6 HOURS TIME FRAME

The Anglo-Saxons

You may have run across these people in passing reference in a World History course, but there are facets you need to understand context as you read the texts:

1. History (the only source I’m referencing here is

Cheney, C. R., ed. Handbook of Dates for Students of English

History. London, UK: Offices of the Royal Historical Society,

1978. My particular area of study is in this.)

2. Culture and Language

History

What are now called the British Isles were settled, according to the earliest written (in an alphabet called Ogham) and archaeological records, by the Celts, a Neolithic culture whose archaeological marker is recognized as a particular type of stone-chipped flint axe.

Historically, the Roman Empire invaded and conquered the island known as Britannia, starting in 45 C. E., after Julius Caesar saw it in 44 B. C. E, as he finished the Gallic War and was called back to Rome before he could cross the body of water to get to the land he saw in the distance.

The Romans conquered as far north as the narrowest point of the island, a 72-mile stretch that they fortified by building a wall and fortresses and garrisons across the breadth of the island. This, of course, is Hadrian’s Wall.

As the Roman Empire was falling to the invading Germanic armies, the Empire contracted. Britannia, being on the outermost edge of the Empire, was abandoned by the Romans in, traditionally, 410 C. E.

This left a power disparity and gap that proved the downfall of the southern, Romanized Celtic civilization. They had a booming economy, paved streets (Lt. strata), and, suddenly, no protection from their barbarian cousins in the North. To protect themselves, the Celtic rulers hired mercenaries from the continental region of what is now Frisiand and Denmark. These mercenaries were warriors from the Angle, Saxon, and Jute tribes.

This was a bad move.

The three armies not only brought their weapons, they brought their families, invading the unfortified island from the south and the east.

By 450 C. E., the Celts had been pushed to the perimeters of their former lands – what is now Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, and, on the continent, Bretagne (the modern French province of Brittany). The conquest was so absolute that even the Celtic languages weren’t spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The only words we have in modern English from this era that are Celtic in origin are “tor” (hill) and “avon” (river, so the River Avon is actually the River River).

The Anglo-Saxons had multiple kingdoms in what is now England at any given time – Kent, Deira, Bernicia, Northumbria, Mercia, Lindsey, East Anglia, South Saxons, East Saxons, and West Saxons. There was not one particular ruler over everyone, and, in the course of almost 300 years, various kingdoms waxed and waned in their significance.

It was the invasion of the Isle by the Norse Vikings (“vik” is the Old Norse word for “bay” – a viking was one who was in a stable, seafaring longship shallow enough to pass through a bay in to a river system) in the early 8th century, that led to the unification of England.

The Vikings, like the earlier Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, were moved to settle in to this island. They came from Norway, and they pushed in to the island from the northeast (what is now Yorkshire). They were fierce enough fighters that the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fell, and by 871 C. E., only the young king of the West Saxons, Alfred, was left, and he was hiding in a swamp, burning his breakfast (if you talk to a Brit who went to public school, the thing they always know is “the bloke who burned the bannocks and became king”).

Alfred was the 5th son of the King of the West Saxons and never was intended to inherit the throne. But his father and four older brothers all died fighting the Vikings. It turns out he was a very smart strategist. He fought back the Vikings to the point that he forced them in to the Treaty of Wedmore, establishing the Danelaw (the Viking kingdom, marked on maps as an arching line from the NE corner of Wales to north of London) and England. Alfred is the first King of England.

That era of English history ended with William the Conqueror’s successful invasion in 1066 C. E., when his army defeated King Harold’s at the Battle of Hastings on Saturday 14 October 1066.

Culture and Language

Until Christian missionaries arrived on the island, the Anglo-Saxons were culturally fairly close to the Scandinavian Norse; discussing culture requires and understanding of social structures, religion, and language.

This is the World Tree, Yggdrasil. It is how the universe is organized, according to the religion of the Anglo-Saxons; it is the same religion as that of the Norse, although the language is somewhat different. This religion, as with most cultures, shapes and underlies the culture of the Anglo-Saxons, so being aware of it will help you understand the texts. Even after the Christian missionaries came and converted various kings (the Synod of Whitby, 527 C. E., established Roman Catholicism as the official version of Christianity, the earlier religion remained and influenced the culture.

So, a brief synopsis of pre-Christian Scandinavian religion (really brief; if you know Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, you’ve been exposed to these ideas in the culture of the Rohaninn.):

Humans live in Midgard (literally, Middle-Yard or Middle-Earth); it became habitable after a war between Jotuns (Giants) of Fire and Ice, who battled in to a stalemate and made the world habitable by attaining temperate balance between extremes.

The gods of the Vanir (Odin the All-Father, his wife Freyja, sons Thor and Loki and Baldir [among others]) live in Asgard. They actively engage in the affairs of men pretty much for their own entertainment and to prepare for Ragnarok, the Final Battle between the Giants and the Gods, which the gods will lose, ending life in the world. Loki, the Trickster, and his children (one of which is the wolf Fenrir) will bring about this battle.

So, humans exist during this pause in warfare; when a person dies, they go to the afterlife, either as fallen warriors or as the damned. If you die in battle, you go to Valhalla (Hall of the Fallen) and party until you’re called up to die during Ragnarok at the side of the gods. If you die in any other way, you go to Hel, where you don’t have the chance to die gloriously in battle. The goddess Hela is in charge of Hel, and it’s cold.

Culturally, this means that the Anglo-Saxons valued the virtues (characteristics) of a warrior. The worst thing you could do was behave dishonorably or ignobly. You were supposed to be courageous, a fighter, and willing to die for your hlaford (loaf-giver; this becomes lord, later). If you were in a battle, you stayed and fought and either won or died. Anything else was damnable behavior.

Think about all the ways this would influence what you’re reading, examples of the variety of texts. How does this cultural underpinning impact the ideas presented?

Language

When you look at the PDF of Alfred’s Preface, you will see Old English (the language of the Anglo-Saxons) in its Roman alphabet. Prior to trade with the continent and the arrival of the missionaries, the alphabet was runic, referred to as the Elder Futhark (see https://www.vikingrune.com/2008/11/elder-futhark-runes/ if you are curious; the site has some good information and lots of silliness masquerading as good information, but the alphabet is accurate in its letters and in their equivalents). Once the Roman alphabet became the norm, the Anglo-Saxons modified it for sounds that Latin didn’t have (see https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/the-old-english-alphabet-used-to-have-more-than-26-letters/ ). This is one of the reasons that English spelling and pronunciation relationships are so problematic; the French that came in with the Normans took the sounds heard and transcribed them in to the French alphabet, but the French had no way to represent some of the sounds.

Regarding the language itself, it was Germanic. What we speak now is, structurally, strongly structured by later influences that simplified its structure.

Old English was an inflected language; this means that it had case endings for every grammatical function of its nouns and their accompanying adjectives and qualifiers (nominative, genitive, dative, etc.). So, word order was not an issue. No one would mistake the subject of a sentence for the object, simply because case endings, not word order, marked grammatical function.

Verbs were, except for one particular class of verbs, internally changed for tense (the remainders in MnE [Modern English] are the “irregular” verbs – ring, rang, rung, etc.).

English was a compounding language in its structure, like modern Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic (all of which are linguistic cousins of Old English). So, a noun was often a compound of its characteristics – the hlaford earlier is an example of a compound noun; it is the person himself, but it is also a sign of what was valuable about the person (here, it shows that a lord provided for his thanes [warriors]).

Thus, when translating Old English in to Modern English, the shifts are not just linguistic; they are cultural, too. But that’s the subject of the next lecture.