Aelfgyva : The Mysterious Lady of the Bayeux Tapestry (*)

The Bayeux Tapestry, long recognized as a significant legacy of the Middle Ages, is a treasure not alone for its intrinsic artistic merit but also as a historical source of major importance. A near contemporary pictorial narrative of the background to and the course of the Norman Conquest from 1064 to the triumph of Duke William at Hastings, its many panels have been meticulously examined by generations of scholars, each of its hundreds of figures, decorative embellishments and fifty-seven terse Latin inscriptions closely scrutinized for whatever information they might yield regarding that momentous event (1). Yet, in spite of the intense study devoted to the Tapestry, uncertainties remain concerning both its place of origin and the tale woven into it (2). One of the most intriguing of these puzzles centers upon a scene in that initial segment of the Tapestry treating with Earl Harold Godwinson's famed and controversial visit to the court of the