Anglo-Saxon and Viking invasions

Anglo SAxon + Viking invasions

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Who wrote The Ruin of England?

Gildas

Bede

In the 540s a British monk named Gildas whose purpose was to denounce the evils of his day in the most violent possible language wrote The Ruin of Britain. (Morgan, 2010, p. 60). Bede, a monk in the Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, completed his great Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731.

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Gildas

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gave an accurate yearly summary of events

YEs

NO

The early annals are much less reliable than those for later centuries, and their chronological framework is suspect before the late sixth century. There is no near-contemporary source of Anglo-Saxon origin. The reason: the Germanic peoples were illiterate during their first two centuries in Britain. So their early fortunes can only be glimpsed through the hostile eyes of Britons, through the ill-informed eyes of foreigners, and by means of their own half-remembered traditions. (Morgan, 2010, p. 62)

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NO

Kinship values and wergild were introduced by Scandinavian invaders

No

Yes

Anglo-Saxon kin-groups were close-knit in the homeland, and they remained so in England. The families and dependants of one man may sometimes have formed their own settlement units, with shared resources and systems of land-allotment. The influence of such extended 'affinities' on the character of the settlements is shown by the numerous place-names ending -ing, -ingham,and -ington. (Morgan, 2010, p. 64)Safety lay in knowing that relatives would avenge one's death, and to neglect such vengeance meant undying shame. Honour might be satisfied by a wergild, a payment by the slayer to his victim's kin. Anglo-Saxon law codes list scales of wergilds in accordance with the victim's rank, and kings increasingly encouraged this non-violent type of retribution. (Morgan, 2010, p. 65)

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NO

Anglo-Saxon kings enjoyed great stability and prosperity

NO

YES

In the world of seventh-century politics, then, it was possibleto gain great power but hard to keep it for long. Why did kings rise and fall so quickly? One reason is that power and conquest depended on military forces; forces were attracted by gift-giving; gift-giving depended on wealth; and wealth in its turn was gained by power and conquest. Society was riddled with feuds, and the succession to kingdoms was fluid and uncertain; hence there were many royal and noble exiles from their own kin in search of generous and congenial lords. Such a system could hardly be stable: when a king grew sick, poor, or mean his retinue would collapse, and his heirs, if they survived at all, would become sub-kings or followers of a new lord. (Morgan, 2010, p. 72)

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NO

Anglo-Saxon kingdoms maintained a strong central administration

No

Yes

At the heart of each early district was a royal manor house or tun, run by a local official but visited by the king and his retinue at more or less frequent intervals. It was these 'central places', not towns or even villages, which were the main local foci of early and mid-Saxon society. The scattered inhabitantsof the district looked for law and government to the king's great hall with its surrounding buildings. Here too they paid their dues and other public burdens in accordance with a com-plex system of assessment. The king's deputy at the centre might thus receive renders of grain from some groups of hides, of calves or foalsfrom others, and of honey, mead, or lesser commodities from others again. Thus the early administrative districts were organized for exploitation as well as for jurisdiction. A system of economically specialized zones suited the underdeveloped countryside, with its sharp geographical contrasts and large areas of uncleared common pasture (Morgan, 2010, p. 75).

One of Egbert's speeches from his royal manor as seen on the Vikings series

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YES

England welcomed the first Danish invasions with...

Horror

ARms wide open

England had been safe from foreign attacks for two centuries; the reaction to the sudden desecration of three of its most holy places Lindisfarne (793), Jarrow (794), and lona(795) is easily imagined. These were, however, isolated incidents, and it was a generation before the Viking nuisance became a major threat. But a big raid on Kent in 835 opened three decades in which attacks came almost yearly, and which ended with the arrival of a full-scale invading army. The dramatic expansion of the Norwegians and Danes is a European phenomenon, of which the raids on England and Ireland were only one part. (Morgan, 2010, p. 91)

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The Lindisfarne raid as imagined by the TV series Vikings.

Horror

Danish raiders were originally traders whose interests turned towards organizing new settlements

No

Yes

Many adventurers must have heard stories of the fertile lands with monasteries full of easy plunder, and it is surprising rather than otherwise that the early raids were notfollowed up more quickly. The fall of the Danish royal dynastyin 854 left a power vacuum, with no strong king who couldunite warriors and prevent them from dispersing on foreign exploits. These factors help to explain why raiders descended in such numbers on European countries from the 850s onwards, and why casual plundering gave way to a policy of conquest and settlement. (Morgan, 2010, p. 92).

YES