Anglo-Saxons (or
Anglo-Saxon) is the term usually used to describe the invading
Germanic tribes in the south and east of
Great Britain from the early 5th century AD, and their creation of the English nation, to the
Norman conquest of 1066. The
Benedictine monk,
Bede, identified them as the descendants of three
Germanic tribes:
- The Angles, who may have come from Angeln, and Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain, leaving their former land empty. The name 'England' or 'Aenglaland' originates from this tribe.
Their language (
Old English) derives from "
Ingvaeonic"
West Germanic dialects and transforms into
Middle English from the 11th century. Old English was divided into four main dialects:
West Saxon,
Mercian,
Northumbrian and
Kentish.
Place names seem to show that smaller numbers of some other Germanic tribes came over:
Frisians at
Fresham,
Freston, and
Friston;
Flemings at
Flempton and
Flimby;
Swabians at
Swaffham; perhaps
Franks at
Frankton and
Frankley.
In modern usage,
Anglo-Saxon can be used in various contexts to mean people predominantly descended from the
English ethnic group, in
England as well as other
Anglophone countries. This usage is restricted to certain contexts in Anglophone cultures, but this term and its direct translations are commonly used in other languages.
Etymology
The term "Anglo-Saxon" is from writings going back to the time of King
Alfred the Great, who seems to have frequently used the title
rex Anglorum Saxonum or
rex Angul-Saxonum (king of the English
Saxons).
The Old English terms
ænglisc and
Angelcynn ("Angle-kin",
gens Anglorum) when they are first attested had already lost their original sense of referring to the Angles to the exclusion of the Saxons, and in their earliest recorded sense refers to the nation of Germanic peoples who settled
England in and after the 5th century.
The indigenous British people, who wrote in both Latin and Welsh, referred to these invaders as
Saxones or
Saeson - the latter is still used today in the Welsh word for 'English' people.
The term
Angli Saxones seems to have first been used in continental writing nearly a century before Alfred's time by
Paul the Deacon, historian of the
Lombards, probably to distinguish the
English Saxons from the
continental Saxons.
There is a theory that the name of the Angles came from the Germanic and
Indo-European root ang- = "narrow", i.e. "the people who live by the Narrow Water (i.e. the
Schlei inlet)".
Anglo-Saxon history
The history of Anglo-Saxon England broadly covers early medieval England from the end of Roman rule and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Conquest by the
Normans in 1066.
Origins (AD 400–600)
Migration of
Germanic peoples to Britain from what is now northern Germany and southern
Scandinavia is attested from the 5th century (e.g.
Undley bracteate). Based on Bede's
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, the intruding population is traditionally divided into Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, but their composition was likely less clear-cut and may also have included
Frisians and
Franks. holds the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which contains text that may be the first recorded indications of the movement of these
Germanic Tribes to Britain.
Heptarchy (600–800)
Main article: The Heptarchy
The main Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms circa A.D. 600
of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms began around 600 and was essentially complete by the mid 8th century. Throughout the 7th and 8th centuries, power fluctuated between the larger kingdoms. Bede records
Aethelbert of Kent as being dominant at the close of the 6th century, but power seems to have shifted northwards to the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria.
Aethelbert and some of the later kings of the other kingdoms were recognised by their fellow kings as
Bretwalda (=ruler of Britain). The so-called 'Mercian Supremacy' dominated the 8th century, though again it was not constant. Aethelbald and
Offa, the two most powerful kings, achieved high status. This period has been described as the
Heptarchy, though this term has now fallen out of academic use.
The word arose on the basis that the seven kingdoms of
Northumbria,
Mercia,
Kent,
East Anglia,
Essex,
Sussex and
Wessex were the main polities of south Britain. More recent scholarship has shown that theories of the 'heptarchy' are not grounded in evidence, and it is far more likely that power fluctuated between many more 'kingdoms'. Other politically important 'kingdoms' across this period include:
Hwicce,
Magonsaete,
Kingdom of Lindsey and
Middle Anglia.
