9. From Britons to Saxons

 

West Stow. A Recreation of a Saxon village.

The period after the Romans left is known as the Dark Ages, not because they were particularly gloomy, but because we don't know much about them, so we superimpose our current ideas about how things are organised around kings, nations and regular armies.

The reality was almost certainly more chaotic. It might be better to think of early England as being a bit like the Congo, with weak or non-existent central control and people with strong family and tribal loyalties. There would probably have been frequent informal invasions, many refugees, and a few wandering, plundering warlords.

It all started with what appears to have been the takeover of much of the country by a consortium of tribes whose business plan was international expansion. 

Procopius, a historian in the embers of the Roman Empire, referred to the inhabitants as being 'Angles, Frisians and Britons. I alluded to this in my previous post. Gildas, a British monk and chronicler with an axe (!) to grind, is primarily responsible for the story of what followed that was taught as a kid. He eventually voted with his feet and is commemorated in a rather nice statue in Brittany. 

Gildas

He tells us that after the Roman legions left, taking their wine and pizza ovens with them, the administration disintegrated, and the land came under sustained attack from its neighbours. The local rulers sought help from the undeodorised and brutish pagan tribes from across the North Sea, to help resist the undeodorised and brutish pagan tribes from across the North Sea. But having arrived, they took advantage and shoved the hapless, insufficiently religious and degenerate Britons into the far West. A problem with immigrants coming in small boats is nothing new! 

Several centuries later, another monkish chronicler with a distinct point of view, Bede, fingered the perpetrators as Angles, Saxons & Jutes, Germanic tribes who, among other things, bequeathed us a language. 

A problem with small boats

Around this time, to add to the misery, the population was scythed by the same varmints who were responsible for the Black Death a thousand years later. To cap it all, the weather turned really nasty. The 'Roman Warm Period' ended, and in 536 AD, volcanic eruptions around the globe caused a rapid and enduring fall in temperatures. Famine followed.  

Recent research suggests that it was more complicated than that. For a kick-off, it is possible that some of the 'Belgic' tribes who were here before the Romans arrived were effectively Germanic. Their numbers would have been increased by the mercenaries and others who came with the Romans and who were given land in reward. 

Neither is it clear that, once the Roman legions had left, the Saxons subjected the Britons in the South East to an extended bout of recreational ethnic cleansing. For instance, there are hints that St Albans remained in local control for a long time afterwards, and records indicate that Britons came second in a dust-up near Aylesbury, some 150 years later. 

The evidence of genetic and other advanced archaeological techniques doesn't support a wipe-out either.  Many newcomers probably arrived in small groups, bringing their wives, kids and Aunty Hilda. They lived alongside and occasionally married the locals. The overall result seems to have been a mixed population, but how this developed, and the nature of the relationship between the groups, isn't clear. The English called the Britons 'Wealas' (as in Welsh), which could mean both foreigner (which is ironic!) and slave.

Slaves were an important part of their economy. Nowadays, we all think we know what defines a slave, i.e. working without pay or a licence to roam and with minimal creature comforts. But maybe they gauged their (mis)fortunes differently. Are you free if you do not earn enough from your daily toil to pay the rent or eat properly while owing unbreakable obligations to a lord? 

Neither do place names give us a reliable guide to the story. While Olde English names predominate, many others seem to predate both the Saxons and Romans. Thames, Avon, London, Kent and Chiltern are examples. And maybe we have more Anglo-Saxon place names because the Saxons were keener on creating hamlets and villages? Perhaps place names like Wallington, Waltham and Wallington remember surviving settlements of the 'Wealas'? 

Old Father Thames

And why did they come? Every explanation is contested. 

The 'push' factor might have been the arrival in Europe of Attila and the Huns, a hard rock band suffering from acute drought in their eastern European homelands, and who decided to try gigging further west. The tribes they displaced shuffled westward. Maybe some set off for our shores, rather than fall off the North Sea cliffs like lemmings. 

