The movements of sea tides around the coast of Britain form perhaps the most significant and wide-reaching example of the mutable, permeable edges produced by the interaction of land and water. Yet no sustained attention has been paid to the representation of tides and tidal geography in literary texts. This chapter focuses specifically on the depiction of tidal sites in a range of early medieval texts from Britain, asking questions about how these shifting, dynamic, elusive spaces are written and understood. Rather than a comprehensive or exhaustive study, this short discussion seeks to offer a starting-point and to open up possibilities for further exploration. It selects a deliberately broad range of texts for analysis, from late Anglo-Saxon literature to the twelfth century, and also deliberately includes material which reflects both English perceptions of Britain’s tidal geography as well as the experiences of others within the island (in the case of this discussion, Welsh). The chapter suggests some possible approaches to the selected material, traces stylistic parallels and conventions across the texts, and interrogates the potential cultural, ideological, and political messages which these representations of tidal spaces might carry.

The symbolic value of sea tides as a marker of the edges of human power and authority is a familiar element of our shared cultural vocabulary. The story of King Cnut vainly commanding the sea has entered oral tradition and popular memory, though the story told by Henry of Huntingdon in the twelfth century differs from many modern versions in its emphasis on the king’s piety and his recognition of the limits of government.

...quod cum in maximo uigore floreret imperii, sedile suum in littore maris cum ascenderet statui iussit. Dixit autem mari ascendenti, ‘Tu mee dicionis es, et terra in qua sedeo mea est, nec fuit qui inpune meo resisteret imperio. Impero igitur tibi ne in terram meam ascendas, nec uestes uel membra dominatoris tui madefacere presumas’. Mare uero de more conscendens, pedes regis et crura sine reuerentia madefecit. Rex igitur resiliens ait, ‘Sciant omnes habitants orbem, uanam et friuolam regum esse potentiam, nec regis quempiam nomine dignum, preter eaum cuius nutui celum, terra, mare, legibus obedient eternis.’