Anglo-Saxons

This is not just a book about a battle; it is a book about the biggest battle before Hastings 1066.
This is a battle most people have probably never heard of, but it is a battle where five Scottish and Viking kings and seven earls died, somewhere in the kingdom of Northumbria in late 937. As well as royalty, the bones of tens of thousands of ordinary men from Northern England, Scotland and the Viking territories lie buried in a place which, according to the chroniclers, is no longer known.
This book is about that battle and the search to find the long-lost site. Thousands of pages have been written about the Battle of Brunnenburh, but this book is unique. It is written by descendants of a legendary Viking Egill Skallagrimsson. Thousands of pages have been written about Brunnenburh but all of them are written from the perspective of the victor, King Athelstan of Wessex and Mercia. This book is the closest anyone is likely to get to a Northern Viking account.
Even if you have no real interest in the site of the Battle of Brunnenburh this is worth the effort you will put into it this book to understand it. Take a deep dive into the world and beliefs and times of the competing factions in 10 th century England and beyond, and the battle that first unified the United Kingdom.

This paper seeks to provide a new contribution to the debates on Viking Age women by focusing on a rather controversial notion of ‘female warriors’. The core of the article comprises a preliminary survey of archaeological evidence for female graves with weapons (axes, spears, swords and arrowheads) from Viking Age Scandinavia. Attention is focused not only on the types of weapons deposited with the deceased, but first and foremost on the meanings which similar practices may have had for the past societies. The author discusses why, where and how the weapons were placed in female graves and attempts to trace some patterns in this unusual funerary behaviour. In addition to exploring the funerary evidence, the iconographic representations of what could be regarded as ‘female warriors’ are also briefly considered. Lastly, a few remarks are also made on the notion of armed women in the textual sources.

The twenty-five poems and eleven metrical charms in this Old English volume offer tantalizing insights into the mental landscape of the Anglo-Saxons. The Wanderer and The Seafarer famously combine philosophical consolation with introspection to achieve a spiritual understanding of life as a journey. The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Message, and Wulf and Eadwacer direct a subjective lyrical intensity on the perennial themes of love, separation, and the passion for vengeance. From suffering comes wisdom, and these poems find meaning in the loss of fortune and reputation, exile, and alienation. “Woe is wondrously clinging; clouds glide,” reads a stoic, matter-of-fact observation in Maxims II on nature’s indifference to human suffering. Another form of wisdom emerges in the form of folk remedies, such as charms to treat stabbing pain, cysts, childbirth, and nightmares of witch-riding caused by a dwarf. The enigmatic dialogues of Solomon and Saturn combine scholarly erudition and proverbial wisdom. Learning of all kinds is celebrated, including the meaning of individual runes in The Rune Poem and the catalog of legendary heroes in Widsith.

This book is a welcome complement to the previously published DOML volume Old English Shorter Poems, Volume I: Religious and Didactic.

Spinning and weaving were, in Viking Age Scandinavian societies, exclusively the domain of women. Woven in weaving huts (dyngja), textile production was associated with female embodiment, with beliefs about sorcery, fate, death, fertility and reproduction, while male involvement often resulted in allegations of homosexuality or death. Based on current research looking at gender and cloth in Viking and medieval Iceland new ideas have come to light regarding these age-old associations of female embodiment and the eventual transformation of cloth into a form of legal currency in the 12th century.

