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AD43–1500

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EARLY & MEDIEVAL MIGRATIONS AD43–

1500
Anglo-Saxons, Gaels and Scandinavians: the peopling of Scotland

The Anglo-Saxon invasion and

the beginnings of the 'English'
Fifth-century burial pots and other artefacts from Issendorf, Lower Saxony, Germany. Courtesy of
Landesmuseum Hannover
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The early British

During the fifth century AD Britain ceased to be part of the Roman Empire and
became a group of small warring territories, from which eventually developed
the medieval kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales. This process involved
population movements around the Irish and North Sea coastal regions, of
which the largest was that of the Anglo-Saxons from northern Germany and
southern Scandinavia into eastern England.

Early accounts of Anglo-Saxon migration: Bede’s

story
Two early accounts of the Anglo-Saxon migration were written by authors who
were both Christian clerics, Gildas and Bede. Gildas was British and wrote in
about 500AD, probably in south-western Britain. He describes in his account
the departure of the Roman army, followed by the arrival of bloodthirsty
invaders, who killed the native British population or drove them into exile.

Two hundred years later Bede, an Anglo-Saxon monk in the monastery of

Jarrow, wrote The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he
completed in 731AD. He drew on Gildas's work, but in his own account
describes the Anglo-Saxon invaders, his own ancestors, as those carrying out
the just vengeance of God and therefore being a people chosen by God.

Bede gave a precise date, 449AD, for the first arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and
he said they came from three tribes: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who
themselves came from different parts of Germany and Denmark – the Angles
were from Angeln, which is a small district in northern Germany; the Saxons
were from what is now Lower Saxony, also in northern Germany; and the Jutes
were from Jutland, now part of Denmark. According to Bede the Angles
settled in East Anglia, the Saxons in southern England, and the Jutes in Kent
and the Isle of Wight.

The name ‘Anglo-Saxon’ comes from the fusion of the names of two of these
peoples. The terms ‘English’ and ‘England’ come from a further shortening, all
terms coming from the name of a small district in northern Germany, Angeln.

Was Bede's story correct?

Bede’s story has been so influential that many scholars have taken it as their
starting point rather than as a piece of historical evidence to be tested. The
tribes Bede names in his account have been understood as the names of
distinct peoples, who arrived in separate groups, all from specific places. But
Bede was explaining regional differences that existed in his own day, in terms
that made sense to him, centuries after the migration had actually taken place.
The archaeological evidence suggests, instead, that Britain’s people were
much more mixed. The incomers did not all come from the same place at the
same time in separate groups and many of the regional differences have other
explanations.

Also, any version of this migration story that presents it as the rapid and
complete replacement of Britons by Anglo-Saxons shortens a process that
took centuries, and a different course in different parts of Britain. Crossing the
North Sea by boat was not like the early European journeys across the Atlantic
to discover America; they were not difficult, unusual and dangerous voyages
to unknown lands. People had been travelling by boat around the coasts of
northern Europe for thousands of years, and trade across the Channel was
established long before the Romans arrived. During the Roman period people
had moved around the empire, many of them coming to or travelling from
Britain, and movement didn’t end completely once Rome was not ruling
Britain any longer, even if the big official shipments of goods and money did
stop. The Britons knew about the peoples of Germany and Scandinavia as
traders, slaves or pirates, and the Anglo-Saxons knew about the land they
decided to come to, and once they arrived they were able to make repeat
journeys to return home or to bring more of their family over.

The truth about Anglo-Saxon migration

There has been much debate about how many Anglo-Saxons arrived and how
many of the native Britons survived their invasion. The key issue in this debate
is the extent to which change in culture and language was caused by a large
scale invasion or whether or not the social, economic and political changes we
know took place, combined with native adoption of a Germanic lifestyle and
language after the disintegration of the Roman Empire, were the result of a
much smaller incoming group.

Language, archaeology and genetics have been used with varying success to
expand, confirm or contradict the story of an all-conquering Anglo-Saxon
migration provided by Bede and other early medieval historical sources.
Figures of between two and six million have been suggested for the
population of Roman Britain on the basis that the scale of land use and
density of settlement shows it was as great or greater than the population
listed in the Domesday Book in 1087 (which has been estimated at around two
million) (see: 'An African presence in thirteenth-century Britain'). There was
probably a population decline at the end of the Roman period but we can only
guess at actual numbers.

In some areas, for example Norfolk and the Vale of Pickering in Yorkshire, the
density of Anglo-Saxon settlement has been shown to be comparable to the
population density of the later Middle Ages. In other regions, for example in
the north of England near Hadrian’s Wall, pollen analysis suggests regrowth of
the woodlands cut down for timber during the Roman period that could have
resulted from a fall in population.

