Or is the extent to which the Anglo-Normans maintained their status as a people apart exaggerated?
I always knew there were various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms throughout the early medieval period but I didn't realize that it became the kingdom of England for a relatively short period before the Normans came.
It seems like the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England didn't really get to mature into its own identity.
I know William the Conqueror faced rebellions and crushed the North but was there a threat of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, etc returning into independent realms?
Welcome, Welcome! To the first history post of 2014! Now, this time, I am gonna be moving away from Rome and Greece and start talking about what happened AFTER Rome fell. Welcome to the land of the Anglo-Saxons!
The Franks preserved much that was Roman in Gual - the language, the Church, the Towns. The Angles and Saxons, however, who crossed the North Sea to England, drove out Latin and in their poetry and prose produced the first major non-Mediterranean literature. Their greatest poem is undoubtedly Beowulf, one of the greatest heroic epics in the English language which, although surviving in a 10th century manuscript, tells of legendary and actual happenings in 5th century Scandinavia.
Literature reveals only a shadowy history of the first two centuries of Anglo-Saxon England. Leaders such as Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Arthur, have left behind legends but little actual history. Excavations, however, have produced graves, settlements and weapons which give some idea of the different social levels of the Anglo-Saxons.
The wealth of jewelry found in the memorial of an East Anglian king at Sutton Hoo, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, for example, demonstrates the high quality of workmanship executed in Anglo-Saxon England. It recalls the wealth of the furnishings for a funeral by the poet of Beowulf:
...They brought from afar
Many great treasures and costly trappings,
I have never heard of a ship so richly
furnished
With weapons of war, armor of battle
swords and corslets.
Despite the rich trappings uncovered at Sutton Hoo, no body was found: it was simply a cenotaph to a king who was buried elsewhere.
Further evidence of the way royalty lived in Anglo-Saxon England is given by the excavated buildings of the Royal Palace at Yeavering in Northumberland. This had great halls and out-buildings, a fort for refuge, an assembly place and a cemetery. it also contained a church, for the arrival of St. Augustine in 597 had begun the conversion of England to Christianity. this was one of the Palaces of the kings of Northumbria until it was destroyed in the 7th century. But like the kingdom, it fell into decay for in England kingdoms rose and fell: Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, and Wessex all had periods of greatness, and it was not until the 10th century that the Kingdom of England came into being. [](/bri
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As a brit i've always been confused with some americans identifying as Anglo-Saxon.. How exactly are they Anglo Saxon? considering Anglo Saxons are not really a racial group at all in the UK
how can one claim 'anglo saxon' heritage?
British people are mix of all their invaders
Celtic, roman, Germanic, Viking, Norman
it seems odd that they would focus on this singular group of Germanic settlers