From Saxon mercenaries to prince Beowulf  – Scandinavian identity in Anglo-Saxon England ca 450 – 800 AD.
Through an analysis of the spatial, chronological and social organization of Scandinavian material culture in England during the early and middle Anglo-Saxon period, it is argued that the Scandinavian cultural traits take part in a social discourse relating to the manifestation, negotiation and transformation of Anglo-Scandinavian identity. Both archaeological and contemporary historical sources are explored, and the analysis focuses on the intersection of manifestation of ethnic identity in the different medias/sources. The theoretical basis of the analysis is the perception of ethnicity as a dynamic, contextual and multidimensional phenomenon, generated in a situation where a cultural encounter between peoples of differing cultural traditions takes place. The cultural content of ethnic identities is seen as dependent on both the cultural practices of the agents involved, and the social conditions that characterize the specific historical situation where the meeting takes place.
The analysis of Scandinavian material culture indicates that in the period immediately following the ”Anglo-Saxon” invasion, Scandinavian identity is incorporated in a common Germanic, ”Saxon” identity that is contrasted and defined in opposition to a British/Romano-British ethnic identity. Then, in the period ca 475 – 575 AD, Scandinavian culture seems to be actively involved in a process of polarization between different regional groups. These groups are based on a constellation of different ethnic groups, such as Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Francs, ”Norwegians”, a ”native” Romano-British population etc, and are later to be known as Angles, Saxons and Jutes referred to in historical sources from the 8th and 9th centuries. At the end of the 6th and beginning of the 7th century, Scandinavian identity is going through a process where it is structured in accordance with a hierarchical principle, in which it comes to symbolize the common cultural heritage of an emerging aristocracy.

Презентация доклада на 24-й международной научной конференцим студентов, аспирантов и молодых учёных «Ломоносов-2017».
В докладе рассматриваются историографический поиск и выделение высшего слоя нетитулованной англо-саксонской светской элиты накануне Нормандского Завоевания (1066 г.) по материалам XII века. Последовательно разбираются и критикуются попытки в рамках конституционной истории (Р. Рид и Д. Рофф) и аграрной истории (У. Стаббс и П. Кларк). Докладчик приходит к выводу, что данные гипотезы не подтверждаются известными источниками (Книга Страшного Суда и нормандские переводы англо-саксонского права XII в.) при непредвзятом анализе и требуют насильного прочтения известных текстов. В заключении делается предположение, что подобные построения – это отражение современных представлений об устройстве общества (в том числе и английского), где относительно чётко выделяются имущественные классы.

A PowerPoint presentation at the 24th international academic student and young researcher's conference "Lomonosov-2017".
The presentation analyses the historiographical search for an upper layer of the titleless Anglo-Saxon lay elite on the eve of the Norman Conquest (1066). The presentation's consecutive study reveals the flaws in the constitutional (by R. Reid and D. Roffe) and agrarian (W. Stubbs and P. Clarke) approaches to the problem. The author finds that such hypotheses do not find support from the extant sources (the Domesday Book and Norman translation of the Anglo-Saxon law) when reading without any preconceived notions. The conclusion supposes that this kind of search might be a reflection of the modern-day view of the society (including the English one) as composed of more or less clearly defined classes.

In this text the authors want to explain the relation between the field in Hunwick as a possible site for the Battle of Brunanburh and four sites closely to the field that are likely to be burial sites for the lost ones in the battle. There is possibly an ancient burial site close to the proposed field and there are three different sites that might relate to three different segments of the invading force. There was a local chapel one mile from the proposed field, there is possibly a Scottish site half a mile from there and another site only half a mile therefrom that could relate to the Danish Vikings from Dublin.  In this paper we look at these sites as well as other possible sites further afield.

Andrew Rabin, "Capital Punishment and the Anglo-Saxon Judicial Apparatus: A Maximum View?" in Jay Paul Gates and Nicole Marafioti, eds. Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 181-200. FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE BY REQUEST

Andrew Rabin, “Witnessing Kingship: Royal Power and the Legal Subject in the Old English Laws,” in Gale Owen-Crocker and Brian W. Schneider, ed. Kingship, Legislation, and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), pp. 219-236.

The great misconception of women within the Anglo-Saxon world begins with the failure of contemporary critics to perceive the world from the dark view of violence, alliances, politics, and the code by which the Anglo-Saxons lived by. The female roles within Beowulf are no exception to this misinterpretation. In modern view, women are often seen as voiceless, forced into peace-making marriages that were doomed from the beginning, and left to face the bloody consequences when the peace-pacts failed; this ideal has been grossly exaggerated, romanticized, and stretched to fit the modern critics own outlook. Therefore, the role of women must be looked at through the demanding Anglo-Saxon code of conduct, not a modern one. Females made integral contributions to the Anglo-Saxons and while their role differed from the ideal male's role, both the roles of men and women served to complement one another. Their role was not restricted to arranged marriages but was a vital political and social role that welded communities together. Most importantly, in their duty under the Anglo-Saxon code, its requirements for revenge for blood ties, both males and females were equal.

