In the early 5th century AD, Britain began to be invaded by fierce tribes from Norway, Denmark, and northwestern Germany. It was the Angles and the Saxons, who ended up creating a culture in Great Britain that would last more than 400 years .
The invaders began to arrive in Britain after the Roman legions left the province. They arrived in long, narrow boats driven by 28 oarsmen. The ships had no sails and were not suitable for crossing oceans, so the invaders traveled along the coast of Holland before making the short journey to Britain.
These warriors were tall, fierce fighters with blue eyes and blond hair. At first, the Anglo-Saxons were hired as mercenaries to defend the British from their northern enemies, the Picts , who lived in what is now Scotland. But in the year 600 AD. the Anglo-Saxons had settled in the east and south of England, conquering the British who had hired them .
Anglo-Saxon England was divided into seven kingdoms:Northumbria, to the north; Mercia and Wessex to the west; East Anglia, to the east; and Essex, Kent and Sussex to the southwest . Although some Britons were pushed west to Wales and Cornwall, many of them stayed and probably ended up intermarrying with the Anglo-Saxons. However, the British were treated as second-class citizens and forced to become laborers on the land or slaves.
The Anglo-Saxons had a hierarchical society, with the king and the nobles at the top, the peasants in the middle and, below them, were the agricultural workers -those who could not leave the place where they worked- and the slaves. The nobles owned large amounts of land given by the king, while the free peasants or ceorls (pronounced "chiurls") were given less land and had to serve in the king's army. The lowest social group was slaves, people who had been captured during war, had broken the law, or were simply poor and had sold themselves for food.
Most of the people who lived in Anglo-Saxon England were farmers. They lived on individual farms or hamlets of between two and ten farms. Each farm had a wooden main house with a thatched roof where the family lived and slept. The rest of the buildings that surrounded the house were used as workshops or warehouses. Sometimes there was a fenced yard next to the farm and the rest of the buildings were inside it. Towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, between the 9th and 11th centuries AD, the appearance of a new type of arable field, large and open, meant that farmers had to work together, as a team. So the peasants began to live in large towns.
Anglo-Saxon nobility
The nobles lived in halls built of oak with thatched roofs. Often the wooden walls and doors were carved and under the wooden floors there was space to store goods. In these ballrooms, as they were called, there were no bedrooms, so the nobles had to eat and sleep with their servants. Sometimes these great halls served as royal centers, such as those discovered at Yeavering, in the kingdom of Northumberland, and at Cheddar, in Somerset. Yeavering is known to have been visited by King Edwin in the 620s and Cheddar by Alfred the Great in the 9th and 10th centuries AD .
Anglo-Saxon noblemen were buried with their arms beside them to make clear their status, while their wives were buried in dresses fastened by decorated brooches. In the 6th and 7th centuries AD, the tombs of kings, nobles and their relatives were covered with mounds of earth.
In Anglo-Saxon society, if someone hurt, killed or caused any damage to another he had to pay an amount of money, known as wergeld or blood money, to his victim or her family. The amount to be paid depended on who had been injured and how seriously. So a small injury to an unimportant person required a small payment, while an injury to a nobleman required a large sum.
Women could be rich and powerful in Anglo-Saxon society. Ethelfled, the daughter of King Alfred, was known as "the lady of the Mercians" and was one of the most powerful people.
Through the payment of dowries, the husband gave his wife money and land. The poorest women received jewelry at their wedding. However, most of the farmers' wives spent their time weaving, sewing clothes, and working in the fields.
Anglo-Saxon trade
The cities were slowly transformed into commercial centers. Here the nobles sold slaves, animals, skins, leather and woolen cloth in exchange for goods and jewelry from other countries :German mill wheels, ceramics from Egypt, wine from northern France and precious stones from the Middle East. The ports of Ludenwic, Ipswich and Hamwic became important trading centers between the 7th and 9th centuries. However, they were not fortified and were attacked by Viking raiders from Scandinavia . In response, the Anglo-Saxons began building fortified cities to replace commercial ports; many of them still exist today.
Viking raids in the 9th century destroyed all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms except Wessex. In the 10th century their kings fought back and conquered the Danish Vikings, creating a single kingdom in England. This unified kingdom even survived the invasion of the Danish King Cnut.
However, after the English King Edward the Confessor died without an heir, William, Duke of Normandy (known as the Conqueror), invaded England from there and defeated the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings in 1066> . From then on he ruled over England as William I.
In 1939 several extraordinary Anglo-Saxon burial mounds were excavated at Sutton Hoo, near the Suffolk coast in East Anglia. In one of the burial mounds, the remains of a 30-meter-long wooden boat that had been dragged from the nearby river Deben appeared. A burial site had been set up in a cabin amidships. There was no body, but the burial contained some of the finest Anglo-Saxon weapons, armor and jewelery ever found. Among the finds were a ceremonial helmet and shield, gold and garnet jewelry, silver-trimmed drinking horns, a lyre, a scepter, and numerous gold and silver objects, including gold coins. Sutton Hoo was evidently the tomb of a great warlord. Some historians believe it to be the tomb of Raedwald, an East Anglian king who died around 625 AD