The Origins of the British: The New Prehistory of Britain (50 page)

Three very populous nations inhabit the Island of Brittia, and one king is set over each of them. And the names of these nations are Angles, Frisians, and Britons who have the same name as the
island. So great apparently is the multitude of these peoples that every year in large groups they migrate from there with their women and children and go to the Franks. And they
²⁹
are settling them [sic] in what seems to be the more desolate part of their land, and as a result of this they say they are gaining possession of the island. So that not long ago the king of the Franks actually sent some of his friends to the Emperor Justinian in Byzantium, and despatched with them the men of the Angles, claiming that this island [Britain], too, is ruled by him. Such then are the matters concerning the island called Brittia.
³⁰

First, this is a unique use of the term ‘Brittia’ for Britain, which Procopius elsewhere refers to as ‘Britannia’. Procopius seems to identify sixth-century Britons as an aboriginal nation sharing their island from some unspecified time. In that detail the text echoes Bede’s distinction between ‘Britannia’ and the sixth-century ‘Brettones’. The Frankish attempts to claim control over the ‘Frisian’ part of Britain can probably be dismissed as a political agendum, although it does imply intimate family contacts across the Channel – presumably non-belligerent! For me, however, the real clue here is unconscious of politics and possibly more revealing. The Angles tell Procopius that three populous nations inhabit Britain, two of them being Angles and Britons. So far, the Anglian version agrees with most historians, including Bede (except that Bede includes the Picts as a fourth nation). However, the third nation in the sixth century ought to be Saxons, not Frisians. Saxons are, surprisingly, not mentioned at all. The Angles are not
adding
Frisians in their story to Procopius, they are
substituting
them for Saxons.

The simplest explanation for this anomaly, short of ignorance or further political agenda, is that the Anglian informants
conflated English Saxons and Frisians as culturally, and possibly linguistically, similar. This again seems to echo Caesar’s comments about the links between the southern coastal tribes of Britain and Belgic Gaul six hundred years before. More credibly, it implies that, during the sixth century, Angles were sufficiently different linguistically from ‘English Saxons’ not to know the difference between Saxons and Frisians. Given that the Continental ‘Old Saxony’ homeland, in north-west Germany, adjoined Angeln, this seems odd. But it would at least be consistent with a significant divergence of Old English Anglian from Old English Saxon already existing at a time not long after the ‘invasion’.

Getting back from language to the English geography of early runes, if the distribution of North Germanic runic script
before
650 was a proxy marker for fifth- to seventh-century Germanic invasions, it was very limited geographically. This would be more consistent with small elite Anglian and Jutish invasions than the wipeout theory.

As far as the regions of the English Saxon kingdoms are concerned, with the exception of a couple of finds in London itself there are effectively no securely dated runes before or after 650 (
Figures 9.2a
and
9.2b
). It could be argued that since there were no runes in the Saxon homeland in northwest Germany, then there wouldn’t be any in English Saxony – but this does not really hold water. During Roman times the south of England enjoyed a good standard of literacy, yet soon afterwards Saxon regions seem, on the non-perishable inscriptional evidence, to have descended into illiteracy. When runes
first spread exclusively to Anglian and Jutish regions in the fifth century it would be natural for their practical use to have spread south to the apparently illiterate Saxons, who lacked their own runes – in much the same way that runes spread across into Frisia from eastern England. This did not happen. As indicated earlier, when the first post-Roman writing reappeared in the Saxon kingdoms later, after 650, it was in Roman script. This southern picture of Roman before and Medieval Roman after seems more consistent with the archaeological-cultural continuity in the south of England described by Pryor rather than the descent into illiterate barbarism implied by Gildas.

One of the other specific archaeological markers used to link the German Anglo-Saxon homelands with England in the fifth and sixth centuries is a form of personal adornment known as a cruciform brooch (
Figure 9.3
). In Germany, they are typically found in both the Angeln and Old Saxony homelands at the base of the Cimbrian (Danish) Peninsula, although not in Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen, see
Figure 8.1d
) in the hinterland south of Frisia. In England, they are found in nearly exactly the same limited Anglo-Jutish distribution as are the early runes, and are absent from the English Saxon kingdoms.
³¹
Again, this void seems to de-link those kingdoms from the Old Saxony homeland over the same period.

Even in the Anglian regions, in which they are found, cruciform brooches, like early runes are also far more limited in distribution than the great political spread of the Anglians by
AD
600, which is suggested in most standard texts (
Figure 9.3
). As mentioned, this first spread of runes was in Kent (Jutes), East Anglia (East Angles), East Midlands (Middle Angles), and a couple of sites in Northumbria (Deira and Lindsey). The
centre of gravity of later runes (after 650) moved north to north Mercia, missing most of south Mercia. They also spread throughout Northumbria, including Bernicia and Lindisfarne. The later runes featured the double-barred H,
(
Figure 9.2b
). The density of English runic finds is not nearly as intense as in the Angeln homeland at any period. This muted and tardy distribution pattern could be argued as just a limited elite expansion, but then it would not support the population replacement that many argue for. Furthermore, the slow wave of cultural movement implied by the runes might suggest receptive acculturation as the elite invaders moved up the eastern rivers, rather than rapid conquest and genocide.