The 'pull' factor might have been space for all, with the population of Britain having been much reduced for the reasons already referred to, although there is evidence of depopulation in other parts of Northern Europe as well. 

Scarier Atilla (A Contemporary Photo)

It is complicated by the lens through which we view the past. We tend to identify people by the place they come from, but it is possible that the settlers identified themselves by the place where they ended up. This is quite common. For instance, London, north of the Thames, was part of Mercia for a long time, and the locals seem to have called themselves Mercians. But Mercia was a political creation, not an ethnic one. The name comes from the Latin word for a border, in this case, the Welsh Borders. (Offa, builder of the eponymous Dyke, was a Mercian King. He supposedly had a base at Great Offley on my Lilley Bottom Cycle Route and is buried in Bedford.) Link : Giro de Lilley Bottom

An Offa coin

This short YouTube video gives a good and concise summary of the changing pattern of control. Link: England through the ages

If you want a bit more detail on the pagan English period, I found this article useful. 

Link: The Pagan Saxon Period

Scary Saxons? Nice lawn!

 

The next influx was the arrival of Vikings, the nasty Norsemen with horned helmets. There is certainly plenty of evidence of them touring, looting, enslaving and sometimes settling in East Anglia in particular. In fact, the arrivals in the southeast mostly came from what is now Denmark, didn't wear horned helmets, and as time passed, were increasingly more likely to be farmers than raiders.  Eventually, a treaty between Alfred (blue corner, Saxon) and Guthrum (red corner, Viking) divided up the country. This is what it said about boundaries:

"First, as to the boundaries between us. [They shall run] up the Thames, and then up[e] the Lea, and along the Lea to its source, then in a straight line to Bedford, and then up the Ouse to Watling Street". 

The only known 'real' Viking Helmet. No horns.

Watling Street was a Roman Road which followed the route of what is now the A5. It was presumably still in use then, so this tells us that the area the Vikings controlled and maybe settled was to the East of our region. Even there, while the ruling elite might have changed, it doesn't follow that the population was also wholly transformed. Nothing new about that. All over the world, countries are still run by people drawn from ethnic minorities. 

On your travels, when you stand by the River Lea, look eastwards across the water and see if there are more blonds there. Maybe it isn't just the Essex way! 

During the later period, the increasingly mobile population waxed and occasionally waned, affected by changes in the agricultural economy, plagues and ever-increasing mobility afterwards. 

So who were the people living in the Southeast as the clock ticked towards the arrival of William the Conq. and his garlic-munching mates? Whatever you make of it all, the end result in human terms is a mixture, albeit with a much greater proportion of people hereabouts from across the water than you would have found in the West of the country. Is that surprising? In five hundred years, will we be able to disentangle our own Irish, Eastern European, Asian or African roots? I doubt it. 

I enjoy both a ripping yarn and undermining silly 'blood and soil' narratives. But let's face it: When 'God gave the land to the people', he could have been a mite clearer about which land and which people he was referring to. 

How did they live? As you might expect, they usually built wooden huts, and there is nothing readily visible left of them. Thankfully, the patient digging of the archaeologists has resulted in some well-informed recreations. If you want to see what they would have looked like, check out these websites or, better still, pay the places a visit.   

Butser Ancient Farm (Stone Age to Iron Age) 

Flag Fen   (Bronze Age Britons) 

West Stow Saxon Village  (Early English) 

We might have to rely on these wonderful projects to get up close and personal with these ancient ancestors of ours. Still, their collective impact on the overall landscape should not be underestimated. Even if their cities didn't get anywhere near emulating Byzantium or even Londinium, they built many of the smaller towns and other settlements and ploughed a lot more land. Their legacy, albeit faded, can be seen almost everywhere if you look hard enough. 

So on we go, and after this diversion into the people, I can return to the landscape.  

(Link)The Medieval Countryside