Resumen:
El objetivo de este artículo es presentar la trayectoria en contabilidad social y ambiental de la academia contable anglosajona. Para ello llevamos a cabo un análisis de contenido, basado en una revisión sistemática de la literatura publicada en revistas indexadas en Scopus. En el trabajo se identifican las revistas que se han convertido en espacio natural para este tipo de discusiones, los principales autores, las principales instituciones, las teorías de base y los principales métodos utilizados. Por tratarse de una fuente bibliográfica amplia, el trabajo tiene un carácter exploratorio preliminar y no pretende agotar los temas, sino brindar una perspectiva amplia para que los investigadores puedan focalizar trabajos futuros.

Abstract:
The objective of this article is to present the trajectory in social and environmental accounting of the Anglo-Saxon accounting academy. To this end, we carried out a content analysis based on a systematic review of the literature published in journals indexed in Scopus. The work identifies the journals that have become a natural space for this type of discussion, the main authors, the main institutions, the basic theories and the main methods that are used. Since it is a broad bibliographic source, the work has a preliminary exploratory nature and does not intend to exhaust the issues, but to provide a broad perspective so that researchers can focus future works

Excavation at this site revealed two early, possibly Saxon, features considered to represent small structures or buildings. Later features indicated that the digging and working of clunch, a hard variety of chalk, had been carried out at this site. Dating evidence suggests that this activity continued throughout much of the medieval period and indicates that this is one of the earliest identified incidences of the digging and working of clunch in Isleham. Isleham became known for its clunch industry in the early modern period.

Nella parte settentrionale dell’Inghilterra viveva una popolazione celtica nota come i Pitti. Dei Pitti  (lat.  Picti ) parlano non solo  gli storici latini ( come  Cesare o Pomponio Mela), ma, anche poeti  come Claudiano (IV sec.). Partendo da Plinio, l’immagine dei ‘Britanni’ dal corpo dipinto di blu si  diffonde: dalle descrizioni non è chiaro se si tratta di veri e propri tatuaggi o di colori cerimoniali di  guerra. La tintura usata si diceva fosse ricavata dal guado (isatis tinctoria), che conferiva ai volti e  ai corpi dei guerrieri pitti il colore azzurro. Erodiano parla anche di disegni di animali che ricoprono tutto il corpo dei Pitti che, per questo  non indossano abiti. Una Cronaca  (Chronica de origine antiquorum pictorum) parla invece  chiaramente di tatuaggi incisi con una punta di ferro. Una minuziosa descrizione di come i Pitti si  tatuassero il corpo è offerta di Isidoro di Siviglia nelle  Etymologiae  (XIX.xxiii.7). La descrizione di  un popolo che si era opposto tante volte e, spesso, con successo, ai Romani presenta tutti gli stilemi  della rappresentazione del guerriero ‘barbaro’ dal corpo possente nudo e ricoperto di tatuaggi/disegni. 
Molti secoli  più tardi, nel periodo elisabettiano, un artista inglese, John White, viene inviato in  quella che è l’attuale Virgina con l’incarico di  ritrarre uomini e  terre del ‘Nuovo Mondo’ e esegue  una serie di  acquerelli che rappresentato i ‘nativi’.  Gli Indiani hanno il corpo seminudo  e recano disegni sulle braccia. Le immagini molto simili  ad opera  dello stesso White, incise da Theodor de Bry (e  pubblicate nel  1585), raffigurano invece i Pitti, presentati come i primi abitanti dell’Inghilterra, nudi e  tutti  coperti di tatuaggi, dando, questa volta, voce agli stereotipi della contrapposizione tra  le diverse rappresentazioni contemporanee dell’origine e della composizione del popolo inglese.

This paper, delivered at the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings Battle Conference, at Battle in 2016, argues that Edward the Confessor made a consistent policy of attempting to procure an heir of the blood. When he failed to produce a son by Edith, he turned to the next in line, Edward the Exile; and when the Exile died, he adopted the Exile's son, Edgar Aetheling, and named him as his heir. This paper overturns the traditional argument that Edward nominated William or Harold or both.