Viking Age (800–1066)
In the 9th century, the Viking challenge grew to serious proportions. Alfred the Great's victory at Edington, Wiltshire, in 878 brought intermittent peace, but with their possession of
Jorvik the Danes gained a solid foothold in England.
An important development in the 9th century was the rise of the Kingdom of
Wessex; by the end of his reign Alfred was recognised as overlord by several southern kingdoms.
Æthelstan was the first king to achieve direct rule over what is considered "England".
Near the end of the 10th century, there was renewed Scandinavian interest in England, with the conquests of
Sweyn of Denmark and his son
Canute. By 1066 there were three lords with claims to the English throne, resulting in two invasions and the battles of
Stamford Bridge and
Hastings, the results of which established
Anglo-Norman rule in England.
Culture
Architecture
Early Anglo-Saxon buildings in Britain were generally simple, constructed mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. Generally preferring not to settle in the old Roman cities, the Anglo-Saxons built small towns near their centres of agriculture. In each town, a main hall was in the centre.
There are few remains of Anglo-Saxon architecture, with no secular work remaining above ground. At least fifty churches are of Anglo-Saxon origin, with many more claimed to be, although in some cases the Anglo-Saxon part is small and much-altered. All surviving churches, except one timber church, are built of stone or brick and in some cases show evidence of re-used
Roman work.
The architectural character of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical buildings ranges from
Coptic influenced architecture in the early period;
basilica influenced
Romanesque architecture; to in the later Anglo-Saxon period, an architecture characterised by pilaster-strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular headed openings.
Art
Anglo-Saxon art before roughly the time of Alfred (ruled 871–899) is mostly in varieties of the
Hiberno-Saxon or
Insular style, a fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic techniques and motifs. The
Sutton Hoo treasure is an exceptional survival of very early Anglo-Saxon metalwork and jewellery, from a royal grave of the early 7th century. The period between Alfred and the Norman Conquest, with the revival of the English economy and culture after the end of the Viking raids, saw a distinct Anglo-Saxon style in art, though one in touch with trends on the Continent.
Anglo-Saxon art is mainly known today through
illuminated manuscripts, including the
Benedictional of St. Æthelwold (
British Library) and Leofric Missal (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl, 579), masterpieces of the late "Winchester style", which drew on
Hiberno-Saxon art,
Carolingian art and
Byzantine art for style and
iconography, and combined both northern ornamental traditions with Mediterranean figural traditions. The
Harley Psalter was a copy of the
Carolingian Utrecht Psalter — which was a particular influence in creating an Anglo-Saxon style of very lively pen drawings.
Manuscripts were far from the only Anglo-Saxon art form, but they have survived in much greater numbers than other types of object. Contemporaries in Europe regarded Anglo-Saxon goldsmithing and embroidery (
Opus Anglicanum) as especially fine. Perhaps the best known piece of Anglo-Saxon art is the
Bayeux Tapestry which was commissioned by a Norman patron from English artists working in the traditional Anglo-Saxon style. The most common example of Anglo-Saxon art is coins, with thousands of examples extant. Anglo-Saxon artists also worked in
fresco,
ivory, stone carving,
metalwork (see
Fuller brooch for example) and
enamel, but few of these pieces have survived.
Language
Old English, sometimes called Anglo-Saxon, was the language spoken under Alfred the Great and continued to be the common language of
England (non-
Danelaw) until after the Norman Conquest of 1066 when, under the influence of the
Anglo-Norman language spoken by the Norman ruling class, it changed into
Middle English roughly between 1150–1500.
Old English is far closer to early
Germanic than Middle English. It is less Latinised and retains many morphological features (nominal and verbal inflection) that were lost during the 12th to 14th centuries. The languages today which are closest to Old English are the
Frisian languages, which are spoken by a few hundred thousand people in the northern part of Germany and the Netherlands.
