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offences are found being presented through the fifteenth-century ward courts. However the ward courts did not simply wither away, as you might expect given this loss of business; rather householders developed a new language of neighbourliness and good citizenship, which was increasingly focused on the regulation of public nuisance. 108 Sarah Rees Jones Table 5.2 Offences presented before the London ward courts, 1421–3. WARDS and parishes Environ mental nuisances Social mis conduct COLMANSTREET BASSISHAW CRIPPLEGATE WITHOUT PORTSOKEN BISHOPSGATE All Hallows St
of birth, official citizenship, geography, or bloodline – this, too, is why those in America who identified as Norwegian and Swedish could claim Leif Eiriksson, who settled in Greenland, and whose parents were born in Norway and Iceland, as their Norse ancestor, with few qualms. Mayor Harrison understood the power and malleability of identity performance, and exemplified the Chicagoan embrace of verbal bluster, re-enactment, spectacle, and transformative mythmaking. So when the ship Viking sailed into Chicago, as the Tribune records, of course Mayor Harrison
Sam] said, ‘is Leif the Lucky . He is the first settler of the United States. He is its first citizen. He acquired his citizenship by being the first man to cross the churning waves of the Atlantic Ocean and to discover this continent.… And the child over there is Snorri Þorfinnsson . He is the first “indigenous” citizen of the United States. Leif the Lucky and Snorri Þorfinnsson are my forefathers.’ 47 Uncle Sam then lists several more of his illustrious ancestors, including William the Conqueror and Cnut (Canute) the Great, concluding that he – that is, the
. 55 Jean-Philippe Laurenceau et al., ‘Intimacy as an interpersonal process: current status and future directions’, in Debra J. Mashek and Arthur Aron (eds), Handbook of closeness and intimacy (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), pp. 61–78, at 62. 56 Ken Plummer, Intimate citizenship: private decisions and public dialogues (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press
gestures outwards.’14 Unlike the journey of the Hugin, then, Refugee Tales used medieval culture as a resource that might expand, rather than limit, the possibilities of the present. Like Drift, Refugee Tales demonstrates how engagement with medieval structures might radically disrupt modern habits and assumptions. In his theorisation of the migrant, Thomas Nail explores how the migrant subverts many of the assumptions of modern citizenship. As he writes, ‘Place-bound membership in a society is assumed as primary; secondary is the movement back and forth between social