In the last three chapters I have discussed genetic, linguistic, literary and archaeological evidence for a foreign, probably Germanic-speaking presence in Britain from before the fifth century
AD,
and even before the Roman invasion. The genetic evidence points towards north-west European influence on the east and south coasts of Britain, going back to the Neolithic, and a Scandinavian influence, affecting north-east Britain in particular. I have cited evidence for a deeper division between the first Old English dialects with a stronger Norse influence in the north. I have suggested that-the colonizations of Anglian and Saxon parts of England had complex but different timescales and arose from several Continental sources at different times.

In the next chapter I ask how the Angles and Saxons identified themselves: who they thought they were, their origins and cul tural identities. Unlike the Celts of the classical period, the Angles and Saxons wrote quite a bit about themselves.

Using language and culture to trace and label previous migrations is an age-old practice, but the problem is that such identifications may or may not correlate with modern genetic evidence for migration. In the past, the word ‘race’ was employed quite freely and confidently, even in academic texts, on the assumption that the reader would understand exactly what the writer meant by ‘race’, in particular and in general. Since the 1950s, two other words have crept into the vocabulary of anthropologists and others: ‘ethnic group’ and ‘ethnicity’. Although there is no more clarity between the user and hearer, these terms carry
rather less of the spurious implications of genetic difference and purity implied by ‘race’. In anthropological usage, ‘ethnicity’ stresses an individual’s own perception of identity and group membership in addition to the externally imposed cultural or genetic definition. An example of the former would be ‘I am “Welsh” because I see myself as Welsh’. Unfortunately, when the perception of the person making this statement is different from those of people hearing it, particularly in the context of recent immigration, it may cause misunderstanding.

The external observer’s view of group affiliation, although more readily available in the works of historians, is likely to be biased and unreliable when the source of information is remote in time or place – one cannot take ancient assessments at face value. Phil ologists studying the Roman and Early Medieval periods (Latin, celtic and Old English) use the words ‘British’ and ‘English’ in a similar sense to Bede and Procopius, to indicate Brythonic celtic as opposed to Anglian and other non-celtic languages. Those early Medieval historians also used the Latin term
gens
(‘people’ or ‘tribe’) to indicate that they meant nationhood or tribal grouping in this context. An example is the title of Bede’s great text:
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
, meaning the ‘Ecclesiastical History of the Anglian Nation’, which specifically excludes not only Britons but also Saxons from front-stage.

By contrast, Gildas was, in Bede’s view, the ‘Britons’ own historian’ and demonstrated immaculate credentials of subjectivity. When he used the term ‘Britain’ he passionately identified with an island that, in his view, had belonged entirely to celtic-speaking Britons. Unfortunately this detracts from his historical credibility when it comes to the sort of details Bede
was so keen to nail down in order to clarify his history of the Anglian church: who invaded which area, where and when?

The subjective view of group affiliation may still help us to see how speakers of Old English, the new Anglo-Saxon rulers, saw themselves ethnically. Is there any information which can help us to determine whether they regarded themselves as Scandinavian
¹
or as Continental ‘Western Germanic’ folk? There is one readily available source of information, but one which is usually derided as creative, legendary and even ‘mythological’ – namely royal family trees.

It is said that we can all choose our friends but not our relatives. With
king lists
, written lists of kingly succession which feature in many countries’ ancient literature,
²
there is the possibility of breaking this biological rule. By adding illustrious ancestors, kings may hope to enhance themselves and their origins. The motivation for such risky creativity has to be legitimacy. One purpose that all royal genealogies share is to establish legitimacy through the iden tification of lines of descent. In common with many other royal trees, the Germanic king lists are indeed somewhat creative and legendary, not to say mythical, often stretching back to Biblical names such as Noah. Scythia and Asia Minor are sometimes claimed as ultimate homelands, and the Scandinavian god Thor as a prime ancestor, sometimes said to have descended from Priam of Troy. While these Medieval eccentricities might be thought to cast doubt on the veracity of more recent branches of the trees, they emphasize the overall motive of the process: to establish legitimacy via a bloodline going back to great leaders of the past.

The more recent branches of ancient Germanic royal trees from Germany, parts of Scandinavia, Iceland and England show increasing concordance with one another in their deeper roots, tending to move the Anglian and even the Saxon identity away from Lower Saxony to Scandinavia. Some of the concordance results from later Medieval scribes copying from the same older sources. This potentially circular practice can, to a certain extent, be checked for detail to ensure independence. Some of the earliest documents about Germanic-speaking peoples are from England, and royal genealogy forms a major part of their text. Luckily for the purpose of checking the distortions of later Medieval writers, the earliest such text by an English person is Bede’s sober
Ecclesiastical History
, written in Latin.
³
About 150 years after Bede, in the late ninth century, came the first of a series of versions of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
. This first one was commissioned in Old English by King Ælfred the Great of Wessex, but subsequent editions were added to by generations of compilers up until the middle of the twelfth century, by which time the language had matured into Middle English.