Before literacy in the vernacular Old English or Latin became widespread, the
Runic alphabet, called the
futhorc (also known as
futhark) was used for inscriptions. When literacy became more prevalent, a form of Latin script was used with a few letters derived from the futhork: '
Eth,' '
Wynn,' and '
Thorn.'
The letters regularly used in printed and edited texts of Old English are the following:
- a æ b c d ð e f g h i l m n o p r s t þ u w x y
with only rare occurrences of
j,
k,
q,
v, and
z.
Law
Very few law codes exist from the Anglo-Saxon period to provide an insight into legal culture beyond the influence of
Roman law and how this legal culture developed over the course of time. The Saxons chopped off hands and noses for punishment (if the offender stole something or committed another crime). If someone killed a Saxon, he had to pay money called
wergild, the amount varying according to the social rank of the victim.
Literature
Old English literary works include genres such as
epic poetry,
hagiography,
sermons,
Bible translations, legal works,
chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving
manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.
The most famous works from this period include the poem
Beowulf, which has achieved
national epic status in Britain. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of important early English history.
Cædmon's Hymn from the 7th century is the earliest attested literary text in English.
Religion
The indigenous pre-
Christian belief system of the Anglo-Saxons was a form of
Germanic paganism and therefore closely related to the
Old Norse religion, as well as other Germanic pre-Christian cultures.
Roman Catholic Christianity gradually replaced the indigenous religion of the English around the 7th and 8th centuries. Christianity was introduced into Northumbria and Mercia by
monks from
Ireland, but the
Synod of Whitby settled the choice for Roman Christianity. As the new clerics became the chroniclers, the old religion was partially lost before it was recorded, and today historians' knowledge of it is largely based on surviving customs and lore, texts, etymological links and archaeological finds.
One of the few recorded references is that a Kentish King would only meet the missionary
St. Augustine in the open air, where he would be under the protection of the sky god, Woden. Written Christian prohibitions on acts of paganism are one of historians' main sources of information on pre-Christian beliefs.
Despite these prohibitions, numerous elements of the pre-Christian culture of the Anglo-Saxon people survived the Christianisation process. Examples include the English language names for days of the week:
- Tiw, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Tyr: Tuesday
- Woden, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Odin: Wednesday
- Þunor, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Thor: Thursday
- *Fríge, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Frigg: Friday
Contemporary meanings
"Anglo-Saxon" in linguistics is still used as a term for the original
West Germanic component of the modern
English language, which was later expanded and developed through the influence of
Old Norse and
Norman French, though linguists now more often refer to it as
Old English. In the 19th century the term "Anglo-Saxon" was broadly used in
philology, and is sometimes so used at present. In Victorian Britain, some writers such as
Robert Knox,
James Anthony Froude,
Charles Kingsley and
Edward A. Freeman used the term "Anglo-Saxon" to justify
racism and
imperialism, claiming that the "Anglo-Saxon" ancestry of the English made them racially superior
to the colonised peoples.Similar racist ideas were advocated in the 19th Century United States by
Samuel George Morton and
George Fitzhugh.
"Anglo-Saxon" is sometimes used to refer to peoples descended or associated in some way with the
English ethnic group. The definition has varied from time to time and varies from place to place. In contemporary
Anglophone cultures outside the
United Kingdom, the term is most commonly found in certain contexts, such as the term "
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" or "WASP". Such terms are often politicised, and bear little connection to the precise ethnological or historical definition of the term "Anglo-Saxon". It often encapsulates socio-economic identifiers more than ethnic ones.
Outside Anglophone countries, both in Europe and in the rest of the world, the term "Anglo-Saxon" and its direct translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of Britain, the
United States, and other countries such as
Australia,
Canada and
New Zealand. The term can be used in a variety of contexts, often to identify the English-speaking world's distinctive language, culture, technology, wealth, markets, economy, and legal systems. Local variations include the French "Anglo-Saxon" and the Spanish "anglosajón".
As with the English language use of the term, what constitutes the "Anglo-Saxon" varies from speaker to speaker. For example, in Spain, the term can also include
Ireland and its peoples and cultures.
See also
