Borderlands in Medieval Britain and Ireland

by

Lindy Brady

• LAST MODIFIED: 20 March 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0211

Introduction

Borderlands in medieval Britain and Ireland took many forms. Borders were sometimes physical boundaries within the landscape, whether natural features such as rivers or mountains, or man-made barriers such as Hadrian’s Wall or Offa’s Dyke. Yet most modern studies of medieval borderlands have argued for nuanced understanding of these regions as frontier zones within which a range of interactions took place rather than as strict dividing lines between different religious, political, linguistic, or ethnic groups. However, studies of medieval borderlands have largely still been informed by modern national perspectives. While some studies in both Britain and Ireland have focused on frontiers between regions or kingdoms, the vast majority have focused on ethnic, linguistic, and political frontiers. One consequence of this is that more studies of medieval borderlands have been produced for Britain than for Ireland (due to the focus on England’s frontiers with Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall); another is that studies of border regions in Ireland have largely focused on frontier zones between the island’s Gaelic Irish and English inhabitants after the Anglo-Norman incursion. This bibliography begins with broad surveys of borderlands in Britain and Ireland before turning to studies with a substantial focus on theorizing medieval borderlands and frontiers generally. The bibliography then considers Britain and Ireland as frontiers of the Roman Empire before turning to studies which focus on physical boundaries on the landscape. Britain’s most frequently-studied frontier zones—regional English borderlands, the Welsh borderlands, the Scottish borderlands, Cornwall, and the Danelaw—are then discussed before turning to frontiers in Ireland and the insular region’s maritime borderlands of the Irish and North Seas and with Normandy. A thematically unifying feature running throughout many studies of borderlands in medieval Britain and Ireland has been a focus on micro-details and on the landscape. The items cited in this article include many placename studies that trace local interactions between peoples, as well as studies discussing features of the local landscape, such as examinations of Old English landscape descriptions embedded within the boundary clauses of Latin charters. Maritime regions as frontier zones have also been a fruitful topic of recent scholarly discussion, featured here in studies on the Irish Sea and North Sea regions. Boundaries and borderlands could be real or imagined, and the final section explores representations of frontiers within medieval literature. The association between outlawry and the forest and the ethnic and supernatural borders found in medieval romance texts comprise this bibliography’s final examples of the many ways in which borderlands informed the history and culture of early medieval Britain and Ireland.

Surveys of Borderlands in Britain and Ireland

The studies in this section take a broad perspective on borderlands and frontier zones in the region. Items here address borderlands in medieval Britain and Ireland from a historical and comparative perspective, while those in the Borderland Theory section tackle conceptual questions surrounding borderland regions and frontier zones more broadly. Bartlett and MacKay 1989 surveys frontier zones across medieval Europe, and Byrne and Flood 2019 and Muldoon 2009 contain studies of frontier zones in the North Atlantic region. The borderland regions of Britain and Ireland are discussed together by Davies 1989, Davies 1995, Ellis 1999, and Jankulak and Wooding 2007. Borderland zones within Britain are the focus of Chadwick 1963, Higham 2007, and Guy, et al. 2022.

• Bartlett, Robert, and Angus MacKay, eds. Medieval Frontier Societies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

  A foundational volume in medieval frontier studies. Essays take a comparative approach to frontier zones and borderlands throughout medieval Europe, and the volume as a whole elucidates the complexities of political, military, and cultural interactions within frontier zones, which were often the sites of hybrid societies and cultural productions.

• Byrne, Aisling, and Victoria Flood, eds. Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2019.

  A wide-ranging volume with chapters that “cross boundaries” to produce cross-cultural studies, primarily literary in nature, elucidating connections between Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and the wider medieval world.

• Chadwick, Nora K., ed. Celt and Saxon: Studies in the Early British Border. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1963.

  A classic collection of individual studies on contact and conflict between Celtic-speaking peoples and Anglo-Saxons in the borderland regions of early medieval Britain, with some chapters focused on geographical borderlands and others on in-depth textual studies.

• Davies, Rees. “Frontier Arrangements in Fragmented Societies: Ireland and Wales.” In Medieval Frontier Societies. Edited by Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay, 77–100. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

  Surveys Ireland and Wales as “frontier zones” of Europe from the eleventh century onward. Discusses military and political conflict within Ireland and Wales in light of Anglo-Norman incursions into these regions.

• Davies, R. R. “Presidential Address: The Peoples of Britain and Ireland 1100–1400 II: Names, Boundaries and Regnal Solidarities.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5 (1995): 1–20.

  DOI: 10.1017/S0080440100016157

  A survey of the names used to refer to groups of peoples and the regions they inhabited in medieval Britain and Ireland, with discussion of relationships to royal authority and geographical definition of territories.

• Ellis, Steven G. “The English State and Its Frontiers in the British Isles, 1300–1600.” In Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700. Edited by Daniel Power and Naomi Standen, 153–181. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

  Surveys the frontier zones of the English state during the late medieval to early modern periods and the administrative challenges these regions posed. Argues that the frontier experience was similar throughout the British Isles in the period prior to state formation.

• Guy, Ben, Howard Williams, and Liam Delaney, eds. Special Issue: Borders in Early Medieval Britain. Offa’s Dyke Journal 4 (2022).

  A special issue focusing on borders and frontier zones in early medieval Britain. Articles are interdisciplinary, including legal, numismatic, placename, and archaeological evidence. The Anglo-Welsh border receives the bulk of attention, though Scotland and Cornwall are also represented.

• Higham, N. J., ed. Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2007.

  An interdisciplinary collection that explores contact between Britons and Anglo-Saxons in early Anglo-Saxon England, drawing together a wide range of essays encompassing archaeological, textual, historical, legal, and linguistic approaches.

• Jankulak, Karen, and Jonathan M. Wooding, eds. Ireland and Wales in the Middle Ages. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007.

  An important interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring connections and points of comparison between Ireland and Wales in the (primarily earlier) Middle Ages.

• Muldoon, James, ed. The North Atlantic Frontier of Medieval Europe: Vikings and Celts. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.

  Studies in the North Atlantic region as maritime frontier and zone of expansion, encompassing the Viking age, conflict between England and Celtic-speaking regions, and Norman incursions into Wales and Ireland.