Even if the name ‘Angle’ was applied to people living in a larger region of
north Germany and Denmark there were not enough of them to wipe out and
replace all of the people already living in the east and south of Britain. The
story is more complicated than that, but it is certainly a story about people
moving and arriving in a new country where they and their descendants had a
big impact.

As a result of the Anglo-Saxon invasion, the British and/or Latin spoken in

lowland Britain disappeared and was replaced by Old English, the direct
ancestor of modern English (see: 'Making peace'). Rural settlements in early
Anglo-Saxon England included one new imported type of building,
the grubenhaus, which had a large pit under the floor. Burials also changed. In
addition, new types of dress, weapons and pottery appeared in Britain during
the fifth and sixth centuries. Many of these were very like the brooches, pots
and weapons being used and buried on the other side of the North Sea.

Clearly a new people brought their belongings and ideas about how to make
pots, bury the dead and build houses. A lot of the people buried with the new
types of brooches or pots certainly were immigrants but even these
proportions are hard to determine because local people could also have used
these things: some ‘Anglo-Saxon’ brooches were probably worn by women
whose ancestors were British, even if their descendants thought of themselves
as ‘Anglo-Saxons’. Some ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cremation pots may have held the
remains of British people as well as those of Germanic immigrants.

Regional patterns
When we look at regional patterns we can see they don’t have the simple
explanation Bede gave.

A Spong Hill, Norfolk, burial pot. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council Historic
Environment Service
The settlement of Jutes from Denmark in Kent may be reflected in gold
pendants called 'bracteates', characteristic of southern Scandinavia in the later
fifth century, but other ‘Kentish’ jewellery, pots and glass vessels are like those
found across the Channel, used by the Franks in the Rhineland and northern
France, with whom Kent was in close political and economic contact in the
sixth and seventh centuries. The ‘Angles’ of East Anglia were buried with dress
fasteners and pots of types that had origins in different places around the
North Sea, including both ‘Saxon’ and ‘Anglian’ regions.
Our current picture of the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain is that in some
regions like Norfolk there may have been many incomers who arrived early in
the fifth century, but in other regions migrants arrived later and in much
smaller numbers. Some of the incomers were successful war bands who met
little organised resistance in the parts of Britain closest to their homelands;
elsewhere the local population remained but its leadership either eventually
adopted Anglo-Saxon language and customs or was replaced, leading in turn
to the Anglicization of their people.

Anglo-Saxon migrations did contribute significantly to the population of

England but perhaps not on the scale that has sometimes been
suggested, and their impact was not the same in all parts of the country. Many
people have Anglo-Saxon roots, but where those roots stretch and the ways
they are entangled, is more complicated than Bede and others would have us
believe.

AD43–1500

Europe
archaeology arts internal migration language war

RELATED RESOURCES
Books

Helena Hamerow and David A. Hinton (eds.)(2011), The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon
Archaeology

Catherine Hills (2003), Origins of the English

Nicholas Higham and M. J. Ryan (2013), The Anglo-Saxon World (esp. chapters 1-3)

Samantha Lucy (2000), The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death

Leslie Webster (2012), Anglo-Saxon Art

Barbara Yorke (1990), Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England

The finds from Spong Hill have been published in reports in the series East Anglian Archaeology and
in Catherine Hills and Sam Lucy (2013), Spong Hill Part IX: Chronology and Synthesis

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Written by Dr Catherine Hills, Senior Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research,
University of Cambridge

Questions and Student Activities

Recently, scientific evidence has been used to try to work out the proportion
of incoming migrant 'Anglo-Saxons' to other post-Roman residents of Britain.
Unfortunately, research based on modern DNA has produced some
contradictory results, either arguing that most modern British populations are
descended from the prehistoric inhabitants of the islands or coming to the
opposite conclusion that the male British population in the eastern part of
Britain was all but wiped out by invaders.

More recent research is based directly on the skeletons of people who lived at
the time, extracting ancient DNA and isotopes from their teeth, which can
show whether individuals grew up where they were buried. These techniques
may eventually provide enough examples to give conclusive answers.

 Bearing this information, and the information from the source above in
mind, do you think we will ever have a full understanding of our
ancestors? Are there certain things we cannot know and, if so, what
does that suggest about the study of history?
 Compare the account of the Anglo-Saxons with the account of
the Ipswich Man. What links, if any, can we draw between the two?

Migration and conversion: The Christianisation of Britain

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AD43–1500
Early & Medieval Migrations
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1500–1750
Early Modern Migrations

1750–1900
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