This paper announces the Battle of White Hill. It took place in 926 and was a crushing victory for King Athelstan of Wessex. As the immediate result of the battle, Athelstan reasserted control over Northumbria which he had annexed by fiat and then lost over the course of the previous twelve months. In the treaty of Eamont Bridge, which followed hard upon this victory, the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde formally recognised Athelstan as king of all England and overlord of all Britain. As such I propose that this was the "First Battle of Britain". Without victory for Athelstan at this battle, there would have been no Battle of Brunanburh (937), so vaunted by the annalists. This paper sets this battle in its context, identifying the battlefield. The author hopes that the local authority will now take steps to preserve and memorialise such of the battlefield as remains otherwise undisturbed and takes appropriate steps to recognise the forthcoming 1100th anniversary.

The theme of posture is an important feature of Anglo-Saxon hagiography that frames decapitation scenes. Ælfric’s account of the martyrdom of Edmund, king of East Anglia, uses many postural descriptions to depict the king’s saintly qualities. From Christian defiance to self-sacrifice, Edmund is portrayed as a Christian king who heroically defies his heathen enemies. After his death, Edmund assumes great control over his enemies and administers divine justice. These key stages of Edmund’s death and burial focus heavily on his posture and that of his adversaries. This saint’s life provides one example of how the Anglo-Saxons used postural gesture, upright positioning, and elevation and descent to describe the virtues of saints and the vices of enemies.

Many of the Anglo-Saxon charms identify locations for their performance and function. Previous scholarship has used locations as evidence of continuous pre-Christian practices and this argument has impacted on how the charms are perceived. As a result, the role of the church building as one of the charms’ identified locations has not yet been properly highlighted. Rather than focusing on the potential pre-Christian associations with certain sites in the charms, it is more enlightening to look at how other locations orientate around the church building. In this article I will explore how charms use liturgical and public spaces to signify their function during the late Anglo-Saxon period. After outlining the main scholarly views of Anglo-Saxon locations that have had an impact on charm studies, my analysis will make a comparative case study of two charms against elf-sickness to open readings of the corpus of Anglo-Saxon charms. This approach reveals interesting information about the Anglo-Saxons’ interaction with their landscape in the tenth and eleventh centuries and helps us to redefine the religious nature of these rituals.

The values that underpin the Anglo-Saxon concept of honour changed at the beginning of the sixth century. During this period, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms enshrined a new era of cultural and religious fervour, inculcating new practices of honour among the new Christianised Anglo-Saxon elite. This paper demonstrates the transition from pagan to Christian honour systems. Historians have often examined honour through concepts based on comparisons or 'terms of art', for example 'Bushido' in Japan, 'Futuwwa' in Islam, and 'chivalry' in Christianised later-medieval Europe. This paper emulates these examples by examining honour in Anglo-Saxon society through use of the Old English term weorð, an under-studied phenomenon. Unlike Bushido or chivalry, weorð does not imply a mandated way of living. Weoro is instead pervasive, encompassing many modes of Anglo-Saxon life: poetry, giving- and -receiving, burial, kin, and bestowing honours. This paper combines sociological analysis with historical evidence.

The Old English Boethius boldly refashions in Anglo-Saxon guise a great literary monument of the late antique world, The Consolation of Philosophy. Writing from prison around 525 CE, Boethius turned to philosophy to transform his personal distress into a powerful meditation on fate, free will, and the human capacity for virtue in a flawed, fallen world. King Alfred and his hand-picked circle of scholars in ninth-century England recognized the perennial relevance of Boethius’s themes. They reshaped the Latin text into an Old English version that preserves the essence while accommodating a new audience: the Roman Fabricius, for example, becomes the Germanic weapon-smith Weland. The translation even replicated Boethius’s alternation of prose and verse—only in this case with Old English prose alternating with alliterative verse.

Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth each turned The Consolation of Philosophy into English, giving it an unrivalled pedigree of translators, but King Alfred was the first to bring it to a wider vernacular audience. Verse prologues and epilogues associated with the court of Alfred fill out The Old English Boethius, offering readers a fascinating glimpse of the moment when English confidently claimed its birthright as a literature capable of anything, from sublime ideas to subtle poetry.

