A hairstyle change could cost a medieval man his ethnic identity

Evidence

Early in the eleventh century, an otherwise unknown Anglo-Saxon named Edward took to cutting his hair in the Norman fashion. He shaved the back half of his head and let dirty, long hair cover his face. His brother, thoroughly disgusted with Edward’s new hairstyle, wrote him an angry letter, which has been preserved, “You despise your race and your ancestors,” he seethed, “since in insult to them you dress [your hair] in Danish fashion with bared neck and blinded eyes… . He will be accursed who follows heathen practices in life and dishonours his own race.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 88

Categorization

• CANDY: A great conversation piece: an 11th-century Anglo-Saxon man disowned by his brother purely over a Norman-style haircut.
• XREF: Echoes the dress-race-politics nexus also explored in the reader’s essay on ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — hair and clothing as identity markers.