The Anglo-Saxons: A Comprehensive Guide to Their History, Culture, and Literature
The Anglo-Saxons: Who They Were and Where They Came From
The Anglo-Saxons were a group of Germanic tribes who migrated to England from northern Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. They were made up of three main tribes: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
The Anglo-Saxons settled in England south of Hadrian’s Wall, a long stone fortification that had been built by the Romans to keep out the Picts and Scots. They were lowland people who were looking for farming land.
Anglo-Saxon Society
Anglo-Saxon society was based on loyalty to the family or clan. The center of their communal life was the hall, which was the place where they gathered and swore loyalty to their chiefs in return for their protection.
For a long time, England was not really one country. Anglo-Saxon kings ruled many small kingdoms across the land, each with its own royal family.
The Heptarchy
By the beginning of the 7th century, the borders of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy, or Seven Kingdoms, had formed. These were:
- Northumbria
- Mercia
- East Anglia
- Essex
- Kent
- Sussex
- Wessex
These kingdoms continued without changing until 829, when the kingdom of Wessex became the most important.
Christianization
While the Romans had introduced Christianity to Britain, the Anglo-Saxons partly reintroduced pagan values.
Pope Gregory I the Great decided to send the monk Augustine to bring Christianity back to England. This mission of Christianization was successful. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, which is still the most important role of the Church in England.
As a result, England joined Europe’s ecclesiastical culture. The monasteries became important cultural centers, and the Church educated the people and offered them efficient public administration.
In the monastery of Lindisfarne, the monks produced illuminated Gospels, a manuscript that contains the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
In 685, a new monastery was founded at Jarrow where the scholar Venerable Bede wrote The Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
The Danes and Vikings
The Vikings, commonly called Danes, were people from Scandinavia who migrated and terrorized Europe from the eighth to the eleventh century.
They left their homeland because they were looking for better places to farm.
They penetrated England thanks to their strong and flexible long ships and their violent spirit.
They are remembered for being crazed warriors who attacked villages looking for treasure, cattle, and slaves, but some of them came peacefully to settle.
In 793, they sacked Lindisfarne and destroyed hundreds of manuscripts.
The name “Viking” comes from a language called “Old Norse” and means “a pirate raid”. The Norse had an alphabet made up of characters called runes. There are many words in the English language that come from Old Norse (window, ugly, happy, etc.).
The Vikings were pagans, and Christian monasteries in Britain were easily conquered by them.
They succeeded in conquering all of England except Wessex, which was ruled by Alfred the Great. After years of fighting, the Vikings and Alfred made a peace agreement: an imaginary dividing line was agreed to run across England. The Anglo-Saxon lands were to the west, and the Viking lands, known as the Danelaw, were to the east.
The most important city in the Danelaw was the city of York, or “Jorvik”. Many towns and cities in Britain that were founded by the Vikings end in -by, -Thorpe, or -kirk.
Alfred the Great
Alfred was born in 849 and was the youngest son of Aethelwulf, king of Wessex.
At the time, England was divided into several small kingdoms, and Wessex was one of those, located in the southwest of England. Alfred’s older brother Aethelred became king after Aethelwulf, and when Aethelred died, Alfred became king.
Alfred had to fight several battles against the Danes. He reorganized the army of Wessex and built fortresses.
He established his capital at Winchester and promoted education in his kingdom. He believed that all free-born English boys should receive an education, and he set up a school at his court. He ordered the translation of various Latin works into Anglo-Saxon and encouraged the writing of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of England’s early history.
In 886, Alfred went beyond Wessex and liberated London. All the English people who were not ruled by Danes then accepted him as king.
Alfred died in 899 and was succeeded by his son Edward. It would be his grandson Athelstan who would be called the first King of England.
The Battle of Hastings
In 1066, the Battle of Hastings changed the line of kings and queens in England completely. Harold Godwinson was crowned the last Anglo-Saxon king of England in 1066, but his rival, William, the Duke of Normandy, wanted his crown. At the Battle of Hastings, which took place on October 14, 1066, Harold was killed, and William of Normandy became the new king of England.
Anglo-Saxon Literature
Anglo-Saxon literature was anonymous and oral. The poet, called a “scop”, entertained the noblemen in the halls of kings, often accompanied by a harp.
The scop sang epics celebrating cultural values on occasions of great ceremonies and festivities.
Many Anglo-Saxon poems were not written down until the 12th century, when they were written down by church clerks. This was possible thanks to the programs of King Alfred and the Benedictine Revival. After their conversion to Christianity in the seventh century, the Anglo-Saxons began to develop written literature; before that period, it had been oral. No poetry surely pre-Christian in composition survives.
Main Features of Anglo-Saxon Poetry
The main formal aspects of Anglo-Saxon poetry were stress and alliteration.
Stress: is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence
Alliteration: is the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words,
Each line was divided into two halves by a break and has four stresses; alliteration was used to link the two halves of the line.
Another important feature was the kenning, which is used in place of a name or noun.
Kenning: a two-word phrase that describes an object through metaphors.
The Epic Poem
Epic poetry is one of the main forms of poetry which tells the dramatic life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group of persons.
The major epic poems in the western tradition are the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to the Greek poet Homer, and later the Aeneid of Virgil and the Beowulf, written in Old English.
Characteristics:
·The hero in the poem is a figure of heroic stature or national significance. He is usually a warrior who faces opponents and performs courageous deeds that are valued by the nation.
·The setting of the poem is vast and could include land, seas, oceans, the world, or even the whole universe.
·It is usually long,
·Supernatural creatures such as gods, angels, or demons are introduced, and they play an active part in the actions of the heroic character.
·The style is elevated and the vocabulary very rich. Each line is divided into two halves by a break and has four stresses; alliteration links the two halves of the line.
·The poet tries to remain objective.
·The most used type-scenes are the banquet, the battle, the voyage and the funeral.
·The society described is the aristocratic and military one.
The pagan elegy
The elegy is a lyrical poem, generally in the form of dramatic monologue, where an isolated speaker expresses his loss of friendship and favour and past splendour.
There are elements of personal experience and philosophic reflection offering a moving view of the human condition.
One of the favourite themes is the exile or ” wracca” which haunts the Anglo-Saxon imagination with its constant fear of a possible dissolution of the clan due to internal conflict or external attack. Outside the clan there’s a hostile world in which even the best men aren’t able to establish new relationships.
So, the main character of the elegy is the lone wanderer who is outside his natural context so that he becomes vulnerable.
In the elegy there’s a melancholic mood given by a vivid and descriptive language while the oral aspect is underlined by the frequent use of alliteration.