Transcription
Hello Noble ones, welcome back to my channel. This is the Metatron speaking. As you know, I have a predilection for ancient history. I'm very keen on teaching history and cultures, and I'm very fond of talking about ancient civilizations. This is why today I chose to talk about the Anglo-Saxons.
Now, the first thing we need to keep in mind when we decide to talk about the Anglo-Saxons is a date: the 5th century. This is when these populations started inhabiting Britain. There is also another reason why it is important to remember this date. In the 5th century, to be more specific, in 476, we have the end of the Western Roman Empire. As according to Odoacer, the first king of Italy, that is the date of the deposition of the emperor Romulus Augustulus.
Now, when we say that the Anglo-Saxons were inhabiting Britain, what we're talking about is an actual ethnic relocation of various Northern Germanic tribes which originated in Continental Europe and moved or migrated to the island. But really, this was no coincidence. The whole overlapping of dates, the end of the Roman Empire and the relocation of these Northern Germanic tribes. Think about it this way: the Romans lose their grip on Britannia, and as this occurs, as they withdraw, these Germanic tribes take their place.
So, the Anglo-Saxon period begins in the 5th century, and it will reach its point of culmination in Britain's most famous date: 1066, the Battle of Hastings, the beginning of the Norman Conquest.
So, who were these Anglo-Saxons? The term Anglo-Saxons comprises various Northern Germanic tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Frisians. It is important to note, however, that the term Anglo-Saxon only began to be used in the 8th century to distinguish the Germanic tribes on Britain from those on the continent. As a matter of fact, the Romans simply called them Angli. It was during the Anglo-Saxon period that England, as a nation, was formed, and many modern-day aspects such as the shires, the establishment of laws, the beginning of literature, etc., were created. Even the term England, if examined in its roots, means the land of the Angles. And even the language I'm using in this video, English, derives from the Anglo-Saxon language, what we often tend to call Old English, which was spoken and written in England and in eastern Scotland.
But who was there before the Anglo-Saxons? What language did they speak, and what happened to them? So, let's get the full picture. We have established that in the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons take over Britain, thus replacing the Romans who had arrived there in 43 AD. So, 5th century Anglo-Saxons, 43 AD, the Romans. Before that, we have the Britons.
The Britons were an ancient Celtic population who lived in Britain since the Iron Age. Hence, the language that the Romans had spoken by the locals when they arrived in Britain had nothing to do with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxons. It was a Celtic language, an ancient Celtic language called Common Brittonic, which was an Insular Celtic language. After the Roman conquest of Britain in the first century, a Romano-British culture emerged, and Latin and Vulgar Latin coexisted with Brittonic. With the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement in the 5th century, the culture and language of the Britons fragmented, and much of their territory was taken over by the Anglo-Saxons. Common Brittonic developed into the distinct Brittonic languages: Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Instead, Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is a West Germanic language closely related to Old Franconian and Old Saxon. It had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin. In most respects, including its grammar, it was much closer to Modern German and Icelandic than to Modern English. It was fully inflected with five grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental; three grammatical numbers: singular, plural, and dual; and three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
So, let's talk about architecture. How did the Anglo-Saxons make their buildings? Where did they live? Well, Anglo-Saxon buildings were rather simple. They were made of timber, and they used thatch for roofing. So, Anglo-Saxon villages, settlements, and towns were made or built around the centers of agriculture, or other times they were built at forts in rivers, or simply to be sited and used as ports. At the center of each Anglo-Saxon town, there was a main hall.
The Anglo-Saxon period was defined by its use of wood. The importance, care, and craftsmanship put by the Anglo-Saxons into their wooden society was incredible. It was evidence of some form of probably religious attachment. We could say of a more of a sort of naturalistic lifestyle. As Michael Shapland said, "The stone buildings imposed on England by the Romans would have been startling and exceptional." And following the collapse of Roman society in the fifth century, there was a widespread return to timber buildings, a cultural shift that it is not possible to explain by recourse to technological determinism.
And another exception to this wooden society was brought, and another change occurred when Christianity reached Anglo-Saxon lands. In fact, Christianity started building churches and cathedrals, clearly of stone, and they were in fact bringing Frankish workmen to build these things.
Now, moving to the ceremonial burial. Now, we sometimes tend to imagine the Anglo-Saxon period perhaps as a sort of morose or somber period, but it was anything but that. The Anglo-Saxons buried their dead in several ways. Sometimes they buried them, sometimes they cremated them, as we can clearly read in Beowulf. In the late 6th century, the Angles in the East of England started to bury men of high social class in barrows. A barrow, also called a burial mound, was the grave of important people. So, men of high status had a burial chamber inside this chamber. We had the corpse and grave goods, which, similarly to Egyptian thinking, would have been used by the dead person in the afterlife. Interestingly enough, these barrow burials were used both by Christians and pagans.
We also have ship burials, which are similar to those used by the Vikings, for example. So, the corpse and the grave goods at this time would be put in a ship rather than a chamber, and the ship would then be either pushed out to the sea or left on land. Now, sometimes these ships would be burnt, but other times they wouldn't, as we read clearly again at the beginning of Beowulf.
Now, when we start talking about the county of Suffolk, which is in East England, we will find a different custom. The custom there was to build a barrow over the ship. So, we have both burial techniques or ceremonial burial techniques put together. In 1939, a ship burial from the 7th century was discovered at a place called Sutton Hoo, which is again in Suffolk. There, a 27-meter-long ship was found full of grave goods.
Talking about the grave goods, these could be, these were most of the time war objects such as weapons, armors, helmets, shields, and sometimes precious objects such as jewelry. The helmet found in Sutton Hoo is very similar to helmets found in ship burials in Sweden.
Finally, one cannot speak about the Anglo-Saxons without talking about the biggest Anglo-Saxon treasure, which was found in July 2009. The treasure was found in a field in Staffordshire, a county in the middle of England. The Staffordshire Hoard, as it's called, consists of more than 3,500 objects, again from the 7th or 8th century, made of gold and silver. Almost all the treasure is parts of swords, shields, and other military objects, and there are no objects for use by women. What's peculiar about this treasure is that no graves were found. So, it is very difficult and still puzzling to understand why all this treasure was buried in the first place. Perhaps an offering to the gods, or perhaps in a moment of danger, it was buried to keep it safe. It remains a mystery for all of us to speculate.
All right then, I hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you very much for watching, and remember, the Metatron has spread his wings. Also, please consider sharing this video, and if you liked it, please thumbs up and consider subscribing to my channel for more content from the Metatron. Goodbye.