legitimacy, get rid of him without causing a massive stink. And maybe he just felt it was better to push him gently aside, which is...

What the tapestry does doesn't mention him, pushes him to one side, so you don't need to think about him. But that's the really interesting thing about what the tapestry does, I think, is that basically, because it's so good, because it's so powerful... because its images speak to us still. Even in 2D format, when we have all the amazing stuff that we have today to visualise stuff, the tapestry's images still speak to us. And you can see...

Emotion, you can see they have power. There's one scene where there's a woman leading away her son from a burning building just before the Battle of Hastings. And you can look at that and you think it's got power, it's got emotional impact. and it still speaks to us. And so the tapestry itself kind of dominates our understanding of the Battle of Hastings. We've got all these other great sources, William of Poitiers, William of Jumier, Edmer, they're great.

but you have to read them. They're in Latin. They're a bit difficult, clearly. The tapestry, you just look at it and you can take something from it, which is why it still sort of dominates what we see, what we understand. And because it dominates what we see and understand...

its message has carried through. And I think most people tend to see the Battle of Hastings and Normal Conquest as a clash between Harold and William. And it was, to an extent. But other things happen. I think most people probably know about hard drive. and what went on in the north but I think Edgar is very much under the radar and the fact that there was this other guy is completely overlooked and the biotapestry has done its job over almost a millennia now of effectively...

writing Edgar out of the story. Because we look at the tapestry and we think that is the best source for the Norman Conquest. And so it sounds like ultimately the Bayer tapestry worked. If we think it was probably... a piece of propaganda prepared to explain the reasoning for the Norman conquest of England and to paint a very certain specific picture of the flow of events.

as well as missing out some of the key things it didn't really want us to think about. As you say, given that it dominates our thoughts and understandings and imagery of the Battle of Hastings, it sounds like it's something that even a thousand years later has worked and is still working.

Yeah, absolutely. So if we look back and say, OK, so Odo of Baer had this made to big himself up a bit, but also clearly to tell a story which would have appealed to William and validated William's claim to the throne and Odo would have wanted to make. William feel good about his role and the tapestry to be a right reflection of the way that he saw the conquest going then

The tapestry has done exactly that. It's like, you know, we have this sense that William's claim was valid because Harold had perjured himself, and that's kind of the Norman view of events, but the tapestry doesn't... fight against that. It allows a bit of space for interpretation, but it doesn't fight against that.

it does not introduce any elements of complexity into the story. And that's what we miss. And so the tapestry has, yeah, it's absolutely done its job. It's still doing its job. Unless people pick up Michael Lewis and my book and we get a bit of a kickback for Edgar. which of course I thoroughly recommend. And is there any likelihood of it still coming over to England? Do we know if it will?

Well, I mean, that's very interesting. So if you look at the Bayer Museum website, they sort of talk about the museum being redeveloped and reopened in 2025, 2026. So that does present a bit of a window for something to happen. Lots of complexities, lots of issues, not least the fragility of the tapestry. It is almost a thousand years old. and it's been through quite a lot, so it's not in pristine nick. So there's a question mark over there as to whether it can travel, and that's still...

very much being discussed I believe. I haven't spoken to the curator for a bit of the museum but I think it's still a conversation that's going on and I think there is a window of opportunity for it to come over.

It's a question of whether that is deemed to be in the best interest of the tapestry. But if it did come over, then they would be able to do lots of conservation work on it. If it went to the British Museum, for instance, they have facilities for doing that sort of thing. Lots of research. I'm looking at the...

back of the tapestry no doubt would be an interesting thing there's been some work done on that but to review it from the rear would be useful and so we would be able to learn a lot more about it and If it was displayed in Britain at some point in the next few years, then it would be undoubtedly the biggest historical blockbuster exhibition for decades, generations probably, bigger than the Tutankhamun one, I would imagine.

really revitalise interest in medieval history in the Norman Conquest and maybe even in Edgar. Absolutely. It would seem like a fantastic opportunity if it does make its way over here. But then I feel like at a thousand years old, it's so venerable that perhaps we should make the effort to go and see it if it's not safe for it to travel. I mean, everyone should go to Bayer. It's a beautiful place to visit and you can see some of the sites that are associated. You can also go to Reading.

Reading has a replica of the tapestry, which is worth looking at as well. So if you can't make it as far as Bayou, then Reading is a good second bet. But yeah, if you're allowed to travel and you feel so inclined, then go to Bayou. It's a beautiful place to look at. Thank you so much, Dave, for sharing those insights with us. If you'd like to learn more about the Bayer Tapestry, do grab a copy of Dave and Michael's book.

the story of the Bayer tapestry unravelling the Norman conquest. And if you'd like to know a little bit more about the Battle of Hastings itself, there's a brilliant explainer episode of Dan Snow's history hit that will sate your thirst for more knowledge of the battle. You can join Dr. Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode of Gone Medieval. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

But I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit. Make money predicting football. Now you can. Now in Texas with Calci. Calci is the only platform that lets you legally trade on real world events in all 50 states from football to Bitcoin, the Oscars, and even politics. If it matters, you can trade on it.

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