The Anglo-Saxon Period

The Anglo-Saxon Period

• Began, when the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes and the Frisians invaded Britain in 5th century AD.

• Anglo-Saxons spoke Old English.

Before the Anglo-Saxons

• The Romans first came into Britain in 55 BC , headed by Julius Caesar.

• The Picts and the Britons lived in Britain, the Gaels lived in Eire (nowadays Ireland)

Anglo-Saxon Invasions

• The Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians were seafaring warriors who at first fought often among themselves.

• Wyrd - gloomy outlook on life in which one’s fate, unavoidable

• By the end of the 7th century Christianity had become firmly established. Christianity brought beginnings of education and culture.

• Anglo-Saxon civilisation emerged- 7 kingdoms were allied in the so-called Heptarchy:

  Northumbia and Mercia, the kingdoms of the Angles in the north,

  Kent, the kingdom of the Jutes in the southeast,

  Essex, Wessex, Middlesex, Sussex, the kingdoms of the Saxons in the south and west.

• Around the 9th century Vikings began to attack Britain. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex halted the vikings.

Beowulf

• Epic - long narrative (storytelling) poem that records, in grave and stately language, the exploits of a larger-than-life hero who usually embodies the ideals of the culture that produced him. Doesn’t rhyme, has alliteration.

• Stories of epic heroes were passed down orally from generation to generation, recited by wandering minstrels called scops, who usually could not write, to audience of listeners who usually could not read.

• Beowulf was written down in 10th century, but scholars believe that this version of ‘Beowulf’ was composed in the 8th century.

• ‘Beowulf’ - talks about Scandinavians in the 3rd or 4th century, about Beowulf’s battle with the monster Grendel, Grendel’s mother and a fight with a fire-breathing dragon, that results in Beowulf’s death.

The Venerable Bede

• Father of English History.

• Wrote ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’