L’articolo presenta tre opere di Ælfric: Grammatica, Glossario e Colloquio, inquadrandole nella temperie della Riforma benedettina inglese. Studia i rapporti tra Æthelwold e Ælfric; il ruolo del vogare e del latino nella Riforma; gli interessi didattici di Ælfric e la concezione della ‘grammatica’ in Inghilterra anglosassone.
Anche se non possediamo dati tali da permette  di affermare che Ælfric abbia concepito Grammatica, Glossario e Colloquio per un loro impiego congiunto, la tradizione manoscritta delle tre opere punta in questa direzione e testimonia l’utilità pedagogica di un uso abbinato per lo meno della Grammatica e del Glossario, formalizzando un loro legame, anche se intervenuto in un tempo successivo alla composizione delle due opere da parte di Ælfric.

'Rolf H. Bremmer Jr. is then set the task of introducing "Old English heroic literature," which he achieves through some helpful musing upon the nature of heroes in their Germanic context, moving via an examination of poetry with a Migration-age backdrop to a subtle discussion of the "heroic ethic" in Old English verse with a more contemporary setting.'
Richard W. Dance, Medieval Review, 06.09.23

From the sixth century forward, the early written sources for post-Roman Britain agree on the same dated events. In particular, the dates in chapter sixty-six of the Historia Brittonum coincide with those in Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and are consistent with Gildas’ sequence of post-Roman events. Any variation is due to the Historia author’s incorrect belief that consuls (and not emperors) ruled Rome after 388. This in turn fully explains twenty-four supposedly missing years in chapter sixty-six. Recognition that relative, or ‘stepping stone,’ dating underpins early post-Roman historiography accounts for current chronological inconsistencies.

The conquest of England by the Normans in the year 1066 has been described by the renowned English historian, Frederic William Maitland, as being a catastrophe which determined the entire future of English law. This traditional view of legal history has regarded the primary source of modem English law as being of Anglo-Norman origin and has often overlooked the valuable contributions made to it by the antecedent Anglo-Saxon customary law. The purpose of this article is to rectify this deficiency and to examine, in some detail, the operation of the Anglo-Saxon legal system.

For at least three hundred years the linear earthwork now known as the Bedwyn Dyke was held to be a part of the Wansdyke system. It was not until 1960 that the Wansdyke was finally established by Fox and Fox as terminating at New Buildings to the west of Savernake Forest. From this point forward the nature of the Bedwyn Dyke was divorced from studies relating the Wansdyke. Since this time the Bedwyn Dyke has been mentioned only in relation to the study of other features in the area and no critical reassessment has been carried out. This paper charts the historiography of the east end of Wansdyke to examine how the concept of an extended Wansdyke frontier became established and was perpetuated for so long.

Reassesses the role of King Alfred in the development of London in the ninth century.  It explores the historical and landscape context of the political and strategic developments of which it was the centre, at a crucial juncture in the development of the West Saxon kingdom in relation to the Viking presence in Mercia and East Anglia

This study provides the first evidence for the extraction of lead in the later early medieval period in Lancashire, in the North West of England. Archaeological evidence for human activity in the region during the later medieval period is modest, although the material culture that is known supports the historic accounts of settlement by people of Scandinavian origin, which is reinforced by studies of place names and local dialect. Investigation of two upland sites in the western Pennines, on Anglezarke and Rivington moors, indicates that lead was being extracted in the period c.680-1000 cal.AD, most likely from known veins at Lead Mines Clough. The emergence of extractive activity coincides with contact with the Norse who are known from both historic and archaeological evidence to have been present in Lancashire during the later early medieval period.

KEYWORDS
EARLY MEDIEVAL, LEAD, MINING, MINERAL EXTRACTION, MAGNETIC MEASUREMENT, SATURATION ISOTHERMAL REMANENT MAGNETISATION ASSAY, HEAVY METAL (LEAD) ASSAY, METALLURGY, UPLAND, PEAT, LANCASHIRE, ARCHAEOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGICAL METHOD, NORSE ARCHAEOLOGY