The Embroidery of Terror

 

Norman soldiers, depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry

A most interesting take on the Bayeux Tapestry as it arrives in the UK for the first time in 950 years, in The Observer New Review, 30/08/2026. The article claims that experts now realise that it should be seen as a testament to terror and acknowledge that the women who created it, did so in order to survive. Interestingly, I am writing on September 3rd, the anniversary of the beginning of WW2.

The Normans landing in Pevensey.

The band of Norman raiders who landed on the Kent marshes near Romney, in October 1066, was intent on avenging the town’s brutal treatment of French sailors a month earlier. The French sailors had been blown off course by fierce winds and driven on to the Romney coast, miles from the main invading forces of William the Conqueror at Pevensey. What followed that October 1066 invasion was barbaric; Anglo-Saxon men, women and children were slaughtered by the Normans; limbs were severed, children beheaded. Some of the women who fled for their lives, found sanctuary in the convents of East London, living there with other refugees fleeing the violence. Perhaps in Canterbury, or East London, in several safe nunneries, many of these women resumed their former industrious lives as the country’s most talented weavers and embroiderers, making garments and creating artistic and ceremonial works for the clergy and the new regime.

Death of Harold.

Within five or six years of the invasion, the Normans had conquered 95% of Anglo-Saxon land and almost entirely removed the Anglo-Saxon nobility from power. The displaced women, often high-born and safe enough in their convents, could only continue their earlier lives, using their accomplished sewing skills and the exquisite Bayeux Tapestry was the eventual result. Later ages have thought of the Tapestry, in all its nearly 70 metres in length, as a unique victory banner, but if considered in the context of the contemporary violent times, it is a document of trauma and survival. Four thousand Anglo-Saxons are estimated to have died in the Battle of Hastings and in the following decade of Norman occupation, a policy of starvation and destruction known as the Harrying of The North, [which was particularly rebellious], was pursued by the victors relentlessly, resulting in at least 100,000 deaths, a huge proportion of the population.

Harold wounded on the battlefield

According to London University mediaeval art specialist, Professor Janina Ramirez, the Norman occupation amounted to genocide. The Normans set out to annihilate Anglo-Saxon society, culture and population. After the 1066 initial flight of women to convents, the escape continued as the numbers of women without husbands increased and they sought sanctuary in religious communities to avoid violence and forced marriage to Norman overlords with the consequent loss of home and land. Few women are depicted in the pictorial narrative but one sections shows an unknown woman fleeing with her child from her home which is being set on fire by invading Norman soldiers. This scene in particular, catches the fear of war and reminds any viewer of the Tapestry that women and children were its helpless victims.

Battle scene.

The tapestry was intended to last; it is made from high-quality linen with the pictorial storyline outlined through superb quality wool threaded through the linen fibres. Needlework would have been carried out in broad daylight outside, with a linen panel stretched on a frame ready for the incredibly time-consuming and labour-intensive process of ‘pricking and pouncing’ on the cloth before perforating the pattern on the cloth and then marking the holes with powder before stitching using bone needles.  From the back of the Tapestry, one can see where the different embroiderers’ hands met and the direction changed. However, it seems a miracle that it has survived for so many centuries. It could have been stolen, lost or degraded by natural decline such as fading or being eaten by moths. During WW2, the Tapestry was moved to Paris for safety but almost became Nazi loot when Himmler pursued it for his own castle. A decoded message via Bletchley Park, warning that it was about to be removed from the Louvre, alerted the French Resistance in time for its urgent removal to a secret location elsewhere in France where it stayed for the duration of WW2.      

The Bayeux Tapestry on view in France.
This photo gives some idea of the size of the Tapestry.

Dialogue in Harold's encampment.

There is a strong research opinion that the Tapestry was probably commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux [who is pictured on the Tapestry] for the Romanesque cathedral there but little proof. It was recorded in Church chronicles as present in Bayeux at the end of the fifteenth century but there are gaps in its history.  A letter sent by the powerful Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury to the anonymous ‘Bishop G’ in the late 1070s refers to the women who, “fled to a monastery not for love of the religious life but out of fear of the French, “while the monk and chronicler, Orderic Vitalis, also wrote of Anglo-Saxons seeking protection within convent walls.

Some academic researchers who believe that it was not Odo who commissioned the Tapestry but that it may well have been by a powerful English woman, Edith of Wessex, sister of the aristocratic Harold 

Bishop  Odo urging on the Norman troops.

Godwinson, and widow of Edward the Confessor, as a grand gesture of diplomacy. Bishop Odo however, had impeccable connections to be the prime contender; he was half-brother to William the Conqueror and as the Earl of Kent, would undoubtedly have known of the skills of the Kentish embroiderers through his involvement in the building of England’s first Norman church in the familiar Kentish marsh area of Romney. It is also possible that the Tapestry could  well have been made in Canterbury by nuns there, though Barking Abbey in East London also has strong claims for authorship. Barking Abbey was an extremely high-status site strongly connected to both Church and State and  perfectly placed for locally sourcing the materials needed for the compilation of the important banner.

In Bayeux, ongoing repairs to the precious tapestry.
In England, the Bayeux Tapestry is displayed lying down.

There are several inconsistencies between what we know about the Bayeux Tapestry and the facts

1.It is not a tapestry but rather an embroidered wall hanging.

2.It was not made in Bayeux.

3.It was not Harold with the arrow in his eye, as depicted in the embroidery; he is the man nearby, lying wounded on the ground as he dies. The man with the arrow was probably a random, though unfortunate, wounded soldier serving in the narration, as a representative of the countless wounded in the story but misidentified as Harold.

4. The Bayeux Tapestry which could have been equally called the Barking Embroidery or the Canterbury Mural, shows the horrors of war and enemy occupation but, importantly and unusually, the story is told by the vanquished, not the victors. The victors must have considered the Bayeux Tapestry as a chronicle of power and glory but the women, the embroiderers, were sewing for their lives.

5. The Bayeux Tapestry resides in France, in Normandy, but its narrative lies chiefly in Kent with its storied roots in Normandy. Thus, the current exhibition at the British Museum, is an Anglo-French collaboration, strongly led by President Macron, telling an Anglo-French hybrid story which covers the past 1000 years.

Preparing for Anglo-Saxon/Norman dialogue.

  

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